Work Text:
"Oh!" Syril flinched when Dedra came home. "I didn't expect you to be back so soon."
As quick as ever, Dedra hung up her coat and put down her briefcase, and he didn't manage to pack the toys spread out on the kitchen table back into the box before she saw them. He had assumed he would have more time to play with them.
"What's that you've got there?" Dedra tilted her head, looking curiously at the contents of the small box. "That's a lot."
"Uh, mother gave these to me."
Syril couldn't help but pout. It had been painful to see his childhood, his aspirations and dreams, everything that had once given him comfort and joy, carelessly stuffed into a small box like this by his mother. He had actually planned to play with everything one last time, look at it, feel it, try to organise it, and then say goodbye to it. But there was nothing in it that was of any practical use in a shared apartment and it was probably time to finally part with this stuff for good.
"Just a few old toys of mine," he said, anxiously watching Dedra as she picked up a toy trooper figure to examine it closely. "They've been in my bedroom for a good 30 years now. I suppose mother is tired of dusting them, and now that I've moved out for good, she thinks they're disposable."
"Disposable?" Dedra repeated, looking somewhat confused. "This figure looks brand new to me. I don't see any scratches or discoloration. You've really kept it in very good condition."
Syril breathed a quiet sigh of relief when he saw how carefully she handled the little trooper figure with her slender fingers.
"Yes, but I never managed to complete the entire collection. And I no longer have the original packaging, so..." He shrugged. His entire childhood. The dreams and few happy memories. "...it's all worthless."
"Don't say that. These toys obviously meant a lot to little Syril, if he took such good care of them, so they're not worthless," she said, and Syril felt a pleasant wave of warmth wash over him and the tension that had built up in his body ease as she spoke of 'Little Syril' in the third person, as if his childlike self were here.
And in a way, it was.
It had happened once, in her presence, on one of the few days when they both had time off. Something in the gentle tone of her voice and the way she had said his name that morning while stroking his hair had triggered it. And then, just like that, he had felt small, protected, and loved. Completely carefree with her by his side, his delicate little self, still wearing his jammies, had eaten cake for breakfast and watched a children's show on the Holonet. She hadn't scolded him for it, hadn't questioned it, but seemed to enjoy seeing him like that, in that state of childlike bliss. There were no responsibilities, no nagging about the way he sat, how he dressed, what he ate, no slaps in the face, just complete peace of mind.
Worthless. Thanks to Dedra, he no longer felt that way about himself. Life was worth living.
Seeing the trooper figure that had once meant so much to his little self, and still meant something, in Dedra's hands, felt right. If he trusted anyone to handle it, it was her. Although she seemed extremely confused, as if she had never held anything like this between her fingers before.
Her lips curved into the tiniest of smiles as she pulled out a stuffed animal out of the box. "And what is this supposed to be?"
"Sluggy!!", Syril exclaimed and reached for the stuffed animal, a gray slug, whose soft plush was no longer quite as fluffy as it had been more than 30 years ago, but still felt pleasant to the touch.
"Sluggy?" Dedra repeated, confused by the name, by his sudden overjoyed reaction to it, by everything.
"Yes, well, it's a Duracrete slug. I wasn't very good at coming up with names as a child."
"Why is it... fluffy? These creatures grow up to 10 meters long and are a pest. A danger. Infestations in buildings are very difficult to exterminate. By consuming Duracrete, they develop extremely hardened skin," Dedra stated facts as if she were reading directly from a textbook. "They are neither soft nor fluffy?!"
"Well, my Sluggy is very soft," Syril replied, hugging his stuffed animal.
His Sluggy. He had completely forgotten how it felt to cuddle it. He held it to his face and sniffed it, and the memories came back. His dad had bought it for him, always pretending it was a monster that would eat him and tickling him with it.
Without realizing it, Syril hugged the stuffed animal tighter and buried his face in its little fluffy tentacles, as if he could inhale and absorb the happy memories it held.
Dedra stared at him with such a loving look of confusion. He had gotten used to that expression on her face. At times, he enjoyed confusing her. If there was one thing that touched her heart, it was his willingness to show her his own softness. After a slow blink, she continued to examine the trooper figure in her hands, and then looked inside the box. "And you want to throw all this away?"
"I'm not sure if you..." Syril cleared his throat. "...if we have room for this stuff."
He still couldn't quite believe that they were now really living together.
Dedra was startled when she accidentally turned one of the figure's arms upwards while trying to place it on the table. "Oh! Did I break it??"
"No, it's all right. You can twist it back again. It has several points of articulation," Syril said reassuringly, but very amused by Dedra's confusion.
She turned the arm back down. Then up again and down again. Carefully, she took one leg between her fingers and bent it backward, and with every additional movable part of the figure she discovered, she seemed to become more and more fascinated. "It's like a doll. You played with this?"
"It was a long time ago, really a very long time ago," said Syril, still feeling a little embarrassed.
"You like dolls." She wasn't making fun of him. She simply stated it as a fact, as another note for her mental personality file on him. And as if tackling a difficult case, her voice sounded absolutely determined when she said, "Show me how you played with it."
"Uh, well, they're more for display. See, like this."
Syril searched the box for a small blaster, pressed it into the trooper's small hand and positioned it on the table, pleased that he could finally show it to someone, as he had often wished to do as a child.
"Oh, they even have weapons?" Dedra said with growing excitement.
"Yes, they come with both short and long blaster accessories! Watch, when I bend his arm like this and pose his knee like this, it looks like he's resting the heavy weapon on his leg to snipe someone in the distance. I came up with a lot of fun positions for them," he said without thinking, and immediately regretted it.
He was embarrassed to think about how much time he had spent as a child trying to find the perfect and most realistic attack and surveillance positions, and how little 'fun' that had been for the dwindling number of other children he knew back then.
"It's good that you had fun with it." Dedra stared at the figure and ran a finger over the tiny toy blaster, lost in thought. "We weren't allowed to have any toys in the kinderblock when I was little. There was no need for them anyway, we always had plenty of things to do."
Syril could sense the sadness behind the facade of practicality in her voice. And suddenly it hit him that the little box on the kitchen table contained more than Dedra must ever have had in her childhood, and that was why she had called it 'a lot.' It broke his heart, but at the same time, watching her play with the trooper's little arms again, he felt more in love with her than ever before. She actually looked almost *cute* as she played with it curiously. And gradually, a genuine smile, albeit small, appeared on her usually stern face.
All of a sudden, she aimed the tiny blaster at Syril. "Pew pew!"
That was unexpected. For both of them. From the extremely ashamed look on Dedra's face, it was clear that she was just as confused as he was about this sudden burst of playfulness, which he had never seen in her before. Her smile faded.
She quickly put the toy back in the box, her arms tense as if she had violated a law by even having dared to touch it, but her gaze remained fixed on it. "Well, we don't have to throw them away if you don't want to. If you'd rather keep them here, we can find a place for them."
"I don't know." Syril frowned slightly. "I don't play with them that often anymore. I mean, I haven't played with them in 15 years. I mean, I... uh...," he stammered, immediately feeling a little ashamed again. Sometimes, when the weight of the world became too much for him, he liked to feel little again and return to a state where fantasy seemed real, where everything was just a fun adventure with an ending he could control.
"Wouldn't they just take up space?"
It sure was a little sad to part with his beloved toys, because they had helped him in his loneliness a long time ago. But now he wasn't alone anymore.
"Mhm. We're certainly not going to spend our limited free time playing with toys." Dedra's expression was grim, as if uttering these words caused her physical discomfort. "Toys are only meant for little children."
To Syril's surprise, Dedra seemed just as ashamed as he was, her shoulders tense, her gaze still fixed on the box, her hands clenched into fists to keep herself from reaching for it again. Now they were both staring at the box, and in the ensuing silence, Syril wished for nothing more than to travel back in time one minute and see her hold the figure again. Her curiosity about it had been strangely exciting.
"We could pretend," he finally said.
Dedra blinked. "What?"
"We could pretend we're both little."
Dedra raised an eyebrow and stared at him as if he had completely lost his mind. And maybe he had. But he didn't care how silly it sounded, he just wanted to see that childlike joy on her face one more time.
Syril took the trooper figure out of the box again and held it in front of his face. His voice was higher pitched. "Hi Dedra, I'm Syril, wanna play with me?"
There it was again, that confused but loving expression on her face, and her hand, gentle and always cautious, cupped his face and tenderly stroked his chin with her thumb.
"Syril. I don't mind you playing with your toys. But I can't do this," she said, bitter.
He couldn't blame her for her reluctance. Decades of stress and the need to be constantly on alert had made her the serious and tense woman she was today. Nothing she did in her life was for fun. He wanted to change that. He wanted her to feel as safe with him as he felt with her, wanted to give her the same relief of no longer having to be a person with responsibilities, but simply someone who was there to play, cuddle, and eat sweets. He wanted so much to give her that same feeling of comfort that she had given him. He, or rather someone inside him, became more and more excited at the thought of playing with her.
"Then just hold it. Just a moment." He held out the figure with the blaster to her. "Here."
Dedra stared at it tensely for a few seconds.
"You were never allowed to have any toys, so I'm giving you mine. This one's for you. Please, hold it," he insisted. "I want you to have it."
After some initial hesitation, she finally relented and cautiously reached for it, as if it might electrocute her at any moment.
"And take Sluggy too. Feel how soft she is."
"It's a she?"
"Yes and she's yours now, too." He pressed the gray plush slug into her other hand.
And then Dedra stood there, holding the little trooper figure and the stuffed animal in her hands, unmoving and with a blank expression on her face, like a mannequin in a shop window, and was still extremely unsure what to do with them. Syril took another figure out of the box, one that looked similar to the one Dedra was holding, but had blue markings on its uniform. Just touching it, feeling its smooth surface, the small moving parts, and its weight in his hands brought back old memories.
"I always pretended to be a fleet captain. And an adventurer. And a renegade pirate from the outer rim. What was your favorite thing to pretend to be?"
"I... I don't know. I can't remember."
"Oh, and my favorite game was to pretend I was a spy and that I had to keep everything secret from my mother so she wouldn't find out any sensitive information. Well, actually, that's still the case. As you know, respecting privacy is not her thing." Syril's voice became increasingly cheerful, and he could no longer hold back his little self. "Come on, let's play! We're both warriors of the Imperial navy now! We're going on a dangerous mission. We have to be alert at all times, so have your blaster ready."
The trooper's boots made a clack-clack-clack-clack sound as Syril moved it across the table. He looked at Dedra with a small grin, eagerly anticipating that she would follow his example and be playful again, even if only for a moment, just for a second, just for another sweet little "pew pew" from her mouth.
Dedra looked back and forth between the things in her hands. "I don't know what to do with this, Syril."
"Just imagine you're little again."
"I can't..." Dedra tilted her head, lost in thought, her eyes wandering, looking at nothing but searching her mind for memories, and clutching the toys that were now hers.
But Syril could sense that her body was stiffening, could feel the restlessness in her rigid, slender frame that seemed to make the room vibrate.
Standing frozen in place, she stammered, "I... I can't. I can't..."
Syril had no idea what was going on. He had expected anything from her, an annoyed sigh, a snide remark, even an outburst of anger - but not what he was now seeing. And what he heard next deeply disturbed him.
"I'm scared." Her voice. It sounded so strangely weak and small. It wasn't even a whisper, just a breath.
"Why? What's wrong?" Syril asked, alarmed by her strange reaction.
"I'm scared. I'm scared. I'm scared," was all Dedra managed to say, clutching the plush slug to her chest as if she wanted to shove it into her ribcage.
"What are you scared of?"
Never before had he seen such vulnerability in those blue eyes of hers, and whatever had caused it, he was afraid to find out. Dedra's face was distorted with fear as she forced herself to speak.
"Th-That... they... are gonna take everything away from me again." She sounded like a frightened little girl holding her breath, trying not to be noticed. "Don't take them... don't take them away..."
"What's going on?" Things were not going at all as Syril had imagined. "I won't take the toys away from you. No one will take anything away from you, Dedra."
Tears welled up in Dedra's eyes. "I'm not allowed to play. I'm not allowed to. They're gonna take them away from me. I can't... I can't hide. They'll find me."
Syril's heart skipped a beat. He was an idiot, such an idiot. Whatever she had seen and done before she was sent to the imperial kinderblock, even if she claimed not to remember, it must have been terrible. What had been done to her afterwards had robbed her of the joy of playing. There was a reason why her subconscious had buried all this deep inside her, locked it away and sealed it off like toxic waste. What memories and old survival instincts were now tormenting her in this state, he didn't know, but this was all his fault.
"You have Sluggy now. She's yours, remember?" he tried to reassure her, and his soothing, familiar voice seemed to help her, but only a little. "She's a duracrete slug. She'll protect you. Feel her... feel how soft she is?"
"Sluggy." Dedra's little voice was barely more than a whisper. She held the stuffed slug toy to her face to feel its softness. "Protects me?"
"Yes... yes, she will," Syril said quietly. "She's a giant monster slug and she eats through walls. She's a pest. No one can stop her. She gobbles up all the people who want to hurt us and she's very kind to us, okay? Nobody is taking anything away from you. Nobody is going to hurt you. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do."
Fighting the tension in her limbs, she began to move slowly, and with a vacant stare, she approached him, following only the voice that made her feel safe. Syril wasn't sure whether he should put his arm around her to comfort her, or whether she even wanted to be touched in her current state, so he just awkwardly held out his trooper toy to her.
"Follow me, I'm Captain Syril and I know a safe location."
Something in Dedra's expression changed.
"Mhmhhh," she nodded, whimpering with her sad, weak voice. Holding her own trooper with the small blaster, she clenched her fist around it as if she could really shoot someone with it.
"This is our home base," Syril said, sitting down on the bed and lifting the blanket. "And this is the deflector shield. Come here, we can hide under it."
Trembling and clutching her toys, Dedra sat down next to him and pulled her knees up to hide behind them. Her shoulder touched his, and Syril saw a tiny wet spot on the blanket under which she had snuggled up with him. Without making a sound, she had started to cry, quietly, so that no one would notice. She rested her forehead against his, and when he heard her softly sniffling beside him, Syril felt like crying too.
"No one will take anything away from you anymore. No one can see us here. We are completely safe here. You're safe."
"Safe?" she whimpered.
"Yeah. You and me. And Sluggy."
The sound of heavy sighs and quiet sniffles echoed through the bedroom for a while as Syril and Dedra awkwardly held hands, with Sluggy between them. As she petted the ugly slug plushie on her lap with jerky strokes, Dedra gave him the most pitiful, haunting look.
"She's hurt..." she said with a trembling voice. Her grip on the stuffed animal had been so tight that a seam had come apart.
Little Syril's heart broke at the sight of his beloved soft toy. His Sluggy was hurt. It felt real. So real. A pain so childish, yet so deep. But something else, something new and more intense, hurt even more. His Dedra was crying.
"We'll take care of her," he whispered softly and began to look for his sewing kit. "And as you know, Duracrete slugs are hard to eradicate. They are a pest, a danger, like you said. Nothing can stop them."
A few stitches later, the stuffed animal was repaired.
"There, all better. Hey... wait... Oh no, Sluggy is stronger than she looks! I can't control her!" he said, pretending to fight the slug and then holding it out to her. "Oh, she's very calm with you. She likes you."
Holding the slug to her face, he made a soft kissing sound as he gently pressed it against her cheek. Dedra embraced the slug in return.
"And you know what? There are even more toys. Wanna see what else little Syril liked to play with?"
"Mhm..." A soft nod.
"Keep an eye on Sluggy. Or else she'll eat her way through all the walls."
Syril got up, fetched the box from the kitchen, and one by one, placed the old toys on the bed.
"If you want, you can play with all of these. Here are more trooper figures. And this is my Zillo beast. It can roar," he said, squeezing the rubber creature, causing Dedra to wince at the weird squeak it made. "I also have a lot of speeder cars, and... oh, and this is my spy equipment!"
Syril laid out an entire espionage kit in front of her, consisting of several small, very cheaply produced gadgets.
Dedra pointed to a pair of tiny binoculars. "What's that?"
"Top Secret Agent Spy Glasses. Look, they have a button for the super zoom function, one for facial analysis, one for an invisibility shield, and one for sending secret hyperspace messages."
Dedra squinted her eyes in disbelief.
"Do they really work?" she asked in her weak, little voice. And then, out of nowhere, that other tone suddenly crept into her voice, the one she always had when she couldn't help but analyze something and state the facts. "Because they're far too small to have both an invisibility shield generator and a hyperspace transmitter."
"Right... the zoom function works. Would you like to try them on?"
Fiddling nervously with her fingers, she finally said, after gathering all her courage, "Yes."
"When I was bored as a child, I used to watch people with them and memorize their daily routines. I always imagined I was a secret agent on a solo mission. Well, because I didn't have anyone to play with," Syril said meekly as he helped Dedra put them on. "Do you like them?"
"Mhmm," she hummed softly, eyeing him up and down through the spy glasses, her view of him probably distorted by the green-tinted lenses with fake analysis data and fading "Secret message incoming!" overlays.
She looked around the room, up at the ceiling, out the windows, and then back at the toy box, and spotted something else that piqued her curiosity. She put the spy glasses aside and, at last, dared to reach for a toy herself.
"That's... an imperial shuttle?" She moved its little wings up and down, into flight and landing positions, obviously aware of how it functioned.
Syril couldn't help but smile at how Dedra gradually allowed herself to be relaxed and playful again around him.
"Yeah, it comes with matching minifigures that you can put in the cockpit," he said, handing her one of the little figures. "And it can shoot lasers."
Dedra held the figure awkwardly between her fingers, placing it in the cockpit as if playing with it were dangerous, her arms stiff and her expression tense, but her curiosity slowly overcame her fear. "How do you shoot the lasers?"
"Um, well, yeah... about that..." Syril was a little embarrassed. "Can I tell you a secret?"
Dedra gasped. "Yes!"
Oh, little Dedra liked secrets.
He leaned over to her and whispered, "I lost all the little green laser pieces for the shuttle... I think they're still somewhere under mother's dressing table. You're the only one who knows that now. She'd explode if she found out."
And there it was. The tiny twitch at the corners of her mouth. Not a smile, but almost.
Dedra watched attentively as he showed her all his old toys, everything that had once made little Syril feel happy and safe. And he told her more secrets, embarrassing things he had done, things he still enjoyed doing even as an adult, and things he planned to continue doing in the future. Even though it was somewhat humiliating for him to admit everything, it seemed to calm her down, and the familiar, slightly loving expression of confusion gradually returned to her face. It took a few minutes, during which Dedra touched all the toys and even pushed a speeder car back and forth a little on the bed, but finally she relaxed, closed her eyes, and let out a long, pitiful sigh.
When she opened her eyes again, she seemed puzzled. She looked first at the toy in her hand, then at Syril. The silence that followed was crushing. What he had just witnessed, her regression to her little self, had been worrying for him, but for her... for her it must have been absolutely confusing and humiliating.
"What's wrong with me?" It was still only a whisper, but from the serious tone in Dedra's voice and the shadow of decades of stress that lingered in it, Syril could tell that it was no longer the frightened little girl speaking to him, but the deeply distressed woman.
He frowned and looked around the room, then looked at her, then at his hands, then at the toys, to avoid having to answer, to avoid having to ask himself the same question. What was wrong with him, that he liked to regress into this state? He was having a hard time understanding it himself. The world, everything, sometimes felt too big around him, too noisy. With her, he felt safe. So how could he explain it to her and make her feel safe with him?
"You... were scared. Little Dedra was scared," he said in the same loving voice she always used with him, brushing a single strand of blonde hair from her face, trying to be as gentle as possible with every touch. "But you're at home. And I'm here. There's nothing wrong with you. And whoever made you feel like you weren't allowed to have fun..."
Anger rose up in him, but he suppressed it, not wanting to overwhelm her more than he already had.
"...was wrong. It's okay. I think we... we're both okay," he said, patting her hand awkwardly.
Something was definitely not okay with either of them. But he couldn't quite put into words why. Both of their childhoods had, in their own way, not been particularly pleasant. And then he had an idea.
"What we need now are snacks. Shall we have a little something to eat?" he asked, then added, with a suggestive wiggle of his eyebrows, "In bed?"
Dedra's eyes widened, filled with a glimmer of mischievous excitement. For her, eating in bed was the most dirty thing they could ever do in the bedroom. She tilted her head, nodded slowly, then shook it again, changing her mind, torn between self-imposed rules and the desire to enjoy herself - a strange mixture of both movements that made her look like she was about to pass out. "Mhmmhh."
Yup, she definitely needed a snack.
Syril went into the kitchen, grabbed a pack of blue mini cupcakes and little chocolate nutribars, then plopped back down on the bed. Without saying a word, they snuggled up close together, butt to butt, and ate, occasionally letting out happy little noises of delight as they munched on their snacks, not unlike the squeaking of Syril's rubber Zillo beast. Dedra's head gradually sank onto his shoulder. Syril noticed that she was staring at him with tired, unblinking eyes. Her gaze followed his hand to his mouth and watched him eat. Then suddenly she leaned forward and nibbled blue crumbs from the corners of his mouth. It wasn't really kiss, but her lips pressed against his for a long, beautiful moment. Then she jerked away, blushing as if she had done something very naughty. But she smiled and began to fidget with Sluggy's little mouth tentacles between her fingers.
"I think we could use a nap, hm?" Syril asked.
Dedra didn't even nod, but just looked at him with a slow blink. Syril turned out the lights, let himself fall flat onto the bed, and, a little more hesitantly, Dedra did the same. And there they lay, surrounded by softness, snacks, and toys. It was quiet. Warm. And nice.
Syril couldn't see anything in the darkness, but he could feel Dedra bury her face in the stuffed animal to sniff it.
"Sluggy smells like you," she said softly.
Syril pulled the blanket over her. "Well, little Syril did cuddle with her a lot. Maybe he also drooled a bit on her in his sleep."
He hoped she was smiling. As much as he would have loved to listen to her giggle, he wasn't going to use Sluggy to tickle her. Yet. Instead, he hugged her, his Dedra, as if she herself were a giant stuffed animal, thanks to whom little Syril was no longer afraid of the big, noisy world, and gave her a little kiss on the neck. "Shall we take the day off tomorrow?"
"I can't," she sighed. "I have this report on three sectors that I still have to finish-"
"What if we just pretend? We could pretend you don't have to work tomorrow. We could pretend I canceled everything just to spend the whole day with you. If you could have anything you wanted, what would it be?"
She let out another heavy sigh.
But she thought about it.
And whatever she was going to say next, no matter how small a dream, how childish a thing, how ridiculous an activity that brought joy to little or big Dedra, Syril swore to himself, he vowed on his life, he would make sure it came true.
He waited a few minutes for a response. But when he heard her quiet, steady breathing beside him, he realized that she had fallen asleep and that she already had everything she ever wanted. She was safe and snug, her belly full of snacks, surrounded by toys, tucked in warmly, next to someone who loved her.