Sleep had not come easily ever since Gianna had been taken. If he were honest, it had been before then. But in hindsight it was easier to blame his crumbling psyche entirely on her loss. It was easier than admitting that his marriage was struggling. That Cybelle was changing. That something was wrong. Something that their love could not fix.
He had told himself it was temporary. A single night without waking drenched in sweat. A single night where Gianna's cries did not echo from an empty room. The underworld contact had not asked questions, and Brandyn had not offered answers.
Deep within the near-comatose, drug-induced state, Brandyn found himself in another world. One familiar, yet with the taint of decay. It was the old estate. Before it had been destroyed in the cataclysm.
It still held many of the hallmarks of an operating estate, yet the buildings showed signs of cracks. And there was no noise. Not even the rustling of the leaves that clearly moved in the breeze.
It felt like a place that should never have existed. It felt like a place from a life that was not his own.
But the pain was gone. The ache of his face, the constant reminder beneath the plate, the phantom weight he had carried for so long. Gone.
Yet something had vanished with it. Colour absent. Sound seemed distant. The estate remained standing, but it was stripped of something essential. The laughter, the warmth, the little imperfections that made it a home.
Life itself had become the price of his relief.
☾ ✧ VELDA ✧ ☽
Brandyn's dreams were always interesting. Sometimes she would appear as herself, sometimes as Cybelle, or anyone else in his life, even the occasional random stranger.
It almost seemed like a game by now, just to see if he could figure it out. But that was not the case in this one, at least not right now.
Ever observant, she watched him as she sat on the staircase. Not in disguise as Cybelle, or any other person. Just herself.
Her clothing? Simple, a flowing black dress, no hood, no attempt to hide.
At first, she didn't utter a word, just being content to watch him.
A quaint stillness...a welcome reprieve. A rarity, given the situation Brandyn now lived in.
Just before the wind of change picks up again. Only for those winds to push his wounded heart to resume searching for his truth.
But not the truth.
Perhaps she was feeling sentimental within the moment. The estate did hold memories of a simpler time for them both.
Except it was easy for her to feel that way, it was Brandyn after all.
Everything seemed ever so slightly faded, drained of all color and vibrancy. And yet it didn't seem to bother her in the slightest.
Her voice broke the silence between them. Not loud, just smooth, familiar. "How interesting..." She gestured toward the bottom of the stairway. "That's where we first met, as little kids." Her brown eyes glanced at Brandyn. "A much simpler time...before Cybelle."
"Now it's just a memory. This estate seems like the scene of a playground fading."
༺═───⋆༻ ⚜ BRANDYN ⚜ ༺⋆───═༻
He felt her presence before she spoke. And still, he was surprised. He should have been. Velda seemed to delight in haunting him. It was rare though, thankfully most of the time he saw only Cybelle...the only light he had left in this dimming universe.
"Everything used to be so easy," he muttered, but did not permit himself to engage with her.
As he did when he noticed her presence on other occasions, Brandyn woke up...except...he could not.
"What have you done to me?" He said, accusing before considering his own culpability.
☾ ✧ VELDA ✧ ☽
What had she done to him? That was his burning question. Really, the only thing of note that he inquired about.
She supposed that to him, it seemed so simple: Sith Lords must always be the villains. A part of her wished she had kept that secret back on Corellia.
Then again, had she done so, then she wouldn't be seeing this side of him, probably. Or regardless of the choice she made, perhaps seeing this was always inevitable.
"Nothing...what I have done is stand by and watch you destroy yourself, while your soul rots away. What I have done is permit your free will to cast everyone aside except... her. What I have done is attempt to warn you repeatedly about her, apparently the only one that has. Warnings that have gone ignored and unheeded...."
She angled her head, feeling curious. "What have you done to yourself?"
༺═───⋆༻ ⚜ BRANDYN ⚜ ༺⋆───═༻
Where his blood should have boiled and his anger rage at Velda, Brandyn felt dulled. Impotent. For the first time in years, he did not recoil from the slight against Cybelle.
But he did not stoop so far as considering its merit.
"I have tried to do my best," he said, the emotion that the words should hold feeling stiffled.
He approached her. Eyes still avoiding hers. And looked about the estate, that seemed to be falling apart in slow motion.
"I have loved my wife. Protected her. Fought for the Order. Trained my Padawans. I have worked the land that fate gave me...and yet..."
Her looked now towards the Sith.
"...fate seems doomed to torment me."
Emptiness filled his heart where passion ought dwell.
"I was happy...for a moment..."
☾ ✧ VELDA ✧ ☽
She wanted to laugh in his face. Love, protection, duty, all of the hallmarks of the hero that he saw himself as. Something that she always found endearing about him.
Even if it all were delusional.
The Sith in her wanted to tell him to become intimately acquainted with his torment, embrace it, and then shatter it, to become something greater.
But she wasn't here as a Sith. She was here as the woman who secretly used to love him. Even if he never knew it. Maybe a part of her still did, deep down, but she'd likely never admit it.
She watched him ascend the steps closer to her, and her plush lips curled upward at the edges. "Love is a cruel mistress, of course."
"Choice..." As she sang the word, she let it hang in the air, just a breath between them now. "I chose to be a Sith, you chose to be a Jedi. Choice is everything..."
"I don't even blame her for coming between what we could have become. She is just a girl in love. You had a choice, and you brought her into this."
"Cybelle, your duty to the Jedi...all these are choices that you have made. You probably don't even understand why I haunt you in your dreams like a churchyard shadow every night."
༺═───⋆༻ ⚜ BRANDYN ⚜ ༺⋆───═༻
A rock cracked behind him causing Brandyn to jump, not just within his dream, but upon the stained mattress in the underworld hostel where he lay, slightly askew across the bed. His eyes flickered, almost opening, before the dream pulled him back in.
The very stairs on which he stood had cracked beneath him. A red glow rose from beneath his feet. He did not move. Fate and time, and the nothingness...dulled his edge.
Half aware of his need to refute Velda's twisting of reality, Brandyn could only sigh in rebuttal.
"I don't know why you do this, Velda," Brandyn said, taking another step closer. He didn't want to understand, but the protest died on his lips.
He could neither appreciate Velda for her beauty, charm and efficient corruption, nor be repulsed by it. Dull, dull, dull. He was barely aware of the moment.
"I love her more than my own life. I love our daughter. Our home. Our life."
The ruins of the family estate cracked again, pulling his languid gaze towards a broken pillar that tumbled upwards into the sky.
☾ ✧ VELDA ✧ ☽
His dream walk scene in his old family estate was crumbling away, slowly tearing itself apart.
She could, of course, probably counter it and stabilize the environment, but what would be the fun in that?
She noticed he stopped coming closer due to the crack beneath him.
"Part of why I do it is to feel your heartbeat." She glanced down at the crack and back at him. "Just to check and see if Cybelle hasn't murdered you yet."
Then what he said next earned a reaction of disgust. "You don't love her at all. You're just terrified of who you will become without the burden of her."
Love indeed can be cruel. "You made that choice, and there is your torment."
She watched him finding his listless demeanor from the start of this charming dream walk rather peculiar. As one more far piece of the estate warped and tore away
"Where's the rage in defense of her? At least in our earlier talks when you were screaming at me, you felt alive."
For a split second, she saw it through the haze of his vision. He appeared to be in some room, a slum of some sort, in a bed.
"Ooooohhhh," cooed quietly from her in slight surprise of her findings.
"Here you are, trying to get some sleep in a far off hostel, on a worn out mattress. Dreaming about your family's old ruined estate, and you have the nerve to talk about a happy home and deep love. Really??"
One more fissure formed at the bottom of the stairs while she was thinking through the moment, and then decided.
"I'll be close by..." She came to stand, and descended the stairs passing right by him.
She looked over her shoulder. "Sleep well..." She took one last casual glance at the estate ruins "Or not..." And then she disappeared.
Meanwhile, crimson smoke and fog began to coalesce within his hostel as he slept. And then from that mist...Velda emerged. In her sith attire, hood down.
She walked to the edge of the bed, observing his sleeping visage. He seemed fine and peacefully sleeping as of this moment.
She planned to be gone by the morning, and to Brandyn, it would all be just another dream.
