Starkiller flinched when you hugged him. Not out of tenderness, but out of surprise. His back, scarred by lightsabers and energy blasts, remembered being touched much more painfully than yours. You smelled of ozone and the dust of distant planets, the smell of a home he'd never had.

He didn't understand what you were looking for in him. Power? He was her surplus, but she cursed him, made him a weapon, not a man. Loyalty to the Empire? He betrayed her by throwing off the burden of the Sith, even though the darkness was still whispering in his head.

Your touch trembled on his skin, like a faint light in the dark. He didn't dare return the hug, afraid that he would break you with his strength, his pain. He remembered how bones broke under his pressure, how lives were extinguished like sparks.