Used To Be

T0T I'm so glad!! They're both experts in the puppy eyes department, but I think Kleya could really give Cassian a run for his credits...

(For the sapphics in my phone, love y'll~~)

Velkleya fan art commissioned by me, done by the amazing @basementexplorer07 to illustrate @rubikswriter 's amazing fic Primary resistance at a critical low. I'm obsessed, they're so beautiful 😍 The lighting! Vels hair! Vel's smirk! The gay panic!

a stolen moment at the pianoforte for our beloved Michaela and Francesca <3

I really appreciate this scene, on many levels, but there is especially something about the visual composition of it that hits me real good. There’s been so much fun back and forth between them, animosity, caustic sarcasm and weird accidental incidental flirting. They’ve had it all. So for this to close them out - the way the scene is composed; across from each other, a physical object in their hands, between them - to take the edge off the vulnerability and act as a barrier, a shield. But their words cut through it even when they remain skittishly tense in their physicality.

There aren’t any angry words left between them, no sparring, no weapons. They’re each simply clinging to that mug of something hot, or something strong - as a defence. That mug that somehow is both a shield against everything that threatens to come rushing in and against the woman sitting across from them. They’re not at battle, but they’re both so guarded. They've put down their swords, but neither of them are ready to relinquish their shield. So the mug stays, for now.

Still though there is something there, not necessarily a peace offering, more just an acknowledgement of “I do see you”. Words cut through the defences and land and somehow link them together in a way that is left entirely unexplored.

I enjoyed watching their scenes from the start. The actresses played well off each other and the writing was sarcastic and fun, but I didn’t actually ship it until this scene in the rain. And to be honest it’s not the scene itself that got to me, it’s how it was presented and when it was presented in the narrative.

The writers send a wounded Kleya off rudderless into the forest and by having the scene bleed into Partagaz suicide it sets a tone which slowly chills your stomach. You get this melancholic imagine burned into your retina as Kleya disconnects herself from the machines monitoring her wellbeing and then steps out into the rain. Especially melancholic as the scene plays out beneath the hypnotic lull of Nemik’s manifesto which starts off on “there will be times when the struggle seems impossible, I know this already, alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy-” That is what we leave Kleya on, that is the note on which she unhooks her lifelines and walks out into the dark void on. Only for it to be directly followed by Partagaz killing himself. It sets quite the dark tone in you mind. Instantly as we close out on the muffled blaster shot you worry not for the dead fascist, but for the roaming spy out in the cold. Worry real fucking bad that she too is about to walk the perimeter of self-harm town. What is there to stop her?

Fast forward to where we’ve got Vel at the same time. Vel is being an adorably sentimental little lesbian and is pushing for Cassian to reconnect with Bix. Sure the scenes is there to punch us in the gut as we as the audience already know that such a reconnection is not on the table and that Cassian will be dead soon. It does however also work as a good snapshot of what Vel’s mindset is like and the emotions she harbours. For her that human connection is something worth pushing and striving for. It’s made clear she is still pretty broken in her own grief, but to her human emotion and love are worth pursuing even in the face of all the darkness. Maybe she doesn’t see it for herself, but she pushes those around her towards it.

So we have a lost and emotionally unmoored Kleya with potentially suicidal tendencies and you have an equally lost Vel who is shown to still treasure, champion and maybe even yearn for love even though she herself have suffered grief because of past experiences. Those are the two ships that are sent off into the Yavin night with the sole purpose of crashing into each other. Two people in different stages of grief, but with an equally deep need for tenderness.

I don’t know which one we are supposed to assume saves who through the rainy encounter. But Vel gets a reason to care, a reason to comfort and a reason to be put together. Kleya on the other hand gets a safety-net, compassion to catch her in its webs as she’s free falling. A familiar person who anchors her to the moment, the cause and to herself. Suddenly the latter part of Nemik’s manifesto makes a comeback in your mind, “remember this, freedom is a pure idea, it occurs spontaneously and without instruction”. Which maybe isn’t just referring to freedom in its more traditional sense, but also as a synonym for human connection. Care, compassion and love are all spontaneous acts and cannot be killed no matter how many restrictions or legislations you try to apply to them. In that moment, in that scene, you feel it - the unstoppable flow of human connection occuring without instruction.

Whatever that connection between them is actually supposed to be canonically – well it’s up for interpretation, but personally it bumped the pieces into a position where I suddenly raised my eyebrow at what had come before. It was the metaphorical equivalent of being handed a blacklight in an Amsterdam hotelroom. I can now suddenly see what was always there, but which wasn't visible to my naked eye before. Am I pleased I now know what’s there? Maybe not entirely, because who needs more rare!pairs in their life?! Not me necessarily, but here we are and there’s no putting it back once you’ve seen it. Because you realise that for these two the show was actually just the prologue. Whatever their story is, it actually began there in the rain and the end - well it is yet to be written, but does appear to involve each other.

“I have friends everywhere. You’re here with friends.”

(For the sapphics in my phone, love y'll~~)