Work Text:
Qimir looked down at his hands where they rested on his quadriceps, palms up and fingers casually splayed. His palm lines ran deep and curved over the flow of his flesh like a current of river water carving a path through the earth. He wasn’t sure what destiny was in his palms, what secrets they contained. On his travels through galaxy, he had come across several fortunetellers and seers that were skilled in the art of divining destinies through reading palm lines among other methods. Qimir’s curiosity was strong enough to query them about the basics of what they were doing and how they came to learn the craft, but he always stopped short of actually offering his hands up for inspection.
The Qimir of those times had justified it to himself as a simple matter of privacy. He was a man walking the line between many façades, changing masks as casually as the wind changed direction, which wouldn’t endear him to authorities legal or otherwise. And that didn’t even take into account his genuine cortosis helmet that allowed him to wield his saber without risking identification by the Jedi. Identification that he had killed to protect. So no, it was wise to hide himself from diviners who could expose him.
But maybe it wouldn’t have been such a bad thing.
After all, he might have learned about Verosha sooner. Might have gleamed something, anything about what destiny had planned for them.
Osha. Osha. Osha…
The young woman was sleeping, curled up on her side, the gray morning light igniting the color in her braided hair. Hair that he wanted to stroke on the descent to the sensitive skin behind her ear.
Some time had passed since she decided to attach herself to him, since her life exploded before her very eyes. Her beloved Jedi Master, dead. The secret behind the demise of her coven, revealed. Her twin freshly absolved of past crimes and reunited in the loving embrace of sisterhood, sacrificed.
The tragedy of it all saw Osha evolve into a different woman. Oh, to him to still shone like a star, was as magnetic as he found her to be during their first introduction. To him, she would always be the one he was meant to find. But she was changed. No longer did she doubt herself. There was no fear about what she was capable of. Her innocence of many moon cycles ago shed like an old skin.
Osha was magnificent.
Her intellect and raw physical ability served her well as Qimir’s acolyte, she was able to quickly learn from his fighting style while managing to incorporate her own techniques into a personalized blend that left her deadly. Her wit sharpened by the day as well and that was perhaps even more exciting. Mae had been eager to learn from him but always maintained an emotional distance born from her fear of the most ruthless parts in his spirit. But not Osha. She sought both things from him. A new master but also a companion, someone to get to know and know her in return.
At first, she only wanted to give her anger and frustration to him, keeping the softer parts hidden behind the more aggressive ones. It was understandable. He was much the same when he was betrayed by the Jedi and reborn into what some might deem as a sith. But he came to the conclusion that there was power in all emotions, not just hatred and fear, and that labels did not matter. Why else would the Jedi so earnestly insist in control over, or even complete suppression, of them?
Damn fools the lot of them.
His acolyte was no fool. In fact, he was comfortable in admitting that she was more clever then he was. Osha’s own journey with reconciling her emotions progressed faster than his, and, though there were days where she preferred space and to tear and claw at her bothersome master, she was warming up to him little by little.
Qimir liked that. Connection had eluded him so for long that now that he had it, and that in came in such a dazzling package as Osha, he found himself yearning for more, like a stray animal life form that imprinted on a being who fed it once and kept returning for more.
Lately, that yearning had extended towards something unexpected—Osha’s touch. The first time she willingly touched him, other than during one of their training sessions, the day she held his hand in hers over the sea water reflecting the setting sun, was seared into his essence, etched into his eyelids whenever he closed them. He didn’t have a lot of so-called nice memories, but that was surely one of the few.
More touches from her followed and he added them to the nice memory category as well. Although perhaps good wasn’t the best way to describe them; they were much more than merely good. He was unsure if there was a single word to capture the emotion of them though he wasn’t fluent in every language across the galaxy, so maybe the perfect word was out there. He would have to continue searching until he found it.
Aside from her touches, there was also the issue of his own touches.
Before Osha, his hands were not used for tender pursuits. Maiming and violence, sure. His kill count was impressive and his injury toll even more so. It was necessary and he was good at it, so it didn't bother him. Even his more mild interests, like cooking, had their own instances of micro-violence between chopping, dicing, and boiling both of animal and plant ingrediants needed for his dishes. With Osha those impulses were nonexistent, the mask of his darker tendencies shattered from the moment they met. She inspired honesty in him and the truth was that Mae could never be what he desired.
However, Osha very much was just by being herself despite the ploy of pretending to be her sister in that first encounter. Her reveal is what sparked his new hunger for touch, a hunger that only became more ravenous as time went on. His touches started before hers, assessing her injury while she laid unconscious on the forest floor, carrying her onboard the ship and later his home, grasping her forearms when she rushed him with his lightsaber. But the situation changed after that meeting of hands at the sunset.
The goal was no longer mindless flirtation or seductive persuasion to get her by his side. She was his pupil and in his home sleeping just on the other side of the room, in Qimir's former bed. A warm rush of greed struck his sternum like a crack of lightning. He wanted to touch because he craved it.
Take the dip of her lower back for instance. He wondered what it would feel like to press his palm there. Not to possess, nor to claim, but because he was certain it would bring him comfort. Peace in the fact that he could hold her close and that she might allow him to.
How about the line of her graceful shoulders? Would she be ticklish there as his hands curved them and gave a squeeze? Osha carried a weight on her shoulders, but she didn’t let that weight crush her. She was strong, a fighter, and the urge to massage them as a symbol of his pride and affection bubbled constantly in his skin.
Even her ankles were enough to catch his attention in the short time it took to remove her boots and climb under the bed sheets. It was the only time he got to see them as her boots covered them all day, and he was always up and doing things when she awoke. He made sure of that. They were closer, and more affectionate with each other, yes, but she wasn’t the type to tolerate him staring at her in a moment where she was vulnerable. It was probably for similar reasons that she still refused his offer of a shared bath. So bedtime it was. His one chance to get a glimpse of her delicate ankles, imagining how her flesh there might give under tender pressure from his thumb.
There wasn’t a single part of Osha’s body that Qimir found himself not admiring. From the top of her head, to the generous swell of her breasts, to her muscled legs and quick feet. And she couldn’t have known, likely had no idea how much he wanted to touch her and be touched in return. Whether it was touching born from an innocent longing for another being after being starved so long, or of a more sensual, carnal nature, he didn’t have a preference.
A touch between them was a touch of pure life, as quenching as a sip of water.
He’d never thought that yearning could be so intense that it felt like it could kill him. At times it definitely did. But at others it felt like a yearning so intense that it might keep him alive, and victorious over his enemies, if the reward was the continued presence of Osha’s affection.
His acolyte. His equal. His everything.
Small groans echoed off of the cavern walls, a sign that Osha was waking up. In a practiced movement, he stood up from his own bed and began preparing ingredients to scramble in a pan over the cooking fire.
When she spoke, there was no trace of sleep left in her voice. “What are you doing?” She was much closer than where she last was on the bed as she crowded him against the table he worked at, hooking her chin over his shoulder.
Bliss rumbled up his throat in happy waves. “Food.”
“Should’ve guessed. You’re always so adamant on feeding me.”
The sun broke through the early morning cloud cover and settled over them, the warm hands of destiny wrapping them both in glowing light.