Private Tit For Tat

[Muad Dib]

"I hope I didn't keep either of you waiting."

When Muad heard Rin, he turned his head and stared. She wasn't in a two-piece bikini that held very little to the imagination. Instead, the earthy tones of the sleeveless tunic and ankle-length skirt covered much of her previously exposed skin. However, the clothing choice hugged her curves in all the right places while remaining demure and acceptably comfortable evening wear. You could put a rough-hewn bag on the woman, and she'd still shine. Or he could be sightless and still be blinded by her beauty. Muad swallowed the lump in his throat.

"You clean up surprisingly well."

He laughed as she crossed the remaining distance to the table. Muad stood, a retort already on his lips. "Don't get used to it, darlin'." One hand pulled the chair out for her to sit, his lips lightly brushing the side of her head and an exposed ear tip in the process. Derek also stood, manners as ingrained as breathing, as he set the tumbler with Corellian whiskey within her reach. "Sincerely. Don't get used to it. My wardrobe couldn't handle his meddling."

Muad frowned at his brother as the two returned to their seats. Derek gestured to the elaborate spread. "Ladies first, help yourself," Muad smirked while resisting the urge to claim Rin's hand in his own. It was difficult to cut a steak with one hand, after all. After Rin took whichever portions of the food she desired, the men followed suit.

Crimson eyes looked up from where Derek had begun slicing his rare nerf steak into bite-sized morsels. "I presume you had an enjoyable day, Rin?" Muad spoke around the tumbler he had just taken a sip from. "Of course she did; she was with me."

"And that was why I said I presumed. You have your entertaining moments. Occasionally."

Muad observed the flush of her ears as she spoke. It would have been easy enough to xelbe along the dyad, but oddly enough, he found the respectful boundaries they had unconsciously created would require an effort of choice to cross. His lips twitched in amusement. Chek and Marta had warned them the dyad would make it difficult to keep where they each began and ended as separate. And yet, the two of them had found the boundaries and marked them in their minds as lines not to be crossed. He wouldn't defile their trust in one another with simple curiosity. It wasn't needed. He felt her feelings bleed into his at the center: deep affection and desire, and a comfortable resonating wholeness found with one another.

"Do you know what a Battlelord is?"

Derek jumped in his seat; a muttered curse followed as he reached under the table to rub his shin. Even without his boots, Muad could still kick with intent and accuracy that would, no doubt, leave a bruise on the older Dib's leg. Muad merely gave a toothy grin while Derek stared at him with open hostility. Undeterred, he continued.

"What do you know of Mandalorian culture? Their beliefs in the afterlife, Manda, I believe it's called. Or their gods, like Hod Ha'ran?"

Again, Derek jerked in his chair. This time much more violently. He retrieved his steak knife and pointed it at Muad, who sat there with an innocence on his features. "You kick me one more time, and I swear by the Force ..."

"You'll do what? Ruin our perfectly peaceful dinner?"
"No, I'll talk about ancient Sith runes, Sith plagues, doppelgangers, children from the future with curses, ripping your soul to feed an ancient Nether deity, pacts with the d-- SITHSPIT!"

Muad's steak knife quivered in the back of Derek's chair. If he hadn't dodged in time, it would be sticking out of his chest.

"Dammit, Muad, that was close!"
"It's not my fault the presidency has made you soft."
"It's not the presidency."
"Oh, you're just getting old then?"

Derek pulled the blade from his chair and flipped it through the air at Muad's own chest. But his hand snatched it from the air as he grinned. Derek shook his head, an exasperated smile creeping onto his face as he went back to his meal.

"You're a dick."
"Don't you mean a phallus, oh distinguished one?"
"No. A dick. And I'm not old. You're old."
"You're still older."
"That doesn't negate the fact you are still old."
"True."

Muad grinned as Derek smiled, and they both retrieved their glasses and saluted before drinking. Muad glanced over to Rin and sighed. His brother was trying to clear the air. Muad disagreed with his approach, but the need was still real. But there was another subject he wanted to discuss first—business, followed by pleasure.

"Since we've been gone, any updates on the warfront?"
"There has been a surge of activity along the northwestern border of the High Republic. It would appear the target may very well be Alderaan. However, they've decided to reinforce and blockade the southwestern border. And the King of Naboo has pulled resources to establish a large fleet and garrison in his system. From what intelligence we've gathered, I ascertain an immediate attack. Not on Alderaan, which lies in Sith Space already, not on Naboo, which is insulated within the borders of High Republic space, and not in the obvious southern reaches. I believe they mean to attack a planet important not just the Republic, but the galaxy as a whole."
"You're thinking ..."
"Yes."
"Soon?"
"Immediately."
"I hate you sometimes."
"The feeling is mutual."
"So, tomorrow."
"Probably for the best."

Muad leaned back and glanced at Rin with an apologetic smile. "Looks like we go to war tomorrow, darlin'. But until then, Derek brought up a few points you could question. Or if you have any of your own, the floor is yours."
Rin Taal

 

[Rin Taal]

Rin had barely reached the table before Muad was on his feet again. The chair being pulled out for her earned him a small, appreciative smile, but the brush of his lips against the side of her head and the exposed tip of one ear caught her less prepared. Her ear twitched beneath the contact as warmth slipped down the back of her neck, awakening an immediate memory of his breath against that same sensitive edge in the hallway. After everything that had happened outside, her body seemed determined to remember every place he had touched her, and Rin lowered herself into the chair with considerably more composure than she felt. The words she had overheard only minutes earlier made the tenderness of the gesture worse in an entirely different way. I love her. She could not look at him without hearing them now, and when Derek warned her not to become accustomed to Muad looking respectable, her smile became a convenient place to hide everything else. "I'll keep my expectations appropriately low."

The whiskey Derek placed within reach received a curious inspection before Rin wrapped her fingers around the tumbler and left it resting near her plate. She helped herself to dinner without ceremony, comfortable enough with both men that she felt no need to wait for anything beyond Derek's invitation, and his question about her day warmed her expression in a way that had very little to do with the meal. "Very much." Muad's immediate insistence that his presence explained why made her laugh softly, while Derek's dry correction widened her smile. "He had something to do with it." She gave Muad a sidelong glance as she took her first bite, knowing perfectly well how inadequate that description was. A dragonling had chosen her. She had flown above the clouds with him, discovered that the dyad did not frighten her anymore, nearly kissed him against the mansion, and then heard him tell his brother that he loved her. There were entire days of her life with less packed into them than the hours since waking beside him that morning.

Derek's next question pulled her attention fully toward him. Battlelord meant nothing to her, and Rin made no attempt to manufacture recognition where none existed. "No." Her utensil settled back toward her plate while she listened to the additional questions, but neither the Manda nor Hod Ha'ran produced much more than a thoughtful narrowing of her golden eyes. That realization left her oddly aware of how much she knew about Muad as a person and how little she knew about the world that had shaped him. She knew his touch and his laughter, fragments of his pain, pieces of his family, the strange chaos that seemed to follow him, and, increasingly, the quieter man underneath it all. Yet those things were Muad. They were not the same as understanding what it meant when he called himself Mandalorian.

"Almost nothing, apparently." Rin admitted it without embarrassment, although genuine curiosity had begun to take hold. "I know pieces of what Muad has told me about himself, but that's about Muad. I wouldn't pretend that means I understand Mandalorian culture." Her attention remained on Derek for another moment, studying the older brother with increasing interest. He had brought up several subjects in quick succession, and she doubted he was merely testing her knowledge for amusement. "Are you planning to give me a crash course? Because if you are, I think you're going to have to start near the beginning."

A dull impact beneath the table interrupted whatever answer might have followed. Rin's ears flicked instinctively toward the sound an instant before Derek jerked in his seat, and understanding arrived when she looked at Muad. The innocence on his face might have worked on someone who had met him several hours ago. Rin had already seen far too much mischief lurking behind that particular expression to believe it now. Her lips pressed together around the beginning of a smile as she returned to her food, curious to see where this peculiar exchange was going rather than inclined to interfere. She had wanted to know Muad's brother. Apparently that also meant learning the language the two men had developed between themselves.

The second kick suggested that language involved considerably more violence than she had anticipated. Rin leaned back, finally raised the whiskey Derek had poured for her, and let its warmth touch her tongue while the conversation proceeded to deteriorate around her. Ancient Sith runes barely earned a reaction, but plagues, doppelgangers, cursed children from the future, souls fed to Nether entities, and pacts with something Derek never quite finished naming gradually pulled her brows upward. There was enough contained in that single breathless retaliation to occupy several evenings of questions, and she found herself looking at Muad with a renewed awareness of just how much history could be concealed inside a life as impossibly long as his.

Then the steak knife buried itself in Derek's chair.

Rin stopped chewing. Her gaze settled upon the quivering knife for a long second before traveling to Derek, then Muad, and something dangerously close to laughter began pressing against the inside of her chest. Neither man behaved as though attempted impalement had fundamentally altered the evening. Derek simply pulled the knife free and sent it flying back across the table; Muad caught it, and Rin slowly lifted her whiskey for another sip because apparently this was what dinner with the Dib brothers looked like. She had spent more than a century around families who argued loudly, wrestled, threatened one another, and reconciled before the food cooled, but this was spectacular even by generous standards.

The longer Rin watched them, however, the more the absurdity softened into something unexpectedly endearing. There was a cadence beneath their insults that spoke of repetition and familiarity, an old rhythm neither brother needed to consciously follow. Muad knew exactly how far to push Derek. Derek knew precisely where to strike back. Even the insults about age lacked any real edge, and when both men finally raised their glasses with matching smiles, Rin felt something inside her loosen. This was another piece of Muad she had not possessed yesterday. Not a memory offered through the dyad or a story about someone absent, but Muad with his brother, alive and ridiculous and entirely himself. After everything she had overheard about Arabella and everything Derek had said about Muad being broken, seeing the affection between them mattered more than she would have expected.

Rin hid her smile behind another sip of whiskey and returned to her food, content for the moment simply to be there. She had been welcomed into the space between the brothers rather than left standing outside it, and there was something quietly significant about that. Muad wanted her to know Derek. Derek, in his own peculiar way, seemed interested in knowing her. The thought left a small warmth beneath her ribs, joining the far deeper one that had been there since she heard three simple words through a wall. For someone who had spent so much of her life moving from one road to another, she was beginning to understand why Muad spoke about home as people rather than places.

The change in conversation extinguished her amusement gradually rather than all at once. Rin continued eating while Derek spoke, but each new piece of information slowed her movements a little more. Activity along the High Republic's northwestern border. Alderaan. Naboo gathering defenses. A southern border conspicuously reinforced. None of those things meant enough individually for Rin to draw the conclusion Derek already had, but together they created a presentiment she recognized all too well. She had felt its mundane cousin on caravan roads when birds went quiet at the wrong hour, or tracks appeared where none should have been, that subtle gathering of details that made the body uneasy before the mind had identified why. By the time Derek said he expected an immediate attack, the warmth of dinner had acquired a colder edge.

The exchange between the brothers after that was almost painfully brief. Rin's fingers remained wrapped around her tumbler, and the quiet happiness she had carried into the room tightened somewhere beneath her breastbone. She had known the galaxy beyond Olanet hadn't stopped turning simply because she and Muad had spent a day together. Still, knowing that intellectually was different from hearing that tomorrow might carry them directly from this table into war. Her eyes found Muad before he looked toward her, and when his apologetic smile came, something inside her ached at the idea that he thought an apology belonged anywhere in it.

"Tomorrow." Rin repeated the word softly, tasting its weight rather than questioning it. She drew a breath and let it leave slowly, refusing to surrender tonight to something that had not happened yet. Fear existed somewhere beneath that choice. She had only just admitted to herself how deeply Muad had worked his way into her heart, and war had an ugly talent for taking precisely the people someone had finally discovered they could not bear to lose. The realization tightened her fingers briefly around the glass. She did not send that fear through the dyad or make it his burden, but neither did she lie to herself about its existence.

Her gaze stayed on Muad, and the memory of his voice through the wall returned with almost painful clarity. I love her. Rin felt the answering truth inside herself just as strongly, and suddenly the hours they had spent on Olanet seemed more precious because tomorrow was no longer abstract. "I suppose today was a good day to spend above the clouds, then." There was a softness in her voice that Muad might understand better than Derek could. If tomorrow demanded something from them, she was grateful they had been given today first. She was grateful for the dragonling, for Galabatorix, for laughter and interrupted kisses, for Muad's hand in hers, and even for this ridiculous dinner with a man who apparently considered steak knives an acceptable component of sibling conversation.

Rin finally looked back toward Derek, unwilling to allow the threat of tomorrow to consume what remained of tonight. Curiosity still waited beneath everything else, and perhaps it mattered more now. If she was going to stand beside Muad in whatever came next, she wanted to understand more of the man beside her, including the culture he carried with him. "You were about to explain how much I don't know about Mandalorians." Her mouth curved faintly as she picked up another bite of food. "You mentioned Battlelords, the Manda, and Hod Ha'ran. So where do you want to start?" Her gaze slipped toward Muad and then briefly toward the abused chair behind Derek before returning to his brother. "And do I need to know whether flying knives are part of the culture, or is that specifically a Dib tradition?"

Muad Dib

 

[Muad Dib]

"Throwing knives is, most assuredly, a Dib tradition. However, Mandalorian culture can be as amusingly volatile at times. That may have been one of the finer points that drew my brother in initially." Crimson eyes filled with wry amusement, even if his lips didn't betray the emotion. Muad stood, taking the crystalline decanter, and refilled their drinks before sitting down once more. He watched as his brother raised a single eyebrow, a gesture that was both a statement and a question. Since the subjects were forcibly broached, he wanted permission to continue before speaking. Muad merely rolled his eyes before answering with a slight, inclined nod. Derek looked back to Rin and leaned back far enough to cross one leg over the other and gently tap the tabletop with the fingers of his right hand.

"Perhaps we shall start with a subject I was witness to. Feeding a deity a piece of his soul. Rhaegar, our uncle, had perished at the Battle of Eshan, by one he considered a vod, a brother in the Mandalorian culture. At the time, a major schism split the Mandos into two warring factions, and they arrived in a war zone on opposite sides. Neither side backed down, and Alkor Centaris finally struck a killing blow. Ginnie, Muad's adopted sister and carrying Rhaegar's twins, lost her mind when we brought his body back to Mandalore. Genius over here, broke Mandalorian law and bound our uncle's spirit to an alchemized statue so the kids and Ginnie could visit Rhaegar as often as they wished. Muad was almost executed for the deed. You see, at this point it was illegal to use the Force on Mandalore. He didn't care."

Muad's eyes had closed as he listened. A finger was raised as he interjected. "It was an osik law. And I didn't get executed, which is all that matters."
"Of course. If you say so, brother."
"I do."
"Muad began spending more time with Ginnie, and the twins Amma and Rhae."
"You missed a part."
"What? What did I miss?"
"The part about Ginnie dying."
"Oh. There is that. Long before our uncle died and near the beginning of his relationship with Ginnie. So, Ginnie's brother, Isley Verd, also called Darth Metus, accidentally killed her while trying to get to his enemy. Rhaegar refused to let her go and traveled to the Manda, the Mandalorian afterlife, to petition for her soul. But it was already departing. So he split his soul and intermingled his with what remained of her own. So the couple was connected on a spiritual level."
"Soul mates, you could say."
Derek sighed. "You need help, little brother. But, as Muad so elegantly put it, their souls were interwoven with one another. Because Rhaegar had broken the natural order of things, when he died, there was no way to revive him. So Muad anchored his spirit to the statue. Am I missing anything else?"
"Nah, you're doing great."
"Your praise warms my heart."
"That's cause you're a needy shabuir."
Again, Derek sighed before continuing. "Rhaegar remained in the statue for almost fifteen years. And then Muad came up with an idea about -"
"You're jumping over the narrative, big brother."
"It isn't important to the narrative."
"Oh, I fully disagree. It's loads important."
"No, it isn't. This is about you, not me."
"Actually, it does.
"Why?"
"Because if I have to endure this, you do too. And this lets Rin get to know you a bit better too."
"I hate you sometimes."
"I know. Isn't it grand?"

Derek closed his eyes as Muad turned his eyes to Rin, a smile on his face. She wanted to get to know Derek and learn a bit more about his past. This was an excellent opportunity that made both brothers equal parts complicit in a stupid venture and vulnerable too. However, Derek was the one who would most likely feel uncomfortable for once.

The elder Dib took several moments before he continued, his voice obviously lower and huskier. "When our uncle died, Ginnie was a wreck. Not only did her husband, and father of the unborn twins, die, but part of her soul was lost too. She lost herself in work and alcohol and Muad, and I chose to stay close and help raise them. I moved in after Ginnie accidentally set the house on fire during a drunken stupor. She and Rhae escaped unscathed. Amma was burned. For over a decade, I lived between this mansion for work and their house for my family. And ... uh ... I ... uh ... excuse me for a moment." Derek took the tumbler of whiskey and walked away to stare out of the glass windows. The harsh weather of the night before had returned, rain hammering the surface of Olanet while lightning forked across the skies.

Muad reached out and squeezed Rin's thigh, his hand resting there longer than needed, before he rose from the table and moved to stand next to Derek. No words were said. He stood in stalwart strength. After two silent minutes, Derek nodded his head, and Muad gripped his shoulder and squeezed before returning to the table. He paused behind the Zorren woman and kissed the top of her head before slipping into his chair. "It was a rough time. And moments were very hard on him."

Derek returned, his glass empty, and sat back in the chair. He refilled his tumbler before slowly beginning to speak again. "Muad and I raised those kids. He played the eccentric uncle and I ... became a father figure."
Muad interrupted quietly. "No, you didn't. You were their father. Every milestone. Every boo-boo, nightmare, ridiculous drawing, family outing. You were their father for a decade and a half."
"As Muad said ... I was there. And I was there for Ginnie. We grew close. And ... I fell in love with her. But I never acted, because she was my uncle's widow and he was still around—just a Spirit. There was a moment when I almost acted on my feelings, feelings shared by Ginnie. But then there was the plan. To resurrect Rhaegar. Then, I couldn't allow myself to act. Not if they were to be reunited and be a family again. I couldn't take that from them."
Derek nearly choked up, and Muad reached across the table to grip his wrist for a moment before leaning back. It was the madman who continued from there.
"I'd been searching for over a decade for a way to bring him back: mystic arts, arcane sorcery, trips into several different realms and realities. I found a way to do it, though it would require the sacrifice of many lives. Over one hundred lives would need to be given to have the energy to begin the process. And the blood and ichor of several gods. Alchemy, runes, a powerful Sithspawn, and many different magiks. I was willing, able, and capable of doing it. And so I did. The sacrifice would also cost a lineage. Though I wasn't aware of it at the time."
"Yes. The price was enormous. And the fool of a brother of mine sought to pay it. He rebuilt our uncle's body using his own Rhakghoul-infected blood, hence the Sithspawn. We both used portions of our own soul to replace what was lost to the manda, a soul our uncle could tether to. Muad pissed off an entire list of Force beings who were deities, claiming their lifeblood, which made them all angry. When Zacqour, an ancient god of the Nether, came to stop us, Muad made a deal—his life for Rhaegar's. Rhaegar was resurrected, and as Ginnie and I escaped with our uncle, Muad stayed and paid the price. Zacqour imposed a curse upon him. A long life of suffering. A life filled with loss. An existence of pain, loneliness, and sorrow that would sustain the god for centuries. And then ..."
"Enough. I can finish it. I was willing to pay the price, and so I agreed. Zaqcour told me I must sacrifice my lineage to seal the deal with a final gesture. I have no trueborn blood children. So that meant I would be the sacrifice. And I agreed. Fierfek, I agreed."

Emotion now filled his voice as Muad continued.

"Zaqcour took my lineage. But not in the way I assumed. I had a daughter Named Jia Darkhold. The Sorcerers of Tund created a clone using my blood and Arabella's. And Jia was the product. I found her, freed her, raised her. And Zaqcour took her life as payment." Muad stopped speaking and drained his glass.

"Rhaegar lives with Ginnie and the twins. A whole family again. And as a favor, asked of both of us, we left. And we haven't seen them since, at their request. I lost ... a possible family that never materialized. Muad sacrificed considerably more. This is one story of many about your friend's longevity. The worst story. One we both share. My brother will do anything for those he loves, those he considers his. And neither the Corellian hells, the Manda, the Evenrealm of Dreams, the Undying fields of Adumar, or the Nether Realm will stop him. In all my years, I've never met a man willing to sacrifice everything for others so they can find and cling to life and happiness. And that is the kind of man you are choosing. Muad isn't evil; he's not good, but he is a man of conviction and unconventional morality. That is who Muad Dib is. That is who you are ... attached to."

Derek gave a nod with a slight smile at the final words he used. Another bleeding between the bonds Rin and Derek shared with the madman. Then he arched a brow, a twitch of his lips revealing his quiet amusement. "I've lived a long time with my bond with Muad. His capacity to forge new and old bonds with people has made me more perceptive about what I allow across my side of the bond. It also gives me access to general feelings and thoughts along the connections in his own bonds. I never try to eavesdrop, but sometimes certain emotions radiate more strongly than others. Hatred is hard to ignore. I have heard of one of his bonds with a man named Ellion Corsair. Unspoken thoughts of wanting to kill Muad. As well as other thoughts. One the man shared relatively recently. I believe it went something like ... He loved her, and she loved him too."

Muad was obliviously eating the last piece of his steak while Derek allowed a knowing smile to cross his lips at the young Zorren woman across the table from him. Though he hadn't meant to hear it, he did.

"Just as I am certain that my earlier, compromised emotions about relationships drifted farther than intended. One thing I am well versed in is discretion. I am sure you understand what I'm talking about, yes, Rin?"
Rin Taal

 

[Rin Taal]

Rin had expected a lesson in Mandalorian culture. Instead, Derek gave her a lesson in Muad, and somewhere between Rhaegar's death and the revelation that Muad had bound his uncle's spirit to a statue, the meal in front of her stopped mattering quite as much. Her utensil remained loosely caught between her fingers, forgotten above a plate that was gradually cooling while she listened. Rhaegar had died at the hands of someone he had considered a brother, on the opposite side of a Mandalorian conflict neither had been willing to abandon. That alone carried a bitterness Rin understood from too many wars and too many roads littered with people who had once called one another friends. Yet when Derek explained what Muad had done afterward, her eyes moved toward the man beside her and stayed there. He had broken Mandalorian law, risked execution, and anchored a dead man's spirit because Ginnie and her unborn children had been left behind.

Muad called it an osik law and dismissed his near execution as though surviving it rendered the rest irrelevant. The corner of Rin's mouth almost moved. Of course he had. She could practically feel the shape of the decision even without him offering it through the dyad. Someone he loved had been taken. Others he loved were suffering. Muad had possessed the means to do something about it. Somewhere beyond those three facts might have waited law, wisdom, consequence, and perhaps even the natural order itself, but none of them had been important enough to stop him. Rin could question the wisdom of binding a spirit without pretending the man who had done it surprised her.

Then Derek went backward, and the story became heavier.

Ginnie had died once before Rhaegar ever did. Her own brother had killed her accidentally, Rhaegar had followed her into the Manda rather than let her go, and when her soul was already departing, he had torn his own apart to keep some part of her with him. Rin's fingers finally lowered the utensil to her plate. The small sound of metal against ceramic seemed strangely loud against the story unfolding across the table. She took a slow sip of whiskey instead, feeling its warmth burn down her throat while she tried to imagine loving someone enough to divide the thing that made you you rather than accept a universe without them.

She didn't have to imagine very hard.

That realization settled uneasily beneath her ribs. There was something almost like a threnody running beneath the history Derek was giving her, not a single mourning but one grief answering another across years and generations. Ginnie refusing to recover from Rhaegar. Rhaegar refusing to surrender Ginnie. Muad refusing to surrender Rhaegar. Love kept reaching after what death had taken, and every time it did, something else seemed to bleed for the privilege. Rin could see the terrible pattern in it without mistaking devotion for foolishness. She knew too well what it was to reach for someone slipping beyond her grasp and discover that letting go was the one choice she could not make.

The familiar bickering between the brothers briefly surfaced again when Muad insisted Derek belonged in the story too, and Rin felt a small warmth stir beneath everything heavier. She understood what he was doing. She had asked to know Derek, and Muad was making certain his brother could not sit safely behind the role of narrator while revealing every impossible thing Muad had ever done. It was almost funny until Derek closed his eyes, and whatever protest might have remained in him seemed to drain away.

When he began again, his voice was different.

Rin felt the change before she fully understood it. Her shoulders went still, her tail quiet beside the chair, and even the glass between her fingers stopped moving. Derek spoke of Ginnie collapsing beneath grief, of alcohol and work, of a house catching fire and a child being burned. Then came the years afterward. He had divided his life between this mansion and their home, between work and children who had never been his by blood but had nevertheless become part of the shape of his days. The roughness in his voice deepened as he spoke until the words finally failed him altogether.

When Derek rose, Rin stayed where she was. Every instinct of compassion in her wanted to ease what she could see hurting him, but she knew better than to confuse comfort with intrusion. Her golden eyes followed Derek toward the windows only briefly before lowering to the table, granting him what privacy she could without theatrically pretending he had vanished. Outside, rain hammered against the glass and lightning briefly threw the room into sharper relief, but Rin barely registered the storm. The ache in Derek's voice lingered in the silence he had left behind.

Muad's hand settled against her thigh before he stood, and this time the contact awakened none of the heat that had followed his touch all day. Rin covered his hand with hers for a heartbeat instead, fingers closing gently around it before he pulled away. There was nothing to ask through the dyad and nothing she needed him to explain. She had siblings of her own. She knew the difference between leaving someone alone and giving them space, and she understood why Muad crossed the room without saying a word.

Rin remained seated, careful not to watch so closely that Derek's private moment became a spectacle, but unable to look away entirely as Muad simply took his place beside his brother. Something about that quiet act tightened her throat more than any reassurance might have. There was no attempt to repair the moment, no demand that Derek master himself, no empty promise that old grief should have become easier by now. Muad merely stayed until his brother was ready, solid and silent beside him, and Rin felt an ache spread beneath her breastbone as she understood another piece of the bond between them. She had already seen the chaos, the kicks beneath the table and knives sailing through the air, insults traded with the effortless cadence of brothers who had been doing it for longer than she could imagine. This was the other side of it. When the laughter stopped, Muad remained.

When he returned and kissed the top of her head, Rin's fingers found his hand and squeezed once before releasing him. His quiet explanation that those years had been hard on Derek did not need an answer. She could still feel the shape of Derek's absence at the table and the weight of everything he had not managed to say before walking away. Sympathy rose painfully beneath her breastbone, but Rin kept it from becoming pity. Derek deserved better than that.

When he finally returned, Rin met his eyes without searching them for evidence of what had happened by the windows. She simply listened when he was ready to continue.

Muad corrected him almost immediately when Derek tried to describe himself as merely a father figure. Every milestone. Every injury. Nightmares, ridiculous drawings, family outings. Ordinary things, all of them, and perhaps that was why they struck Rin harder than something grander would have. She could almost see the years inside those few words, a child reaching automatically for the same hand after waking frightened, another presenting some terrible drawing as though it were priceless, the accumulation of countless unremarkable days until a person ceased to be someone helping raise children and simply became father. Blood had never possessed an exclusive claim upon family. Rin knew that. Muad clearly knew it too.

Then Derek admitted he had loved Ginnie. Something tightened beneath Rin's sternum, slow and deep.

He had loved her. She had returned some part of that love. And Derek had still stepped away because the possibility existed that Rhaegar could be restored to her. Rin watched him as the full shape of that choice emerged, and for a moment the storm beyond the windows seemed very far away. There was a particular cruelty in loving someone enough to want them and loving them enough not to take what they might willingly give you. Derek had chosen Ginnie's possible happiness over his own certainty, then helped make that happiness possible knowing exactly what it would cost him.

Rin said nothing. Sometimes sympathy, spoken too quickly, became an attempt to make another person's grief easier for the listener to bear. She would not do that to him. She let Derek finish in his own time, carrying what he had trusted her with rather than immediately trying to hand some of its weight back.

Then Muad took up the story, and what had been painful became horrifying.

More than a hundred lives. Blood and ichor stolen from gods. Alchemy, runes, Sithspawn, fragments of souls, journeys through realities Rin barely understood. Her fingers closed more tightly around the tumbler with every new piece, the glass pressing hard enough into her palm that she became conscious of its edges. She did not look away from Muad, but neither did love soften the enormity of what she was hearing. Lives had been spent. Beings had been hunted. Parts of Muad and Derek themselves had been offered to reconstruct what death had already claimed. Rin could love the man beside her and still feel something cold move through her at the cost.

Yet she did not recoil. That mattered to her.

Derek had called Muad broken before dinner. Now Rin was being shown one of the reasons he might believe it, but she still did not see something that needed repair. She saw a man who had once decided that someone he loved was coming home and had kept walking after every sensible person would have stopped. The path had become darker, uglier, more terrible with every step, and Muad had walked it anyway.

Then came Zaqcour.

Muad had offered his life. Rin's breath caught quietly, but surprise never followed. He had bargained himself away for Rhaegar, accepted a life of suffering, loneliness, loss, and pain that would feed something else for centuries, then agreed to sacrifice his lineage because he believed he was the end of it. Her gaze rested on Muad's profile while a pressure gathered behind her ribs, fierce enough that she had to breathe deliberately around it. Of course he had agreed. She hated that she understood it so easily.

Worse, she understood why.

There had been a time when Rin would have believed some boundaries immutable. Death was death. Nature possessed its own order. Every life ended, and grief was not permission to tear apart everything surrounding it. Those convictions sounded clean when spoken beneath peaceful skies, when no beloved face waited on the other side of them. Age had complicated them. Muad had complicated them more.

Rin had already reached across an impossible distance when he was dying and refused to let him disappear.

What would she have done if someone had placed the consequences before her first? Her stomach turned faintly because she could not give herself the answer she wanted.

She wanted to believe she would stop. She wanted to believe more than a century of living had given her the wisdom to weigh one beloved life against every other consequence and choose correctly. But when Rin imagined Muad beyond her reach, or one of her siblings, or now even the tiny dragonling whose new presence she could still feel at the distant edge of herself, the certainty crumbled. If there were a road leading after them, however terrible, she knew she would put one foot upon it.

Whether she would eventually stop walking was a different question, and the uncertainty frightened her more than anything Derek had told her about Muad. Before Rin could sit with that realization for long, Muad said he had a daughter, and her heart seemed to miss a beat. Jia. The name was entirely new, carrying with it the sudden, almost disorienting knowledge that somewhere inside the vast span of Muad's life there had been a girl he had found, freed, and raised. A daughter born from his blood and Arabella's through someone else's design, a whole person Rin had known nothing about until this moment, another part of Muad's life opening before her all at once.

Then the rest of his sentence reached her. Zaqcour had taken Jia instead.

The breath Rin had been holding left her without sound. Her fingers opened around the tumbler and settled flat against the table because suddenly she did not trust herself to hold anything. Something hollowed out beneath her ribs, a visceral drop that made the room feel briefly colder despite the whiskey still warm inside her. Muad had offered himself. He had believed the bargain ended with him. Instead, the price had reached past him and found his daughter.

There was nothing she could say to that.

No apology could touch it. No reassurance could make it smaller. No declaration that he could not have known would return Jia or erase the knowledge that Muad had lived ever since with the consequence of a choice he had made, believing he alone would pay for it. Rin looked at him, and the ache that moved through her was so immediate she made no effort to hide it. Her eyes burned faintly, but she did not look away.

Through the dyad, she sent no words. She simply stayed.

Her presence settled beside his without pressing inward, warm and quiet and unmistakably there. She asked for no memory of Jia, no explanation, no glimpse of the daughter he had lost. Whatever Muad chose to give her someday would be his to offer. For now, Rin let him feel only the same thing she had watched him give Derek minutes earlier.

He did not have to sit beside the pain alone.

By the time Derek reached the end, Rin understood why he had chosen this story. Rhaegar lived. Ginnie had him again. Their children had their father. Derek had surrendered the possibility of a life he might have wanted, and Muad had surrendered far more than he had ever intended to lose. Yet neither man spoke as though the ending invalidated the choice. They had done something impossible for people they loved and carried the consequences ever since.

When Derek described Muad as a man of conviction and unconventional morality, neither good nor evil, Rin's gaze returned to the man beside her. She had known pieces of him before tonight. Now she knew something of what those pieces had cost.

"I'm not surprised." Her voice came out softer than she expected, roughened slightly by everything she had swallowed while listening. Rin looked toward Derek, and this time she allowed the sympathy she had held back to show fully. "Not by either of you." Her fingertips moved slowly along the side of her glass without lifting it. "I'm sorry you had to live through all of that. Both of you. And I'm sorry for everything you lost."

She stopped there for a breath. The words felt terribly small, but perhaps they were supposed to. Nothing she said could make decades of love, sacrifice, grief, and regret fit neatly around a dinner table.

"But I'm not going to sit here afterward and tell either of you what you should have done." Her gaze moved between them. "I wasn't there. I didn't love the people you loved. I wasn't the one who had to decide what I could live with losing."

That last thought sank deeper as she spoke it. Rin's eyes fell toward her hand on the table before returning to Derek. "And I can't even promise I would have chosen differently." There was no pride in the admission, nor shame. Only an uncomfortable truth she had finally stopped trying to soften. "I'd like to believe I'd see every consequence and find a better road. Maybe I would." Her eyes drifted toward Muad, lingering there for a heartbeat too long. "But if someone I loved was waiting at the end of the worst one, I know myself well enough not to swear I'd turn around."

Then Derek changed everything again. He loved her, and she loved him too.

Heat surged into Rin's pointed ears so violently that for one mortifying heartbeat it almost displaced every heavier emotion the evening had produced. Her eyes snapped to Derek, widened, then betrayed her completely by darting toward Muad. He was eating the last of his steak with the blissful ignorance of a man apparently unaware that his brother had just placed Rin's most private realization directly between them.

Her heart gave one hard beat against her ribs. Derek knew. Not suspected. Knew.

Embarrassment prickled hotly across her cheeks and ears, but it tangled almost immediately with something softer. Derek had not dragged the knowledge into the open to embarrass her. He had explained how it happened, admitted the limits of his own control over the bond, and then offered discretion before asking whether she understood. The parallel landed almost painfully well. Rin had heard Muad say I love her through walls because her ears had given her something never intended for them. Derek had caught that she loved him too because his bond had done much the same.

Neither of them had gone looking. Neither intended to betray what they had accidentally found.

Rin's eyes slowly returned to Derek, and beneath the lingering embarrassment came a warmth that had nothing to do with being caught. There was trust in what he was offering her. Perhaps even a quiet kindness. He was telling her that he knew something precious and would leave it in her hands.

"Yes." Her voice was softer now, and the smile that touched her mouth arrived despite the stubborn heat still burning along her ears. She held Derek's gaze, letting understanding replace embarrassment instead of fighting it. "I understand exactly what you're talking about."

Rin finally lifted her whiskey and took a slow sip, partly because she wanted it and partly because the rim of the glass gave her somewhere to hide the smile threatening to deepen. Her golden eyes met Derek's over it for a moment, and nothing more needed to be said.

Some knowledge arrived before it was freely given. That did not make it yours to use.

Muad would tell Rin he loved her when he was ready. Rin would tell Muad she loved him when she was ready. Until then, Derek could keep what he had inadvertently heard, and Rin would keep what her own inconveniently sharp ears had given her.

Apparently, the two of them had reached their first agreement concerning Muad Dib. He did not need to know about it. Yet.

Muad Dib

 

[Muad Dib]

She had already chosen a similar path. Twice on Veradune. For him. The first time was for an injured stranger. The second time, for a man who had become more than a friend. What would she sacrifice for him now? With war looming at dawn, Muad worried about his death, for once. He almost smiled before his gaze returned to the woman he had just told his brother he loved. What would she sacrifice if he was gravely injured, dying, or dead? He didn't want her to cross the lines he had chosen to do, or risk her soul for his. But just as she would never ask him to make a promise she couldn't keep, he would never do the same. His thoughts grew perilously similar to a conversation at the mountain home of Marta and Chek, and he smiled. He missed the older Zorren couple. Perhaps they would have words of wisdom to address his worry over what Rin might do. Yet there was no purpose to dwell on uncertain circumstances, not while they still had the night.

His hand squeezed hers as he took comfort and solace in her presence, though he did wonder what was going through her mind to cause the tint on her ears. He nodded too. "I also am sorry we had to live through it. Especially Derek. If he had died, I would have inherited this entire mansion all for myself." His laughter rang out as he winked before rising from the table. "I think we need another bottle of Whyren's Reserve. It's the best Corellia has to offer. Still in the kitchen?" When Derek nodded, the madman moved down the hall and out of sight to collect the new bottle.

Derek dragged a hand over the dark stubble on his face and closed his eyes. "Muad left out an important fact. He spoke of the price, the one hundred lives and the energy that existed within them. Every triumph. Each loss. Moments of joy. The deepest pain. Physical, emotional, and even psychic wounds. Every moment of a person's life adds to the unseen energy formed around them. Thoughts, emotions, and memories grow in a person's presence. Muad was not the Sith he once was when Rhaegar died. He was an Alor, the head of his House, businessman, esteemed member of the Confederacy, and so on. He was incapable of sacrificing a single person, let alone a hundred, for his uncle. Not when there was another way."

Derek took another small drink of his whiskey as his brows furrowed. "The process of sacrifice required the person to relive every dark, negative, painful, sorrowful, injurious, hurtful, heartbreaking, depressing, miserable, and severe memory in one moment of madness. The text said the person who was the sacrifice either died of an aneurysm, heart attack, became comatose, or was lost to madness. And the power released from a lifetime of anguish created energy. One hundred lives would need to be sacrificed."

His sad smile grew as his red eyes turned to where Muad had gone. "My brother has a tendency to say things factually while deflecting the real truth behind a facade. He said, ' I found a way to do it, though it would require the sacrifice of many lives. Over one hundred lives would need to be given to have the energy to begin the process.' The truth was, he made the sacrifice of over a thousand years of life and a hundred lifetimes of experience. He didn't just experience sixty or seventy years of anguish. He took a millennium of pain in a single moment rather than risk one hundred lives. It nearly killed him. The stubborn bastard managed to see the ritual through, but when we returned to Olanet, he withered. Right before my eyes."

His gaze returned to Rin as he slowly shook his head. "He couldn't eat, drink, or sleep. My little brother, the strongest man I knew, was trapped in a cycle of pain because of the ritual. Because of all the rituals, he wouldn't die. But he was trapped and couldn't escape. I almost think he didn't want to. Nothing could reach him. Then one night I lost control. That had never happened to me before. I destroyed half the mansion in grief before passing out in a drunken stupor by this very same fireplace. I think some of my misery drifted to him through the bond. Because when I woke up, he was sitting in one of the leather chairs, a bottle of ale in one hand and a book in the other. He was skeletal, but he looked at me with his crazy eyes and said, 'You're a Dib, and that means that as long as I'm alive, you will never be alone.' He came back because someone else was hurting. Someone he loved needed him."

The sound of Muad speaking to someone else in the house made Derek shake his head ruefully. "I'm sure my brother has shared his vision with you." Crimson eyes blinked before he gave Rin an appreciative little smile. "No, not that one. A speeder with you and two children ... That would be something indeed. No, I'm speaking of his death vision. Muad believes that one day he shall fall in battle, bloodied and surrounded by the dead of his enemies. I don't think that is accurate. You should know by now, he doesn't fear death. But why the vision haunts him is because he feels that if he dies, there is no one left to watch over those he cares for. Which now includes you."

The president of Siskeen finished his drink and leaned back in his chair, noticing the empty plates. "Perhaps we should retire to the den for our nightcaps." Derek rose and walked around the table, headed for one of the overstuffed leather chairs around the short coffee table. He left the sofa for his brother and Rin. Before he sat, he raised his hand, and a ball of red flame coalesced in his palm before he tossed it into the fireplace and set the logs within on fire. Then he eased down with a sigh. Heat from the hearth radiated outward and combatted the cold chill in the air brought on by the storm outside. A different set of footfalls echoed down the hall. A being with immense girth, the clear tap of claws on marble and hardwood floors.

Derek shook his head again, this time at the approaching presence. "Has my dear brother ever told you the story of Tython?" He paused, waiting for her response before continuing. "He journeyed there with a Knight, a togorian named Berserker Odinson. I believe he went to learn at the different temples. And where a temple would be empty, he would use our mother's talents of psychometry to relive whatever lessons he could. He was gone for a few years, but when he returned, he was changed. I think the duality and forced balance helped him find some peace after, well, after Arabella left him to follow her family. I can only imagine what Muad would have been like if he had a real childhood with our parents. That is a regret I have for him. While the Sages raised me, he had no one. Certainly no one kind. He's never talked about the early years, at least not with me or anyone I know. I can almost imagine him coming home as a small child with a hundred things he found that day. See, he's a collector. Knowledge, artifacts, beautiful things, people, and strays."

His eyes flickered to the hall where two massive tuk'ata wandered in. They stood on four muscular legs, a long tail whipping behind them. Raised spikes traveled along their spines, a dozen horns hooked backward from their long canine heads. Their leathery hide lacked fur. One of them stood up on its hind legs and walked over, its blue eyes glancing from Derek to Rin. The other padded into the den and flopped down in front of the fireplace, red eyes staring at the Zorren before closing its eyelids. The other dropped back on four legs and slowly advanced toward the woman.

"Speaking of strays. These are the two tuk'ata pups he brought back with him. Tracyn and Ciruus, fire and ice respectively. They can easily live for centuries, as have these two. Tracyn smells Muad on you, I'd wager. They're the unofficial pets of House Dib." Tracyn turned her head, blue eyes glaring at Derek, before she moved closer to Rin and sat back on her haunches. The Sith hound's mouth opened to reveal three rows of jagged teeth before a tongue flopped out.

"I apologize. They are members of House Dib. And they are quite intelligent. I think she wants you to pet her. With Muad's scent ... on you ... she's decided you're family. Which, from my estimation, is true."
Rin Taal

 

[Rin Taal]

Rin watched Muad disappear toward the kitchen, the lingering warmth of his hand still caught around hers even after his fingers had slipped away. His joke about inheriting the mansion earned a small smile, briefly lifting some of the heaviness that had settled over dinner, but it softened when Derek began speaking again. She had thought the story finished. Instead, he reached beneath what they had already been told and exposed another layer, until the history of Rhaegar's resurrection began to feel like a palimpsest, one truth written over another without ever entirely obscuring what came before. The hundred lives had never been taken, and as Derek explained what the ritual had actually required, Rin's gaze dropped toward the whiskey in her hand.

Every wound, grief, loss, humiliation, and terrible memory accumulated over the course of a life could be dragged forward and experienced in a single crushing instant. A hundred people enduring that would have created the power Muad needed, but instead he had taken more than a thousand years of his own anguish and offered that. The distinction did not make everything that followed harmless, nor did it erase the darker choices involved in returning Rhaegar to life, but it changed the emotional shape of what Rin had heard. Muad had found another road because the first demanded innocent lives, and when that road required someone to suffer in their place, he had made himself the sacrifice. There was no amusement in her quiet recognition of him this time, only a painful tenderness edged by something almost weary. Of course he had. But would she have done anything differently?

Derek's description of what followed gave that choice a consequence Rin could picture far too clearly. Muad had returned skeletal, unable to eat, drink, or sleep, trapped inside pain that would not kill him and apparently unable, or perhaps unwilling, to find his way out of it. Then Derek had broken instead. His grief had crossed whatever strange connection existed between the brothers, and Muad had dragged himself back because someone else was hurting. As long as I'm alive, you will never be alone. Rin's throat tightened at the words, not simply because they were beautiful, but because by now she knew exactly how dangerous a promise like that could become in Muad's hands.

She had seen that part of him throughout the evening. He had stood silently beside Derek at the windows because his brother hurt. He had torn open impossible boundaries because someone he loved had been taken. On Batuu, Rin had followed roads perilously close to the same place twice herself. The first time had been for a Muad she barely knew, an injured man for whom compassion had been enough reason to act. The second had been for him again, after friendship had already become something more difficult to name. She had crossed a distance she should never have been able to cross because he was dying and every part of her had rejected the idea of allowing him to disappear. Now she loved him, and the question of what she might sacrifice for him carried far more weight than it had before.

Her golden eyes drifted toward the hallway where Muad had vanished, and unease mingled with that tenderness rather than replacing it. If he lay gravely wounded tomorrow, if the war waiting at dawn fulfilled some terrible possibility neither of them could prevent, could she truly promise she would stop at the boundary he wanted her to respect? She doubted he would ever ask her to risk her soul for him, just as she knew she would never ask him to stand aside while she died if some terrible means of reaching her remained within his grasp. The contradiction carried the quiet discomfort of a truth neither of them could solve with promises. Marta would probably have regarded them both with that maddening patience of hers until one of them finally admitted the question mattered precisely because neither could honestly give the other the answer they wanted.

When Derek asked whether Muad had shared his vision with her, Rin's attention sharpened. "No." The answer came easily enough, but what followed caught her entirely unprepared. A speeder. Herself beside Muad. Two children. Warmth rose abruptly into her ears before she could prevent it, bringing an entirely different emotional shade into a night that had already held more than she knew what to do with. Her eyes flickered almost instinctively toward the hallway Muad had disappeared down. After overhearing him tell Derek that he loved her, learning that somewhere among Muad's visions existed the possibility of the two of them with children felt unexpectedly intimate. Rin knew better than to mistake a vision for a promise, yet reason did very little to quiet the flutter beneath her ribs.

Derek dismissed that vision almost as quickly as he had revealed it, and the warmth lingering in Rin's expression slowly changed as he told her about the one he had actually meant. Muad believed he would someday die in battle, bloodied and surrounded by those he had killed. With war waiting for them at dawn, it was impossible to receive that image with the comfortable distance it might have possessed on another night. Rin had spent the evening refusing to borrow grief from a future that had not happened, but Derek had just placed a possible version of that future before her, and worse, had given her the reason it haunted Muad. He did not fear death for himself. He feared leaving people behind with no one to protect them, and now that fear included her.

Something inside Rin softened around the unease rather than yielding to it. The contrast between the two visions was almost painfully Muad: one holding the possibility of a life he might build with her, the other shaped by the fear of being torn away from everyone he believed it was his responsibility to protect. "He worries about everyone except himself." Her thumb moved slowly along the side of her glass before she set it down. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that even his own death bothers him mostly because he thinks someone else might have to manage without him."

She did not tell Derek what she might do if that vision ever came true. The question had already been circling too close to everything he had told her about Muad, and now the image of him dying threatened to give it a face. Rin refused to let herself live inside that possibility when Muad was only down the hall and tomorrow had not yet arrived. If that road ever opened beneath her feet, she would discover then where it led and what she was willing to pay to follow it. For tonight, she allowed the darker vision to remain only what it was, a possibility, while the other lingered somewhere quieter inside her: Muad, Rin, a speeder, and two children she had never known he had imagined.

Instead, Rin followed Derek into the den when he suggested they move, carrying what remained of her whiskey while the atmosphere shifted from the intimate weight of the dining room toward something quieter. The fire Derek summoned pushed against the chill carried through the mansion by the storm, and as she settled within its warmth, he began speaking of Tython and another Muad altogether. Not the resurrector, warrior, Sith, Alor, or man who had bargained with gods, but a wanderer moving through empty temples in search of whatever knowledge the past had left behind.

That image affected Rin differently. She already knew Muad possessed an appetite for knowledge, but imagining him wandering abandoned places and drawing forgotten lessons from the impressions left there suited him with almost painful precision. Derek's speculation about the childhood Muad might have had softened it further, until Rin could almost imagine the boy herself: returning home burdened with some curious treasure, some fragment of knowledge, some strange creature he had decided required rescuing, eager to show it to people who were waiting for him. There was an elegiac quality to the thought, not because the child had died, but because that version of his life had never been permitted to exist. It left a muted ache behind, gentler than the grief surrounding Rhaegar and Jia but no less real.

Knowledge, artifacts, beautiful things, people, strays. Rin's mouth curved at Derek's list, the melancholy easing enough to let fondness through. "I've noticed." The words carried considerably more affection than teasing, because she had begun to understand that collecting was perhaps another expression of the same instinct she had been hearing about all evening. Muad found things that mattered to him and brought them close. Sometimes those things were dangerous. Sometimes damaged. Sometimes beautiful. Often all three.

The approaching footfalls drew one pointed ear toward the hall before Rin's eyes followed, and the creatures that emerged were impressive enough to momentarily redirect even the emotional weight of the evening. Massive, horned, unmistakably predatory, the tuk'ata looked capable of reducing most ordinary visitors to considerably smaller pieces, yet one promptly flopped before the hearth while the blue-eyed female came closer. Rin remained relaxed, watching Tracyn with open curiosity rather than fear. She had spent too much of her life among animals, wild places, and creatures capable of deciding for themselves whether another being was a threat or company to mistake intelligence for tameness.

When Derek corrected himself from pets to members of House Dib, Rin's smile deepened. "That sounds more accurate." She lowered one hand slowly rather than reaching directly for Tracyn, palm relaxed and fingers loose, offering her scent and allowing the tuk'ata to decide the remainder. If Tracyn wanted contact, she could close the distance herself. The three rows of jagged teeth concerned Rin considerably less than perhaps they ought to have, particularly while the creature's tongue hung between them with an expression that undermined some of the menace.

Derek's explanation of why Tracyn had approached, however, carried more weight than its humor. Muad's scent was on her, and to the tuk'ata that apparently meant something simple enough to require no debate. Family. Rin's eyes lifted from Tracyn toward Derek, and the word settled into a place already made vulnerable by everything he had shared tonight. She had come to Olanet because Muad wanted her there. She had expected to meet his brother, perhaps understand a little more of the place he called home and the family attached to it. She had not expected Derek to entrust her with centuries of grief, sacrifice, failure, devotion, and memories of the man Muad had been before she ever existed in his life. Nor had she expected two ancient Sith hounds to make the question of belonging sound so uncomplicated.

Something inside her warmed with a different emotional color than desire, softer and deeper, carrying gratitude with a faint thread of sadness for all the people missing from the room. Jia. Rhaegar and Ginnie. The parents neither brother had truly been allowed to have. Arabella, wherever the truth of her absence now lay. None of that diminished the comfort of the moment. If anything, it gave the warmth greater depth, because belonging did not erase grief here. It seemed to grow around it.

"I'm glad I came." Rin's voice was quiet as she looked toward Derek, but there was nothing uncertain within it. "And I'm glad I've met both of you."

Her attention returned to Tracyn, hand still offered patiently between them, while somewhere beneath conscious thought the evening gathered into a confluence of feelings too complex to separate cleanly. Admiration existed beside unease. Tenderness beside sorrow. Fear of losing Muad beside an almost fierce gratitude that she had him now. There was affection for Derek, newly formed but already colored by the trust he had extended to her, and a strange, gentle sense of welcome in the creature deciding she smelled sufficiently like Muad to belong here.

At the center of it all remained Muad himself.

Rin had meant to keep that realization within herself until she chose to speak it. She had no intention of sending a confession down the dyad while he hunted for another bottle of whiskey, and she certainly did not want the bond making that decision for her. Yet emotions had never respected boundaries as neatly as thoughts did. Something shifted through the connection before Rin recognized it, not a sentence or deliberate declaration but the accumulated feeling of the evening itself: the ache of imagining him skeletal beside Derek's fireplace, tenderness for the child he might have been, admiration for the man who had chosen his own suffering rather than a hundred strangers', fear sharpened by tomorrow's war, and beneath all of it the steady warmth of loving him more now that she had been shown parts of him that were neither simple nor clean.

She felt the emotion reach the dyad's edge and could have tried to close around it. Rin didn't.

If Muad sensed anything from the kitchen, perhaps it would only be warmth without explanation, a quiet presence touching his own and lingering there. He might not know precisely what had caused it or how many shades had gathered inside it over the course of the evening, but for once Rin did not mind if the bond let him feel something before she found the words to say it herself.

Muad Dib

 

[Muad Dib]

No overwhelming sense traveled through the dyad. He felt a range of emotions, but Rin didn't offer details about the overlap. Nor did she need to. He grinned, his conversation forgotten as he responded without words. Snippets flickered through their bond. Rin asleep in his bed, an aching tenderness he felt at watching her sleep. Watching her walk across the yard, feet glistening with the dew, the sheer wrap around her waist, and his utter inability to tear his gaze from the vision of sultry beauty. The desire as he flipped backward on a dragon soaring in the air, his hands pulling her legs over his thighs to draw her near. The flames that burned in him almost took what he promised would be hers when she chose.

Then the beach. The culmination of everything they had experienced together. All the need, want, and desire stripped down to a single thing. Choice. They had chosen one another and sealed it with a kiss. Several kisses, in fact. Watching the wonder as she bonded with a hatchling. Their hands raised together as they rode on Galabatorix. His instinctual desire to lend her warmth in the chilled night air. How she froze when Derek had opened the door, the color of her ears and the look on her face both hilarious, endearing, and sexy. What he saw and felt when she joined the brothers for dinner.

No words were given, only the pieces of what he witnessed and the emotions that welled within him. A deep longing filled with joy, desire, happiness, and something deeper as of yet unnamed. Or so he thought. Another smile creased his lips as he returned to Lorran and continued the conversation.

Derek watched as Tracyn sniffed her hand before a long tongue flickered out and wrapped around her extended fingers. Then the great hound shifted forward on its haunches and lowered her head onto Rin's lap, expecting pets. "I'm glad you came too. Muad deserves someone in his life he ... cares for as ... deeply as he does for you." The older Dib brother let a smile flicker at the corners of his mouth as amusement filled his eyes. "You wanted stories; here's another one I am well acquainted with. A group of pirates, in our early years in the Siskeen system, tried to attain a foothold on Siskeen. Located in the Lothal Mountain range, they set up a base with plans to expand. Muad and his friend, Sol Damerin, who was a grumpy, older human man who happened to be a Jedi Master, decided to take it upon themselves to extricate the menace. Sol, who was a very somber man, wore traditional armor and a helmet to conceal his identity."

He paused as he glanced toward the hall where Muad had yet to return. "My brother chose an ... alternative style of armor and concealment. Imagine plate armor with every square inch covered in flashing, multi-hued, neon lights. And he had purchased an authentic Isley Verd mask which looked less ridiculous when paired with the neon armor." A small flicker of hilarity crossed his features. "They cleared the compound, rigged explosives, then Sol found out Muad had set a ten-second fuse instead of the previously agreed ten-minute fuse. Sol leaped from the cliff and used Muad's body as a snowboard of sorts. The recorded feed from Muad's helmet still makes me laugh. Or as close to laughter as I ever come. "I've learned my baby brother doesn't do anything halfway. And he always finds a way to entertain himself in the midst of it."

He watched as the large sith hound pulled its head from Rin's lap and lowered its great body to lean against her legs with a loud yawn of its wide mouth. Derek turned his attention back to Rin.

"Help me understand you a little more, if you will. As explained, you are older than you appear. Two and a half lifetimes. Why Muad?" He steepled his fingers under his chin as he continued his query. "You are an attractive woman—kind and caring from what I've seen. You aren't unfamiliar with joviality and a certain lifestyle of adventure. And it appears you are susceptible to a man with a certain type of charm. Why are you not married to one of the many suitors I'm sure you have had to entertain? And why Muad?"

Derek didn't approach the conversation as an interrogation. He wanted to understand what kind of woman had captured his brother's heart so quickly and completely. Muad could be brash, rash, and driven by whims, but when it came to matters of the heart and a relationship, even the old celibate monks of the Baron Do Sages would have been hard-pressed to compete with the walls and barriers Muad had erected over lifetimes. Who was Rin Taal? What made her the exception to the hosts of women who had thrown themselves at the madman, only to land in the dust, completely ignored by the blue-eyed man in the other room?
Rin Taal

 

[Rin Taal]

The answer that came through the dyad was nothing Rin expected, and perhaps that was why it caught her so completely. Muad offered no explanation for what he had felt from her, no attempt to pull meaning from emotions she had deliberately left without detail. Instead, pieces of Olanet began slipping across the connection, each carrying the shape of how he had experienced her. Rin asleep in his bed, unaware of the tenderness with which he had watched her. Bare feet crossing dew-wet grass, the sheer wrap at her waist, and the unmistakable desire that had accompanied his inability to look away. The dragon came next, the sky opening beneath them while Muad drew her closer, followed by the heat of a moment when desire had pressed dangerously near the boundary he had promised would remain hers to cross.

Rin's ears warmed, but she made no attempt to close the connection. She let each memory pass through her and discovered there was something almost intoxicating about seeing herself through him, not because every impression was flattering, although several certainly were, but because none of them existed alone. Desire carried tenderness beside it. Amusement threaded through affection. The beach returned with the startling simplicity of choice, everything that had been building between them finally becoming something neither had stumbled into nor been pushed toward by the dyad. They had chosen each other, and the kisses that followed had belonged entirely to them. Then came the dragonling, their joined hands upon Galabatorix, the warmth Muad had quietly given her against the night air, and her own mortification when Derek interrupted them at the door. By the time she felt what Muad had experienced watching her enter dinner, Rin's smile had become impossible to hide.

There were no words beneath any of it, yet what reached her possessed more emotional color than words might have managed. Want burned through some memories, tenderness softened others, and happiness ran between them with an almost luminous quality. Beneath everything waited something deeper that Muad did not name, though Rin knew the shape of it now. She did not seize upon that recognition or send his own feelings back to him labeled with a word he had not yet chosen to give her. Instead, she simply enjoyed the connection, allowing her answering warmth and quiet delight to remain where he could feel them. Whatever else the dyad could become, moments like this made it feel less like an intrusion and more like another language they were slowly learning together.

Tracyn's tongue wrapping around her fingers pulled Rin more fully back into the den, and a startled laugh escaped her before the enormous tuk'ata lowered her head into Rin's lap with all the expectation of a creature who had apparently decided the introductory portion of their acquaintance was complete. Rin obliged readily. Her fingers settled against Tracyn's head and began working slowly over the leathery hide, adjusting whenever the hound's response suggested she had found a particularly agreeable place. The absurdity of petting something with three rows of teeth while listening to Derek speak about his brother should probably have struck her more strongly than it did.

His next story certainly helped. Rin's expression shifted from interest to disbelief somewhere around flashing, multi-hued neon lights, and the Isley Verd mask did nothing to improve matters. By the time Derek reached the ten-second fuse and Sol Damerin, who used Muad as an improvised snowboard, went down the mountainside, laughter escaped her properly. She could picture far too much of it, particularly after everything she had learned about Muad tonight. There was something refreshing about hearing a story where the consequences amounted to injured dignity and a helmet recording Derek could enjoy centuries later.

"Ten seconds." Rin shook her head, fingers continuing their slow attention to Tracyn as the great hound eventually shifted from her lap to lean against her legs. Amusement still warmed her voice when she looked back at Derek. "I think the part I'm having the most trouble believing is that anyone trusted him with the timer."

The laughter lingered until Derek asked his next question, and Rin's hand slowed against Tracyn. Why Muad? It was a fair question, although Derek had wrapped it inside enough compliments that warmth crept back into her expression before she could begin answering the more difficult part.

"First, thank you." A small smile touched her mouth, accompanied by the faintest inclination of her head. "Attractive, kind, caring. That's a very generous beginning to what sounds suspiciously like an investigation into my judgment."

The humor bought her a little time, because the question itself reached considerably deeper than Derek's teasing assumptions about suitors. There had been people over the years. Attraction, affection, moments when something might have become more if Rin had allowed herself to follow it. A hundred and fifty-four years was a long time to live without ever feeling the pull of another person, and she would not pretend otherwise. Yet she had always become circumspect when affection threatened to ask something more permanent of her.

Fear had lived quietly beneath some of that reluctance. Not fear of loving someone, exactly, and certainly not fear of being alone. Rin had simply spent too much of her life belonging wholly to herself to know what would happen if she gave someone else access to the vulnerable places love created. Would affection eventually carry expectations? Would compromise slowly become concession, then obligation? Would someone love the freedom in her until that same freedom inconvenienced them? She had seen enough of the galaxy to know that cages were not always made of metal. Sometimes they were built so gradually from promises, expectations, and affection that a person did not recognize the bars until they tried to move.

"There have been people." Her fingers moved slowly along Tracyn again, though her attention remained with Derek. "People I've cared about. People I've been attracted to. Probably a few who could have become something more." A rueful softness touched her smile. "But I think some part of me was always afraid that loving someone that way meant giving them enough of myself that someday they might decide what I should do with the rest."

The admission left a small ache behind, one made gentler by the warm weight of Tracyn against her legs and the lingering presence of Muad through the dyad. Rin did not regret the life she had lived. The vicissitude of roads and years had given her people she cherished, places she still carried inside her, griefs she would accept all over again for the privilege of having loved those who caused them. Yet romantic love had always occupied a different territory. It offered a kind of intimacy she had never been certain she could accept without eventually surrendering something essential in return.

Then Muad had arrived and made an utter mess of that certainty.

There had been no singular moment when he became the answer. He had worked his way into her life by degrees, one impossible encounter and ridiculous conversation at a time. Somewhere between danger and laughter, arguments and quiet roads, the first accidental openings of the dyad and the deliberate ones that followed, Rin had stopped guarding that part of herself from him. Not because Muad had persuaded her to surrender it. He had done something far more dangerous.

He had made her feel safe enough to offer it.

"Muad never asks me to become smaller so there will be room for him." Her golden eyes lifted fully to Derek, and the affection in them was impossible to disguise now. "He doesn't always understand me, and I certainly don't always understand him. Sometimes I think understanding him might actually be impossible." The corner of her mouth lifted. "But he lets me choose. Even when what he wants is painfully obvious, the choice stays mine."

Her fingers found their way behind one of Tracyn's horns, rubbing slowly while her thoughts wandered toward the man somewhere beyond the den. Muad had wanted her before she was ready to give him everything he wanted. He had come close enough that she had felt exactly how thin his restraint had become, and still he had kept his promise. Hers when she chose. There had been something almost numinous in the simplicity of that, not because restraint itself deserved reverence, but because he had understood without being told how much the choice mattered to her.

"I can disagree with him without being afraid of what happens afterward. I can tell him no and know he'll hear it." Her expression softened further. "He makes me feel free while I'm standing beside him. I didn't know how much I needed that until him."

And there it was, perhaps the simplest answer buried beneath everything else.

Muad frightened her too.

Just not in any of the ways she once feared love would.

Rin's hand slowed against Tracyn as the thought settled through her, carrying none of the old anxiety about losing pieces of herself. Muad did not make her fear the erosion of her freedom. He had never made her wonder whether loving him would cost her the right to remain herself. Instead, he had given her something else to be afraid of, and after Derek's revelation about the vision, that fear sat nearer the surface than usual.

She could lose him.

The thought had teeth now.

Not because Derek's story made Muad's death inevitable. Rin refused to grant a vision that kind of authority over a future that remained unwritten. But she loved a man who walked willingly toward danger, who had already died before, who had torn himself apart for people he called family and would almost certainly do it again. She had felt him dying once and crossed a distance that should have been impossible because some part of her had refused to accept a galaxy in which he simply ceased to be. Back then, she had not even possessed the courage to call what she felt love. Now she did.

"He makes me laugh. He challenges me. He irritates me." Affection warmed the words until even the complaints sounded cherished. "He makes me feel safer than almost anyone I've ever known, and then he'll do something completely insane and remind me that apparently peace was never part of the arrangement." A quiet laugh escaped her, but it faded into something much softer before she continued. "He sees me. Not what he thinks I should become. Me."

Her gaze wandered toward the hallway, and for a moment Derek might have seen everything she had not yet said aloud to Muad resting openly across her features.

"I spent a long time being afraid that loving someone might cost me my freedom." Her thumb traced absently along Tracyn's hide. "Muad doesn't make me afraid of that at all." A quiet breath left her. "I'm afraid of losing him."

The words were softer than everything that had preceded them, but they carried more truth. Rin did not think about leaving Muad. Somewhere along the way, that possibility had simply ceased to occupy space in the future she imagined. Even the vision Derek had accidentally revealed tonight had contained the two of them together, with children whose existence she was trying very hard not to dwell upon while Muad remained close enough for the dyad to betray exactly how much the thought affected her.

Perhaps that was why the fear felt so different. Loving Muad had not narrowed Rin's world. It had expanded it. There were suddenly things within that world she wanted with an intensity that left her vulnerable to their absence: his ridiculous laughter, the weight of his hand around hers, arguments she knew they would have, roads they had not walked yet, the dragonling waiting outside, and thousands of ordinary mornings she had never thought to want with anyone before him. Losing Muad did not frighten her because she needed him in order to remain whole. It frightened her because she knew exactly who she was without him, and had discovered how much more she wanted from life with him in it.

The thought brought her back to what Muad had sent through the dyad. Rin had seen herself asleep through his eyes, felt his desire as she crossed the yard and the tenderness beneath it, experienced his joy in their kisses, and felt his warmth as he watched her bond with the dragonling. Derek had asked why Rin had chosen Muad, but Muad had chosen too, and suddenly she found herself wanting the other half of the answer.

Her attention remained on Derek while a quieter touch slipped deliberately toward the other end of the dyad. This time Rin allowed words to accompany it, carrying them privately along the connection without insecurity or any demand that Muad reassure her. Curiosity rested there instead, warmed by everything he had just shared with her and perhaps touched by a little mischief at passing Derek's question along.

Your brother just asked me why you. So now I'm curious. Why me?

The smile playing at the corner of Rin's mouth deepened as her fingers continued lazily against Tracyn. Muad could answer however he chose. She had given Derek the closest thing she possessed to an answer, but beneath all the explanations about freedom, choice, laughter, desire, and the peculiar way Muad Dib had entered her life, something simpler remained.

Rin had once feared that loving someone deeply enough might mean surrendering some essential piece of herself. Muad had taught her that love did not have to take anything from her at all.

It could give her something precious enough that the thought of losing it finally frightened her.

Muad Dib

 

[Muad Dib]

Derek listened attentively, his eyes never leaving Rin Taal's features. He could sense she spoke honestly and believed what she said was true. Perhaps it was. It was difficult to understand the difference between fact and what one perceived as truth. But with the Zorren woman, he felt that the facts and perceived truth may have been one and the same.

His head tilted in agreement. "I find it difficult to understand why Sol was short-sighted in that regard. The Jedi certainly knew better." When she laughed at his description, he merely rolled his shoulders in a shrug. "Complimentary facts remain facts. As for an interrogation, it isn't intended as such, though I must admit they share a common denominator."

Derek could understand choosing to remain aloof from attachment. Relationships came with sacrifices as you made room for the other person. Sometimes the sacrifice wasn't worth the reward; occasionally, what you surrendered was identity rather than time, and then there was the hint of fear at losing yourself in the label of 'relationship'. The fear could be healthy, or it could be a barrier one erects to protect themselves. He was leaning toward the former for the young woman, yet he made no decisions.

As Rin spoke of the freedom Muad exhibited and acted by, Derek nodded in consternation. "My brother lives by that code. He's very similar to one of his dragons, or the tuk'ata for that matter. He enjoys autonomy and would never try to enforce his will on others just because he can. That may have aided the dissolution of his first relationship. But there's something inherently different this time. Muad is more mature. And if you tell him I said that, I will deny it with my dying breath." The slight crinkling around his eyes betrayed the joviality of his statement.

"Sometimes I think understanding him might actually be impossible."

"I would be forced to agree with you in that sentiment," he commented dryly. His brows arched slightly when she commented on what was painfully obvious on the subject of what Muad 'wanted'. A knowing smile flickered on his lips at what exactly that entailed. When Rin next spoke of the freedom between them, he understood it intellectually. Still, he couldn't comprehend it emotionally or through his own experience, in all his previous relationships, chains, expectations, and subtle manipulations that equated to the opposite of freedom. And in that, he found himself slightly jealous of his brother.

And then she ended with words that struck close to home.

"I'm afraid of losing him."

He settled deeper into the cushions as he turned the statement around and examined it from every angle. One of his first concerns about Muad's love interest was purely speculative. Was the woman looking at what she could glean from a relationship with a powerful, wealthy, and influential man? However, upon their introduction, that line of thought extinguished nearly immediately. Next, and nearly as important, was his apprehensive disquietude over the depth of her emotions and the direction of the relationship. But upon unintentionally hearing the extent of her intense response to Muad's proclamation, his worry dissipated.

"I have felt the same fear. Multiplied over centuries and centuries. The only wisdom I have to share is what I've learned. Plan with the hope of tomorrow. Love with the intensity that another day isn't promised. And cherish every moment as though it could be your last. It is a pessimistic view sprinkled with a sanguine optimism. But know this. Muad lives his life to the fullest. Sometimes dangerously so. Yet he understands why every moment is precious. And he chooses who he spends his time with very studiously. Muad chose you. And the bastard is hard to kill and nearly impossible to keep down. I anticipate that will be even more of a fact because of you."

Your brother just asked me why you. So now I'm curious. Why me?

Muad was finished with his conversation with Lorran and paused in the hallway, considering his words.

How could I not? With everything we've been through and experienced together, bonds were going to form. But it's more than that. I want the silence filled with your presence. We don't need to talk; I just need you there with me. And when we do talk, it's filled with laughter and gentleness; your smile both melts my heart and stokes the flames. Falling asleep with you in my arms feels like a piece of me I didn't know was missing is back where it belongs. And the knowledge that no matter what physical distance lies between us, I have a home with you. And you have a home with me. We don't have to force this, what's between us, because it feels as natural as breathing. When my heart beats, it reminds me that we have many more miles ahead of us. Because I chose you. And you chose me. Ner mesh'la cyar'ika.

As he finished, he reentered the room and saw they had relocated to the den part. So he walked across and rolled over the sofa, his head landing in Rin's lap as he tossed the bottle to Derek. Without missing a beat, Muad grinned up at the Zorren woman as his legs settled across the armrest of the couch at the other end. "Hiya, darlin'."
Rin Taal

 

[Rin Taal]

Derek's agreement concerning Muad earned a quiet laugh from Rin, although his observation about his brother's first relationship caught her attention more seriously. She knew enough now to recognize what he meant without needing to pry further. Whatever had existed between Muad and Arabella belonged to them, shaped by people they had been centuries before Rin entered either of their lives. She could be curious without turning that history into something she needed to measure herself against. Derek's threat of absolute denial, however, restored some of her amusement. "I wouldn't dream of telling him his older brother thinks he's matured." Her expression became suspiciously innocent. "Some knowledge is simply too dangerous to use irresponsibly."

His response to her fear was harder to answer with humor. Rin listened while her fingers continued their slow path over Tracyn, though their movement gradually stilled as Derek spoke of centuries spent knowing the same fear she had only recently learned to name. There was something sobering in realizing how long he had carried it. Plan with the hope of tomorrow. Love with the intensity that another day isn't promised. It was not entirely how Rin would have phrased it, but she understood the sentiment beneath it. She had spent too much of her life watching circumstances change without permission to believe tomorrow was guaranteed. Yet she had never wanted the uncertainty of tomorrow to diminish today. If anything, loving Muad made the finite moments between one danger and another feel more precious.

Something else brushed against her awareness while Derek spoke, faint enough that Rin initially wondered whether she had imagined it. It did not arrive as words, nor with the startling clarity of Muad's memories moving deliberately through the dyad. This was more elusive, an emotional reverberation caught somewhere between Derek and his brother, reaching Rin only because she stood at the other end of Muad's connection. Scrutiny came first, carrying the vestigial shape of suspicion. Someone had wondered what she wanted from Muad, what she might gain from attaching herself to a man with wealth, power, and influence enough to make ulterior motives reasonable to consider. Rin felt no offense at it. Derek loved his brother, and protectiveness sometimes asked ugly questions because not asking them could cost more. Yet the impressions shifted almost as soon as she recognized them. Suspicion had disappeared, followed for a time by concern over whether Rin's feelings possessed enough depth to survive everything that came with loving Muad Dib. That too had changed. What remained now was warmer and quieter, touched by relief and something that felt very nearly like acceptance.

Rin's golden eyes rested on Derek a moment longer, but she did not reach for the impressions or test whether more might follow. She had learned enough from the dyad to recognize the difference between something offered and something accidentally overheard, even when no actual words were involved. If those feelings belonged to Derek, then they belonged to him. There was a peculiar symmetry to it, though. Derek had accidentally discovered something deeply private about her through his bond with Muad, and apparently the strange confluence between the three of them could flow faintly in the opposite direction too. She would grant him the same discretion he had promised her. "I think I can live with pessimism sprinkled with sanguine optimism." Her smile returned, softened by what he had shared. "And I've already had some experience with the nearly impossible-to-keep-down part."

She had considerably less preparation for Muad's answer. His presence stirred through the dyad, and Rin's fingers became quiescent against Tracyn as his thoughts began to unfold. She had expected humor, perhaps something outrageous enough to make her regret asking while Derek sat only a few feet away. Instead, Muad gave her an answer so painfully sincere that the first few words stripped the amusement from her before she could protect herself with it. He wanted her in the silence, and Rin swallowed as the meaning of that settled into her. There was no adventure in the answer, no dragon flight, impossible rescue, battlefield, or miraculous working of the Force. Muad wanted the moments when nothing happened at all. He wanted her beside him when nothing filled the space except their breathing and the simple awareness of another person there by choice. For a woman who had spent so much of her life believing love eventually came with demands, there was something almost ineffable about being wanted for nothing more complicated than her presence.

Then came laughter and gentleness, her smile somehow possessing the power to both soften and ignite him. Warmth climbed into Rin's ears, but she could not quite manage embarrassment before his answer moved onward. Falling asleep with you in my arms feels like a piece of me I didn't know was missing is back where it belongs. Something inside her gave way at that, though not dramatically. There was no great revelation, only a small inward surrender that left her breath caught somewhere beneath her ribs. She remembered waking beside him, the uncomplicated warmth of his body near hers, those quiet moments before either of them needed to become anything for the outside world. She had treasured them without realizing Muad had been doing the same.

And then he gave her home. For a heartbeat Rin could not separate the word from everything it had meant throughout her life. Home had been Veradune, roads she knew by memory, Marta and Chek, familiar trees and familiar skies, places she could return to after years away and still recognize the shape of herself within them. Home had always been somewhere she chose to return, and Muad had somehow become that too. Not a place that held her, but a person she wanted to return to. The distinction struck directly at the oldest fear she had confessed to Derek only moments before. Muad did not answer why her by describing what she gave him, what role she fulfilled, or what he expected her to become. Physical distance could remain. Silence could remain. They could wander separately and still find one another again. Nothing in his answer closed a door around her. Instead, every word seemed to open another.

Then came the simplest part. Because I chose you. And you chose me. Rin's eyes slipped closed as the words settled through her with a concordance so complete that for several heartbeats she could only feel them. Choice was the thing she had guarded more fiercely than almost anything else in her life, and Muad returned it to her not as permission but as something he understood belonged to her inherently. He had chosen her without claiming her, and she had chosen him without surrendering herself. When Ner mesh'la cyar'ika followed almost softly after everything else, somehow my beautiful darling was what finally made Rin's eyes sting. She laughed once under her breath at herself, blinking away the threat before it could become anything more. Happiness should not hurt like this, yet there was an ache inside it, the peculiar tenderness of receiving something she had never known to ask for. Through the dyad, emotion slipped toward Muad before she could organize it: love, gratitude, longing, and a fierce joy made almost fragile by how much he mattered to her.

Then he walked into the room. Rin's eyes found him immediately, and for one suspended moment she simply watched him cross toward her with everything he had just said still moving through her like the fading resonance of a struck harp string. Then Muad rolled over the sofa and dropped his head directly into her lap. She stared down at him as his casual Hiya, darlin' landed atop everything else, and a laugh broke from her before she could stop it, carrying the remnants of what had almost brought tears to her eyes seconds earlier. It was so thoroughly, absurdly him. Muad could reach through the dyad and expose something achingly vulnerable, tell her she was home, remind her that miles waited for them, and then appear in person as though he hadn't just rearranged something fundamental inside her.

Her hand found his hair almost immediately, fingers threading through it slowly while her other remained near Tracyn. Her smile trembled at the edges before settling into something warmer. "Hiya, darlin'?" she echoed, her thumb already tracing gently near his temple. "You say all of that to me, come in here, drop your head in my lap, and that's what I get?" The accusation possessed no force whatsoever, and whatever teasing authority she might have summoned was ruined by the expression she could not hide from him. He had the dyad besides. There was nowhere for the truth to retreat, and after everything he had just given her, Rin found she no longer wanted it to.

So she let it reach him, not as words at first, but simply herself, open in a way that still felt astonishing sometimes. The warmth behind her ribs, the lingering ache in her throat, and the tenderness that made touching him feel suddenly important all moved through the dyad, as though her fingers in his hair could answer some part of what language could not. Desire was there too, familiar and alive, but tonight it existed inside something larger. She loved him. Not because the dyad had made him impossible to escape, not because she needed him to complete her, and not because fate had dictated their lives should become one. She loved him because Muad had given her every opportunity to remain herself beside him, and somehow that freedom had made her want the distance between them smaller.

Rin leaned over him, long hair slipping from her shoulder until it formed a loose curtain around one side of their faces. Her golden eyes searched his from much closer now, amusement lingering beside something far more vulnerable. "For the record, that was a very good answer." She remained there rather than immediately retreating, her thumb brushing his temple once more while her smile softened from teasing into something almost unbearably fond. "I like being your silence too." That was the part of his answer she wanted him to know had reached deepest, perhaps because silence asked nothing of either of them except to remain.

Rin eventually straightened, though her fingers remained in his hair. Tracyn rested against her legs, Muad occupied her lap as though he had always belonged there, Derek sat nearby, and beyond the walls waited the dragonling who had chosen Rin with equal certainty. An almost sibilant susurrus of ordinary life surrounded them, breathing and shifting fabric, the small sounds of people simply sharing a room. There was nothing grand about it, nothing worthy of legends, yet the thought of home returned with surprising force. Derek's advice followed it, but it no longer felt pessimistic. Rin didn't need to cherish Muad because she feared each moment might be their last. Fear had already taken enough from too many people. She wanted to cherish him because this moment existed now, and because tomorrow, if they were fortunate enough to receive it, would offer another. Then another after that. Miles could accumulate beneath their feet until a life emerged from the journey almost without either noticing when it had happened.

Her fingers mussed Muad's hair affectionately before smoothing it again, and the dyad remained open between them as Rin let him feel the answer forming before she shaped it deliberately. More miles, she sent, warmth moving with the words as naturally as breath. Quiet ones too. Her smile deepened as she looked down at him, all the emotion she had spent a lifetime learning to carry without surrendering herself now finding somewhere safe to rest. After another heartbeat came the simplest part, offered without hesitation and carrying all the choice that mattered between them.

With you.

Muad Dib