He felt her stir, and she was no longer asleep. He waited a few moments as he heard her crawl across the hide-carpeted floor to where he sat. He opened his eyes, unable to meditate any longer.
"What?" Maul asked, without looking at her. She had seated herself on the floor beside him, nearer than she normally did, and nearer than he normally would have liked. But he hadn't been quite normal as of late either.
"Do you remember?" she asked. "When you were no more than twelve, and I was fourteen, and I was looking for a book in the library." Her voice was strangely soothing. "It was on the upper shelves, so I had to use the ladder." He remembered that. He remembered that view of her. He had been training under his master at the time. He had been the apprentice. She had been there, too, not as an apprentice, but attached to his reality through his own wandering. He was a faithful apprentice. But he had also been curious when he was young. The library was a quiet place, and a place where he could meet eyes with someone who was young like he was.
"And when I got up there, the book I wanted wasn't there. I looked for it for ten minutes. Only to find that you'd taken it." Her voice seemed so happy. The way she reminisced was odd. She found random moments of the past, fleeting moments, to be of importance to her life now. That was why he didn't ever read when he went to that library. He didn't want to see what was past. He wanted to avenge what had passed for the sake of the future, and the now.
"Those years have come and gone," he replied monotonously. She didn't seem affected by his tone.
"Yes," she said quietly, and she said nothing for some time. The fire was burning down low, but it still produced some light. He didn't bother to try and speak either. He enjoyed the quiet, the absence of words. And yet, he enjoyed her presence as well, strangely.
"I know you say you didn't save me," she said softly, somehow closer than she was before. He'd broken her fall through the traffic of Coruscant, only ten days prior. He hadn't seen her in years, and he would have let her fall if she hadn't been who she was. But she'd been shoved from that height. So he caught her. She was a victim. She was forced into accepting that kind of death. He'd fallen once before, pushed by an unfeeling universe. So, he caught her.
"But thank you anyway." And then she did it: she kissed his cheek, so tenderly he could barely feel it. But he did. And he looked over at her with intense eyes, and she suddenly became unsure about what she'd done, for it was nearly impossible to read his expressions, and she began to retreat out of embarrassment, but he grabbed her before she could flee and pulled her right into his lap and kissed her lips. He didn't really know why. But it had become apparent to him that he wished to have her around, and that he longed to see her, to feel her against him, in those rare moments when they did happen to be close to one another. And in that tiny igloo, there was hardly any space to move around anyway. It would have been cramped, had he not loved her.
He didn't really know if she could have loved him as he was. He'd never occupied himself with the thought, for it never seemed to matter to him if she did or not. He hadn't really expected loyalty from anyone, or even companionship. Anyone who offered those things was simply giving more than he asked for, and he was not the type to accept gifts that would not further his goal.
But ever since he'd met her as a child, even though it seemed she was just another person to him, he'd been slowly coming to the conclusion that his goal shifted from time to time. Sometimes he'd lose track of what he actually wanted to accomplish, even though he could repeat to himself what he'd wanted previously, as if it would jar his memory. He could give himself a goal, but if he didn't actually want to accomplish it, it was only a line of fruitless tasks to fulfill an unfulfilling goal. It was unusual. When he'd caught Dania, when he'd seen her after all those years of solitude and despair and let her come with him, he'd become confused. And now that he was exploring something entirely foreign to him, a concept he'd disregarded long ago, he realized that he was willingly gripping the very source of what caused his confusion, the beacon of his emptiness. She made him feel lost in the universe, even though he could place where he was. He didn't want to feel lost. But which was the better course? Fruitless, unfulfilling, false purpose, or being forfeit to the universe as far as he could fathom?
He pulled back from her lips. He held her up with one hand behind her head, and the other against her cheek. He'd pulled her down into his crossed legs, where he could see her in the light of the fire, and she was exposed, vulnerable to him. She looked back up at him with a quiet trust, her chest rising and falling. There was no blush upon her cheeks, only the rich darkness of her skin with a hint of red from the coals. She was not asking anything of him. She only gave him what she could have kept for herself. She'd kept it for years. Not as some frivolous lover, or unworthy apprentice, or even a blindly loyal, mindless servant. She wasn't a slave to him. She only had herself, and she offered to share that with him, in that he might share himself as well.
All his life, he'd been running from powers that enslaved him and used him. He longed for nothing but shackleless being. It had seemed that the only way to live such a free life was to have the power to keep others from threatening you. So he pursued that. But he was only met with resistance, confusion, and even more oppression.
How cruel could life truly be, if one could possess more cruelty than life itself? In an indifferent universe, how hard could he possibly fall if he threw himself and landed according to his own will? Wasn't it all a matter of perspective? If he knew he was about to fall, and he saw the pain coming, wouldn't it hurt less?
He looked away from her and into the coals. They were the only source of light in the whole igloo, and the second source of heat, besides that of the body.
She stayed in his lap, comfortably resting her head on his thigh. She watched him. He could barely see her eyes gazing up at him. He felt too empty to look down again.
"Have you ever seen a nebula?" she asked him, speaking in his native tongue rather than her usual English. Her accent made it obvious that she was not at all Zabrak, but her voice was soft to him, and he understood every word.
"No," he replied. He'd never spoken to her in Zabraki before. He hadn't known she could speak Zabraki. Then again, she read books.
"I have," she whispered, the red light on her face, illuminating half. He felt both his hearts inside his chest, not beating fast, but simply beating. He was alive.
"Tell me about them," he said. He didn't know how fluent she was in Zabraki, but he'd let her speak between languages if she chose to. It was something that normally bothered him, but not in the moment. He just wanted to hear her talk. He wanted to hear something in this void of nothingness, something that claimed to care about him. He wanted something to take up space, to fill the emptiness.
"It's like dust," she said. "Floating dust. Not just the dust of a planet, but dust of light." Her eyes were green. He couldn't see them well enough to tell what color they were. But he already knew.
"And the dust of all things that are." She was dust, he was dust, the whole universe was dust. Lowly dust.
"It dances around amidst nothing. In the vacuum of space. They are colorful, and they shine, and inside them, the stars hide." Why would it dance, this lowly dust? Where could it have such joy? Upon what foundation did it prance about?
"What does it do? It feeds the stars. It adorns the heavens. It makes heaven and the worlds below." How? It only gave itself. Did the universe use itself to create itself? Why?
"By hand, it becomes what it is now."
"By hand?" he asked.
"Woven, breathed into, and springing from it, new being." And in this new being, if it was of the universe, by the universe, what was its consciousness made of? What was he that made him Maul, and her Dania?
"What am I without dust?" he persisted.
"Breath."
"A soul?"
"Yes."
"Whose breath?"
"Yours. Mine. His. Hers. All."
"The dust?"
"The dust holds breath. Without breath, the dust would never dance."
He paused. Quiet breathing. Her heart was beating. Alive. So was he. They coexisted.
"Whose breath was the first?" he asked. "Who makes the air? Surely you do not breathe out the air that I take in." It was chemically impossible. Oxygen was life, carbon dioxide was the byproduct: his breath to the universe. So was hers.
"One," Dania replied.
"Who?"
"He who decided to make the dust dance. Surely it does not dance on it's own accord, but it does so gladly, until the dust falls from it, and the soul is released."
"Why does the dust fall?"
"All things do."
"But the soul?"
"The soul cannot be grasped, except by dust, which is not living. Breath is the only living being."
"One being?"
"One."
Maul paused. "The breath that I have, and yours. Is it not mine?"
"It is. And you were given yourself."
"By One."
"Yes."
Her touch was soft against him. She could have laid there forever. For all the eternity he knew. He could have held her there forever.
"Do you love me?"
"Yes," she said.
"Have you always?"
"I don't know. But I do."
"I love you, too."
"I could feel it."
"I could feel you, too. I wondered why." But he knew now.
She rested her body closer to his torso. His hands were stroking her hair. He didn't know when he'd started doing that, but he didn't stop. He could feel her. He could hear her. She was here. So was he.
"Will you stay?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Alongside me?"
"Yes, Maul."
"Why?"
She looked at him with pretty eyes, ones he knew to be green. "Why not?"
"What do you seek if you seek nothing from me?"
"What do you seek?"
"What you seek."
She breathed. What beautiful respiration.
"That I may know myself. From you. From all. And that I may feel my existence, and know what for. Is that not what you seek, too?"
"Yes," he replied. She was fluent. That would be useful to him. He could speak truthfully with her like that. He didn't have to think when he spoke in Zabraki.
"You should sleep," he said. She blinked naturally. He lifted her head and kissed her.
"I should dream of you if I do," she replied into his lips after he'd parted from her. Her lips brushed his as she spoke. Her breath skirted against his skin. He watched her eyes. The firelight danced on her skin, and on his.
"Do return to me."
She smiled. He felt alive when she did.
"I won't leave," she promised. She was closing her eyes. He laid her head on his thigh. His hand brushed her face.
"I'll wait for you."