Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
──────⊹⊱✫⊰⊹──────
Some people love like a field of blossoming wildflowers, painted rose and amethyst and apricot beneath a setting sun carved into amber skies, a warm breeze carrying the scent of pines wreathing through the aftermath of a gentle rainfall. A soft, pearly glow, set inside hearts made of porcelain and crushed glass, gold lining and gentle whispers of I adore you fading into a charcoal twilight.
How does she love? Like a blade, like a storm of fire descending upon a forest of once-charred wood, like a blush of ruby blood pooling between ribs, like a whisper of poison, a deadly drought that murmurs, beauty conceals the venom of a viper, like the abrupt rush of water before a tsunami wave: like something that destroys.
Perhaps she loves in this way because it hurts, because she likes the bite of the flames when they turn her skin into nothing but ashes, because it reminds her to feel when everything else goes numb.
This is why, then, it feels like a white-hot knife is burrowing deep into Zoya's abdomen from the moment the doors to her ship slide closed. She offers herself no explanation other than the fact that perhaps she strained something during their sparring, or that maybe she's still a little sore from her combat with the crime lord's henchmen. (Weak excuses, but it eases the beat of her heart slightly, calming the rush of blood streaming to her cheeks and the apex of her thighs.) Her conscience does not take this for an answer and festers, angrily slashing off bits of her heart and hacking at the insides of her ribs, hissing that this will end in flames.
The cockpit is empty and hollow; Zoya finds herself missing the clamor of the child, the soft whirrs of the rusty Razor Crest, the pile of junk that it is, the starlight reflecting off the beskar of Din's helmet into her eyes with a sharp sort of pain that feels like burning sunlight and icy ocean waves, the glittering of the universe spread wide and welcoming before them, whispering I am yours for the taking.
The second the doors close behind her, Zoya collapses against them, a fluttering dove for a heart and secrets held on parted rosy lips. She runs a hand through her hair, feeling a cool brush of air skate along her arms and the slope of her back and the skin exposed between her breasts. "Fuck," she whispers. "Fuck."
The interior of her ship contains much less warmth than the flames licking at the hollowed-out cage of her body. Barely personalized, barely used, hardly lived in at all, it remains an empty, unfeeling shell.
She moves through it like a ghost, an apparition, and sits before the controls. Against her will, Zoya's eyes dart through the window, finding the lingering hulk of the Razor Crest bold against the soot-stained horizon, a soft glow pulsing within the cockpit. She hadn't meant to go with him. She'd meant to say, You can go to hell and back for all I care! or something similarly damning, but her mouth had betrayed her, taken over by the longing scarlet atriums of her heart, accursed and horribly honest.
