The doors to the small balcony stood open, letting the cool evening air drift quietly through their bedroom. What had once been a cozy space had turned into something else. A place they went only when they had to, complete with an empty bed and an empty bassinet. It was neat as a pin with not a single thing out of place. Every piece of clothing was pressed and folded, with bedsheets hospital-tight across the mattress. Steamed, until whisper-soft.
It was almost offensive how picturesque it seemed.
Cybelle lingered in the doorway with weary topaz eyes lingering on Brandyn's back. He stood alone, gazing over a world that had long since blurred together for her. He seemed lost in thoughts that she ceased to know because his walls had risen kilometer high ever since he'd returned home with his injury. His face forever marred by metal. For a fleeting moment, her hand lifted, and she reached for him on instinct...only to falter before it ever found his arm. The distance between them felt immeasurable now, built not on blocks of anger, but grief.
Months.
They had spent months chasing every rumor, every trail, every whisper that promised hope before it inevitably dissolved into nothing. Every time Cybelle thought there might be some sign of their child, it evaporated, and it made the previously vibrant woman stay in a state of sallow despair. She no longer heard the whispers from beneath. She could not feel things in the darkness. She was sane…But living in an insane world.
Gianna was gone.
Her body had healed in the way flesh eventually did, but something inside her had yet to recover. Some mornings she could almost pretend to be herself again. Others she scarcely found the strength to leave their home. Yet…Every waking moment ended the same way.
With the hollow certainty that somewhere her daughter was alone.
That she had failed to keep her safe.
Failed as a mother.
Failed as a wife.
Her heart was not simply broken. It had been left behind with the child she could not find.
"...Any news?", Cybelle asked softly, her tone hoarse but gentle enough that her husband might not notice how raw it was from her tears. Her frustration. The fleeting… dwindling hope…
__
He flinched. An unexpected, unwelcome reaction even for him. The sound of Cybelle’s voice reminded him of all he had failed to become. He had truly become his father.
He glanced back at her, and for a moment almost leaned in, the gulf between them stayed his embrace. “There was nothing on Tund.”
Tund. Another world. Another dead end. That is all his efforts produced now — dead ends.
Brandyn had forgotten how to cry. But his natural-eye seemed perpetually in a post-tears state.
Finally turning towards his beloved, he looked upon the devastation that was her countenance. Failure hummed its melancholic tune once more. “I won’t give up…” But he already had.
__
He flinched.
From her.
Her eyes didn't well over with tears, if only because she had nothing left to cry. Not today, anyway. The realization that every moment they had shared, tender and sweet, was entirely undone by the absence of what their love had produced was soul-crushing.
Brandyn didn't want her.
"Neither will I."
But…The determination in her expression was there. Even if hope was slipping from her grasp, there was some part of her that knew Gianna was still out there. Just waiting for them to do their job as her parents and find her. She couldn't give up. She couldn't bear the thought of a world where their daughter was truly no longer in it. She had been so small. So…Perfect.
Ten fingers, ten toes. A precious little warmth to her chest…And then nothing. Blocked.
Cybelle knew that much. Any Jedi—Knew that. She could have traced the infant easily were something not blocking or hiding her. Because the alternative…
She could not accept that.
"Did you eat?"
__
“I ate on the ship,” he muttered. It couldn’t have been more than ration packs.
Brandyn reached out, placing his hand on Cybelle’s shoulder. It felt the least he could do, his duty — perhaps.
Studying her face, he found new wrinkles in her once youthful visage. She had aged. Grief was, of course, the culprit.
“I do not sense her presence, anywhere I go,” he said, hand firm upon her shoulder, “I felt the moment she was born…even from so far away…even after the injury. But now…”
“Cybelle,” he whispered. He hadn’t called her by her full name in years. “It might be time to admit that…”
—-
"That's not enough."
The gentle chiding was only made softer when his hand came to rest on her shoulder. Some of the tension seemed to ease for a stolen moment, relief that she did not deserve flooding her body. It was like rain washing some of the pain and darkness away. She held on to that. The firmness of Brandyn's touch that had always made her feel so secure. So safe, loved.
But that gesture was ruined by the sound of her name. Her full name. It wasn't because he used it, but the fact that he chose to use it now. The light in her eyes seemed to flicker out for the barest moment before she pulled her shoulder away from him and curled in on herself. The slender woman didn't cry, didn't scream, but pulled back to the shell she had lived in before they were married. "Never. I will never—", her words cut off, choked. How could he say that?
She stared off into the darkness while waiting for her eyes to stop burning. Waiting for her breathing to regulate, waiting for the tightness in her chest to ease so she could speak. It took a moment. A long moment. He would see it if he cared to look.
It was the same empty expression she wore when they'd discovered that Baros was funding the New Way. When her investigation led them to hunt him—When jade armor slid over her body from the bangle on her wrist, and she saw only the mission. She couldn't see him as Brandyn's father, or she couldn't do her job. She couldn't for a moment believe that Gianna…
That she was never coming home.
"I know she is out there, somewhere. I may not be able to feel her, but I know it…"
___
When she pulled back, he let her go, his hands dropping like lead weights. Brandyn closed his eyes, tilting his head back as the familiar exhaustion washed over him.
He was locked into this belief now. He had to be. For Cybelle, and for the ghost of their marriage. She needed to believe it was possible, which meant he was duty-bound to carry the hope for both of them.
The sheer scale of his search pressed down on his chest.
He turned toward the open door, but the threshold felt like a barrier he wasn't permitted to cross. "Just say the word," he said, the words heavy in his throat. "And I will keep looking. If you believe... that is enough to keep me going."
—
Cybelle..Didn't reply. He was already walking away, walking out the door, but it felt like she was watching a ghost. He would move heaven itself when his sisters were in trouble. As his wife—She had asked for nothing but his love and understanding in all this time. She didn't make much trouble, aside from a difficult pregnancy. Why was she suddenly in the wrong? Why did grief mean surrender?
When he was in the deepest throes of despair, had she not remained with him? Through the passing of his mother, father, murder, and jail? Without blame or judgement? Cybelle had literally planned their wedding from the otherside of prison bars while he was on house arrest. Why was it so unreasonable that she not give up on the most precious thing in their lives?
She drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly.
Hiding her hurt.
It was better that way.
"I'll make you something better for dinner. Poultry or beef?"
It was the same offering, the same habits, the need to take care of him even while she could barely breathe. Her fingers felt numb, cold. Cybelle could sense his reluctance or perhaps the weight of it all and dropped it. If she had to continue looking for Gianna in silence, she would, If she had to do it alone, she would.
Gianna was their daughter. Their baby…Did he really expect her to let go?
____
“I said…I already ate,” he snapped. Then retreated in anguish at his harshness.
But the anger. It did not retreat alongside the shame. “I have looked everywhere I can. I keep telling myself it is the Unblessed. But the more doors I knock on…the less leads I find…”
Shoulders heaving. His heart ached. Crying would give relief. Soften the edge. But the tears came back. Loss had fueled him. He asked for a reprieve. For permission to stop the spiral towards the darkness that already had its hooks in his soul.
“I love her too,” he whispered. His fist was pushing against the door frame. Slowly, he began tapping it with rhythmic purpose.
“I don’t want to give up. But there is nowhere to look…I don’t know…I don’t know what to do anymore…I don’t want…to go further than I have gone already.”
—
He snapped at her.
The soft angles of her face seemed to turn into something worn, beaten, while she did her best not to try and take it personally. She couldn't cry…She couldn't. Not anymore. Not today. But it didn't stop the twisting feeling in her stomach or the pain that lanced through her core like a branding iron on soft flesh.
Brandyn and Gianna were everything to her. She did not love one more than the other, but their baby was defenseless. He…He was spiraling. Worse than she had ever seen and in their relationship…She had seen a lot. Endured a lot.
Quiet as a mouse, she moved toward the shadow of her husband, and a light palm came to press against his back. She had to be more than she was, not a mother perhaps, but the Jedi she had been. The hollow in her soul stayed present; her shell hid her sadness deep inside. "Then stay home and rest for a while. Collect your thoughts…I've been feeling stronger. I can pick up where you left off."
Even if it wasn't quite true, and she was just scrambling in the dark. He didn't seem to want her close these days, so she didn't force anymore than her palm on his back.
"If you want me to go while you take some time…I'll do that. I know I'm not the only one missing her.. I just know…"
She paused, glancing down. Though hope was far and fleeting, she still had the glimmer of it. An eternal hope that only love could bring, no matter how darkness tried to take it away. "I know she's there. I can't explain it, and maybe I'm delusional. But, I know."
—
He was losing himself. He had lost Gianna. And the solution she offered was to risk losing her too.
“I will do it,” he said. Surrender to his fate washing over him.
“I just need to be here for a few days.” Turning towards her, he wondered if she would accept his embrace if it were offered. The gulf between them felt so far. But she truly was his all.
“We were happy…weren’t we?” He had forgotten. The garden. The Shore. The sunsets with her leaning into him as they sat upon a lightly windswept hill. It felt like a different world. He felt like a different man.
—
"You don't have to."
The response was quiet and carried the same cadence as her previous offerings. She made herself small, non-threatening, but some part of her warmed when he looked at her. He had always been the sun while she was a flower looking up at him. Just waiting for him to shine on her so she could grow and be who she was supposed to be. "I can do more. I should do more."
Her hand shifted to rest on his arm instead. Bran hadn't pushed her away…So it left her with hope that she wasn't too haggard or weak from the wife he remembered. Her head did tilt when he asked if they were happy, and her brow came together. While he had forgotten…It was all she thought about. "We were. I was.", it felt like a selfish thing to say but…It was true. She loved him, was happy with him, and would be again, one day.
Just when this ache in her heart melted.
Cybelle reached up, hesitant, and let her fingers brush his temple.
It gave a flash of the first warm memory that came to mind. The way he looked at her when she'd appeared in a wedding dress that Bri had helped her get into. The way the light filtered into the room and touched everything with a warm glow. It had been a small celebratory affair, but Cybelle didn't need a huge guest list and a party. It wasn't the event that mattered—It was the person. Her fingers drew away after a moment before she glanced down.
Not sure how he might react.
"Stay here. Rest. I won't be much of a bother."
___
Just for a moment, he leaned into her touch. Enough to say he was there, but restrained enough to say he didn’t know how to be.
“I don’t want you to go anywhere,” he whispered, still struggling to look at her. Now, instead of anger, it was the returning undeserved feelings that had dogged his relationship with Cy.
“I just need you beside me…I always have.”
His chest heaved as she, as so often before, brought some vulnerability to his fatalistic, misguided heroism.
He took another step into the gulf between them. His hand, with a slight tremble, rose to rest on her arm. “I’m scared.”
—-
Bran didn't pull away…Didn't snap at her, either.
Those felt like good signs, and her bowed head raised to take a swift peek at features that she still found achingly handsome. The metal plate that hid half of him away from her hadn't changed how she saw him because it was still him. He was still her soul—If Exegol hadn't stolen it away so long ago. They were both so broken, bleeding, where no one could see.
Topaz eyes flickered over his form in silence while Brandyn struggled to find the words. She brushed a curtain of brown hair back from her face and tucked it behind her ear, slowly building confidence. Taking his words on faith. That some part of him didn't hate her and want her gone. Didn't blame her for not being…More. Stronger. "Then…Stay with me."
His hand on her arm was the closest they had been in weeks.
The admission of his fear caused her eyes to soften to some degree—But the walls she had raised could not so easily be undone. It had never been clearer to her than this moment that she was being incredibly selfish. Parts of it couldn't be helped, but he was still reeling from his injuries in a war that had served no one. She was his wife. She was meant to bring him peace…Not pain.
"So am I."
She moved slowly into his personal space and lifted her arms to wrap slowly around his waist. Gently enough that he could pull away…But firm enough to tell him she was there and that she wasn't going anywhere. "I know it hurts…I know everything hurts."
Breathing, hurt. Losing a child was not something she would wish on her greatest enemy.
"But I'm here, Bran. If you want me…I'm always here."
___
How could he express the depths of failure pinning him to this spiral of depression and grief? How could he tell Cybelle that she deserved more than he could offer — or face the inescapable truth that he was no hero? He never had been, no matter how much he dreamed of it.
With no words left, he simply collapsed into her arms, slumping to the floor and pulling her down with him into a messy, ungainly embrace. And there, for the first time since their daughter had gone missing, he finally began to cry.
___
Cybelle was startled at first when his knees went, and his body weight pulled them both down. Her arms moved and wrapped around him more firmly, crushing any part of him she could hold against her body. She could feel the ache in him, his tears, and her voice came in gentle, soothing whispers. She didn’t tell him to stop, just one thing on loop...Over and over.
“I’m here...I’m here.”
She had felt drained for weeks after having Gianna, but she could no longer allow herself to feel it. There wasn’t time or a way for her to be anything but strong, stronger than she had ever been. Brandyn needed her to be, and so did their daughter. “It’s all right...”, she soothed and pressed a kiss to the side of his head, holding him tight...As if she might never let go.
It had been too long since she’d felt his warmth, his breathing, and anything that reminded her of the man she had married. She wished she could have cried with him, that she could have grieved with him. She couldn’t. If she started, she might never stop. But she could hold him—She could love him. Even if he didn’t love himself. “I love you...”
“I love you, Bran.”
