Deeds, Pillows & Futures(Preliat)

[Ginnie Dib]

"Dealing with things like this is so much easier when you've had a couple good sleeps. Maybe it'll give you the strength to deal with and kick them. Maybe it won't, isn't it worth the try?" Preliat's hand sliced the air and Aditya's found the coolness of the glass as a buffer against the heat of her lover's temper.

"It doesn't have to be for life, it can be for a few days every once in a while when you really need a break." How far could she push? The snapping tone in his voice told Aditya enough of what Preliat was going through. He was not an unkind man to her, he didn't do anything but adore her and snapping? Being terse? "Okay, I can understand not wanting to be dependent on a machine. I'm not a biologist, but I am an engineer and . . . and I'll never force it on you. But it's an option."

Something was wrong with her lover and Aditya wanted desperately to fix it. Bringing her fingers along the glass, Aditya crept them toward her lover's, a tired smile stroking across her lips. "Thank you. I don't think anyone's been proud of me before. 'Cept my Daddy way back. Oh Preliat." Scared.

The Great and Vicious Preliat Mantis wouldn't open wide his emotional floodgates for a girl he'd met and huck aside later. For all the time Aditya spent fearing the downfall of [member="Preliat Mantis"] in her life (He'd get tired of her, he'd get bored, he'd not love her, she'd do something wrong), this moment when she woke up in the middle of the morning hours and he'd been awake built a stronger bond in her than the adoration in her heart and the baby in her belly. Wrapping her slender, pale hand around his, Aditya sat beside him on the bed, put her head on his shoulder and looked out at the plains.

"Remember when you asked me on that date and I showed up still on fire? I hadn't come thinking that would be the night I made way for Mandalore. As I stared across that table at you pulling off my gloves I was petrified. Shoot, there you were five seconds from finding my past as ugly as my hands. I was sure you were going to walk out. After my tirade, that fear was harder to cut through than the plates on the table. You called the waiter over and that was it. You were gone. I'd lost you."

She sighed dolefully and shook her head slowly, her raven hair cascading across her shoulders in the moonlight. "But I hadn't. You pulled out that flimsi photograph you kept in the Buy'ce and by the time we got to your ship I'd started falling madly in love with the man who showed his weaknesses, his pains and his fears to me. Made me feel like the most important woman in the universe, to know that you're mine. To know that you share for me, you trust me. You made a promise then to tell me I'm beautiful every morning, that you'd love me unconditionally and you've kept it. It's time I made a promise, too. I tell you we are getting through this and I tell you there'll be the day coming when you wake up well rested and glad for the coming day. Believe it. Hold onto that promise. Maybe a machine isn't the way, maybe we need to find a magician. A healer who can take you through. Guide you. I don't know, I'm babbling and my feet are cold and I think our daughter started kicking again. Think she wants you to know she's here for you, too."

 

[Preliat Mantis]

Preliat's dark brown eyes shifted away from [member="Aditya Amadis"], away from her ever growing beauty and ever loving touch. He felt more alone with each day that passed- and he began to fear that he'd slowly become detached from her. A fear coursed through his mind, like no other. But no mind reader, no being could sense it. Such was the curse of his birth. She spoke of sleep. How he missed it- but again, he had grown used to not having it. Would he enjoy it? Would he want it? He could not say. In fact, he was afraid that he was not wanting of it. He turned his head away, then downward. A shadow from the moonlight fell over his eyes. The war paint, he usually wore, looked similar. Two dark shadows lay under his eyes, accentuated by his brow. They were sharp in the angle of the light- much like he was crying darkness. Or oozing it. Depending on you looked at it.


"I'll find solidarity and peace on my own. I do not want a machine."


Preliat's eyes danced over to Aditya. His words were soft. There wasn't a pause. A consideration. There was no consideration to be done. There was only a revelation, and a decision. A decision he had been mulling over in the deepest and most tumultuous depths of his mind. With that, with what she said, he could have said a lot. How he constantly thought about her. How he'd loved her since their first meeting. How he yearned for this kind of love, this kind of connection since Elrood. Since he had spent so many nights drugged out and partied out after hockey games and bloody knuckles.


"Marry me."

Brown eyes met black eyes.

 

[Ginnie Dib]

"That's your prerogative and I'll support you however you decide. Just know I'm here. I'll be here for you, for our baby and I'm gonna give us all a great life. So get ready. You're not allowed to wither away. Y-hh!" Aditya's breath caught in her throat. The galaxy thundered to a halt and any second gravity and momentum would catch up to the shrill curling surprise in her stomach. Her body turned to face him, this vicious savage who had fought to share her bed. Eyes wide, shoulders raised Aditya mashed her fingers together in her lap.

Marry the Mandalorian Wolf? The Field Marshal whose men wore bands of black and ran after him when he stumbled under the pressure of his exhausted, damaged mind was a being created from the substance of shadow and hope. His eyes bled with the horrors of Elrood as hers had become blackened pools of Bimmisari's macabre happenings. Preliat was not a soft man nor a blissful ignorant. He wasn't the idealist fighting with stylus and word to bring the pacifist's reign to a quiet becoming, he was the knife hand, the bludgeon. The equal horror which struck back to push the leaking shadows one step further from Aditya and their child. The soft catch in his voice excited more of her for the rarity of it. The scared and hopeful glint in his eyes shouted louder than arc cannons. The young widow's face softened. The surprise descended to a thorough and blissful contentment. She brushed her fingers across [member="Preliat Mantis"] ' cheek and leaned over to kiss the lips which had seconds before asked more of her than anyone could.

"Yes." Aditya breathed. A tender smile growing on her face, Aditya pulled Preliat's hand onto her belly and laughed softly for the joy of it, nodding her head. The joy of the joined road and solidarity against the monsters and madmen who threatened their newfound peace and home would become theirs. Whether it was the hormones or the moment, Aditya nearly laughed herself into tears for the sheer delight of being so wanted as to be made his. "Yes Preliat, I will marry you. I'll be Aditya Mantis. We're a family. We're gonna be a real family."

The house would become a home of respite against Preliat's battles and Aditya would remain blissful and content within its' bastion. Or if not this house, another. It was time to leave the nightmares where they lied. The road would be long, but with his wife at his side, would it not be easier for Preliat Mantis to shake off the shackles of his traumatized condition? Aditya kissed him sweet and tender, pressed against his chest with the comfort of this new belonging they had found.

 

[Preliat Mantis]

Don't wither away, the voice in the back of his head told him. He felt the demons of his past circle around him, all his failures and trials and tribulations and sins staring at him. How dare he have happiness they cried, how dare he find solace. How dare he even think of living happily. So what was he to do? Lie. He would wither away- he already was. Slowly. Like statues, their permanence and ever standing nature would eventually crumble. Much like the wolf. He was breaking apart, slowly, crumbling piece by piece until all that was left was his legacy. Until that happened- he'd put on a good show for everyone. He wouldn't go quietly. He would not wither away like buildings in sand, or rocks in a river. He'd wither away like a screaming animal, or like a collapsing building. Whatever would eventually destroy him, he'd make sure that he destroyed it as well. But how would he destroy his demons? He couldn't exactly wash his hands, that point was far gone at this point.


But now, he had some brightness in his life. [member="Aditya Mantis"]- he liked the sound of it. His fingers draped across her belly, his brown eyes losing the shadow as he leaned down, face to face with his daughter growing within his fiance. He blinked, unsure of what to say or do. He was brought back up by a kiss, a tender moment that they both shared- but he felt an ache at the back of his heart. How passive he was about it all- how apathetic he had become. Maybe she'd undo that. Or it'd worsen over time. He could not say for sure.


"I love you."


He didn't have much else to say. What else could he have said to her, without her lecturing him or worrying even further? Or leaving him out of fear? He'd wait. Wait until the moment was both opportune and correct for such a revelation.

 

[Ginnie Dib]

"I love you too." Washed over with the happiness of being given a new last name, Aditya ran her hand along Preliat's back as he leaned down to their daughter's level in a few months, their daughter would be one more Mando'ad for the vode. "What Clan are we in? I want to decorate the baby's crib with her family crests. Mantis and. . . I have a patent from the Emperor to make an official Clan Seal for my family in the Atrisian Empire. We could. . . we could use it before the wedding."

Clan was important, wasn't it? If she was going to marry into the Mandos, shouldn't she know? There was a lingering unsettled look on [member="Preliat Mantis"] 's face. She stroked her fingers across his cheek, chasing the fingers with a kiss. "Are you fading from me? You seem preoccupied for a man who asked his lover to marry him. Come back, Preliat. Be with me tonight. While it's us. Before we end up married with a little girl jumping into our bed to escape her bad dreams, or bored nights."

 

[Preliat Mantis]

"Clan? I am simply Preliat Mantis. The Mandalorian. Never been a fan of clans, and all the stigmas that go with it."Irony, found itself etched in the room as if someone took a pocket knife to the wall."Though I suppose it would be wise to have some sort of symbol for our family. Growing, family. Family crests, and maybe..."He put up a hand, and waved it, to signify that it was something on down the line."We can think about starting a clan. The Mantis clan. Has a nice ring, I guess. But again, I'm not a huge fan of it."He blinked, turning back to [member="Aditya Mantis"], blinking softly.


"I won't fade from you and from her."Though, that being said, he didn't say he wouldn't fade from everyone else."My mind is always on sixteen thousand different things at once, don't worry about it."Preliat was a good liar, and a better killer."Just tonight? As I recall, I'm going to be with you until the day I decide to meet the reaper."Again, he smiled. Not a smirk, or a joke in the blackest of humors, but a genuine smile brought on by a happy thought and joyous moment.

 

[Ginnie Dib]

"Nothing wrong with having a Clan Symbol for our family, then disregarding everyone else's Clan bantha-poodoo." Aditya moved Preliat's hair behind his ear with her fingers, running her hand over the familiar hair and down to rest between the blades of his shoulders. She smirked, "Growing family. I like that. Clan Mantis, our little family secret. What a better way to give our girl a foundation, you know? Doesn't mean we have to post notices, just be our little thing. I do like the idea of a personal image for us. It could be a sort of wedding present. A 'we're our own' present."

His reassurance was taken as Aditya took most things, at their face value. [member="Preliat Mantis"] hadn't broken a promise to her yet, and although the road of his recovery was dauntless and lengthy, Aditya knew in the marrow of her bones that with his wife by his side, Preliat could defeat the nightmares. "You'd better not. 'Cause you start fading from us and I'm gonna go jilted Epicanthix wife on your backside. Got that, buddy?" She narrowed her eyes and pouted her lips in the hopes of looking tough, making her hands into fists and play-punching lightly in the shoulder. "Pow. Pow, pow. Right and a left." The fists were doing little less than tapping at his skin before Aditya descended into kindly giggles. "Am I making my point?"

Seeing his smile calmed the giggles into a bright and hopeful grin. Aditya swam in the smooth field of his affections, "Every day. All of them. We're a family now, you're stuck with me the rest of our lives. For better or worse, cyare. When should we tie the knot? Wait. . . do Mandalorians hand-fast? What. . . what do Mandalorians do to get married?"

 

[Preliat Mantis]

"Clans cause conflict consecutively."He grumbled. His lips sneered, showing his appreciation (or more precisely, a lack thereof) of the idea of and current state of the clans."Good luck."He suppressed the desire to chuckle at [member="Aditya Mantis"]' jilted comment. Her fists tapped against the bulging muscles of his shoulder, and he smirked. Pow pow. Fists flying. He had done so much damage in hockey- so many teeth and threw so many punches it was hard to remember how hard he hit- or when was the last time he actually got into a brutal fight. Snapping back from la la land, he turned and nodded his head, laughing."Sure. You've made your point and my shoulder thanks you for the mercy."


"Mandalorians typically drink, stand around and talk, then have a ceremony where the two people profess loves and say things in Mando'a, and then go drink more and then the married couple go home and go at it like wampas."Not that truthfully, that was happening anytime soon for the either of them."I think it'd be a good idea to do it relatively soon."He shrugged."As soon as possible, I suppose. It won't be hard to gather everyone."He turned towards her, smiling still.


"Getting the hang of the language, I see."

 

[Ginnie Dib]

"I like Atrisian Noble Clans a little. They follow the 'you have your thing I have mine' agenda and then all come together when the Emperor wills it for a few dozen cups of tea and some sweet cakes. If there's a duel it's all code of honour and stuff. I didn't see much of it, but I did see this one time? There was this entire family feud done over note cards and stationary. It was cute. At the end they bowed it out and their kids got married. I'm just a scallywag from the Outer Rim who danced her way into an Emperor taking notice and giving her a chance to be an Engineer. . . I defy the Mando'ade to give us guff."

Her fists unballed and she leaned back on the bed. A jolt of pain struck her side. She curled onto her side and exhaled with a hiss.

"Your shoulder had better thank me! I was taking it easy on you, future r-rid um. Lemme get it. Riduur? Is that . . . is that how you say husband in Mando'a?" Stretching out her sore and lengthening muscles, Aditya listened to [member="Preliat Mantis"]' tales of Mando'ade weddings and nodded with approval. "Gosh, and Kei just asked me to turn around so he could sign the papers on by back. . . I like this 'go at it like wampas' idea. Pregnancy hormones are crazy and fun like that. I might jump you, as subtle as I can jump anyhow. Want our daughter to be born proper, do you? Look back and know her parents were hitched? Hey, it's a good idea to me. I'm still learning everyone's names, do you know who you'd want to gather up or is it an 'anybody but the Ordos' idea?"

The smile on Preliat's face soothed her physical discomforts and brought a lovely flush to Aditya's cheeks. She tugged at his arm and pushed herself back up to sitting, leaning her side against his shoulder. "I can almost carry full conversations, now. It won't be much longer before I'm fluent. . . do you think she'll be healthy? Happy? Do you think she'll love us?"

 

[Preliat Mantis]

He smirked."Mandalorians can be picky about who they hate."He nodded, laying back on the bed, to be next to her. A hand laid across his abdomen, steadily breathing."I can't just not invite the Ordos, although- my disdain for their wretched, traitor and misfit-filled clan runs deep."He clucked his tongue. Fluency in a language, of course the engineer would get it. He just nodded when she spoke of the language. Then, came the hard question.



"I don't know if she'll love me. She'll know who I am, and she'll know I love her. Maybe when she's younger. Maybe when she thinks I'm the wall of light pushing the darkness away. Maybe when she isn't scared of monsters and ghosts in the dark. Maybe when she needs help getting dressed and with her hair. But once she starts to see what and who I am, and finds out what I've done, and what I've gone and been through and participated in-"He stopped and turned his head.


"I don't know after that."


[member="Aditya Mantis"]

 

[Ginnie Dib]

"So I've heard." They could be a stubborn people, but so could she. There was a different sort of stubbornness when one could hide behind twenty pounds of Beskar'gam with a couple of ridiculously heavy guns to boot. "I'm sorry the Ordos gave you so many reasons to hate them. They've been decent to me, by and large. When I went to find where you'd been taken. . . that little one Ginnie was the first one to step up and figure it out. She bolted behind enemy lines, brought people in, I doubt I'd have found you without her. That being said. . ."

Hatred was another of those emotions the Saint-less Epicanthix woman could understand. [member="Preliat Mantis"] was rife with hatred, but thankfully that hatred was placed on the enemy. "If you have to invite them, we can always conveniently put them at the table beside the creaky air vent and cut their booze with water." She smirked and tried to make the whole thing sound like a joke. Didn't seem the night for too many jokes.

"Do I love you? I've seen what you're capable of, Preliat. Hasn't turned me away, yet." Aditya draped her hand across [member="Preliat Mantis"] ' chest. She pulled her fingers along the ridges and furrows of his musculature and kissed his shoulder. "You're her Daddy. You're gonna keep her safe from harm, teach her amazing things and look at the culture you're giving her. She'll adore you. It's in her blood." Did her voice quiver?

Truth was Aditya hadn't the foggiest if their little girl would love her mother or her father. Who was Aditya kidding? Become a parent? No way, that wasn't her speed. She was a self-destructive engineer working on getting herself half-way killed every second day in the lab. Now it was all multivitamins and breathing exercises. The pregnant fiancee puffed up her pillow and rubbed her eyes. "I don't know either. My mother was so hard on me, will I be like her? A task-master? I'm half freaked that the kid's going to go running to her Daddy every day 'cause the alternative is being around her awful mother. Not that us having a Daddy's Girl wouldn't be the best thing ever. You're gonna look quite something with a raven haired daughter on your arm. All I know is that you're the most loving, compassionate, savage, terrifying, commanding and powerful man I've ever met. You're vicious in battle and tender in my arms and I love you deep and true.

If she's got us in her, she'll love us too. . . or so help me I'll . . . I'll . . . . I'll send her to dance practice till she succumbs!"