You Hurt Me, My Love. My love... my, oh my. (Kaden)

[Yasha Cadera]

Sundari Palace, Mandalore
Medical Ward

The beeps and blinks of sound and light were a constant reminder of the silent vigil paid to the only figure left in the four bed ward. This room was detestable.

It was the place [member="Adara Raxis"] died. It was the place [member="Kaine Australis"] maimed his soul to save her. Resurrect her. Now it was the place [member="Kaden Mantis"] laid in a coma, after a litany of surgical interventions and a stay in a bacta tank. Bacta did not correct healed things. The legs which held Kaden through more battles than any could count needed to be rebroken, nerves repaired. Muscle fibre was anemically lacking, the months of his imprisonment and the month and more of his healing tore the physical virility from Kaden Mantis’ bones.

Yasha had yet to visit. She did keep a bead on his condition, receiving reports, momentarily flipping her feeds to the sec-cams of his hospital stay. They were mere rooms apart, but Mand’alor the Infernal encased herself in the new security she found in armour and her little family.

She would have no other security. She would only serve the Vode. She only could serve the Vode.

Yet, the doctors whispered in her ear.

Kaden was waking up. He was finally, after over eight weeks of steady treatment, waking up. She excused herself from the tail end of an economic treaties meeting and walked, fully armoured, to the medical ward.

Just inside the door, the Hell Wolf leaned against the wall, arms crossed over her chest.

 

[Kaden Farr]

Days became weeks and weeks became months. Kaden Mantis had no idea how much time had passed. Everything blurred together. His mind only truly remembered the pirates, then Kad’s place on Dxun. The rest of the details were fuzzy. As his eyes began to flutter open he was greeted to a foreign place, smells he was not familiar with. It was a sterile environment and everything ran together.

”Yasha... Yasha...”

He kept asking for Yasha. There wasn’t anyone else he wanted to see. She had been what brought him back, and their daughter. Had she been born? Kaden didn’t know because he wasn’t sure how long he’d been gone.

A sigh escaped his lips. His eyes closed, and he drifted off to sleep, all without noticing the figure standing inside the door.

[member="Yasha Mantis"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

His body folded in sheets, antiseptic and clean, well shaven, hair cut short by a nurse after it got too straggly for her tastes. The black pitch of his beskar’gam was gone for the soft green of cotton scrubs and he could not seem more foreign. This was not her husband, her childhood companion and best friend. It was a doppelgänger, a new creation of the sordid months distance and horrific reunion.

“Give him the best care you can. Tell me when he wakes up.” Yasha’s voice threaded through the room, soaking into the lone nurse, who stood vigil over [member="Kaden Mantis"]’ bed. She pushed off the wall and turned to vacate the room the moment Kaden nodded back off.

“Ma’am. He needs to see you. Please.” The nurse motioned to the chair set up beside Kaden’s bed large enough to accommodate Yasha and her armour.

“I can’t watch over a ghost.”

“Is he the first loved one you’ve had to be wounded without dying?” Dust settled on the chair. The Infernal’s wolf-head twitched. “Sit down, Ma’am. Even if he’s asleep, talk to him. He’ll hear you, it’ll help.”

The nurse left the room, and the door wooshed closed with a click until the only sound was the in and exhale of Kaden’s lungs, and the odd beeping device.

“Reminds me too much of a grave. Quiet like one, can barely hear you breathing. As silent as you before we went to Garos, trying to patch things up. Things… weren’t… great for us. Not since you walked out of the shabla tea house, and Dad flew me home. When you went missing on Barataria, I was too busy trying to breathe… you will never know that pain! You will never understand how much it hurt to be wounded on the floor, yanking bits of metal out of my broken ribs, while my body contracted!

It was the worst pain of my life, Kaden… pale compared to watching you turn away. All I wanted was to be held while I fought to keep us alive. What I got? A war. Adara is… alive, if you can call it that. I look at her and I cannot for any ounce of life in me be glad we made it. Not when her eyes look back at me, the Dark Lord’s eyes. He bled for her and she got better, [member="Gray Raxis"] works every day to expunge the… price she paid. I love you, Kaden… but our life was wrong. We should have waited. I can’t watch you like this. I can’t… you have to get up.”

 

[Kaden Farr]

Kaden could hear, but he couldn’t. He called out to Yasha in delirious state of mind. All he knew was that he had been trying to find his way back to her. The more she talked the more clear her voice came, and when he finally could hear clearly all he heard was...

“...our life was wrong...”

The fact those words could even come out of her mouth troubled him. Kaden was suddenly awake. His eyes flew open, and his emotions threatened to flood him at once. Everything over the past months were washing over him, and it took a lot of willpower to to not show any of it. Kaden was to weak to let it all show, and he was too weak to hold it back. His mind and body were in limbo. The only confident feeling he had was the pain in his legs. Why did they hurt so much?

”Nothing about it was wrong,” he said. His stubborn Mando’ad manner was as strong as ever. If that was how she felt, then perhaps...

No Kaden couldn’t let himself go there. His mind was a mess, but he did turn away from her. It was not the words he wanted to hear waking up.

”I can’t get up... my legs don’t work...”

[member="Yasha Mantis"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

The one person Yasha spent more of her life beside than any other laid frail and barely living in a hospital bed. Kaden was the Son of Anger, an orphan taken in and bound to a girl more vicious and regular with violence than he. Together, they were the Hell Wolf and the Avenging Demon, the Black Warrior in Pitch and the Undying’s Little Wolf.

He was the only one who could undo her. Take her down to the naked bones and unmask her like a demon unfurling the skin from her bones.

[member="Kaden Mantis"] was never that weak. He was never one to lie in the bosom of medical machines, when there was work to be done. ‘This is what happens,’ her inner voice said, ‘this is what happened when people love you, Yash.

This is what you do to all who enter your bower. You will, given time, destroy them all.

That is what you are, Yasha. A destroyer. A hammer with no anvil. The killing club of a butcher’s practiced hand. Even the mighty… even the mighty…’

“Nothing? Our daughter died from my wounds! Her little body gave out. Someone… he didn’t accept it. They brought her back to life and put her in my arms, and she’d been alive for five days and I hadn’t held her. Not for a second. If… if we’d waited before having her, if I was older and stronger after the Nether, if we’d let ourselves recover, Adara wouldn’t… we were fools playing house. You hurt me, I hurt you and neither of us let go enough to fix it.”

If they remained in the Netherworld, as Yasha looked at her husband she knew emphatically, Kaden would never have made it out alive. His legs were shattered and reconstructed. Medical reports flooded her mind, the calm doctors speaking in level tones about prosthetics over recovery, the quality of life for a man with one real limb.

No. They didn’t know Kaden. He was a fighter. A warrior. He would get up and walk. He was the constant point in her stars, damaged and tilting, but ever present in her psyche.

“No! No, I don’t accept that, you’re going to get up. You are. You’re going to walk again. You’re… you’re going to… You are. You are…” The audio processors of the wolf-helm crackled and fizzed with an increase of Yasha’s voice. A hiccup expectorated as a filter of static. Her throat struck as a traitor, clamming the power of her elegant voice.

“Stop it, Kaden. Stop… Stop being insular and armoured! I can’t know you anymore, I can’t look at you and see what you’re thinking. When did you have to start defending yourself from me?

Let me in, or let me go. Kaden… Kaden don’t you turn away from me again! Turn… turn around.”

In the Infernal Wolf’s thrall, even the mighty did not kneel. They collapsed and prostrated, incapable of standing on.

 

[Kaden Farr]

"Stop second guessing yourself.... stop calling what we have built a mistake!"

He shouted at her, the machines rang at the sudden rise in his heart beat. Taking in a few breaths to calm himself down he still could not bring himself to look at her completely. After all it was her fault that he was in this bed. Had she not been Mand'alor the rescue team would have never pushed him aside to rescue her only. They had abandoned him. His people had abandoned him as though he were an after thought. Only now did they see to him, months after he'd been lost.

"I had to start defending myself from you the moment you decided that what we had was a mistake. We were young, yes, but by the time we made our vows we were old for when most Mando'ade marry. You have always viewed our life from the lens of something everyone else wanted for you. You were not raised to be Mando'ad by your parents, I have always understood that... but you CHOSE this. You ARE Mand'alor, so quit spitting on what OUR people value by saying we made a mistake..."

Kaden turned to look at her...

"Because if that is what you feel... if you truly feel like what our love produced was wrong or should have never happened... If you can look at me and say that with 100% certainty..."

He was not going to finish the thought because it would break his heart to do so. However, it broke his heart to think that she could think that what they had was a mistake. Was it ideal, no, it never was. Was it real and true, to Kaden it was. If Yasha could not see past the surface to the core of what they had, then their riduurok was broken before it ever started.

Kaden sighed.

"Can't you just see that I love you, and that while things have never been ideal... this is us, the good, the bad, the atrocious. No matter what happens our love is the only constant we have had our entire lives. Please stop saying that anything built on that foundation is a mistake. I cannot be, not if we are going to mend. I could not bear it in my heart to even think you could hold that as being more true than the bond we share."

[member="Yasha Mantis"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

“Adara died!” Yasha barked, groaning and standing to her feet. “Our daughter was dead. A corpse. A body in an incubator, Kaden, I wasn’t strong enough to carry her and you’re not listening! Manda! It’s Sakura all over again.”

[member="Kaden Mantis"] was a stubborn man, his overprotective and aggressive nature one of the main reasons Yasha and Shia survived in the Netherworld. They were animals wounded in those days, yet Kaden and Yasha both never learning how to live once they were free of the horrors and bloodshed.

“Adara scares Shia to death. Something went wrong! We didn’t wait long enough after we got out of the Netherworld, or… or it was the trauma of Barataria, but… she’s not… Carnifex met Adara and knew exactly what she was… was it me? Was it you? Did one of us bring something back? Was I too weak to carry her properly? Was it the trauma of her birth? A rough hand would shatter her bones. I can barely pick her up without bruising her tender skin, and the only people who can pick her up without her wailing are the Panathan Wet-Nurses, Australis, Gray and Beth.”

The look in Kaden’s eyes scalded Yasha’s cheeks. Her chest heaved, until she worried it could no longer hold up her armour and her bones.

“You’ve been gone for months, Kade. I thought you were dead… Australis kept me going. He moved in to our Palace apartment, renovated with rooms for him, me, Adara and his daughter Beth... I needed help and he gave it. Unconditionally.” Yasha released her helmet, appearing not as Kaden remembered her, but as a pristinely healthy, well rested paragon of Epicanthix beauty. “I know you love me… after you left our wedding on Sakura, I realized you’d never understand what I needed… what I wanted as a wife. How could you?”

The door opened, and a Panathan-dressed woman with House Zambrano’s sigil on her clothing entered carrying an infant dressed in the colours of Clan Raxis. Yasha took Adara from Tamar and nodded. Tamar bowed, and folded her hands in front of her, standing at the far corner of the room for privacy’s sake.

“I didn’t know what I wanted. I got swept up in the emotions of Gray’s moment, and I never should have done that to you… I wasn’t ready to marry you, Kaden…

… and I shouldn’t have.

If I held back, by the time we were ready to wed and bear children, Adara wouldn’t be in the straights she’s in. I was unfair to you, I was unfair to our daughter… and she’ll pay for it her entire life… I’m sorry, Kaden. All I’ve ever done is cause you pain.”

A twenty year old girl put her infant daughter in the arms of the man who conceived her. The child was pale, skin showing every vein, every mark under her skin as if she could simply never get warm. Adara was underweight, undersized for her age, her head rooting for a meal no physical being could give. Adara looked up at her father with Aditya’s eyes… Zambrano’s eyes…

​

His eyes… ​

​

… even the gentlest wind could unravel Kaden’s little girl. A girl with Kaden's nose, and her his lips. Soft, downy brunette hair. Fingers that reached for the 'thing on his face'.​

“The night we knew Adara would survive, Australis brought her into the throne room. Gray and Cassiopeia were with me… Gray knew the truth.

The Manda dictated, it was her time. I wasn’t strong enough to bear you a daughter who would survive being born in a war zone. I failed you, Kaden… and if not for Kaine… I keep praying that Adara breathes again… I watch her stomach move, I never leave her alone… there is someone awake with her at all times… yet I know how to save her. Carnifex offered her a Sithly salvation and yet again I’m terrified…”

Adara in her father’s arms, Yasha stepped backward into the wall and slid down, a woman defeated.

“… it’s happening like the Rue. What if the only way to save what we made is to give her to the Dark Lord? What if I could save her if I didn’t leave a piece of my soul behind?

I look at you… really look at you, and what I see is the destruction of a good man.

I’ve ruined you, Kaden. I bled the goodness out and left you staggering around in wounded pain with nothing else left. How can you say you love me? I’ve destroyed everything worth loving in your life. Maybe that’s all I am. Maybe that's what my love is. A hammer with no anvil, just… destruction in a pretty dress.”

 

[Kaden Farr]

ADARA DIED.

Yasha kept saying those words and yet she also talked as though their daughter lived. He knew the truth, someone had brought her back from the grave, and it had not been him. Kaden's brow ruffled at what she said following. There was no way he would tolerate Australis living in his house with his wife. The man knew nothing of loyalty to a woman and collected women as though they were trophies to be had and objects to be kept. Kaden's interpretation of the Resol'nare was pure, and the customs of their people to the line. Polygamy had no place in his mind or heart. Yasha knew this, they had discussed it when the possibility of a political marriage was introduced. Kaden was glad it did not happen. For his own mind and the sake of the Mando'ade. Their people did not hide behind political marriages.

She was blaming herself, saying it was all a mistake again. Kaden simply sighed and leaned his head against the pillow.

"Yasha..."

The door opened and woman came in carrying a small child. Something awoke in him because he knew. The energy he did not have to fight with his wife was their to hold his daughter. He reached for her cautiously, accepting her into his arms.

The beskar around his heart cracked​

​

A single tear rolled down his cheek as he smiled. Where Yasha was afraid, Kaden only saw perfection. Was it ideal, no. Their lives were far from ideal, and they never would be. Why couldn't Yasha see that? Why did it always have to be what she needed, and not what THEY needed?

Kaden was quiet for a long time as he listened to Yasha and even after she spoke. It wasn't an angry silence or even awkward. It was the awe like silence which came from a father holding his first born. He let his mind and heart grasp around the fact she was HIS.

His eyes found hers and whispered, whether Yasha would hear it or not was something else.

"I will never abandon you. You will always know your father. I will not be Preliat."

Kaden never used the words promise any more. Anyone who knew him knew that his word was his oath. If he said it, if he pledged it, then it was as good as done.

His eyes finally looked to find Yasha.

"The answer is what it has always been, Yasha. We will do what we must."

"You have to stop questioning what happened, Yasha, and stop blaming yourself for a choice I made. You went into labor early because of injuries. Had that not happened you may have carried to term and delivered a healthy child. For every scenario you can dream, I can have one to negate it. Can we please stop going around this sick cycle carousel. You did not destroy a good man... I was never a good man. At the age of ten I was a wild child seeking revenge who met a girl seeking the same. We have kept each other alive from that moment, and we will continue to do so until the Manda decides it is time to call us home."

He paused and looked at his daughter again. She was reaching for his eye patch.

The beskar around his heart cracked.​

​

"Destruction in a dress was who I made a riduurok with. That is who I love. So tell me... Infernal. What have you done with my fearless warrioress and why do you carry the fear I pledged to carry?"

[member="Yasha Mantis"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

Kaden settled himself back in the bed in defeat, incapable of reaching his bride as she was incapable of reaching him. Two people who loved and depended on each other for every shared breath, until the moment of matrimony passed and the swell of a young woman’s belly dashed their ability to see past their faults.

Stubborn, capricious faults. One spirit in war, two fractured beings beyond the battles’ end. Kaden whispered to his flesh and blood, and turning her face away from her husband, Yasha bit back a choke of emotions she could never allow herself to feel.

“She’s never gone a day without a father… [member="Kaine Australis"] stood in the medical room for days watching the doctors work. He saw her last breath, and caused her first. The life in your arms, you owe to him, Kaden, just as he owes the love he feels for Adara to you. Australis sold his immortal soul to a worse dark than Carnifex to bring Adara back, and he offered his life to my executioner’s hands in recompense. I put the Cure in his hand myself. I alone watched over him, while he writhed in agony for hours. He paid the price for my sins, and yours.” Face turned from his, Yasha did not see the tear on Kaden’s face.

She did not see the way he softened for his child.

The child knew him not, as she couldn’t know one disconnected from the Force which sustained her. Adara’s eyes were passive and blank to [member="Kaden Mantis"], an infant making strange of a strange presence. The baby wriggled and chittered out a cry, and then a coo.

“Is that your demand of me, riduur? That I keep you alive and keep your daughter in your arms?” This was her father… she was part of him and he part of her. As if guided by a spiritual hand, Adara smiled up at Kaden, her fingers reaching and reaching, little legs kicking weakly in the onesie she wore.

Salt water bathed Kaden’s face, and Yasha turned to see it glint on his once familiar cheek. She could feel the adoration in the room, a family returned to itself at last…

… she saw herself run off from Sundari with Kaden and the baby, to make a simple life within the Empire. In his doting love of Adara, Yasha saw the death of the Infernal.

It would be so easy. A couple of packed bags, one of her ships… so simple a thing. So selfish a life.

‘This is what happens,’ her inner voice said, ‘this is what happens when people love you, Yash. ​

​

This is what you do to all who enter your bower. You will, given time, destroy them all. ​

​

That is what you are, Yasha. A destroyer. A hammer with no anvil. The killing club of a butcher’s practiced hand. Even the mighty… even the mighty… are nothing to your annihilation.’​

The Infernal clicked the switch, and her wolf-helm returned around her strained, yet beautiful face. Pulling off from the floor, Yasha walked to the chair beside Kaden’s bed and sat down, guarded and encased from all alarum.

Her voice, when it came, was the voice of the Infernal, augmented by audio processors and the mechanical nature of her beskar’kandar.

“Out of all the people in this galaxy, only you make me weak. Only you do I fear. I fear the isolation of loving you, as I fear the overbearance of your protectiveness. Must I give all to you, and receive the chains of your interpretations? You would follow me to every possible end, and I would watch you suffer through each of them. You would bear my fear, and my pain as your own and I would have nothing to give you but more of it. You would hold me through the night, one second from waking while I slept soundly, and by rights, by our oath you would be right to do so.

I realize now that I cannot be both wife and Mand’alor. Not without constantly worrying of what my position was doing to you. What the battles I endure do to you. Kaden, I have loved you since I was eight years old. You were always by my side, in Keldabe, in Sundari, Cold Iron City. When I awoke, you were there. When Daddy was gone, you were with me… when I touched the Warlock Gate, you followed. You are, now and ever, a loyal and righteous lover… and I broke you. By virtue of doing your best, your legs were crushed and rebroken. You were tortured, battered, wounded and left for dead.

I am your riduur. The reason for your violence.

The Mando’ade are mine. Do not ask more of your Mand’alor, when I have nothing to give but the promise of another broken leg, or another dying daughter. This is how I can protect who I love. Let me protect you. Let me go.”

 

[Kaden Farr]

Australis... Kaden disliked the wild and unpredictable man more than hell itself, and yet he owed him his gratitude for the life of his daughter. He had broken the law in doing so, and Yasha should have killed him with no mercy given. The man had stolen Manda's will. Had the child died Kaden would have mourned, but he would have come to accept it. Yasha, however, seemed as though she could no longer accept death. What had being Mand'alor done to her. Where was all this fear coming from. It was not her, this was not the woman he promised his life to. Certainly she would be calling this woman unfit to be the Hell Wolf if she could only see herself.

Kaden could not help but sigh. With every turn she tried to tell him that the best she could give him was brokenness and more pain. Her only way of protecting him was to push him away? So she could what... run to the arms of someone that was not good, one that would be more deserving of the destruction she would bring on them.

"You know what... maybe you are right. Maybe you are too weak," he said with his eyes still locked on their daughter. She had the power to break the beskar around his heart. Kaden knew it. It was already beginning to crack.

"If you are however, then you should not be Mand'alor. If you cannot be both, then you are not strong enough to bear the title I was broken to see you have. Are you telling me that my brokenness was all in vain? Have I given my life and body to one who is not worthy of it? In every breath you take you say this was a mistake, and I see it in your eyes."

Fear!"

"You are afraid that I will die, that she will again... and that you would be lost without us. You wear the mask to hide your fear from me, but I see it anyway. Your armor has made you a coward, Yasha. Cowards hide, warriors fight. What has happened to me... that is not your fault, and if it were, you should embrace it because it was for OUR people. I gave my word to be the one always one step behind and to the right of you. Do you think I did not know what that could mean? I have told you before that you may be the death of me, and I have loved you regardless. You may be, but do not presume to make this choice for me, and do not ask me to leave..."

Kaden called for the nurse as he no longer had the strength to hold his daughter. She returned to take the child.

"If you cannot be both, then be my wife, and if you refuse to step aside, then do not ask me to leave you. You need me. You have always needed me. Others have tried, but I have always been the shaft to the wild spear. I am your stability and the guiding hand to keep you pointed where you should be. If you must be the infernal, then I shall be there with my black pitch armor, the son of anger, champion of the netherworld, and conqueror of death, at your side where I belong."

He sighed as he reached for the button to force her helmet to retract. He'd watched her put it back on.

"Look me in the eyes and tell me that you really think the best thing you can do for me is to push me away. I don't want to hear it from the Infernal. I want to hear it from Yasha Mantis, the Hell Wolf. If you can dare to look me in my eyes and mean it, then I will do as you ask. If I see or sense any shred of doubt, or that you want to retreat, then you are stuck with me until I draw my final breath."

[member="Yasha Mantis"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

Yasha was long paused in the dull disquiet of [member="Kaden Mantis"]’ tirade. A response to her pleas. The Son of Anger always.

“I wear this armour…” Yasha’s voice was measured, thin and strained inside the helm. “… because love forged it. The love of my People, who gave of their dead’s beskar’gam and sealed every one of their memories together in one living monument. This armour was the gift Kain’ik made me, that I might remember my duty and my strength.

And if you think calling me a coward in my own Keep is the wisdom of a cripple, then your one lost eye really did make the difference in your perceptions. I am the Infernal! My body is mine! My life is mine! My People are mine! How dare you lie there half-broken, when I have seen how your body breaks! My petition was to save you from further harm, because your death would fit ill on my conscience, when I could prevent it.”

Tamar took Adara, cuddled the child in her arms and swept back, as if she could feel the tension splitting into a terrifying and unyielding storm.

“Being your wife is being less of myself. The only thing I have to fear in this life is you. I will never lie with you again. If you wish to prove your value to me, you may recover, and display your worth in battle. I shall allow you access to your daughter, as you have the desire.” Kaden’s words broke upon his riduur’s face and shattered the wide-eyed concern and desperate love Yasha previously displayed. As her mask retracted and his words ran out, Yasha Mantis’ heart became hard.

There was nothing of Yasha in the face which peered coldly at Kaden now. He had broken it out of her, with his words. There was nothing of the vulnerability she allowed for him and him alone, his admonition of her cowardice destroyed it.

“You demand submission instead of love. You demand being my only bulwark.” Only the Infernal looked back at him now. Kaden’s Yash’ika was gone. The chair creaked as she pushed out of it, stepping away from the bedside of a man, who could not follow.

“You are wrong about Kain’ik, Mantis. His love is freedom, an exhortation of my own will and power, and the encouragement of our entire Peoples. He respects the boundaries I set, and bows his head in acknowledgement of my place above him. Yours is a sickly cage, where only you can hold me.”

One of the doctors returned to the room, a nurse in tow. Yasha stopped her exit, refusing to turn back to look at her dar’riduur. “Give him the best care Mandalore can afford. Schedule daily time for him to see his daughter. Get his legs moving… The Son of Anger has many enemies to rage for… and his own battles to fight.”

“Yes, Mand’alor.” The doctor bowed his head as Yasha exited, Tamar and Adara in tow. No one would see the blank slate of her face, nor the emptiness in stern amber eyes.

There was nothing left of the marriage Hell built, which Heaven could not abide.

 

[Kaden Farr]

”Your petition is not meant to save me! Your petition is meant to assuage your own guilt, guilt you have no right to carry. You dare call our marriage a mistake and expect that I won’t be upset? Are you the only one who is allowed to have some kind of righteous anger? At least your people didn’t abandon you!!! Mine did!!!!!”

She wasn’t listening to him, she stopped doing that a long time ago. Yasha Mantis only heard what she wanted to anymore, and rather than love him, she demanded he do as she say or lose her. That was not a marriage. No, she no longer loved him. That was clear and very evident. Especially since her love seemed to be for Australis.

They left... or tired to, but Kaden still yelled after her.

”I have never demanded submission. Everything I’ve done had been because of love. I am broken because of love. Now that I dare challenge your thinking, you want to leave. It is you who demands submission and not love, and if you are too blind to see it then I suppose it is true... your heart holds no love for me...”

Kaden’s words grew weak. His breathing labored. Each one became a pain. The expression on his face was that of a man that had not just lost his love, but his reason to exist.

His heart broke.

”Do not... I can’t break my word to Adara...”

The monitor tracking his heart rate showed it weakening until finally the sound no one wanted to hear fell upon all their ears.

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!​

His heart stopped, Kaden died.

”Out of the way Mand’alor,” a nurse said rushing past. ”We need to get his heart started again... we cannot lose him...”

***********

Kaden’s eyes flicked open... they fell an all too familiar sight.

He was in the Rue...

HE was there waiting for him...

”Did you bring my mommy back...”

[member="Yasha Mantis"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

“I’m sorry, Kaden! I’m sorry they left you behind! I couldn’t do anything about it, I was struggling to breathe and in labour! I never would have left you!! I woke up and you were gone!” Yasha roared, swerving back around at the panic in his voice. “I searched for you for months! Nobody could find you. You were wounded! More than once, you almost died in the throne room, you nearly died every day in the Netherworld and again with Barataria!? I would have only caused your death and I love.. I love you… but you’re not strong enough to live my life.”

Finally, the panic was there. Why had he waited until their riduurok was over to show her any of his emotions? Was she that dumb? Had she previously been too hurt to see it? In that moment, Yasha saw and pitied [member="Kaden Mantis"]. He was her best friend and confidante, her warrior who pushed when it wasn’t what she needed. She saw the man in him, in what he became…

… for her.

“This is a shock. You’re upset… rest. Once you do, we can talk about parenting Adara. You belong in her life, but I won’t be the death of you. Goodbye, Kade…” The monitors sounded raucous alarms, and despite the deference given to Mand’alor the Infernal, medical staff rushed into the room with a crash cart.

“Kaden?”

Yasha backed up to the wall, watching the rush of medical professionals as they surrounded his bedside.

“Kaden!?”

"Ma’am, you have to leave there isn’t room!” The doctor nodded to one of the nurses, who turned on the Infernal and led her out of the room, shutting the door between them.

“Kaden!”

He was gone.

“Well, that’s a right bundle of pretty peaches. I told Yash she’d get you killed. Think she would’ve taken my advice and stayed dead herself, when she was popping your princess out, but nooooooo. Mama don’t know squat.” Aditya Mantis’ shade sauntered up, picking Eli up and sitting him on her hip. She offered Kaden a hand, and looked him over.

“Adara ain’t with you… that girl survive? Huh. Beats me how Yash did it… what’d she do, this time? Who were you defeating? You know, if Yasha’d taken my advice and stayed dead, you’d be alive right now. Seriously, I ought to have hit that child more, when she was young enough not to hit back… that was a joke, I loved my kid. Never hit her, my thing was purely emotional guilt tripping. Hey, Kaden? Honey pie, why don’t you come with me? I’ve got a great set up at Ember’s Castle, and when Yash comes to see you, well, it’s the first place she’ll go.” Aditya continued to hold out her hand, nodding to her son-in-law.

“Babycakes, we’ve gotta get moving’ now. Come on. Might even let you pummel a Sith Lord on the way through the Field of Blades. Won’t that be fun for acclimatizin’?

Well! Welcome home, Kade.

I sure as hell weren't ready to see you, but here we are.”

 

[Kaden Farr]

”No... not here... anywhere but...”

He was interrupted by the one person he did not want to see. Aditya Mantis. The woman had never treated them right, and when she realized Yasha loved him, despite her warnings, she had charged Kaden with the sole duty of keeping her daughter alive. The way she rambled it was intolerable. Though he would not be going to Ember’s.

”No... we will not go there,” he said with a firm shake of his head. ”I have to find someone, or something. Adara is supposed to be here, part of her should be...”

Aditya was smart. She would realize that they had cheated death, well Kaden hadn’t.

”Australis happened. Your daughter is in love with him. She won’t be coming for me. Her words were pretty clear before I died. There is no love in her heart for me anymore. Whatever hell I have it’s of my own making for loving a woman who was too afraid and too much of a coward to love me back.”

“I blame you for that...”

His finger pointed directly to Aditya. Had she not filled her daughter’s mind with her lies, Yasha could have been high Mand’alor and wife. However, Aditya had ensured she would never be strong enough.

He stood from the ground before the Rue could take him deeper. Kaden has broken it for her, and the Rue would remember him. The Netherworld would. This was his domain, he had conquered it.

”I will fight my way back to her. Not even death can keep me from loving her, even if she doesn’t want it... besides I made my daughter a promise, and I’m going to keep it...”

The beskar around his heart formed another layer...​

[member="Yasha Mantis"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

“Gee, thanks for travelling to the Rue for me, Aditya. Thanks for stomping through the Garden of Thorns, half the Blood Plains and the entire Field of Blades to show up. You didn’t have to interrupt your busy death-schedule and stop your parcheesi tournament for me, oh no. Just a ‘not here… anywhere but…’ Hello, Zdraaamaaaaa!”

There he went, demand, demand, demand. He’d been such a nice boy back in the day. He loved her daughter, fought to preserve her and carried her when she couldn’t walk. Then he turned into a commanding son of a bantha, reminded her of Preliat.

Bucket headed men. Why couldn’t Yasha marry a nice evil Zambrano?

“Australis!? Isn’t he, like, eighty years older than her? Honey pie, you’re post-death delusional. Of course she’ll come after you… Oh honey Adara ain’t here. She went to Manda. You’re thinking of Yasha… who is… ah…” Aditya coughed and took her hand back, shaking her head. “Not here… nope! Never left a piece of my daughter in eternal hell because I’m a terrible parent and got stabbed and should’ve been dead… nope.”

Shifty eyes… totally shifty eyes. “Listen, are you sure you’re talking about Yasha Mantis? The girl who loved you more than death? Oh… oh hey! Don’t blame me for talking my daughter out of living!

It didn’t work! You can only blame me for the things I was successful with!”

Aditya rolled her eyes and smacked [member="Kaden Mantis"] upside the head. “You want to find your magical macguffin that’ll prevent Yasha from leaving your deadbeat backside, you’ll need help. So come on…

… gee.

Not even death can keep you from loving her? You do realize that’s what stalkers say, right?” Aditya coughed and shook her head. “Gee, you made a promise to an infant who’ll never remember you. Awesome…

… this…. now this is Hell. I’m stuck in the Rue with a delusional.”

 

[Kaden Farr]

There was not one demand in anything Kaden said. If Aditya and Yasha would actually listen to him and not what they wanted to hear it would be rather clear. The only thing Kaden had done was refuse to accept the path Aditya wanted. He was nothing like Preliat, nor would he ever be.

Kaden looked to Aditya.

”You and your daughter have the same problem you know that. You just ignored ninety percent of what I said...”

He looked at the boy, Kaden knew who that was, more like what it was. The boy was Yasha... part of her anyway.

”Adara died. Australia sold his soul to bring her back. He did some dark magic voodoo crap, and now I have to fix his mess, oh but I’m dead because your daughter decided to listen to you, to believe the best thing she could do to protect me was end our marriage. You want to know what, you turned her into her father... are you happy about that? Next time you want to convince her that she’s only going to destroy the people she loves, stop to think about how much you’re destroying her in the process. She’s gone full infernal now, fully unfeeling. She didn’t even have the guts to look at me and tell me that she truly believed it was the best thing she could do.”

Clearly Kaden was still upset. He had every right to be. Had Yasha not listened to her mother perhaps she would have clung to him rather than push him away. All Kaden ever wanted was her love, and Yasha had made it clear she could not give it.

”I don’t need some magic macguffin to keep her from leaving my backside. She’s already left, broken out riduurok. You would think after surviving torture and clawing my way back to her, she’d be happy, but no... she’s grown a heart colder than my beskar lined one. She only wants love on her terms and she made it clear I couldn’t give that to her.”

“So no, Aditya, your daughter will not come for me. She will likely burry herself into the arms of Australis, and she will carry on, because she won’t even stop to think that because I was here before that this where I was destined to return.”

His eyes shifted to the boy again.

”Your mommy won’t be coming. She has abandoned us both...”

[member="Yasha Mantis"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

One by one the doctors halted their ministrations of Kaden’s lifeless corpse. Yasha stood just inside the door amber eyes open wide, mouth agape.

“Hi ruaysk xi pazemb… vui'… vui' olim’d i'ay siddemb uep pazi? (He should be moving… why… why aren’t you letting him move?)” Heavily accented Epicanthic stuttered from Yasha Mantis’ lips. “Moqi uep xliodui… ui ruaysk xi xlioduemb, ui… Kaden? Kaden bid yn! (Make him breathe… he should be breathing, he… Kaden? Kaden get up!)”

The doctor turned slowly to face the Infernal, as one turns in the pen of a wounded predator shaking in the corner. He kept his hands open, sidling away from where the nurse covered Kaden’s head with a sheet.

“Gina, call Ambrose. Mand’alor shouldn’t be alone right now… Mand’alor? Ma’am, I’m sorry. The infection got into his blood, and weakened his heart. We were monitoring it, but… Ma’am? Would you like to see him?”

Nothing but the sound of the Infernal’s beskar’kandar stumbling out of the doorway met the medical staff’s ears.

“Kriff. Someone call Raxis.”

Kaden wasn’t moving. The doctors and nurses manipulated him, his body jolting from paddles as another medical professional injected a cocktail of drugs into his chest. His mouth was open. His eye… Yasha began panting in her armour, staggering along the corridor blindly.

The door to the throne room shifted open.

A cavernous emptiness filled her eyes. The throne room reverberated with the echoes of grunting instinctual noises bursting in stutters from Yasha’s slack jaw. She stumbled into the dais, winding herself on the steps to the emptiness before the missing throne.

​

“Did you bring my Mommy back?”​

“Kaden… Kkhh—“ Yasha’s voice broke into further grunts and gasps, Kaden was supposed to be safe. She was angry, detached from sharing his bed, but he was supposed to be safe. Whole. Recovering from his ordeal so he could help raise their daughter… so one day she could get her best friend back.

Her Kade’ika. Her first love.

“Manda… mm-mmuh… mhm…” Body slid to the spot where once Kaden and Yasha kissed, Yasha’s fingers trembled upon the cold marble floor, arms spreading out. Her knees slid toward her chest, as an inhuman, animalistic scream shuddered out of Kaden’s once-bride.

The howling agony poured out of Yasha’s very soul, connecting briefly to the pieces of her left in the Netherworld. She screamed and wailed in utter disconcerted grief, body shivering with shock at the turn of events.

Within the screams, barking cries of Kaden’s name, lost in the cacophony of Yasha’s outpouring, agonized soul.

“Ummm yeah, because most of what you say is crazy talk!”

Aditya stopped still and looked at [member="Kaden Mantis"] for what felt like the first time. “She left you? She… but Kaden, she loved you… huh. So it worked, did it? For the record, I was trying to get Yasha to stay dead, so you could move on with your life, not the other way around… listen, my daughter’s a monster. She always has been. I was glad as all get out, when she shattered her soul in here, ‘cause I knew half the population of the Galaxy would want her dead by thirty. Never expected to be wrong by a decade.

Listen, I know you’re… dang, you’re here. That’s… well, it’s not the deterrent it used to be. You were good to her, but did you ever consider she wasn’t worth being good to?” A shudder passed through the Rue, fluctuations carried on the guttural scream of Yasha Mantis. Eli tumbled from Aditya’s arms, shifting into a vision of Yasha curled up on the floor of the throne room screaming in grief.

Sobbing. Calling out for a body which no longer functioned. Sheer unadulterated pain coated Yasha’s face, before the next scream rippled through them all.

Eli dropped again. He whimpered up at Aditya and in blessed silence, Aditya picked the boy up.

“She’s grieving… I didn’t know she could do that. No Kaden… I don’t think she’s going to abandon you here, if she knows you’re in it… I’m sorry, Kaden. I didn’t realize Yasha could feel pain, I didn’t… I did what I thought was right not for Yasha, but to eliminate as much collateral damage as possible from what she’d cause.”

Aditya winced, as another unbearable cry fluctuated through the Rue and jolted into their bodies. The cries of Yasha Mantis.

 

[Kaden Farr]

"Did it ever occur to you that maybe, just maybe, that all your meddling would make things worse? You were trying to save people from here... of all places, and you never stopped to think that maybe you should have let things develop as they may. I get it... you wanted to protect her. You made me promise to keep her alive and protect her. Look what keeping my word cost me? Then you meddle anyway, try telling her to just die."

Kaden sighed.

"Both of you have tried to protect me by attempting to tear me away from the one person in my life that has always been a constant. I love her! I always have, and she is the only one that has been there for me. Call her a monster, but you haven't known the softness of her touch, the love she exudes when I walk into a room, or the light in her eyes when I wake up in the morning. We were made for each other, and even you would make yourself an enemy to the bond we share."

It was the only way Kaden knew to answer her. Maybe there was more, but the Rue shook as Yasha's pain rippled through every piece of her soul which she had left behind. While Aditya saw it, both Eli and Kaden reacted. It was evidence of a truth that Aditya had never understood. Kaden was as much a part of Yasha's soul as Eli was. The bond the two shared was that of the soul. His soul was tied to hers, and hers to his.

He cried, as much as a soul was capable of crying. She was broken. Kaden could not process this. He had been the one to carry these burdens for her. Yasha accused him of only wanting to be her bulwark, but it was who she needed him to be. Now he was truly gone, and he was not there to be the prop she would need until the weight of her grief allowed her stand on her own once more. Kaden should have been there. He had conquered hell once, and he would do so again if need be.

Kaden's eyes set on Aditya.

"Perhpas now you understand. This is what I fought to preserve her from, and in the end you convinced her that I would be lost to her, because of her. In the end it is exactly what happened. Now she has a choice. She can accept it, or she can reject the notion and get her shebs over here so that I can be with her and my daughter again. I won't sit by either."

Looking to where the vision of Yasha had been, Kaden called out to his only love, Yasha.

"YASHAAAAAA! Yash'ika!!! You know where I am... you know there is a way. You know what to do! I love you!!! I followed you once... will you follow me?"

Even though their souls were tied, Kaden had no way of knowing whether she could hear him or not. For all he knew it was a vain attempt at reaching her, but he would never give up. Kaden had never given up. Nothing could keep them apart... not even death.

[member="Yasha Mantis"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

“Yes, you love her. And she thought she loved you… if Yasha’s capable of love… I mean, dirty forcies aren’t capable of much, am I right? Isn’t that why you tried killing them all?”

Aditya stayed quietly in her spot, cuddling Eli to her chest. She both listened and heard [member="Kaden Mantis"] speak of her daughter, her own flesh and blood. He’d not known Yasha longer than she had, but it was close.

“She can’t hear you, sweet pea.” Aditya said, clearing her throat and putting a hand on Kaden’s back. “But… but I know how she could. Come on now. Let’s go. Get you cleaned up and I can tell you what I know.”

 

[Kaden Farr]

"She is capable of love, Aditya. I have seen it... I have felt it. You cannot say that amount of pain was caused by anything else..."

Kaden sighed. How foolish he was. He had demanded her love, fought with her as she challenge him, when all he needed to do was show her that he still loved her despite what had happened. How was he was supposed to do that now?

"I know she can't hear me, but I can try..."

His head turned when she mentioned she knew a way. Yes! If there was a chance to get her a message, if there was a way to get through to her even from the grave, she would know he loved her.

"Lead the way... I don't care what it involves..."

[member="Yasha Mantis"]