Valentineās Fic Rec Week: 2017
Day One: Published in 2017
Patches by @rapidashpatronus, 15k words
Iāll be honest here, I didnāt really remember much about this fic by now, other than it was some of the crew stranded somewhere immediately after Scarif, and that I loved it. But now that Iāve a) looked it up and b) skipped through it -
this one is so good. It was among the first ten or twenty or so fics I read, I think, and this is actually a scenario that I find horrifying, and I think that intrigued me. But mostly itās so sad, and so tense, and so SAD, and so beautiful and well-written and hopeful and *sniffs* Iāll leave you with an excerpt from the prologue. Please give this fic a go if you havenāt!
Heās wasting his moments, thinking like this; thereās no time for distraction. Even with his eyes closed, the sharpening light is invasive. The air, already hot in this place, is drying out like dust. Sand-sharpened wind scours his cheeks and whips his face with her hair, filled with the smell of brine and electrical smoke.
Will it hurt him? He can take it, he thinks ā he hopes. Pain is an enemy he has met more often and known more intimately than any friend or lover. Will it ā Force forbid ā hurt her?
Her conviction that the file got through was so solid that he hadnāt questioned it, but fear now races through him, pushing doubt into the cracks, expanding and forcing him apart in the ever-growing heat. What if it all ends, sometime soon after him, all he has given his life for since he has been old enough to know that life can end? Now for the first time he has known that life can begin. And he doesnāt want to die.
He realises again he has wasted a precious second in distraction. Focus. Eyes shut. Mineral tastes of sand and blood. Roaring water, rending air. She is, at last, shaking, and he feels her gasp in fear as it thunders nearer, pictures her frightened, beaten face ā
He stares ahead in sudden horror: he cannot remember what colour her eyes are.