"Why didn't you tell me, Maite?" Maite glanced away from the lion of her dreams. Styxx was several leaps away, talking to a young hare. He'd explained that he was protecting the orphaned kit and it had made her heart melt. No, Styxx hadn't changed at all, for all he tried to hide it from the rest of the world - of that she was certain - his heart was still as strong and compassionate as she'd always known it to be. Oded had spoken to her, his voice gruff, but whisper-soft as he sat at her side and frowned down at her. She looked away, ashamed but she regretted none of her decisions.
"I didn't want you or Papa keeping me from seeing him," she replied with a small shake of her head.
"He's a Dal'ek."
"I didn't know that."
"What did you think he was, Maite? A rogue? A Dal'ek slave? Do you think any of those would have been safer? What were you thinking?" There was a growl in Oded's tone, one Maite couldn't ignore. She didn't like her decisions being questioned, and she sure as hell didn't like them being questioned about Styxx. Her fur bristled as she took in a deep breath, trying to calm her nerves.
"He was hurt, so very hurt and I thought it was a Time Lord's responsibility to help others. Look how wrong I was," she huffed and shook her head. Kumi had been right to cut the warring prides off from the rest of the world. Let them fight one another and stop dragging innocents into it. "And I wanted a friend. Not my brother, not the other cubs who I saw only for lessons, I wanted someone I could be easy with. Someone who'd just sit with me if that's what we wanted. Don't you understand?"
Yes, Oded understood, and that was what terrified him. What she described was exactly how he had felt with Lili. He hadn't needed to do anything, to say anything with her, he hadn't needed her to say or do anything. He'd just been happy to be at her side. Maite had wanted love, and from the look of things she'd found it in the most unlikely of places, at the most unlikely of times. He would have wondered how this could be, but he needn't have bothered. This was Maite. He had seen her charm snakes into puddles of affection. She was soft, much too kind for her own good, and tenacious when she set her mind to something. It shouldn't have surprised him that she'd permanently worm her way into the heart of even a Dal'ek. He sighed and looked down to the ground for a moment. When he raised his gaze, the young warrior was comforting a hare kit, gently stroking it and speaking. That boy was no Dal'ek, Oded no longer had a doubt of that. It was amazing to see a lion who had been under the paw of them and had managed to come out mostly intact, but there was the proof before his eyes.
It just hurt him that Maite had thought it was better to meet with the boy in secret, rather than telling her family about him, rather than telling him.
"That was where you snuck off to on your free time, wasn't it?"
"Yes and no. I always went to the same spot. He was just there one day and I asked him to come back. He came to see me." Maite smiled a little as her attention returned to Styxx. So much of him hadn't made sense to her then, but it did now. His hesitancy and confusion, the small smiles he'd almost been reluctant to give her, why he had flinched whenever she had reached out. That he had cared enough about her to keep coming back, the way he had treated her today, she really did love him all the more. He was right though, they were grown and not the same as they had been in their youth. He was harder, quieter, more easily provoked than she had remembered. And she was more jaded, a little more tough, and didn't laugh like she used to. In truth she was often so very sad. Most of the time she hid it from her guardian, but it hadn't always been easy. She wondered if having Styxx back in her life would take that sadness away, or at least some of it.
"Well?"
"I want to stay with him. We've been apart for so long, I... Uncle, I don't want to lose him again."
Oded's heart squeezed tightly in his chest as she said those words, his eyes closing as they sunk in. Maite wasn't his daughter, but he'd known her all her life. He was the closest thing she'd had to a father in a very long time. The thought of another male taking her away from him... Gods, if he ever had cubs of his own he hoped they were all sons. He wasn't sure he could do this again.
"I won't stop you." His eyes opened to watch her head whip around, blinking at him. He wasn't sure if she was surprised that he'd acquiesced or if there had been a chance that he wouldn't.
"Uncle?"
"I won't, but I'm not going to leave you, either," he explained and placed a paw on the side of her head, folding her ear down beneath his heavy paw. "You two will be stuck with me. At least until I decide that he's worthy of you."
Maite smiled and he could see tears start to form in her eyes, a short laugh in the back of her throat when she said, "Which will probably be never."
"Aren't you always telling me not to lose hope?"
"Yes, but that doesn't mean I can't be realistic too," she replied and wrapped her paws around him in a hug. "I wouldn't want you to go away forever, either, Uncle. I'm not sure what I'd do if I never got to see you again."
Oded gave her a squeeze back and looked over her shoulder, finding the boy's heated gaze on them.
"I think your Dal'ek's a perfect example of how we can always find one another. Now, go on before his stare burns me any more than it already is."
He touched his nose to her forehead in a fatherly gesture and nudged her away, towards where the scarred young warrior waited to introduce the lioness to the kit. Oded could only watch and pray that this male would make his little girl happy, that she'd never be hurt.
Otherwise he'd have some bones to break.
(WC: 1,121)