((Thank you so much for all the reviews and comments, they've been so encouraging!))
Orion was gone when Lucilla awoke and true to Keir's word, he told her everything.
"Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey!" The smuggler was on his feet in just enough time to restrain his daughter scrambling from her bed; calling over the desperate sob when she realized what had transpired. Naturally, she made a break for the incubator. "Stiches, Lucy! Stitches!"
"No! Let me-!"
"Angel, listen to me. Listen to me, Lucy." Wrestling her back into bed and holding her there (as gently as possible, of course) while her panic threatened to boil over into hysterics, Keir had to be the sensible one while Lucilla was clouded by one thing and one thing only. "I need you to calm down a sec, love. You're still very-"
"Papa, I need my baby!"
"I know. I know you do." Keir soothed with gruff tenderness, oozing with patience. Lucilla stared past her father with a trembling lip to where she needed to be; one betrayal was bad enough without being kept from her child too. "But hear me out, okay? You're just outta an anaesthetic, love. You've got stiches from your caesarean. Your husband's a piece of bantha shit." Lucilla did not appreciate the reminder and the danger of her crumbling again surfaced. "So here's what I'm gonna do, okay?" Compromise time. "You stay here-"
"No!"
"You stay here… and I'll get the chair." Keir pushed on with his bargaining and Lucilla quietened. "I'll put it over right next to the hole in the incubator, a'right? Then I'll come back and I'll help you over to sit with her, nice'n'slow. Yeah? Sound fair?" Conceding, the blue-eyed beauty knew that her father (unlike someone else that she was trying not to think about) had the best intentions at heart and therefore, the best for her and her baby so cooperation made sense; it would ensure she got what she wanted.
Keir did as he promised. He moved the unoccupied chair without toil or trouble then returned to where Lucilla could hardly sit still. In the short journey between the bed and the incubator, he lost count of how many times he had to stop and remind her to calm herself; overexertion would see her fall and therefore, hinder her recovery. Eventually, after what seemed like an eternity, Lucilla was finally reunited with her baby.
"It's hard, I know." Keir pacified softly, gathering his daughter's upper half against his side, standing to her left as she came undone all over again. Frustrated that all she could touch of her child was her frail hand, Lucilla had to put that exasperation somewhere and howling into her father's trench coat was as good an outlet as any. "There's nothin' I can say to make this easier, Luce." The supportive squeeze to her shoulder did nothing to alleviate the utter devastation rooted in the pit of her stomach. "But I'm here. And whatever either of you need, I'll do my best to make sure you have it."
From the doorway came an edgy clearing of a throat and Keir reacted more sharply than Lucilla did. She straightened (no less upset) as her father side-stepped flawlessly to block her from view; the swipe of his trench coat briefly revealing a loaded blaster was no accident. Intimidating in both physicality and demeanour, Keir glowered at the abnormally large bunch of flowers trembling in the threshold; cue Lucilla's curious lean forward.
"It's alright, papa." She assured, directing a miserable, lasting look through the hole. "It's only Mitaka."
"What's a Mitaka?" As if in answer to the somewhat insensitive question, the face of her loyal caretaker appeared from among the muddle of white Nova lilies (a rare and no doubt expensive mutation); he, too, looked pained.
"From the General, Miss Lucilla." He offered placidly, looking from the distressed female to her sleeping area, probably for somewhere to put the oversized bunch. "He asked me to-"
"He sends me flowers but what does he send his ill daughter?!"She shot, suddenly accusatory at the innocent party that stunned even Keir and rattled Mitaka further. Mouth opening and closing like a dying fish and at a loss for a placation, the Lieutenant was not in the clear yet.
"I… Noth- I don't know, Miss Lucilla..."
"And if he was any sort of a man, he would have brought them here himself! Make sure he knows that, Mitaka, won't you?!"
"Yes, Miss Lucilla! Of course… Uhh…." Again, at a loss, he cast his flustered gaze to the vicinity of the bedside locker and the wall-mounted shelf; his arms were starting to ache. "Where shall I put them?"
"Take them away, Mitaka, I don't want them." Understanding but surprised all the same, the Lieutenant shifted the weighty vase in his arms; what the hell was he going to do with hundreds of credits worth of Nova lilies? "This is nothing to do with you, I shouldn't snap, I'm sorry…." Fearing another break down, Keir swept back to his little one's side but she held firm and readjusted her apologetic sight to the man in the doorway. "Send them to your fiancé, they're too beautiful to waste. If the General asks, I sent them. If Yvette asks, you sent them. I just can't look at them."
Mitaka left with his thanks and to com him should she need anything; despite paternal protests, she requested a plate of food for her father.
"Boy's obsessed with you." Keir observed with a snort, arms folded in a bid to smother the sound of his stomach growling; Lucilla was not fooled.
"That's nothing." She replied, deadpan and hypnotized by the tiny chest rising and falling in the warm safety of the incubator; a very welcome sight for the melancholic mother. "You should see the other one. He'll be around in due course, sooner or later. He won't be able to keep to himself."
"The other one." The scruffy male repeated with the slightest note of inquiry, his eyes flickering every now and then to the doorway in anticipation of Mitaka's return. Or rather, the arrival of a meal. "Who's the other one?"
"Kylo Ren."