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The relationship had grown cold, something you always heard about when it came to love. How marriages had their dormant stages, how people separated in times like these when they couldn’t handle the loneliness or weren’t strong enough to admit to each other, or to themselves, that the love had vanished.
But the love hadn’t vanished, at least yours hadn’t. You couldn’t say the same for Din since you couldn’t tell what was going on inside his head, or at least not anymore. But you didn’t need to know his every thought to acknowledge that his love for you had changed. Whether drastically or slightly was your uncertainty.
You missed him. Mornings were your favorite. You missed the way he would wake you up every morning, pulling you closer to him and pressing his nose into the crook of your neck, leaving a trail of kisses up your jaw, along your cheek until his lips met yours. You missed how he would chuckle against your cheek whenever you complained that his facial hair felt itchy against your skin, though you secretly loved it, and he knew that. You missed the way he would jokingly respond, “Good morning to you too” right after.
You missed the little things. How no matter what small problem you had compared to his, he always worried for you and listened, supporting you despite all the stress he was carrying on his back. How whenever you were out, any form of physical touch was crucial to him. Whether walking around in a marketplace or just out in a field on an early morning walk to watch the sunrise, there was always a hand on the small of your back or a hand gently holding your wrist. There were times where he would reach his hand out for you to hold without looking back because he knew you would take it, and you would silently laugh to yourself.
You loved his instinctively protective nature and how it made you feel safe. But, now you wondered to yourself if protecting you was even one of his top priorities anymore.
The longing you felt for your husband was bad enough to make you miss arguing with him, because at least in those times he would give you his full attention. He would look straight at you, his brown eyes still the warm and comforting ones you fell in love with, even if the expression he wore was one of anger. A hug on your part ended every single argument. You would slowly walk up to him when he would finish ranting, and he would sigh, closing his eyes because he knew what was coming and hated that it would work. You missed how he would always give in and wrap his arms around you, muttering the words, “I’m sorry” against your forehead.
But what you were not aware of was that Din felt just the same.
He missed you just as strongly and longed for your touch to stop being merely a memory. From all the aspects of you that he loved dearly, your scent was the one that was engraved in his mind. It was something he always kept to himself to avoid making you feel uncomfortable, even though he knew you would probably just tease him about it rather than judge him. Nevertheless, it was his favorite aspect of you because it was one of those scents that he could easily identify and in times of disquietude, it was one he could remember to comfort himself.
He missed your laugh and how it would echo in the cockpit when he would intentionally fly recklessly just to hear it, because it never failed to make his chest flutter.
He longed for your embrace, how you would wrap your arms around his waist from behind, pressing your head against his back, his thumbs caressing your arms as he would stand still, smiling to himself and relishing the tenderness. He missed your kisses, especially the ones you gave him before he set off to his missions. They always lingered on his lips, making him feel protected and fueling him to be stronger, more focused. The price over his bounty’s heads was an encouragement, but his determination was always set on coming home to you.
Now you slept separately. Months of sleeping apart felt like years for the two of you. You slept in the narrow cot, cold and alone, while he slept uncomfortably up in the cockpit on the pilot’s seat, feet propped up on the dashboard. Even though Din’s body ached daily due to his sleeping position, he preferred the pain over any type of confrontation.
In secret, he would come down from the cockpit in the middle of the night to pretend to get water. He would only come down to see you, to admire you while you slept, and in doing so he would feel ashamed. He would denigrate himself and the word coward would ring in his head. He just couldn’t bring himself to look you in the eyes and speak to you. In fact, it had been weeks since the two of you had made any eye contact.
You used to be inseparable, committed to each other, and even more so after you married. You felt that the strong devotion Din once had for you had left, that he wouldn’t care if you were to walk out right here right now without a goodbye.
-
You sat at the end of the cot, waiting for Din to come back from his latest mission. He never took this long; usually it took him a mere three hours, which led you to worry. Your mind was clouded with a variety of scenarios of what could have happened to him.
You felt your chest tightening, eyes brimming with tears, until you heard the loud sound of the Razor Crest’s ramp lowering. You were relieved when Din walked in as the ramp rose behind him, but the feeling quickly left when you observed him more closely.
He had a limp in his step. It was normal for Din to have some minor injuries; however, his body language said it all. The mission was not a success. He set his weapons down slowly with control, though his shoulders were stiff.
He wasn’t going to be able to take his armor off on his own and the instinct of a spouse automatically kicked in. You had to help him, but you were hesitant. It had been a long time since you had helped him take his armor off. Recently, he didn’t allow you near him, and you had grown accustomed to his rejections, but that wasn’t going to stop you.
“Do you need help?” you spoke up. It came out weaker than you pictured in your head. You knew what his answer was going to be. Nonetheless, you had hoped that this time he would open up.
“No,” Din muttered, taking his gloves off and then moving on to his shoulder plates. He bit down on his bottom lip, trying his hardest to not make a sound that would indicate any sign of pain or difficulty in what he was doing. He did need your help, but he wasn’t going to give in.
His mission went terrible. His bounty had pushed him off an elevated location and it was too late for Din to run after them. They had taken the speeder bike Peli Motto lent him and left him out in the middle of nowhere on Tatooine, leaving him no choice but to walk back to the Razor Crest in defeat. Almost all his missions had been unsuccessful recently for the sole reason that you consumed his mind. He couldn’t focus anymore. During combat, he would think about how things used to be, even going as far as to daydream about you.
You let out an exasperated sigh. The frustration you carried over the state of your relationship had been drawn out for too long. You were growing tired, and patience was not on your side today. It wasn’t on Din’s side today either. Din picked up on the attitude behind your sigh, and he wasn’t having it.
He stopped stripping his armor and looked up, staring at the wall in front of him in annoyance. “What?” Your stomach fell. He was not in a good mood and the last thing you wanted to do was argue. You wanted to avoid making the conflict between you any bigger, so you chose to stay quiet.
Din hated when you would do this, how he would ask you something and you would intentionally ignore him. He looked slightly behind him, subconsciously clenching his jaw. “Do you have something to say?”
“Nothing at all,” you retorted. You were letting the bitterness get the best of you and you were tempted to say just about anything to him, but you held back. It was taking all your strength on staying voiceless in your sentiments.
Din turned around to face you and even though he had his helmet on, you knew he was looking at you right in the eyes behind his visor. If you weren’t so lonely and deprived of his love, you wouldn’t have been feeling the small amount of glee you were feeling at that moment.
Your heartbeat sped up as his gaze was on you, but soon after that it went still when he said, “It’s obvious you do, and I’d like to hear it.” You recognized that tone; it was the tone he used that began all your arguments.
It was silent. The only sound you heard was the rhythmic pounding of your heart in your ear. The tension was unbearable. This was the moment you were waiting for. Now that he was willing to listen to you and give you his attention, you felt it was time to confront him.
“Fine” you spat out, a lump in your throat already forming. You swallowed it before taking a deep and shaky breath.
“When did you stop loving me?”
The words kept replaying in Din’s mind that he didn’t notice he hadn’t yet responded to your question. Well, how could he, considering the mood he was in?
Your words aggravated him inadvertently, especially after walking miles and miles back under the hot Tatooine sun. “What?” he managed to say curtly.
“Answer the question.”
He sighed wearily, “What are you saying?”
His lack of empathy and understanding was only a catalyst to your frustration. “Just answer the question!” you didn’t mean to raise your voice, for desperation to pour out in each word.
A part of you wanted to end this right here, to forget everything you said and keep on living a marriage with someone who was soon to become a stranger. His silence and gaze were killing you. You feared his answer to your question was the opposite of what you longed to hear.
Your voice cracked as you asked the question once again, “Din, when did you stop loving me?”
His vexation faded away. Hearing his name made his chest tighten. He was stunned. He felt his heart wanting to beat out of his chest, and his mouth was dry, unable to form any words. He knew why you were asking him this. You were confronting him, and he didn’t know if he was strong enough for this. He knew you; he knew that you were holding back tears, he could see your distress and he was angry. Angry at himself for causing the person he unconditionally loved to feel this way, to feel like they weren’t loved.
You could hear his breathing get heavier as the modulation of his voice made it more evident. Din’s voice fell into a whisper. “What are you… Cyare…” he swallowed, “I haven’t stopped loving you.”
“You haven’t called me that in a very long time.”
Din fell silent again. He didn’t know how to respond because you were calling him out, rightfully so.
You were slightly reassured hearing what he used to call you, but you were still uncertain as to why he treated you this way. Why didn’t he sleep with you anymore? Why didn’t he kiss you or hold you anymore? Why didn’t he look at you anymore? Why would he reject you if he still loved you?
You recovered, regaining the strength in your voice. And projecting it louder, “If you really haven’t stopped loving me, then why are you being this way?”
Din stayed quiet for a while staring at you, both his arms at his side while his right hand was balled into a loose fist as he slightly shook it, a nervous habit you noticed he had over the years.
His silence broke you down once again, and the little strength you had gathered had abandoned you. Your voice weakened. “Please, just answer me.”
Din couldn’t bear to hear you like this, to see you like this. Images of your smile flashed in his mind as he stared at the love of his life, now small and broken.
Your words, your gaze, it pushed him to turn his back on you again. He didn’t want you to visibly see the conflict within him, what he had been bottling up and how the position he was in was causing his hands to tremble and his breath to shorten.
You had your moment to question him. Now it was his to explain what made him change. You had to know what had pushed him away from you. You feared that you were the cause for his frigidness, and you wouldn’t be able to live peacefully if you were.
“That day,” he mustered the courage to say. He was so immensely anxious that he was deprived of any sensation, and it felt as if something else, something beyond him, had extracted the words from him. He squeezed his eyes, desiring to be anywhere else and praying for his hands to stop shaking terribly.
“What?” your small voice asked, laced with confusion, reminding him how gentle you would speak to him at night, bringing him solace after a long day.
Din turned around to see the confused expression depicted on your face and it ignited his memory of how much he adored kissing the space between your eyebrows when you would look at him that way; how he always had an intense desire to shower you with kisses when your lips would form into a small pout and how when he would act on it, your tight grip on his arms and laugh in between your numerous, “Din, stop!” would make him grin from ear to ear. But he shook it away. Now is not the time, he thought to himself.
He balled his hands into fists, hoping all the tension he was feeling throughout his body would manifest itself there. “A year ago. When you shouldn’t have followed me.”
He held back tears, putting up a barrier to appear stronger than how he was feeling. Din watched as the puzzlement on your face slowly receded. You knew the day he was referring to. It was practically immersed in your head. “It was my hardest mission, and you saw all of it.”
Much like today, Din hadn’t come back from the mission and night was approaching, leaving you tremendously worried that something may have happened to him. You were thankful Din had shared details of his mission to you the day before, and he did so in order to reassure you, precisely telling you the location to let you know it wasn’t far.
Din always made sure to separate you and his job, to keep you far away from any kind of danger, so his world came crashing down the second he spotted you from afar. Fear was all he saw in your eyes, and fear was what you primarily felt as you stared at him and the scene around him. It was entirely different knowing about his job than seeing it right before you. What you had witnessed was ever so much for you to handle that you had opted to ignore Din calling your name while you ran away. In that split second, it was unfathomable to think how someone who held an abundant amount of love and care for you could effortlessly end a life.
You stared down at your lap, swallowing and lacing your hands together while it recapitulated in your head. You had buried any recollection of that day deep within your mind and hadn’t thought of it ever since because it only brought you pain, though Din thought of it every day.
“And you-“ he sighed shakily. The barrier he had built up had been completely torn down and he began to choke up. “You didn’t look at me for weeks... Any time I’d try to touch you, you’d pull away.”
His words brought you back to that day, how he found you sitting outside of the Razor Crest with dazed eyes and how you stood up quickly at the glimpse of him. How he had approached you slowly, his hands reaching out to comfort you, but the response he got was a quiet “No.” as you took a step back with a hand right in front of you, beckoning him to stay where he was. You remembered it so vividly now.
“I felt like you hated me. That you were disgusted by me...” the knot in his throat quieting his words, “scared of me.” You look up to find his gaze locked on yours.
“Din, why would you think that-“
He interrupted you, wanting to use the scant amount of persistence he had to tell you the reason for his behavior, “I thought that if I distanced myself from you, you would feel safe.” He paused, as his next words were the basis for his restless nights and failed missions, “safe from me.”
He stared at you, waiting for you to say something, anything, as silence engulfed the two of you. You could almost see the saddened eyes of the man you so adored behind his visor.
The sight of him was tempting you to run to him and provide all the comfort he needed, and he wanted exactly that. He longed for your gentle touch that invariably provided him ample strength.
Likewise, Din thought of rushing over to you and bestowing all the love he had for you as he looked at you. He wanted to wipe the tears that were falling down your cheeks and kiss your lids as he would whenever you would cry, take the hand that now covered your mouth, and kiss your palm.
Your fear turned out to be a reality. You were the reason for his frigidness, for his lack of affection. The fear you felt after that dreadful day dissipated quickly, but it was too late. Din had started being distant the very next day. Shame dawned on you this very moment and you had to let him know that he was loved.
You spoke up in a hushed tone, unable to speak loudly, “Din, you are my safety.”
Din’s breath stiffened at your words. It was what you said when you first confessed your love for him under the moonlight which perfectly exhibited your beauty and had Din contemplating on retiring and immersing himself into a life of loving you.
Emotionally, he felt everything falling to pieces at the realization and at the relief that you still, despite what you witnessed, loved him. He held his hand up, finger pointed, as if he were going to say something to you, but dropped it in defeat, shaking his head and looking down. His muffled crying urged you to stand up and slowly walk over to him. You couldn’t stand to see him this way.
Din ceased his crying, feeling your presence right in front of him, and looked up. His chest constricted at the closed distance between the both of you. You held your hands up on either side of his helmet and he immediately knew what you wanted to do.
He stared at your pleading eyes and glanced down at your lips when you whispered, “Can I?” His heartbeat sped up, face flushing and for a split second, he felt that the world around him was nothing, that only you and him were the inhabitants of it.
His trembling hands took yours and placed them on his helmet, your hands touching the cold beskar. His hands were warm, yet his touch induced goosebumps all over your skin as they wrapped around your wrists and steadily dropped down to your forearms until they were at his sides again. His right hand displayed its subtle habit once more.
You lifted the helmet off and met his tired, teary brown eyes that used to gleam every time they looked at you, and he met your credulous wide ones that he cherished ever since he met you. The loud clanking of the helmet falling on the floor next to you did not make either of you look away. He studied every part of your face, as did you. Both of you had forgotten what it was like to be this close, easily within reach of each other, close enough to hear every quiet breath that escaped your mouths.
Every hair on your body stood up as his eyes stayed on yours, whispering words that were sacred to him, words that were for you alone, “When I said those vows, I meant every word, and I still do. I promised to love you, and I still do.”
You nodded, knowing his words were genuine, but tears welled up in your eyes and you looked down, indignity seizing you. You were revolted by yourself for the way you pushed him away and for feeling you couldn’t trust him when every time he would come back from his missions, all he craved was your affection, and he did so to feel loved, to feel grounded and protected, to put whatever he did that day behind him, to be held by you and feel at home by your familiar scent.
Din gently and carefully cupped your cheeks, bringing your gaze back to him. “Cyare…” he murmured. His gentle touch had sent you into a whirlwind and you couldn’t help but swoon, lips slightly parting with an intense inclination to kiss him.
His unpleasant habit of doubting himself made him fear that deep down, you were still scared of him, despite confirming to him you weren’t. His eyes were pooled with dubiety as he asked you self-consciously, “You know I will never hurt you, right?”
“Of course,” you quickly answered, wanting him to know that you had all the trust in the world for him. “Din… I’m so sorry” you exhaled shakily.
He hushed you to try and subdue the shame you carried heavily in your heart, and you felt him closer than ever. His eyes flickered from your eyes to your lips, swallowing nervously at the thought of what he desired to do at this moment. Both of your hearts going still at the silent closeness.
His hands moved from your cheeks to the back of your neck, gently gripping it as his thumbs stroked the ends of your jaw. Soon your hands found their way around his wrists.
With eyes closed and noses lightly grazing, he initiated the kiss. It was reluctant at first; lips not fully pressed against yours from hesitation, and you knew why. You were not going to allow him to think you didn’t fully trust him or that he had to earn your love back, so you deepened the kiss. After the moment passed, he gave it his all, as did you.
The kiss was exceedingly sincere and desperately passionate, with noses smushed and occasional sighs against lips, yet it was tender. It was euphoric, the intimacy of it making the two of you yearn to remain in this moment for eternity. The kiss mended all the pain felt in those past months and revealed that nothing could come between the pure and abundant connection, which only grew and grew as more time passed, that you shared with him.
As your lips slowly parted, you nuzzled his nose with yours and felt him smile against your lips. You quietly laughed when he playfully nudged back. Din rested his forehead against yours. Both of you relished the loud fondness that beat in your hearts, basking in the revival of a new, improved, and undoubtedly vigorous love.
He pulled away and looked at you, his lips forming into a small smile as he admired you while you remained captivated by the moment. Though your eyes remained closed and the kiss echoed in your mind, he knew you were listening, and with all the endearment he had locked away solely for you, he whispered, “We are one.”
Your eyes flew open and the grip you had around his wrists lightly tightened. He pressed a quick and delicate kiss on your trembling lips, and it only magnified your emotions.
He cupped your cheeks again and swiped the tears that ran down your cheekbones with his thumbs. His brows furrowed subtly as the smile on his lips left and his expression suddenly turned serious.
He never wanted you to doubt his love ever again, to ask such a question like “When did you stop loving me?”
He poured all his devotion into his whisper of “Ni kar’tayl gar darasuum.”
His heartbeat quickened as you broke out into the incandescent smile that always made him feel a surge of joy, and you were at a loss for words that all you could do was breathe his name.
It felt like he was seeing you for the first time, feeling exactly what he felt the moment he spotted you in the markets of Tatooine, and he smiled softly at you, breathing your name back.