Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Paul.” The name tumbled unbidden from Chani’s lips onto Paul Atreides's ears. He moaned ever so softly into the hollow of her neck. He placed another series of soft kisses to her throat and her hands twisted tighter around his hips, half on top of hers. 

“Chani.” He whispered softly, bringing his lips to hover above hers. She smiled and bumped her nose against his, spreading her fingers across the soft skin at the base of Paul’s spine. Just as she breathed in, he took her mouth in a fiery kiss, with generations of longing on his tongue, desperate to be released. Chani’s breath and body drew Paul in closer, her arms snaking up his bicep, down his hips. Her fingertips brushed under the loosened waist band of his pants and hey both stilled for a moment. They shared the exhale between their noses, foreheads pressed warm and smooth against each other. 

“Have you…?” Her fingers inched lower, illustrating her point. He ducked his head slightly, a strand of hair tickling her nose. 

“Mmmhmn.” Paul shook his head once, then dared a look back up at Chani. “But I’ve read about it in books.” 

“Of course you have.” She smiled fully then, propping her self up on her elbows, surging up to kiss him with her own leverage. 

Later, when she laid on his chest, her fingers pressed across the slowly rising and falling planes. 

“You know these tents conserve water.” 

“Yes, I know.” 

“That means it is acceptable to sweat in them. The water won’t be lost.” 

“Hmmm…” Paul hummed. He turned the idea of voluntarily sweating over in his mind, but couldn’t quote make all the pieces come together.  He knew sex drove people to strange ways, but he’d never seen Fremen forsake water conservation for anything except death. Yet another thing the anthropologists had left out. “But why I wonder…would someone ever sweat inside their tent at night?” A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth and Chani couldn’t help the slight blush she felt on her cheeks. 

She answered by way of a gentle kiss between her fingers, leaving just the smallest impression of moisture in the shape of her lips. 

“We could have died!” Though the battle had been over for many hours, the din of the celebration and the haze of the Spice had only served to further ignite the burning adrenaline taking over Chani and Paul’s bodies. 

“But we live!” Paul spun around, his eyes wide and wild, spiral curls matted and stringy. Chani gave a silent chuckle, covering her smile with one hand and opening her —their— tent with the other. 

Paul stayed close behind her, his body touching and almost touching in enough places to fill every synapse of his brain. As the flap fell closed behind them and snapped shut, his eyes met hers. 

“Chani…”

“Usul…”

We’re alive. Paul whispered as he leaned in, his lips at first tentative and experimental. He shifted his weight towards her and she stayed steady, one hand resting on his hip as she began to kiss him back. In a matter of seconds, the spark had flamed into a fire, desperately consuming Paul’s gaze and burning a catastrophic path from Chani’s pelvis out though her mouth. She didn’t quite care that it felt dangerous to kiss Paul like this, really kiss him, want him. He was just a boy, after all. 

Paul clutched her to himself, running his hands along her back, up to her neck. She shivered at the sensation of it, of his long, thing fingers on her bare neck. 

They’d spent many nights together, but only a handful of them had ever involved purposeful undress. At some point while he was trying to get his boots off, they ended up on the ground, Chani’s top half-off her shoulders. He ran his fingers over her bare shoulders and she shivered again, pressing her lips urgently to his. 

Paul’s hands were clumsy on the clasps of Chani’s stillsuit, further distracted by the way she was alternating between sucking his earlobe and pressing her thigh between his legs. He didn’t think she could feel it, not through his suit, but he knew from the sounds he was making, from the way she was smiling, that she knew he was hard. Panic rose momentarily in Paul’s throat as he processed the implications of the ease at which Chani seemed to know how to release another person from their stillsuit without looking. He’d always wondered about who he would marry, if she would be a virgin, if he would live up to her expectations, but he’d never quite had the presence of mind to worry about his own first time. He swallowed hard, pressing his eyelids closed and when he opened them he was on his back, bare-chested with Chani’s hands pushing at his waistband. Paul couldn’t help but marvel at the effortless beauty of her cheek, the low-light all but erasing the blue tint of her eyes beneath her dark lashes, the smooth slope of her nose onto her parted lips, the catch of her crooked smile. 

“You’re looking at me like that again.” She shook her head and he caught her cheek in his palm. 

“So let me look.” He ran his thumb over her cheekbone, holding her chin steady, not letting her turn away. He sat up gingerly, brushing the remains of his stillsuit aside as he took her face in both hands and kissed her tenderly. For once, she let him. She obliged him as he peppered kisses along her collarbone, slipped her arms out of her shirt, dragged the fabric down her body. She held him lightly, her fingertips pressed to his scalp but not twisting in his hair. She sighed as he began kissing her breasts, one palm flattening on the back of his head, the other propping her up. She let him kiss her all the way out of her stillsuit, biting her lip as she watched him strip the rest of the way out of his own. He looked at her with pupils wide and blow, eyelids heavy and chest heaving shallowly. She nodded answer to the unasked question, feeling her heart flutter into her throat in anticipation. She rubbed his arm gently as he laid down next to her, kissing her with more softness than she could remember him ever doing. His fingertips ghosted down her to side before they met her hip, bent as one foot remained flat on the ground, her other entailed with his at the ankle. She pressed her thighs together and he inhaled sharply, crushing his mouth against hers. 

Paul was surprised at the softness of the hair between her legs. He spent several minutes exploring it, sending his fingertips in explorative circles and winding paths, marveling at the fluffiness and sensitivity of the area. Chani squirmed slightly under his touch, alternating between relaxing her legs apart and squeezing them tightly together. Chain’s hand slid down his shoulder, down his arm and took hold of his wrist, guiding it lower into her center. He gasped when he finally felt her wetness. It was completely foreign, after so long in the Desert, to feel the sensation of his fingertips gliding against skin. She guided him in long strokes, dipping barely into her entrance and then up to her apex again. Her breasts rose and fell with each stroke, her back arching as their kisses became less practiced and more messy. She let her knee fall to the side and changed her rhythym, moving Paul’s fingers in smaller circles right around her clit. Paul as relieved not all of his sexual education had been useless—on Caladan it was considered brutish not to know about the anatomy of pleasure, but he’d assumed it was all defunct now, like the rest of his years of etiquette training. He rubbed tight circles with two fingers like she’d shown him, groaning as her lips left his, her eyes closed and eyebrows knit together. He stayed steady, watching her face closely as her breathing plateaued, no longer ratcheting up in tension and volume. He switched then to one finger, using tight circles just a fraction of an inch lower than she’d shown him. She bit back and moan then and grabbed his shoulder, shoving her face into the crook of his neck. With her panting against his skin, alternatively licking and nibbling at his ear, Paul couldn’t help but grind against her leg. As if matching his impatience, Chani began to buck against his fingers, undulating so his fingers ventured closer to her opening. Paul expected the sort of sharp gasp he’d often heard the other men imitate women making during intercourse, but when his fingers finally entered his lover, she only sighed deeply into his ear, urging him on by palming his ass roughly. He pleasured her with one and then two fingers, trying his best to circle her clit with his thumb. As she circled her hips, she pressed them deliberately into his cock, just as she pressed er hands into his ass cheek, her teeth into his earlobe.

He wanted to swear, wanted to ask her where she’d learned all this and then tell her not to answer, but they hadn’t spoken in what seemed like hours, and Paul couldn’t bring himself to disrupt their wordless dance of negotiation. Just as it was becoming too much, as Paul approached the point at which words would have forced themselves out, Chani turned her body towards him, claiming his mouth in a kiss and pressing her entire body into his. Paul wasn’t suite sure he was capable of thought anymore, consumed as he was with the feeling of their hearts beating against each other, the sound of her breath in his mouth, the warmth of their hips pressed together. He tried to steady his mind and his hand, which laid slick and trembling slightly on her thigh. 

“I…”His breathing shook as he felt her hand wrap around his cock, slick with her own arousal. 

“Shhh…” She kissed him more tenderly, stroking him only a few times before she positioned him at her entrance. He hoped she couldn’t feel his hand shaking as he held her face, but knew that she must. Together, they thrust into each other’s bodies, faces and chests close and arms entwined. Again, Chani sighed deeply and Paul fought the urge to cry, burying his face in her neck as his hips began to move seemingly on their own accord. He clutched her to him, arms wrapped all the way around as he kissed and moaned and nibbled at her shoulder. It seemed achingly soon that Paul found a different kind of heat pooling in his cheeks, tension coiling in his whole body, spreading from his cock. 

Even in his arousal, Paul was conscious of his duty—his destiny. He didn’t know if the Atreides House would ever rise again, didn’t know for sure if his bloodline would ever be restored, but he knew that he could not risk Chani carrying his heir. He loved her and knew he would love her until his last breath, but he also knew that mating was about much more than that. 

“Fuck!” He ripped his mouth away from hers, pushing her off of himself just in time to stoke himself to completion, painting a stripe of pearlescent cum from her navel down to the top of her fluffy hair. He shook and writhed for what was both agonizingly brief and unfathomablely infinite. 

“Usul…”Chani’s hand flew to her mouth, her eyes going wide. 

“I…I…” Panic flooded into Paul’s body, his mind scrambling for an apology, positive she’d read his mind, was utterly insulted that his concern over his issue trumped his love for her.  

“Thank you.” She whispered under he breath, her fingers leaving her lips to drag through the fluid. 

“What’re you…” Paul’s mouth went dry as he watched Chani take the milky-white fluid between her fingers into her mouth. She closed her eyes and sucked, popping them out clean with an obscene sound. Her eyes snapped open to Paul’s bewildered ones. 

“I would not refuse your water-gift.” She whispered, a smirk playing just at the edge of her puffy lips. Her hands returned to the small pool on her stomach again and again until all the white had disappeared from the planes of her smooth brown skin. Eyes locked with Paul’s, she brought her fingers bearing the last vestiges of his seed to her lips. 

“What does it taste like?” Paul marveled. 

“Spice.” Her eyes twinkled with the danger of prophecy. He took her wrist, drawing her finger into his mouth. And she’s right. The taste explodes in his tongue and into his brain, firing off nerve endings that shouldn’t have existed, igniting images more vivid than life itself. He sees himself calling an army, commanding an army in his name to conquer the Known Universe. He sees the Fremen liberated, Arrakis a paradise once again as his father’s usurpers are killed and harvested for their water. He sees House Atreidies ruling above all else—and at its head, himself and his wife, Chani. 

Chapter Text

It wasn’t quite right to say things changed between Paul and Chani when they became lovers; but rather what seemed the natural and inevitable course continued on its way. Their lives, minds, and bodies continued their intertwining dance. Paul carried his own stilltent out of precaution, but it remained stowed in his pack each night, Chani’s small dome becoming their home on the dunes. Though they never seemed to be there for more than a few days at a time, in sietch tabr, too, Paul Mauh’Dib Atreides took up residence in Chani Sihaya Kynes’ yali. They were the only two living there, which Paul could tell was unusual, but he could also tell was a topic barred from inquiry.

Paul slept better in the sietch, probably due to the limited exposure to Spice, but Chani slept better on the dunes—the whipping winds and howling sands seemed to soothe her to sleep. But then again, they didn’t always sleep much at all on campaign. 

One morning, after Paul had slept fitfully and Chani had tried her best to comfort him in any way she could think of, he caught Shishakli teasing Chani about how tired she looked. Chani kissed her teeth and rolled her eyes, brushing the remark off easily. However she seemed to have a little more trouble brushing off the accusatory eyes when Paul finished packing her tent and handed it to her—along with the reclaimed water from the night. The small pouch was noticeably fuller than the other bags being stowed for the day. But after all, there were two of them. 

Stilgar tisked, bent over his own pack and shaking his head. 

“She is not tired, she is thirsty.” He pretended to mumble, in Chakobsa. Paul watched Chani carefully from the corner of his eye, sure this was a taunting insult but not quite sure of it’s offense level. “You two should drink, you surely have enough water.” Stilgar said loudly, in English, straightening and smirking as the Fedaykin guffawed. 

“Mind your own water!” Chani called back in Chakbosa, snatching her things from Paul’s hands and stowing them quickly. Paul spent the rest of the day thinking of a way to clarify the issue. Truly, he was not sure exactly who it would have been safe to ask. As it turned out, Chani beat him to the punch. 

“There are some things you do not understand.” She sighed as she untied her blue hair scarf and laid it on top of her stillsuit, pulling on her nightshirt. 

“I’m sure there are many.” Paul replied, lounging in nothing but his underwear, hands clasped behind his head. Chani looked at him and sighed, tossing his shirt at him. “What’s the point? You’re just going to take it off again," he muttered.

“Paul.” She scolded him like a child and for a reason he couldn’t quite pinpoint, it made something warm and loud bloom in his chest. She only ever called him Paul when she overtaken with her basest impulses—usually annoyance, but every so occasionally, arousal. 

She crossed her arms and glared at him until he relented, putting his shirt back on and sitting up. He noticed the change in her body after he was clothed, somehow softer …but noticeably less…distracted. It made his mouth twitch in an aborted smirk, one which Chani could not have missed, but chose to ignore. 

“The others…Stilgar. The Southerners. They do not…think so easily of sex.” Paul raised his eyebrows; Fremen were not known to him to be a prudish people, but sometimes their bluntness took him by surprise. 

“I thought you said sweating in the stilltent is fine.” Paul let the smirk twinkle only in his eyes.

“And I also said I don’t believe in prophecies.” Paul conceded with a nod and looked away from her for the first time that night. 

“So they don’t approve.” 

“It isn’t the sex. I am sure, I am certain, Stilgar is pleased to have me in your bed.” The way she said it made Paul’s skin bristle and his chest roar with confused creatures of desire and anger. “Usul,” She took his chin in her hand, “sweating with someone, sharing your water, it’s deeper than intimacy.” Paul nodded. He had guessed as much; had gathered also that their sharing of a tent seemed to also run deeper than companionship, love, or sex. 

“Stilgar thinks it is improper for me to be bedding you outside the binds of marriage.” Paul turned it over, trying to figure out how he felt about that fact. It seemed to be the only area he’d ever disappointed Stilgar in…but he still wasn’t sure that was enough to give it up. But to his surprise, Chani laughed. 

“No. Well, yes, I’m sure Stilgar wants that. But you’ve misunderstood…for Southerners, sex is for making children. They consider it to be a erroneous use of water.”

“But you do not?” 

“No.” She answered him bodly, no pretense of shame or modesty anywhere on her face. Like a careening sandworm, Paul felt the path of their conversation veering dangerously to the side. Like a navigation star, Paul saw one his curiosities presenting itself to steer them into safer—possibly safer—territory. 

“Had you ever been with anyone…before?” He meant to match her stroke for stroke in boldness, ask plainly what he wanted to know, but when the time came, he could not produce the bare words. 

“No.” She answered again, shaking her head twice. Paul’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Not really,” she continued, “No more than childish…” Chani pursed her lips and said a Chakbosa word Paul couldn’t recognize. 

“What does that mean? I don’t know it.” Chani didn’t hesitate to consider Paul, but to consider herself, questioning the air around them on how to answer Paul’s question. Though it seemed small in the scale of their conversation, Paul marveled at his own frankness. Months ago, when he’d arrived on Arrakis—when he’d been Heir to a Duke—he would never have asked so plainly, would have tried to remember and research later, develop from context clues what he could not from the filmbooks. But he did so without a second thought, and trusted that would answer him truthfully and without shame. 

“Sexual immaturity.” She finally came out with. “With you age-mates,” she continued, relaxing into the appropriate description, “you share a bed, you end up kissing and rubbing, what do you call, fooling around?” A twitch passed though Paul’s eyebrow, and this time Chani did not pretend not to notice. “What? They don’t do that on Caladan?” 

“I wouldn’t know,” Paul replied, dropping his gaze for a moment and sighing. “I didn’t have age-mates. I had masters. And my parents. And um…servants.” His voice faded into a whisper. Chani scoffed lightly, her hand returning to his cheek and caressing it gently. 

“Duke-in-training.” She whispered back. He closed his eyes and sighed into her palm. 

“That’s all over now.” 

“Do you think you’ll ever go back there? Caladan?” Paul opened his eyes, but the levity they’d enjoyed only moments ago did not return.

“No. That’s all over now.” He swallowed. “This is my destiny.” Something unknowable flashed quickly over both of their faces, like they were at the center of a thousand swirling possible futures, in the eye of the storm. 

“Me…or the Mahdi?” He couldn’t bring himself to answer her. 

“I never asked for this.” Chani noticed he had stopped saying he didn’t want it anymore. Maybe he couldn’t bring himself to lie to her like he could the rest of them. “I love you.” His voice and grip suddenly hardened, pulling her in by the back of her neck, leaning their foreheads together. “You are my destiny.” She wrapped her arms around him, letting him slide his tongue between her lips. 

Paul didn’t think Chani believed his dreams were premonitions, and he knew she didn’t know he’d been dreaming about her for years. He wasn’t sure himself if he believed he was everything Jessica spoke of, but he knew as he’d never known anything else that Chani was the love of his life. Some things were written in the stars, he supposed. 

He pressed forward, leaning Chani onto her back as she wrapped her arms around him, moaning softly as he kissed her, pressing their hardly-clothed bodies together. He was hungrier this time, more fervent, somehow less and more afraid; Not afraid of the unknown of what making love would be like, what it would be like with her, but full of fear for the future he feared most—that he would lose her. He’d been seeing it, too, in his dreams. He’d seen her die at the hands of enemies, of friends, of his own mother—or rather, at the feet of his mother and his sister, who seemingly watched, emotionless. He’d seen her roasted by the sun, burnt alive by the Harkonnens, and consumed by fiery sandstorms. But the dreams that scared him most where when she looked at him with profound disgust and horror, turned on her heel, and left him. There were never words, but it was always final. Sometimes when he woke and she was beside him, he cried in secret, or else barely resisted. But now, she wasn’t going anywhere, she loved him and she wanted him to stay and he would have done anything to hear her moan his name again. 

In no time at all, he was panting against her, his hips rolling as his hands pushed her shirt up, hers digging in to the lean muscle of his ass. 

“I can’t wait, I need you.”

It terrified and exhilarated her how earnest he was as he pressed sloppy kisses to her neck and face. She pulled his shirt up just an inch before his hands replaced hers, casting his shirt aside and returning his lips to hers. His hips fell easily into the cradle of hers, thrusting unevenly as he urgently palmed her breasts, kissing her with teeth and tongue and terror. She pulled down his underwear and he released her mouth only for the time it took Chani to lift her hips and rid herself of her undergarment. She let her eyes roam hungrily over his pale body, every muscle a finely honed instrument, pulled taunt with anticipation. She bit her lip and let her hands wander up her shirt, clutching her breast, rolling her nipple idly between her fingers. He ran his tongue along his teeth and clenched his jaw, returning to the perfect space between her legs. This time when he entered her, she did gasp, perhaps from the force at which he initiated his thrusts. He was a wild animal, a prophet with an inflated ego, a prisoner facing execution devouring his last meal as she wrapped her legs around him, pressing her lips tightly together. He kept going, snapping his hips in increasing desperation. He seemed to be making attempts at speech, but his words were not discernible, mere mumblings and strangled cries as he flew quickly towards the precipice of his own pleasure. 

“Usul, Usul. Usul!” She cried, pushing her palms into his chest. He stilled, begrudgingly, shoving his hair out of his face and looking down at her with concern. 

“Slow down.” She murmured, her gaze soft but her hands firm. Above her, Paul heaved, a thin sheen of sweat building on his brow and upper lip. He worried his lower lip in his teeth, further contributing to the obscene wetness on his face. 

“Show me.” He whispered, gasped, begged. She returned the gesture by venturing her tongue onto her lips, reveling in the way she held his attention singularly. She drew him down gently, kissing a path across his chest, relishing the feel of his skin under her palms, the little shiver he didn’t even know he made when she ghosted over his nipples. Finally, when she was ready, she swung her legs over his and sat astride him. She smirked, enjoying the view of Paul Muad'Dib splayed out below her, completely at her mercy. His fingertips grasped uselessly at his own collarbone, his face contorted just on the line between pleasure and pain. She stretched her arms over her head, making a show of extending her neck and rolling her shoulders, pushing her pert nipples to the front of the thin fabric. Then, when Paul’s chest was heaving like he’d run at top speed for hours, She grasped the hem of her shirt and stripped out of it in one smooth motion. She then licked her lips again, letting her hands explore her body. Paul squirmed below her; his cock was close enough she could feel it pulsing, could only imagine the blissful agony he was feeling as she sat firmly on his thighs, forbidding him to move. When her hands reached between her own legs, she let her head fall back in pleasure as she touched herself leisurely, dipping in and out, rubbing her clit in lazy, wide circles. Only after she had begun to rock against her own hand, began to plunge her fingers deeper inside herself and was still craving more, did she give Paul what he wanted most. 

“Ahhhh…” She moaned lowly as she sank onto his cock, relishing the scrape of her pelvis against his hips. Paul sucked in a breath and his eyes rolled back in his head as they began to move together in tandem again. She set the pace this time, preferring a slow, deep rocking motion. When he started making those little desperate, uncontrollable sounds again, his fingers digging into her hips hard enough to leave bruises, She returned her hand to her center, rubbing smaller circles with her whole hand, the other pressed to Paul’s chest, holding herself up and pressing him into the ground. She was determined to reach her peak before he did, closing her eyes to concentrate as she leaned forward, grinding against herself, against Paul. She cried out as she came, louder than she’d dared before but unable to contain it any longer. She rode out her orgasm on Paul’s cock, letting her hand fall with a smack onto his skin as she used him mercilessly for her own pleasure. When she could finally breathe again, she opened her eyes to find Paul staring up at her with an open mouth, his entire face straining, his chest flushed and slick with sweat, despite his prone position. He seemed unable to speak, his lip quivering like he might try. She leaned down and kissed him again, her lips attentive and sated, his pliant and uncoordinated. She began to rock her hips again, leaning close so her hair fell over his face, folding herself into an angle she knew he loved. He grabbed onto her hips, the swell of her ass, and thrust into her, matching her thrust for thrust, gasping and moaning and panting and begging and promising into her hair, her ear, her mouth, any and all parts of her he could reach. 

And in the end, it was like sand-walking. There was only so much he could have learned from descriptions, from books and films. He thought he’d known, in his ignorance of youth, what it was to dance in the Desert. But he was wrong. Feeling it, doing it, wasn’t at all like what he thought. It was almost indescribable, a sensation kept solely in the body, hidden in wordless experience from the mind. And, like sand-walking, making love was yet another thing Paul would always owe to Chani. 

Later, when the winds outside their tent had quieted along with the screaming voices in his head, when she lays in the crook of his arm and he draws absent circles with his fingertip, he speaks again. 

“On Caladan, they teach that bringing a woman pleasure leads to better mating, it’s important for the conception of a child.” It is the sort of confession one can only make in the intimate tiredness after sex, Paul thinks. When all else has fallen away, when there is no point in remaining guarded any longer. Chani turns her neck to look at him, her arms tucked up against her bare chest. She gives him a puzzled look, turning his words over like a stone, looking for something hidden under them. Then, when she finds it, she bursts out laughing. 

“You think I will bear your children?” Paul doesn’t quote muster the energy to blush, but he pulls himself inward slightly. She props herself up and narrows her eyes into his.

“It is a possibility now, at least.” He reminds her that she received his most recent water-gift inside herself. Inside her womb. She considers him, part boy-king, part lover, part dubiously-willing messiah. 

“Tell me, have you noticed your body slow down in the Desert? You heart rate is slower, you eat and drink less. You don’t feel as hungry no matter how tired you are? Your breaths feel deeper, fewer, slower?” 

“I suppose.” Paul had noticed some of those things, but he attributed it to the increasingly complex series of calculations and plans constantly warring for dominance inside his mind. 

“It’s the same for women. We do not bleed often in the Desert.” She told him simply.

“Oh.” Paul’s eyes widened with understanding. “You can only get pregnant in the sietch?” 

“Not technically, but it’s very rare.” 

“Is it true a woman knows when she is fertile?” Now seemed to be the time for every wonder Paul had ever filed away for another time.

“Yes, but it isn’t exact.” She titled her head at him. “Paul Muad’Dib Usul Atreides, are you trying to get me pregnant?” 

Paul blushed deeper than he ever had in his life, humbled by her use of all his names, heated by the fervent denial he feared was a lie. 

“No, not now. It isn’t…no. But…someday?” Finally he sighed and shrugged. Chani looked at him incredulously, clearly not buying his denial. 

“We’re in a war, Paul.” His own name twisted in his chest. 

“My family was slaughtered, Chani. Almost everyone I have ever known is dead.” He let the confession hang in the air for a moment, pulled from his body by the reminder of the name his father had given him. “Maybe I don’t think waiting is a good idea anymore.” 

She looked at him for a long time, blue into blue. She sometimes forgot that the boy who was simultaneously brave and beautiful, charming and cunning, precise but preoccupied, strong and scheming, was also anguished and adrift. His grief hung heavy in the air between them. 

“Usul. My Desert Mouse.” She spoke it English, because he knew she did not favor his War name. It was becoming too synonymous with Lisan al-Gaib. In another world, in a different future, he might have given in to his desire to fall into her arms and anguish for as long as she would let him, to find relief of his burdens for a few moments even, to share them with his love. And she would have held him somehow as a lover and a child, kissing him gently and whispering sweet nothings until the waves of grief subsided, until Muad’Dib surfaced again from Paul's grief. But in their present, too much had already been said. He couldn’t promise himself to her always, though he wanted to. Because they both knew he didn’t belong to himself anymore. Such was the nature of prophecy: the subjects were always borrowed by both past and future, doomed to a constant half-life in the present.

With hardly a shadow of the life they could have had, Chani tiled her head towards Muad’Dib, “For a boy-king who’s lineage depended on this knowledge, you seem not to have been educated.” He blushed and ducked his head, burying the memory of the moment that wasn’t. 

“Another thing you can teach me.”