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Avar knew it was going to start a fight.
She knew, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself from rolling out of bed to check Maru’s Jedi lodging assignments log anyway. And when she pulled on a robe and stepped into the pair of fuzzy slippers Elzar gave her for her name day last year, she should have realized that this was not her finest idea, but no. Maybe she should have paused before her door controls and convinced herself to go back to bed—her own bed—but she didn’t do that either. She stepped into the cool halls of Starlight Beacon’s Jedi quarter and sighed.
She felt better doing. She wasn’t meant for passivity or patience. That’s not why she was here. Here, in the galaxy, on the outer rim, on Starlight, or in the hall right now, just after the midpoint of the station’s night cycle. Avar pulled her robe tighter around herself and walked. She didn’t stomp as she might have mere hours ago, simmering with unbecoming rage, but she didn’t tiptoe either. She had nothing to be guilty or ashamed of. She just walked.
When she reached her destination, it faced a sprawling viewport. It was good of Maru to give their guests such breathtaking views of the vast galaxy at their fingertips. The stars stretched out forever, and Avar stepped up to the transparisteel to admire them. All those pinpricks of light and life. They always reminded her of—
“Do you want to come in?” Stellan asked.
Avar turned toward the sound of his voice on pure instinct. They were opposite poles, magnetized, but frozen.
Stellan stood barefoot in the now open doorway of his quarters, the lines on his face deepened by the hour. She answered his question by brushing past him into his plain but spacious room.
His sheets were rumpled on one side of his bed, but not pulled back. He hadn’t been sleeping either. She was never alone when he was nearby, after all. The door slid closed and they were alone together.
“You’re up late,” he said into the room’s claustrophobic silence. He leaned on the inside of his door frame now, his arms crossed.
She nodded. “So are you.”
“Jump-lag. What’s your excuse?”
She shrugged.
“Was I keeping you awake?” He asked.
She smiled a little at that. She couldn’t help it. It brought to mind memories that usually felt lightyears away. Tossing and turning in her padawan quarters while her roommate slept, Stellan’s unique note in the force trilling with anxiety in her mind’s ear. Knocking softly on Stellan and Elzar’s door well past quiet hours to whisper-scold him for staying up too late cramming for an exam, all the while Elzar snored softly from his bunk. Kissing his cheek goodnight and smiling all the way back to her room.
“I was, wasn’t I,” he sighed. He rubbed his eyes with one hand.
“No, you weren’t.” She shook her head.
Stellan studied her for a moment with his head slightly cocked to the side. His eyes narrowed with a whisper of concern. “Avar, what’s—“
“Can I sleep here?”
Avar hadn’t planned on blurting it out like that. She just couldn’t bear to hear him ask what’s wrong. Because nearly everything was, and she was barely holding the outer rim together with her bare hands and she was so tired, but she couldn’t—
“Just sleep,” she clarified before he had the chance to reject her.
His face was unreadable, or it would have been to almost anyone else in the galaxy. It was the corners of his eyes and the dip of his head that gave him away. He was disappointed in her that she’d asked, but more disappointed in himself that he was going to say yes.
He sighed his especially exasperated sigh that seemed reserved for her lately. His sigh for Elzar still had a playful weightlessness to it. Hers was all pressure, all resigned frustration. It didn’t used to be.
He motioned toward the far side of the bed where the sheets weren’t as rumpled. Avar wasn’t going to get a better invitation, so she took it.
“I should try to get some sleep too, I suppose,” he said.
Avar kicked off her slippers and shrugged off her robe. She caught Stellan studying her oversized tunic.
“Whose is that.” It sounded more like an accusation than a question.
Avar pulled back the covers of Stellan’s bed. “Mine,” she said.
“Whose was it,” he said. Definitely an accusation.
“Goodnight, Stellan.” Avar rolled her eyes and climbed into bed. She forced herself to lie on her side facing him. If she turned her back to him it would feel like an admission.
Another sigh. More tired this time. He scrubbed his hands over his face.
Avar had seen enough. She closed her eyes and listened to him click off the bedside sconce and join her in bed. When he settled, she could clearly hear him breathing. He must have been on his back or on his side facing her, but she refused to open her eyes to be sure. She had to take advantage of this rare opportunity to get real, restful sleep.
Unfortunately, sleep deprivation was a bitch. They had that in common.
Before she knew what she was doing, she was reaching across the cold sheets between them. She found his arm first, and followed it to his hand. He twitched when she slotted her hand into the gentle swirl formed by his fingers and palm. On a night like this, years ago, she could expect a kind squeeze or a threading of their fingers. Now, the lack of tension was enough for Avar’s nose to tingle with tears.
Her relief was short-lived. True to her fear, Stellan’s hand stiffened around hers, solidifying like a lake in a bitter winter. The cold dripped down her spine too. Her reckless affection at just holding his hand might have cost her the chance at a precious night of rest. Stellan had sensed her feelings. Why else would he tense up only after a surge of emotion had threatened to choke her? And now Avar could sense the non-attachment lecture crawling up Stellan’s throat.
She was so tired of this. She’d heard it all before. From countless masters, from Stellan, from herself. She felt so exhausted. So small. So alone. Again.
“Can we not do this part?” She asked, and it sounded like she felt.
“Avar, we’re Jedi masters. We have to do this part.” He sounded small, too, but also resigned and a little sad.
When she opened her eyes, Avar couldn’t make out his expression in the dark. Maybe that was for the best. “I’m not asking for anything untoward here,” she said.
Stellan shifted onto his side to face her. Notably, he still held her hand in his. “Aren’t you?”
“We slept in a pile with Elzar for years!”
“And the crèche masters discouraged us! Attachments start—“
Avar growled in frustration. She ripped her hand free of his and pressed her fingertips into her eyelids. She couldn’t even try to look at Stellan right now. She rolled onto her back.
“Light abound, what happened to you?” She cried, “Where is my best friend? How far past the Jedi council member do I have to dig to find him?”
“I’m right here,” he said.
That snapped her head back in his direction.“No, you’re not, you’re on Coruscant! You’re lightyears away from here. Just be in this moment with me!” She pleaded.
“The council has to look ahead. That is our function as—“
She had known it would all go up in smoke, and here she was, fanning the flames again. She couldn’t decide if the firefight was better than being iced out. What choice was there? She had to be the hot to his cold or she would freeze.
“I know the function of the council!” Avar snapped. She sat up violently. It didn’t help much, but it made it easier to deal with the political bullshit Stellan was spewing through his Jedi Council member mask. “I only wish you weren’t letting the council dictate your whole personality—“
He sat up too. “I’m not—“
“You are! You’re practically made of talking points!“ Avar spat from so deep within her chest it almost hurt.
Stellan threw aside the covers and started pacing. Finally, vitally, his anger had boiled over enough for Avar to see it.
“Why are you throwing this in my face, Avar?” He gesticulated wildly as he spoke, so unlike the over-practiced postures he had adopted to please the galaxy beyond the door, but so like the excitable boy she grew up with. “I wasn’t exactly quiet about my goals! And neither were you or Elzar for that matter, always going on about how I would be a council member before either of you were knighted!”
“I just didn’t know what your elevation was going to cost me!” Avar shouted.
Stellan’s pacing stuttered to a stop and he looked into the negative space of the room in shocked, scandalized silence. Avar could hear emotions tearing through him like movements in a symphony, sped up so much that had become noise instead of music. Shock, embarrassment, hurt, disappointment, regret… Sounds swirled into memories too precious for Avar to touch anymore.
“That… is not what I meant.” Avar’s bluster evaporated. She untangled herself from the sheets and sat on the edge of the bed. This wasn’t what she wanted.
“Then please explain it to me,” he said measuredly. His posture was stiff but brittle.
“I miss my friend,” she sighed. “That’s all. I miss talking to you without politics getting in the way. I miss having fun with you. Being a little silly with you. Leaning on you as a friend, and not as a council member. I miss talking about things that don’t really matter in the grand scheme of the galaxy.”
Stellan ran his hand through his hair and took a deep breath.
“Okay,” he conceded. He approached her tentatively and sat next to her on the edge of the bed. “Are you going to tell me why you’re here?”
The words were vague, but Avar knew what he meant. Why had she sought him out now, in the middle of the night, when they would be decidedly alone together?
A cackle of hoarse hysterical laughter escaped Avar’s throat. “Because neither of us have the ability to be friends during the day cycle anymore so I thought I’d try the night cycle!” She said. “Maybe it would be enough to be near you while I try to sleep.”
Stellan nodded. “I—Wait. Try to sleep?” He pivoted to face her. “Are you not sleeping well?”
Avar raised an eyebrow. “Are you?”
“Ave.” He wasn’t deterred.
Avar rested her head on his shoulder and just barely kept herself from bursting into tears. Thankfully, in a way, she was too tired to cry.
“Will you tell me what’s wrong?” Stellan asked.
“Will you try to lecture me into submission if I do?” Avar’s sassed.
Stellan breathed in like he was about to say something, but before he could—
Avar groaned. “I’m sorry.”
Stellan deflated in the most endearing way. “No, I probably deserved that.”
“Oh, you definitely did, but it didn’t feel good to say.”
Stellan laughed, rested his cheek on her head, then whispered, “Why aren’t you sleeping?”
If she was too tired to cry, she was too tired to lie. “I don’t sleep well when I sleep alone,” she mumbled.
Stellan heaved a sigh.
Avar held up a hand. “Whatever you’re thinking, I’ve already said it to myself a million times. I don’t need to hear it from you.”
“Then can I ask a question?”
Avar nodded.
“Do you only know that because of Elzar?” He paused, like he was deciding if he wanted to go there. “And me?”
Avar wasn’t sure why he was dancing around their past. That ship was off the landing pad already, thanks to her sleep-deprived ass.
“No, having a bunkmate as a padawan was better than nothing. When Master Cherff and I used to camp for missions and I could hear him snoring in the bedroll next to me, that worked too.”
“Anyone else?”
“No.”
“I don’t like it.” Said Stellan.
“I’m shocked,” Avar deadpanned.
“You know, we have resources to help with insomnia—“
“Hey, no.” Avar lifted her head from his shoulder to shake it at him, and maybe blink some tears from her eyes. She couldn’t watch him do this to her again. Not tonight. “That’s the council member. I want—I need my friend. And I know about the resources. I’ve tried them all, but I only know one thing that works.”
Stellan glared at the ground for a beat. “I don’t like it,” he said again.
Avar scoffed. “I’m aware.”
Stellan picked at a hangnail on his thumb. That little Stellan-ism told her he was stumped, uneasy, or both. It made her melt a little.
She said, softer, “I don’t have to stay. I can go back to my own quarters. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable—“
“I’m not uncomfortable—“
Avar tilted her head testily, leading with an eyebrow. “Could’ve fooled me.”
“Avar, if you could refrain from jabbing me for one minute so I can think—“ His voice was rising in volume again.
“I’m just going to go.” Avar stood up. “This was—“
Avar took a step toward the door, but froze when a hand caught her wrist. Stellan had moved so desperately fast that he couldn’t have made the decision consciously. It surprised her, but Avar suspected it had surprised Stellan more. Her blood rushed under his fingertips in celebration. His fingers twitched, tensed, then slowly relaxed. His thumb tentatively stroked the cool skin of her forearm. The soft hair there stood straighter in response. She looked at his hand, the barely-there movement of his thumb, then her gaze climbed to his face. She found his brow creased in something like confusion… or determination, perhaps. His eyes were focused on his own hand circling her wrist.
Avar knew from many years of experience that Stellan Gios did not need to make eye contact to connect. In fact, he usually preferred not to. He only did it with masters and dignitaries and reporters because it was expected. But Avar had known him and cared for him before any of that mattered. Before everything that came out of his mouth was a lesson. He didn’t need to bow to expectation around her or Elzar. Why did he even try? Wasn’t he tired?
Maybe he was as burned out as she was.
Stellan flexed his fingers, but did not let her go. He said, “You have to solve this. You have to sleep, Avar.”
“I know—"
“But,” he said, and finally lifted his eyes to hers, “You don’t have to do it alone.”
Her shoulders dropped, suddenly relieved of tension. She didn’t know he had the power to do that with words alone.
She moved back toward him, and his fingertips brushed the palm of her hand as he let go of her wrist. She sat on the bed next to him again, but said nothing. She didn’t know what to say.
“It’s late. We should get some sleep.”
Avar nodded.
Stellan glanced at her through the corner of his eye briefly, then back to the floor. It was as if he’d had a thought, but resisted it. After a breath, he gave in. He wrapped an arm around her, pulled her in, and kissed her temple. He was pulling away before she could relish his closeness. Her eyes followed him where her arms, her hands couldn’t. They followed him around to the other side of the bed. Even as he pulled the covers back and settled between the sheets, she could only stare. Let her eyes touch what only her teenage self has held.
“Stay, Avar. Rest.”
“Just sleep,” she asked. She couldn’t be sure anymore. Where had the lines been redrawn? What was too much? What was not enough? Avar doubted they would give the same answers if pressed.
“Yes. Just sleep.”
She joined him in bed then, but didn’t stop at holding his hand beneath the covers this time. She buried her face in his chest and rested one calloused hand on his ribs. He was no less guilty, circling her in his arms and resting his chin on the crown of her head, fitting so well that he felt a little like the diadem she wore in the daylight hours. He sought out her cold feet, trapping her toes beneath the relative warmth of his legs. She could hear his guilt, swirling in his gut, but she heard his relief too. It was softer, skimming her mind’s ear like his rough fingertips had once skimmed her cheek, her bare side, her thigh. The memory became a lullaby. With her last thought before sleep took her, she hoped Stellan heard it too.