#aawari

He produced a small mirror and held it out so she could admire his work. Aawari turned her head this way and then that, considering carefully the way the patterns snaked around her head-tails, then smiled and wiggled two little thumbs way, way up in the air. She was still very young and wouldn’t get her Sith tattoos for many, many years, but they had spent the better part of an afternoon trying garish renditions of blood-masks or tribal grimaces with teeth, the little nautolan loving each as Laz’ab’s imagination went wild.

But this one looked best in her mind. Simpler than the others, back to the basics. Just confident dark shapes and uneven edges, lines that got away before reigning in again and twirling to a jagged stop. One side was slightly off-kilter than the other as Laz’ab bemoaned the asymmetry of it all, but to Aawari it was perfect.

“I suppose you do look like me. A bit. You poor thing,” he added with a cheeky smile. That made her giggle and she slapped him playfully on the arm.

It was a weird sensation to the twi’lek, to have someone beam at him so genuinely without fear or regret. Not that she had always felt so confident around him. When he first encountered her she was so frightened it felt like having a black hole occupying the house. Now here she was, laughing and playing. He shrugged it off, there was nothing he could do about it if she wanted to be weird.

He hunched forward, hands clasped in his lap until he was eye-level with the young girl. He put on his best smile, it was all shark teeth and his red eyes looked hungry in the dark.

“What should we try next?”

There was a moment of looming silence during which time Aawari never tore her eyes away from his, and Laz’ab couldn’t help but feel a little bit proud.

He started.

“Me? You want to paint me?”

Silence.

“But I’ve already got tattoos!”

She tilted her head like a bruised puppy and frowned. Her eyes, vast like the endless cosmos and scattered with as many stars, narrowed and the Sith felt himself falling headfirst into the void.

“Without … without my tattoos?” he balked. “Little Spider, it is going to take a lot of paint to get rid of these.” Sharp nails poked and prodded his flesh as he stretched and skewed the skin around his eyes. His black tattoos morphed and twisted, the veins underneath wriggling like worms. Self loathing rose up in his throat like bile.

But Aawari was steadfast in her resolve. Crossing her arms over her chest and jutting out her bottom lip, she continued to stare. Laz’ab sighed. He had made Sith talk in the past, broken even the most battle-hardened soldiers with his methods, and torn the names of doomed thousands from the begging lips of dying Jedi. But there was just no arguing with this child.

“Fine, but don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.”

With a resigned grunt the two swapped chairs and the twi’lek did his best impression of trying to enjoy himself. Dipping her fingers deep into the pallette, the young girl scooped out white paint by the handful and began to apply it liberally.

Laz’ab did not enjoy having his eyes closed or his face touched, too much went on in the darkness beyond his eyelids while he wasn’t looking, and the paint felt clammy and cold. His stomach tied itself in knots as his mind went wild with the worst scenarios.

“Are you done ye--”

She clapped a hand over his mouth and shot him a little glare. Or at least he thought she was glaring, he couldn’t see. He was pretty sure of it though, he felt a little wave of frustration roll off her and couldn’t suppress a small smile.

Silence stretched between them as she worked, broken only occasionally by a wet slurp as she scooped up a fresh dollop of paint. The nerves began to twist in his gut again and he felt as though his stomach were churning with live eels. His skin crawled with the sensation of pinpricks on his spine, sweat beading over his lip. The open door behind him was a creature’s maw ready to snap shut. He had put Aawari’s back towards it so he could keep an eye out, but now he was the one in her seat., and it would take no effort at all for someone to sneak in and …

A hand closed around his. A small, tiny hand, through which a thousand wordless thoughts flowed like an explosion of stars cascading down, each little twinkle that landed on his skin lifting one more worry.

The girl was a wonder.

He cracked an eye to look at her, the placid expression on her face, the utter fearlessness through which she wove the Force like a blanket around her, around them both. He did not deserve such a beautiful star. But the worst of his crisis was over, and with a look of intense concentration Aawari resumed on his face. Laz’ab sat in complete silence. Contemplating nothing. The silence between them was serene.

A tap on his leg let him know she was done. He opened his eyes and peered at her curiously, she was doing very little to hide the shock on her face.

“I know you haven’t seen me like this, even I forget what I looked like,” Laz’ab muttered darkly. “I’ve had these for a very, very long time …”

The bite drained from his voice and his throat went dry when he saw the person staring back from the mirror. His Sith tattoos, dark, winding, and jagged still snaked their way around most of his lekku, but where they met the base of his skull there was only porcelain skin. The contours of his sunken cheekbones seemed less exaggerated without their painted edges, the crook in his nose more prominent, his eyes somehow more sunken, unable to hide the pain without his mask. His hand went out to touch the person in the mirror before he could stop himself.

“I forgot about you …”

A tiny arm snaked around his waist from behind, the other across his shoulder. He was not wearing his spikes today.

“You think so?”

A little head pressed between his shoulders.

“Okay, you’ve had your fun, Small One. It’s late, let’s get you to bed.”

Aawari took full advantage of the fact he was not wearing his theatrical armour today, just simple robes without the sharp pauldrons and points. She clung to his back like a spider monkey as the lanky twi’lek loped through the abandoned star destroyer they called home. Ducking to avoid the low hanging vines and nodding good night to the guards ambling past, the two made their way in silence to her bedroom at the end of a long hallway. He kept her separate from him, there was no reason she had to share his nightmares.

Or wake to his screams.

Moments later she was asleep in her bed, and Laz’ab’s dead, red eyes stared back at him from the reflection in his bathroom. Her little hands had covered up more than his tattoos. The corruption around his eyes had faded away, the veins invisible on his cheeks, and his lips were no longer discoloured and bruised. He looked younger, somehow.

Is this who you were meant to be?

Hands gripped either side of the sink, but he couldn’t look away.

Hello again, long time no see.

Laz’ab frowned. He saw a little of his old self in that expression.

You have ignored me for so long.

Because you are not me, he spat with vitriol, a wave of anger rippling against the mirror until it shuddered. His hands cupped the water flowing from the faucet and he splashed it over his face. Cold shocked him back to the present as hands rubbed the white away.

You are not me. Not anymore.

This was a ridiculous game.