Chapter Seven – The Truth
Nicola staggered as a sudden presence slammed into her through the Force. With a gasp, she lurched forward, grasping for the back of the nearest chair. She felt Bror catch her elbow and steady her. With her husband to lean on, her free hand went to her abdomen. She dived into the Force, checking herself over, most specifically her child.
After a moment, her panic subsided, though she still felt weary. Bror's hand never left her elbow as he brought her to their room. After she was settled on the couch, she saw his eyes and their concern.
"Are you alright, Nicola?" His voice held the same concern as was in his eyes.
Nicola nodded, her focus swimming between being too bright and blackness. Her elbow rested on her knee as her forehead fell into her hand. Eyes closed, she worked on attempting to figure out just what had gone wrong. Tentatively she reached out in the Force again and came back with a startling bit of news. Two bits, in fact. The presences of Jori Daragon and Darth Maul were receding into the web of the Force. Putting two and two together was easy enough to lead her to the assumption that the Sith Lords had been the one with the attack on her child.
The other piece if information was just as shocking, if not more so. In her sweep of the Force, she had found not only the Sith Lords leaving, but that Adra was no longer conscious. The rest of the Jedi in Wraith Headquarters, however, were going around their business as if nothing had happened. And, Nicola thought dimly, to them nothing probably did.
The fact that Adra must've been affected by the Sith Lords' attack caused interest enough in Nicola for her to focus her energies on her friend. Due to the Jedi's sudden slip into unconsciousness, her mental shields had slipped as well. Feeling slightly guilty about taking advantage of her friend while she wasn't even conscious, she none-the-less pushed the feeling aside and continued her search through the Force. As abruptly as she had plunged into her search, she withdrew. It was with startled realization that Nicola knew the truth...the question was, did Adra have any clue?
A knock on the door accompanied with the door buzzer jolted her from her thoughts. Even as Bror stood to press the release, Nicola set out in the Force again. Face Loran was standing on the other side of the door.
As it slid back to show the pilot, she stood up, her hands falling to her sides. Face nodded to Bror as he stepped aside to allow Face entrance. Quickly his attention refocused to her. With a brief smile, he glanced once at Bror, then at Nicola again.
"Nicola, I need your help-"
Nicola raised a hand to cut him off, her facial features and tone devoid of sarcasm. "Adra, right? She's unconscious, I know."
Face nodded and looked pleadingly at her. With a quick look at Bror, who nodded hesitantly, she followed Face towards the still-open door. Face led the way down the hall and towards Adra's room, his fingers nimbly punching in the access code, though Nicola knew it herself.
As the door slipped back, Face entered, Nicola following him quickly. She nodded to Face as he went to the kitchenette, presumably to get a drink. Nicola went over to kneel next to the couch, where Adra was lying. The fact that she wasn't sprawled on the floor, or other, confirmed her sense that Face had followed her here to talk over her father and was also there when she blacked out.
Calmness seeping through the Force and into Nicola, she placed a hand on her friend's forehead. She sent something like a jolt through the Force to Adra, monitoring her face as she did so. Within a moment from the removal of her hand, Adra's facial muscles bunched slightly, then released. Nicola sat back on her heels as her friend opened her eyes blearily.
"N-Nicola?" Adra's voice was hoarse, but clear all the same. Face appeared next to Nicola, holding out a glass to her. Tentatively Nicola took it and offered it to Adra, careful to make sure her friend didn't drop it.
While Adra drank the water, Nicola stood up, looking over at Face. Though he was Adra's fiancé, and though he deserved to know about Adra's little 'dilemma', she felt she'd better talk to Adra first. With a nod to the door, she sent Face the idea that he suddenly wanted to go to his office and read the reports for the day. Face complied by offering her a parting remark and a mumbled excuse of needing to check reports, but was then gone. Nicola pressed the release on the controls once more, then crossed back to Adra, who was sitting up carefully on the couch.
* * * * *
Though she didn't let it show on her face, Adra felt like she was going to throw up. When Nicola turned her back to get a glass of water for herself, presumably, she got up and made her way carefully to the 'fresher. All of seven seconds later the food that she'd managed down was making a journey back up. After throwing up her small breakfast, Adra sat on the floor of the 'fresher for a moment, forehead on the cool wall. A minute later, she'd risen to brush her teeth and wash her mouth out.
Nicola was out in the living area waiting for her as she came out of the 'fresher. Just from the way Nicola was looking at her she guessed that her friend knew that truth. After all, Nicola was two months pregnant with her own child. Nicola got up from her seat and walked over to Adra as she grabbed at the back of a chair. In half-realization she felt Nicola patting her back soothingly.
"Welcome to what I've been going through for the past two months." Adra heard the small amount of sarcasm rigged into her friend's voice, but didn't even bother to respond to it. Right now she merely wanted to feel secure under her half year-older friend's protection. This was one of those occasions where she could say, without fear of sounding like a whimpering child, that she wanted her mother...or any sort of motherly figure. For the moment, Nicola substituted just fine.
At last working up her words of reply, Adra launched them. "Yeah, well, you're actually married to your kid's parent. And he knows that you're pregnant."
Next to her, she heard Nicola laugh slightly before she led her to sit down on the couch. Nicola sat down next to her, releasing the elbow she had directed Adra with.
"Well let's see. You're engaged to your kid's parent and he doesn't know about it."
Adra scowled. "Yes, I know that. That's why I said it, Nicola." She paused, her scowl softening into what, she didn't know. She only knew that her face hardly ever held the expression she was sure it supported now. "But... Jees'm Nicola, how the sith am I supposed to tell him?"
As soon as the last words passed her lips, Adra realized what she was feeling. Fear. Fear that Face would suddenly desert her. Fear that she would never be able to get through with this. Fear that everything she had fortified herself with would be stripped away.
Nicola, however, seemed to want none of it. The expression Adra read on her face was one of something like 'don't go there, girlie'. "Well let's see here. You go up to him, drag him into a separate room, or of course you could tell him when he's only half awake, and then you say the magic words," Adra caught Nicola's grin. "And you'll never going to believe what those two words are." She paused for dramatic effect. "You say 'I'm pregnant'."
In spite of herself, Adra grinned and gave a small laugh. Then her expression grew a bit livelier as she continued on Nicola's thread of sarcasm. "Can I have him get drunk the night before, then tell him when he's got a hangover and is half-awake the next morning?"
That pulled a laugh from Nicola, just as Adra had hoped it might. If Nicola laughed, she would most definitely find it easier to do so as well.
"That works too," Nicola grinned.
* * * * *
Adra and Nicola walked into the lounge where a good portion of the squadron sat doing something. Adra watched as Nicola went to sit on the couch next to Bror, then looked over at Face. She took the few steps to come up behind him, then put a hand on his shoulder, grinning slightly.
"Hey Face..." Adra's voice trailed off.
Face looked up, his expression a bit confused and worried at the same time. "What?"
Before he could say more, Adra pulled him up and around the chair, all but dragging him off towards the door of the lounge. Face quickly put his datapad away and tossed a datacard to Tyria before he followed Adra. Glancing behind her, Adra saw Nicola grin, a knowing smile tucked under it. Ryok came up behind Nicola, obviously asking her what was up. Adra was pleased to find that her friend kept her mouth sealed.
Adra led Face along the way to his office and hit the control panel. The door slid open and she 'escorted' him through, hitting the controls again after him. Face looked at Adra in question and at once she began to have her misgivings on telling him. How could she just tell him, like Nicola had said? Through the haze of her sudden, self-directed anger, she slumped in a chair by his desk.
"Adra, what's wrong?" Face's voice broke into the mists she'd surrounded herself with. Though it shouldn't have touched the nerve of self-directed anger, his words somehow did just that.
"You want to know what's wrong, Garik Loran? Is that what your problem is right now?" Adra snapped, her five foot five figure standing sharply from its point in the chair.
She could sense Face's initial drawing back at her sudden reaction, his worried uncertainty wrapping his annoyance and anger in a blanket, sufficiently smothering it. Face had the uncanny ability to read everything about her moods, whether it was a smiling remark after a dogfight or if it was some issue about her personal life. He walked towards her, moving carefully around the chair she had slumped in for all of a nanosecond. Adra turned away from him, her mind focused solely on not allowing her panic and uncertainties to show on her face.
Behind her, she felt the presence of her fiancé getting closer. After all of a moment Adra felt his arms wrap around her waist. While she privately wished she could just be agreeable to Face for once, she scolded herself mentally for not being able to keep a tight rein on her emotions.
"Yes, that is my problem," Face's voice broke in on her thoughts, a calm voice anchoring into the internal storm. Adra released a silent sigh, relaxing in his embrace at the whisper in her ear. "It's my problem because you were blacked out, then you were perfectly happy when you dragged me in here and all of two seconds after, you had a look to kill on your face."
While contemplating how the sith she could even tell Face this, the other part of her mind was nagging at her, telling her it was his fault, after all, that she was faced with this predicament. Though she had tried not to let any emotion seep onto her face, she scolded herself mentally as she felt a tear roll down her cheek. As the tear dropped from her cheek to Face's overlapped hands, she felt concern rushing off him. She really needed to stop leaving him in the dark about everything going on with her; she knew she never should've done so in the first place, but it just soothed her nerves to know that Face wasn't going to worry about it just as much. The stress from being a squadron commander capped with how her parents had treated them a few days ago would be enough stress for anyone.
Face tightened his arms slightly as she bent her head to catch it in her hands. She could feel him freeing a hand from around her waist, instead bringing it up to the blue-gray material of Adra's tank top, rubbing her back.
She turned around, not moving other than to rotate so she might see Face's eyes. He offered a anxious yet comforting smile, his eyes dancing with a protective worry.
"Face..." she broke off after she said his name, not really sure where she wanted to say, how she would say it. Face nodded to her carefully, waiting her out as she collected her thoughts. Adra closed her eyes, her thoughts on this subject reeling around in her mind so fast she could hardly grasp them. Finally she slowed the emotional swirl around and reviewed what she could.
Her eyes flicked open, her head hanging slightly, as she took a deep breath. "Face...I'm pregnant."
As quickly as she had said it a bout of worry crossed her mind. She stopped listening to the emotions running through the Force, just waited for some outburst of anger or shock that was inevitably to come. One of her hands rose to rub her downcast face and clear her eyes of the tears gathering in them. Face's hand under her chin lifted her gaze to his.
"Are you serious?" Face, if anything, looked excited.
Completely thrown back by his facial expression, Adra stood still for a few heartbeats then nodded slowly. Adra found herself being quickly squeezed into a hug. The response had been completely outside what she had expected, but she was glad for it none-the-less. She felt Face's grip releasing slowly and glanced up to find him looking down at her. He still looked jubilant...goofily so. Face rested his forehead against hers and Adra grasped at his emotions in the Force again. Happiness, excitement, a slight bit of worry and no doubt concern all came spilling off.
"Adra... I know we didn't plan this, but I promise I'll stay by your side until the end," his voice was filled with the loving concern she'd sensed.
Adra closed her eyes, her expression thoughtful. She nodded in thanks to Face's words, but then a horrible thought hit her. From one predicament to the next, she thought wryly. The fact that Face wasn't absolutely flipping on her was a good thing though.
"Face, does this mean I can't fly?" She was unconsciously aware of the worry laced into her voice.
Face smiled as he directed her to the couch, but Adra could sense that he wasn't sure through the Force. Wasn't sure he was going to let her touch any sort of craft that wasn't simulated for a good ten months. As he opened his mouth to speak, Adra braced herself for the worst, leaning on the arm of the couch as if it was some sort of stronghold that could keep her from reeling out the nearest viewport when the words were spoken. Adra heard Face sigh.
"No, you can still fly, but six months from now I'll go to General Antilles if you don't give it up for a bit."
Adra opened her mouth to say something, her temper rising a bit, but then shut it again. In all truth, he was being reasonable. So she'd be laid off for four or five months. She could still fly simulators in those months, even if she would be receiving glares from her husband when she did.
"Who...who are you going to tell?" Adra finally found the voice to ask.
Face contemplated for a moment, his brow furrowed with the effort. "I think it's only a reasonable assumption to be made that I should tell the squadron, considering the fact that the Jedi will have you figured out soon enough and no doubt will tell everyone else. Other than that, Wedge should know."
Adra paled at the thought of telling the entirety of the squadron, shaking her head. "The Jedi will only figure it out of I leave my guard down." Face began to speak, but Adra plowed on. "Nicola already knows, if that makes you feel any better, and I'll tell Tyria. That's only fair as she and I work together. She'll probably demand I get away from the computers no less, for sake of worrying about me getting a mood swing and murdering one of them."
As she finished speaking, Face nodded. He used an arm to pull Adra closer to him on the couch and she rested her head on his shoulder. Quietly she let out another sigh, her eyes falling closed as she did so. Immediately she felt more anxiouty coming from Face. Adra opened her eyes again, raising an eyebrow.
"Face, do you honestly think I've been holding out on telling you? It's not like I'm three months pregnant."
A smile played over her fiancé's face and then he stood up, taking one of Adra's hands and pulling her up with him. Adra allowed herself to be pulled up, her bare feet meeting the floor again. As soon as she found her feet, she looked over at Face who was still watching her. He pulled her closer, his hand releasing hers to accompany his other as they framed her face. Next instant his mouth had claimed hers, one of his arms now around her waist and the other holding her back. Adra gasped silently and then the couple seized the initiative to deepen the kiss. Adra's hands found a way to free themselves from the embrace and just as quickly as they had released themselves, they were linking behind Face's neck. Only when the need for air broke in on them did they break the kiss, though they remained in each other's embrace. Once more Adra felt Face's forehead leaning against her own.
"I know that, Adra, I know that."