Work Text:
A scream rises through the street. Somewhere. In her makeshift shelter on the roof, Cinta can’t see where the scream is coming from.
She stands still. There’s nothing she can do. She must wait. She still has to wait several hours before the action starts. The scream stops. She slowly moves her legs numb from the already long wait. The streets are now quiet but the scream echoes in Cinta’s mind. It reminds her of a distant past. A long time ago when everything was different or a least, when she was different. A time when everything had changed. There in the tiny villages in the rocky mountains of her homeworld.
She remembers the screams. She remembers the smells, the noises, the blood, the fire, the destruction, the fear, the pain, the tears, the supplications, the mercilessness.
And above all, she remembers the utter distress, the feeling of helplessness, the shiver that shook her entire body and then the loneliness.
And she also remembers how these feelings evolved into others over the days.
How grif, anger and suffering turned to resolve, coldness and fearlessness.
She uses to think that in those days she killed herself for another woman. A woman in a mask. The woman she had become.
What she was before, what she liked, all that didn't matter anymore. Even her name wasn’t important. She was no more than a masked body driven by ideas : justice, revenge. Or maybe more accurately driven by feelings of which anger occupies a preponderant place.
And this state of things did not leave much room for the rest and certainly not for the future. She had a goal but no future. She had a past full of tears and sorrow to grieve but no future to dream of.
She was a promise to herself, to the people she had known, to the world. A promise that she would do everything she could to block these people that have destroyed her home and countless other lives and places.
So she has learnt to fly, to forge documents, to sabotage and many other things. She has learnt to lie and to have sex to get what she wants. She has learnt to kill. Easily.
Over the years, her mask has hardened as if it were dipped in Beskar steel.
She has been pleased to think that there was nothing left below this mask : that the dreams of the little girl from the tiny village were gone, that her resolve was unwavering in thinking that every single imperial should pay for what happened.
But unexpectedly, the mask showed cracks even though she thought it was stronger than ever.
The first small crack snuck out when she had just landed on the green planet of Aldhani and had discovered that one of the team members was an imperial lieutenant.
Her anger rose but she finally understood his key role in the mission and she managed to keep her calm.
The second crack, a much larger crack, appeared one month after the first when she had finally found out that another one of her teammates was actually a former stormtrooper.
Her anger poured out and she almost killed him.
It took her several weeks to calm down and even more to start trusting him again. When she finally did she took a few minutes to contemplate her cracked invisible mask. The crack was big but didn't seem to be irreparable. She had understood that killing all the Imperials might not be the solution, but her determination and her thirst for revenge were only slightly affected.
The last crack was by far the more insidious and devastating. She hadn't paid attention to it at first. Truth be told, she hadn't even seen it coming at first.
The crack did not appear in a big cracking noise. It snuck out quietly and steadily. When she finally realized it, it was already too late. A small part of the mask had already crumbled into dust, leaving her with an unwanted feeling of vulnerability.
The reason for this crack was equally surprising. She had struggled to put a name to it for weeks but one day the answer had popped into her mind as a snowdrop finds its way through the snow. The answer fits in three letters : Vel.
On Aldhani, she had rolled her eyes at Vel's naivety countless times. She remembers telling herself many times that this person was not up to the task. That this mission was made to fail with such a disparate team, inexperienced and tinged with former imperials.
But yet, against all odds, something drew her closer. A feeling lost through time slowly re-emerged and through the broken mask the girl from the tiny village dared to dream again. Foolishly.
Certain nights under the wooden hut in the cold mountains of Aldhani as she was falling asleep softly in Vel's arms, her mind had wandered in limbo between wakefulness and sleep. There her mind liked sunbathing in an utopian out-of-reach future. A future where she could smile and walk hand in hand with Vel without worrying about all the atrocities in the world. A future where she could take the time to love fully and to enjoy life to the fullest.
Often this image has become so vivid that her heart had yearned for desire.
But everytime an unbearable feeling of guilt eventually twisted her belly.
The guilt of having betrayed her promise. Her promise to fight to the end. She knows wishing for a happy future can weaken her resolve that is why the guilt always creeps in during these times. So she closed her eyes and tried to remind herself that’s just a foolish dream, that daydreaming was a waste of time. Time that could be used for the struggle. The struggle is real. This ideal future isn’t. And it's definitely not going to come true by continuing to daydream. Dreaming only hurts and produces longing for things that you won't get anyway.
She should not forget that. Never.
And Vel should not forget that neither.
Life isn’t for them. It’s a simple truth. Concise, solid, tangible. Purified of all unachievable and painful dreams and plans.
But that doesn’t seem to really sink in Vel.
So sometimes she's mad at her. She is angry at the futile hope she sees in Vel’s eyes. Sometimes, she wants to shout at her to close her eyes. To forget all of that. This is nothing. This is not important. The struggle is more important. The struggle comes first. Always.
What are all the hugs, caress and kisses in front of the Empire? What is this little love in front of all the atrocities committed by the Empire? Nothing.
But she is also angry at Vel because it is easier than being angry at herself. She knows that part of this rage is just a disguise to hide her own fear and to crush down her own hopes.
Hope. So much is said about it. But what Cinta knows is that hope is a dangerous thing. It's a double edged sword. You never know who it will cut deeper: your enemy or yourself.
So, she wants Vel to focus on the struggle. For this purpose she has to say harsh things, even if it hurts her sometimes as much as Vel. But we all have to make sacrifices don't we?
We are alive and free. That's fortunate enough when compared to the situation of other humans, aliens, droids and other sentient beings across the galaxy. Isn't that enough to forget about futilities like love?
Cinta sighs. Is there an answer to this question? She doesn't even know. She blinks and looks at the horizon. It’s early evening. She ends up pushing those thoughts out of her mind. She tells herself it's because she doesn't have time to think about it right now. But at the same time, it may also be because she is a little scared. Scared to have been wrong all this time.
Cinta sighs one more time. Alone in the shelter on the top of the roof on a lonely planet in the Outer Rim she looks at the setting sun. The rooftops glow red in the last twilight lights.
She lets her mind wander for a few more minutes before focusing on the mission that will soon begin.
Something she sees herself, her relationship with Vel and even the Rebellion like a spinning-top, which must continue to turn so as not to lose its balance. Stopping is not an option.