eiattu_pride | (no subject)

"Knitting wouldn't be a bad idea," he retorts.

"And if you get up now, you're giving yourself any time to heal. You'll be worse off again by night. Trust me."

He reaches over, and lightly pokes her shoulder.

"You want anything, or should I go back to work?"

He isn't taking her seriously, and for a second, she seethes.

She smacks his hand away, and then she is calm, her face set stubbornly, when she says, "Rial, I'm not sitting in here and doing nothing. Not when we're in the middle of trying to locate the Priamsta's base of operations, not when there are a million and one administratorial duties to take care of, and certainly not when I am perfectly capable of pulling my own weight."

"Perfectly capable."

There's a skeptical snort.

"I'll believe that when you're perfectly capable of eating - oh, and walking more then a few feet on your own. Go back to sleep, I've got things under control. And you're not helping."

"I got out there fine, didn't I?" she shoots back, stung, ignoring the way that her voice is cutting in and out in protest. "Kriff, I want to do something. I can't just lie here and stare at the ceiling. I'm not some fragile little frilly princess."

"So learn to knit."

He throws his hands up in frustration.

"Sleep. Dream interesting dreams. Get better. Watch a holo. I don't care."

He gets up, running his hands through his hair. "I'm going for a walk."

"Fine," she says sharply, settled back against the wall with her knees drawn up and her arms folded over her chest. "That's kriffing fine."

"Fine."

And he stalks out of the room, picks up a datapad and tosses it at the wall, then storms through the main door.

The guards, perhaps wisely, don't intervene.

~

He goes everywhere, finally ending up in a little garden close to the edge of the palace. It's raining softly, and he leans back against the wall, watching the stormy grey Eiattu sky.

Everything is different.

He doesn't want it to be different.

Stares at the sky, wondering if he should paint it in soft, muted watercolors, and he's sorry.

Plourr lets herself slide down into the bed, and she ignores her raw throat and screams into a pillow the second she hears the outer door close. A guard's footsteps approach then retreat.

It's not til she walks into the outer room (briefly, shakily) that she realizes that he went alone.

The princess lets their guards fucking have it. Lelian and Rher are speedily dispatched to find him, though she knows perfectly well that they won't, if he doesn't wish it.

She curls back into bed with her datapad and her worry, and the little room doesn't have any windows or exterior walls, but she almost imagines she can hear the rain.

She's ready for him to come back now.

Right now.

It's a good couple of hours before Rial, soaked and dripping water everywhere, opens the outer door and steps in. Lelian and Rher trail in behind him, looking slightly less wet but no less quiet.

There's a quick stop in the kitchen so that he can bend over the sink and squeegee the worst of the water out of his hair, peeling off a sodden outer tunic and leaving it on the floor.

He's tired.

Hesitates just in front of the door to their bedchamber, then knocks.

Plourr is sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed, bent over her datapad with a box of tissues and a glass of water close at hand. Her head rises at the knock and she shoves her hair out of her face. "Come."

The door opens, and Rial slips through as quietly as he can.

"Hey."

Crosses the room, hesitates by the bed, then crosses into the 'fresher and starts removing his soaking-wet clothes.

A pause, and then "Sorry."

She carefully slides out of the bed and pads over to the half-stocked dresser, pulling a tunic and pair of trousers from the top of first drawer she opens.

She squeezes into the tiny 'fresher and sets the dry clothes on the counter. Then she presses her chin against his shoulder, wrapping her arms around him and leaning against his (wet, cold, and she doesn't care) side.

"Me, too." And honestly, it's not nearly as hard to say as it once would have been.

A quiet moment passes, and the relief--he's alright--is suffocating.

"Were you even armed?"

He's already shirtless, but his hair is dripping uncomfortably and he's cold enough to press back into her warmth.

Tilts his head back, "Yeah. Vibroblade."

He knows he was stupid.

But everything's so kriffed up and he just didn't know what else to do.

Another beat and then he's turning, kissing her, breaking away and "You know I love you, right? So much."

She's trying to turn her head away, but he leans in and kisses her too quickly and she smiles faintly, blowing her nose with the tissues held in one hand. "Enough that you're willing to risk being infected by the mutant virus, apparently."

A pause and her smile falls away and she answers more seriously, "I know. I just -- I forget that you aren't used to life constantly being chaos. To people dying."

Crying and a blaster shot from the next room. Living on the run, forever afraid that her identity would be discovered; later living with the shadow of the Empire looming over the battered capital ships and the X-wings.

The temple blossoming into a brilliant fireball on Malrev IV, twin explosions over Brentaal, a lifeless body covered with a sheet on Ciutric-- a mangled conference room with blood still spattered across the walls.

Plourr is pretty damn used to it, herself.

She kisses his cold neck, in lieu of his cheek.

"I don't get sick," he informs her. "Ever."

There's a pause, and he glances away.

"Yeah."

Plourr isn't a superstitious woman, but even she shoots him a slightly horrified look at that. She nearly says 'I can't believe you just said that,' but then he's looking away and -- yeah.

She, too, is silent. She doesn't want him to know the chaos, doesn't want him to know what it's like when people are dying all around you. She wants to protect him, which is illogical and irrational; he's a grown man and he's strong, he's perfectly capable of protecting himself -- but the fierce protectiveness is still there.

She says, "You're cold; you should dry off." She steps back. "And bring at least a blaster next time." So she doesn't have to sit and wait and worry. So she doesn't have to suffer those three days all over again, but for good. She leans in and presses a sweet kiss to his neck again, and then she pads back out into the bedroom.

Rial glances over at her. There's a crooked smile, "Yes ma'am," and he sets to drying himself off and changing.

When he's done, he comes back out into the bedchamber, and perches on the side of the bed.

"Hurry up and get better. I want to kiss you properly."

She glances up from where she's curled up with the datapad, hair falling into her eyes again. She raises her eyebrows in amusement. "What's properly?"

"On the lips," he explains, "and then pretty much everywhere."

:D?

A slow grin. "That sounds nice."

"So."

He taps her nose.

"Be good."

"Hey." She gestures vaguely at the bed. "Look where I am right now."

It has nothing to do with the fact that he was right and she can't move very far very fast.

Really.

"Because I put you there."

Hah.

She tosses her stylus at him. "You were gone for hours. I easily could have gone and sat--" A pause for coughing, and then she goes on as if nothing happened. "--In the other room."

"Yes, but did you?"

He's curious.