AN: A series of very short shorts from Wren's POV.

The Microcosm

#01 - Start: It should have been his choice, but it's really her smile.

#02 - Memory: When he sleeps, there's blood on his hands and the smell of burnt flesh in his nose and the only two men he ever considered brothers are dead.

#03 - Freedom: He puts his name beneath their silly rules, because he never realized how terrifying it was to live without any.

#04 - Drink: It's somewhere between too much and never enough that he staggers through the door and almost runs down Eda. It starts as insults, but somewhere in-between the scorn and loathing, uglier truths come out as well. The next morning, with his mouth as dry and dead as Tattooine's desert, he'll remember the nearly-empty bottle in her hand.

#05 - Talent: She cleans him up, after, smoothing a bacta patch over the swollen cut of an armored gauntlet to his cheek. "You've got a real talent for making friends, Cookie." He grins at her through the pain of broken ribs, licking the blood off his teeth. "One of many, cheeka."

#06 - Dark: Turning off the lights is all it takes to terrify her, but she never once flinches under his gaze.

#07 - Shadows: The old wolf gets a laugh from the whole cantina. The patrons are always badgering Shiv for war stories and they never seem to run dry. Wren wonders if wars were different back then; his own stories are nothing to laugh about.

#08 - Clash: The sun breaks through the smoky sky, beams falling and catching in the latest amalgamation of colors she's smeared into her hair. For a moment, the effect is dazzling enough to outshine the blood spatter on once-pristine-white plastoid.

#09 - Dream: When he wakes up from bacta, she's tucked herself into a chair beside his biobed, both hands tangled in one of his, fast asleep. He never does find out where she got the chair from.

#10 - Sensual: He follows the line of her naked pulse down into the hollow of her throat, past the curls of hair towards the empty place the holo-lockett usually rests in and that is now cradled in her palm. He closes his eyes, feigns sleep, to leave her alone with her family's ghosts.

#11 - Cold: "They said he did something stupid." The barracks are closed off, but troopers are still milling about. There's no fighting right now, so they've got nothing better to do than watch the med droids cart the body away. "He made a choice." He doesn't look up from where he's cleaning his blaster until her fingers touch his. "You sound like you admire him." "He made a choice." It's the only thing worth saying.

#12 - View: It's the fifth time he's done this: walk into the house, store his gear in his room and wash off the dregs of their last mission. He's thinking about the meal and the people waiting for him, while the hot water soaks into his bones, and it won't be until months later that he realizes…..He's come back home.

#13 - Hero: She keeps calling him that; he'll never believe her.