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sullustangin · 2 years

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Maybe (A Mother’s Day Fic)

Rating: T

Word Count: ~4500

Pairing: Theron Shan x Smuggler

Time: 3624 BBY/ 28 years ATC

CW: Discussion of pregnancy, discussion of termination of pregnancy, discussion of character death, reference to past indirect character suicide attempt (sorta kinda - fuck Valkorion) .... All characters are fine at the end of the story, just lots of scary conversations.

(Yes, this is me being self indulgent. It’s fluffy at the end, I swear to God.)

The silence in the room was never-ending.

Theron arrived, the swish of the door the only disruption. He silently sat in a chair on the opposite wall of the waiting room in some non-descript women’s clinic in Coruscant.

Eva used to like silence. She worshipped it when she could have it in the gunner’s compartment of the Thief. She adored it when Valkorion was evicted, at last. Her silence was the drone of the engines and the solitary beat of her heart.

When Theron went AWOL on his Zildrog spy mission for long months, Eva had realized that her silence had expanded to include his breathing. The occasional times he was under the weather and snored were also accepted into the parameters of silence. When he was absent, the silence was broken – it was as if everything in her universe was screaming. When he had come home, years ago now, the silence resumed.

Now, as she waited in agony – no, profound discomfort but not agony – she found that she could not take the initiative to speak. Eva thought she would cry, if she spoke directly to him. After everything they’d put each other through, she didn’t want this to be another stone in the path. “It’s my fault,” she said to the floor.

His head snapped up to look at her.

Eva moved first, the slightest motion of a hand reaching toward him. That was all it took – Theron was on his feet, crossed the floor in three steps, and was sitting next to her before she took another breath. She crumbled into his arms. She did not weep.

She trembled.

Theron swallowed hard, twining his fingers into her hair. “Let’s start with the fact I love you. It’s a non-negotiable. You are non-negotiable in my life.”

That set her off. She felt her eyes water, and the tightness in her chest became painful. Eva listened to Theron’s heartbeat. Elevated rate. His arms curled around her, protectively. “Second fact. You forwarded to me a medical report that had a differential diagnosis attached. It was a very scary differential diagnosis.” He sucked in a breath of air. “You circled for me one of those less fatal diagnoses.” He pressed a kiss to the side of her forehead. “Why is it ‘your fault’?”

Eva tried to calm her breathing, but she just sniffled instead. She was losing it. She had always believed truth to be the ultimate liberator. “When…after I was defrosted, you know I had a lot of potential health problems and some very real, very scary aftereffects.”

Theron’s memory flashed before his eyes.

He found her retching over the head in the Thief. It was six weeks since they’d consummated their relationship. He could count. He also knew enough about female anatomy to understand certain events hadn’t occurred that would indicate contrary. “Should I be worried?” He asked as he knelt behind her, trying to gather her hair. He’d had to keep Balkar from drowning in a Nar Shaddaa bathroom once – this was nothing.

Eva shook her head, then held up a finger before gagging again. She spoke as soon as she could. “Already tested. This is a new fun side effect of my defrost, according to Oggurrobb. He’s got his friend’s niece working on my case – nice kid. Nosey as hell. I’m going to end up in a medical journal.” Back to worshipping the commode.

True to her word, it had stopped after a week. The vomiting was replaced by fainting spells, then by numbness in her right leg, which was terrifying due to the condition of her right arm. That was replaced by excruciating pain for a week or two. It took nearly six months for the worst effects to shake off. She still became cold very easily, even to today. Theron was there the entire time.

“We know that the ‘less than optimal’ carbonite freezing may have shorted my life, rather than extended it. Quality of life overall lowered. I was unhappy that my options were being taken off the table before I had a chance to actually decide what I wanted with my life.”

She shook in his arms again. Theron pressed to ease his mind or at least bring the issue into the light. “Pre-cancerous cells. Signs of early organ deterioration.” Theron felt the dread eating into his heart as he remembered the words written in the report.

“Infertility, when I first came back,” added Eva. “I had the implant for you anyway. Then, while you were away….” Zildrog. “…there was the question of whether it was helping me or hurting me.”

“And so it went.” Theron knew the rest of this story, but there was still a small, frantic voice in his head that chanted, No. No. No. No. Theron felt himself go pale, his entire head going cold while his implants provided a small burst of heat along his forehead.

She had told them before they married that she had taken out her birth control implant. He kept his.

It had been 4 years. Theron supposed the odds eventually would catch up to them.

Eva’s face was already contorted in misery, her eyes shut. “In all honesty, I didn’t think it would make a difference. The doctors didn’t. I thought…never. After the carbonite. After everything.” Silent tears coursed down her face. Agonizingly, she opened her eyes to look at Theron. He wished she hadn’t. “I broke your trust.” The red-rimmed, deep russet eyes were glassy with tears that did not seem to relent.

There was a part of Theron that was angry and wanted to leave her in the waiting room. It was an echo of the man he had been. Theron had been an unplanned pregnancy. His life hadn’t been easy. He didn’t get attached to people easily. He’d always been careful. Always. He was unashamed to be one of the first in line to get a male birth control implant when it came out, when he was 17. He got a replacement every 10 years on schedule. He hadn’t wanted a child, someone who very much deserved to have loving and secure attachments.

Theron never thought he could provide that. It took a near mythical effort over six years for Theron and Eva to be a committed pair. He didn’t need anything or anyone else. Now, if this was real, Theron had less than a year to make or fake another attachment to Eva’s child. To his child.

The anticipated panic never came. There was not a visceral, negative response to ---

The odds had been astronomically against this. Both partners with an implant? As close to zero as it could be. One implant? About .3% of a chance. The math itself – if this was what she suspected – was mind-boggling. The odds for her dying were vastly better.

Now there was the panic. Now there was the fright, the urge to clutch at her.

And yet, Theron always did find a way to blame himself. “If I hadn’t been away. If—if I’d known, if I hadn’t nearly destroyed us, lost so much time…” The waves of shame crashed over him as he forced himself to continue look at her, in the face. He had to stop doing this to her.

She gripped his arms, hard, tears still falling. He saw the flat eyes of the gambler briefly flicker through – it was her instinct to shell up. But she let it pass through and kept her face honest.

For once, Theron wished she had not killed the Voidhound. Just this once. Emotions complicated everything.

A tense silence ensued.

Theron spoke first. He had the most practice doing unforgivable things. “But I still have mine. The odds –” His voice cracked. “The odds for this being something else, something fatal – ” He couldn’t finish the sentence. “I don’t deserve you,” he said instead.

Eva took a deep breath and almost immediately went light-headed. She bent at the waist to rest her head in her hands, then let her head fall forward between her knees. She was dizzy. “I’m the judge of that – you told me I was when I took you back. I can’t reconvict you again and again for the same mistake – we would never move on.” Gods, she hated this.

Theron’s hand appeared at her back. “You need the doctor?” He sounded alarmed.

Eva shook her head. “I need to get through this conversation.” She attempted to regulate her breathing. “If I was pregnant,” Eva asked the floor, “would you want me to keep it?”

A hush fell over the room. Theron’s hand was still. “It’s your choice.”

“I need to know, from the beginning, what you want. If I am.”

He made no motion. Theron’s hand was still, but the longer he did not answer, the heavier it felt on her back.

Eva’s eyes traced the line on the tiles. Time passed by.

“You are non-negotiable. I will do anything for you.”

The floor tiles continued to be very interesting. “Except answer my question, apparently.”

Theron lifted his hand from her back. “As I said before, it’s your choice. My opinion is immaterial.”

Sometimes, a surgeon’s scalpel was the best way to extra information. Other times, a serrated blade without anaesthesia was the only way to go. “I think your father would disagree with that. But he doesn’t have a vote here either, does he?”

Theron’s chair hit hard back against the wall, even though it only scooted about two inches. Eva saw Theron’s boots threaten to head toward the door, but he didn’t pass through. “You’ve notified me of the possibility. Thank you,” Theron angrily spat out. “Congratulations, you’re better at this than Satele. Want a certificate? Or a medal?”

Serrated knives cut both ways. Eva had forgotten that, but her anger brought her to her feet, and she wobbled in her boots as the blood rushed from her head. “No, I want to know if you’d be happy if I kept or got rid of it. Which one? And I swear to the gods, Theron, if you say something about ‘whatever makes me happy,’ I will shoot you in the foot.”

“Just the foot? I would have aimed higher.”

“The day is still young, and that’s just where I’d start. I’ll work my up the more of an ass you are.”

Both of them glared at each other, shoulders rising and falling with each breath. Theron finally bit out, “I don’t see the point in having this conversation until we know what the final diagnosis is. We’re fighting over theoretical pregnancies and you might be dying. I did read the other scary things on that medical report.” Eva felt a small flicker of shame as she saw Theron’s anticipatory grief filter into his anger.

“And we’d deal with it. Only one way forward with the other options. The third option means we have to make choices and pretty soon.” Eva shook an open hand at Theron. “Can we just have the conversation?”

Theron huffed. “It’s a simple conversation. You have it. You don’t have it. That is your choice. It’s your body. My only vote is for you not dying.”

Eva’s brow furrowed. “Do you want to be a father? And I don’t mean just a biological contributor.”

Theron froze momentarily then sort of shrugged, sort of shook his head, sort of gestured. “I’ll do anything for you.”

Eva stomped her foot in frustration. This typically happened when she didn’t have access to anything that she could throw, shoot, or punch. Theron was never an option. “You know that’s not the question. I’m asking you if I got rid of it – or if I kept it – would you resent me? Be sad? Wonder, if we survive all these years, what if?”

Theron’s face was unreadable again. “You are non-negotiable. I will do anything for you.” That set line. That default.

Eva could strangle him. “Have you ever wondered what your life would be like if Jace had been in it? How different it would have been to have had a parent who wanted you?” she spat, thoroughly exasperated. “I need to know – in or out. I’m not doing this without you.”

As Theron’s face tightened and a frown appeared, Eva realized she said something more than what she should have known.

Eva crept up the gangplank into the Thief. She planned on ambushing Theron, wherever he was, for a quickie. Or maybe just to suck him off, if he’d let her. She had to break the dour mood that had overtaken him. Switch his brain off for fifteen minutes or however long he took.

Theron had been charged with determining the classification of certain matters in Jace’s journals before Jace turned them over to archives. It was a blind peer review; Jace was never to know. Eva wasn’t even supposed to know, but her ship was the only place with a storage environment suitable for archival material (add that to the list of random uses for smuggler holds). He had to ask. She let him.

Theron had been pouring through the legal and personal frameworks of his father’s life for weeks now. He had found out more about Jace than they’d ever spoken about.

He’d been an absolute horror to live with. Eva had made it a point to have girls’ weekends with Akaavi and Risha with Bowdaar as the Designated Responsible Adult.

As Eva crept around to the Captain’s quarters, she stopped. She listened.

Theron was sobbing.

Neither Eva nor Theron liked seeing the other in this state. She had done it front of him too many times during the entire ordeal with Arcann and then Vaylin.

Theron had grown teary on several of those occasions. He outright cried in the aftermath of Valkorion’s hostile takeover attempt. The one where she stuck a hot blaster in her mouth. Her potential loss was palpable.

This loss – whatever it was -- was actual, not potential.

Eva retreated out and away from the Thief. She waited twenty minutes in the cantina. When she approached the ship again, she made it a point to knock over a nearby toolbox and curse, loudly. As she walked slowly up the gangplank, she dawdled. She finally entered the ship, and Theron was in the hallway to meet her.

He’d pinned her up against the wall and had her there, loud and lusty. Apparently, the cry and the sex were enough of an emotional reset for him, and living with him became easy again.

She didn’t tell him that she later pilfered the journal he had cried over.

She didn’t tell him that she had read of how a young Jace had written about wanting a son. He had speculated that he could convince Satele that he was a good man, that she could marry him, even by the strict rules of the Jedi.

She didn’t tell him that she had read that Jace would have been fine with a daughter, too. He wrote about friends’ children, how he was an uncle to so many. He wrote about the activities he wanted to do with his own children, having seen his friends do it and have so much happiness. He wrote about women he dated after Satele. He wrote about how few compared to her. He wasn’t going to have a kid with someone he didn’t love.

The end of that journal volume saw an older Jace accepting that he likely wasn’t going to get married. Or have kids. He wished he had done so.

How different Theron’s life would had been if his loving father – his busy, emotionally clumsy, and sometimes too stubborn father – had been involved from the start.

Theron frowned deeply. This wasn’t going the way he thought it would. It would have been simpler if she, as the smuggler she was, lived just for today. If she didn’t make a play for the future. His opinion didn’t matter, because he wasn’t going to make her have a kid she didn’t want.

Now Theron was slowly realizing this might not be the case. He had disregarded the obvious fact that she was the child of smugglers – she was the only one of her kind among her parents’ circle of friends. However, she’d been thoroughly loved; as she said once, up until the last hour of it, her childhood was happy.

Adding on the invocation of Jace’s name and her face turning a whiter shade of pale, a different analysis came through. This had to be combined with his own lack of negative response to the idea. He hadn’t thought to update his preferences since he was 17 and angry. Because the idea of a child with her (specifically her, not anyone else) was not innately--

After Nathema, after he married her, after everyone was reconciled, Theron had read his father’s journals as an external reviewer. Jace….hadn’t known. Theron didn’t tell him or object because that would have exposed them all to far too much to public scrutiny, even 40 years later.

Jace’s life was a triumphant life. It was a duty-bound life. It was a lonely life. Par for the course, it seemed, when in juxtaposition with Satele’s life and Theron’s own life up until he was in his late twenties (some smuggler and her crew of misfits hijacked him and took him pretty far off course).

Jace had wanted a child. He had wanted Theron to exist, badly. He did not know his wishes had come true for 26 years, by which point the ability to parent was moot.

And now Theron knew that Eva had read the journals as well, without his consent. There was a flutter of anger. But he was storing things on her ship. The Captain always had a right to know what was on her ship. He had always thought she had been excessively noisy that day as she came home to the Thief; he now understood she had likely been home sooner but avoided intruding on his grief.

It was one of the few times that Theron had acknowledged his life had been sadder and lonelier than necessary, and he had indulged himself in the self-pity.

Theron’s shot about Satele had hit its mark better than he had anticipated: now it was a question of what she wanted, as she was desperate to not put him in Jace’s shoes. He didn’t want to put her in Satele’s. Theron realized that he had to ask the question, not her. “If I said I wanted it, would you be the parent who didn’t want it but had it anyway? Because that’s just as bad,” he hissed as he took a step toward her, fingers reaching for her.

A tremor went through Eva as she widened her stance slightly. Theron realized she – oh, the chair. The floor. The position. He crossed the rest of the way to her and let her lean into him. “I’ve been nauseous for days.” She placed her hands flat on his chest.

“Please don’t faint,” he plaintively asked as he drew her into his arms. Theron kissed her on the closest available part of her face. “Now you’re not answering questions. We’re not getting anywhere.”

Eva sighed. “You’re right. Fine.” She straightened up slightly to look at him directly. “The way I think of it, my family has history of things not working out.” The first Eva Corolastor, may she rest in peace. “This is the first time it might have worked out.” She cleared her throat. “It might be the only time it ever works out.”

“Do you want it to work out?” Theron’s hands clasped behind her back, draping over her hips.

“Do you?”

Theron cast a look heavenward. “This is so stupid. On the count of three, yes or no. One, two, three.”

“Yes.”

The ceiling became absolutely fascinating to Theron for a solid minute. He felt as if he’d just jumped off a cliff. “I’m starting to think we should have had this conversation sooner. Like, years ago.”

Theron finally looked down at her as she vigorously shook her head. “No. Part of--- part of --” She was waffling over saying something. He gave her a gentle squeeze and it came out in a rush. “Part of the reason I didn’t make the galaxy into an empire -- besides the obvious fact that a smuggler as emperor is stupid -- was the fact that an empire requires a succession, typically biological. After everything, I didn’t want the galaxy fixating on our ability to have heirs. I didn’t want that choice taken from either of us. Looking back, it would have been so hard to make it this point. Together.”

If they’d agreed earlier to have a child, what they considered ‘lucky’ now would have been very ‘unlucky’ then. Theron bowed his head to press his lips against hers. “My only reservation,” he said against her mouth, “is whether this is going to be high risk. I may want…this,” he danced around the more emotionally charged words he could have used, “…but I won’t sacrifice you for it. Everything else, I can do without. Not you.”

“I always did like risk,” Eva said, but she lacked her usual cavalier attitude when she said it. She was taking it seriously.

That terrified Theron. “For once in our lives, let’s be careful. I know this didn’t start from us being careful, responsible, loving adults instead of lustful, dangerous, kriffing idiots…but it matters how we finish this.”

Somewhere in the middle of that sentence, Theron realized that he might become a father. And that he was … not unhappy about it. “When do we get the final verdict?” he asked, stunned at the self-revelation.

“Should be soon. I wanted you here, as my next of kin.” That made him smile. Eva was the first person to ever give his name in that fashion; for obvious reasons, Satele and Jace and Theron had never written each other’s names down for anything.

As if on cue, the secretary stuck her head into the waiting room. “Are we ready for the doctor?”

“As I’ll ever be.” Eva drew a great, shaky breath. She looked up at Theron.

He was still desperately in love with her.

They walked through the door together.

Far later that night, the lights were on low within the Thief’s Captain’s quarters. Both were in their sleepwear. Eva lay on her back in bed, head resting in Theron’s lap. He had one arm crooked around her, the hand mindlessly playing with the closures of her night shirt. The other hand was holding a datapad, reading.

Eva turned her head slightly to leave a kiss on his abdomen. He startled slightly, his focus broken. “Lana is going to be so mad. Another security risk.”

Theron stifled a laugh. “If Lana is mad, she can go take a space walk off Republic Fleet without EVA gear. I don’t think she will be, though.” Theron put the datapad aside and used the free fingers to trace her face tenderly. “I think she’ll splash out. Remember how she prepared for your coronation long before you rejected it? Apply that, and you get an over-enthusiastic aunt.”

“She didn’t know if she’d get another opportunity to run a coronation. So she went hard. Yeah, I can totally see that.” Eva’s hand travelled to where Theron’s fingers were playing with a clasp. “The crew is going to be thrilled.��

Theron smiled at that. “I know Bowie will be over a few moons.”

“Corso too. Risha will wrinkle her nose and make noise, but go to pieces at first sight.”

“Uncle Guss may be an acquired taste.”

“Aunt Akaavi – that’ll be a force to reckon with.” A beat. “Boy or girl.”

“No preference.”

“Last name?”

“Oh, that’s a tough one.” Theron sat back against the headboard. “I’m not expecting either of us to change our last names at this point, just to be clear. But the kid has to have one.”

Eva’s lips curved upward in a smile. “I can tell you from personal experience, Shan is easier to learn how to spell than Corolastor.”

“Hyphenate it?”

“And make it even longer and more obnoxious?”

“I’m not attached to my name. You are to yours.” Theron drifted a thumb over her eyebrows. “My name should have died out a long time ago.”

Eva dipped her head back to catch that thumb with her mouth. “I could say the same. Maybe a third option?”

“And make this kid’s life even more complicated, having three different last names running around? I’d say pick one and stick with it.” Theron’s face relaxed as he looked at her.

In the dim light, Eva saw the increasing grey at Theron’s temples that was now sneaking into the rest of his hair. Eva had always liked silver foxes, and this one was exceptionally hot. The lines on his face were more pronounced than they were when she had met him back on Republic Fleet. His face was slightly thinner, the fullness of youth departing. The eyes still burned bright and intense, and he remained mentally and physically active.

“What are you thinking of?” he asked, noticing her rapt attention to his face. His thumb trailed along the side of her jaw and under her chin then up the other side.

“You.” They both used to lie about thinking about each other. Now there was no point.

“Good to know. Still like what you see?”

“Yeah. In fact, I might love it.”

“Very good to know.” Theron’s voice grew husky, and he turned off the lights.

She needed her rest. And he needed her.

Thanks to @ayresis, @vexa-legacy, @commanderlurker, and @previousjane for the nudges to post.

#swtor #swtor fan fiction #theron shan #theron shan x smuggler #oc: eva corolastor

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