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The weight of eyes on her is familiar, but Aurra has never cared about it before. It’s just now, here in the quiet, that she feels like she wants to claw her way out of her own skin to get away from it.
“Staring isn't going to win you any prizes, you know,” she says waspishly, and doesn’t look up from the repairs she’s making to her blaster.
Across the table, wrapped up in Aurra’s thickest blanket, with those long, deft fingers that first caught Aurra’s attention wrapped around Aurra’s favorite mug, the proof of her mad impulse smiles, just a little. “I was only admiring,” she says quietly.
Aurra snorts, derisive, to hide the way her skin prickles. “My skill with a blaster? I thought I proved it already when I put a hole through that bastard owner of yours.”
Shmi is silent for a moment, and the draw to look up at her is almost overwhelming, a vivid, impossible presence in the Force that Aurra has never encountered before, like a star burning just beneath Human skin. When she’d walked into the junk shop on Tatooine, she’d thought for a moment that she was hallucinating.
Aurra’s sense of the Force is a broken, decayed thing, because any use of it makes her think of Dark Woman, makes her think of pirates and a grimy dark hold and men’s laughter, but—
Shmi is the first beautiful thing she’s felt in the Force in so many years it makes Aurra’s bones ache.
“I'm glad that Watto won't harm anyone else,” Shmi says after a moment. “But that isn’t what I meant. I thought I would die on Tatooine, and never see the stars like this again.”
She probably would have, if Aurra’s favorite blaster hadn’t jammed in a way she couldn’t fix, if she hadn’t taken one step through Watto’s door and laid eyes on Shmi, a small woman with worn features and a universe behind her eyes.
Aurra’s skin crawls, and she looks away, some fragmented sense of weight pressing just beyond her body, like someone else’s will.
Like the Force, maybe, but the first time Aurra listened to it in decades was when she saw Watto snarl at Shmi and knew she had to do something.
“This isn't charity,” she says, the words harsh in her throat. “I'm expecting you to keep my weapons in working order. I don’t have time to do it myself.”
Shmi's gaze drops to the blaster Aurra is currently working on, and she smiles. Aurra tenses, cursing herself for those stupid words—
Leaning forward, Shmi lays one small, hot hand over Aurra’s colder one, squeezes gently. “Thank you, Aurra,” she says, soft. “I didn’t expect anyone to ever come to save me.”
Aurra closes her eyes, breathes out. Something about touching Shmi feels like the very first time she used the Force as a child, a bright wonder that resonates through every inch of her, and it aches. It aches and she almost wants to pull away but she can't.
She doesn’t want to stop touching Shmi. If she could, she would crawl into Shmi's arms, bury herself against her, stay there forever. Shmi just—feels good. Feels kind.
Aurra has forgotten over the years what kindness feels like. Or maybe she made herself forget.
“Come on,” she says, gruff, and rises to her feet, using her grip on Shmi's hand to pull her up as well. “There's a spot in the gunner’s turret. I use it to watch the stars sometimes. The view’s better up there.”
Shmi smiles, pushing up, and even when Aurra leads the way towards the ladder, loosens her grip, Shmi doesn’t let go.