He slept well. Until he didn’t.
Brandyn stirred. The cold in the room bit into his awareness first—sharp and wrong. He shivered. Teeth clenched as his mind slowly realized it shouldn’t be this cold.
The heating system had its moods, but the house was still warm most nights. He hadn't even fallen asleep beneath the blankets. Now, though, he reached down to pull them up.
There was nothing there.
His lashes clung together in a last-ditch plea for sleep, but instinct overrode comfort. He reached to his side, seeking Cybelle, just a touch. Just to be sure.
He felt nothing. His heart skipped.
Eyes opened fully. The room around him remained cast in shadow, but the shadows seemed to have… shadows. Darker folds of dark.
He squinted into the room, trying to find what he already knew was there.
__________________
A silhouette—familiar, delicate, and motionless—would slowly make itself known in the darkest corner of the bedroom. Moonlight still dared to filter through the high window, but what little illumination it offered seemed to be throttled, choked, and hidden away behind all-encompassing shades of midnight black. The light didn't touch the pale and cheerful blue of her sleep dress, but Brandyn would find that the figure in the dark was unmistakably his loving wife.
It was, Cybelle.
And yet…It was not her…Not his Cybelle, at all.
She was murmuring. Quiet. Intense. Like she was listening more than she was speaking. The words were too soft to discern, as if they were meant for ears that were not his. The chill in the air deepened, gnawing at the skin, but the Hapani woman didn't seem to notice. Her posture was rigid, almost reverent, and it would bring to mind the temple statues that had been left too long exposed to the elements. Crumbling, ominous, and still. Wrong.
Cybelle flinched, barely, when she heard movement—heard her husband wake. It was a shiver more than a startle…as if she'd only just remembered where she was.
"...They're louder at night…"
__________________
The chill in the air was not from the temperature. Brandyn found himself glancing at the thermostat in a desire to warm the room for his beloved. The chill running up his spine contrasted the comfortable setting on the display.
His frown deepened.
“Who are they?” He said. He reached out for her through the Force before he reached her physically.
When he did step towards her, he did so without fear for himself, arms reaching out to embrace her. “What…Cybelle…what happened?” He said, his voice betraying his calm.
His mind raced. Was she hearing their child? Why the ominous feeling in the room? Even as the unpleasantness flitted away from the room, it left a stain on his memory.
His hand reached out and rested on her shoulder. The warmth in the room was returning. No lights had turned on, but it felt like daytime compared to moments earlier.
“Cybelle…”
__________________
Her head turned when he touched her shoulder, only partway, not enough to see her face. Even as the bedroom warmed by degrees, something was pulling her attention back toward that deep, dark corner. The use of her name seemed to bring some sort of recognition, and she repeated herself softly. Not dreamy, not scared, almost apologetic.
"They are louder at night."
Cybelle turned a little more, the dim light catching the curve of her cheek. Eyes of soft topaz were glassy and far away while her hand rose to settle over the curve of her stomach. "The ones beneath…", her small voice carried, her whisper filling the air. "In the roots. They want me to remember a place…I think they're trying to help."
A beat of silence passed, thick and unnatural. "But…I told them to wait. They must wait, until our love is born."
Her distant tone seemed to change. Flooded with concern that had no visible beginning…But it was there all the same. Her touch to her pregnant belly seemed to shift from comforting to defensive. Protective. As if there were something in the room they needed to be protected from.
"They do not want to wait."
__________________
Brandyn’s chest tightened. His fingers curled up, taking hold of the soft fabric of her night gown. “Cybelle. What are you talking about?” He said, voice straining against the rising tension within.
His other hand drifted her to her chin, and gently guided her gaze upward. She appeared so distant. Brandyn’s eyes briefly glanced down towards her protective swaddling of her stomach. His eyes looked back up at her, trying to understand.
“Is there something wrong with the baby?” He said. Despite the room recovering its warmth, he still felt a chill of worry.
“Who are you talking about, Cybelle?”
__________________
She looked at him easily, even though there were moments when she appeared to be looking through him. Seeing things that weren't there. If it weren't for his touch to her chin, it might have felt as if she could drift away on the moonless current that followed her home from death.
Her heartbeat was still there—Yes. Steady.
But the Force clung to her like dew before a storm. It held the kind of quiet that meant thunder wasn't far. Cybelle raised her free hand to his face, and the pads of her fingers ran along his cheek. Loving. Fascinated. Almost, as if he were something to be studied beneath a pane of glass. "Nothing will harm our love. Not ever."
Love. Child. The words seemed interchangeable for her in the moment, and her eyes closed while she let her head rest in his hand. "I don't know…But it's better when I don't fight.", something in her tone might make him think she did, at least in part, but Cybelle wouldn't willingly lie to him.
It wasn't in nature.
But neither was this strange and dazed creature. "It's not loud…Not like a battlefield. It's more of a suggestion. A knowing. I feel it…Like the sea pulls at the tide. I don't know how to fight it…"
__________________
He knew the answer. But the question still desired to be asked. He closed his eyes, feeling the softness of her face against his hand. How could he feel like he was losing what he had only just received?
“It is…the Exegol…thing…isn’t it?” He said, just moments before his forehead rested against the silky rest of her head. Her hair smelt subtly of wildflowers. It was a cruel reminder of all he stood to lose.
They had studied, tried to understand, but found the pull of domestication an easy distraction from the pursuit of answers. This, though, was a slap in the face to waken them from their wedded bliss.
“What is it suggesting?” He muttered.
__________________
Cybelle didn’t answer at first.
“I don’t know.”
She stood, held by his touch, swaddled by concern that she didn’t deserve—but wanted so desperately to understand. The press of his skin to her chin felt like sunlight through glass—warm, real, and grounding. But it didn’t reach the depths where the whispers lived.
Where they waited.
Her eyes fluttered open at the question, but her gaze didn’t find his. The fingers that touched his cheek slid away, and her hand formed a fist between them. Clutching at nothing, holding on to air, and her lips parted to speak, but her breath caught. The moment tasted of static.
“...That it’s not over...”
Her brow furrowed slightly while she rolled the answer to his question over a cloud-covered mind. She was there, but not there. His wife...And not his wife. “They show me...pieces.”, she fumbled distantly through the reply, eyes flickering, glassy caramel reflecting nothing. “Pieces of a path I didn’t walk. Places I’ve never been but know, like I’ve dreamed them up a hundred times in a fever. The ground is scorched, the sky...Wrong. But it waits”
“They say—”
She stopped talking then, abruptly, as if ice water had been poured over her head. Tawny eyes focused on his face, and she squinted with no small measure of confusion. “Bran?”
Cybelle looked around, suddenly cold, shivering, and she stepped into her husband to cuddle up tiredly to his chest. “Why are we out of bed? Is everything okay? Did something happen?”, her voice was sweet and muffled, but warm, brimming to the top and overflowing with love that would feel all too familiar. Her tone took on a faint whine, and her lips brushed affectionately against his shoulder while her stomach growled audibly. Cybelle blushed.
“I...guess we woke up...hungry.”
__________________
With her head nestled under his chin, Brandyn closed his eyes and tried to laugh. The complete failure of the attempt came out as a groan. Pre-grief.
“You were talking to someone. Or someones. Something about it not being over,” his voice caught on the words. Fate had taken her from him, and given him back, but something deep within told him he was living on borrowed time.
His jaw clenched, as if that alone could prevent whatever was coming.
“I…I am scared, Cy…something is happening to you.”
__________________
Her blush deepened at the sound he made, incorrectly, thinking that his groan was due to her bottomless pit of a stomach. It felt like it could never be full lately. "Sorry…", in typical Cybelle fashion, apologizing, for something she couldn't help.
Topaz eyes were confused when she pulled back and glanced up at him. She didn't remember getting out of bed, but certainly she wasn't so fogged with pregnancy brain that she couldn't recall talking to someone who wasn't him. He was afraid. "Hey…Nothing is happening to me. Not to me or the baby."
"I'm sorry I scared you. I must have been…Sleepwalking."
It wouldn't have been the first time since finding out she was expecting that she'd woken up in the garden with no recollection of leaving the house. Or - With a mouthful of lemon bars at midnight.
She leaned up on her tiptoes and nuzzled her nose affectionately against his. Her heart swelled from his concern, but she was in perfect health. "This will be over soon…And things will go back to normal. Well…Mostly normal…"
After all, their little family would have a plus one.
__________________
Brandyn leaned into the affectionate gesture. Even as he did, he noted that a pressure headache was setting in. “This will be over soon…” Her words stuck in his mind, adding layers to his misery.
He drifted in his thoughts to all the moments where he had almost lost her. Exegol. The New Way facility. The day on the Shore when his father intervened. He even thought of the anomaly that presented a horrifying future for their unborn child, and where he had almost lost Cybelle.
You are living on borrowed time, Brandyn. One of these days…she will slip through your fingers.
“Let’s go get you two some food,” he said, voice scratching against his grief.
__________________
Instinct.
She had every intuition and instinct in the world when it came to Brandyn. Cybelle had loved him from a point in her life when she didn't know what love meant—and she loved him now. Every moment, every breath. Her hand drifted up and brushed against his temple to ease his distress.
He was miserable in a time that should have only been joy.
"We can wait…Talk to me?"
Her stomach grumbled in protest as if to prove her wrong and the lovely blush seemed to settle permanently into her cheeks. "I love you.", the words fell from her easily, like rain, and he would feel it echo from all that she was. "Please talk to me…"
She needed him.
__________________
He was already moving towards the door, but her hand kept him anchored to the conversation. His head dipped again. He knew it. He knew she was not safe.
“We still don’t understand what happened to you on Exegol,” he said without looking at his dear wife.
Slowly, his head lifted. The deep furrows in his brow, and the dim lighting of the room, aged his appearance by a good two decades. “Something is affecting you, Cybelle. Something is talking to you…when you are asleep.”
He shook his head. Thoughts intruded. Thoughts of what he would be willing to do to save her should it come to it.
“I need to figure this out…before…”
He couldn’t finish the sentence. Instead, his voice cracked and gave way to a silent cry for help.
__________________
Her heart froze.
Brandyn hadn't…Said "I love you back" back. He was standing right in front of her, just a few paces away, but he couldn't have been further. As much as he was letting her in—He was shutting her out. "Exegol…Exegol was a long time ago. I'm here. I'm…I'm me."
Her hand fell away from him, and she glanced down at it. Slim fingers trembled before she pulled them back and held her belly again instead. It was a familiar action.
But not for this reason.
She was vulnerable.
"No one is talking to me, Bran."
Her voice was starting to hold an edge of hurt to it because this was the same way he'd withdrawn before. When the New Way had killed his parents. When she'd failed him…When he'd taken a life for their absence. For revenge. Quietly, she swallowed the pain of that memory.
Cybelle felt her eyes fall to the floor.
"We're married. You don't need to do anything….We need to figure it out…"
Unless…Unless it was just her. The stress of being married. A baby that he hadn't asked for. A quiet life that…She wasn't sure he wanted to live.
Was this just a way to escape from it?
__________________
The moment Cybelle withdrew, Brandyn recognized his mistake. He signed loudly, and was stepping to her and taking her in his arms. “I love you…so gods damned much,” he said, words muffled as she spoke into the soft warmth of her hair.
“You were talking to someone, Cy…I heard it…like I was hearing one side of the conversation,” Brandyn muttered.
Despite the added contours of her pregnancy, she still fit in his arms like she had been designed for his embrace. His shoulders slumped now. The feeling of the weight consequence was fully realized. It was not just her that he feared losing. He was now battling the overwhelming fatherly urge to protect his daughter.
“We do this together. For us. For Gianna. But we have to do something…Cybelle…I saw…what I saw.”
__________________
Cybelle released the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding when his arms wrapped around her. Body and soul melted against him, so easily, that she was momentarily dazed by the sensation of sudden isolation rapidly draining away. He was her warmth. Her sun—Her absolution in a world of uncertainties. He would feel her nuzzle close, instinctively. The auburn-haired Hapani gave a believable illusion of being put together, but she was still the same sensitive creature she had always been.
Empathic in a way that was both helpful and quite wretched.
She...Could feel his fear. Whether or not she’d been talking to herself was a moot point...Her husband was afraid of it. That made it real. Thin arms wrapped around him, fingers curling in his clothing, doing her best not to succumb to the shadowy thoughts that Exegol drew back to the surface. There had even been a time when she’d doubted her own humanity...
For all of the peace the afterlife had dangled before her eyes, this world, this life, was something she clung to. There were small things about the experience that she kept to herself out of sheer preservation, but she loved Brandyn. She loved their baby. Desperately. “Okay.”
It was that simple.
Cybelle...Didn’t recall any of what he was saying. It felt strange, wrong. Left her with a feeling of violation that she hadn’t had since discovering the barbarism of the New Way.
“I can stop by the infirmary and get a workup tomorrow. Just...To be safe.”
Perhaps Gianna, the Master, not the child, would have some insight. There were so many secrets that bounced around the shining smile of the ginger-haired Jedi that Cybelle wanted to believe there was nothing she couldn’t solve. “Maybe...We should talk to Gianna and John.”
“Bri too. She already knows some of it...But not about this. The conversations. The—”
Cybelle swallowed hard, realizing she’d never thought to mention the small spells where her memory was just blank. She’d talked herself into thinking it was just the fog of “baby brain,” but what if it wasn’t? She was an adept medic, but in this, she was just a lost new mother. What if none of this was normal? Her mouse-brown head cuddled against him, and she sighed, slowly.
“—The blackouts.”
__________________
Brandyn just held her for a long second. He had everything he had ever wanted in her. In their family. They had to figure it out. Had to understand it. Had to solve it.
“I would go anywhere…talk to anyone…that I needed to if it meant saving you,” he said, rueful smile trying to lighten the mood along with the completion of the thought, “I guess I can survive talking to my sister and your parents.”
His lips pressed gently against the top of her head.
“Come on. Let’s go get you two some food.”
There was another loud rumbling of her stomach that obviously agreed with this plan.
The rest...Would have to wait until morning.
