#daenril

Most days, Theron loved being a parent, honest. It was not a future he would have ever envisioned himself having, but his son was the little star that his world revolved around, and he was excited to meet the daughter in Xaja’s womb, still a few months away from being born.

That being said, tonight was one of the nights when Theron found himself missing being a single, unattached bachelor without four-year-old responsibilities. “Daddy?” asked the little voice as the bedroom door slid open for the -- Theron mentally calculated -- fifth time this night.

“Go back to bed, Daenril,” Theron groaned as he rolled to face the door, trying to keep his voice low so he wouldn’t wake Xaja up. “You’ve had two bedtime stories, and you’ve had a big glass of water, and I’ve already checked under your bed for monsters, and you can go pee without Daddy needing to help you. Go to sleep.”

“But I was s’eeping,” Daenril protested with a little sniffle. “Den I waked up.”

“If you go back to bed, you’ll go back to sleep,” Theron assured the child. “Go snuggle Mister Nerfy.”

Daenril sniffled again and tightened his grip on the nerf plushy he carried everywhere. “I did, Daddy,” he whined. “But…”

Theron sighed. “But what?”

There was a pause before Daenril whimpered out “I had a bad dream,” and this time, Theron could hear the tears in the child’s voice. “It was real scary.”

The things you make me do, Theron inwardly groaned as he sat up, fully prepared to get out of his warm, comfortable bed and escort Daenril back to his own room. “I’m sorry, buddy--”

Taking the sympathy as an invitation, Daenril opened the floodgates as he scampered over to his father’s side of the bed, with the exact tone of voice that promised tears and near-hysteria. “There was a scary old man, Daddy, an’ he said he was gonna be in Mama’s head forever, an’ he was gonna hurt you an’ Mama an’ me an’ Gramma Satele an’ everyone! An’ he had a scary laugh an’ scary eyes!”

Spydad is being uncooperative (colour me surprised), so here’s the Theron/Xaja half of the ask!

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Daenril seemed to have come to the conclusion that sleeping through the night was highly overrated, and had taken to voicing his opinions aloud. Force, Xaja loved her son, she did…

… but right now, when it was barely after two in the morning and Daenril was loudly squawking his displeasure in the next room over, he was Theron’s son, not hers. She groaned into her pillow, mentally trying to summon up the willpower to crawl out of her warm bed and try to get the toddler back to sleep, or at least back to quietly lying down. 

The mattress shifted as Theron sat up with a soft groan, tossing the blankets back to land on Xaja. “I got him,” he mumbled as he swung his feet to the floor. “Go back to sleep, love.”

“Mmmph.” Too out of it to form any real words, Xaja just burrowed her face further into her pillow and closed her eyes, listening to the sound of Theron’s footsteps and the hiss of the door connecting their bedroom to the nursery. A few seconds later, she heard Daenril’s loud, high-pitched squeal of delight upon seeing his father. 

“I’m glad one of us is happy to be awake,” Theron’s voice drifted back to Xaja. She heard him sigh, and could visualize him raking a hand through his mussed-up hair. “You gotta settle down, Daenril. Your mama and I both need to sleep, even if you apparently don’t--”

“No!” Daenril’s new favourite word was accompanied by a giggle. “No!”

“Yes, sleep,” Theron argued back. “Sleep is good for little boys like you, and their parents.”

“No!” There was silence for a moment, before Daenril angelically cooed “Dada.”

Theron sighed again. “Too smart for your own good, kid. You know that?” To judge by Daenril’s giggle, he did. Having apparently given up the futile efforts of arguing with a wide-awake and, frankly, adorable toddler who knew just how to press his daddy’s buttons, he sounded resigned to being up for longer than he had wanted. “What’s it gonna take for you to go back to sleep, buddy? Playtime is not the answer.”

Daenril babbled nonsensically for a few moments. If there were any new words in his repertoire, Xaja couldn’t hear them through the door. She yawned and snuggled down under the blankets, fatigued, yet unable to fall back to sleep, for some reason.

“What about if Daddy tells you a story? One more bedtime story?” The happy babble seemed to be an affirmative answer. “Okay, one more story then. But we gotta be quiet, buddy. Mama’s still asleep. Heroes like her need sleep as much as you do.” There was a soft grunt, then the sound of footsteps; when Xaja cracked an eye open to look at the nursery door, she could just see Theron pacing back and forth in the dim glow cast by Daenril’s nightlight, holding the little boy. Even though she couldn’t see in the dim light, she was pretty sure their son was holding onto his favourite stuffed nerf plush -- a gift from Satele. “Did you know your mama’s a bona fide hero?”

Daenril made a happy little noise. “Mama.”

“Yeah, buddy. She is one. She was a Jedi hero a long time before Daddy ever met her, you know.” Theron lowly hummed in thought for a moment. “Daddy knew she was a hero when he asked her to help him with a big mission that turned into hunting down a bunch of trai-- of sneaky bad guys. Don’t tell Mama this, but Daddy had a crush on her all the way back then, even if he didn’t want to admit it to himself. Of course, Daddy didn’t think he had a shot with this super pretty Jedi hero, not when she was a Jedi, and when she was so pretty and popular that she could have had anyone she wanted. There were a few months when Daddy and Auntie Lana had to go into hiding since the other good guys thought we were with the bad guys, and I’ll admit, Daddy was pining for Mama the entire time. Auntie Lana would say Daddy was a grouch that entire time until your Mama came to help us track down the real bad guys, along with your Uncle Korin and Uncle Sorand and your granddad. By that point, Daddy had just about convinced himself that Mama only liked him as a friend.”

Despite her weariness, Xaja smiled fondly and settled in to listen to the rest of the story, idly wondering which one of her and Theron’s early adventures was tonight’s bedtime story.

“And then after Auntie Lana set Daddy up as bait, Daddy got captu-- uhhh, Daddy met Great-Great-Grandpa Revan, who was the leader of the bad guys. Grandpa Revan wasn’t the nicest guy around.” Theron made a soft hushing noise as Daenril babbled his opinions about ‘Grandpa Revan’. “Shush, buddy. Revan… wanted Daddy to stick around and join his bad guys. But Daddy didn’t want to, so he decided he was going to sneak out, find your Mama, and tell her what Revan’s plans were. Daddy stole a blaster from the bad guys, snuck out of his cell, hauled ass to the exit, came around a corner -- and there was Mama, yelling at Revan over the holo, demanding he tell her where Daddy was, lightsabers blazing and more upset than any Jedi I’d seen before. She had broken in to rescue Daddy when she had a bunch of other, more important stuff to be doing.”

At that, Xaja wanted to interject with a correction -- nothing had been more important in that moment than finding Theron and getting him back to safety. She could still remember the fear that had nagged at her from the moment she had found out he’d been captured, and then the relief she’d felt when she had seen him tear around the corner and run up to her -- beaten to within an inch of his life, covered in bruises and blood, but alive. Disregarding Revan on the holo, or her father a few metres away, she had deactivated her lightsabers just in time to catch him in a hug, under the pretense of keeping him from falling to his knees (and really, who would have believed that a five-foot-nothing woman could have kept a guy who towered a solid foot over her from falling, Jedi or not?). She still wasn’t sure if the memory of Theron clinging to her had been him returning the hug, or merely trying to keep himself upright.

“And then Revan tried to make the whole place crash down on us, and your granddad couldn’t override the systems to stop it. Fortunately, Auntie Lana managed to get into the computers from a long way off and stop the crashing before the roof could land on our heads.” Theron hummed thoughtfully for a moment as Daenril cooed. “That was one of the lousiest days of Daddy’s life, but it was also one of the best. That was the moment that Daddy realized that maybe he did have a chance with the pretty Jedi hero who’d come storming in to save him, if she liked him enough to come rescue him when there was a lot of other stuff she could be doing.” He lowly chuckled. “And considering that Daddy finally got to kiss Mama for the very first time after she saved the day again by wrecking Revan’s fleet and getting Grandma Satele and Darth Marr on board… I’d say it all worked out, don’t you think?”

Daenril gurgled something incoherent, which Theron seemed to take as agreement. “Glad you think so, buddy. I don’t think you need to hear the details about the first-kiss story though. We gonna try this whole sleeping thing again?” Xaja closed her eyes again as Theron moved out of her line of sight, feeling herself start to drift off again to the faint sounds of her husband tucking Daenril back into bed.

She finally felt the bed shift several minutes later as Theron crawled back in beside her, and rolled over to snuggle closer to him. “Shhh,” he murmured, soothingly stroking her hair. “Sorry, babe, didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Mmm.” Xaja shook her head, then smiled. “Story’s wrong,” she mumbled.

“What?”

“Your story’s wrong.” She opened her eyes again to see Theron’s bewildered look. “Rescuing you was the most important thing.”

“... Shit, you heard that?” Theron sounded sheepish; Xaja could imagine his blush. “How much of it?”

“All’ve it.” Xaja wrapped an arm and a leg around Theron, pulling herself closer to him and brushing a kiss against his shoulder. “Had a crush on you too, spyboy.”

Theron seemed stunned into silence for a moment before he finally smiled. “Still surreal that I got to marry the gorgeous Jedi war hero who liked me back and dropped everything to rescue me, for some reason.”

Xaja shook her head as she yawned. “Lotsa reasons. You’re cute, and smart, and brave, and kind, and my hero--” Another yawn interrupted her list of Theron’s admirable traits.

“And you need sleep, sweetheart.” Theron pressed a kiss into Xaja’s hair and snuggled down with her. “Go back to sleep, my lovely Jedi hero.”

“Mmmm.” Xaja let her eyes drift closed again as she revelled in Theron’s warmth beside her. “Love you.”