Private Ardor's Sorrow: My Greatest Joy

[Cybelle Sal-Soren]

TAG: Brandyn Sal-Soren

The night was quiet.

Naboo was peaceful as it typically was, with the evening air full of crisp citrus and the echo of little crickets. There wasn't a cloud in the sky with stars glimmering overhead. It was the kind of peace that usually soothed her when nightmares crept in, resting in her childhood bedroom. She felt safe here. Content. Loved in the presence of parents who had wanted her, cared for her, when no one else in the galaxy seemed to notice an abandoned Hapani child. It should have been another night, like any other.

Only something woke her with a gasp.

For a moment, she didn't understand and could only feel the racing of her heart. Her breathing was short, and something inside her ached. Not the soft, familiar kicks and pulls of the child she carried but a sharp and foreign pain that wasn't her own. It burned through their bond like lightning flowing across still water. She shivered. Brandyn.

Her fingers gripped the sheets. The connection between them had always been gentle, even after his parents had passed away. Even when he had taken revenge for their death. This was suddenly raw and electric, and it flooded her with agony and fear. Cybelle tried to rationalize it with herself, trying to quell her panic. Of course, it couldn't be physical pain. It just couldn't be. But it was deep, wounding, and all too real. "Bran…", the whisper was full of plea, coupled with the whimper of a wounded kitten.

The next wave hit her before she could brace for it. Pain twisted through her abdomen, sharp and unfamiliar, stealing every bit of her breath away. She curled instinctively inward, holding her stomach with varying degrees of panic, worry, surfacing for their baby. For the man she loved more than the air she breathed. The Force around her trembled while it reacted to her distress…She tried to calm herself, to find her center, as Master Aegis had taught her time and time again. 'Breathe'. Find peace…But there was no peace.

Only the echo of his pain.

Tears blurred her vision as she tried to reach Brandyn through the ether, tried to find him in the dark. Nothing answered her but distance.

"Bran, please…"

The pain struck again, sharper now, lower, and more urgent. It faded after several moments…But then the cramping started again. Worse. Realization dawned on her slowly and terribly. 'No…Not now. Please, not now.', she thought to herself, pleading to nothing, while she forced herself upright. Her breathing hitched, and the room started swimming. Something didn't feel right…

Was it supposed to hurt this badly?

"It's all right…", she whispered, though, her sweet voice shook from the bravery she tried to fake. "It's all right…We're going to be all right…"

But she wasn't sure she believed it.

It was only a few moments later that Gianna Aegis burst into the room to find Cybelle barely conscious and crying softly about the baby, about Brandyn, delirious, but very obviously going into labor. She didn't respond to commands or instructions but kept trying to refuse them. As if it could somehow stop the process—As if she could wait for her husband.

He was supposed to be there.

He was supposed to be there.

"I need Brandyn…I need him. I can't…Go away—I need him…I…"

He was supposed to be there.

He wasn't there.

He was hurting, she couldn't help, and he wasn't there… "Bran…"

"I—"

 

[Brandyn Sal-Soren]

// Departing Atrisia System
// Republic Medical Frigate Carazan
// Med Bay 1

​

The light was white.

Not the kind of white that comforted, but the kind that burned. The environment was sterile and unrelenting, washing everything in cold clarity. Monitors hummed. Oxygen hissed. A rhythmic tone clicked with each fragile heartbeat. The air reeked faintly of antiseptic and ozone. It was the sort of stillness that only came after violence had already spent itself.

Brandyn lay beneath the glare, motionless save for the shallow rise and fall of his chest. His once-handsome features were obscured beneath bandage and grafting mesh, a constellation of bruised metal and pinked flesh. The left side of his face had been stripped raw, the skin scorched away where energy and shrapnel had struck its passing blow.

The Ithorian surgeon, whose voice came in low, harmonic reverberations, moved with a calm precision that seemed almost reverent. Two surgical droids hovered beside him, silent extensions of himself.

“The impact was glancing,” one of them noted flatly.

“Had it struck full-on, half the cranial mass would be gone.”

“Eye integrity...destroyed. Dermal loss at forty-seven percent.”

Every instinct of the surgeons said that the man before him should be dead. And yet, he was not dead. Because he refused not to be.

Each time his heart faltered, the Force trembled through him, as if something, or someone, was calling him back from the dark. In the stillness of the medbay, a pulse beat that wasn’t entirely his own. A whisper. A breath. Bran...

His fingers twitched. Somewhere far away, stars shimmered against a Naboo sky. He saw her face, heard her cry his name...and then the sound fractured under a sudden surge of pain as the cauterizer flared, sealing what could not be saved. The agony was absolute, all-consuming. What remained of his vision when absolute white and the dark as consciousness threatened to wane. But he held onto it. He used the pain. Because pain meant there was still a thread between them.

"Keep him under," the Ithorian murmured, though the command was unnecessary. Brandyn's body was already slipping toward the edge again, his pulse stumbling.

A voice spoke, someone that was on the ship with him, sitting at his side, but he did not know who. "Stay with me, Sal-Soren. You're not finished yet."

His breathing hitched once, ragged. Beneath the hum of the machinery, a single tear traced down the uninjured side of his face, vanishing into the sterile sheets. His consciousness flickered, reaching, no stretching and searching for her warmth in the cold. He found only distance and the echo of her fear.

She's afraid, he thought dimly, for me. For our child.

His lips moved soundlessly. "Cybelle…" Then, nothing but the hiss of respirators, the cold white light, and the steady, mechanical rhythm that refused to stop.

He wasn't supposed to be alive. But he was. And that would have to be enough — for now.

| TAG: Cybelle Sal-Soren |

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[Cybelle Sal-Soren]

TAG: Brandyn Sal-Soren

The first thing she noticed was the quiet.

It wasn't the way Naboo usually sounded at night. Instead, there was only a soft, padded stillness that was broken by distant beeps and the faint whisper of circulating air. Her eyelids felt impossibly heavy. When she finally mustered the strength to open them, she winced and shrank back into the covers. The light was dimmed, low, and filtered through pale transparisteel panels instead of burning white…But she could barely handle it.

Her body hurt.

It didn't feel sharp or urgent like it had when a lightsaber had slid through her chest on Exegol…But she ached everywhere. It was bone-deep that made even breathing something she had to remember how to do. She swallowed, throat dry, and tried to move. Her right arm trembled uselessly at her side. Then…She felt warmth. The inexplicable warmth of the sun, even though she was indoors. "Gianna…?"

She sounded like she was trying to talk through a mouthful of sawdust

"It's okay…I'm here."

There was a new warmth, next, pressing against her body that felt like it had been run through a thresher. Small and fragile. Her gaze dropped, slowly, while fear spread through the haze until she saw the tiny bundle nestled against her chest. "Oh…", the sound left her as a broken breath. The baby was wrapped in soft blankets with pale yellow fabric tucked carefully beneath a shock of dark hair. She was so small. One little hand had escaped the swaddle, and a finger curled around one of her own, reflexively, anchoring itself to the world.

To her.​

A sob wrenched free before she could stop it. Her free hand shook as she reached for the little life leaning against her body, held steady by Master Aegis. Cybelle was terrified. Afraid…While shaking fingertips brushed against a tiny cheek. The Force stirred faintly around them, not in alarm this time, but in a fragile, exhausted huh. "I.."

"She…She's all right?"

"She's perfect."

"A-Are you sure? It was too s-soon…"

"I'm sure."

Cybelle felt her chest tighten painfully as love rushed in and continued to cry, silently, to keep from disturbing the little one she had been waiting so long to meet. She loved her like nothing else, instantly, and it was overwhelming. Dizzying. It felt too big for her ruined and aching body. Tears slid quietly into her hair, onto the blanket, and perhaps even onto an impossibly perfect little face. And then she reached, instinctively, not with her hands…But through the bond she shared with her husband. She was looking for the place Brandyn always was.

Nothing answered.

The warmth that had lived there for years, the steady, grounding presence that she leaned on, was missing. Her breathing hitched, and panic started slicing through her love and exhaustion. She searched again, desperately this time, pushing past the pain, past the haze, and past the warnings her body screamed…Begging her to rest. "Brandyn?"

"Where is he? Gianna…I can't feel him. I can't feel him."

She felt the weight of her child being lifted from her body, and her panic increased while she reached up and tried to rip the equipment away from her body. "G-Give her back—!", the garbled words were met with Gianna trying to take her hands to calm her while she continued to struggle. "Shh…It's okay. It's okay. He was hurt, but he's on his way home…He's there. You're still weak...You lost a lot of blood. Just close your eyes and breathe with me…"

"He's there."

"No he isn't—No he isn't—", Cybelle cried out, raw and hyperventilating, with every inch of her pushing against the flame-haired woman that had cared for her all her life. She had to get to her daughter, she had to find her husband. "P-Please…Please I—"

There.​

There was a faint blip through the universe that made her cry out through her tears, this time, with some measure of relief. Cybelle traced the line of that bond, over and over, strengthening the pathway until she could feel her husband again. Her body began to fall slack until she slipped out of Giselle's hands. Back to the pillow, with a solid thud. Dimly…She was aware of Giselle calling for help. Hemorrhaging? Feet rushing in. People shouting. Her sweet, beautiful baby, crying. She had her father's hair…

<<I love you.>>​

And then nothing.

 

[Brandyn Sal-Soren]

He had insisted on walking from his hover chair to sit in the chair beside her bed. Refused to be held, coddled or otherwise supported. He was her strength and if she were to open her eyes, he would not have his wife see him enter the room weak. Not now. Not after.

She had been out for some time. The loss of blood had made her weak. The revelation she would face upon waking would not aide in her recovery. His head was spinning, unable to come to terms with all that had transpired.

His face ached, until it didn't, but then the ache was replaced with the burning. He concentrated on the Force, trying to heal the damage that medicine could not find the answer too. They had told him it was still burning, and would for some time. The implant covering his face treated, and monitored the wound, while protecting it from foreign contaminants.

But it was his heart that hurt more than his face. To see Cybelle connected to sundry tubes, and monitors. To know he missed the birth of their daughter...and...nothing else. Nothing else was wrong.

Ignorance was a choice. But ignorance could not be created posthumously. Denial though, denial was the only medicine for the wound in his heart.

He had not been here early enough to be with Cybelle for the delivery. That was all.

Brandyn lifted his hand, it trembled as he reached for hers. His fingers wrapped around her soft, delicate digits. He could not remember how it felt for her to touch his face. Happiness, joy, had all departed when they told him that he had missed the delivery...and nothing else was wrong.

Their baby girl was born early. There were naming her Gianna Teyla. After their mothers. She would be in Cybelle's soft hands soon enough. Cybelle would ~~one day~~ be able to nurse her. Care for her. Listen to laugh. Listen to her...cry.

Nothing else is wrong.

He sat with the metal plate facing away from her. It would not be the way she saw him when she woke. She would not see that, and fear for him. They had enough to fear with...nothing else is wrong.

"Mister Sal-Soren..."

Brandyn startled. Squeezing Cy's hand more than he ought to have. He looked at her first, to apologize, and then turned his face away so she wouldn't see him like this. Finally his eyes looked up at the intruder.

"...we have alerted Republic Security. The grounds are being searched."

Why were they saying this? Nothing else was wrong.

"The camera footage has been retrieved. Would you like to come and see if for yourself?"

"Camera footage?" Brandyn said, voice more of a choke than fully formed words.

Nothing else is wrong. Why are they offering this?

The security guard looked awkward. Like, Brandyn should know something, but the guard was being forced to say it out loud.

"Yes...sir...footage of the person who took your child..."

Brandyn stared at the man blankly. Nothing else was wrong.

Cybelle Sal-Soren

​

 

[Cybelle Sal-Soren]

TAG: Brandyn Sal-Soren

"That's not…me-e..I'm no...not a mister...."

The world came back in fragments.

"I-I'm…mm…a..."

Mumbled words…Sweet, dreams. A delirious giggle...Remembering when her boyfriend became her husband. Forever.

"Miss...M-Mrs. Bran…dyn…Sal-Sor…en."

It wasn't like the last time, where, she'd drifted slowly out of sleep. Her eyes didn't open and the hyper-clean air that she breathed in through a thin apparatus burned her nostrils. Her breathing hitched while awareness crept in, pain blooming dully, but not as sharp and keen as it had been. Cybelle stirred. Her lashes fluttered, eyes struggling open, and light leaked in at the edges of her vision…Oh…It hurt. Everything, hurt so much.

She winced, and a small sound escaped her before she could stop it. And then…

Wonderful, warmth, brought by a hand in her own. Her fingers twitched, and she visibly relaxed when they found a strong, familiar hand, that drew a tired smile across sallow features. It was so small and thin…But full of love. The kind that was bone-deep, tender, and everlasting. Even while barely coherent, her heart felt like it was ready to overflow. "Bran…"

The word was barely a sound, scraped raw from a throat that, up until recently, had too many tubes shoved down it. "Mmm…Brandyn.", her eyes fluttered closed again, as if, she had been waiting just for him. Now that he was here…It was okay. Everything, was okay. It was then that her memories flooded back, one by one, along with her panic…His pain. Their sweet, perfect baby.

"Oh—", she gasped out, choked, while she grasped his hand tighter. Her chest began to rise and fall rapidly, and her vitals started spiking, sensation overwhelming, just knowing that it was his hand wrapped around hers. The fact that he was awake, alive, with her, was everything in that moment. She loved him so hard, so fiercely…"You're here…Really…Here…"

Her gaze drifted, unfocused at first, then it slowly sharpened. She saw the way he sat angled away from her, but didn't think too much of it in the moment. Cybelle was just overwhelmed with relief that he was there, that she wasn't dreaming, and that her beautiful, amazing husband had come home to her. As promised. But…It wasn't all sunshine. He wasn't as happy as she was…Why wasn't he happy? She searched for him through their bond…

Was he hurting?

"Are you…Are you okay? I couldn't feel you…I was so…I was scared. I thought…"

Her worries came out in a jumble, soft, but with some sense of urgency. If he was hurt, he should be resting, not staying up next to her like this. His posture was so rigid…But her breathing grew uneven once more as her memories solidified. Her free hand moved toward her abdomen on reflex, fingers trembling, when they pressed lightly there. Her stomach wasn't flat, but it was…Empty. Her eyes brightened with sudden awareness—"Can I see her?"

"I was holding her…", Cybelle whispered, lips dry, while confusion threaded through exhaustion. She could feel Brandyn…But not their daughter. "She was right here…She held on to my hand… She has your hair…Brandyn, she—"

Her voice faltered.

It wasn't like before, when she was searching for Bran, and his presence was so faint that trying to find it was like gossamer slipping through her fingers. The space where her baby should be in her heart, in her mind, was hollow. Her newborn should have glowed when she closed her eyes…Like a little candle flame. "She should be close…She needs us…"

"I should feel her, shouldn't I?"

Cybelle's brow furrowed, but she pushed down on the bed to try to sit up anyway. Frustrated with herself…What was wrong with her? Slowly, she twisted her hand that was still wrapped with her husbands and she brought the back of his to her lips to kiss it. "I'm sorry…I wish I were stronger…", tough, like him, because he'd obviously gone through something awful…But he was still here. Always, her strength. Then she figured it out, like a light bulb, it would be easy to miss a little light ear her adoptive mother...She was so bright. "Gianna…She's with Gianna, right?"

Gianna with Gianna…It made her smile, lopsided, and hopeful…Still a little under the influence of medication. Oh, how she loved him. How she loved them…Cybelle would never, ever, let either of them out of her sight again.

"Can you call her?"

 

[Brandyn Sal-Soren]

He felt how Cybelle sought for strength. He dared not speak of how little remained within him. For her sake, he would retain the facade of control. There would be time to fall apart later. In private. When no one would be hurt by his weakness. Now that she was awake, there was no room for his selfishness anymore.

"I'm here, my love," he said, squeezing her hand but still not turning to face her.

Her semi-conscious stream of thought set about making sense of her surroundings. And of course her concern was for him and their daughter. Of course she was self-less. To a fault, some would have said, but not to Brandyn. He only saw perfection in her soul.

"I will be alright." Lies were a strange way to comfort your beloved. Especially as he knew he would have to show her the other side of his face soon. His lack of closeness, not leaning into kiss her brow. It would all become evident in time.

His arm tucked inside hers, feeling the warmth of her body, as his shoulders slumped and he leaned forward, palm on forehead. Nothing was wrong. Nothing was wrong.

She kept asking about the baby. Kept caring enough to ask. He fought back the instinct to snap at her, to tell her not to think about it. To tell her nothing was wrong. But as always, she wore away at his baser instincts. Made him face truths he avoided, all the while holding him in her heart as the paragon he never was.

He turned his head. Looking at her properly for the first time. "Gianna is not here," it was a truth she could misunderstand, but still be the truth he was working up to admitting.

The pain in his face seemed more real under her gaze. His eyes, both that real and the eery yellow implant, looked to the ground. Not strong enough to heal himself. Not strong enough to defeat the dark sider on the Death Star. Not worthy. How much more did he have to lose before the universe stopped giving him things to care about?

"It hurts. But I am alright," he reasured her, "the medical staff insist that in time...I may recover. Lot's of bacta treatments. Cosmetic surgery will fix the scaring..." His words were a mumbled mess of half thoughts and reassuring nothings.

He turned to her. Pleading for her to not want more, but her eyes spoke the question again. "Where is our daughter?"

The muscles in his face tightened. His other hand reached for Cybelle's.

"Someone took her." His voice cracked under the weight of admission. Something was very wrong. Admitting it, saw him subtly tremble, forehead leaning against the back of his wife's hand.

Cybelle Sal-Soren

​

 

[Cybelle Sal-Soren]

TAG: Brandyn Sal-Soren

Cybelle froze.

The world seemed to tilt as the steady hum of machines thinned until it sounded far away, as if she were submerged in water. Everything else that Brandyn said to her in that moment fell away in the wake of something her mind couldn't process, aware of his pain, but the panic beneath her breast bone was rising quicker than she could control it. "…took her?", she repeated the words, confused, like he had spoken anything other than galactic basic.

She breathed in through her nose.

Out.

Her fingers tightened around his hand on an anchoring instinct. When she felt herself slipping and the walls started closing in, he was her person, her one and only. This time, she held tight because holding him more firmly might make the words he had spoken into something survivable. Her head shook, denial. "That doesn't—", her breathing hitched, then steadied with significant effort. The machines behind her betrayed her…Her pulse was racing now, beeping, and signaling alarms. "That doesn't make sense."

Cybelle looked at her husband, really, looked at him this time…Not the careful glance that was softened by relief, love, and medication. Tawny eyes followed the curve of his jaw while the back of her hand pressed softly against his forehead. Her hand turned so that she could touch his hairline, only to realize abruptly that what she felt wasn't skin at all.

His face…

She went through about twelve rounds of shock and a few stages of grief in about thirty seconds. Her heart broke, thoughts cycling between what he had endured and the fact that their daughter was apparently missing. He wouldn't lie to her about that. It just didn't make any sense at all. It wasn't possible. How could someone just take her without anyone noticing? How could someone take her without HER noticing?

Her fingers slipped in his grasp, suddenly weak, and she fought to tighten them again to keep hold of something when everything was slipping away in a second. It should have been the second-happiest day of their lives, reunited, and having the family they'd been dreaming of. Her eyes dropped to the bed, then drifted back up toward his face…Searching it with mounting desperation. What had the Galactic Empire done to him?

She reached with one hand to touch the metal plating, and her eyes became unfocused while she stopped short, afraid to hurt him, and his face became blurry from tears. The sound that left her was something between a cry and a whisper, wrenched, with pain that she didn't know how to express. Her husband—Her baby. "She was here."

"I held her. I held her…"

Another sob tore out of her then, raw, as if the news of her missing child caused her physical pain. There was nothing graceful about it, and she pulled herself toward him as much as the tubes and wires would allow. They had to…They had to find her. They had to fight for her—She had no one else in the world, and she was so helpless. Cybelle…

Cried. Overwhelmed…She wept her soul out, wept her heart out, until her tears ran dry. She didn't ask questions, still, just reeling from loss and the pain of childbirth. The pain of bringing her daughter into this world, only to have her taken away. Eventually, though, her emotional outburst began to subside. Not naturally. No. The exhausted woman began to disassociate.

Her crying slowed…Then stopped altogether. Not because the pain had eased but because something inside her had simply stepped away from it. Her gaze fixed on a point of nothing beyond Brandyn's shoulder, unfocused, and glassy. The Force around her dimmed, no longer flaring with grief or panic, but retreating inward, to fold tight around a single brittle purpose.

They had to find her.

"She's cold."

Her voice was quiet…Flat. As if she were thinking aloud, assembling a problem to be solved rather than referring to her newborn. "She'll be cold. She was early…She needs to be warm. She needs to eat."

Her eyes dropped to her arms, empty against the sheets, before she let go of Brandyn to start clawing the tubes and wires from her body—Ignoring the pain that knifed through her abdomen. Her movements were clumsy and weak, but they became more frenzied by the second. "I shouldn't be here—I need to find her—"

Cybelle had to find her.

 

[Brandyn Sal-Soren]

Her sobs, her insistence. Brandyn steeled himself against tears. He would not fall apart more than he had. For Cybelle's sake, he would put aside any need he had for emotional release, and simply comfort. He could cry more later, alone — so no one would see.

Be strong.

Not like when your parents...

He had failed once. Catastrophically failed. Fled his beloved. Abandoned his families side. All for vengeance that had only added burden not satiated his grief. His parents had stayed dead, and Brandyn bore not just their loss but the loss of his composure. He had to believe himself better than that now.

He stood, and leaned over her, in a half crouch to compensate for the disparity in height between him and the bed. Both arms wrapped around her, hand cradling Cybelle's head. It was an awkward angle, but the rawness of the emotion and its expression fuelled the gesture. Or perhaps it was some small wish that he might suffer further for his failures as husband...as...father.

She cried. He held her. She tried to get up. He held her down. She spoke of their baby's needs like she was in the other room, and then realising baby Gianna was not here, she tried to get up. "Stay, Cybelle. Recover your strength. Gianna, your mother, she is looking for our little girl. People are being alerted. But you must stay and rest..."

He pulled back from the embrace, eyes searching Cybelle's for confirmation that she understood her part in this. Get better. "I cannot go and look for her...I am not positive...that you will stay and rest."

His hands pushed her hair back, though it was unneeded. Fingers trembled as he traced her brow and temples. His thumbs wiped away tears that streaked her face, which retained beauty even in grief.

"I cannot lose you, too, Cybelle," he said, real and artificial eye bearing down on her, "you must stay and recover. For me...for our girl...for yourself. Please."

They were the perfect team. He with his underworld contacts and years spent hiding in plain sight of his enemies. She with her compassion that tempered his cynicism and gave room the Force to surprise with its providence. They were the perfect team. But Brandyn out there looking was better than neither of them out there looking. And better than him having to tend to her recovery as he searched. "But I will not leave until you send me..."

Cybelle Sal-Soren

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