Starfall. It’s all in the timing. (Sio)

[Siobhan Kerrigan]

[member="Natoline Kerrigan"], [member="Tegaea Alcori"]


"I know, sweetie, I know. I'm sorry," Siobhan spoke in an as soothing tone as she could, gently stroking Nato's hair before planting a kiss on her cheek. The Countess sounded bloody tired, but she was trying to be comforting, even though her face was soaked in tears, intermixed with droplets of blood dripping out of an open head wound.


Despite the daze she was in she could make out Tegaea and gave her a tired smile. "Hey, wifey. I...got our little girl," she said tiredly and tried to stand, wanting nothing more than to rush towards Tegs and hug her. Unfortunately for Siobhan, this was not possible because her wobbly legs gave way and she promptly collapsed.

 

[Tegaea Alcori]

[member="Natoline Kerrigan"] [member="Siobhan Kerrigan"]

Tegaea’s eyes took in the scene in a couple of heartbeats. She quickly gathered matters, then rushed forward to catch Siobhan before she could fall.
“Medic, now!” she ordered, her voice cracking a bit. “It’s alright, Sio…you did good. You’re both safe now,” she said softly as the doctors came in.

Going next to Nato, she kissed her adopted daughter on the forehead. “Welcome back, Nato…go with the doctors. We’ll be close.”

Fortunately the Ardarvia was well prepared for Siobhan, and reputedly had a bacta tank always on hand for her. For Nato she would be taken quickly to have her legs looked at and set as well as having other injuries seen to.

She wasn’t sure what had happened down there, but she was sure she’d get the whole story soon.

 

[Glade]

Nato tried to reach out to catch her mum with no way to move, but tegs was there, phew. She'd never spent enough time with her other mum, she kinda felt bad. The doctors started fussin’ and stuff, she wondered if she’d get another eyepatch, or maybe a peg leg like her holobooks. Double pegleg! Woah Head kiss from Tegs! Then a beaming smile, even if she was sore and had just been through losing everythin' again, she totally nato-froze where she was.

Owwww doctors and people were trying to move her, “yeppers gonna be okay mum.” She said to teggy, teggi, tege hmm she’d work on nicknaming to keep her mind busy, consciously so or not she’d be distracting herself all the way to their medbay and into next week. Before she got’ta way the little Kiffar girl stole a tegs-hug, much to her doctors dismay as they were trying to settle her to a gurney, and telling her to stop moving her legs!

Pffff…. Doctors, what did they know, all doctory, maybe she needed to lie down and rest..., nope! “Is mum okay?” She said somewhat oddly through her brain buzzing, her façade fraying at the edges with real concern. Hoping to tegs, wanting Sio to be okay, she was twisting herself up inside that she’d hurt her mum, and about… no she didn’t want to think about everythin’ else. Whatever smile framed her bobbing head, as she let go of Teggie, didn’t really tell anyone the true picture of what she was feeling.

“Not goin till Sio is okay.” She put her little hand on the medical staff's arm, and looked defiantly into his eyes, he must have been twice her size.

[member="Siobhan Kerrigan"] | [member="Tegaea Alcori"]​

 

[Siobhan Kerrigan]

[member="Tegaea Alcori"], [member="Natoline Kerrigan"]


Tegaea caught her, stabilising Siobhan before she could fall to the ground like a sack of potatoes. Breathing heavily, she gave her wife a grateful look. As much as she hated showing weakness, she was too tired to irrationally fuss about it! She gave her wife a grateful kiss, though it was understandably a rather clumsy one.


Glancing over to Nato as the medics arrived, she gave their daughter a tired smile. "I'll be fine, dear. Go with the doctors. You sure need the care. We'll be close," she managed to say. The armour was weighing rather heavily on her shoulders, but at least she managed to keep herself from falling again, though she was now on the receiving end of a headache from hell.

 

[Tegaea Alcori]

[member="Natoline Kerrigan"] [member="Siobhan Kerrigan"]

“She’ll be just fine, sweetie. Just relax, let them help you,” Tegaea said gently. Kneeling down she helped Siobhan remove her armour and let the medics get her onto a gurney too.

Teggie. It was just as well that one wasn’t vocalised. It would probably be for her what ‘Kerri-goo’ was to her wife.

A glance out the hanger showed her the ruin of Kaeshana. Even from high orbit she could see the flames, the flooded land, the dust. She turned away.

“Close the hanger doors. Get us into hyperspace,” she ordered the bridge. “I’ll be in the medical bay.”

 

[Glade]

After Sio and Tegs both assured her, Nato snugged herself back in her gurney, as much as was possible, much to the relief of the medical staff which picked her up on their hover assisted board, and carried her out with them, beginning to plug a tube or two into miss-gets-captured-a lot. She didn’t have a nickname but she still wanted an eyepatch, which she was asking her doctor about as she was pulled out.

Bright smile on her face that Sio was gonna be okay, with tegs, just smiling covering everythin’ else up, especially because someone relented and offer her an honorary eyepatch, takin' her mind off her legs, n stuff.

Plonked up on what was probably the cleanest room she had ever been in, she wiggled her nose a touch, she was fine. They began to set her legs, yep just fine, ow “heeey”, she tensed her nose as their medical staff worked, sighed wistfully, someone had put on some music! Wait she knew that music, only one person played a jazzy form of glitz minus any sneaky little gliz melodies...

"I gotta eye patch!" Nato said to the man approaching her bed, yeah she was being silly, she didn't care, that was easier than being serious right now.

[member="Siobhan Kerrigan"] | [member="Tegaea Alcori"]​

 

[Siobhan Kerrigan]

[member="Natoline Kerrigan"], [member="Tegaea Alcori"]


Little, adorable Nato seemed to have a thing for eyepatches. Hopefully she would not follow in her mum's footsteps in the maimimg department! As for Teggie, Nato totally had to mention that nickname to Siobhan, who still wanted revenge for 'Kerri-goo'.


Regardless, now freed from her armour, Siobhan was placed on a gurney and carried out of the hangar. Soon she would find herself in the medbay, where the healers and doctors soon set to work. She had suffered a concussion, a couple broken bones and ribs that would need to be mended. Fortunately, though there was internal bleeding her organs were intact. Above all, she was simply exhausted and so she soon drifted off to sleep. Fortunately, the Ardarvia was well-prepared to accommodate her needs since she did get hurt a lot.

 

[Tegaea Alcori]

[member="Natoline Kerrigan"] [member="Siobhan Kerrigan"]
Eyepatches were pretty cool, even if probably not necessary. This writer imagines the various Firemane facilities keep a couple on hand in case Natoline ended up in their care.

For Tegaea the hardest part was the waiting. She paced restlessly down the hall as she waited for news. The Doctor came to her first regarding Siobhan, and the news there was relatively good. Siobhan had not suffered too bad damage this time.

A little while later another Doctor came to say that Natoline’s legs had been set and she had been sedated to recover.

With nothing to do until wife and daughter awoke, Tegaea went to catch up on some work. However, progress was slow because of her distraction, and in the end she gave in and took a shower before heading back down to the medical wing to see if her family was awake.

 

[Fyor Nayus]

While Nato muse’d’, she would totally not remember to call anyone teggie, nope, not at all, there was a wink given to the man who placed an arm on her shoulder @Fyor Nayus, of course who else. She didn’t how she felt about him right now, but she was glad he was here.

Fitted with a suitably velvety red eyepatch Nato beamed happily, unfortunately, unlike Sio who got off to sleep. Nato was chatting on for ages with Fyor, and fyor was consoling her in the only way he knew how, by telling her long fanciful stories about made up journeys he’d been on, always over exaggerated and overblown, which seemed to work because she knew they were made up, but listened all the same. He knew the more talkative she was, and the happier she played her mask, the more torn up she was inside.

Eventually his charge fell asleep, music still going off somewhere in the background, his job was done. Fyor pulled out a small silver flask, one of about five across the part-time-padawn’s belt, and started to swig, but he didn’t leave her side all the same, not until the doctors finally hustled him out into the hallway. It seemed wearing a doctors uniform only got you inside for so long, at least when you were drinking in front of them!

Nodding to Tegaea in the hallway, hoping not to receive too much of a scolding. Galtech’s engineer and the firemane associate took a chair and sat down, wondering if this was the time to smoke some of [member="Taiden Keth"]’s especially strong herbal remedies, laced with his own needs of course, he hesitated as he brought a stick to his mouth, but if there were no objections settled down to settle his own worry about Nato's ability to walk.

[member="Tegaea Alcori"] | [member="Siobhan Kerrigan"]​

Spoiler

Skipping Nato, Tegaea might know Fyor as they own part of galtech his company and he's Nato's on off lover.

 

[Siobhan Kerrigan]

[member="Tegaea Alcori"], [member="Fyor Nayus"], [member="Natoline Kerrigan"]


Kaeshana was toast, which tremendously sucked for the benighted natives left behind, for only a fraction of the planet's population had been evacuated. One might add that this had been the best case scenario. The survivors would awaken to a new world, one of nuclear winter, floods, and daily struggle for survival. They would envy, resent and hate those who had been so fortunate to escape and rage against the Goddess who had failed to protect them.


As the Ardarvia drifted through the depths of hyperspace, far away from the wasteland that had been the home for the Firemane clan for so long, Siobhan dreamt. At first, her slumber was less than peaceful. Again and again she stirred, seemingly assaulted in the dreamlands by daemons. Perhaps it was the ghosts of Kaeshana that haunted her, those who had been slaughtered during the civil war, the countless Forgotten who had been left behind. Here and there the nurses could hear her mutter words in Eldarai.


Finally she calmed down after being given stronger sedatives and drugs when it seemed like she would wake up right in the middle of an operation, and seemed to settle into something what was close to a peaceful slumber. Her dreams became more peaceful and for some reason involved syrup and caramel. Hours passed and finally she seemed to awake. She felt groggy and her eyes looked sleepy as she stirred, looking around as she tried to acclimate herself to her surroundings, though common sense told her she was in bed in the medbay.

 

[Tegaea Alcori]

[member="Fyor Nayus"] [member="Siobhan Kerrigan"]

Tegaea noticed the young man with the flask and smoke who was also wearing a doctor's coat. She returned the nod, slightly puzzled, then headed in to Siobhan's room.

At last, sleeping beauty was awakening, and so she went to her wife's side.

When at last her eyes opened Tegaea was there. "Hello, sweetie. Welcome back," she said, and kissed her gently.

 

[Glade]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb9fHU4d3Ds​

Snoozing, waking, snoozing and waking, while we would like to say Natoline’s eye patch and stories of high adventure inspired happier dreams than they did, sadly in her current state of mind she was just a gibbering mess of emotions. Like her mum she just saw ghosts, only she couldn’t and wouldn’t accept them as ghosts, she’d taken an item from every single refugee before she’d left, all 1,000 of them and if Fyor had come that collection was somewhere nearby, on his ship maybe.

Memories, her mind was desperately trying to remember every face, for every memory, for every item, an impossible task but this new distraction kept her busy, her memory box was about to get A LOT bigger, memory vault would kinda be her thing, healthy or unhealthy she was just gonna keep them.

While her Lorrdian companion sat outside smoking his own brand of release from worry or care, Natoline horded hers, she wasn’t letting go, not to her home. Her eyepatch had got her to sleep, but sleep wasn’t very restful, she wanted to curl up into a ball but was denied that by her stupid legs. Pulling at her bedcovers again, till someone asked her if she wanted another sedative for her pain, she ignored them and look up at their ceiling. How was her mum?

Outside fyor did his fyor thing, falling into a stupor, and inside she got the word her mum was okay, because she kept waking up every thirty minutes to ask, they might have even just told her that to get her back to sleep, so she couldn't sleep in case they were fibbing, pfffft, so much for one little head.

[member="Siobhan Kerrigan"] | [member="Tegaea Alcori"]​

 

[Siobhan Kerrigan]

[member="Tegaea Alcori"], [member="Natoline Kerrigan"]


Waking up to find her firemaned wife hovering over her tended to be a pleasant sight. After all, Siobhan loved being the centre of attention. So she gave her wife a tired smile, leaning into the kiss when it was planted on the undamaged part of her face. "Hey, how long was I out, love?" she asked, looking around. Of course her thoughts drifted to their daughter. "Is Nato ok? I want to see her. " With some effort she reached out to take Tegaea's hand.

 

[Tegaea Alcori]

[member="Siobhan Kerrigan"] [member="Natoline Kerrigan"]

"She's fine, love, recovering in the next room. You've been asleep a good twelve hours."
She smiled, trying to insert some levity. "I would let you get up and see her, but Doctor Osway has ordered you stay in bed a little longer...and we don't want to go against the good doctor now, do we?"

 

[Glade]

Unbeknown but to a few left now, after a Sith raid on coruscant before the One Sith existed, Nato had broken her back, and had wild experimental surgery to get walking again, something she never took for granted, at all, enjoying every second of movement in more elaborate ways. Minifractures across her legs complicated things further, and she was listening to them explain dangers to her about things like dancing or doing those Ataru back flips she was known for, but she blocked them out, she’d be okay.

A few more hours passed, and she’d just rolled out of a dream, her top half anyway as her bottom half was restrained to set in place and be unmovable, that would be a long process to reset them. They’d pulled up a hoverchair of sorts next to her bed, her nose scrunched up, “kinda got anythin’ less…. Crappy?” The doctors looked at each other, she’d felt bad she’d said it, they were trying to help but she was grouchy. “Sorry," Nato frowned, "like, pink or red?”

Another chair was hovered along, someone had done a rush job to get a red cushion in place of standard black, not quite the emperor’s throne, which Nato still totally wanted to sit in after seeing those holomovies, but her chariot looked comfy.

Doctors wouldn’t let her out of course, pesky doctors, not until next morning when Fyor stumbled his way back in on a rescue mission, he could not risk moving her, but he could risk hacking into the viewing monitor to make a two way communication screen between the rooms, which the savant engineer could do almost blindfolded. So it was Sio and Tegs might suddenly see a zoomed in picture of their daughter's nose on the wall, then giggles till fyor got the depth right, her bright bubbly smile and happy wave coming next.

[member="Tegaea Alcori"] | [member="Siobhan Kerrigan"]​

 

[Siobhan Kerrigan]

[member="Tegaea Alcori"], [member="Natoline Kerrigan"]


Siobhan felt quite grumpy about being told she'd have to stay in bed. "But she's hot when she's pissed! And I'm so bored here," she protested, sounding just a bit sulky. As for Osway, in Sio's opinion she should totally join the Order of the Torch, but alas all of her attempts to seduce the doctor failed. "Could I at least get some magazines or a foot massage?" she asked half-seriously.


However, then she was distracted when she suddenly saw a zoomed picture of Nato's nose on the wall! Siobhan looked very perplexed, then Fyor got the image right and she saw her daughter waving. Giving Nato a bright smile, Siobhan waved back. "Hey, sweetie, Up and about again? That eyepatch is...cute."

 

[Tegaea Alcori]

[member="Siobhan Kerrigan"] [member="Natoline Kerrigan"]

“Well, maybe I can keep you interested, yes?” Tegaea asked, giving her a kiss. “As for a foot massage, I’m not an expert, but I can give it a try.” Knowing her trollish ways she’d likely insert a bit of tickling too!

Suddenly the screen came on to show…a nose. It was true that Natoline had the most expressive nose in the galaxy. When it wriggled or scrunched up it had a character all its own.
Thus, Tegaea was wholly surprised when the refocus yielded her daughter. One of them anyway. She’d never imagined she’d end up with multiple daughters, or children of any sort!

“Hey there, Nat! How’re you feeling? That is a cute eyepatch too,” she added.

 

[Glade]

“Ummmm docs sayin gotta rest my legs but, y’know probably jus fretting, oohh they got me this cool chair!” Whatever they said she was gonna just go back to walking, bit like her mum she would just push herself. Nato had started like that and with both her mums care and acceptance become more and more like that. Even if she didn’t mind being pushed out of their hospital to get her goin’!

Smiling and feeling equally silly with Tegs compliment about her eyepatch, she loved that Tegs had said that as much as wearing it, maybe that’s the real reason she had worn it, Nato froze, but only a lil. “Kinda fuzzy mum but okay,” her face was still marked though and looked bleh, fragments of her home on her raggy sleeve, “Fyor’s brought me some sweets,” she held up the huge fold out gold box which was probably as big as her tiny belly. Out of the hundred sweets, she he’d had you guessed it, none at all, but they looked nice.

“How are you feelin’ mum?” Listening and watching Sio, there was a little flicker of real sadness in reminder, for what had happened and what she'd put Sio through, guilt too, separation and now she was all, stuck in her bed, and hurt and Nato smile! Picking up her box again, “can’t wait t’share these, with,” her voice stumbled and faltered around, prodding at the wrapping, "you both."

"Is she okay." Whispering to tegs as if she was wanting some reassurance, after losing her planet and lover you couldn't really blame her for grasping, or maybe just to hear voices of family again, Fyor ruffled her already ruffled hair from behind.

[member="Siobhan Kerrigan"] | [member="Tegaea Alcori"]​

 

[Siobhan Kerrigan]

[member="Tegaea Alcori"], [member="Natoline Kerrigan"]


"You're very good at keeping me interested," Siobhan said most cornily before locking lips with her wifey. A possibly heated makeout session in the hospital room was cut short by Nato's appearance and so Siobhan focused on her little girl. She was happy about her and Tegs getting on!


Family was important to her, after all. "Listen to the doctors, sweetie. You've been through a lot and need the rest." This was as close to a lecture as Siobhan came and her tone was rather mild. In the light of the fact that Siobhan usually disregarded her own advice, it was slightly hypocritical!


"I'm ok, Nato. Really. Day or two and I'll be as good as before," she said as reassuringly as she could, cracking a smile, then glanced over to Tegaea. There were two things that needed to be addressed. Namely Nato's kidnapping and the damage on Kaeshana. "The asteroid hit Kaeshana. Do we have report on the damage? I imagine it impacted close to Santaissa." She could imagine what devastation the planet had suffered, but she still needed to hear it.

 

[Tegaea Alcori]

[member="Siobhan Kerrigan"] [member="Natoline Kerrigan"]

In order to stop Sio’s writer having nothing to do, this one will do some quick posts.

Tegaea smiled at Nato’s words. Her adoptive daughter was just so…quirky, it made her smile.
“Sio will be fine, sweetie. She’s tough, your mum is,” she said fondly.

Siobhan’s words changed her mood a bit. “It’s bad,” she said softly. “So many people lost….”