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

[Yasha Cadera]

“Trying burns out your energy, sweet pea. What, you think these are unlimited spectres? Eventually you’ll be reconnected with the Force, or fade to oblivion, or go off into nothing and be irrevocably lost. This is death, honey pie. Not some teenagers rushing through armageddon looking for the scraps of an old man.” Aditya’s voice was harder than [member="Kaden Mantis"]’d ever heard it. Devoid of the sunshine she spilled upon her caustic skin.

“My daughter was born, Baiko put her in my arms and I felt my skin crawl. No, none of us were forcies… it couldn’t be. Baiko didn’t say a damn thing and it’s probably for the best. If she had, I’d’ve drowned Yasha in a bathtub rather than watch her grow up wrong. The Force is a plague. It’s a crime of Nature, and although it goes part and parcel with the worship of my goddess and my gods, there isn’t a single moment I’ve ever felt glad people can tap into it… so… save your strength. Only reason I’m still here is my abject refusal and rejection of the Force that tried to make me one with it.

Can’t be one with something you hate.” Aditya nodded them down the path, walking without footfalls on the Netherworldly ground.

“There’s a piece of Yasha’s soul trapped here. A fractured bit she tore out as a six year old. Eli is… well, he’s more like one of Yasha’s shadows than a piece of her. He’s an illusion of what will be, if we don’t change it. I can already kind of feel it, the pulling away… I’m slipping, Kaden… Soon enough I won’t be here anymore, and I’m not sure I’m okay with that… but… if I can help you make good with my daughter, then maybe I wasn’t such a kriffin’ bad mom. She’ll forgive the dance lessons then. The hard words… you know she’s going to end up with Him, right?

The Zambrano? You’re not a part of her destiny, honey pie. You were an aberration of it. A chink in her armour… place like this the most valuable thing we got is the knowledge of who and what we are. Conserve your strength. I’ve been saving mine to give Preliat Mantis the biggest fudging uppercut of his life.” Aditya walked on, carrying Eli on her hip.

This, more than any other world, was hers. “You get back? You never let her come here again, Kaden Mantis. You never. Not ever! She don’t belong here…. This place is for us, Kaden…

… this place is for sinners, and Yasha’s the one who gets to throw the first stone.”

 

[Kaden Farr]

"Only if she chooses him," he answered regarding the Zambrano, "And she knows what that would cost her if she did..."

Even in death Kaden was a stubborn man, and held a traditional view of the Resol'nare. There was no room for polygamy in his mind, nor in that of the tenets of their people. There was room for other lovers in war or great absence, but never another spouse. They had been young and immature in how the world worked when they were married, Kaden could admit that, but they both knew the Resol'nare.

"I have always told Yasha that it was he choice to live her life by the Resol'nare, but that if she wanted the mantle of Mand'alor, that she had to embrace it. The Zambrano is not her destiny. Her soul is tied to mine, and if you cannot see that, then you truly are blind. She also knows that if chooses another that I will be lost to her, and if that is what she chooses, then I should simply remain dead, because she is my destiny, she has been from the day we met. And before you try and tell me that Epicathix are polygamists, just remember that it is just the Zambranos that are. Their practice does not define the entire species."

Kaden listened, Aditya was making him give her another promise. He sighed. The warrior was so tired of her asking him to promise things that she would just interfere with. It was time for them to come to an understanding. His voice would come out firm, but gentle.

"I will give you my word on one condition. If I promise to keep her from here, to never return should I get out of here... you stop meddling. If she makes a decision to do what you think is not what she should do, stay out of it. If she faces death, and is fighting to live, encourage her to fight if that's what she wants. I will not make a promise to you again, just to have you undermine my efforts to keep it as you have done this last time."

He looked her in eye, and made sure she heard his words.

"Are we clear on this?"

[member="Yasha Mantis"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

“I am not Mandalorian! I hate the Mandalorians! All your culture promises is a short life and a hard death! If you think for one measly second of your existence that I wouldn’t have thrown Yasha at Kaine Zambrano’s sons, you are one lost soul in this muck!” Aditya bellowed, pushing at [member="Kaden Mantis"]’ shoulder harshly.

“Yasha is my daughter and I am Panathan Citizenry, you ignorant boy! Panathan nobility are polygamist by a rule! Just because you can say with honesty that you’re good with being with only one person for the rest of your life doesn’t mean that’s what love is like for the rest of us. Yasha is genetically descended from a culture which didn’t even know monogamy existed, and if you think that you alone will make her happy, you’re as brain dead as Valier Zambrano! My mother was polygamist, my grandmother was polygamist, my great-grandmother, my sisters, my grandfather, heck, even Uncle Joe! I spent the entire time I had with my daughter teaching her the Panathan way in hopes she’s go for it hook and line. You’re in there, that’s obvious to see, but think of how much damage you’ll do by fighting to be her only, when she’s desperate to experience more.

Don’t make your love a cage. Love is freedom, Kaden. Not a cage.” Little did Aditya know her sentiment did get through to Yasha. Little did she know that Yasha spoke similar words to Kaden mere hours before.

Aditya deflated and shook her head, still walking down the road. “Look. I loved Preliat with a burning and untameable passion. He was my one and only, and it killed me. Twice. Do you think being the wife of a Mandalorian is easy? It’s not. You live in constant and abject fear that the only thing coming through the door again is going to be a burnt out piece of his armour. I wanted more for Yasha than fear. I wanted her to become a ballerina and marry rich. Some minor noble with delusions of grandeur and half the stamina needed to carry them out. This whole Mand’alor thing is just another way you Mandalorians have to give bright and capable people a shorter life span. And yes, I know there’s the Manda.”

Aditya spoke the word ‘Manda’ with a groan, shaking her hands out as she said it. “Sure, I’ve seen edges of it. I watched someone pull poor Ginnie Dib’s soul out of the Manda, happened somewhere…. that way.”

Motioning to the horizon, Aditya hopped down a ravine, and took what looked like a straight cliff’s edge, yet did not fall. “If your only reason for being alive is my daughter? You might want to reevaluate yourself, son. I can promise I won’t meddle, sure. That’s fine… but you have to promise to see her. Not with your human understanding but with the understanding of what she is, and what she was born to be. If she wants someone else in her bed than you, guess what? It’s her decision. Sure, if Preliat’d done that I’d’ve killed the booch. Made her life heck… but I remember my father… he was an engineer, a real mechanical ace. Fourth son of a minor Lord, nothing special. He married up, marrying my mother. His life was better, he had his mechanic shop and he even got to repair some of the Royal Family’s speeders… He loved my mother, but not… not like a planet-shattering love. They had their affection, but there wasn’t all of it.

Wasn’t until he met his second wife that I saw what love actually was like between spouses. They rocked the stars… gods, my mother hated it, but she also liked him giving her space to meddle in my ballet career. I guess… nobody can be everything to one person, you know? You can be a whole heck of a lot, but you can’t fulfill all of a person by yourself. That’s what teams are for. A real polygamist relationship’s about being a team around a central figure. About… bonding and helping each other out. It’s not about one-ups and ‘who can do it better’. It’s not about fracturing love, but discovering more of it… guess… guess if I’d found that with Eli, I’d have stayed… but… being the wife of the mentally ill is never an easy feat.

So if I’m clear on your thing, are you clear on understanding mine?”

 

[Kaden Farr]

Kaden shook his head.

”Like I keep saying, you and your daughter you latch onto one thing and do not listen to the rest...”

He sighed and shrugged his shoulders.

”I am going to speak slower so maybe you hear it all, because I’m tired of these conversations going in circles with crux of all this being ignored.”

“Yasha chose to be Mand’alor. It means she must embody the Resol’nare. There is a key rule of leadership that every good leader knows. The more leadership responsability you assume, the less rights and freedoms you have. Leadership is sacrifice. If Yasha does not embody the Resol’nare to the most restrictive interpretation possible, then she will be challenge, and those are usually to the death.”

“You charged me with keeping her alive, and to do that I HAVE to insist she live it out without flaw or room for question as to her loyalty. Her choice means that she must turn her back on what you would have had for her. It means the rules of your people no longer apply to her. That was her choice. Why do you think I told her that if she cannot do what Mand’alor requires of her that she should abandon it.”

“Can Yasha do what she wants, sure. Mand’alor the Infernal cannot. If Yasha cannot understand that, then if I must, I will heal my legs and challenge her myself. It would be better me than someone else, because I would keep her alive where another may not.”

Kaden sighed again.

”And do not tell me love is freedom. Love is sacrifice. Love is a choice. There is an old saying, you cannot unconditionally love two masters. If you try you will love one and despise the other. It is not fair to love one and tell the other they get your leftovers. Yasha does not get mine, and I would never allow myself to be in a position where my life partner could possibly give me theirs. I have to share her with the Mando’ade as a whole. It is more than fair that I ask for something of her that is mine and mine alone.”

Did they understand each other?

”I understand you, but I do not agree with you. When it comes to Yasha’s heart I will not be an afterthought. I will be her first, and her only thought, or I will not be a thought at all.”

[member="Yasha Mantis"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

“Oh, I’ve been hearing you, honey. I chose not to go there, that’s totally different from not hearing it.”

Aditya stopped short of a small chasm, put Eli down and shimmied through a break in the black ice, scraping herself along with the little boy following in her footsteps.

“Sounds to me like you’re using the Resol’nare to restrict her. Isn’t that a children’s poem, anyway? Don't people have better things to gripe about than who my daughter tangles up in her bed roll? See, you’re only willing to have her if you have her your way. Full cleave to the Resol’nare, ‘ooga ooga beskar I’ma raid it’ Monogamous Mando. If you don’t get what you want, you’ll call her a fool and stay dead. That’s one heck of a manipulative misinterpretation.” Grunting as she moved along, Aditya looked back to check and see if Kaden was still with her. “Sure, she’s probably doing the same to you. ‘Live inside my interpretation or be gone’. That ain’t a marriage, that’s a set of ultimatums. If she don’t be the Mand’alor you want her to be, you fight her? Leave her alive as a mercy?

Who made you the boss of Yasha’s mind? And what kind of line is that? Better you than somebody else… Worse things than death, being betrayed by a lover? Deacons preserve us, that’s one of them.”

Aditya scrambled purely upwards now, disappearing momentarily before sticking her head back to the dim grey light of the chasm and offering her hand to Eli, then to Kaden.

“No, honey. Real love is freedom. It’s release from all else. Sure, you sacrifice to get and keep it, but dang, seems more I hear it, Yasha made you miserable. Other than ‘because I love her’, and 'Adara' why are you doing this? Why’re you putting yourself through the Netherworld yet again to get a single slim chance of returning to life unnaturally? Why not enter Manda? Won't you lot all be the same interconnected brain or such then? You died.

Happens.

There ain’t no natural way of bringing you back. In order to do it, Yasha will have to break a solid hundred natural laws and stick her finger up at the rules and sages, who explain why it’s not a good look.

Maybe Shia could do it… Yeah. [member="Shia Kryze"] could probably finagle you out of here… I understand you. Gets my back up, hearing you talk like that. It’s the most unattractive thing I’ve ever heard… but I’m not Yasha and I’m not you. Maybe possessive men are all the rage. I mean, mine killed for me, so.. so much. But he also played into my hands in his nightmares, and let me do what I needed and had to do.

You sure you want to do this? What happens when the inevitable happens and my little girl figures out Mama knows best and throws herself at someone else?”