smoky view

“Then I’m glad, it must mean we align to the same side?” Amilyn asked, venturing a guest and giving a nod, before the purple haired woman gestured to a platinum ring on her finger with the Rebel Alliance emblem. “Well, I’m just happy to assist where I can, I suppose i’d be much more better at delegating things and people, but searching for a cure is something I can do with the given options. “Your name? I’m Amilyn Holdo”

“we sure do,” orion answered with a nod. “whatever your heart desires, i suppose. any help is good help.” any help made the searching go faster, she hoped. there were so many hands on deck and yet, not one of them could find a definitive cure for this damned virus. “holdo?” of course. how did she not know? who else had purple hair in the alliance. “i’m orion challis, vice admiral.”

it made sense. even if she was mad at her, she could still love her. rey sniffed and paused before nodding swiftly, sitting up on her knees again. “c-can you… make them find the-the cure faster…?” she murmured, wiping at her puffy eyes. both from crying, and from the effects illness. “i-i wanna see you, a-and… and i wanna g-go home…”

she was doing a lot of sighing lately but it felt like the only thing that could relieve her emotional pain just for a moment. a deep breath left her system as she looked down at her feet. orion hated to disappoint but she wasn’t one to lie, either. “we’re working as hard as we can...” she murmured. “i know you do,” she said, taking a seat in front of the glass. “i want to get you out of there and cured as soon as possible. i just.. don’t know when that’s gonna happen.”

death, it seemed, always came too early. he had not been a young man the first time he’d died, not exactly, but he’d perished far younger than humans were supposed to. rebels never did have long lifespans. this time, however, death seemed especially cruel. he was young again, babyfaced and energetic, and he’d finally told orion all of the things he’d wanted to tell her. yet somehow, even now, he had been too late. there hadn’t been enough time, not in this life nor the last, and he wondered why he’d been brought back to life at all. was this some sort of cruel trick? or perhaps it was punishment for something he’d done decades ago. 

he watched through the glass as orion broke down into tears, little salty streaks streaming down her face, and he wished for nothing more than to reach out and brush them away. quarantine restricted him from doing so, and gael was forced too watch her weep. “i don’t either,” he murmured. it had become harder and harder for gael to meet her eye. he’d have sooner torn his heart from his chest than forced orion to endure this sort of suffering, and all for him. him. as if gael was worth this sort of suffering. “i’m not calm,” he confessed. beneath it all, gael felt as though he was going to come undone at any moment now, but if he broke down too they’d be entirely inconsolable. “i feel like i can’t breathe sometimes, but i’m trying to keep myself together.” he shrugged a shoulder helplessly, “i wanna make these last… i wanna make this count for something.” nothing would be accomplished here if they were both miserable. 

if it was up to gael, he wouldn’t have chosen to leave orion this time. there was nothing greater at play, her life was not at risk, this death felt rather pointless. he would be one of dozens and dozens to die, and there would be nothing at all accomplished in his end. this was not a death for the rebellion, but a life wasted because of some leak in an old, shitty lab. 

almost as soon as gael had spoken those words, he realized the gravity of what he’d said. he wanted to tell her, it was important that orion knew how he felt in these last moments of his life, but kriff, he’d just confessed to something that he wasn’t ready to say yet. after all, gael and orion had only just started to date. but it was the truth. if she asked, he would have to tell her that yes, he did love her. he had loved her for so, so incredibly long. just as the silence between them had started to feel uncomfortable, she spoken the very words he’d hoped to hear. at once, his expression erupted into a grin. illness aside, gael was thrilled to hear that she loved him. “so much,” he agreed, tipping his forehead against the glass as if to meet hers. the glass was so thick that he couldn’t even feel her warmth yet. “i do too,” he agreed with a little frown, “but at least this time around we told each other.” his smile weakened and he shrugged a shoulder. “maybe next time we’ll get to have a little more time.” as soon as he’d spoken, gael felt the ache blossom in his chest and he winced. “… how’s the cure going anyway?”

she smiled at him through her tears and lightly nudged the glass with her nose as if it weren’t the thing that was separating them at the moment. “we should’ve ran away together,” orion suddenly said as the thought popped into her mind. “into the lake country or something. where no one and nothing could ever find us. not even this damned virus...” she sighed. it sounded like a dream, maybe even paradise. to live together, free of war and sadness. they could just be their carefree selves without a reason to worry about anything. “i’m glad,” orion replies with a laugh. “that we didn’t wait for another fifty years to tell each other the truth,” she shook her head and rolled her eyes. “even though i’ve loved you for a very long time.” 

her mood drops back to it’s solemn state as her eyes flickered away from his. she let out a huge sigh as she felt the weight that had been lifted from her chest gently place itself back onto her heart once more. “i wish i had better news,” orion confessed, playing and picking at her fingers. she had just spent quite a while crying about how she didn’t want him to die but there wasn’t even a cure to be given in the first place. “we’re trying,” she assured but even then, hope was beginning to fade among the searchers. they all felt like they were reading a foreign language, not really understanding what the specific thing they were looking for was. the storage room was a mess, pages and pages of documents and logs were scattered into piles, most of them useless. “and we’re going to find something.” it’s more of a reassurance to herself but also to him. perhaps if they believed hard enough then something would actually come up somehow. orion hesitated before adding in a small, “i promise.”

a comfortable silence falls over the two of them as she shifts her position on the floor, her forehead still resting against the cool glass, her hot skin felt nice on it. there was no use in sulking over each other and wallowing in pity when their time was running out. “do you remember that one time...” orion couldn’t help but let a laugh escape from her dry lips. her face lighting up for the first time in days. “when we were.. kriff i don’t know... seventeen? and we snuck out of our cabin in the middle of the night with jugs of homemade fozbeer?” she asked, the scene of them trying to tiptoe out of the base without being caught red handed played through her mind. “and there was that old crashed ship in the middle of the forest and we got so drunk.”

“i don’t even remember what we did. we probably played some stupid game and made out before falling asleep. then we woke up the next day feeling like absolute shit and we missed our morning session, didn’t we? we kind of did the walk of shame back to base, i’m sure. that was pretty fucking embarrassing... i think we were on kitchen duty for at least, what, a month? our superiors were not happy with us. i know for a fact that my parents weren’t.” tired giggles bubbled from her lips. orion missed the days where they were both wide eyed teenagers just starting off in the war. they hadn’t known what they were getting themselves into. 

after gathering as many documents as she could from the storage room, iris made her way up the greenhouse, hoping to find rose or someone from her team. instead, she found a young woman she’d only seen once before. iris didn’t want to bother the woman, so she looked around the plants. unfortunately, as she moved from one plant to another, her elbow hit one of the pots and sent it plummeting toward the ground, making a loud clang when it crashed.

orion must’ve jumped at least a mile into the air, letting out a surprised noise in the meantime before turning around with a startled look on her face. “the hell?” she put her hands on her hips, her eyes landing on the broken pot, dirt all around it. “that’s a big yikes,” orion bluntly stated as her gaze trailed up to just who had scared the living shit out of her. “way to make an entrance, though.”

It was rude to stare, Amani knew, but she couldn’t help it. The girl’s features were simply bizarre. Perhaps this was how it felt when you lived, then died, then lived again– you saw the faces of those you once knew everywhere. And yet, she couldn’t shake the feeling that this wasn’t someone who just looked like a young Orion. Perhaps a part of them belonged to her? Perhaps they were kin? “I don’t mean to be untoward, but did you ever know your grandmother?”

orion didn’t realize that the other woman had said something to her before a few moments passed. she was too busy being distracted by the fact that her former lover was sitting right in front of her. “--oh uh...” she had forgotten that she looked at least thirty years older from the first time they had met. orion just wasn’t sure if she should reveal her identity. “no,” she stated with a shake of her head. it was the truth. “she died in combat.”

“i know…you are,” jyn replied gently, reaching up a shaky hand to the glass and wishing that she can reassure orion better. the people who were working on the cure were some of the people she trusted most on this planet––luke, wedge, orion…maybe even cassian. if there was a cure to be found, then those people would find it––though with each day she spent trapped in here with seemingly no hope, she found it hard to believe that she would make it out of this quarantine zone alive. at her confession of love, jyn offered the other woman a small smile. “i’m happy for you,” she said, nothing but genuine truth in her eyes. “when this is all over…” one way or another, “we should…all go out, sometime.” if cassian still wanted anything to do with her and she survived this mess, that was.

“no, s’not,” she retorted weakly, trying to summon enough fire in her voice to somehow sound menacing, but it was so hard and she was so tired. perhaps her ghastly appearance made up for the lack of her usual spite. “can’t say i…look very frightening,” she started, then had to cut herself off to cough. the disease was slowly growing worse; this morning, she had tasted blood in the back of her mouth. “but that…makes sense, i suppose.”

she watched as jyn placed her hand on the glass and moved her own to line it up with hers. it was the closest thing they could get to any physical touches around the quarantine rooms nowadays. if orion had enough balls, she would’ve broken the glass days ago. “thanks,” she spoke a little shyly. she didn’t really discuss her newfound romantic relationship with anybody. it wasn’t like anyone needed to know but it was nice to let some of it out to someone other than gael. “yeah?” orion replied with hopeful eyes. “that’d be fun,” she softly smiled. a picture of the four of them finding some random restaurant or bar in naboo appealed to her greatly. “you know, if cassian doesn’t kill gael or gael doesn’t chicken out.”

“I never enjoyed science, I’m more of a fan of physical exercise and action” she said simply, the Trooper looking a little bored by not being able to have her fun with war anymore. The treaty tired her. “I suppose that is meant to be the fun of it?” she said sarcastically, wiping dust from her gloves and then looking down at some of the open folders “Does it explain what they were testing?” she asked.

“Team?” Amilyn asked “The Resistance…” she added simply, unaware that people had been split into teams to help with the virus. “Or does that not matter in this moment?” she asked. “If anything I wish it never had to matter…” she added as she came closer to the table, hands clasped before her neatly as she stood, almost a pose that was as if she was about to address a whole room. “Have you found anything of use?”

she cocked her head to the side, still trying to concentrate on the paper. “alright. good to know...” she mumbled. “it doesn’t really matter in the big picture but it does to me,” orion admitted with a small shrug. she’d be nice, a little less snappier than usual. if this woman was truly on the resistance, that is. “but, do you know if you’re supposed to be searching for the cure or for who caused it? it’d be good if you had a more specific goal,” orion explained, finally looking up at her. she looked oddly familiar. “no, not really.”

orion could feel her heart beating faster as an invisible weight was pressed on to her chest. if. the keyword was if. him dying wasn’t certain, it was a giant possibility but it wasn’t something that was going to happen for sure. “he won’t,” orion stated with glaring eyes despite the bubble in her throat that was making it hard to breathe. “he’s going to live and heal and we’re gonna go back to doing whatever the hell we want.”

“he’s not gonna die.” 

“a few days. seems like i got sick maybe a minute after i got resurrected.” there was a hint of bitterness in her voice. she resented being stuck in quarantine, unable to do anything. it was as if she came alive just to die again; there were so many things she never got to do during her first life, and she hated that she couldn’t do anything. “when i get out of here, you have to tell me everything, starting with how you look like a teenager, and i’m thirty.” she grinned at orion. seeing someone familiar made her heart feel light. “i’m fine,” she said. in truth, she seemed to be getting worse every day, but she wasn’t about to say that out loud.

orion pursed her lips and stuck her hands in her pockets, a small mechanism for when she didn’t quite know what to say. “that kriffing blows,” she said. for someone to come back to life only to get infected by the virus felt like the force was just trying to play a cruel trick. when she gets out. orion smiled at her, glad that she was definitely planning on sticking around. other’s had accepted their untimely death but, leave it to brynn to refuse it. “well, i was a wrinkly mess when i died so i guess being brought back as my nineteen year old self was someone’s way of saying sorry for making you suffer?” orion suggested with a shrug. “you still look as beautiful as ever though,” she grinned. she knew that no one in quarantine was actually fine but still, it felt oddly comforting to hear it come out of someone’s mouth. “that’s good.”

      ❛  IT’S  A  GOOD  IDEA ,  but  i  don’t  see  it  coming  to  fruition .  i  don’t  think … we  have  the  time  for  it .  ❜  he  looks  towards  her  as  he  speaks ,  before  turning  away  once  more ,  frustration  inevitably  shown  upon  his  features .  ❛  besides ,  i  have  a  theory  …  things  aren’t  the  same  as  the  last  time  this  virus  struck .  it’s  smarter ,  faster .  whoever  did  this  had  access  to  both  nuvo  vindi’s  research  on  the  blue  shadow  virus ,  and  probably  the  cure  too . ❜  he  shakes  his  head ,  contemplating  expression  on  his  face .  ❛  no ,  the  same  methods  for  a  rescue  won’t  work .  ❜  it  takes  a  moment  before  he  realizes  he’s  saying  all  the  wrong  things  —  those  infected  were  their  friends ,  her  friends ,  and  the  concept  there  was  no  base  to  formulate  a  conclusion  to  this  saga  over  …  he  sighs ,  running  a  hand  through  his  hair .  ❛  people  thrive  off  chaos ,  and  will  endanger  innocents  to  do  it .  we’ll  find  them ,  orion .  the  perpetrator  and  the  cure .  ❜

“i kriffing hope so,” orion sighed, running a hand through her hair. “i trust her,” she stated bluntly. she considered the other woman one of her closest friends at this point. they understood each other’s struggles in a sense and cared about the other enough to look out for their respective men. “i think that settles things.”

rey groaned in frustration again and hid her face deeper in her hands, fingers tugging at her locks. no wonder her parents ended up abandoning her; somehow she managed to disappoint and upset every single parental figure that had entered her life so far. now it was orion. the one person she thought would never leave her. her words shocked her, and she slowly turned to look up at her again through the glass. “y-you do…?” she whispered, pressing her hand to the barrier again as she coughed a few small times. “really…?”

orion didn’t want to upset her but she wasn’t sure how to avoid that and still tell rey the truth. she hated nothing more than lying (and maybe the first order but that was besides the point) and had no intentions in starting now. orion softly smiled at her before nodding. “of course i do,” she said. “i wouldn’t be here if i didn’t.”