Private Aftershocks

[Briana Sal-Soren]

She recalled little of the details surrounding their escape from Thyferra, aside from the jarring leap of the ship as they took off from the surface, paired with the echo of her brother’s agony, rapidly crowding inside her mind. The mental suffocation of that darkness, and the sheer willpower it took to pilot herself and Rik to safety, left little room for coherent thought. She'd flown almost entirely on instinct, until the stars stretched into brilliant lines and hyperspace swallowed them whole. Only then, as the distance between her and Brandyn grew, did her mind finally begin to quiet.

Exhaustion settled into her bones almost immediately, accompanied by the familiar, unnatural chill of space. For several moments, Briana remained hunched over the controls, staring blankly into the swirling blue beyond the viewport. The Force had returned to them, but after pouring so much of herself into holding the Republic and its Jedi together, fighting through its absence, and enduring the violent intrusion of the dyad when it came back, she'd nothing left with which to reach for it.

Her muscles felt weak, and every thought moved as though wading through a water so deep, she could not see, nor reach, the bottom.

There were things she probably should have said to Rik, comforts she should have offered. He'd watched an old friend die below, escaped fields crawling with horrors capable of turning the living into monsters. But the cockpit was deathly still, and whatever kind words she meant to offer, laid somewhere far beyond the reach of her exhaustion. Briana swallowed and looked up when the navicomputer confirmed their course, immediately working the controls again, before fumbling with the restraints and freeing herself.

“Autopilot’s set,” she managed, her voice little more than a rasp. “I’m going to clean up."

Each step toward her quarters felt heavier than the last. But once the door hissed shut behind her, Briana was quick to seal her ruined clothing away for decontamination and step beneath the shower, turning the water hot enough to sting as she scrubbed Thyferra’s smoke, soil, and sweat from her skin until it ran clear. Still, the phantom residue of the planet, and of everything that'd happened down there, clung to her in a way no amount of scrubbing could ever erase. Emerging from the fresher, and with her hair still damp, she barely made it to the bed before collapsing onto the mattress, sleep immediately dragging her under.

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She lay still for a long while after she'd woken up, staring into the blackness and listening to the subdued hyperdrives of the Vere while trying to piece her thoughts together.

Her hand slid across the blanket to reach for her datapad for the umpteenth time, checking to see if the message she’d sent Vizion was answered yet, clinging to the faint hope that a response might be waiting... only to find there was nothing there.

Outgoing Message: Vizion Trozky
From: Briana Sal-Soren

Hey, I hope you're all right,

I've been worried about you ever since you sent out that message about the Force on Thyferra and then went radio silent afterwards. What happened up there? Were you hurt? At least tell me you're okay and what's going on. In more than a single sentence, preferably. We haven't really spoken since I left with the Vanguard, and the few times we have, you've seemed...distant. I told you I missed you, and you didn't even answer.

I know the circumstances are less than ideal right now... but is everything okay between us?

Briana stared at the unanswered message until the screen dimmed on its own. There was nothing she could do about Vizion’s silence except wait, tempting as it was to send him a follow up message. Her thoughts swam with anxiety, trying to grasp some tangible reason for it, beyond the one that sat at the front of her mind: that he'd already decided she wasn't worth all this trouble.

It felt like she was watching her life come apart in slow motion, but the more she tried to grab for all the unraveling threads, the easier they seemed to slip through her fingers.

A noise from beyond her door reminder Briana she was not alone. Rik was here, and the memory of leaving him alone in the cockpit sat uneasily beneath her ribs, pulling her from the tumult of her own thoughts. Enough that it finally pulled her from bed.

Pushing aside the blankets, Briana tugged on the first pair of clean clothes she could find, and dragged her fingers through the knots in her sleep-tangled hair, growing frustrated with the process before giving up altogether and throwing it into a makeshift ponytail. The datapad remained clutched in her hand as she stepped out of her quarters, her thumb instinctively waking the darkened screen before the door even finished hissing shut behind her. With a sigh, she made sure the sound was on and pocketed the device before making the short trek to Rik's quarters.

Pausing outside his door, she gave it a gentle knock.

“Rik?” she called softly. “Can I come in?”

TAG: Rik Perris

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[Rik Perris]

When Rik linked back up with Briana on their way to escape Thyferra, the state he could see and sense she was in made him want to do whatever he could for her. He was unaware of what happened to her after he left her to face that Dark Lord alone, but she at least looked unharmed.

Still, when they reached the ship, he offered to handle piloting duties, but she didn't reply. She hadn't replied to a single thing he'd said the entire way to the ship and that stoked his concern greatly. Maybe she needed time to process whatever it was... not that he didn't also. The loss of Cahir was still so fresh, and knowing he was at peace in the Force only lessened that pain so far.

But he would be able to cope. He would be able to accept it, give the process of grief its due, paid in time, and the memory of his Togruta comrade its due respect. Cahir was far from the first friend to be taken from him, but it never got easier. He never became numb.

But not every Jedi was fortunate to be as resilient as him, and so he'd long-since taken it upon himself to look out for them.

The flight out of Thyferra was also wordless, until she set the autopilot, their destination locked in, and excused herself to clean up. After she was gone, Rik remained in the cockpit for a while, before heading to the room he'd taken aboard the vessel for some rest before starting his post-combat maintenance.

By the time there was a knock on his door, much later, Rik was dressed in regular clothing, and partway into cleaning his armour. He paused, listening.

“Rik?” she called softly. “Can I come in?”

He resumed his work briefly, finishing up going over a crevice with the narrow brush from his maintenance kit, "Yeah, come on in," he replied, pausing once again after he spoke and standing to set aside his work, half-turning towards the door as it opened, and seeing just how unkempt she was. It urged him to say something.

"You doin' alright?"

Briana Sal-Soren​

 

[Briana Sal-Soren]

"You doin' alright?"

A muscle in Briana’s jaw flexed, and she lifted a hand to smooth the bumps from her hair, his question reminding her just how disheveled she must look. She hadn’t cared about her appearance when she’d first left her room, but standing before Rik now, the propriety and decorum she’d abandoned began to reassert themselves. Suddenly, she greatly disliked having the evidence of her inner turmoil so plainly on display where it could be scrutinized.

"You mean aside from the Republic neutering us in the middle of a battlefield? I don't know." Her tone was brittle with annoyance, "Are any of us alright, after that?"

She blew a frustrated breath through her nose and shook her head, moving further into the room as the door swished closed behind her.

"I'm sorry, you didn't deserve that."

Her arms folded over her chest as she looked away. After a moment, she reached for some little unknown device on his desk, turning it idly between her fingers while she wrestled with how much she should tell him about what had happened planetside. Where could she even begin?

It was only as she turned the device over in her palms that she noticed the deep crescents carved into her skin, left behind by her own nails when she’d been desperate to anchor herself in a tangible distraction from the pain splintering through her head.

"I can't make sense of anything anymore, you know? Sometimes I feel like we're spinning our wheels."

A soft ping sounded from her pocket and Briana’s heart leapt into her throat.

"Sorry, one second..."

She pulled out her datapad almost quickly enough to fumble it, and the moment she saw Vizion’s name, everything else in the room seemed to recede.

Hey.

I don't know if I can find the words that convey just how immensely glad I am that you're okay.

I'm not hurt, but I'd rather not... I don't want to do this over messages, Bri. That's not what you deserve. You mean too much to me.

Please come home.

Relief flooded through her first, having finally received the confirmation that he was alive and well, but then her eyes returned to the middle of the message.

I don’t want to do this over messages.

Whatever fragile hope had risen in her began to collapse beneath the weight of those words. They should have comforted her, but they sounded painfully like the gentle preamble before the executioners blade fell, a way to soften the blow so that she would understand he wasn’t leaving because he didn’t care.

She wanted to throw up.

Her thumb hovered over the screen while she read the message again, and then once more, before pocketing it.

“It's Viz...He's okay, and wants me to come home, but.” she said at last. Whatever remained of her composure crumbled as she lifted her eyes to Rik. “I think…” Her voice caught around the admission. “I think he’s going to leave me.”

TAG: Rik Perris

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