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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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."

At first, only a few words really get through to Rial's head. Your kid, she says, and his kid, she's carrying his child (the scientific part of his mind says it's barely a fetus, but Rial ignores it). And then she's standing there and he can't find the words to describe the look on her face, except it doesn't seem like an expression that should be there. Not an expression that Plourr should have.

And then, and then she says she can't do it without him by her side and Rial's heart seizes, twists, and he doesn't quite know what to say for a moment.

Eventually, he finds his voice again.

"I'll be with you. Always."

It's not easy to describe how she was feeling; what might have translated to her expression. Angry would be one word. Young, another. Afraid.

But with the response, some of the immediate fury, the desperate rigidity, slowly bleeds out of her posture. The fire in her eyes fades and she is tired, her shoulders curving inward. The doctor had told her that fatigue was 'perfectly normal' but, just -- kriff.

"You busy?"

All in one, Rial would say. But then she slumps, just a little, and he shuts his eyes for a moment.

"Of course not."

The gratitude in her eyes can't be measured. "I said I'd go back to the infirmary." Once she calmed down and had gotten over the immediate shock. Her arms are crossed loosely, and she feels every meter of space separating her from Rial. "They wanted to run some more tests and start giving us information."

'Us.' Not 'me.'

"You want me to go with you?" He holds out a hand, eyes quiet and dark and serious even if he can't suppress that little spark of excitement.

That contained but obvious excitement -- it sends a pang through her, makes something painful rise into her throat. But she's glad of it, at the same time. At least somebody's happy about this.

She takes a deep breath. "Yeah." She steps forward and slips her hand into his.

He squeezes her hand gently, smiling at her.

"I'm here."

"I know," Plourr says, leading him to the small pile of her things by the door. She steps into her lightweight running shoes. "Hard to miss that when I've got you by the hand."

She knows what he means, though, and as she balances on one foot and uses a finger to wedge her heel into her shoe, her hand tightens on his.

Rial shrugs, half-rolling his eyes. "You could be highly mistaken. I could, in fact, be a mynock."

"No wings," she points out, with the ghost of a smile. She falls silent, stuffing the roll of athletic tape into one of the boxing gloves and picking up the pair. She glances at him, tips her head at the door.

"After you, my princess."

He bows, holding a hand out in front of him.

He still calls her princess. She likes that. Even when her head and her stomach are whirling, she likes that, and it's adding some sense of -- almost of normalcy, even if things can't be normal.

Even if they won't ever be the kriffing same again.

She steps through the doorway and into the abandoned, dusty corridor, not relinquishing her grip on him in the slightest.

Rial keeps his grip in her hand, stepping out after her. Shifting so that his arm isn't twisted uncomfortably, who's to say it isn't an accident when his other hand brushes against her flat stomach and stays there for a moment.

Then he's sorted himself out and it's like maybe it never happened.

When Rial lingers, it gives him away. Plourr freezes a half-second, then rolls her eyes. "Oh, for fuck's--" She stops and turns to face him abruptly, and she lifts the big hand that is already wrapped around hers.

She presses his palm flat against her abdomen.

Cue a sheepish grin, tugging his hand away. "I know, I know. It's barely a fetus."

Derailed by that--fetus, holy hell but that sounds real--she holds still for a moment, but then she shakes her head. "No." Beat. "Well, I mean, yes, but I meant -- you don't have to sneak. You're--" the father, but that's too real and she slams the door shut on that thought, "you. I'm not going to bite your head off here."

She sighs, scrubbing a hand over her face. "I'm not making any kriffing sense."

[OOM] Eiattu - Palace Corridor

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