Private Head First Into The Flames

[Sion Lorray]

CORUSCANT
Cordé Sabo

This was awkward, wasn't it?

The first time Sion visited Cordé's apartment and it was right after... everything. After Dantooine and after Exegol. The two static points around which their relationship was rotating in increasingly more desperate ways. He came back for her, risked his life, but it had been no dilemma whatsoever. What was Sion supposed to do? Just leave her to burn? This concept hadn't even come up in his mind.

His body already moving before he knew what happened.

Then he... somehow... managed to still the desolation of the room. At least long enough to patch Cordé up just a bit and then get her out.

"Oh-uh, yeah, thanks." Accepting the glass offered by Cordé with an awkward smile. His eyes had returned to their trademark shade. The burning firey amber receded as if it hadn't been there in the first place. He helped her get back to her place after the hospital refused admission. Apparently there were people having it far worse. "I uh... sorry I healed you, I guess. It was just a patchwork, but without it they might have let you stay at the hospital."

Leave it to Sion to find his fault in a faultless situation.

Then he reached out and squeezed her hand.

"I am sorry for your people too. They deserved better than what they got."

 

[Cordé Sabo]

Bandaged up fingers pincered the flat side of a lone surviving leaf and stroked down. Cordé frowned at it. All her plants were dead.

Maybe she should have accepted her nosy neighbour’s offer to look after them more frequently while she was gone. It had been months since she’d been back in here.

“Don’t apologise.” Cordé muttered, and fiddled with the dressing around her wounds. “I’m anxious to get back and help but, at risk of infection..” she sighed and rested her hip against the countertop. She was exhausted. Wrung out.

She thought they might be here earlier, under different circumstances. Maybe after Life Day if she hadn’t run away. But now, it was after a cataclysm and a spark of hope. Nothing smooth about it. Nothing easy. And all her plants were dead.

Was their relationship just as irreparable as the greenery?

As an answer, Sion Lorray reached out for her hand. She let him, and held on. She felt the bones in her knees turn weak, to wax and her grip tightened at the mention of her former squadron and Cordé looked down at her feet. They could have been the worst people in the world, and Sion would have still bled his heart out for them.

He’d done that for her, in the control room. She’d felt it, all the emotion behind his words had pulsed and gushed like a dam breaking and all the water rushing out and into her. He’d come back for her, and he said he would always come back for her.

Each time she thought it was their last chance, he’d defied. This time felt like it though. As though it may be their last moment together. So precious and fragile that if she didn’t say something and break her patterns of withdrawing, it would disappear forever.

She had so many questions about him, and he might answer them just because that’s who he was, but she couldn’t see past the growing wedge between them that begged for repair. The calloused edges around their hearts from damages done. She’d pushed him away again and again, and each time, he pulled himself back, or her back, and then he pushed back, and she let him — it was him, in the end, that pulled them back to that same precipice where they balanced now.

“I didn’t think I’d see you again after….” Cordé started quietly, testing the words out as the formed across her tongue. She bit it, which just made the memory and word hurt more: “Dantooine.” Her gaze was still down. “And then there you were. And then again I thought when you walked out of that room that would be the last time.” And it hurt. It hurt more the second time.

"And then you came back for me. Even after everything.” Apprehension was a tightness in her throat and a buzz in her hands. She drew in her breath, slow and precise, and lifted her eyes to set on his. The final vestiges of her resistant pride flexed and waned, prepared to collapse.

“I don’t want to feel again the way it feels when you walk away. I know it’s been.. I’ve been..” Her voice trailed off, growing hoarser and thinner. ”Tell me what I need to do to fix it.”

 

[Sion Lorray]

Cordé Sabo

Somewhere between her words his hand slipped out of hers.

Eyes closed and he tipped his head backwards.

This was a conversation he had hoped to avoid. What was there to say? What could they say to make things right? Sion hoped they would have been able to just... pretend. Like things were back to their normal. Before Dantooine and everything it brought with it. He breathed out as he tried to center himself in the void of her request.

Eyes opened and he watched Cordé quietly.

"I am not sure there is anything you can do to fix it, Cordé." He'd finally say with a soft sigh. "You believe Jedi are monsters. Baby snatchers and worse for reasons I am sure are..." Sion grimaced there for a fraction of a moment before continuing on. "...fair reasons."

It almost hurt to say.

"But I am a Jedi. And if you think Jedi are monsters then how can you not think the same of me? How do you fix that?" He shrugged, because from his perspective Cordé could not. "And what is there left to say after what happened to Dantooine? I hurt you." His eyes went to her throat. "And I am sorry for it, but if things happened exactly the same way they had, I would do it all over again even if I hate it."

Quietly Sion rose up there.

"Maybe it's for the best. I- my heart aches for you." He says the last part quickly before he can swallow it.

"But maybe some things aren't meant to be."

 

[Cordé Sabo]

He was preparing to leave.

While he spoke, languid and intentional, he distanced himself from her. He let go of her hand and drew himself closer to one decisive side of the narrow fence they balanced on. She could feel it, a tunnel burrowed into her chest cavity with dissolved, apoplectic regret. The same feeling that welled up inside whenever he left. Right after she’d exposed her deepest desires to not feel that way again.

It felt useless to say, but she admitted more of her mistakes anyway: “I should have gone with you. Accepted your invitation then to talk.” Her eyes closed. Hurt started to harden back to stubborn indignation. Her hands were back to herself, and she remained on the edge of that emotion.

He’d understood her hate for Jedi when she’d been pinned against the wall. She’d never forget his expression then; wide-eyed and hollowed. His eyes had warned her away then, sharp and full. Now, his eyes were weary, the skin beneath them was dark as bruises.

Sion Lorray s questions were good. She asked them herself time and time and time and time again. She said as much: “I don’t know.” Cordé whispered. She couldn't very well lie that she didn't like Jedi. Her behaviour was clear. The generational trauma that shaped her actions was nearly bone-deep. “You’re…you change what I think I know.”

On Exegol, he’d reframed her perception of how Jedi treat younglings. Even as a babe, Elodi was getting the chance to communicate with her family back on Dantooine. And even be set up to go back to them and be freed from the pedagogies of an ancient religion if it was appropriate.

"There's everything left to say. I don't want your heartache, I want —" She argued, her expression tight with emotion. All that conflict she'd wrestled with on Dantooine slipped away, that hardened shell cracked and left the soft inside exposed.

“Please..” She felt herself step forward after him, and her hand floated out, the materialisation of her unsaid supplication to stay. “Why did you come back? You said always.”

 

[Sion Lorray]

Cordé Sabo

She grabbed his hand and arrested his movement.

It didn't take much.

Every fiber of his being wanted to stay. Every brain cell was ushering him on to go. How could Sion ever trust her? How could he ever trust himself with her?

He was about to ask her what she wanted. What did Cordé think they could do here? Erase everything, start over? It had been his original idea, but it was so foolish in retrospective. But then Cordé asked him... possibly... the most questionable question in the history of questionnaires. Why did Sion come back?

Turning around Cordé could see the bafflement on his face.

"I came back because it was the right thing to do. I came back because you don't leave people behind." It was impersonal, the equivalent of saying 'it wasn't about you, I'd have done it for anyone on the team'. But his voice low and compressed, tight with barely suppressed emotions. It was hard enough to steel himself against the avalanche of hers flowing over him, much less stem the tide of his own. "I did it because I love you." His voice broke there for a moment before Sion straightened him out again.

"And I always will. I'd put my life on the line for you." He'd reach out... almost to cup her jaw before his hand dropped mid-movement. "But after Dantooine... you broke my heart and you broke my trust, Cordé. It isn't just my life on the line... if I let you back in, I will risk all of them all over again."

That was something Sion couldn't do.

Could he?

 

[Cordé Sabo]

He stopped. He stayed.

Just when she’d admitted he proved her wrong countless times and broke Jedi stereotypes, or the projected re-imaginings of them, he gave her the most prescription response she could anticipate. For his reason solely to be because it was the right thing to do. It was a Jedi’s duty to protect life.

She was prepared for it, but it still hurt.

“Oh.” Her shoulders crept up like folded wings.

I did it because I love you."

Something in her chest broke so violently, that it would have been impossible for him not to have heard it shatter. The final vestiges of her restraint were eliminated and she felt the weight finally lift on her craven desperation not to see the truth: She was deeply, irrevocably in love with him. And he loved her too.

For a moment, possibility swelled between them. Warm and inviting as if the cosmos existed just to hear him say those words to her —I love you— this culmination of hard histories and shared existential stresses here, right now, was for this, here, with him.

The edges of this moment felt transformative. Healing. Comforting. Promising.He reached out, and she felt herself yearn forward to meet —

— nothing.

Nothing but the cold consequences of her actions.

Stiff paralysis seized her. Her pulse struck, breath hitched. Not even enough breath to make her vocal cords buzz. Just start to move her lips noiselessly. Haunted by the ghost of Dantooine. She breathed again but felt dead. The sound of repercussions ran through her and turned her cold.

He’d changed her. Gently, unknowingly, and through their shared time her perspective softened. Jedi at large earned more chances because of him.

“I know,” She whispered, her voice was as small as she felt. “I am so sorry. I was sorry before you looked at me with coals in your eyes. I’m sorrier with each moment that passes, sorrier still knowing how wrong I’d been and how many steps you’ve taken to keep her and her family connected.

And even worse knowing how much I hurt you. I didn’t mean to, I know, it seems so obvious, but I genuinely thought she’d be safer without a future that put her in situations that demand, that expect sacrifice.

Like what you just went through, or right now. Where whatever choices or wants can’t happen because of all the lives she feels responsible for. Even at the sake of her own.”

But could she promise him never again? Or would that just turn into another opportunity to break his trust. Did the scar she’d left on his heart match the one on his face? Was it so irreparable? Was she such a coward to settle for not meant to be when her heart felt so wholly? Would having courage to compromise only further heartache and pain and a misunderstanding that would, eventually, after an ephemeral stretch mutual glory, tear them apart when she found herself entirely unchanged?

Like a swelling bruise, the past and the pressure pressed so hard on either side of the moment so there was little room left for the present. Everything but the seconds they shared in this space felt condemned and starcrossed.

From the moment she’d been able to walk, her first steps were on a path to hate Jedi. And here was one person, standing in front of her, undoing a lifetime.

Maybe he was right in his selflessness.

Cordé’s desires were selfish and dangerous.

How stupid it was to fall in love with a Jedi. Her love may have been strong, but their trust was fragile. The unselfish choice he was making was part of his creed as a protector. She should have known that, even if she’d hoped so desperately against it.

"I don't know what to say. I wish I could undo it, but I can't.

Words are.." her shoulders fell, and as important as her words were, they wobbled "Probably not enough. But they're all I have right now.

I don't want to deceive you again. I can't. I won’t. As much as I can't bear to lose you, I can't bear the thought of seeing you like that again and knowing your hurt was because of me." A bleariness to him gathered along her eyeline. The ceiling lights, little diamonds, stretched like starlight or little halos. "There can’t be an again."

 

[Sion Lorray]

Cordé Sabo

He let those words wash over him.

His eyes closing, opening, closing again as he tried to blink away the tears. How could words be equally painful as well as warming? Wasn't this exactly what Sion had wanted to hear all along? Not just an apology, but something heartfelt and coming straight from the heart? Not just in the moment but many moments later after everything had settled and received the opportunity to calcify?

"I..."

Sion blinked his eyes open once more and this time his hand finished the track to cup her jaw. Warm. Almost as warm as his hand. "Promise me." He murmured there, fighting against a sob or fighting against the feeling inside of him to give up on this while they still could do so safely.

"Promise me you will never cut me out like that again. That you will take the opportunity to talk to me and won't give up talking."

Stepping closer there again as his other hand settles on her hip to keep her close. Because even while his brain was telling him to leave, his heart was already struggling two steps forward and fighting against Cordé's reflexive desire to remove herself from these situations. "When we talk, we can figure it out. When we stop talking..."

Dantooine and all its ghosts happen and they had seen the result of it.

"Promise me this, Cordé, and... I will be yours. Only yours, that I swear."

 

[Cordé Sabo]

It was too good to be true.

Could she be true?

All she had to say was yes, and they would belong to one another. All she had to do was promise honesty.

Could she be true enough to fulfil such a simple ask?

Overruling the filter between her heart and her head was giving her a nauseous, heady rush, and she felt her stupid eyes weaken. Her composure slipped beyond repair.

Before she could do anything to stop it, or even clear away the trail down her cheek, his fingers covered the sheen and kept the rest of her tears trapped between his skin and hers.

She gulped and the empty sound of months lost and childhood influence struggled on her lips. She wanted to pull away, hadn’t she given enough? Hadn’t she revealed her explanation, bled out her apology, picked the scab off the memories she couldn’t shake and reopened this gaping wound between them? Could her willingness to do it again really be the gauze?

Sion Lorray 's quiet implication, the words he left unsaid, were enough to pitch a spike of culpability through her chest. Her body tightened, like a flinch, and the fluttering in her chest sharpened. She drew her bandaged hands up to fold over themselves to conceal her heartbeat. It pumped into her palms.

Cordé bit her lip, and left-right-left-right, searched the depths of his eyes and she found herself drawn in. She was already his, as much as she’d tried to fight it, it was impossible to deny.

Like the moon on water, he surrounded her completely. His words, supplication, promise, gentle embrace, all enwreathed her until there was nowhere else for her to go, nowhere else she’d rather be, nowhere else to be but here, now, entirely. All of her. All that truth.

She was standing on the edge of reason and he was encouraging her to take his hand and jump. To fall into whatever, together. It put more urgency to letting go of the inhibitions she’d tried to protect throughout their relationship thus far.

Everything behind them, down the path of reason and sense, they’d already tried. It couldn’t be travelled again. Not if they wanted to be together. Not if she wanted him to be hers.

There was nothing to do but take the leap.

“I promise."

 

[Sion Lorray]

Cordé Sabo

He only realized he was holding his breath when she murmured those words.

Sion gasped.

Lungs breathing in air like sweet elixer as he smiled brilliantly down at her. Part of him didn't want to hope, dared not to hope, because it would have meant his ruin if she said no. But there was nothing to fear. She promised, there would be truth between them, and Sion already pulled her into his embrace and hugged her tight.

His brow pressed against hers.

"I love you." He murmured there, quickly, to fill the void at the end of her words and let something beautiful take root. "I love you. I love you. I love you." Sion could say it now without fear. Before it had been a hesitant offer, but now it was liberation. Sion could have said it a million times. He would still not be tired of the way it felt on his tongue.

He kissed her face, teary and salty, but Sion was heedless. He just wanted to make it all better. Pick up her heart and mend it with gold.

"This isn't the end, it's the beginning... and... we aren't perfect. There will be things on our path, but we will do our best and we will do it together. Yes?"

Both his hands cupping the sides of her face so gentle.

"If I could take your tears away I would... I never want to make you cry again."

 

[Cordé Sabo]

Could I lock in your love​

In the sweet circle of his arms, wrapped up like this, it was as though she could feel him pulsing in her veins. Addictive and intense. Emotion stung at the angle of her eyes, and she moved deeper against Sion Lorray to lose herself to it. She let him love her. She resisted no longer.

It seemed impossible that her heart could have been any fuller than the first time he’d said he loved her. Like he’d walked right in as though he’d always belonged there, took down her walls, and lit her soul on fire.

But when he said those words again, and again, and again, they became purer, refined, unadulterated by the consequences that had built a barrier around their beauty and possibility. And they seemed to flow so readily! Brow to brow, it felt like the words themselves spreading without inhibition over her face and warming her cheeks. She smiled into them as their sounds ran through her.

Pillowy soft, his lips pressed through her pain, and he’d feel the rise that happiness brought to her cheeks. Her eyes squeezed shut, and the relief that loosened through her body made her chest and shoulders tremble.

“Yes.” The after-effect of her emotion and tears made the word feel like it had to unstick itself from her tongue. “We will.” This was so much, from the lowest of lows to the highest of highs, but somehow, they steadied.

“Iloveyoutoo.” Saying it for the first time, Cordé found the words as easy to speak as they were to think — But they came out in an excited rush. She felt breathless, the elation of this newfound splendour was unlike anything she’d ever felt before. It was scary, invigorating, silly, and good.

”You have my promise, will have my best tries, my heart,” Cordé whispered, and tightened her arms around him “You have all of me.”

Somehow, she mustered the ability to sniff out a laugh and unlooped her hug so she could slide her hands up and down her face to scrub away the tear stains.

“Sion, stop. It wasn't you. You didn’t make me cry.” She assured him, and felt herself back on that platform, feeling the anguish of regret. "Not even then." Her hands slid from her face to cover the back of his and squeezed. "I did it to myself. We could have been here sooner if I —” she sighed, and wanted to stop. But she’d just promised to keep talking.

This was going to be hard.

Worth it, but that didn’t make it any less difficult.

“Feth, this is really happening, isn’t it?” This was the longest she’d been in his embrace without interruption. Nobody yanked him from her and she didn’t push him away. She loved it and settled into it, unmoored by the weight that had kept her down and away from the rise he gave her. “After all this time, ah— If

If I just stopped trying to flee.” That’s what he’d said on the train, right? Every time they got close, she fled. “Even then, there was nowhere that didn’t lead right back to you.”