fighting_mad | [OOM] Eiattu

[OOM] Eiattu - Palace Corridor

The private hall outside the royal apartments is quiet now; the warm, faded red walls and shining tile floors tell no secrets. The two guards dressed in charcoal and purple uniform, standing uneasily outside of the door, however, are a different story. For one thing, there only ought to be one of them. For another --

Lelian and Marama stand in close conference. His arms are crossed over his chest, and her hands are twisting in front of her. Every so often, one of them glances down the hall or starts to bring a commlink to his or her mouth, but one guard always halts the other. Neither of them has produced a weapon, but both look deeply troubled and out of their element.

"Do you think we should call--" asks anxious Marama for the fifteenth time, ginger hair piled high, but Lelian only shakes his head and begins to pace.

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You are going to have a baby.

It's not quite a flinch, not quite a wince, but something in her pale face shifts at that.

"Yeah," she mutters, her mouth set into a thin line. Her shoulder is one giant knot of tensed muscle under his hand.

Rial hesitates a beat, then moves forward, hugs her gently.

"It'll be okay," he repeats, more for her sake then his. "It'll be okay."

Plourr doesn't know how to say, 'no, it won't.' Not long ago, she would have said just that. But she knows just how badly he wants this, and she knows that it would hurt him, and even if her instinct is to lash out -- she doesn't always give in to her instincts.

Her arms are crossed over her chest and staying that way, and she stands evenly on bare feet, not leaning in. But she turns her face and rests her jaw against his shoulder, and all she wants to do is scream.

He holds her that way for a long, long moment, then moves away.

"Do you want to be alone?"

The answer that comes immediately is 'yes.' She wants to be left alone. She wants to hit something til it breaks or her knuckles do; wants to shout at the top of her lungs; wants to go on a run and stay on it until it's all behind her. Wants to forget that there's life inside of her.

There's no outrunning this, though.

She sighs and runs a hand through her hair and -- honest, tired -- says, "I don't fucking know."

He shouldn't. He really shouldn't. But Rial has a strange urge to tell her that she needs to watch her language, she's going to have a baby.

He doesn't. He just nods, shifts awkwardly, and glances around for something to capture his attention. Nothing does, so eventually he glances back at Plourr.

"Have you...seen a doctor, and everything?"

She nods. "I went to the infirmary, earlier. Was sick of not feeling like myself." Great, she thinks, and her thought process is pretty easy to follow as her face falls. Got how many more fucking months of that now?

She catches her lower lip between her teeth. "Four weeks. Everything's healthy." She crosses her arms again. It's a defensive posture, and at the moment, well -- she has never looked so young.

Rial reaches out, then thinks better of it and takes his hand back to tuck a stray strand of hair behind his ear.

"That's good."

She'd thought he would be happy.

She thinks she could deal with even that better than she can with ... whatever this is. These awkward pauses. That solemn expression.

She struggles on; stands tall and white and tense. "He gave me--" Her mouth closes.

Kriff her pride.

Kriff the part of her that wants to punch a wall until something snaps.

She takes two fast, silent steps forward and wraps her arms around her husband, resting her chin on his shoulder, and she holds on tight.

Rial tenses, surprised and shocked and confused and then most of his brain shuts down apart from the bit that says this is his wife, this is Plourr and she's clinging to him and that means he holds on tight.

So he holds on tight, nose buried in her hair, not really saying anything. Just holding her.

Holding on.

She gets as close as she can and she stares sightlessly at the rafters a moment before she closes her eyes, pressing her temple against his. Her hands curl in fistfuls of the back of his tunic. It's vaping stupid, but there's some comfort in this; in feeling his strong arms around her, in listening to him breathe, in the smell of familiar aftershave.

It's small comfort, but Plourr will take what she can get.

Rial smiles, a little, and tightens his grasp. He thinks it's all going to be okay.

And maybe he'll be right, maybe he'll be wrong, but Rial's always been to hope for the happy endings.

That makes one of them.

Eventually, she moves.

Eventually, she loosens her hold on him.

Eventually, she quietly smooths down where she crumpled up the back of his tunic.

"Hey."

His voice is soft, quiet, and he's trying to look her in the eye.

"Are you going to be okay?"

"I'm kriffing pregnant," she grumble-mutters into his neck, but it's half-hearted at best, and as much as she wants to say it, she bites back, 'what do you think?'

She leans back, feeling his attempts to see her, and she almost laughs. "That's a hell of a question," she says, hands on his shoulders.

He smiles, a little, ducking his head.

"I thought it might be appropriate."

She touches his chin, brushes the pad of her thumb against the upturned corner of his mouth. "I know you're excited," she says, quietly. "It's okay to show it."

The smile gets bigger at that. Not much, but...enough. "Okay."

Plourr nods, saying "Good" without ever actually saying a word aloud, and she steps back.

She takes a sudden, powerful swing at the punching bag, and as it goes slam and is flying on its chain, she doesn't feel any better for it. That's what makes up her mind for her. That, and how exhausted she is.

She turns back to Rial. "Look, I--" She sighs, arms akimbo, and falls silent.

"I don't really know what to do." Her voice is much quieter than she originally meant it to be, as she says something she didn't originally mean to say.

Rial hesitates. He wants to help, he's just not sure how. He wants to tell her (again) that it's all going to be okay, but his happy ending is threatening to vanish each time she looks at him. He wants to do something, but he doesn't know what.

So in the end, he just shrugs, and smiles as best he can.

"We'll figure something out."

She's under no illusions that either of them has all of the answers here. She just hoped he might have at least one or two, considering that he'd been the one arguing for this all along. But no. She put herself out there, and he just smiled. He just shrugged. He brushed her off. 'We'll figure something out.'

Very real hurt flashes for a second in the set of her mouth, in steady brown eyes, and something in her face closes off. "Right. Look, I'm going to stay down here a while longer. I'll see you upstairs."

Oh. Oh, oh, kriff and he didn't mean it like that and he didn't want her to go all quiet and walled in again and kriff, kriff, fuck. He opens his mouth to speak and then closes it again, shifting his weight.

And then a new little voice speaks up in the back of his head, a voice that says she knows you well enough, she must know you didn't mean it like that, you should just go.

Rial waits for another long, agonizing minute, then turns towards the door.

"I'll see you around."

'I'll see you around.'

He sounds like he's talking to -- she doesn't know who. Definitely not her, though. Not the woman he just found out is carrying his child.

His back is turned for the stricken look on her face, but ... She may be upset and she may be angry and she may be wishing she wasn't such a fucking emptyhead and this had never happened, but she is still the same honest, brazen Plourr Estillo she has always been, and she says,

"Hey. No. Can we not vaping do this?"

He looks back. It's not really a nice look.

"Not do what, Empress?"

Plourr's chin rises fast, eyes dark and wide and incredulous.

She gives a broad, sarcastic gesture with one hand before she sets it on her hip. "This, Your Majesty. This whole thing where one of us says something stupid and the other takes it badly and somebody leaves and I go sit in my Headhunter and pretend I'm not upset, and you go wherever it is that you go and pretend you're not upset, and it takes hours or days for us to be able to talk to each other again. I kriffing hate that.

"I'm not doing it right now. I refuse." Standing pale and alone and defiant, she points at her flat stomach. Her hand doesn't waver, even if her voice grows less steady as she goes on. "This is your kid, Rial Pernon, and no, I didn't ask for this, and let's be honest here, I am angry and I don't know how to handle this and I'm scared and I can't--" Her mouth snaps shut; she lowers her hand to her side.

"I can't do this without you with me."

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