fighting_mad | [OOM] Eiattu - Palace Conference Room

[OOM] Eiattu - Palace Conference Room

The meeting finishes at a good time, just as Plourr is coming in. The empress slips past the last woman leaving (nodding to those who bow to her, brushing off the one duke who tries to corner her) and into the conference room. Inside, Rial leans over the table, brushing hair impatiently off his face and gathering some sheets of flimsi, and she stops on the same side of the huge table.

She sets her shoulders, face a touch pale.

"Hey."

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Rial glances up with a smile that fades to a worried frown.

"Hey - Plourr, is everything okay?"

Her outer tunic is gone, leaving her in a work skirt, her favorite pair of battered boots (never worn in public like this), and an undershirt.

Her eyes meet his, wide and dark. She could let it out in slow, halting sentences, could take her time, but Plourr has always been one to rip the adhesive bandage off all at once. "I went to the 'fresher earlier and I -- was bleeding. I went to the infirmary and it's fine, everything's fine, but--" Words fail her, and her jaw sets tight as she looks away quickly, swallowing.

Shavit, Rial thinks, setting the flimsi aside and getting up to move quickly to her side.

"They're sure? There's no problem?"

"Just a little spotting," she says, clearly repeating someone else's words. She stands rigid, like she was carved from stone, besides the movement of her mouth. "It's normal. They ran some tests and," her arms, wrapped around her upper ribs, hold on even tighter, "everything's fine."

Everything's fine. Rial's heart unclenches in his chest and he breathes again, relaxing.

Except...

"Plourr, what's wrong?"

Her head comes up quick. "What's wrong? Rial, I almost had a fucking heart attack."

He bites back the urge to say something stupid and childish. It's hard, he's had a long day.

"But everything's okay now, right?"

"Would you just--" Her mouth snaps shut, and she steps into him. Her arms may be still around herself, but she hides her face in his neck, mouth set tight. "Yeah. It's fine, I'm fine."

She is shaking.

She is.

She is shaking. His beautiful, strong Plourr, who can handle everything and anything (except for when she can't) is shaking. Rial hates himself for it, and folds his arms around her.

"It'll be okay."

She leans against him. After a moment, she gets her arms around his neck like a slightly unsteady vise. "It is okay. Everything's fine. EmDees said so."

Silence.

"What if something happens to this kid, Rial? I don't -- I don't know if I could take that."

The words burst out of her, quiet and convulsive into the side of his neck.

"Nothing," he says firmly, "is going to happen to the kid. Nothing. I won't let it."

He holds her tightly, like he's trying to shield her.

"Why didn't you want this, Plourr?"

A short, sharp breath of laughter, more pained than mirthful. "Long reasons or short reasons?"

He squeezes tighter then he needs to, really.

"Long."

She remains silent a long moment, grateful for the fact that her face is hidden. When she speaks, the words again are as if torn unwillingly from her throat; they don't come smoothly.

"I'm no good with kids, and I sure as hell don't know what I'm doing. This isn't exactly like defusing a tense situation in a meeting or pulling a perfect barrel roll. I -- Kriff it, Rial, I don't love easily. What if I don't feel anything even once the kid's born? What if I fuck things up?"

What if she does love the kid and what if it goes the way of her family? There are so many what if's, so many possibilities, all of which--

"Scares me."

Oh, oh, oh and Rial definitly doesn't need to hold her that tightly but it's not stopping him.

"You won't, Plourr, you won't. You are going to be the best mother ever and that kid is going to be the luckiest little kid ever and we're both going to spoil it rotten."

"How do you know?" she persists stubbornly, but her voice is cracking because oh, Rial, she badly wants to believe him.

"Because," he says firmly.

"Because I say so."

She shakes her head against his shoulder. "Life doesn't work like that, Rial."

There's a quick, tight squeeze. "Then because I know you and I know me and I don't know our kid, not yet, but I bet you a hundred credits that I'm right."

"What the hell about me tells you I wouldn't make an awful mother?" It's not self-deprecating; she speaks matter-of-factly, almost calmly. She honestly needs to know.

"You care about me, don't you?" And it might sound like one of his silly little answers, but...it's true, realy, the way he looks at it.

"Of course I do. What does that have to do with anything?"

She still holds onto him just as tightly, just as seriously. Even the strongest need someone to catch them, sometimes.

"If you can care about me, you can care about anyone."

All joking aside, "And you were worried, right? When there was a chance something was wrong?"

"You make it easy, you idiot."

But she falls silent, and her voice shakes only a little when she says, "Yes."

Terrified, more like. The surge of emotion had taken her entirely by surprise.

"So there."

She'll be a good mother, really. A little outside the box, but that's always fun.

'So there'? Not exactly reassuring, and Plourr doesn't say anything for a long moment or two.

Finally, her mouth set into a firm line below where her nose is pressed into her neck, she speaks.

"Rial, we're related."

"Mmhmm." He shakes his head, "But we don't need to worry, remember? The genetic engineers said that there wouldn't be a problem."

She pulls away, at that, leaning back so that she can look him right in the eye. Her coloring is pale, still, her eyes over-bright. "The genetic engineers said the same thing about my parents."

Look where that got them. More accurately, look who that got them. Three perfectly normal, beautiful daughters, yes, but the fourth child--

"His screams mixed with the screams of my family as they were put to death, and there was only one thing I wanted to do.

Put an end to the screaming."

K R A K K.

There's not much Rial can say to that, because it's true. And he can't exactly say that it was a mistake because then, well, what if they made the same mistake with him and Plourr?

So in the end he rests his head on hers and whispers, "That won't happen."

She has killed one child like that already; with a black hole where its heart should be and a love for other beings' blood. Granted, it wasn't on purpose. She was trying to escape and Harran was screaming she just needed to stop the screaming she didn't mean for him to die -- but sometimes, she thinks it was for the best.

Doesn't mean she hasn't been living with the guilt for years.

Plourr doesn't think she could do it again. And she couldn't raise a kid like that, either. She doesn't know how her parents did. She sure as hell doesn't know how her mother loved him like she did, right up til the end.

"It can't."

And she is so afraid it will.

"It won't," he says again.

It won't. It can't because it can't and Rial won't let it happen. Not again.

There's no way that he can promise her that. Neither of them has a say in this. It's biology. It's genetics. It's genes crossing in a too-small pool.

There's no way to be reassured on this. She stands silently and leans on him.

"Tell you what," he says finally, voice sounding almost too loud. "We'll go back to the genetic engineers, get them to rework the data from your parents and see if they can find what went wrong. Then they can rework the data from us as well, just to be sure."

It's not much of a plan, but it's all he's got.

She doesn't respond for a long moment, and then she raises her head. "You think they would?"

He nods, looks more confident then he feels. "Sure they would."

"It'd be worth a shot," Plourr says, and it doesn't make the situation immediately better, but -- it helps, a little, to have a plan of action. "I can make a few calls tonight." She rests her forehead against his and her voice is quieter when she says, "Thank you."

"Hey, it's fine." He's still got both arms wrapped around her, holding tightly.

"We're going to get through this and we are going to be the most astral parents ever."

"You," she says, and she smiles, soft and fond, "are going to be kriffing fantastic."

"I'll be nothing compared to you."

Rial beams down at her.

Plourr's eyes flick down and back up so fast as to almost be unnoticeable. She smiles, faintly. "Don't think I've forgotten my favorite babysitter, Rial Pernon. I was young, but I wasn't that young."

"You were a holy terror," he says fondly. "But oh, it was fun."

She snorts quietly, hands resting on the back of his neck and forehead still pressed against his. After a moment, she asks, "We have anything we have to go to tonight?"

He thinks back, and then shakes his head. "Can't think of anything, no. We're free."

"Good," she says with quiet fervor. "Think we can talk the kitchens into making us some dinner, and Lelian into fetching it?"

It's a rhetorical question. They are the emperor and the empress; their wish is everyone else's command.

She cut out on a meeting and two audiences earlier in order to make it to the infirmary, mostly just to sit and wait for test results, her heart in her throat. She has catch-up to play, and feet to put up.

"I'll hold him, you threaten."

Rial steps back to stretch, and pick up his sheets of flimsi from the table. It's been a long day.

He can fucking think that again.

The color has been slow to return to her face, and she is still disheveled, and -- she just wants to go home now, yeah. She's got a comm to compose to some geneticists.

She holds out a moderately steady hand to him.

And Rial takes it, as always.

He squeezes her hand, lightly, and smiles at her. He doesn't need to say anything, Plourr knows. He'll always be here. He'll always take her hand.

Plourr squeezes Rial's hand a little tighter as they walk through the corridors, talking quietly, but she knows he can take it. For all the complaining he does when she hits him, he's a strong man.

Sometimes, she is incredibly grateful for that.

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[OOM] Eiattu - Palace Conference Room

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