PHOENIX

nimm aldanar. padawan. "Do not neglect the echo. You live by echoes."

[moral-disorder]

The wolf runs. It runs three legged, like all damaged creatures, across the snow. She thinks: this is true. She thinks: this is a life. She thinks: I do not want to die, but my life will always be like this—wounded and animal, lurching against white.

Lidia Yuknavitch, The Small Backs of Children (via starriestnight)

[aldanars]

♦☆

Who would you most like to go on a two month roadtrip with?

this is mostly answered!!

Who would you most like to punch in the face?

same for this one!!

MAKE MY MUSE UNCOMFORTABLE.

[aldanars]

✌, ☭

Who would you most like to go to jail with?

besides merei, she’d want to go to jail with matt @knighthimself & fein @feinkomo they could either get stuff done OR take hours to get out because they’re being siblings and arguing with each other, one of the two

Who would you most like to be a permanent roommate of?

atticus @atticusprior because SOFT REASONS, currently she’s rooming with matt @knighthimself and i GUESS she wouldn’t mind rooming with him forever if he didn’t hog the blankets, nareen @nareens because they’re Soft Friends, xavis @ecroixx because she wouldn’t mind all the animals 

MAKE MY MUSE UNCOMFORTABLE.

[aldanars]

♗♦

Who’s the sexiest person you know?

(nimm quietly in her mind) everyone, but also let’s run down this list folks, in no particular order: luha @olluans, atticus @atticusprior, khadis @khadisshrike, & orion @accessdecried

Who would you most like to go on a two-month roadtrip with?

matt @knighthimself & fein @feinkomo because we’re Soft, @atticusprior also for soft reasons, @nniedra because mother/daughter galaxy adventures, xavis @ecroixx so they can go find all the animals and pet them, khadis @khadisshrike because the Great Bantha Petting Adventure needs to happen

MAKE MY MUSE UNCOMFORTABLE.

[aldanars]

♤✌

Who has the best butt out of everyone you know?

sorin @sorinnoveske probably, but also @khadisshrike

Who would you most like to go to jail with?

merei @mereiversio the guards would let them go bc they’d be screaming back and forth at each other, that’s their tactic

MAKE MY MUSE UNCOMFORTABLE.

[aldanars]

☆

Who would you most like to punch in the face?

matt @knighthimself because he takes all of the blankets and snores really loudly but also for some reason by gut wants to add llewyn @llewynalarcon in here too I’m Sorry

MAKE MY MUSE UNCOMFORTABLE.

[the-write-ideas]

Send me three names + a number...

[atticusprior]

the-write-ideas‌:

fuck, marry, kill

marry, cuddle, sleep with

fuck, take a bullet for, murder

adopt, be adopted by, marry 

kill, betray, have on your zombie apocalypse team

seduce, steal from, serenade

[aldanars]

ecroixx‌:

you have been to worse places, boy. he tries to remind himself of this, tries to remember the crevice of the basement he hid in for one too many hours - days - years - how he never left, even now. how someone’s head might be the worst place to be and how he’s lived in it ever since the world became a crueler thing than a boy raised on make-believe hope and dreams could handle.

the rain outside, no matter how threatening - it is still better than the silence. he will hold on to it, to her - life, or just signs of it. he’ll do his best to not let it become a clinging again.

xavis follows the smaller girl readily, steps matching hers and eyes already sweeping the area, careful not to miss corners - one job, he reminds himself. this is easy enough, right?

her voice startles him out of his concentration, jumping a little before trying to cover it with a sheepish grin.

“yeah, i - i’m fine.” a blatant lie. “it is, i - it’s too still in comparison to jedha. i’m not sure what i should be trying to get used to.” something closer to the truth.

he stops in his tracks, eyes the room and te lock. “i… i don’t think so - i’m sorry. we could - we could ask someone, or - do you?”

Owl-eyes can know. Nimm’s eyes can—do—know a lie, know when it’s being concealed by a sheepish grin. She meets it with a slightly lifted eyebrow. His next words, though, she agrees with, and gives him a little nod, “It’s... quieter here.” 

There’s something more dangerous about that. A buzzing underneath it all.

She screws her mouth to the side, eyes fixed on the screen. “I might have something.” Turning away from him, she begins to rummage through her utility belt before procuring a small, rectangular piece of metal with a connector at the end. Matt’s droid had shoved it at her before they parted ways. 

The connector at the end lines up perfectly with a tiny opening on the side of the screen. She plugs it in. For a horrible moment, nothing happens; then, the screen flashes green, and the doors slide open.

“It’s okay to be—nervous. It means you’re paying attention.” It means you’re trying to stay alive. Once inside, the room lights up, each wall lined with smaller weapons, humming with the presence of Kyber crystals. But she’s distracted; still caught up in what Xavis said earlier. “I’m nervous too.”    

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

You, memory, almost weightless this morning inside me.

Jane Hirshfield, from The Beauty: Poems; “My Memory,” (via violentwavesofemotion)

[knighthimself]

DATE & TIME: 1/16, 3:00PM   LOCATION: Advanced Weapon Lab, Eadu TAG: @aldanars

There’s a stench here, if you look for it. Wet clinging to clothes in the midst of metal. Wet dirt smeared against the pristine floor, trailed against windowless walls, where wind still crashes, causing everything to quake, mixing with the sound of sabers, of stomping feet, and Cutie following after them, screaming at him the whole way—her favorite thing is to usually tell him just how he fucked up. “Hey, hey, hey—Cutie, hey, save it for when we’re home, how about that?” She has a voice she thinks everyone wants to hear, and she’s right, but as he wipes the rain and sweat from his eyes, blurry tints of red enter his vision too, its on his cheeks.

The droid stays beside him in the darkened closet, door barricaded closed just until he can complete this, until Nimm is ready to go back. The only light comes from Cutie’s flashlight as he leans in close to her shoulder and arm, hands steady, but if there’s a tremble, we’ll blame the cold, having to angle himself so he can see what he’s doing with the floss, now wet too and making the wet dirt smell, just a bit minty, he’ll remember the stench. He’s stitching her with it, and from the way he does it, maybe you can tell, he’s done this before, and never to himself. The floss, though, he hasn’t told her about yet, and whenever she first looked at it, all he could say was, “That’s showbiz, baby,” in a voice half his own, mocking someone else she won’t even know, because there’s nothing else in his mind to say except fumbling words, and then swift, “Fuck. Shit. We can take this shit out when we get home, but it’ll do.”

[aldanars]

It’s too loud. Hears: rain pounding, Cutie’s whirring and beeping (she doesn’t have to wonder who programmed her to say that), an unidentifiable chattering sound, Matt’s voice ringing back in the close quarters they’re in. And the smell. Burnt skin and blood and mud and mint. Nimm decides all at once that she hates the smell of the latter. She grits her teeth when the needle enters skin again, pulling the makeshift thread through, and her jaw ticks—she’s pale, solemn-faced, too-black eyes fixed on the wall. 

“I’m sorry,” Said almost too quietly for even her to hear, then said again, still without looking at Mathias as he stitches her as quickly as he can. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t do it. I’m sorry.” Heal like he can. (She had only ever successfully done it once; the slash on her throat, that night on Tatooine when the Hutt’s goons couldn’t make quick work of finishing her off. But never again.) If she’d just been able to, then they wouldn’t be here right now, locked away in some utility closet with mud and blood and floss. The needle enters skin again and her jaw ticks. This pain is far from the worst she’s ever experienced, but she’s still kicking herself mentally for not being able to heal herself. 

Another moment passes before she realizes the faint chattering noise is her own teeth, breath coming out in hisses between them. She’s freezing. 

“We should get moving soon, it won’t be safe here very long.” Nimm tells him, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. These are the words of someone raised to keep running, even wounded, even with teeth bared. Mathias would know it. 

[aldanars]

DATE & TIME: 1/16, 5:00PM   LOCATION: Ship back to Yavin IV (Engine Room) TAG: @feinkomo

This was the only empty space on the ship Nimm could quickly access on the way back to Yavin IV. It’s silent, save for the steady humming of the ship’s engine. 

A medpac lays open next to her feet. Her coat is cast aside, sleeve long torn above the shoulder and left somewhere on Eadu, long buried in rain and mud. Nimm isn’t touching the stitching Matt managed to get done on her right arm. She’s only working on making it a little more presentable to the doctors in the medbay—and because she can barely stand the strong smell of mint coming off of the floss he’d used to piece broken skin together again.

The wound, beginning just at the cap of her left shoulder and winding down to her elbow, is at just enough of an awkward angle that it makes her attempts at wrapping it in gauze a little difficult. She holds the end of it between her teeth, the roll gripped tightly in her left hand as she begins—and freezes at the sound of the blaster doors whirring open. 

Her entire frame tenses, mind still buzzing from the firefight, from the sound of rain so loud she can almost still hear it, even now. But there’s something almost comical—like an alleycat spotting a stranger standing at the one exit, back curled, eyes wide, teeth still gripping the edge of the gauze. It’s only when she realizes who it is that she eases up slightly. “Fein,” Muffled, because she’s still talking with something between her teeth. She allows the gauze to drop. 

“Did Matt tell you I was here?” 

[aldanars]

atticusprior‌:

Blue eyes almost-white meet such dark brown, all he does is watch them, too aware of her eyes on him too, where they land, how he moves when they do, how she moves. How close are their feet from each other? Hand just above the space her arm hair grows. Is it too close?  It’s more than he can think of now, the dangers someone faced without seeing a doctor in so long, the fear he searches in her eyes now, everything as a hint of where he should hold himself, what she needs. He holds himself further back, holds his hand more gently.

The Force reaches out as a source of light, up her veins, down bones. He senses it, the scars around her neck, the arms, a history that strikes as a chord, or a knife, or just fear placed as concern. He looks up at her under eyelashes as his expression is still facing her hand, no question in the gaze, it’s just to see. Enough to speak words, if she looks long enough. He’s had to fight for his own life too, it doesn’t make it feel better that Nimm had to too so young.

His eyes are still down as she speaks of Yavin, still watching his hand, his Force signature spreading as water does, waves against a quiet shore, spreading calm, if he can. But there’s something soft across his expression. He says it, only half a joke, maybe hoping the air will be lighter, “We’ll call it a date,” look at her through his lashes again, and then down again, and still there as he answers her, “On and off, when they needed me. Twelve years, if you don’t count the time I wasn’t here. If Ahsoka asked for a house call,” and she knew he would be there.

After this, he steps back, slow, the way he lifts his head up, in the way he straights his back, stretches it, in the way his gaze turns back to her. “The vaccinations will do you well if you haven’t been on many planets. Your immune system will have a hard time taking to a jungle,” a beat, “I may be able to treat the scars, if you want it,” spoken quiet. 

The almost-blue, almost-not of his eyes reminds her of something she’s seen before in a dream. (Water from a fountain in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. There are stones at the bottom that she used to collect. She’d show up to the creche with her entire sleeves soaked from reaching beneath the surface to select the smoothest ones.) Atticus watches her beneath white lashes, and she watches him, wisdom in her owlish gaze. Sees the fight inside, the fight he’s known. Sees that he understands. She allows her hand to rest a little more readily in his palm. 

Atticus is all calm. A ripple in still water; something known beneath it, comforting. Her posture relaxes. She only realizes after it’s been a beat too long that she hasn’t taken her eyes off of him, and when she does, she forces her gaze back down to their hands. There’s still a small smile on her face. 

In return, she peels her Force signature back, allowing it to spread. It stretches out like a Tatooine sunset, something melancholic in the memory of the planet’s twin suns steadily making their way over the horizon. If she closes her eyes, she can still picture them. (Hot wind over her cheeks. She misses the dry heat.) 

Her smile grows at his words, “A date?” Echoed, eyes flickering back up to meet his. A question. She then nods, “A date, then. Are there—are there very many waterfalls, here? On Yavin?” 

From the way he answers her question about time, Nimm doesn’t immediately chastise herself for being nosy. Twelve years in the Rebellion, twelve years of healing, of fighting. She nods a little. Part of her wonders when Atticus first knew of the Light inside of him. Of what it called him to do. She can’t help but ask him, “Did you ever—was it ever something you knew? How to... heal, I mean. Outside of being taught in the Temple.” (The last formally taught Healer alive. That was another thing Nimm heard.)

Her fingers curl back into her palm, hand lowering to her lap again, “I’m ready for the vaccinations.” Straightens up her shoulders and lifts her chin, the movement playful. His next words cause her to tilt her head and swallow, quiet for a beat before, “It’s... it’s okay. It is. Maybe,” Subconsciously, she touches the small line on her throat, “Maybe some other time.” 

[aldanars]

feinkomo‌:

Her hands tremble as they slide along the lines of his past, and he wants to tell her what each one means. She used to love seeing his new ink, hearing about the things he had done that earned a place on the canvas of his body, but they’re all about death, and he doesn’t want to talk to Nimm about death. He wants to tell her about the six baby porgs Xavis has nestled on Fein’s pillow at this moment, wants to tell her about the clearing he found about three clicks from the farm where a little stream settles into a pool of water – so clear its almost like the waters not even there. He wants to tell her about the youngling in Noa’s creche the day before the mission who looked up and said a cloud looked like a bantha and tell her how much he thought of her in that moment.

But instead the stories he has are dripping with blood and tears. They won’t make her hands stop shaking anymore than he will – not anymore.

But somewhere in his memories there’s a little girl looking up at him with eyes as big as the city their temple stands in the center of, as she holds a baby convoree in her cupped hands and asks him to help her get him home. Somewhere in his memories, she watches him scale a tree one handed with the bird in his own palm to tuck it back into a nest and watches with eyes even bigger than before as he slips and thuds to the ground. Somewhere, Nimm calls his name and scolds him for scaring her with hands that trembled just like they do now – and Fein can’t stop himself.

He reaches out, and takes her hands in his, “I’m sorry,” he tells her, looking down at their hands instead of her eyes (he sees the way she looks away when he meets her eyes, he doesn’t want to scare her – not when all he wants is to make her feel safe), “I didn’t think when … I just moved.”

He wets his lips, trying to phrase the words right, “She’ll remember Bail, like we will, and …,” he squeezes her hand, the smallest bit, gauze forgotten, “I don’t know who will remember us, but I never forgot you. It’s alright that you can’t remember me, because I’ll remember it all for the both of us. If you ever want to know something, just ask – and if not, then we’ll make new memories for the two of us.”

If he told her the stories about a boy fighting for his life in a ring made of dirt and blood, she’d tell him a story about a girl left alone to die in the desert. She’d tell him that people have wanted to make them both into Animal—to make them and accuse them and hurt them. She’d tell him, stories like that don’t scare me. And that would be the worst part: knowing they’ve both lived through the ugliness of it all and come out the other side with understanding. Nimm can’t speak for what Fein feels—there was a time when she could have, but she doesn’t know that time anymore—but she can say, if she looks into a mirror, she doesn’t know what she looks like after all of that.

If he told her he couldn’t tell her any stories, because the only ones he has are twisted and ugly, she’d say: it’s okay. All of mine are, too. 

Nimm’s thoughts, running too quickly, freeze when his hands find hers. She blinks, gaze fixed on the tiny scars lining the backs of his knuckles. Her voice is barely audible, “It’s okay,” It’s okay, there’s nothing else they can do. Repeats herself, louder this time, voice cracking, “It’s—it’s okay, Fein.” As long as they’re both okay. 

“But don’t do it again.” This time, she says it with a slight, hesitant smile curling at her lips, “Or else I’ll kill you myself, idiot.” And jabs him playfully in the side for good measure.

I don’t know who will remember us. The words make Nimm’s heart hurt for reasons she doesn’t quite understand, not fully. She catches her bottom lip between her teeth, eyes stinging without her meaning for them to as she finally looks him in the eye and nods. “I want to remember,” A quiet confession. “But we’ll make new memories, too.” They can—and they will.

There’s a slight pause. She looks back down at his half-bandaged arm and lets out a nervous, breathy laugh, “Now, stay—stay still. Let me finish this.”  

[knighthimself]

SEND ☁ FOR A MOODBOARD OF OUR MUSES:

NIMM ALDANAR + MATHIAS ILESAR @aldanars

[aldanars]

DATE & TIME: 1/15, 8:00AM LOCATION: Yavin IV’s Jungles TAG: @atticusprior

Water hangs thick in the air here, unlike Tatooine; plants that she could have barely ever dreamt of flourish (picture, a little girl, later young woman, with tiny seedlings growing from bird skulls. Trying desperately to make something grow in a place where nothing could. Not even her, at times). The sound of footsteps, hers and Atticus’s, are steady background noise. She’s come to be somewhat relaxed around him. Shoulders down, head tilted back, gazing up at the canopy. 

His presence lingers impossibly soft on the edge of her awareness. She tips her head down, focusing on the line of light that glows around his hair like a halo before she takes a few longer strides to walk beside him.

She’s memorized every turn they’ve taken since leaving the base. It’s comforting to know the way, to know that maybe some other day she could be the one to lead Atticus out her, if she wanted to. 

“I never thought a place could be so green,” Said with a small smile in her voice, hands down at her sides, fingers tapping habitually against the outer parts of her thighs. “It’s beautiful.” Different from the dry, arid heat of the planet where she had been raised. She glances at him out of the corner of her eye, before turning her head to look at him more directly, “Thank you, Attie—” Her eyes pop open a fraction. (Where had she heard that before?) She corrects herself, “—Atticus. For being here, it... you didn’t, you didn’t have to.”

(Still trying to learn a reason for the gentleness of his hands; he owes her nothing, and she’s been raised her whole life to believe that everything must be an even trade.)

[aldanars]

DATE & TIME: 1/17, 3:00PM LOCATION: The Temple TAG: @nniedra

The crystal hums faintly from its spot, laid out on a piece of cloth in front of her with all the other components that go into creating a lightsaber. Not quite hers. Not quite not, either. (It called to Mathias, Nimm knows that. It called to him and his solar flare heart—she knows that. When she holds it flat in her palm, it buzzes faintly, as if saying, you’ll do. But you’re not the one I’m looking for. Nimm knows that.) 

Gaze fixed on the disassembled lightsaber, legs folded neatly, hands on her knees, she waits for something to happen. The others have already begun; parts levitating in midair and spinning precisely into one another. She’d repaired pods and broken things for as long as she could remember, but this is entirely different. This isn’t something she can just put together with her hands. 

It takes a moment for her to feel a shift in the air and immediately, she looks up, ears burning red with embarrassment at the sight of Noa. 

“Hi,” She offers weakly, the corner of her mouth pulling into a barely-there smile. Nimm had just watched Master Niedra battle an Inquisitor; had watched her, brilliant and lit by lightning. There’s no helping the way she folds into herself now, yet again. Feeling inadequate, yet again. 

[ecroixx-blog]

DATE & TIME: 01/16, 1300H   LOCATION: the palace TAG: @aldanars

is the shaking just from the wind? he’ll say it is so, that hands are merely trembling from the cold air, from the ride, from anything but him - try and call himself a rebel and the word tastes too strange in his mouth; stranger still on his skin. he doesn’t know what to do with it other than to hold it in his hands, shaking. 

it doesn’t belong to him, this title. bodies reject it and won’t stop trembling. 

but he finds her easily, presence calming - close his eyes and they’re just sitting down for lunch, on dirt for cloud gazing, on beds for daydreaming - use the smaller girl as a grounding, try to take steps steady when he follows the team into the palace. 

remembers the mission, tries to breathe. smiles uneasily at her when they’re told to start looking. 

“team?” he says, as if there was ever a question of it. “i’ll look up and you’ll - well, you can take the lower ground. if we go around the space together we won’t have to come back again to double check for the areas we can’t quite see.” 

[aldanars]

“Team.” Nimm echoes with a nod, offering a small and nervous smile that pairs easily with Xavis’s uneasy one. It wasn’t even a question. (She was afraid the hurricane winds howling just outside of the blaster doors would’ve blown him away.) She removes the seeing goggles from her eyes, lowering them so that they’re hanging around her neck. The slate gray poncho she’d been given is still dripping wet from the intense rain; if Nimm listens hard enough, she can still hear it pounding on the outside of the facility’s walls.

She glances side to side, the corridor arching off into a circle—left, or right? “Let’s start left.” The commlink wrapped around her wrist glows, highlighting the schematics Fulcrum had been able to provide them with. 

Xavis’s anxiety is rolling off of him in waves, mixing with her own. She bites down on the inside of her cheek. “You—you okay?” Asked while leaning closer, struggling to keep her eyes on him. (He’s a friend. Still, the motion of avoiding gazes is long-practiced.) 

“This feels... different from Jedha,” Spoken quietly in already quiet corridors, everything brightly-lit and pristine. They approach the first room, locked with a keycode. She interrupts herself to ask him, “Do you have one of the security spikes?”