As the Wanderer and Mari rode away from the forest town, Mari was continuing to throw praise at the Wanderer for a job well done after disposing of the twin Sith. "You were so wizard! Especially the part when you threw fire, which I didn't even know you could do, at the one with the hat and then lept in the air and flipped and landed behind them." Mari then held her hand outward as if she were holding a lightsaber of her own before imitating the Wanderer's raspy, low voice that completely contrasted Mari's typically soft and bubbly one. "Checkmate!" she said, mimicking the Wanderer's final words Nostrovia.
"Yeah... I was there." the Wanderer was smiling ever so slightly as she said this. Her voice gave off the sound of annoyance, though, in reality, she thought Mari's reenactment was sort of cute. "You're so amazing... Is life always like this for you?" Mari's voice shifted into a more serious tone as she looked at the Wanderer with solemn eyes.
"Hm?" the Wanderer was unsure of what she meant. "What do you mean?" she asked her.
"Well..." Mari trailed off, adjusting in her seat before turning to look out the window of the speeder, her arm resting on the side as she propped her chin on her hand. "I never really left my village unless we went to the big city for whatever reason... Nothing ever happened in my village. Ever since I've been traveling with you, I've felt more... I don't know." Mari was starting to feel embarrassed about how she truly felt. She didn't want to just come out and say what she truly meant.
'Excited? Free? Alive?' the Wanderer thought, describing exactly how Mari was feeling at that exact same moment. The Wanderer knew that feeling all too well, describing exactly how she felt when she met her first love all those years prior. She felt excitement, being free from the strict rules being forced upon her by the Jedi when she was sneaking away with him as they would when they had the chance. He made her truly feel alive.
But those times were long behind her.
Breaking the silence between them, Mari began shifting the mood, putting the facade of a smile back on her face. "Anyway, I just wanted to say that it's a nice change of pace! I wonder which bad guys we'll take out next." Mari joked.
The Wanderer scoffed playfully. "We?" she parroted.
"I was there for backup. Or support." Mari told her.
"Mm. of course. Thank you, Ms. Mari. Where would I be without ya'?" the Wanderer quipped.
"Speaking of bad guys..." Mari wasn't sure if the Wanderer would allow her, but she asked her next question regardless. "May I see the crystals?" she asked her.
"Sure. Go ahead and grab 'em." the Wanderer told her.
Mari reached into the Wanderers' pocket and pulled out the bag of kyber crystals. "Woah..." Mari said as she opened the bag, peering inside to see the dozens of bleeding crystals. Digging inside, she tried to get a rough estimate of the amount of them, but there were just too many. "Incredible..." she muttered, picking one up while holding it up to her eye. "Why do you collect them?" she asked, looking at the Wanderer's face through the red crystal.
"So those crystals won't harm nobody else." the Wanderer answered plain and simply. "If I leave them there, who knows what someone might do with them? Besides, these things are cursed. If you touch them for too long, you start to turn.
"Turn?" Mari spoke worriedly, tossing the crystal she took out back into the bag. "Yeah, I forgot to tell you, don't ever touch one of these things with your bare hands. If you do, your skin will turn pale." as the Wanderer explained this, Mari looked down at her own hands. "Your eyes will turn bright orange." Mari then looked at her reflection in the window, checking her eyes to make sure they were still their natural green color. "And you'll grow fangs." the Wanderer added, compelling Mari to worriedly look at her teeth in her reflection.
"Is it... reversible?" Mari asked, her voice trembling.
"Nope. That's why I always touch them with my sleeves. Why?" the Wanderer looked over at Mari, watching as she rubbed her own face, staring at her reflection with wide eyes.
Unable to hold it in any longer, the Wanderer burst into laughter, which then led Mari to turn around and face her with a pouty expression on her face. Filled with embarrassment, her cheeks started to turn red as she crossed her arms and frowned at the Wanderer. "That wasn't funny."
"No, it was hilarious. C'mon, did you see the look on your face?" the Wanderer could barely drive the speeder through her laughter. Seeing the Wanderer smiling, which was a rare sight on its own, Mari couldn't stay mad at her. "Fine. You got me." Mari smiled shaking her head before tossing the bag of crystals back into the Wanderer's lap. "Take your dumb crystals."
The Wanderer glanced over the Mari, who still had that pouty expression on her face. "You know, you're pretty cute when you're upset." the Wanderer told her, causing Mari's face to instantly become flushed. "N- not true." Mari turned her head in the other direction.
"Anyway, I hope you're comfortable because we're gonna be driving for a while. The next town with a place to stay is about half a day out. We might have to sleep in here for tonight." the Wanderer told her, looking at the holoprojected map on the dashboard.
Mari groaned. "I don't think I could sleep in this old thing..." she muttered.
However, hours later, Mari was asleep inside the speeder, while the Wanderer was sitting with the seat reclined backward and her arm behind her head. Mari's eyes slowly opened, and she found herself looking at the night sky above her. The Wanderer looked over at her with her lone eye before teasing her. "You sure do sleep a lot."
"Where are we?" Mari asked, looking out of the window with wide eyes. There was a beach next to them, though the water was seemingly glowing in the dark, shining a bright blue hue.
The Wanderer glanced out of the window with her. "Luminent Shores. I saw it on the map and thought it would be a nice place to stop. There shouldn't be anyone else around here."
The luminescent, blue water reflected off of Mari's eyes as she gasped gently. "It's so beautiful." she whispered. The Wanderer smiled gently. "It is."
The two of them silently watched the waves for a while until once again, the Wanderer noticed that Mari was shivering. It was a very cold night, and their speeder didn't have any type of heating system in it due to its archaic model. "You cold, Mari?" the Wanderer asked her.
"No, I'm okay." Mari felt embarrassed, trying to stop herself from trembling due to the cold, but it wasn't working. The Wanderer started removing everything from her pockets before taking off her kimono and covering Mari with it like a blanket, giving herself nothing to cover her upper body with outside of the black bindings around her chest.
Mari blushed, looking at the waves outside. "Thanks... but what about you?" she asked quietly, hiding her blushing face. "I'll be alright. Remember what I told you? I can regulate my own body temperature."
Mari looked over at the Wanderer, seeing the goosebumps on her skin. The Wanderer could regulate her body temperature, but it did not make her immune to the cold. She simply wasn't as cold as a normal person would be. It was more so being so disciplined that she was able to ignore her body being cold, rather than her body temperature physically changing. It was all mental.
"You look cold." Mari told her, reaching for the Wanderer's arm. "See. Your arm is all cold and bumpy." she said, feeling the goosebumps along her toned forearm. "Maybe... we can share. So we can both be warm." Mari started to feel embarrassed as she made the offer to the Wanderer.
The Wanderer, with her arm behind her head, looked over at Mari with skepticism in her eye. "It's not big enough for that." she told her, being too dense to understand what she meant.
"That's not really what I'm saying." Mari told her. "It'll be better if I just show you. If that's okay." Mari said shyly.
At this moment, the Wanderer was starting to understand what Mari was talking about. She couldn't tell if she was reading too far into it, in fact, she never could with Mari, which was why she barely reacted to most of Mari's attempts at flirting with her. However, there was no ignoring it this time.
The Wanderer could feel her heart pounding, a feeling that had become foreign to her after years of living under the facade of being heartless. "Show me." the Wanderer said softly, which surprised Mari. She thought she would shut it down, as she'd shut down most things.
Mari turned in her seat before slowly crawling over to the driver's side of the speeder, squeezing into the Wanderer's chair while covering the both of them with the Wanderer's black kimono. "See." Mari told her gently, immediately becoming overwhelmed by both the literal and figurative heat of the moment.
Their faces were close, nearly touching as they both barely managed to fit on the driver's side of the speeder. Mari looked up at the Wanderer with gentle, wanting eyes as her cheeks continued to gain that pinkish hue.
"So this is what you meant?" the Wanderer's voice was still unwavering as always, sounding as confident as ever, perfectly hiding her nervousness. "Isn't this a little tight?" There was practically no room to even move when the two of them were like this.
"I don't mind. Do you?" Mari whispered, resting her head on the Wanderer's chest. By this point, she saw past the facade, hearing the Wanderer's heart beating even faster than hers. She could hide it with that confident voice and a calm eye all she wanted, but her fluttering heart told the truth.
"Your heart... It's beating really fast." Mari told her. Feeling embarrassed and exposed, the Wanderer turned her head and looked the other way. "Yeah, well..." She was starting to become flustered and her face began to flush just as Mari's did. Seeing this, Mari started to tease her. "Are you blushing, Ms. Wanderer?" she giggled ask she spoke, tilting her head to get a better look at her.
"I'm not. I don't blush." the Wanderer told her, convinced that she would never allow herself to do such a thing, however, it was clearly visible. Her act of being a stoic, passionless bounty hunter was no longer holding up. "I see it right there." Mari said, placing her hand on the Wanderer's cheek. "Your face is warm too."
Feeling Mari's hand on her face only made the Wanderer feel even more flustered. With soft hands, Mari caressed the Wanderer's face and turned it to face her. "What are you afraid of?" she whispered, seeing the want in the Wanderer's eye, yet it was a want shrouded in hesitation.
"I'm not afraid of anything." the Wanderer said, lying to both herself and the woman in front of her.
"I am." Mari told her, looking into her eye deeply with her hands touching her face and neck softly. "I'm always afraid. Do you want to know what I'm afraid of?" Mari asked her. "Sometimes, I feel like I'm trapped..." Mari stared wistfully into the Wanderer's eye. "I'm afraid that I don't have control over my life. Everything feels so mundane and hopeless, or at least, that's how it was until I met you."
The Wanderer's eye widened as Mari continued on with her confession. "These last few days have been the best days of my life. There's been so much excitement... I've felt so free... And for the first time in my life, I've truly felt alive.
Sometimes I get scared when the bad guys come, but that's part of the excitement. I don't want to live some boring life as a princess... I want, well..." Mari did not break eye contact as she spoke to the Wanderer.
The Wanderer was horrified, not because of the fact that Mari had feelings for her, but the fact that she found herself feeling a similar way. Though she'd never admit it, traveling with Mari was the first time she genuinely felt alive in years.
They laughed and smiled together.
They shared intimate moments together, like the one they shared right at that moment, or when they held hands, funneling the Force through each other as rain struck the musical flowers around them. During the festival, the Wanderer had this warm feeling inside of herself, watching as Mari looked on in awe at the prayers to the dragon god.
And that lantern, the one that the two of them wrote on before sending it away to the heavens, signified when the woman who the Wanderer killed all those years ago, the one whose name she promised never to utter ever again, was revived.
"I haven't ever wanted anything else. My whole life, I only did what I was told, but now... I know what I want. I want you." Mari whispered, and as she did, she started to lean closer to the Wanderer, so close that their lips nearly touched. "Is that okay, Ms. Wanderer?" she asked her, wanting her permission before going any further.
"I- It might be." the Wanderer whispered, looking at Mari's deep, green eyes that were just inches from hers. Despite her uncertainty, and with her heart nearly pounding out of her chest, the Wanderer gently placed her thumb and pointer finger on Mari's chin.
Slowly, the Wanderer leaned forward before gently locking lips with Mari.