if you're interested in doing more dialogue prompts how about "okay, now i'm begging." or "i would never let that happen."
no worries if not! i am just eating them up.
Aaaa, thank you for the prompt💜!
So... care to read an angsty break up scene of Qyrhu and Theron after the traitor arc? Tadaa *Takes the cloche off and it's a fucking mess*
I’m angry because once I started putting it on the page, the glowing version in my head could not be conjured again. I hate that it does that!!! *through clenched teeth* this is what art is. now move on.
A bit of context: The time following the Alliance’s victory over Zakuul is rough for Qyrhu due to him going through a terrible mental health period (the mind takeover in the thron room fucks him up. forever). He keeps trying to brute force through it, running on fumes, doesn’t want others to know what’s up, and is therefore isolating or taking it out on the people close to him that try to help. Theron is taking the brunt of thankless care work during that time. He doesn’t really blame Qyrhu, but it makes him a bit desperate to protect him from more shit…. Theron going rogue slaps Qyrhu out of the idea that he can just keep going like that, he puts down most of his work and duties, tries to be more open about it to trusted people. He feels a bit better after that, because he finally stops pretending. His house of cards has collapsed and the relief of it takes off a significant part of his suffering. Still not exactly recovered. And his usual shit is incurable unfortunately.
word count: ~ 2300 (help), cw: none
"I would never let that happen."
Despite Qyrhu keeping his pace deliberately slow, Theron seems to struggle while walking next to him, gait careful, pain hiding in the rigid lines of his face. A slight sheen of perspiration starts to cover it, and his puffy eyebags look redder than usual. He looks awful and Qyrhu can’t believe Theron suggested going for a walk outside. No, the only place Qyrhu will be speaking another word to him is at his bed in the med wing. He has told him as such, and Theron has had to relent.
Qyrhu could have dropped by for a visit sooner, so Theron wouldn’t have felt the need to abscond from the med bay and ambush him in the halls, nearly making Qyrhu’s heart seize up. The bastard. But Qyrhu admits that he has been delaying meeting Theron again, even after he had recovered enough to receive visits. The conversation that will need to follow weighs heavily in the pit of his stomach. He doesn’t trust himself not to botch it, draw too much blood. Not after all the previous ones with him, long ago now, but not long enough.
Let’s get this over with.
Theron sighs when they enter the med bay, and Qyrhu spends a few minutes idling in front of his room, picking at his gloves, while Theron receives a dressing-down from the annoyed nurse on duty. The satisfaction of it makes Qyrhu break into smile.
He enters the room when he finds it has lasted long enough. The nurse really hasn’t done anything other than scan him and remind him sharply that his state is still fragile. Theron bears it with an air of someone used to medical personnel being angry at him. No remorse.
“Thank you, sir. He will adhere to your professional recommendations in the future,” Qyrhu says, though only for the nurse’s sake. It is not likely to ever happen.
“Now, leave us.”
The nurse exits the room with delightfully insubordinate commentary under his breath. Something sounding suspiciously like ‘see if I care next time’ and ‘he’s as bad as Shan’.
He can’t dispute that.
Qyrhu lets the door slide close and leans against the wall, so as to face Theron, who, for the lack of other seating options, has perched himself at the far end of his bed. He seems like he really didn’t want to touch that bed again for a while, even though he looks less sickly now, sitting down.
Qyrhu takes note of his rumpled downtime pants and oversized shirt that were hiding under his cloak, now discarded. His mop of dark hair messy and unstyled, his sidecut less neat than when he had first seen him up close on Nathema. Theron takes him in in the same way. There hasn’t been much time to truly look at each other until now. Not in the last nine months. Something inside him aches for this kind of silence between them, Theron’s eyes on him, and his on Theron’s, no words, just their familiarity, their appreciation, their sanctum of the other’s presence. Both of them seem to briefly conjure it among the strangeness of his long absence, among this nervous, uncertain quiet before a storm of their own making.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” Qyrhu says into this silence.
Theron looks up, into his eyes. Qyrhu holds his gaze, willing to show him he means this, his own eyes softening around the edges for a moment. Theron needs to know this, whatever follows, he’s glad he’s here, and alive. He doesn’t want to think on how he would feel if Theron hadn’t survived his injuries. He can’t… It is too horrific. He clamps this imagined despair down again. There is no need for it, Theron is in front of him, calmer now, his skin tone healthier again as he has had time to recover from his walk.
“I… yeah. I’m glad, too. That you’re safe.”
Theron looks like he has words bubbling in his mouth that he has wanted to say for forever. Qyrhu lets him speak them out.
“Look... I know I put you through hell. I was reckless and stupid, and it almost cost us everything. Leaving you there on Umbara... Saying these things to you… it destroyed me.”
Qyrhu keeps his face impassive. He’s surprised how hard it is to take his words for the apology it is. He had been waiting for an apology. Theron truly owes him one. But he just hates it now, hearing him do it. He hates his contrite look, how his eyes jump around before returning back to him. Theron looks like a trapped animal, and that’s quite literally what he just did to him. Maybe he should have had this conversation outside, as Theron had suggested. Theron leans his arms on his knees and looks up to him, looking everything like an abject supplicant. It makes him want to taste bile.
Qyrhu should at least have sat down, too, so to not make that comparison starker, but he hasn’t wanted to sit next to him. He slowly breathes out his discomfort through his nose. Since when can’t you take one sincere apology, from the person who wronged you? Not in every way, but it had been insane, what he did. Telling no one. Leaving everyone blind in the wake of this. Leaving him with this much guilt.
Theron has straightened up now, trying to decipher his silence. His hands are gripping the edge of the mattress unconsciously.
“I know I don’t deserve it,” he continues tentatively, “I don’t know if you… where we stand. If we have another chance –”
Qyrhu halts him with a raised palm. He has heard enough, and he doesn’t want him to say things he will later regret. Even without any Force behind it, Theron falls silent immediately, as if he has squeezed shut his windpipe. Qyrhu cringes inwardly, hurt to see that display of anxiousness before it is hidden behind a neutral expression again. It’s Qyrhu’s own fault, for always being so imperious, so exacting. For making everyone be wary of his reactions. It affirms what he has to say.
“My turn.”
Theron’s expression slips again, into confusion now.
“The way you have gone about this whole solo operation is terrible, and we’ll need to pick that apart more when you’re on active duty again.”
Well, the others will. I’m sure Lana has already started.
Theron nods feebly, valiantly covering his unease about that prospect. “Alright.”
“And I fault you for the way you broke up with me. It was cruel.”
“I know.” Theron’s expression is pained now. “I know, Qy. I’ll never forgive myself for that–”
“But I don’t fault you for ending our relationship in the first place.”
“…What?” The word escapes in a startled breath.
“You should have done it long before that.”
There had been many reasons to do it. For the many times he had rebuked his comfort, his help. For all the venom he had lugged at him for trying. For Qyrhu’s weakness at falling apart in the first place, not strong enough to keep himself together, to weather the hardships he should have been able to weather. He had been waiting for Theron to distance himself the whole time, even though it was Qyrhu who should have been the one to end it, assume responsibility, when Theron couldn’t do it, but he had been blindly clinging to the idea to try again, try every day to be better, to make it up to all of them. In vain.
“Qyrhu,” Theron shifts abruptly, to stand. Qyrhu holds out his hand as quickly to stop him in his tracks. He doesn’t want him to come closer right now. Theron keeps himself seated, tense and poised to jump. He looks distressed.
It had been a brutal wake up call. He had realized that if he kept this up, he would end up hurting everyone around him, until they all turned away from him, or worked themselves to death because of him. He can’t be thankful to Theron exactly, but in this last act, he had finally done what Qyrhu had expected him to, and made him realize how awful that was.
“I can’t let you go on flagellating yourself without bringing this up,” he says, too lightly for the taste of blood still in his mouth.
Qyrhu looks down at Theron’s unhappy face and breathes out. He didn’t think he’d ever have the opportunity to tell him this. It helps to ease the sting of it.
“I am sorry, Theron. For how I behaved. For trying to force it for this long. You didn’t deserve this. You didn’t deserve me like this.”
“Qy, you were going through shit. I never held that against you”, Theron says, grief in his voice.
“And why shouldn’t you?”, Qyrhu is tired. He swallows down his irritation at having his own past state acknowledged, even when he has just admitted it himself.
“The circumstances are excuses. This is about how much one has to put up with someone else’s issues, excusable or otherwise.”
Theron puts his face in his hands. “Fuck. I’m trying to apologize here.”
“It is noted. But I’m not finished.” He wants to say his piece before Theron can divert from it. Some detached inner voice is noting that he isn’t being considerate once again. Well, that isn’t news.
He overrides his instinct to remain unmoving and brings his hand to his face to smooth over his forehead, closing his eyes for a moment. Trying to soften himself into something less harsh.
“My point to all of this is… I don’t want you to feel like you owe me a relationship.”
Theron lifts his head again, his face carefully still.
“I don’t want to resume whatever we were doing just because it was so before. Honestly, I don’t want to go back to that.”
Theron chokes out a sound; it resembles a mirthless laugh.
Qyrhu doesn’t like who he has been then. No one would have. Theron is just being too nice, too forgiving. He doesn’t want that. He wishes he was angry at him at least a little. He used to be. When did it change? When did he stop to take him seriously? He thinks to know when. From the moment he had been snapped in half like a dry twig. The moment he started coasting.
“I don’t want you to come to me out of a sense of loyalty,” Qyrhu keeps going, trying to keep his voice even, through his chest constricting, “or guilt.” Or pity. His nostrils blow out involuntarily. “I would never let that happen.”
“You…,” there’s a oh-so-slight hint of anger in Theron’s distress now. He wants so badly to lock his jaw around it and shake. “Stop assuming things. I’m not thinking that.”
“I don’t believe you, Theron.” Qyrhu keeps his tone quiet, but the sharpness is undeniable.
Theron’s mouth clicks shut.
Their silence is thick now. Hope drains down slowly, marring the floor.
Qyrhu is still mad at him and he can’t pretend otherwise. He can’t swallow down these long months of misery and doubt, feeling like he failed him. He still failed him, but apparently not as much as he had thought. How stupid. All of it was stupid.
Another part of him wants to fall on his knees for all those words, clasp his boots and apologize for making him sad and hurt once again. He knows how much Theron has sacrificed, how much he has risked, how lonely and arduous his last year has been. And now, after everything he’s done, wounded and still half on his hospital bed, he comes to him for reassurance, to mend bridges, and he is met with this. His mess. Again. If he was a better man, a better friend, he would stand by him to get through this time of convalescence, at least wait until Theron doesn’t feel as jittery as now, covert op nerves still in his veins.
Qyrhu cannot smile at him and pretend it’s fine, however. He is tired of pretending things are fine. It is unfair, but he can’t change that.
“This is a chance. For both of us,” Qyrhu keeps dropping stones into the pond of Theron’s resigned silence. They splash in with a dull finality.
“I don't think we are who we need to be for each other.”
It will be better if both of them realize this, and leave each other be, don’t cling to something out of sentimentality that doesn’t actually make them happy.
“I want you to think about it. For longer.” plounk “And I will be doing the same.”
Theron nods calmly, a conscious act, his gaze looking at nothing. It hurts to see him like that. Doesn’t he see the chance in that? That he’s free of him, of his expectations? He hopes he will realize it soon.
He wishes to be someone who makes him happy. And he doesn’t want either Theron or him to squirm and change too much to be able to fit with the other. I just want both of us happy. But he isn’t sure how possible that is. He won’t make up his mind now.
Qyrhu pushes off the wall and makes to end this. Finally.
“I’m leaving Odessen.”
Theron looks up at him again, sharply.
“Where?”
It’s a hastily tumbled out word, not much hope for an answer behind it, as he watches him walk over to the exit.
Qyrhu stops in front of the door when it has swished open.
“Don’t follow me.”
He leaves, the door closing behind him. He is staring straight ahead, blinking too many times in the harsh bright light of the med center. When he’s out of there, he gets out his comm unit and quick dials the first contact.
“I’m done here,” he speaks into it.
“Good,” the line on the other end is briefly drowned out by a clattering noise, someone throwing down something with finality. He feels more certain again, hearing Vette’s voice.
“Let’s blow this joint.”