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[Aadya Rasheer]

vibe​

Aadya's ship dropped out of hyperspace and was met only with the inky blackness of space. Impossibly far away stars twinkled their little lights across the backdrop, mirroring how Aadya felt in this moment as she stared out of the viewport. People often forgot that looking at the tiny dots in the sky was looking back in time and that many of them had gone supernova, blinking their last gasp of dying breath with no one the wiser.

As Aadya's ship drifted towards La Bailarina, she felt just like those stars. She had been gone for a long time and so much had changed around her. Maybe she too had collapsed in on herself just like those dying stars, no one around to see it happen, people only looking at memories from far away and seeing a light that simply existed no longer.

The transponder code Altair had given her was transmitted silently and appeared to work as there were no hordes of starfighters descending upon her like a plague of locusts. Aadya had reached out to Altair in the wake of his holonet announcement and asked to see him, and thankfully the new Warmaster of the Empire had obliged her request.

Though, truth be told, Aadya had no fucking idea what she was going to say to the man once she saw him. She had loved him once, but that felt like several lifetimes ago. Maybe deep down in the chasm of her heart she still did, but none of that really seemed to matter now. It had been too long. Too much had happened, had changed. Aadya knew that.

Her ship landed without fanfare in one of the hangers of the star destroyer, the landing ramp extending with the sound of pneumatics and durasteel clanking on durasteel. Aadya descended the ramp and was surprised to find no escort to greet her. Instruction from Altair most likely, though she did notice that the various Imperial troops that milled about had their eyes on her, unwavering and judgmental.

She didn't blame them. After all, she was a Sith and they would know that. Aadya carried no weapons with her as she left the hanger and headed toward the bridge of La Bailarina, knowing Altair well enough that if he was going to be anywhere, it was probably there. A minute or two's silence in the lift gave Aadya time to breathe, though when the doors slid open and she saw the looming, familiar frame of Altair ahead of her she still had no idea what she was going to say.

She walked toward him, feeling the gaze of each Imperial fall upon her as her footsteps echoed dully off of the durasteel. She hadn't expected it to, but a strange feeling of loneliness hit Aadya's gut as she stared at Altair. A slow exhale escaped Aadya, like someone trying to calm their nerves before jumping out of an airplane.

Thank you for agreeing to see me, Aadya said, her voice coming out even and resolute, though her façade was slightly betrayed by the unmistakable look of unsureness she couldn't shake from her eyes. It's been far too long. Aadya paused for a moment, stumbling over her own thoughts as she wondered what to say next. I wanted to give you my allegiance, but I wanted to do it face to face.

You've achieved so much. I'm.. Another pause, a slightly bitten lip. A level of nervousness that was foreign to Aadya in so many ways. I'm proud to see who you've become.

Aadya knew that Altair didn't need to hear that and probably couldn't give a fuck less what she thought. But she wanted to say it anyway, a truth she held in her heart that had never wavered. She looked at him, her neck craning slightly to catch the man's gaze if he would allow it.

Hopefully she would be given more than stony silence in response.. Hopefully Altair didn't cut her down then and there.

Though, maybe that wouldn't have been so bad afterall.

@Sreeya

 

[Altair Din]

He was hardly recognizable at first. He wore a crisp, tailored officer’s uniform that had his ranks displayed. He carried himself with grace and poise, and she would wonder if this was really that boy she met years ago. As the doors hissed open, Altair slowly turned to face Aadya. His amethyst gaze didn’t have the old childish wonder in them, replaced with a frosty calm. At first, he said nothing when she spoke. His tail curled the slightest bit as she spoke of her allegiance. Could he trust her? She was Raze’s apprentice and that was perhaps the only Sith Altair couldn’t predict.

Altair glanced back towards the large transparisteel windows that overlooked the stars and the void of space. It was a reminder of where they stood - aboard a star destroyer. His Star Destroyer. He looked back at Aadya again, “Do you remember when I showed up to your ship messed up on Wildfire?” He asked without that accent she had grown to love, a grin beginning to tug at his lips. He had been at his lowest point - broken, shattered and only a shadow of a man. She had pulled from the bottom of that pit.

Altair took several steps towards her, towering over her as always. His physique was much larger now, his shoulders broad and his defined torso shaped by the routine of his biggest enemy right now.

“You’ve risked a lot to be here,” Altair said calmly. It was suicidal for a Sith to come to Altair now and they both knew it, “Where do you want to go from here, Aadya?”

@Logan

 

[Aadya Rasheer]

There were ways people changed that were obvious and there were ways that weren't. Aadya noticed immediately that Altair's voice was different now. Gone was the twang of his home, discarded like so many other things about him that Aadya remembered.

It was odd to mourn something so miniscule, but it cemented many things Aadya had been wondering about. The man before her truly was not the man she had known, but the memories she still had were something she would be able to keep forever. Nothing and no one could take those from her, at least.

I do, she said simply, nodding her head as the events of that night replayed behind her eyes. Altair had shown up on her doorstep a broken man, but a ravenous one. Unsure of his own worth but confident in his wants, and what he had wanted was Aadya. You dress much more sharply now than when we went to that mall. The slightest smirk pulled at the corner's of Aadya's lips thinking about the ridiculous clothes Altair used to wear. She liked the new ones much better.

Aadya's thoughts drifted slightly as she remembered the crack in his voice that night when he'd assumed that she would have wanted him to leave, as if she would simply swallow him up and spit him back out when she were finished. Of course, she had shown Altair that that couldn't have been further from the truth.

Thinking back on it, that was probably the first time Aadya had given a piece of her heart to him. A little piece here, a little piece there, until the jigsaw puzzle no longer belonged to her, but was held firmly in Altair's hands. Aadya wondered if the man that stood before her now knew that he still held it, even if she would never tell him. Even if it didn't matter anymore.

Pulled back from her own memory as Altair spoke again, Aadya raised an eyebrow at him - undaunted by the way he towered over her, resolute and unafraid despite her choice to walk willingly into what could easily be her own demise.

A risk I was willing to take. She said, her voice quiet. Aadya's eyes pulled away from Altair and looked toward the viewport he'd been staring out of just moments before. The stars twinkled, somehow brighter than when she'd seen them from her own ship.

With you. Was all she answered to Altair's last question.

@Sreeya

 

[Altair Din]

Altair couldn’t help but smile faintly at the memory of that mall, when she quite literally made someone crap themselves. That day felt like centuries ago. He was on the verge of tears, at the lowest point in his life, thinking he had lost everything. He couldn’t face his family, couldn’t face his friends, but he wanted to find that girl that looked at him at a party that made him feel some type of way. It only spiraled from there, and they both came out on the other side as very different people. Different, but still standing across one another.

She stood tall and proud, but he knew her well enough to know she felt vulnerable here. Was it fear? Of him? Or was it because she didn’t recognize him anymore? Sometimes he gazed into the mirror and could hardly tell it was him. He didn’t look like a Din with all his military regalia or when he saw himself on Holonet.

He saw Aadya look past him and at the stars, but his gaze stayed on her. He took a step forward, wondering if she understood the gravity of her choice. Of course she did. She was effectively cutting her ties with Sith just as he did. It came at a cost.

“I don’t recall ever making you so nervous, m’am,” Altair said quietly with a familiar twang as he tilted his head to look at her. There was a grin on his face, hints of that boyish smile from years ago laced in it. It was one of those incredibly rare times that a smile surfaced these days.

@Logan

 

[Aadya Rasheer]

Altair's words floated into Aadya's ears like a siren's song, but not one that was luring her to her death. Instead, a tantalizing one that pulled her back to when they had first met, when the fire between them burned hot enough for even him to feel the lick of its flame.

Her attention drifted from the viewport and back to him, her dark brown eyes locking onto his magnificent amethyst ones. The way they swirled made Aadya feel like she had slipped underwater, engulfed wholly and completely but at the same time, having no fear of drowning in them.

Altair's gaze gave her comfort, something that no one and nothing had been able to do before or since. She missed him more than he would ever know.. more than she would dare to admit. Without thought, Aadya moved closer to Altair so that they were only a hair's breath away from eachother.

She mirrored his smile, the tips of her fanged canines poking just past her lips. Am I so obvious? Aadya asked, her tone coy and quiet. Altair had always made her feel the butterflies of nervousness in her belly and Aadya had always done her best to hide this, to pretend like those feelings weren't there.

But as she stood there, staring at Altair, she suddenly found the will continue to do so escape her. Maybe if all that time ago she had told him what she knew to be true, things would have ended up different.

Though, with the way things had turned out, she wondered if different would have turned Altair away from the destiny that had come to fruition for him. She wouldn't have wanted that, even if it meant getting everything else she had ever thought she needed.

Looking at Altair and the man he'd become, Aadya decided now that she was going to leave it all on the table. Fear of rejection cast aside, unworried and uncaring about the potential ramifications for what she wanted to do. So unlike her, but yet, so much of who she was.

And in the end, if she didn't get what she hoped to have, at least she knew that for once, she put it all out there and could at least be content in that.

Standing on on the balls of her feet, Aadya would lift her head towards Altair and look to kiss him. If he pulled back or otherwise declined, she would accept this and understand why.

And if not, she would kiss him so passionately and so deeply that he would know what she was trying to say.

That she loved him; moreover, that she always had, always would.

Forever.

@Sreeya

 

[Altair Din]

Altair thought about all those times they had spent together, when he serenaded her on a beach, when he dressed up in a suit for the first time for her, all those times he drew out a smile from her when others couldn’t. He thought about his own journey from being that lost boy to a man fashioned and molded by hardships and on the shoulders of all the brave Imperials that fell.

Others shaped him along the way. People like Aadya, his best friends, and even Clove. For better or worse, for all the ways they loved and hurt him, they crafted him into the man he was today. The tiefling gazed into Aadya’s eyes as she spoke, the smile still tugging at his lips. He didn’t move away as she drew closer, his hand slowly sliding along her hip as she closed the distance. It was an old, burning desire, a yearning that had long since been buried. They had parted on decent terms, though he would never admit it took him a long time to cope with it. Altair missed the taste of her lips, the touch of her skin against his, even the way her sharp claws raked against his back.

She didn’t have to say a word for him to read her. It was in the way she gazed at him, in the coy manner she moved, the hints of nervousness in her speech and on her face. Aadya leaned in and he could almost taste her lips again. But at the last moment, he tilted his face down the slightest bit, so her kiss pressed tenderly against his forehead. Altair’s arms wrapped around her waist, making it clear he didn’t want her to move away. But he did not kiss her. He kept his eyes closed.

He felt her in his arms, so close and yet an entire galaxy away. Altair saw his own path, a route he largely intended to walk alone. Because it meant betrayals, sacrifice, and destruction. It meant staying the course, being an unwavering ship against tidal waves that threatened to rock him on his side. It meant he was no longer the man she had known before. For better or worse.

When Altair tilted his face to gaze into her eyes again, she would know she was looking into the eyes of someone that was set on a path and would let nothing get in the way of it. Of someone that carried the weight of an entire Empire on his shoulders. Of someone that was thrust into something he never intended. Of someone that was left picking up the pieces of a mess left behind by those far more seasoned and experienced than him. Of someone that abruptly had to cut threads he had spent years building. And yet, she would know she was looking into the eyes of a King..of an Emperor. She would see all that mixed with the slight hints of longing in those amethyst eyes she came to know so well.

“Join me because you believe in me, Aadya,” Altair said quietly as his hands slowly, reluctantly slipped from her waist, “Not because you are in love with me.”

@Logan

 

[Aadya Rasheer]

background music​

The feeling of Altair's hand caressing her hip caused Aadya to gasp softly as his his touch flooded her with memories. Every kiss, every shy smile, every time Aadya had wanted to say those three words out loud but had always chickened out at the last second.

In his eyes Aadya saw herself. Like they were mirrors showing her everything she wanted right now and everything she'd ever wanted. She saw her and Altair's fingers laced as her head rested on his chest, the feeling of hearing his heart beat slowly and methodically, the way it only did when you felt wholly and truly safe.

Aadya saw the hundred little things she tried to chase away and not remember, the things she tried so hard not to let herself think about because that's when the pain and the hurt came in that place in her mind where it always rained a slow and endless drizzle.

She felt her lips press against Altair's forehead and she savored the taste of him, something she already knew but still wanted to know. Even with all of the changes in the man she loved his taste was still the same. He radiated heat from his body and she could feel it on her lips.

When Altair opened his eyes again to look at her, Aadya would meet his gaze. He would see the look on her face but more importantly, the truth her own eyes would tell him. That she knew the path he must walk. That she knew the tumultuous danger, the pitfalls, the tragedy that could so easily befall him.

That she knew and she did not care.

Aadya did not care about any of those things. That even if the path of the Emperor destroyed them both that Aadya was willing to risk that. She needed him to know that the weight of burden Altair so willingly carried on his shoulders was not one he had to drown under alone.

Most importantly, that Aadya knew and understood that Altair had become something different; something more. And those changes did not frighten her, did not make her want to pull away and forget him.

When Altair spoke again and Aadya felt his hands begin to slip from her waist, she would reach down and grab him by the wrist, holding him there in their embrace. She was strong and her grip was tight, but Aadya would not force him to stay if that is not what Altair wanted.

I have believed in you since the moment you stepped to my door all of those years ago, Altair. I never saw you as the broken man you saw in yourself. She said, her eyes still locked onto his, her tone knowing and absolute. I do love you, Altair Din, more than anything. She paused for a moment, her mind beginning to reel at the words she'd just said. The ones she'd never said out loud before. Not to him, not to herself. But that is not why I came here. That is not why I risked everything to tell you that my allegiance is to you. To your vision, to your goals and desires. To more than just the man that stands before me, but to everything you and this new Empire represents.

If he let her, Aadya would pull Altair closer, as close as they could possibly be.

You do not need to carry this on your own. Let me help you. Let me.. Aadya paused again, her lips curling into the saddest of smiles, her eyes still shinning with the faintest glimmer of hope.

Let me love you.

@Sreeya