Cybelle woke up with a sudden start, curled up in an oversized chair in the living room. There was a soft blanket lying over her lap, and she was wearing a modest set of neatly embroidered robes. They had little green and yellow flowers on the hem, and her lightly tanned face was still glowing from the smidge of makeup she’d hastily applied.
Nervously, applied.
Brandyn was supposed to be coming home that evening, and she wanted to look…Nice. Not overdone because of what he was coming home from, but the type of wife no soldier could dent wanting to get back to. Long auburn hair was pulled half up and half down. She blinked owlishly in the dim light and realized from the darkness that the sun had set.
“Brandyn…?”
She called out to the shadows, but he wasn’t there. She couldn’t feel him…
Not in the house, anyway.
A glance at the clock told her that she’d fallen asleep for a few hours. Why hadn’t he woken her up? The slender woman slipped up from the chair and wrapped the throw blanket around her shoulders as she headed for the door. It was past two in the morning…
The little Hapani followed her heart, for lack of a better term, and felt a deep sense of relief the moment she saw his silhouette beneath the moon. It was short-lived because the longer she watched him and listened with every metaphysical sense she had…The more the entirety of her being ached. He looked fine, from the back. Inside…It was all warning bells.
She crept behind him and her arms wrapped around his waist. Her cheek buried itself against his back, for the moment, setting everything else aside. She felt a little guilty. Her whole body relaxed when they touched, but for him, his shoulders were so heavy. Was it terribly wrong to have needed him so much?
He wouldn’t see her shy, soft blush. She had been so very, very worried. “I missed you.”
Cybelle hesitated but burrowed deeper into him.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
__
He had paced atop the hill for hours, never quite looking at their home, never quite looking back at the speeder that could be his exit from this reunion. The fallout was still coming — he knew this.
Knowing Briana, she would probably seek charges against him, or have the council punish him. Her being a member of the Vanguard complicated that. But he would not put it past her to take the amnesty that had been offered just to make him the outlaw she seemed to want — his actions notwithstanding.
Bastila had not spoken to him on the shuttle. Had not been there to hold his hand during the agony of having his metal plate reinstalled. Instead, he had been left alone with only the memory of her brokenness as company.
And then there was his wife. Dear. Forgiving. Loving. Cybelle.
He hated that she would take him back. Her love had been something that had always felt undeserved, like a precious vase that he held with wet hands. His failure to deserve it always had felt destined. There was too much of his father in him.
And so he had paced, kicked stones, and generally avoided the responsibility that was his. It was becoming a habit — blaming others, avoiding accountability.
When she finally approached and wrapped her arms about him, Brandyn did not ease into it. If anything, he wanted to run. His body grew rigid, unyielding and so very distant.
She missed him. She shouldn’t.
A heat rose in his chest. Anger at her for wanting him near. She had always taken him back. Always worked through his failings, always seen the hero where there was none.
The lack of reciprocation continued, even though a small, screaming voice in his head longed for him to fall into her as he had so often. Cybelle was his safe place. So many times she had held his head to her chest as he had wept.
But now. Now he would not permit it.
“Talk about what?” He asked, words curdling into a mocking tone that scared even him.
__
She tried very hard not to feel it.
His desire to pull away, out of her arms, and back into the cold night air…It hurt. His wife would do her best to pretend that his tone didn’t break her heart. She bit her lip and refused to let go or recoil at the anger she sensed just beneath the surface of his skin. Cybelle had done that before, taken his rejection as a reflection of herself…Sometimes she slipped.
Sometimes, she forgot. He was just lost…He loved her.
“The campaign?”
War was a nightmare that she would never forget. The largest battle she had ever been in, Exegol, still left very visible scars on everything she was. Her shoulders shook when his body went stiff beneath her touch as if she were some sort of poison…His voice…
It told her that something was very, very wrong. She didn’t know what because she had been off-duty since Gianna had been born. Her body wasn’t quite healed, even now, and she lost strength fast. She just couldn’t get enough sleep. “If you don’t want to…It’s all right.”
“I’m…Just grateful that you’re here.”
The small woman had, quietly, asked him to stay behind from Thyferra in her own way, but he had insisted on walking out the door. His mood had been much improved since the last time she visited her parents. Affection came more easily. Hope…She could see it again. Her arms loosened a little, but she stayed where she was. Swallowing hurt- the indifference, the feeling of being the enemy—When her only crime was loving him.
Something he seemed to both hate and desperately want.
“Is there anything I can do?”
__
When she asked about Thyferra his face burned with memories of fire that had only barely been quenched by the medical plate. His visage deformed in an attempt to squeeze the thought from his mind, but the pain lingered.
The temptation existed to cast the pain upon the Sith Witch that had forged an undesired connection with him. But to do so would make it clear to Cybelle that it existed. The mere possibility that she might connect dots wrongly and conclude that he had been unfaithful…he could not allow it. If anything was true, it was what he had done…he had done for them.
He did not respond to queries about Thyferra, choosing rather to endure the pain — his punishment for his sins.
Through the haze of pain and self-loathing, he could not sense the hurt that he was doing.
“Where else would I be?” He muttered, pain lacing his words and forming a spiteful sounding edge that was not intended. He had meant it more as a warm gesture, but he was incapable of pleasantries in this state.
Is there anything I can do?
His elbow moved, a rushed half shove to break free of her embrace. Regret piled upon regret, as he stalked away.
Is there anything I can do?
Stop loving me. Stop forgiving me. Stop trying to make things alright. He did not deserve better. Love was a gift he had backhanded in a moment of rage — Bastila’s eyes still haunted him.
“You can stop giving me hope!” The half-formed muddled words sounded more like the desperate, violent thrashing of a drowning man trying to drag his lifeguard under, convinced they were both meant to sink.
“The Unblessed…or what’s left of them…do not have Gianna…”
Hands smearing across his face in a desperate attempt to stop talking, Brandyn growled furiously at her.
“...she is gone. Cybelle. She is gone…and she is never coming back.”
__
"I meant…"
She swallowed hard and stopped talking when the quick, spiteful words slashed into her. Cybelle had to stop herself from taking it personally, from showing the pain it caused, because that would make this pain all about her. It wasn't the time to let his hurt rule her…Her husband had just come back from war. This response…She knew it was bad. "I only meant that I'm glad my husband is with me. That's all."
It was true in every sense of the word. Her heart ached for him when he was gone, even, when searching for their daughter. Her grief did not make her love him any less.
He shoved away from her and once more she buried the slight. Buried the rejected. Her eyebrows drew together when the conversation circled back to Gianna over the war. The Unblessed didn't have her? Their baby was dead? How did he know?
Her face went unintentionally blank.
It wasn't that she didn't feel his frustration and sorrow. It wasn't that she hadn't heard him. She just couldn't give up on the one perfect precious thing their love had made. The piece that their family was desperately missing.
She pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders and followed him carefully. His face was partially shrouded by the fall of his hair and the dim light but…Something kept dragging her eyes back toward where she knew up be a metallic plate.
Cybelle did not know about the involvement of the Sith Witch to think of anything one way or another. "If the Unblessed do not have her…Someone does. If she was dead…I would know."
A mother would know.
At least that was what she told herself every time Brandyn came back empty-handed and with less confidence than before. Ever since he'd been injured and his face scarred…He'd been different. It was still Brandyn but…
It was almost like he could only see the ugliness of that scar in everything else. As if he hated her for looking at him and finding nothing but beauty. He was imperfect…But perfect in his imperfections. She loved all of him, weakness and strength, and no matter how he hurt her…
That never changed.
"Do you still love me, Brandyn?"
__
And there it was. Brandyn recoiled from her, body growing taut as his muscles tensed, and tendons in his neck strained at the prison she forced upon him. If she would let go of her hope, then he would be freed from this cycle of failure — free to claw his way back from the abyss.
A mother knew that her child was still alive. But a wife could not see that hope was destroying the soul of her husband.
He didn’t see her now for the safe harbour that so graciously offered solace despite his not deserving it. She tried to anchor him to her love. But instead that anchor rested upon his chest, pulling him down into the depths.
“Love you?” He sounded offended.
Fists balled up and his eyes narrowed, the small glimmer of yellow shining in the dark from his artificial eye.
After all he had done in the name of their love, and then as a slave to her hope, she questioned it. Questioned his dedication to her. When all the sin on his ledger was purely a reluctant transgression born of devotion.
He had missed the birth of their child, and worse he had not been there to save Gianna from whoever took her. And now, with every single trespass failing earning him reprieve from the search. She questioned his love.
“How dare you ask me that…” His head turned away. A ragged, harsh breath pushed through his clenched teeth.
“If you knew what I had done…” What you have made me do. “...you would never question it.”
__
That wasn't the response…
That wasn't what she'd hoped for. It was a question to be met with affirmation and certainty amidst pain and chaos because it was the one thing that had never wavered. Her face softened infinitely, rather than falling to rage or an expression of being wounded.
"Yet…You did not say it."
He hid so much from her, not lying outright, but she could sense the secrets. The things he did not bring home and share…The things that hosted and birthed this sudden revulsion for her.
"I didn't ask because I don't know," she responded, quiet as s mouse, but her eyes fixed over the hill which caused her to miss the yellow gleam in his. She could feel every scalding emotion he had beating against his chest from the inside. His resentment was ash in her throat, a knife to the heart. "I asked because this time…After this war you seem to have forgotten. Remember me, Bran."
"Remember us."
Not the fact that his nature drew him to battle like a moth to flame. Not that he hadn't been with her when she went into labor or when Gianna was taken. She had never blamed him because she knew him, loved him. If he did not stand on the front line he would not be who he was.
Cybelle…Would never keep him from that.
She wanted him to remember their wedding, a life day party, a proposal, and sitting beneath the citrus trees of the Shore. The countless beautiful memories that sustained life rather than destroyed it. She didn't press into his mind uninvited, knowing that he did not want her. Bloodless lips curved faintly in a smile that was not one at all…It was…
Loving someone that was untouchable as a star. Knowing she had never been enough.
Knowing his father was right.
But selfishly knowing her heart did not beat without him. Jedi were not meant to covet…But he had always been the one thing she could not help needing as much as she needed oxygen. The distant, sad smile faded.
She did not cry.
He would only hate her for it. For bringing him more guilt, more pain, when he needed it the least.
"I love you. I love you no matter what you've done or what you will do. It's not conditional."
Topaz eyes returned to him and Cybelle shifted several steps closer, slowly, closing the distance but still leaving enough room that she could not reach him. Even though she ached to. "Unless you do not love me…Don't push me away. Don't shut me out. I am yours. I have always been, yours."
She would always be.
__
It was always the same. Always forgiveness. Always a pardon for his sins. He was long passed understanding that he deserved none of it. There was a special hell for people such as him, but she would not give it to him.
Brandyn beat against his chest, out of sync with his heartbeat. "I remember every day..." He hissed. "...every minute...every second...I remember us."
And he remembered their dream. Raising Gianna with orphans that were oft assigned to the Shore. Raising her on the same hills that they had walked as lovesick youths that were too afraid to whisper their hearts plea. He didn't just see "them the couple", he saw "them the family" with his every waking thought.
"I am haunted by a child's face that I shall never know...and am commanded to seek someone who I would not recognize..."
And yet, he saw her on the hill, age five and running wild in the long grass. He saw their daughter, age fourteen noticing for the first time that boys didn't all have germs. He saw their love training with a master at the Sanctuary. He saw it all. But never her face.
"Cybelle..."
His tone spoke of exhaustion and ultimatum.
"If you love...me...then release me from this hell you call hope."
___
Still…He hadn't said it.
It was a special form of punishment to be denied the one thing she most wanted to hear when he was like this. But as always…She let it go. Her eyes swept over his face and not for the first time…She granted his request. Cybelle had told him before that she would pick up where he left off. If he could not bear it…She would, for the both of them.
"I am your wife not your jailer. Be free, Brandyn."
Her eyes closed. She would not ask him to keep looking for their daughter again. She would not breathe the name of the child they had lost if that was what he needed.
"I have been unfair to you. She was lost on m-my…", she stopped talking when her voice cracked against her will. The auburn-haired woman was trying so hard to be strong but there was a growing void in her body. A place that the light had stopped touching. A place he had once filled but…Now desperately tried to claw his way out of. "I lost her."
He remembered them but those memories felt less like succor and more like a noose around his neck. She bit the inside of her cheek, hard, to keep from breaking in front of him. She bit it until she could taste copper…
It was her fault.
The little Hapani shuffled through the tall grass and hesitantly reached for the hand that he beat his own chest with. Careful fingers drew his knuckles to her lips and she kissed the back of them light as feather. Not knowing, it was the same hand that had struck Bastila.
"...It is done."
He would never know how it felt to say that…But she wasn't blind. Even if he did find their daughter what state would he be in? What would be left behind?
Her chest felt like it was collapsing in on itself.
"... No more hell."
The hell of bearing her need to have their child home. No more, hearing her ask for news. No more feeling her silent wishes and wants, sensing her dreams, because the only one she'd ever dared to chase was…
Shattered.
Mrs. Brandyn Sal-Soren.
"Will you come inside with me? Your face seems different …Did the injury act up?"
____
“Don’t do this…” His voice still carried the heat of the moments before, his plea for release still warm in the air about them.
He was wrapped up in the anger and pain, he could not see that she was breaking before him. All he could hear was her taking what he was trying to put down.
“No. NO!”
He tore his hand away from her kiss, the moment breaking upon his heart. To have something so tender, so loving offered upon an instrument of cruelty felt so very wrong.
Cybelle bid him return to their home. Return to rebuild their life, while picking up the very same burden that he had desired to be released from.
“This is about…my…wrongs…” Breathless words took him on a frustrated march away from her. His hand reached back, pleading.
“It wasn’t…your…fault…” He breathed out, body curling up as if his core hurt more and more with each word.
When she asked about his face, Brandyn felt the rush of anger again, not at her, but at the Witch who had taken his pain, his justly earned pain, and woven in her own presence into his — without his permission. She had violated him. Taken and given when it was not hers to do so.
And now his wife also took that which was his alone. It was not her failure. It was not hers to pick up. It was his. As she picked it up, his failure became complete.
His defenses fell. The hint of the Witches touch upon his soul flaring into his aura.
Defeated. Open to her mind. The killer. The torturer. The witches pet. Stood before his wife with a thought offered in grief and anger. I didn’t want to put this down, so that you could pick it up.
____
He pulled away again.
She met every rejection from a place of understanding rather than equal hurt or hate. It didn't stop her from feeling the sting, from dying in places he couldn't see, but she would be strong for both of them. That was what a wife was meant to do. The man tearing apart at the seams standing before her was her family, her blood, her best friend, her heart and soul.
It was impossible not to see that something was incredibly wrong with him. That…Something on Thyferra had driven him past the point of rational thought, or compounded it, and the weight of his burdens made…This. This confused, hurtful stranger.
"I am not doing anything…No more hell. No more."
Her words were honest as she trailed after him, finding the hand that reached back, whether it was meant for her or not. "Bran look at me…", she pleaded softly, trying to get him to see her. To look at her…Not at the demons that were chasing him. Anger, like she had never felt, rode him for a moment, and she could almost feel the heat of it. "I don't understand…"
Gianna was her fault.
It was all her fault that their daughter hadn't been there to greet him when he woke up from his own injuries. If she had done something differently, prepared more, perhaps the labor wouldn't have been so hard. Perhaps she would have been alert.
She could have done something if she hadn't been drugged and hooked up to all those machines. Her self-loathing turned inward for a moment, spiraling, before she blinked and shut it down. Cybelle could not afford to feel that. Facts were just that, facts.
She could let them destroy her later.
"I—"
But it was then that everything changed. The heat that emanated from him suddenly burned hotter, and with it came the sensation of something very wrong. She felt as if she were knee-deep in the darkest wells of the blackest pit. Surrounding them were layers of cruelty, and the air smelled of copper for a moment. Blood. She could feel the witches' brand and the torture of it that he had endured…Guilt. Such, guilt. Flashes of anger that bordered on rage.
Cybelle breathed in deeply, eyes widening, just staring at nothing for a long moment.
I didn’t want to put this down, so that you could pick it up.
Her first instinct was to reach for him because she knew no other way. This was the man that she had loved for longer than she'd been a Jedi, more than the air she breathed. Cy moved forward and her arms locked around his neck, pulling him in, while her eyes squeezed shut. She didn't have the words, but her heaving chest would give away her confusion. Her panic.
"...What is all this?"
Strangely, there was no fear.
She was not afraid of him...Just for him.
_____________________.
They had been through so much. And this was the point in all their trials that Brandyn would finally break down in tears. The classic Sal-Soren stubbornness would finally recede, and tears would flow.
But nothing came.
No reciprocal embrace. No pleading for forgiveness. Only the anger, the simmering rage, of a man that knew he deserved none of this. Deserved no softness. No kindness. How could she accept him? Want him near?
One arm stayed contorted behind his back, and the other limp at his side. Her warmth was an affront to him. Forgiveness and compassion to a murder had always been her greatest sin.
The anger honed. A finer point to the rage that he felt like he could rein in, give some degree of control.
He did not want this. But this is what he was.
Their happiness had been an oasis amidst a life of torment. All memories of happiness, joy, laughter and love seemed to slip away. And he let it go. It was all a lie anyway.
“You should never have received me back after what I did,” he said coldly. The cowardice of blaming her love and compassion hidden beneath layers of darkness.
The murder. He should have stayed in prison. She should not have loved him. Their happiness. Their love. It had been stolen time. Destined to shatter. If she only knew how to let him go, none of this would have happened.
“You need to stop…”
His words were flat, disassociated from the moment.
“...stop forgiving me.”
Again, he tried to push from her embrace, but her grip was just tight enough that he would have needed a shove he would refuse to give, even now.
”Please…”
A little light. A single memory. Words whispered long ago. “I will always choose the path that leads to you.” His promise haunted him. A cycle he was doomed to repeat.
Anger stirred anew. His teeth ground together. Anger at his promise. Anger at the truth that it revealed. Anger at himself — finally — for all that he had done. To himself. To her. To them.
He blamed the most beautiful part of his life for all the scars that he had brought upon himself.
His head tipped back, staring at the sky as if it might grant him the sweet release he craved. Nothing came but the blank stare of the stars, condemning him with their small pinpricks of light in the darkness.
He blinked a few times, having only truly looked through Cybelle until now. And then, his eyes cleared. Anger lines around his eyes morphed into lines of worry.
“I don’t know how to stop this…” He whispered, as he slumped into her embrace.
____
“I’m...Selfish.”
It was all she could offer when the coldness of his words worked their way down her spine. She couldn’t help but forgive him the moment something went wrong because he was her everything. It was what made her question her work as a Jedi—Question everything, really. The point of her life felt clear. To love him, to be with him. “I can’t stop...”
She would always forgive him.
Cybelle could do anything he asked, but walk away. He hadn’t pulled away from her this time, but she could feel the desire. She was starting to wonder if her touch was actually causing him pain or if he really, truly, had grown to despise her. Just when she might have loosened her hold, his body seemed to give in. He stopped fighting her...
And a sob escaped.
The brunette woman had tried so hard not to cry, not to feel it, but constantly being pushed aside and kept in the dark had taken a toll. The dark, horrible anger made her head feel like it was spinning, and the varying sensations that came with it...All awful. All terrible. She shuddered while she swallowed hard to stop it, her own eyes turning to the sky, brushing slender fingers through his hair while blinking rapidly.
Pushing back tears. She could not cry, could not. Now was not the time.
“I’m here...”
It might not have been the reassurance that it once was, his safe place, but she pressed a kiss to the side of his head while trying to sort the images he had sent her. It had been too much to take it, and with so much emotion running through him, the pictures weren’t clear. She could just feel him. Brandyn. “I love you. I love you, and I’m here. I’m always here.”
What was he trying to stop?
The red-hot anger was strong enough...Was it that?
“Please talk to me...Please.”
____
He felt it now. Her breaking. The fissures in her resolve. The burden she carried — him. And now she asked for more. More of the knowledge that would only intensify the burden.
This was something that Brandyn could not permit.
Brandyn drew the Force inward, folding his presence tightly around the inferno in his chest until nothing escaped. The anger remained. The resentment at life lingered. But it was his alone. No other needed to bear his burden. Lest of all his Cybelle.
“I love you, too,” he said, the truth of it laced with a detachment that the words had never known.
“We can talk...but not now.” His promise rang hollow. A can kicked down the road.
“But I am home now,” he said, as his arms finally wrapped around her.
____
“...No...”
But the singular word of denial was so soft...Even with her lips near his ear—It might not register right away. Cybelle could feel him shutting down. It was like watching the lights in the windows of a house go out, one by one, until those warm, welcoming rooms were nothing more than cold, empty spaces. “Please don’t...”
But he did.
It was to her credit that she didn’t flinch at the formal confession of love that should have made her heart sing. His arms wrapped around her, a perfect circle, but it didn’t chase the shadows away. It didn’t erase the anger that had flooded from him and still lingered in her. It didn’t erase the fact that she had literally felt him locking away pieces of himself. She couldn’t complain. Cybelle had walled him away from her pain, but this...
She shivered hard enough for Brandyn to feel it.
It was a horrible thing to have exactly what she had asked for. His love. His embrace...While knowing he was somewhere else. Knowing now that...Some part of him hated her. Hated her so much that he turned into a robot instead of her husband, because it was the only way he could stomach her being close. She could only hope that...
The larger part of him, loved her. Still thought of her as his wife. His Cybelle.
Slowly she settled back on her feet with one hand slipping to his shoulder. Her eyes were luminous beneath the starlight, a little too shimmery, but it was clear that she was doing all she could to stay in control. To be the person that he needed when the world fell apart. Someone strong enough to bear his burdens without complaint, no matter the darkness, no matter the pain. There was always a little light for him in her chest that refused to go out.
Hesitant fingers reached up to touch his cheek that wasn’t laced with metal, worried, that it might hurt. It looked so much more raw than it had before... “Are you?”
Cybelle readily accepted that he was not ready to talk yet...
But the distance.
He left a galaxy between them, which, was crueler than being pushed away. Crueler than his anger, than his hate. At least then...She knew he cared enough to do either one.
“Are you home?”
____
He heard her complaints. Her even felt them. But he was done giving her his burdens. Any he put down, she immediately picked up. His request was for them to start figuring out how to move on from losing Gianna, not for her to retain hope, but never speak of it.
Untenable. Even in her arms, the moment felt like the death of something.
She shivered in his arms. Again, something he had done to her. Her love kept her close. His toxicity caused her pain, grief and suffering.
With all his heart, blackened as it may now be, he loved the very idea of Cybelle through and through. She was his perfect thought, a perfect singular dream of brightness and levity. And he had put flame to that as well.
He pulled from the embrace, even as she reached to touch his face. Her question brought the truth to the surface. He no longer knew where home was. He no longer felt at home at the Shore, this place of love and brightness. His garden waited for him, the scent of Cybelle’s lemon bars filling the air with lightness and hope and none of it felt like it was his anymore.
His hand pressed hers against his face. The pain there — a permanent feature of his being — was a daily reminder of his failure.
“I don’t know…”
And with the sentence left unfinished on the wind, Brandyn stepped back, out of her reach, turned…and walked into the darkness.
From here, to the Naboo Cultural Exchange
