Lucilla had been correct in one of her assessments. Before she'd turned from the powerful, simmering form of Kylo Ren and saw her poor, devastated husband standing there: She would be sleeping in the spare room.

That was not enforced by Orion; no, the last time she'd seen him had been when he turned on his heel and left. Seemingly vanishing into the bowels of the ship, it was no surprise he had evaded her when he knew the vessel infinitely better than she did.

She had returned to the apartment immediately, bypassing Ren to go back the way she'd come; the only way she knew. He had called after her but so immersed in distressed regret, she would be lying if she could recall what he'd said. Once she got there and checked the rooms only to find them empty, Lucilla waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Fruitlessly.

Eventually, she conceded to defeat and traipsed to the spare bedroom, the one they (thankfully) had not gone about turning into a nursery. While her dainty body may have been physically at rest, that was the extent of Lucilla's relaxation.

There was no sleep, she couldn't even categorically remember closing her eyes. Not when that utterly crushed expression resonated behind her lids every time she even blinked, let alone subjecting herself to it for a long period by trying to sleep. Selfish? Perhaps.

In her torturous wakefulness, Lucilla found herself overly aware of everything. Every noise had her hoping he had come home but was she left disappointed each time she realized it was her own imagination. Every instance left her more and more dejected. In that resolve, the hours crawled by until the familiar time rolled around, when a brief, efficient alarm should have sounded; Lucilla roused like she usually would have. But when she went to inspect their bedroom; again, she found nothing.

Lucilla stood, helpless, in the centre of the living area; at a loss of what to do. All her options surrounded her, almost physical in their manifestations and just as intimidating as if they were. Overwhelmed, each option had the potential to only make things worse; a dawning that made the little dove begin to iron a fraught laneway into the plushness of the carpet.

Should she go to the bridge? If she did, what kind of icy reception could she expect? Trying to explain the muddled circumstances would be useless; he would not afford her (in his fury) the time to try and tease out the misunderstanding. If she even made it to the control hub before he had her entry barred. What if she collided head on with Kylo Ren again and the situation worsened?

Should she com the bridge? After all, whoever answered would immediately inform her husband but…. All he had to do was refuse the transmission. He might even punish the unfortunate officer who answered the com. Perhaps her com details had been suspended from the system in an effort to prevent her contacting him.

Still in the same attire as the night before, unwashed, teeth unbrushed; Lucilla cared for none of it, this cosmetic nonsense. Not when there was something far more pressing. Had it even momentarily escaped her that she was in state she had longed to be in for as long as she could remember? Carrying her own child? It seemed so.

What if she actively sought out Ren and gave him a firm talking to? If she was loud and blatant enough and picked the right spot, it might be heard and reported back to Orion; if he didn't hear it himself. After all, with the abundance of monitoring equipment on Supremacy, it was a very real possibility.

Still, the General's wife fretted and her stomach churned. Should she eat? Take her mind off it, perhaps and just wait some more? Craving some sort of normality and distraction, Lucilla made tea; a habit to ease her stomach but it seemed (as if privy to the situation) her child was cooperating and the discomfort was nothing to do with her pregnancy.

Guilt.

Sure and certain, she was not too familiar with the emotion but knew it when she felt it biting her like it did then. In a different setting and physical position from the night before, Lucilla sank into dead bewilderment once more; staring at nothing in particular while her mind picked apart the facts. Ren hadn't touched her, nor had she encouraged him to. She had frozen out of….

Disbelief?

Curiosity?

Temptation? No, surely not!

Whatever the case, Lucilla resolved that her only crime in the course of events as they had happened was that she had not been quick enough in moving away.

However.

What would have happened if Orion had not arrived when he did? The blue-eyed beauty had found herself immobilized, for whatever reason, and Ren had kept closing in. Would she have let him kiss her? Would she have woken at just the right moment and swept herself away? Or would she have allowed Ren to swoop her away somewhere else to do something far worse?

Orion could throw money at the pregnancy all he wished; the finest maternity clothes, the best supplements, the most bizarre craving solutions without question, whatever homely touches for the apartment she wished but those things were material. If Orion really cared, he would have given her what she needed in the first place. Then, she would not have wandered from the apartment and in turn, would not have been cornered by the brooding Knight. Was it too easy to apportion accountability? Maybe, but the dark haired darling still could not help feeling hard done by when the situation had not been entirely of her making.

Stranded in trying to comprehend everything and trying to convince herself of her own blamelessness, Lucilla did not quite notice something; something she had been waiting for. When she'd arrived on Starkiller, Lucilla had commented that the doors were quieter than those on Finalizer. It seemed the ones on Supremacy had surpassed those of Starkiller and so the redhead entered without so much as a turn of a darker head.

To Orion, it simply looked as if his wife had shut down and it had rendered her staring at the wall with one milky hand coiled around a stone-cold cup. It must have concerned him enough to speak up.

"Are you alright, darling?"

Lucilla's head whipped, almost to the point of strain, and stunned since she'd convinced herself she had been alone and would be for the foreseeable future. The cup was relinquished, almost tossed from her person as if it was incriminating, and for the longest moment, Lucilla simply stared.

And stared.

And stared.

Until everything slotted into place and suddenly made sense. Then, poor Lucilla crumbled.

"Orion!' She howled, leaping from the kitchen chair and into the arms her husband had automatically opened to comfort her. "I've been so worried, I had no idea where you were or if you were alright or-!"

"Easy, little dove." Orion soothed, tightening the hold of his arms in a bid to calm her and suffocate the hiccupping sobs with his chest. "You cannot be in this state, darling; it's not good for the baby, is it?" If anyone knew their way around Lucilla, it was her General. Immediately, the rattling lessened as the sentiment sunk in but the hysteria remained, trundling around her head like a bull rancour.

"You didn't come home last night." It was time to address the bantha in the room but Orion hesitated. Still clutching her close with his head dipped low to console her quietly, the redhead swallowed but recalled the security footage and the determination he'd come to.

"I spent the night in my office." Lucilla had suspected as much but was not brave enough to find out for sure. "I poured through the security footage, over and over. Listened to the audio, over and over." Again, the blue-eyed beauty had presumed as much. "And I have come to the conclusion, little dove, that you were not at fault." Lucilla could not see much, being pressed in close to the darkness of her husband's chest but if she could read the face tinted with tiredness, she would have seen that he had convinced himself.

"It was Ren. Whatever spell he put on you rendered you immobile and Maker only knows what he would have done to you." Like Orion, Lucilla could follow that narrative; bow to it even. It fitted in with her taking the absolute minimum blame for a very close call and letting things get back to normal. With any luck, they could forget this strange thing had ever happened and resettle their focus on the pregnancy.

"Have you eaten?" Lucilla opted not to linger on anything linked to the indiscretion for too long and so, changed the subject.

"I have." That was a relief in itself but Orion continued. However, Lucilla expected perhaps a rundown of what he had consumed for breakfast; not this though. "I went to the medbay this morning, to see Doctor Craven." Even with her face still buried in her husband's greatcoat, the dark-haired darling's brow creased.

"Why-?"

"Because it was my fault." Lucilla might have thought it briefly in her anger and desperation the night previous but never in a million years did she expect Orion to think it.

"Your fault?" She repeated, lifting herself from the blackness to regard him with uncertain curiosity. "But… You said.… Ren…?" As it happens, Lucilla was not comfortable with Orion taking the blame when he had been nothing but a victim. It suited to accuse Ren and no one else.

"I upset you." He explained, straightening without her to cling onto. "You would not have fled the apartment had I not done so and so, I felt the need to rectify that."

"And… What does Doctor Craven have to do with it?" Their new and rather attractive female medic, the one in charge of Lucilla's care; a woman with whom they had plenty of contact.

"I went to her for help, to explain the situation and to inquire if she could recommend anything." Intrigued by the vagueness, Lucilla did not follow when her husband assumed a non-committal saunter in the limited floorspace of the living area. He stripped his coat as he went, placing it on its usual peg of the coat stand by the door before patting it down but not in the usual fashion to keep out the creases. Instead, Orion sought something, something he quickly found and palmed before returning to his wife.

Lucilla, still at a loss, did not bother to mask her confusion and from that, Orion took his cue.

"I have told you regularly, since you returned to me, that you will have everything you ever wanted or needed." The General stopped short of his wife with the mystery item still guarded by his gloves. With a fleeting but noticeable look of pained, if temporary defeat, Orion powered on. "Last night, I failed to keep that promise. I was present but not willing in what you required of me and the consequences could have been more than I could bare. And they would have been my consequences. So, to that end, I sought help, little dove."

Lucilla's confusion had not wavered. She knew that promise, she remembered it well but as if he'd read her frantic thoughts the night before, he mirrored them almost exactly.

"This..." He began in a steadying breath and a loosening of his grasp to unveil the vial. "Is a bacta serum." Two pairs of eyes, both different shades of blue, settled on the mutual target; the tiny glistening bottle on a background of black leather. Orion licked his lips before he picked up his train of thought.

"Used for healing as you are no doubt aware but... Apparently, it aids virility and, unofficially, boosts libido." Fascinated and flabbergasted at the implication, had it really affected him that badly? Then again, how would she have felt if she'd caught him in such a position with her sworn enemy? What lengths would she have gone to? When Lucilla's eyes heightened, she found Orion's already on her, intense and serious.

"It works at a moment's notice." Direct and to the point, he maintained the shared gaze and his wife received it loud and clear. "The moment you feel the urgency begin to stir, my darling, need only inform me and I will be at your disposal for as long as you require."

"I see…." Surprised and (she may as well admit it) riveted, Lucilla's eyes returned to the vial and the possibilities started to unravel for her. "Well…. It's nearly your lunch hour…"