While You Were Sleeping

[Kaden Farr]

The war was over. Justice had been served. Kaden did not feel happy.

Kaden had built up in his mind that once the war was over he would feel happy, everything would be okay, but it wasn’t. His best friend, [member="Yasha Mantis"], had been in a Bacta Tank for the past couple of days. The girl who had displayed the utmost ferocity had looked so helpless in the tank. Kaden couldn’t simply let that image go from his mind. He tried to push it out, but he couldn’t. Had it not been for her, he would have no one to call family now.

He was going to medical ward to visit her again. The medics had told him she was going to be getting out of the tank today.

His left arm was in a sling. Yasha had not been the only one hurt, but his injury had not been life threatening. The bacta would have worked, but the teenager had ripped the wound open by driving his unit t safety and lifting Yasha when he needed to. [member="Briika Tor-Munin"] had patched him up well, well enough that Kaden didn’t need the sling after today.

When Kaden arrived at the medical ward, Yasha was no longer in the tank. She was not yet awake though, so he was taken to the recovery room where Yasha was being allowed to wake up. Kaden had a knife with him. It was a get well gift for the young wolf. He liked her, and Kaden knew it was more than the typical like one could have for a person. Kaden didn’t understand it, but he didn’t fight it either.

Kaden was hoping when Yasha woke up, that he would be happy again.

 

[Yasha Cadera]

Blood loss did funny things to the hell child. As the bacta wrapped around her, Yasha's only thought was 'why hasn't Mama found me yet?'.





Being in bacta felt like swimming in the blood plain's rivers and lakes. She bucked and fought the unconscious state the medics attempted to keep her in, once and twice her fists hitting the glass. As her body knit together, images wrestled in her mind. [member="Kaden Farr"] pressing his forehead into hers. [member="Malika Mantis"] turning into a bear. The snap crackle of [member="Kal Ordo"]'s bullet snapping her ribs. The absence of her father by her side.





[member="Preliat Mantis"]' absence hurt more than the bullet, which punctured her lung.





Her body was washed, dressed in scrubs, swathed in blankets. There was a source of body heat to her side. As she rose from the unconscious stream, the little girl's hope was that her father found her. He'd come back and sat beside her to watch his daughter wake up.





He was there. He had to be there... where else would a father be, when his child rose from near death? She struggled to wake up, eyes fluttering open and then shutting against the light above her.





"Ow... Daddy..." Yasha whimpered, her left forearm casting over her eyes. "Daddy the lights."





But her father wasn't there. She blinked under the shadow of her arm and saw Kaden. Her lungs caught. "Kade?"





Preliat wasn't there. Another male was, Kaden watched her wake up. Yasha held back a sob, her father hadn't come. He'd put his forehead against hers, like c'yares before a battle... and she'd never been as confused at what it meant, or more embarrassed that he heard her say she was scared.





"Kaden..." She pushed slowly off the bed, reaching for her best friend.

 

[Kaden Farr]

Kaden had been rubbing his temples when Yasha began to stir. He really had no sense of time, or how much of it had passed. The teenager didn't care either. All he knew was that he was going to be there when she openned her eyes. Speaking of her eyes... Kaden started looking around for her goggles. [member="Yasha Mantis"] couldn't see without them, and they didn't seem to be anywhere.

He paged a nurse and asked them for the goggles she had been wearing when she had been brought it.

There was a temptation to open her eyelids so he could say that he'd seen them, what they looked like. Kaden was curious. As she lay there with her eyes closed, still stirring, he finally was able to take in what she looked like without the goggles covering near half her face. She was pretty, but Kaden wasn't going to say it. He knew better. Their culture didn't accept beauty as a standard for attraction, not above combat prowess. Yasha was certainly the most capable of the young women her age, and even more so than most of the young men. Kaden knew that he could do no better than the young wolf if their future ever went in that direction.

Kaden heared her call out for her father. Where was he!?

Her arm was covering her eyes. She recognized it was him and suddenly reached out for him. It was slightly awkward knowing that she wanted her father there, but he did not feel as though she was settling for Kaden. If anything Preliat's absence made the situation awkward to start with. He didn't care though, and moved to embrace her with his good arm. His other was still in the sling, just for one more day. Kaden had been afraid he was going to lose her, and he held her as tight as he dared try in that moment. Somewhere during their embrace the nurse returned with the goggles and set the down. Once Yasha was laying on her back again, Kaden grabbed them and put them on on her so she could open her eyes.

"You scared me..." he admitted, and didn't care that he was supposed to be brave. "When you passed out... Briika arrived just in time."

Kaden sat back in the chair he had been occupying. The battle flashed in his mind again. Yasha being scared. His forehead pressing to hers to whisper back to her that he was too. They had bonded in that moment, in a way that Kaden didn't understand. Perhpas the bond had always been there. Things felt different between them because of what he had done though. She was still his best friend, but Kaden knew what he had done. Pressing his forehead to Yasha's was something adult lovers did before a battle, or after one.

"The doctor says you might have a really cool scar or two... said it depends on how well the bacta immersion takes. I'll have one too," Kade lifted up the arm in the sling. "The blaster bolt made a nice burn the bacta couldn't stitch... and I tore the wound open even after that bacta shot.... carrying you onto the medivac after you passed out.... I've been right here since.... except for when Si'buir said I had to be home."

 

[Yasha Cadera]

# Post
Once again [member="Preliat Mantis"] missed a moment in his daughter’s life, and the girl was beginning to lose the hope reminding her of his love. As she curled in [member="Kaden Farr"]’s arms, Yasha nuzzled in, feeling the beat of his heart through his skin.

“Mama kept calling me home. Saying Eli missed me. She named my brother, they... they kept calling me back home to the Netherworld.” Yasha has been close enough to death for the veil to part, and her mother call to the girl. She positioned the goggles on her nose, then pointed to the lights in the private room Ra Vizsla’s Ward was given.

“Can you turn the lights down, please? Then I can take these off.” Yasha’s voice was the soft timbre she used at home, when her father and her talked. A familial sound for a girl who opened to Kaden’s presence at her heart’s door. In the four years he’d known her, Yasha never took the goggles off. They were her security, the HUD a constant stream of threat assessment and interference with the light. As [member="Mia Monroe"] was gone, so too was the constant panic of Yasha’s young life. She could breathe without the spectre of her mother’s unavenged death hanging off her shadow. Yasha could look into Kaden’s eyes, and see nothing but the boy.

“I didn’t want to go. I can’t leave Daddy or Ra or... you. I kept breathing cause I didn’t want to go back home, where I’d only have mama. I want to be here, with you and Daddy and Uncle Silas and Ra. I wouldn’t have hurt so much if we hadn’t had that building on top of us yesterday... is it yesterday? How many days have I been out, Kaden? How many days have you been waiting for me to wake up? Is [member="Narir Tracyn"] okay? Did... did Daddy come to see me?”

A child’s dwindling hope wrapped in a grieving man. Yasha grunted softly as she nudged herself up, struggling with the pillow so she could sit up instead of lie down in bed. “Kade? You carried me? I think... I think your scar is going to be pretty cool. Battle damage. To prove that we made it.”

 

[Kaden Farr]

There some of the questions Yasha asked he did not want to answer. Kaden did not know how to break it to her that he had not seen her father come to visit. That did not mean she hadn't simply that Kaden hadn't seen him. He quietly listened to her. Her words only served to scare him at first, knowing that if her mother had been calling to her the veil separating life from the netherworld had been torn once more. There had been enough separation at least to allow her to cross over the threshold had she wanted to.

A smile etched across his face when Yasha mentioned he was one reason she could not leave. He stood to dim the lights, they were near off, but gave just enough light that Kaden could still see. He was eager to talk with her while her goggles were off.

"You have been in the tank for three days," Kaden said as he settled back into the chair. What he really wanted to do was climb into the bed with her and hold her close, but she was still being monitored. Kaden feared interfering with the equipment. "Narir is good. He helped the man who saved us from the ones chasing us. From what I know your father went with Ra to secure Mia. I am sure they both know you are here, but I haven't been here every moment of everyday to know who else has been here. Si'buir insisted I was not too hurt to do my chores."

Kaden chuckled. He certainly had tried to get out of them. Silas had found work which did not involved the heavy lifting Kaden had been told to avoid for the past couple of days.

"Our scars will be a fun story to tell someday. For now... they are too much of a reminder of what this war has cost us."

FORGET IT! Kaden was not staying in his seat. He moved from the chair to the bed and sat on the edge and put a hand on hers. He was still fighting the urge to put his forehead on hers again, but he was not going to keep a distance between them. They had known each other for four years, and in that time they had become close, too close for Kaden to stay in a chair.

"As soon as you are stable and fully awake they are letting me take you home. Your time for fighting is done for now."

[member="Yasha Mantis"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

“Three days.” No apparent [member="Preliat Mantis"], Ra had been so wounded, her Mand’alor. Wounded in defence of Manda’yaim and of the smallest warriors. Children who shouldn’t have had to fight. Now that the panic of the war was concluded, Yasha looked to the walls for a sign from the Manda, something which told her what life held for one who finished fighting. “Is Ra okay? I was terrified he was going to die. Is he better? Do you think he’ll forgive me for getting him hurt? Do you... t-think breaking into the spaceport and shutting down the shields and guns was enough t-to say sorry? How did Monroe die? Did you see it? She’s gone, really gone?”

The monster who killed her mother, dead. Yasha hoped [member="Mia Monroe"] landed in the Netherworld. She hoped Monroe ended up finding her Mama to get killed all over again.

“Done? I don’t know what that means.” Yasha pressed her lips together, gingerly shuffling aside on the bed to give [member="Kaden Farr"] some room.

“What do we do now?” Yasha remained uncertain with her place, if the fighting was over, what would she do? What would Daddy do? Uncle Silas and Kaden? Deep hazel eyes drifted down to watch Kaden’s skin on her hand. Her eyebrow quirked up, face more animated and entrapped in the wonderment of the galaxy around her than she’d ever been with her mask. Without the goggles, Yasha was a pretty young girl of twelve, almond shaped eyes opened wide and lips poured open as she let her gaze move from Kaden’s hand to his face.

“I can get up. I’m not too hurt, I can. I can get up. I’m not weak, I’m not broken this war didn’t cost me my fighting. I.. I can... I...” Yasha’s lips pressed together, the stalwart face Kaden knew. Yet, her eyes, expressive and deep, flashed with discomfort. She managed only to shift and breathe a timid grunt as her shoulder touched on Kaden’s chest. He’d grown taller since they met. Lanky, thin like a sapling. Yasha continued to travel through growing pains, as finally her body caught up to the other girls, and surpassed the humans. Small for an Epicanthix, Yasha was well on her way toward 6’0” and her life of hardship showed through the muscles coiled under her skin in the hospital scrubs she wore. Wincing with her eyes, she ended up putting her cheek on his shoulder, weaving her arm around her best friend’s chest for a hug.

“Home. Do I have one, yet? Is daddy coming? Shouldn’t we wait for Daddy?” Her shoulder shuddered, eye blinking as unbidden tears started crawling down her face. She sniffled and rubbed her eyes on her left forearm. Aditya and Eli Mantis were avenged. [member="Preliat Mantis"] saw to it. [member="Ra Vizsla"] saw to it that all Manda’yaim was avenged. In the safety of the medic centre, hemmed in by her best friend, Yasha Mantis finally broke down for the first time in four years, and cried.

 

[Kaden Farr]

Kaden didn't know what to tell Yasha about her father at all, other than what he had said. Preliat had went with Ra and Mia. Knowing the amount of damage Ra had taken it would not be of any surprise to learn Preliat was still with Ra. Judgement would came, and she had paid for her crimes. Those the two had sought to avenge had been, even if their own hands had not brought it about. They had helped though, and that was what mattered.

He let Yasha ask her questions, and adjusted as she nuzzled into him. It was an odd feeling to think nothing in the world could feel more right than this. Their bond was a genuine one, pure, though certainly not innocent. The two had lost much of their innocence because of this war, and had seen far more death and destruction than most Mando'ade their respective ages. They were warriors still trapped in the changing bodies of the young. Their friendship had seen much, and been tested by the strain of conflict. They would survive no matter what.

Yasha's questions were his own. Without the war to define them, the fighting, what would they do? Who were they? Kaden didn't really know how to answer that question, but he tried.

"The fighting is done for now. You have a father that needs you to fight for him, an uncle that needs a good woman... Manda knows he needs a good woman, and then there is us... Narir... We train. We prepare. We will be ready for when the time to fight comes again. We are Mando'ade. You have verd'goten to prepare for too."

His answer wasn't the most coherent. Kaden realized after it left his mouth all that needed to be said was that they would always be warriors.

"Of course you have a home," Kaden said incredulously, "You have a'liit, therefore you have a home, and always will."

Kaden wrapped his arm around her and held her. She wanted to wait for Preliat, but Kaden was not sure he was coming. Yasha wanted him to, but in four years Kaden had learned one thing about the man... he was an enigma. The man loved his daughter, but he was inconsistent at best.

"We can wait for him at home. Ra was hurt, and your father was with him when he took Mia. If I had to venture a guess he will personally ensure the vengeance we have been seeking was not in vain. He owes Ra for taking you in."

[member="Yasha Mantis"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

The face of a warrior fell in a slide of relegation. Her father wasn’t coming. Did he know where his daughter was? Had anyone thought to tell him, had he cared to listen?

Yasha sobbed in [member="Kaden Farr"]’s embrace, this just one more parting in the girl’s life. The faith of familial love dissipated, and Yasha was left with nothing but Kaden’s affirmation that he, Silas and now Milika were her aliit. Shifting to relax her back against his chest, Yasha tilted to the side to put her head on his shoulder. Doleful brown eyes searched his cheeks and chin. They lost their childish curves over the years, between age and experience. He was veering towards the chiseled features of an attractive man, something Yasha never noticed through their battles together.

Now, in the dim hush of the medic unit room, Yasha’s eyes were opened. He’d called her Yash’ika, he’d touched her forehead with his. He’d carried her to safety, injured himself, and stayed by her side. Sniffing and wiping her eyes, Yasha cuddled up in his lap, her cheek on his shoulder.

“I want to go home. Take me home, Kade... I want to see how Monroe died and I want to go home... will you... will you stay with me, please? I don’t want to be alone.” While violence was as simple as breathing for the hell child, true intrinsic connection left her innocent and naive. Her stomach fluttered as she held in Kaden’s arm, was there a medical reason? Was she about to die!? The flutter descended to a warm and temperate delight as she rested in his embrace.

“Uncle [member="Silas Mantis"] needs [member="Lyanie Quez"]. She’s the best woman I know and she’d love him lots. Fly around and do engineering... now that you’re old enough, will you start looking for a good woman?” An innocent question. Yasha didn’t see herself as innocent or perhaps she did. She eased off his lap and swung one leg at a time over the side of the bed, breathing heavily as the room spun.

“My clothes got messed up... these are all I got.” She mumbled, swaying. Yasha’s body started to fall to the side. Grunting, She splayed out her hands and stopped her fall. “Help.”

 

[Kaden Farr]

It broke Kaden a little inside to tell Yasha that her father wasn't likely to come and get her. He hurt because she hurt. Kaden had never been one to understand empathy or even be good with giving it, but things were different with Yasha. Kaden had been there since they had met, and had lived through the hurt of the past four years. They shared the same sense of loss that could devestate young life and leave permanent scars. She kept shifting, but Kaden didn't know what to do. There was a bit of awkward silence between them as Yasha drew her own conclusion based on what Kaden had said.

Suddenly what she wanted seemed to shift. There was still a desperation there which was born from the need to have her father present. She also wanted to see Mia, but she needed to stay for now.

"I will stay. As long as you have me around you're never going to be alone."

Her true fear, lonliness.

"Lyanie would be good for him," Kaden replied unsure how to even begin to answer the question which had followed it.

Would Kaden look for a good woman now that he was past his verd'goten? He was only fourteen. Even though he was an adult by the standards of his people there were still a few more years before a man married. It would be near eighteen before he would make a riduurok. His mind was not thinking about it at all, but now that Yasha had mentioned it, he just looked at her.

"I still have time... I would have nothing to offer anyone now anyway. I need a job, a home, a way to provide..."

Kaden would have continued, but Yasha was trying to get off the bed. She wasn't supposed to be getting up until the anesthesia was out of her system. Her legs needed their strength, and she needed her equilibrium. She started to fall, and Kaden reached to grab hold of her. She fell before he could reach her, but her arms braced the fall. He pulled her close to him, helping her back up.

"Yasha, we can't go until the anesthesia wears off entirely. As soon as it does I promise I will take you to see what Ra did with Mia and then we will go home."

Kaden smirked.

"You will like what Ra did to her."

[member="Yasha Mantis"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

Yasha felt the concussive force of [member="Kaden Farr"]’s silence. Lifted back to the bed, she spilled over, her back loosely against his chest. Her head swam in a gaseous atmosphere of its own, medication and recuperation an unfamiliar mix. Curled into Kaden’s side, she wove both arms around his uninjured arm and swooned into his chest. Her eyes shut tight as she waited for gravity and equilibrium to return.

“You’re going to find her someday... a good Mando’ad. I hope she lets us stay friends.” Yasha kept her eyes shut as she cuddled into Kaden’s arm, as innocent to his affections as a bird was to the sea.

“You have a job. You’re Mando’ad. You can fight, Papa Ra has raids coming I know it. I know you got time but... don’t think you’re all unworthy or such. You’re great. My best friend. Gut any girl who thinks you ain’t great.” Yasha drifted off for a drawn out moment, clinging to Kaden’s side as her body gave in to the anaesthetic still pushing through her veins.

Her fingers slid off his arm, head on his chest until some minutes later Yasha woke up.

“Kade? Can we go home now? Why’d you keldabe kiss me? Were you trying to make me feel better about not dying? I liked it...” Yasha sat back, steadying herself and fixing her unbound hair. “I’m ready. Promise. I won’t fall down.”

She pushed to the side, putting her feet into her boots and locking them on. “I’m cold... I don’t have a jacket anymore.”

 

[Kaden Farr]

Kaden was going to have to tell Yasha about this moment if she didn’t remember it later. She would get a laugh and be completely embarrassed about her behavior. It would be great fodder to tease her with later. The fact she threatened to gut any girl that didn’t think he was good enough made him chuckle. He would have replied but she fell asleep on his chest for a moment.

Kaden simply smiled and held. While she was out his whispered under his breath.

”I’m pretty sure she already thinks I’m great,” his voice trailed off as she started to come to.

The next question out her mouth put him on the spot. She liked it? That made him blush. Yasha was groggy, but she was starting to come to. She wanted to leave, and he just nodded. Kaden grabbed a blanket from the bed. The hospital would not miss it. He wrapped it around Yasha. ”I have a jacket for you at home, you’re about grown into it I think.”

He let her use him for balance, and decided he couldn’t ignore the question.

”I was scared Yasha. I told you I was. Didn’t want to lose you too. I.... I care for you.”

Kaden led Yasha out of the room. He was taking her to see Mia first.

[member="Yasha Mantis"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

“You... you do?” In this one last moment before she returned to her electronic world of escape routes and threat assessments in her HUD, Yasha was a girl on the cusp. A child in mid span of her growing years, one cycle around the sun from Mando’ad adult.

Pale cheeks took a hue reminiscent of the Panathan roses Mama grew in their garden on the now charred Mantis Estate. In her innocent and recovering state, the youngest Mantis huddled in the blanket [member="Kaden Farr"] commandeered.

“You’re right, Kade. I do think you’re pretty great... and I wouldn’t worry much about providing... Mama left me her companies and her ship. I’m a Panathan and Atrisian Noble the minute I turn 19.” Yasha’s face flushed again. How close did Yasha live to a violent wakefulness? If even in a swoon she listened, heard? Was the girl ever completely off guard, completely vulnerable? Pushing up on her tip toes, Yasha put her forehead to Kaden’s and clung to his shoulders with shivering, yet waking hands. She took the time to breathe, to take in the scent of him, her Kaden. She wobbled back down to her heels, and searched the room for her bag and gauntlets.

“Can you carry these for me, please?” Yasha asked, another small moment of faith from the girl who refused to put her weapons back on her body. To allow Kaden to carry her gauntlets, her prizes was to trust him with her safety, her strength. Kaden said the war was over. He defended her, kept a level head, carried her to safety. He could carry a bag in peace time. Putting her shoulder against his, Yasha walked out of the room and put her goggles back on. The stern and cold killer child returned, near overwhelmed by threat assessments and a life of statistical data, maps, essential calculations her mother thought she needed to survive.

“You got me a jacket? Really? That’s so cool! Thanks Kade!”

Making her way through the hospital was a lesson in the wounded, a visual diagram of healing Mandalorians. The further they made it, the closer to Kaden Yasha got, until the brisk Cold Iron air brushed across her cheeks and through the thin fabric of her scrubs.

A shadow swung from side to side above them. Yasha’s goggles faced it, seeing the swaying corpse and it’s battle damage. Monroe’s skin turned blue, body frozen in the cold.

Yasha stared from the other side, watching the breeze pick up around the corpse. “Mama and I used to do that to people who betrayed us. In the Netherworld. Kade? I remember Ra. From Hell. He was there, tied to something. I remember how loud he screamed. That’s why I like him so much. Reminds me of escaping home... guess Home is Mandalore, now. With you and Uncle Silas and Daddy and Ra. I hope Mia gets eaten over and over by terror birds. I hope she drowns in one of the Blood rivers. I get that Daddy’s afraid of me. Don’t you be afraid of me too, okay? I don’t want to be the hell child around you. Just Yash’ika. When we get home, can we tell Auntie [member="Malika Mantis"] where we are? She’s got the smell of death on her... I think her family is dead... our family. You’re a Mantis now. Always.”

The moments where Yasha shares of her time in the Netherworld were few. She learned to never mention it, keep it hidden and safe. Locked away. But Kaden put his forehead to hers, told her he cared and was scared of losing her.

“I wasn’t scared for me, Kade. I was scared Daddy, Ra, Uncle Silas and you needed me. I was scared I’d see you in Hell. Take me home, Kade.” Yasha our her head on Kaden’a shoulder, cuddling into his side for warmth. The frozen pendulum above them became a sepulchre of the war won, the final monument of their parents about to be burned.

 

[Kaden Farr]

Kaden nodded. Yasha had been a bit too unobserving to see all the signs, and Kaden had been too confused to say anything. However when the suggestion of finding someone that was not her came up, the young man could not imagine that he would find anyone more suited than her. It was a moment they would come back to in years past and wonder, but Kaden had already made his decision of sorts. There was no one else.

He shrugged at her comment about being a noble. That really meant nothing to him. Kaden was still going to work and find something to do with his hands. He was Mando’ad and nothing would change that. Kaden would work, and when called upon, Kaden would fight. Yasha was the same. This war was over, but the next call to battle she would gear up and fight.

They stopped briefly as Yasha put her forehead on his. The moment lasted longer than the rushed moment of battle. Yasha’s life no longer hung in the balance, and it seemed the affection he had showed her was being returned. Naturally he was going to carry her bag and gauntlets, though he knew this meant her goggles would be staying on for some time. She did want to see the body though, Kaden had promised.

”Remind me never to make you mad,” he said pointing to the body of the Liberator. If that’s how people were dealt with by those he had been in the netherworld, Kaden knew what his undying loyalty gained him. Ra had made a demonstration of what betrayal would cost a person, and Kaden would never forget this lesson. Yasha knew what this mean even moreso than Kaden. Yet neither of them flinched at the sight.

”I don’t get afraid around you. We have hunted together, killed together, and survived this vastly conflict together. Anyone who has us for enemies are the ones who should be afraid. The echoy’la soluse have proven they should be feared.”

Kaden thought about Malika for a moment. She had been the bear. Kaden did not smell death on people the way Yasha did. Her time in the netherworld gave her an insight he did not possess. Malika was family, they would help her. Kaden was family. He knew it before Yasha said a word. Kaden was a Mantis, and Silas was his father. He smiled at the thought.

”You are always concerned about everyone else, Yash’ika. That’s why I had to be scared for you. Someone has to look out for you...”

They moved away from the body as Kaden led them toward where the Mantis’ were staying until they could rebuild their homes. The jacket he had for her wasn’t one he had gotten for her per se, but one she could have. The cold wind blew, so the sooner they found it the better. Kaden held Yasha close to help her stay warm as the anesthesia was finally working itself out of her system.

”It’s not new... the jacket. The one I had when we met. I just never got rid of it,” he said as they moved to the other side of the palace.

[member="Yasha Mantis"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

He was a Mantis.
He would always be a Mantis, her Mantis.

As they watched the Liberator hang in chains, Yasha set her chin in a grim line. “No, you don’t want to see me mad. Stay by me, be in this together with me, and you’ll never have to see what I do to people who hurt what’s mine.”

Curled into his side, Yasha hugged into the blanket and put her head on his shoulder. [member="Kaden Farr"] watched her, through this war, throw herself at adults in armour, stab her way through dozens of men, women and encampments without a single pause. They were in the way of her family’s safety. They had to die. Feeling naked without her gear and bag, she nuzzled against Kaden now that she knew she could.

There was a click in her head, a momentary flash where the girl noticed how long-term Kaden was thinking. She swayed as she watched the swing, the Echoy’la Soluse would become the secret force behind Ra’s throne. Whatever battle, the three of them would overcome it.

“The only thing that scares me is being alone again… I keep feeling this tug on the back of my neck. I don’t want to belong in the Netherworld anymore, Kade. No more.” The seconds ticked down from one half to the next in Yasha’s young life. After the Civil War was over, Yasha had been on Mandalore longer than she’d been in the Netherworld. Long may she reign away from her formative and hellacious home.

“Thanks for being scared for me… looking out for me. I need it… just like you need someone to kill the enemies who try and sneak up behind you.” Yasha looked onward, goggles masking the glint in her eye. “It hurt. That last kill, I thought I was going to die. Made me mad.”

On the other side of the palace compound, Ra gave his Ward and her clan housing beside the Mand’alor’s. Yasha heard whispers of stims and her father, whispers of a man too drunk or too wasted to nurture his own young. Yasha kept walking in the snow until they reached the small pre-fab temporary house. Preliat was nowhere to be found. Yasha smelled the stench of opened bottles, and kicked off her boots to curl up on the couch with a grunt.

“You kept that? Good. ‘Cause I liked that jacket, it looked good on you… not that I was looking at what you looked like in your jacket or anything but… but… I like it.” Yasha bit her lip, sliding off her goggles as the illumination strips dimmed to a level she could handle. She tried not to blush, her shoulder rising up in a shrug as she gulped. “It’s not like I like looking at clothes or… I don’t! I… I don’t.”

The truth was ever present in Yasha’s data pad. Fashion spreads from Coruscant, Naboo and Atrisia resided in tandem with military strategy, Mando’a and her copious homework from Ra. Every time one of the men in her life came near her data pad, she’d flip the screen, only forgetting once in a while. Pulling one foot then the other up onto the couch, Yasha tried to huddle up and couldn’t get comfortable. She struggled with the pillow behind her back, cuddled up in the blanket Kaden took from her hospital bed.

Silas and Preliat were nowhere to be found. Malika busy with rebuilding… somehow after the words said in her hospital room, being alone with Kaden made Yasha’s stomach flutter.

 

[Kaden Farr]

”You won’t be alone any more. Not if I have anything to say about it!”

Kaden didn’t like the fact Yasha talked as if the Netherworld was trying to take her back. She didn’t belong there. Her place was among the living with her family, with her father, and with her Kaden. It bothered him so much it was all he could think about on the way back to the home they had been given. It was empty when they arrived, the smell of whatever her father was doing now already lingered in the air. Kaden sighed. She deserved so much better.

”I’m sorry it hurt. You were so hurt all I could think about was keeping you alive. It wasn’t my best moment letting my guard down like that. That’s twice now you’ve saved my shebs,” Kaden said as he smirked. His language was still a little rough, but not as foul as it had been when Yasha first met him.

The empty house invited Kaden to stay. Yasha dimmed the lights and he goggles came off again. Kaden sat on the couch. Yasha kept trying to get comfortable. She would likely struggle for a couple of days, but eventually she would feel better.

He was happy she liked the jacket. Kaden would have to get it for her. However he quirked a brow when she mentioned looking at clothes. ”You don’t? What would I find if I thumbed throug that datapad?”

Kaden started looking for it.

[member="Yasha Mantis"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

“I need armour… if it’d been a blaster bolt I would’ve been fine. I should’ve seen it coming.” Yasha grumbled, moving the pillow behind her and cuddling up on the couch. She put her stocking feet on Kaden’s lap, giving his side a playful nudge.

“I must’ve looked pretty bad, huh? Never seen you so scared… Heard you screaming my name right before Mama showed up, telling me to come home.” Something about the way her mother called, full of jealousy and fear, filled Yasha’s spine with dread. Now that Mama was gone, would her father fall deeper into his moods? His depression and post-traumatic stress? “But I heard you, and you reminded me to come back… who’d save your… your shebs if I didn’t make it? Thanks… when you’re around I don’t feel alone or… like some little demon born wrong.”

Yasha pressed her lips together hard. Kaden’s mouth bothered her. She had a hard enough time learning the Mando’a and Basic languages, ‘colourful’ terms he learned from uncouth adults didn’t do anything for her but get her mouth cleaned out with soap by Baiko. Where was the Atrisian busy body? Since Ra came down on Force Users, Baiko was nowhere to be found on Manda’yaim. Taken out of her reverie by the smell of spilled liquor and Kaden’s verbal jousting, Yasha sat up straight.

“Augh! Kaden, no!” Yasha tried to reach over and grab her data pad, which was keyed on to the latest Naboo fashions and cosmetics. The data pad was near the couch, sitting innocuous on the table. She slumped back against the couch, holding her side. Her eyes went wide, as she remembered looking up highlighters and a line of make up even a Naboo Princess wore.

“Ow… stop it! Stooop!” Yasha shrieked, a playfulness to her voice as for the first time she felt a little safer to be a girl. Her eyes went wide as Kaden got to her data pad, and Yasha threw the blanket over her head, giggling in loose fits.

“Dooooon’t, it’s… it’s not mine… someone else watched the… the runaway!” Her voice muffled under the blanket, Yasha curled up with her back to Kaden, giggling under the cloth. She should get up, fight for her data pad! But a stitch pulled at her side and Yasha peeked around the blanket.

On the data pad, a host of Naboo Fashion Week, including dresses, cosmetics and outerwear highlighted. The little hell wolf wasn’t only a being of war. She was vastly becoming a young woman, and had her own interests in things other than armour and slitting veins.

 

[Kaden Farr]

Kaden laughed as he ignored Yasah’s attempt to make him stop from digging around on her datapad. As soon as he got access to it he find the fashion images and all things girly and frilly. Mando women didn’t look at this stuff, but Yasha wasn’t just a mando woman. Her mother had been nobility as Yasha had already said once.

He turned a page to her that had a loud dress and chuckled.

”You got that head swap program on here... we should put Si’buir’s face on this one!”

There was no judgement from Kaden. Whatever she thought Kaden was going to do or say, he just ignored it. They were both changing and the last thing he wanted to do was make that harder. He didn’t understand his own feelings and thoughts, changes, why was he going to make it harder for Yasha.

”You were bleeding a lot,” he said. Kaden had avoided the question she’d asked at first. He wasn’t sure he wanted to talk about it. However the sight of her still scared him a little. It certainly made him think about what life without her would be like. Kaden didn’t like that thought. ”I wanted to help you so bad, but I had been driving. Narir stopped the bleeding where the slug went. I had to stop the bleeding on your face. There was just so much.”

Kaden shrugged and set the datapad down. He sighed. His eyes looked for hers.

”You can’t leave me, not like that. I don’t care what anyone says. You’re my Yasha, and you can’t just... don’t do that to me again.”

[member="Yasha Mantis"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

Yasha peeked over the blanket and blinked. She’d expected horror, disgust, a young Mando’ad expressing his rejection of any other thing but war. Biting her lip, she pulled the blanket away from her face and the embarrassment turned to a tiny little bit of hope.

“I like that one. It’s pretty, like a flower. I’d look stupid and dumb in pretty things, but... but...” Yasha crawled back beside [member="Kaden Farr"] and took the data pad, eyeing him for a minute, before flicking the screen and coming into a secret back door on the data pad. The girl hugged it, sitting down and motioning for him to sit beside her. On the screen, a slight and tall ballerina with raven hair wound in a high bun, her pale skin accented with a costume of gold, pink, violets and teal danced. The high society of Coruscant watched from their opera boxes and seats, as Aditya Fitz-Kierke danced. She flew in aerial jumps and spun with an emotion which shook all who saw her, a whirling dervish of colour and expressed catharsis. Yasha watched the data pad with a reverence akin to the divine.

“Mama danced on Coruscant, on Naboo for the Queen, she was the best ballerina on Panatha and she danced for ages and ages. She had the prettiest clothes in the universe, this one she’s wearing? Came from an old dress made for the Queen of Naboo... who gave it to her after she saw her per-perf-perfmerm. Mama told me I dance like a krayt dragon missing a foot. But she was the most beautiful woman in the universe... before she ran away and became a pirate and got scars and had me.” There was a distant hope that she could be as beautiful as her mother, as refined. All Yasha could do was look at her mother dance, her brown eyes glassed with uncalled for and unbidden tears. Yasha wouldn’t cry.

“I didn’t mean to scare you Kaden. I’ll do better, I won’t get hurt like that, promise. I didn’t know what to do but get quiet and hide. It’s what we always did... Mama was always terrified. She couldn’t hide it. We’d find a hidey hole and stay inside it for days, only going out when I couldn’t keep my tummy quiet. It was better when I was little, there were others and we banded together, but... but eventually we were alone. And just Mama and me? She tried but she didn’t know how to be brave a lot. Not unless we had to, but I was brave. I could sneak quiet and kill things and Mama needed me, but... you, Daddy, ba’vodu and Ra need me more. So I’m sorry. I won’t leave you, Kade. I won’t let someone snipe me or hurt me. You won’t ever have to see me bleed like that ever. Never ever. Just don’t you bleed like that ever either, okay? Cause Mama needed her [member="Preliat Mantis"]... and I need my Kaden.”

Yasha looked into Kaden’s eyes and rubbed her cheek with her palm. “You’re my Kaden... aren’t you?”

 

[Kaden Farr]

Yasha pulled up a video of her mother dancing. He knew who it was right away because certain features were just like Yasha. His eyes were fixated on the woman as she danced. He played the scene over in his mind as soon as Yasha talked about Naboo. She was proud of her mother. Kaden smiled at her.

”Maybe you could dance like you fight. I mean you don’t fight bad. You move graceful like when you fight and kill. Maybe you just think too much when you dance?”

The video ended and Kaden smiled. She really was pretty. He couldn’t imagine the dancer he saw becoming a pirate. This woman was the exact opposite of who he knew Yasha to be. Part of him tried to imagine her like the dance, like the woman.

”You can’t help getting shot. We didn’t know there was a sniper. I did what I was taught. I zig zagged to avoid getting hit. Moving targets are hard, but this guy was a good shot. War... it’s what happens, but that’s what scares me. This sickness almost made us lose each other when all we wanted was to see Mia pay. When we fight again, we need better protection. We need Kad Tor to make us armor.”

Her story about hiding made Kaden shake his head. He looked at her. She came back for them. Yasha wanted to know if he was her Kaden. His eyes closed and he pressed his forehead to hers. ”Always. I will always be your Kaden. Will you always be my Yasha?”

[member="Yasha Mantis"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

“You think I move graceful when I kill someone?” Yasha’s ears and eyebrows perked up. She pushed the data pad to another film of her mother dancing, raw and tangled. “Mama said dancing ain’t about thinking… I can never stop thinking on how silly Daddy probably thinks I look. A Mando’ad dancing… waste of time… not that we talked about it. Daddy don’t talk no more… barely a word... I like it when you talk. It gives me practice on Mando'a, and you talk like I'm a real person, not a mirage.”

Sore, bloody knuckles on an otherwise perfect Epicanthix female. Aditya unhinged, a wild and tempestuous model of the cosmos at war within, and without. Her dress ripped not through clever turn of fashion, but through the fight she won. Ada Fitz-Kierke’s last performance.

The day well-behaved Ada beat her mother in a fight, and took her name back. The name her mechanic father gave her: Aditya. Ada was too stuffy. Too Citizen for his little bruiser. Uncontained and beset with her freedom, the last professional performance cost Ada Fitz-Kierke a comfortable life on Panatha. A comfortable life anywhere.

The moment comfort, and peace were lost wound in the jerking deliverance of a body in motion on the dance floor. Yasha watched her mother with fear and envy. She gripped the sides of the data pad, sharing her secret with her Kaden.

“Daddy doesn’t look at these. He doesn’t know I have them… his soul broke the day Mama and Eli died, shattered again when he killed Babuir Jasper… I don’t think I’ll ever get Daddy back.” Yasha whispered, the burden of a child-caretaker settling on her dainty shoulders. She gulped and pressed her forehead to Kaden’s, eyes shut to the small prefab house around them.

“You can hide in a shell, but there’s always a weapon strong enough to crack it. Only true way to survive a battle is not to be in one. I’ve seen Mando’ade in Beskar’kandar bitten in half by a monster with a thousand mouths. I saw my mother pick me up and run from the people who kept us safe in the middle of their formation, because she smelled tragedy in the air… I saw blood fall like rain, and burn through metal like acid through paper. I’ve heard my Daddy’s nightmare-screams every night since I was six. Seen what happens to an amputated leg over time. Watched his face shift when he gets the ‘Dark Harvest’ gaze and it’s not Daddy anymore but the Wolf. If you think armour’s what’ll save you, Kaden? You lost the battle.” Yasha wiped her cheeks and sat back on the couch, dipping her temple to sit on Kaden’s shoulder.

“Only way to win is to find someone else to watch your back… take care of each other. Best armour in the universe is a partner to have you in their sights. So… Yeah… I’ll always be your Yasha.” The girl cuddled into Kaden’s side, nudging under his arm to be held.