Private Notation From The Stars

[Arcturus Dinn]

For a moment he wondered if maybe he'd made an error by not introducing the same substance to Ishani's blade... Only a moment though. He wasn't sure where he'd get his hands on any, nor the best way to really handle it, nor how much use the blade would even get. Arcturus' was his primary weapon, the one he reached for above all else. Was Ishani much of a fighter? Would she use it so frequently that applying such a substance would be more beneficial than the occasional pass over a whetstone?​

​

The girl lay against his shoulder was becoming drowsy, and a little loopy. Most definitely not fit to remain within such a workspace, with its forge and its tools and all that. He pushed the book aside, and pondered getting up. She kept talking though so for the time being he listened.​

​

"I do," he remarked with a confessionary tone when she inquired after him liking the title. "Doesn't it feel right? Master, Apprentice..." Well he was certainly leagues away from being able to claim a student of his own. And the power dynamic which would come with it would no doubt cause their actual relationship to suffer. In that sense he was glad it was not so. Still didn't stop it from sounding nice though.​

​

When she carried on, mumbling about how much she didn't like the sound of the language, he rolled his eyes slightly and chuckled.​

​

"Aaand that's a wrap," he said, gently moving his arms around her and shifting her weight onto him as he rose up. It was no easy endeavor to get up off the ground with her in tow, but he managed it. The strength graced his limbs and his muscles and made much simpler work of it... What a blessing it was in moments such as these. "You are far too tired to remain in so dangerous a place as this. C'mon, let's find you a bed." A bed? No. Not any old bed.​

​

Keeping her in his arms, cradled even if she tried to insist she be put down, he began to walk out of the forge. One elbow lifted slightly, to push a button beside the door which would shut the room down, and then they were gone.​

​

He brought her back to his suite, in that it was significantly cushier than the dormitories afforded to the rest of the student base, and set her down on the sofa. "Tomorrow we'll work on words, runes, whatever language you want them to take. Tonight though, missy, I'm going to fetch you water, and something to eat, and then you'll be away to bed, alright? You lost hours at the forge, I can't just let you sleep without seeing you rehydrated and fed."​

​

After all she'd be useless the next day if he did. It was important to look after oneself - he'd learned that the hard way.​

​

Ishani Dinn ​

 

[Ishani Dinn]

“Heh, I mean like, are you gonna start asking me to call you Master in b—” Suddenly she was being lifted up off the ground. “Arc! Not this again!”

But her whining was ignored, and to be honest, she didn’t have much reason to protest. She was literally being carried to bed, after all. Only the prideful would object to that. Luckily for Arcturus, she didn’t start rambling about philosophy and the ethics of Force healing.

Before she knew it, they were back at his suite—and Force knew how many people saw her being carried by him along the way. She nodded and waved to at least one gawker.

After being deposited on the couch, she glared at him before kicking off her shoes and stretching out. “You wanna cook dinner? Oh well, looks like there’s nothing I can do to stop you…”

Now that she wasn’t being exposed to the heat of the forge, she felt sweaty, grimy, and gross. Couldn’t go to sleep like that. “I’m gonna go take a shower. Burn the place down while I’m gone.” Standing up, she paused. Had she said that phrase right?... oh, whatever. She shuffled off to the ‘fresher and closed the door.

Arcturus Dinn​

 

[Arcturus Dinn]

"I think the idea is to not burn the place down," he retorted as she slunk away toward the refresher. He shook his head, a goofy smile falling over his expression even after she had left the room. For his part, Arcturus moved toward the kitchen and began pulling items out of the cupboards and the fridge. It was usually pretty well stocked, even though he was no longer on so strict a diet as he had been upon his emergence back into the Galaxy. He wasn't quite so gaunt anymore, he didn't look like he was about to pass out at any second.​

​

Mhm. An improvement.​

​

All things considered what he whipped up was rather tame though delicious. Arcturus never got to experiment in the kitchen, at least not as much as he'd have liked to, far too busy for all of that. He seared off some Shaak steaks, pan roasted a couple of veggies, and threw together a hodgepodge sauce to go with it. The room was fragrant by the time that he was done. Two dishes were set upon the island, and two glasses soon after. Water. Tall and refreshing glasses of water. She needed it.​

​

Ishani Dinn ​

 

[Ishani Dinn]

The degree to which Ishani had more or less moved in with Arc could not be exaggerated. Her assigned student dorm was bare of all but the most essential of items, the empty shelves collecting dust without her. Most of her valuables were on the Leviathan or her own vessel. The rest were scattered around his suite. A hairbrush with long yellow strands clinging to the bristles; a pair of shoes too small for him tucked away in a corner; a small amber-colored stain on the carpet that, try as she might, she could never completely scrub out. Other signs of her cohabitation were present in his fridge, where foods which he never would’ve even thought to buy shared a space with his usual fare.

At any rate, she certainly didn’t have to use his soap; she soon emerged from the ‘fresher clean and smelling faintly of vanilla. She dressed in her own clothes, long since migrated into his closet, and finally returned to the kitchen.

“Smells good.” She stifled a yawn as she peered at what he was cooking. “Y’know, if this whole Sith Lord thing doesn’t work out, you could always become a chef.”

A tall glass of water awaited her on the table. It was empty in about five seconds. The cool drink jolted her brain out of its fog, or at least enough that she had a chance to think straight. Her thoughts lingered on the song he had sung.

“Arc, are you… did you know that song because you’re a Lorrdian?” she asked. Ishani didn’t know a thing about Lorrdians, except that they were more or less human and had a thing for sign language. He’d used sign language at one point during their recent trip to Chaldea—though just thinking about that whole disastrous affair made her cheeks burn. She’d also heard something about them having a distinct smell, which if true was quite possibly the funniest thing she’d heard all week. Yeah, the guy whose species has their own unique scent hooks up with the girl who makes perfumes. Watch out, Arc!

Arcturus Dinn​

 

[Arcturus Dinn]

Sith Lord?​

​

He stuck her with an odd look, then perked one brow in speculation. "Honey, if I live to be a Sith Lord I've done something wrong..." Expression broke into a grin, before he shook his head. Perhaps the joke would not land quite so well as he'd intended for it, but then Arcturus had never claimed to be anything even remotely akin to a comic.​

​

Stepping around the island, he sank into a seat and pulled his own plate closer. Knife and fork acquired, he quickly began to cut up the steak as he pondered her question. In that time she'd already drank down the entire glass of water; to save from either of them standing up, he pushed his own toward her and relinquished it to her ownership. He wasn't that thirsty anyway.​

​

"I don't know how I learned it, but yeah... I'm Lorrdian. Wait, has that never come up before?" A piece of meat hung on the end of his fork, slightly raised as he considered it. Forgotten.​

​

"It must have been something someone taught me, you know, before... Grundark once asked me to 'sing the song of my people' and it just sort of... Came out of its own accord. I don't know how to explain it."​

​

Eyes refocusing, he remembered the piece of meat and bit it off the fork. It gave him a little while longer to consider, since he would never be caught talking with his mouth full.​

​

After swallowing, he glanced over at her again.​

​

"Something wrong, love?" he asked her quietly. "You seem a little faraway."​

​

Then again, maybe she was just tired. That made sense... The forge had a way of wicking away one's strength.​

​

Ishani Dinn ​

 

[Ishani Dinn]

“Please, you’ll live forever if I have anything to say about it.” Her words came out sounding a lot more serious than expected. How this little woman expected to hold any sway over fate was anyone’s guess.

Digging into her dinner, she pushed his water back to him with a telekinetic nudge. He’d been sweating like crazy in the forge too.

"...Wait, has that never come up before?"

“Nope. I guess it doesn’t really matter, it’s just kinda neat to know.” She jerked a thumb at herself. “I’m a quarter Umbaran on my dad’s side, for what it’s worth.” People had called her mother a changeling, though that was most likely just a playful compliment. Chaldeans called anyone too beautiful for their own good a changeling. She smirked. “With how good-looking you are, I had you pegged for a Hapan. But Lorrdians are cool too. Although I didn’t notice the smell, if it’s true that you’re supposed to have one.”

The mention of the name Grundark didn’t ring any bells, but she was intrigued. “Who is this Grundark? He sounds like quite the character, making you sing the song of your people.”

He asked if something was wrong. She looked at him, brow furrowing a little. He loved the colors that made her up, yellow and green, pink and white. She loved his lines, the curve of his mouth, the slope of his nose, the shape of his face. Her eyes traced him, trying to commit it all to memory, already afflicted by a nameless fear that she might forget what he looked like in his absence.

“I was thinking about Chaldea, and how awful it was when I took you there. Not exactly the best introduction to my homeworld.”

Arcturus Dinn​

 

[Arcturus Dinn]

"And what do you have to say about it, Miss Sibwarra?" he inquired, one brow perking as though to goad her on. He pushed the glass back toward her.​

​

"I have a scent?" Was his next query, and in that moment the true level of ignorance he had for his heritage lay forefront on his form. What did he know about them? He knew of their anguish, and apparently he knew one of their songs though he did not know how. Knew how to read others too, Kinetic Communication inherent within him even when he'd barely known how to read or write. Even when he'd been too afraid to speak while in the looming shadow of Darth Maliphant.​

​

Echoes of a past he didn't remember.​

​

A sobering thought.​

​

"Yeah, I can see the Umbaran," he retorted with a nod, before grinning. In truth she didn't have all that much in common, not the hair, not the eyes, but there was that ethereal beauty, the otherworldliness. Maybe he was biased though. After all, she was his beauty.​

​

"You don't know Grundark? He's a Cragmoloid. I swear he's trying to incorporate me into his herd or something... We were participating in a hunt for Velok, me, Grundark, Noelle, and along the way he sought to pass the time. So... We each sang." He shrugged. "It was interesting. Eye opening, really."​

​

She stared at him then with an intensity he felt within his core; in response, Arcturus set down his knife and fork and reached over to take one of her hands in his. Her words had him nodding solemnly.​

​

"If it helps any, it's a better introduction than you'll ever have for my homeworld."​

​

His humour fell flat. He knew it as soon as he said it.​

​

Ishani Dinn ​

 

[Ishani Dinn]

“Well.” She set down her knife and pushed the glass back again, as if it were a game. “They say that the best leaders are the ones who don’t really want the job. The ones who do it reluctantly are more likely to be cautious and fair. I think you could do more than you ever imagined, Arc, if you’d only take the chance.”

Phew, this dinner was getting all deep. Aside from the subject of whether or not Arcturus smelled, that is.

“Yup. All Lorrdians do, supposedly. I thought it was just the forge clinging to you, but there’s more to it than that.” Underneath the scent of smoke and iron, there was something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. “It isn’t bad, it just doesn’t smell like anything else. It’s hard to describe.”

“I’d like to meet him,” she said of Grundark. “Maybe we can both get in on this herd business.” Though she couldn’t help but note the mention of a feminine name, Noelle, she suppressed the insecure urge to ask about her relationship to Arc.

She entwined her fingers with his, their eyes locked. “What’s your homeworld like?”

Arcturus Dinn​

 

[Arcturus Dinn]

"Psht," came his retort, with a roll of his eyes, as she spoke of leadership and the like. "That isn't me, Ishani, Force I'd be bored half to death. Nah, I don't have dreams or aspirations which even remotely match all of that. You know that."​

​

He lifted the glass, took a deep sip, then passed it over to her. "Drink" he told her, a little more firmly than he'd intended. Probably just residual from their time in the forge... Yeah. "I don't need you passing out. Not til you've finished eating at least."​

​

The boy didn't have much of a response to the rest, to his smell, or the Cragmoloid, or any of it. No it wasn't until a question was posed that words tumbled free from him again.​

​

"I... Don't know," he lied with an exhale through his nose, perhaps the only lie he'd ever intentionally told her, as she asked of his homeworld. He did know, at least in some minor capacity, he'd walked through its streets as though wandering through a dream that felt all together out of reach. It had not felt real. It was there he'd been pushed toward the Pomojema... He'd left shortly after that suggestion, in fact. Left and never once looked back. Arcturus held no real attachment to Ession. He didn't want that sort of attachment.​

​

Instead, he glanced at her. She needed something didn't she? Some sort of answer. "Well, I suppose Bastion's the closest thing I've ever had to a homeworld. That's... That's where I first came to Maliphant. And when we moved from the apartment to his estate... Yeah. That... That was home, for me." Was it still?​

​

Arcturus didn't rightly see himself as having a home. Not least because so much had changed since then. Decades had passed since, decades wherein he'd been lost within a time locked world which held him in suspension. Maliphant was not the man he had been before, he was more formidable now, he held such a grip over the Galaxy, such a presence that he'd been lacking back then. Back in simpler times. Did he even still have Harpers' Retreat? Would it still stand there if Arc was to return?​

​

Questions he hadn't known he wanted the answers to.​

​

Ishani Dinn ​

 

[Ishani Dinn]

"That isn't me, Ishani, Force I'd be bored half to death. Nah, I don't have dreams or aspirations which even remotely match all of that. You know that."

“That’s the point though, isn’t it?” she pointed out. “It’s not about dreams or aspirations. It’s about duty, and doing the right thing…”

This was the Chaldean in her talking, not the Sith. She realized that and felt like she shouldn’t have said anything in the first place.

He was a little more forceful with the water this time, leaving no room for play. As exposed as she felt in that moment, the sound of the glass scraping across the table almost made her shudder. “I drank a whole glass already,” she said, trying to gently decline. It was not an order he had given her, she reminded herself. It was an offer. She hadn’t sold her soul to him the moment she first called him Master.

But she knew he was lying to her. It was painfully obvious—he didn’t speak of Bastion with the same level of pain and ambiguity as he had when he first broached the topic of his homeworld, implying it was somehow worse than Chaldea. She wouldn’t push him to talk about something he didn’t want to, but she wished he hadn’t lied. Just “I don’t want to talk about it right now” would’ve been so much better.

“You sound like you want to see it again,” she remarked, letting her eyes slide away from his. She stared down at the table instead.

She didn’t have it in her, when she was exhausted and aching and afraid that someone might have overheard her speak of duty and doing the right thing in a fething Sith Academy, to make a fuss about his dishonesty. But she did have enough of a masochistic streak to bring up something she’d told herself she didn’t care about.

“Who is Noelle?”

Arcturus Dinn​

 

[Arcturus Dinn]

"Maybe," he sighed, before shaking his head, "But then I wouldn't be a Sith Lord, would I?"​

​

There it was plain as day. No taking that back.​

​

She refused the second glass of water as gently as she could, and though he stared at it, and then her, for a moment longer, eventually he relented with a nod. He took back the glass, and drank what remained of it himself. Set it down, and then pushed it away.​

​

Tension lay in the air between them; she knew. He knew she knew. He knew just by looking at her that she'd picked up on the lie. But she wasn't bringing it up. Somehow... Somehow that felt worse than if she had. Arcturus glanced down at his hands.​

​

"Ession." That was all he said at first, one word suspended in the silence he wrought around it. Even saying it felt wrong, it was like he'd said a word in a language he'd never even heard before, much less uttered. "My homeworld. It's Ession. But I don't want to think about it, so please don't ask me to. It's where who I was was born, and it's where who I was died. That's that."​

​

He didn't mean to come across as so.. bristly. But that wasn't a topic he ever wanted to broker. Not if he could help it. Arcturus hadn't even known it was the truth until that fateful day in the Netherworld, when he'd happened upon the Spire of Destiny. Ugh, the memories of what he'd seen atop that tower sent shivers down his spine even now, and for a moment he looked like he might throw up.​

​

Thankfully he didn't.​

​

Her next question didn't help matters, though.​

​

"Noelle?" He seemed almost confused to hear that name out of her mouth. Had he spoken about Noelle? When? He couldn't rightly remember which meant it had to have been in passing. "Oh. Well, she's an Echani I met in the Nether... The first time I was there. Actually, come to think of it, that was when I first met Kal too. They were helping with the search for Noelle's mother, Spencer. I ended up joining them, unearthing her mother from within the claws of the Dreaming Dark itself."​

​

He shuddered at the memory. A lot of shuddering today it would seem.​

​

"I saw her once or twice after, mostly to make sure she was okay. You uh... You don't visit a place like the Dreaming Dark, heck the Nether itself, and come out unscathed in some way. She seemed good, though, so I stopped pressing to see her. That's that, really. Why?"​

​

Arcturus glanced over at the girl, curious yet hopelessly confused as to why she'd even bring it up.​

​

Ishani Dinn ​

 

[Ishani Dinn]

“Then forget I said anything.” It was soft, a gentle dismissal of the subject of Sith Lords and his future. Let it lie.

There were better things to be.

He must’ve been able to tell that she’d picked up on his deception, because he abruptly coughed up the truth. Her eyebrows rose. “Ession?” She knew more about that world than she did about Lorrdians. After the Sith attacked the planet, scourging it and salting the earth, there had been a massive influx of Essionian refugees. Quite a few had made their way to Chaldea, where they either assimilated or lived on their own private reserves.

It didn’t take much to fit the rest of the pieces together. A child of Ession, taken by the Sith and enslaved.

“Oh Arc,” she whispered. There were no words that could be said in the face of something like that. Not even an apology would be anywhere near enough to quell the echoes of such an atrocity.

She listened to the story about him, Noelle, and Kal in the Netherworld, but didn’t really process the tale. It paled next to the revelation she’d already had. She was thinking of home, of her mother and father and brother. All of that, taken away when he was much, much younger than she was now…

Her response to his question was delayed, snapping her out of a bittersweet reverie. “Oh, uh… just making sure.” An awkward smile accompanied her answer. Ha ha, I’m pointlessly jealous of every other female in your life, remember? Funny. “Just curious, I guess. I like to learn new things about you.” That much was true, at least. “I want to know everything about you.” That sounded a little bit crazy, but okay.

Cheeks flushed, she looked at the remains of her meal. She’d finished most of it. Standing up, she picked up her plate and went to put it in the sink.

Arcturus Dinn​

 

[Arcturus Dinn]

Ishani was distracted, understandably so, and it left him with little more to add at the end. No more questions came forth from it, she'd simply wanted to know she said. But then why was she so lost to her thoughts?​

​

He had a feeling it had something to do with the way in which she'd uttered his name following the revelation about Ession.​

​

Oh... So she knew about Ession then?​

​

Arcturus, too, was silent after that. Too silent even. When she rose to clear off her plate he did similar, despite the fact that he had a lot more left on his than she had. Barely touched in truth, save for a few slithers of meat. Somehow the thought of eating it wasn't pleasant.​

​

More silence.​

​

Then he glanced at her, glanced away, and spoke.​

​

"You mustn't think any differently of Maliphant," he finally whispered, seeking some sort of spot on the wall to stare at. "He wasn't responsible. He came after... Years after... He took those chains and he broke them. Okay?"​

​

At least, he'd facilitated Arcturus' attempts at breaking them until the boy had managed. No longer Slave, now a Sith in his own right. He owed much and more to the man. The only Father he could ever recall having. For that's what they had been back at Harpers' Retreat... They'd been a family.​

​

Now everything was so messy and complicated, so much bigger than any one of them.​

​

Sorrow washed over him, mourning that loss.​

​

"Come on," he finally stated, and when he looked up at her his face was a picture of apathy, "Let's get you to bed, sleepy head."​

​

Ishani Dinn ​

 

[Ishani Dinn]

The narrow space surrounding the sink inevitably meant they were standing close together, him somewhere behind her, maybe a little off to the side. If she could, she’d lean back against him, her head dipping back and eyes closed as he spoke.

“I wasn’t even thinking about Maliphant,” she murmured. “Just you. Little-little Arc. A baby, going through that.” She swallowed and took a deep breath, her chest rising and falling. “I don’t want to pity you or anything, but… if I love you, I must also love the child that you were.” Hopefully that made sense.

She didn’t protest his suggestion that they go to bed. In truth, all she wanted now was to lie down, cover up in soft sheets and warm blankets, hold him and feel him holding her. She wanted to wake up in his arms. That was all she wanted, all she might ever truly want, it seemed.

Plus, they had stuff to do tomorrow. Like runes and inscriptions on swords, and all that. Yeah. Sleep makes the time go faster...

Arcturus Dinn​

 

[Arcturus Dinn]

He was about to lead her back to the bedroom when she said it.​

​

Little-Little Arc.​

​

The words tore through him in that moment, a realization he'd never allowed himself to have, and it was as though the room around him, the world, shattered. He could feel the weight of her as she leaned against him, but it didn't fully compute within his mind. His chest twisted uncomfortably, and carefully, slowly enough that she could adjust to the lack of support, he sank down to a crouch. Elbows were propped atop knees, head set into his hands.​

​

"Feth," he breathed. Was he breathing? Didn't feel like he was breathing. ​

​

How much did she know? How much had she been told about what had happened back then? How old had he even been? He couldn't remember, couldn't recall, not a single lick of it lingered within his memory. He remembered snippets of what came after, of life between it and Maliphant, of the horrors he'd been subjected to. Blocked most of it out, but every now and then in the darkest hours, when all was quiet, he'd lay there remembering some experiment or another.​

​

Small.​

​

He'd been small.​

​

Too, incomprehensibly small.​

​

Didn't want to talk about it. Those were his words, not hers. That's what he'd asked for. His body, however, had taken it as something of a dare.​

​

Sleep. He wanted to sleep. Wanted her to sleep. He tried to shake himself from the state, push it all back down into the neat little parcels he'd packaged it all up into. Forced himself back to his feet, one hand rising to use the island as leverage. He didn't say anything though as he headed toward the bedroom. His plate was sort of left somewhere on the countertop, long since forgotten, he didn't even kick off his shoes, or turn out the light, as he was so often such a stickler about.​

​

He just entered the bedroom.​

​

Ishani Dinn ​

 

[Ishani Dinn]

The shockwave of his emotions startled her out of her sleepwalking state. She opened her eyes and stood upright just as he was no longer there to support her. For a moment it seemed like he had vanished, before she felt him in the bedroom.

I shouldn’t have said anything, she thought as she stumbled after him. I shouldn’t have brought it up. I shouldn’t have pried, I shouldn’t have asked, I shouldn’t have even opened my mouth…

This had happened before, not too long ago. Something like it. Sudden tears at something she’d said. But that had been different, that had been because she’d given him something back, some piece of humanity that had been ripped from him. This was a black well of buried despair she’d dug up and kicked the seal off of. She’d fixed it the last time by loving him, loving him until he screamed and came apart in her arms. Now he was screaming and coming apart but he was not in her arms, he was out there in the cold somewhere, lost to the storm, reaping the dredged-up pain she’d sown.

The lights were still on, but she felt like she was feeling around blindly in the dark. Trying to find him, trying to bring him back.

“Arcturus,” she said, thinking she would have to shout over the roar of the whirlwind, but it came out as just a whisper.

There were only so many places to hide in a single room. If he was on the bed, she would join him there. If he was on the floor, she’d crawl to him. In the closet or the ‘fresher, she’d ask to come in, or wait outside until he came out. However long it took, no matter how much she wanted to rest, she was not leaving him. Not like this.

Arcturus Dinn​

 

[Arcturus Dinn]

Arcturus was... Sat, in one of the corners of the room, on the floor. The floor had always been of comfort to him, always a stable place he could sit or sleep or rely on, and over the years wherein he'd been allowed to exhale, where he could find comfort elsewhere, he'd forgotten that much. Cushy chairs and beds, sofas, blankets. In that moment he wanted none of it.​

​

But nor was he actively trying to hide.​

​

And then he wasn't alone in the room, nor on the ground, Ishani was sat before him and his eyes focused back to reality to look upon her. "No more" he whispered, folding in on himself, "Please. Leave it where it is... Leave it in the past."​

​

He didn't need to remember. Didn't want to remember. Perhaps that's all it had been all along, perhaps some nefarious Sith hadn't even pried it from within his mind. Perhaps, just perhaps, Arcturus had done all of this to himself.​

​

If he had he couldn't remember doing it.​

​

Nor did he want to know if he had.​

​

Ishani Dinn ​

 

[Ishani Dinn]

When she found him huddled in the corner, like a frightened child, she was afraid his mind was broken. It was an absurd idea, but she wasn’t in the best state of mind herself at the moment.

She didn’t know what to do. All she wanted to do was help him, and she didn’t know how. He seemed so fragile, so vulnerable.

Finally, she said, “Okay. It’s okay.” She took his hand in hers, if he’d let her touch him. “Let’s just go to bed. Go to sleep.”

She started to reach out as if to take off his clothes, but something in her thought better of it. Gruesome thoughts. He didn’t seem to be mentally completely in the present, after all. Might not understand her intentions. Might even confuse her with somebody else. So she just took off his shoes for him.

“Do you want me to turn off the lights?” Force, she really didn’t like the idea of sleeping on the floor, but if he didn’t get up…

Arcturus Dinn​

 

[Arcturus Dinn]

Okay?​

​

Okay. Good... No more talks of that place. He could deal with that, right? Right... Yeah... He breathed, and slowly exhaled. Ishani took his hand, and for a moment he just stared at it. She wanted them to go to bed. She seemed timid, afraid of upsetting him.​

​

Arcturus swallowed back a lump in his throat. Then he forced himself up off the floor. Okay... No more Ession. Banned word. He could deal with that. She'd taken off his shoes, he pulled off any outer layers that were too cumbersome on his way to the bed. He was wearing more than he usually would have when he got beneath the sheets though. Which wasn't really saying much, since he only really slept in his underwear. Too hot otherwise.​

​

Tonight the heat wouldn't bother him.​

​

"Please" he responded, when she asked if he wanted the lights out. Then he lay down, and curled back into a ball beneath the sheets. Force, this was all so dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb. He repeated the word over and over in his mind for a few moments more, before he turned toward her.​

​

"I'm sorry, Ish," he whispered, "I was supposed to bring you to bed, wasn't I?" Some of the haze was gone. Maybe all he'd needed was her reassurance. She'd given it, in a sense, with her little okays. Yeah... He shifted back the comforter so she didn't have to faff around with it once the lights were out, and waited for her to get into her side of the bed.​

​

Her side. Their bed. That thought brought more comfort than words could. He wasn't alone...​

​

Ishani Dinn ​

 

[Ishani Dinn]

The wave of relief she felt when he got to his feet was enough to stagger her. She leaned against the wall, afraid she would collapse otherwise. Arcturus was back, and what’s more he seemed embarrassed about the whole episode. She was just glad he was all right.

The lights went off. His clothes came off. She practically flung herself into bed, as if nothing was wrong and they were just a couple of idiots in love again.

“Don’t apologize, you goof,” she said, settling in beside him and caressing his cheek. “You’re mine now. You’re mine, and I’m yours. And I need you… as much as you need me… whenever you need me… I’m right here…”

Her punch-drunk babbling was probably unnecessary, but it tumbled out of her just the same, motivated by a lingering need to reassure him. To possess him, take him back from the ghosts of the past that had nearly claimed him.

Her body coiled around his, and then she was asleep.

Arcturus Dinn​