Mate.

That was a loaded word for him.

It said a thousand words.

He was a man of many subtleties. Most of the universe saw only those of the large - the arced curve as he swung his shiv, stopping a hair's breath from someone's throat; the way his loud laugh rippled across his throat when he was mind-fucking with someone; the way his muscles strained when he dragged several Predator steel jaws to lay them as traps for those fuckin' mercs. who were always after him.

Few got the chance to see the little ones - an outstretched hand offered over and over again, willingly, to one who could not see in the dark; the offer of a thick arm as a comfortable pillow when sleeping on hard ground; the spread of a thick felt onto the ground when they had sex, when they made love.

Mate.

It said a thousand words.

It spoke only one.

And so, he waited. He waited for her to catch up with him on the slopes of some godforsaken backwater planet in the Coalsack system. He waited for her who had come to him ten years after the hell that had been M344/G, and five years after he'd become the seventh Lord Marshal of the Necromongers and lost Kyra in the process. He waited for her who had found him on Not-Furya.

He held out a hand, and he waited.