Work Text:
Kuvira tapped her fingers on the conference table, pressing a dent into its metal surface and filling the dent between taps. Fidgeting wasn’t an ideal use of her bending- Kuvira made a point to avoid it in public places- but this had been a long morning. Anything to ease her nerves.
It felt strange, foreign really, to listen to her officer’s morning brief without Baatar at her side. During the first months of their campaign, he’d asked her more than a few times if he could skip the morning meetings and depart for work. She hadn’t allowed him of course. How could the Second in Command not be present for conversations that steered the empire?
But after the first dozen meetings, Baatar’s protests began to make sense. The majority of their conversation was strategic or political, tactics for persuading the latest stubborn governor, opinions on battle formations. Virtually none of it applied to him, and truly, his time may have been better spent in the lab. The inefficiency of it gnawed at Kuvira, but she couldn’t bring herself to let him go.
The team needs him for morale, she told herself; they need to see their highest ranked soldier in the boardroom. Baatar was her partner, not a lab rat, and spirits be damned she was going to involve him. But she never expected Baatar to involve himself.
After they took Garsai, Baatar started to speak in meetings. What began as small agreements and acknowledgments- a yes here, a nod there- slowly evolved into sophisticated counsel. Of course, these contributions were rare, but when he spoke, it carried weight. The rest of the meeting Baatar would sit silent, usually with one leg draped over the other, leaning back in his chair as he cleaned his glasses. Listening.
Kuvira could picture him now, wiping those frames with his cleaning cloth, a small green square embroidered with the Earth Empire insignia. She’d had it made for his birthday after Baatar’s old cloth was scorched in a wiring accident- and the thing never left his person. Personally, Kuvira never understood why he cleaned his glasses so often. They were never dirty. But that was Baatar- always searching for something to improve, to refine. It’s what made him so gifted at his work and she loved him for it.
“Am I correct?”
At her commander’s voice, Kuvira snapped her head from Baatar’s empty seat to the rest of the table. It dawned on her, with certain dread, that she’d been staring at his chair for the last fifteen minutes and missed the entirety of the brief. Her tapping fingers had been absent too, neglecting to bend the table back into shape. She’d tapped a dent four inches deep. Spirits .
This wasn’t her. Kuvira never missed details. And she especially never missed them to daydream about a man cleaning glasses.
The Great Uniter made her way down the long, narrow passageway to the back of the maglev, led by Zhu Li. She’d interrupted a lengthy strategic session (made lengthier by Varrick’s elaborate presentations) to report an issue in the lab. For once, Kuvira was grateful for the interruption.
She’d been off her game all morning. Swiveling her attention from meetings to training sessions and back again was normally second nature, but today her mind was a step behind and there was nothing she could do about it.
Baatar woke her last night tossing and turning with a fever. Well, he hadn’t meant to, but Baatar was never good at hiding his pain. They’d call for med, who gave him a once-over, confirmed the fever and prescribed bedrest. Bedrest . Kuvira could barely comprehend the word.
She’d never seen him truly sick in their years together. Baatar was a lot of things- sickly wasn’t one of them. Partially due to his own fastidiousness, the man was in excellent health, and as much as she hated to admit, he knew more about pacing himself than she did. Surely he’d be better by morning. He was always better by morning. But when Baatar didn’t stir at 6am- and felt like hot coals to the touch- Kuvira had been forced to leave him in bed.
It was embarrassing how much it irked her.
“Our last batch of mecha suits have a critical flaw in their inverters. We’ve sent a complaint to the manufacturer, but the replacement shipment could take weeks.”
The two rounded a corner to a large double door. As they pressed inside, Zhu Li began to explain.
“If we wait, the mecha suits may not be operational for our next encounter.” The doors opened on the maglev lab, bustling and fully operational in the midday light. The two of them stood on a platform overlooking the room. As the she spoke, Kuvira watched engineers examine a mecha suit on the ground floor, its insides gutted and scattered. “There’s a competing manufacturer in Omashu that offered us an alternative, but to reach them we’ll have to make a detour into unincorporated territory. Which may involve-”
“Bandits, conflict. Yes, I’m aware,” Kuvira responded with a nod. Her fingers on one hand began to tap at her thigh, but she caught herself and crossed her arms. “I assume Varrick has no preference here?”
“No official preference.” The women locked eyes- and Zhu Li’s stare made it obvious that Varrick absolutely had a preference. Kuvira was sure he’d made it clear on multiple occasions. Of course he’d avoid a skirmish at any cost, but the preference of her eccentric engineer was irrelevant.
She was grateful Zhu Li raised the question while Varrick was occupied- and she half suspected that arrangement was intentional.
“We detour to Omashu tomorrow. It’s worth our resources. If we run into obstacles on the road, so be it. Couldn’t hurt to give our men and women some experience.”
Zhu Li nodded approvingly. “Yes commander.”
“Kuvira.”
“Yes Kuvira,” Zhu Li said with a bow and what Kuvira might have recognized, if she knew her better, as a smile.
She watched as the assistant descended the stairs to the lab and faded into a busy crowd of engineers and scientists. Within moments Kuvira lost sight of her tidy bun. It was astonishing how well Zhu Li could disappear. She’d clearly had practice at it, for better or worse.
Baatar on the other hand- he was easy to find. He and Kuvira never went on break at the same times, not during the week anyway, but she’d occasionally visit him at the lab. It felt strange not to see him in the sea of white coats. Kuvira could always pick her fiance from the crowd, not from his appearance- the army’s uniform haircuts made that impossible- but from habits. Baatar had a strange way of making figure eights as he paced. Whenever the engineer had a particularly difficult problem to solve, which was most days, Baatar would take a long lap of the lab, crossing the midsection and looping around again. He’d never stay still unless absolutely necessary, and she noticed the pacing doubled as a route to check on his assistants. It was oddly efficient, the way his habitual foot traffic took him everywhere he needed to be.
Usually she’d sneak up on him- which surprised absolutely no one except for Baatar. Of course the workers would notice the Great Uniter in their midst- and they were used to her visits. But Baatar was too deep in thought to see it coming.
Except for the day he did. She’d been standing on the entry platform, just as she was now, looking for her figure eight pacer. He’d called up at her.
“Didn’t expect to see you here.” Directly below, Baatar leaned against bottom of stairs with a smirk that could stop an army. Or one uniter anyway. He was holding a moon peach- an old favorite of his from Zaofu- and took a bite.
“I-” she swallowed her words as he swallowed the fruit. It was all too much at 9 in the morning, the lean, the smirk, the ridiculous nonchalance. This wasn’t a Baatar she saw often and she was never prepared when she did. Maybe his mood was from a research breakthrough this morning. Maybe it was from their night before. Whatever it was, it was a total ambush.
At the time she’d rolled her eyes, pivoted and left. A knee-jerk reaction.
Baatar shrugged it off as he usually did when his attempts to please crash-landed. But now she desperately wished she’d said something, played along with him. Spirits knew he deserved to know how many times she’d replayed that scene in her head.
The sun was setting as Kuvira gathered the mess of paperwork that littered her desk. Normally she prided herself on keeping her records neat and organized. It wasn’t her job per se- there were assistants for that- but Kuvira never felt comfortable with the idea of subordinates doing unnecessary work. Now delegating was one thing; that was necessary. She knew the dangers of trying to be in more than one place at once. But asking a recruit to do a menial, personal task, one she could easily do herself…
Kuvira was sure the Earth Queen had someone to wipe her ass. Besides, her paperwork was a matter of utmost privacy.
It was well past supper on the maglev. Kuvira used her evening hours to pour over maps and contracts. But after parsing through the third stack of papers her vision begun to blur and she decided to give it a rest. Her office was quieter than usual anyway. Too quiet.
No one was allowed in her office without an invitation. Except for Baatar who, granted, had an invitation in the sense that he was always invited. When she had no appointments in the evening, he would enter her office without so much as a knock- why was he so terrible at knocking- and settle himself in an office chair on the other side of the desk. He did his work. She did hers. Respecting hours on the clock was critical in their relationship- Kuvira had always stressed the importance of keeping them.
But every once in a while she’d tolerate his chair slowly rolling to her side of the desk. Tolerating that inevitably meant tolerating a hand on her arm, a foot in her lap. And when tolerating that lead to other things, she’d send him rolling - and laughing- to the other side of the room.
That chair was made of metal for a reason.
Now the room felt empty without him. And then it dawned on her.
For someone who thought about glasses and chairs and moon peaches all day, she hadn’t checked on him once. How hadn’t she checked on him? Kuvira cursed under her breath and called the med office, tapping her desk rapidly as she waited. Finally a voice crackled over the line.
“Empire Med Office, how can I-”
“Baatar!” Kuvira barked into the comm, completely unaware of how intense she sounded.
“What?”
“Baa. Tar. How is Baatar?”
She heard a small scuffle on the other end of the line. An older voice picked up the call.
“Apologies, Great Uniter, new recruit. Baatar is resting in your room. We recommend he stays in bed for now, but his temperature dropped a few-”
“Thank you.” She hung up, grabbed her papers, and made a line for the door.
Kuvira had waited long enough. She made her way down the long corridors to the west end of the maglev, passing through a spacious parlor to an unassuming metal door. Its only notable feature was a small Earth Empire crest imprinted just about the handle. The crest housed a lock only Baatar had the key to- and only she knew the pattern to bend. A few swift swipes of her fingers and the insignia parted. Kuvira pulled open the door and shed her uniform in the entry hall, eager to free herself from its weight. She felt heavy enough today.
Her feet found their way to their room and Baatar was right where she left him.
“Finally!” She let out a small sigh and leaned on the door, tugging off her boots with unusual carelessness. Baatar roused at her voice and propped himself up with one hand, fishing for glasses with the other.
His fiance was a blur in the doorway, but her blur of deep black hair and white tank was the best blur there was. In seconds Kuvira was inches from him, sitting at the side of the bed and feeling his forehead. The blur sharpened into the face he’d missed all day.
“Yes, finally. Appropriate sentiment.” He smiled and gestured for her to lay with him, still fishing for his glasses.
“You’ve cooled down. Good.” She removed her hand and assessed him. “Are you okay?”
She bent his glasses from a tumble of clothes on the floor and dropped them in his hands. If her face wasn’t a sign of concern, that was. Normally Kuvira would have floated the frames around to tease him, make a game of it. Which Baatar loved of course, but there was no letting her know that. So most days he kept his glasses in the same place. Most days. There may have been times he misplaced them on purpose.
“You seem...better,” she said cautiously, face still knotted with concern. Her hair was free of its braid now and it flowed over her back in a messy heap, a few strands escaping to brush his face. He really didn’t mind.
“Kuvira, I had a fever; I’m not terminally ill.” His droll tone did little to curb the wave of warmth and excitement building in his chest.
As she opened her mouth to respond, Baatar made a grab for her waist and tugged her to the bed beside him. They wrestled for a moment in a messy heap, him laughing, Kuvira trying- and failing- to hold back her laughter, until she shot straight up with a jolt.
“Baatar! You’re supposed to be on bedrest.”
“This looks like a bed.” He gave his glasses a quick wipe on his shirt and put them on. “I can confirm this is a bed.”
“Bed rest .”
Baatar rolled his eyes. “Kuvira, this is the most rested I’ve felt all day.”
And then he smiled- and it was the kind of genuine, devastating smile that made her heart race and mind melt. Or heart melt and mind race. Or both. Probably both. Kuvira let her shoulders relax - had they really been that tense - and moved the covers to crawl beside him. She laid her head on his chest to check his heartrate- a lie she told herself- and let the rhythm of his heart slow her own.