"I've never had a highborn"
Disgust and anger bloom within Paul as he emerges from the drug haze, not yet fully comprehending their situation, or how they had arrived at it.
"Don't you dare touch my Mother", Paul starts, before his skull is rattled by the closest Harkonnen thug.
Paul sees the reflection of his own smirk in his Mother's gaze. Despite the gag they have on her, she is arrestingly lovely -- even in the meager predawn light trickling through the Ornithopter windsheild. Her long, gorgeous hair frames her almost overly elegant face in strands as she stares him down, willing him to rise up, to meet their circumstance.
The whole room is tinted with a blue haze, yet her eyes still pierce and bore into him. Even bound, even drugged, even in sleeping robes, it is as if she is incapable of not appearing as an angel to him. A magnet for attraction, to him, to the bald brutes guarding them, and to every other man, or woman, in whatever room she happened to be in.
His mind flits back to his visions of the path they may be on, that they may still arrive at, where he would see blue in her gaze regardless of the light surrounding them. He forces himself back to the present, and what his vision may be filled with in their last moments alive if he fails. Three hulking, blindingly pale masses of fat and muscle, stripped of their stillsuits, bearing down on her perfect form. He doesn't have the time to imagine how perfect, yet he is tempted.
Maybe Rabban had sent these dumb, expendable troops on purpose, but it was irrelevant to him in the moment. Failing to gag him as well would be their fatal flaw. He sees the next few moments will be a blur of hand signals and knife flashes. His first attempt at the voice earns Jessica a heavy punch to the gut, the trooper choosing to punish her for her son's action. They both wince at it but stay focused, their minds on parallel tracks about the significance of the idiot trooper's choice. He will pay.
Jessica and Paul both slow their breathing, her arms struggling against her restraints, she guides him from across the cabin. First his voice, then hers, as smoothly as if it was practiced, choreographed, they are free of their bindings and the three Harkonnen are face down on the floor of the ship, their necks slashed open and draining, emptying them of their disgusting, chemical filled blood.
Paul resheathes and gathers the enemy knives, looking for anything else of potential use while Jessica attempts to override the autopilot of the Ornithopter. Grunts of harsh Harkonnen speech burst from the radio, and she abandons the idea as the craft sets them gently down on a sandy ridge.
Paul shoulders an unexpected Fremkit he found under a seat and hands his mother one of the knives. They both step out onto the rocky sand, and turn to witness the capital city of Arrakeen on fire in the distance. The unforgiving sand and spice filled wind howls, muddying the noises of exposions and war, the dimming of the light of House Atreides washing over them.
She bends to strap the knife to her thigh, under the robe. He sneaks a glance as he becomes aware of the flash of his mother's flesh, breifly exposed to the desert air. He has never been able to tell if she notices his noticing, his fixation on her, but in this moment it is not high on his priority list to use his training to attempt any subtlety or concealment. His gaze lingers.
She looks up, meeting his eyes as she rises. She betrays nothing of her internality. He has never seen her look so calm, or so angry. Beautiful.
They hurry down the ridge and away from the disabled Ornithopter, wordless, staying close to the rocks, away from the resonant dune sand. After an hour of sweat, Paul raises a hand in signal to Jessica, and kneels to begin digging and inflating the stilltent from the kit. They both know they will need to spend at least the next half day under the sand, resting and avoiding the baking sun and Harkonnen search scans.
She slides down into the narrow tent opening head first, and he looks again for a glimpse at her flesh, the adrenaline in his system emboldening and intoxicating him. Paul lifts the bag from the sand and kicks up a dusty cloud, specks of spice glinting as the sun begins to threaten on the horizon. He coughs and inhales, coughs again, drops the bag into the tent and then follows it down, coughing again and hurrying to seal them in their small hideaway.
As he regains composure Jessica has already begun to inventory the kit, a sand compactor, a thumper, a paracompass --when her hand finds a cloth bundle at the bottom of the bag. A transmitter, a note, and the Duke's Signet ring. Paul reads over her shoulder as she unfolds the note, their breath simultaneously catching as the information contained in the caligraphy hits them.
Her love is dead. His father is dead.
Jessica's mask slips, her jaw falls open into a dry stilted sob. Paul can feel her shudder through the floor of tent.
They are both paused, momentarily thrown by what they should have already likely guessed at. He is frozen in confliction, wanting to gather her to him, to console his Mother and to need her consolation, yet fully aware of who set them down this path, who is fully responsible for their shared grief. The spice haze in his lungs begins to hit him.
"Oh, Paul," Jessica whimpers, not quite fully turning toward him.
"Two Atreides have died this night," he almost whispers, without thought, surprising himself.
His mother gathers herself in surprise, both of them kneeling at opposite ends of the tent, only a few feet of space between them, there would be barely enough room for them to sleep.
Paul notices the sweat on her face, her arms, as she wipes away a solitary tear from her flushed cheek. He touches his own sleeve and feels the damp of his exertion. They will need to wring out these clothes to give the stilltent the best chance at reclaiming their moisture.
"You did this to us, to me," he is cold, empty as he starts to lash out at her, now intentional, and slowly lifting his shirt off and over his head, squeezing the sweat out into the catch tubes lining the edge of the tent.
"Two-", Jessica starts, while beginning to unravel part of her own robe and mimic him, catching the necessity of his actions even while she focuses on his words.
His eyes dilate as he begins to see more of her body.
"You Bene Gesserit, you have forced us onto this path," he starts to seethe, "this path with only one route to survival, you have given me this vision, this ability, made me this freak-"
Jessica cuts him off again as he escalates, "Two, but-"
"A second child born of the Lady Jessica, of Atreides blood, sister to the Kwisatz Haderach, essential to the path," Paul continues, almost spitting the words.
"How... how did you know..." she folds a hand over her stomach, a large fist shaped bruise already beginning to form as she unwraps the robe.
"A second child terminated, at the hands of the Harkonnen, without even know-" he is interrupted again.
Her words are slow as she cements her understanding, "A sister to the Kwisatz Haderach, of Atreides blood, born of me, essential," she trails off, squeezing the sweat out the first portion of her robe. He takes her and her words in.
They stare into each other, both half undressed, neither speaking. Paul sees her mind moving behind her eyes, and gets there after her, realizing their only path forward. He knows they both know where fate has led them, but what comes next is an almost unimaginable bridge to actually cross, even for a woman of decision and action such as his mother.
If there was any hesitation in his mind it would have been immediately quieted as he continued to stare at her beautiful form. The tragedy of the day fades dull into the background. He has always wanted her, and now he has to have her, and she knows it just the same as he does. He gazes ahead internally, to his hands on her body, her sweat, feeling upward, taking whatever he wants. In real time, in the tent, she gazes right back at him, drilling into his eyes with her own. Coming out of his vision, back into his own body, kneeling before his mother in the tent, he realizes that he is so hard that it is painful.
He breathes in, deep, more spice.
"TAKE OFF YOUR-" erupting from two mouths, almost simultaneously.
Both mother and son recoil back against the tent walls, stunned by each other's half finished command in the voice. They glare at each other like animals, immediately panting and sweating anew. A gentle wet noise joins rhythm, emitting from the catch tubes as the tent reclaims from the air around them.
A layer of what's left of the robe slips from Jessica's shoulder, she rocks forward onto the balls of her feet, and a loose strand of hair falls across her face.
Paul breaks first, "Okay," and his mother crosses the small distance in a blink.
Jessica's hands on his chest, he is knocked backwards again before he knows what hits him, back against the tent, his legs outstretched in front of him, face to face with his beautiful mother straddling his thighs.
He is rock hard against his mother, only a few thin layers of cloth between their heat. Her cheeks flush, he has never seen her flustered before. Her hands don't shake but she is clumsy, with one attempting to finish unwrapping her robe, and the other reaching behind her at his knees to try to pull his bottoms down.
Paul lets her flounder, reveling in the moment before they dive in, in her closeness, the smell of her body, her beauty.
