Private Branding Sal-Soren

[Brandyn Sal-Soren]

The Temple felt different when you arrived carrying hurt.

Brandyn had walked these halls a hundred times, but never like this. Never with the faint metallic click of a half-settled faceplate announcing him before he spoke, never with his own breath trembling against steel because even breathing tugged at tender, half-healed flesh beneath. The cybernetics hummed softly, doing everything they could to heal…yet the burn beneath remained a persistent, whispering reminder of failure, and loss. Always there.

He kept the healing technique steady, palm hovering briefly against the edge of the plate whenever the pain surged. He could maintain it. He had to maintain it. Anything else would crack the composure he was clinging to.

The younglings noticed first. They always did. Those small, bright presences that the Force never quite quieted. A pair paused mid-training drill, practice sabers drooping toward the floor. Another whispered. A third stared outright, gaze flicking from the gleaming curve of the plate.

He offered them a polite nod, but didn’t smile. He wasn’t sure he could.

The message he’d sent to Bastila replayed in his mind as he strode deeper inside. I’m at the Temple. We should talk. No explanation, no details. He hadn’t trusted himself to write more than that, even in text, his restraint had felt thin.

A heaviness followed him. An unspoken thing. A grief that had settled under the skin the way the winter could chill you to the bone. It pressed against his ribs with every step. It choked the air he pulled in through tight lungs. But he refused to let it show.

A pair of Knights passed him, offering the respectful nod one gave another Jedi, but their eyes lingered on the unfamiliar shape of him...on what was new, what was damaged. Brandyn lowered his gaze, letting his presence fold inward. He didn’t want attention. He desired it less than ever.

Not when he was holding himself together by threads.

He reached the central atrium and stopped, letting his hand drift once more to the seam where durasteel met skin. Then he straightened, wincing slightly, and exhaled through the pain.

Bastila would arrive soon.

And when she did, she would see him like this for the first time. Altered, aching, and carrying something dark and wordless behind the eyes. Something he wasn’t ready to set down. But he had come anyway. Because despite everything, despite the burn and the weight and the grief, there was one truth he could not ignore...

He needed her.

| TAG: Bastila Sal-Soren |

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[Bastila Sal-Soren]

Meditation had never felt so loud.
She sat in one of the smallest side chambers in the temple proper, knees folded neatly beneath her, candles arranged in a careful triangle, breath flowing in the precise rhythm Lorn had taught her. The chamber was quiet, yet her mind thrummed like a taut wire. Every inhale scraped. Every exhale felt forced. Every beat of her heart echoed through her sternum with a hollow, restless thud.

The incense didn’t soothe her. It clung to the back of her throat, sweet and oppressive. No matter how she shifted, her robes brushed against her ribs in tiny, irritating whispers of fabric. Her hands, resting on her knees, refused to stay still. Her fingers kept twitching, tapping, curling. The smallest movement broke the shape of her still form for the third, no this was the fourth time now.

She grunted to herself and tried again.
Breathe in.
Hold.
Exhale.

Her jaw tightened because nothing was settling. She felt no easing in her mind. The Force wasn’t the usual warm tide that met her halfway; it felt distant, erratic, like she was trying to meditate while standing on the edge of a cliff in a storm.

The message replayed in her mind again, stark against all the noise.

I’m at the Temple. We should talk.

That was it. That was all that he’d sent. It was unusual because Brandyn was never one to not be direct, at least to her, he never spoke in riddles, never hid hurt behind silence, but something in those words…something that felt stripped-down and hesitant… something that felt it was wrong… had sunk its hooks into her the moment she read them.

She had told herself to breathe, to stay calm, and to be patient. But patience had never been her strong suite, her patience was as thin as spun glass, ready to shatter under the weight of the unease coiling in her gut.

Her eyes snapped open. The candles flickered under the force of the breath she let out. She pressed her palms to her thighs and stood in a single, abrupt motion. The act of rising felt too sudden, too loud, but meditation had become unbearable. Pointless. A hollow ritual doing nothing to calm the violent churn of her thoughts.

She left the chamber with a half frowned look back at the meditation circle, she would be back later for it, for now it had won.

The corridors felt colder than usual. The Temple lights were too bright. Every step Bastila took landed with an urgency she tried to disguise but couldn’t fully hide. A pair of Padawans glanced at her in shock as she passed, then quickly pretended they hadn’t when they caught the intensity in her eyes. She barely noticed them. Her attention stretched forward, drawn to something heavy waiting at the other end of the Force.

It felt like her brother, yet at the same time not; Brandyn.

The moment she felt him clearly, her pace faltered slightly, before quickening again. There was the feeling of a storm wrapped too tightly inside too small a vessel. She swallowed hard. Her palms grew cold. The unease sharpened into something colder, as she entered the central atrium, and the world constricted.

Brandyn stood under the skylight, rigid and composed in a way that she had never really seen him. She approached, with a smile that may have betrayed her inner feelings. Then he turned, his face coming into full view.

“BY THE FORCE WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!” The durasteel faceplate caught the glow overhead, giving it a stark, polished gleam and she just unloaded, for a moment Bastila didn’t move. Her breath caught somewhere between her ribs and her throat, stuck there like a stone. “BRANDYN YOUR FACE!”

He looked… It wasn’t broken. Just changed maybe in a way that made her heart clench so tightly it ached.

Her gaze traced the edge of the plating, the seam where metal met skin, the faint tension in his jaw, the stiffness in his shoulders that told her he was fighting his own body more than he would ever admit aloud.

She admitted to herself that she hated it. Not him, she could never hate him.

She hated the pain that was radiating out from beneath the steel, staining Brandyn’s usually hope filled aura. She hated the silence that was creeping off him like dragon’s breath across the valleys and most of all she hated that someone, or something had done this to him and she hadn’t been there to stop it.

Her steps toward him were slow at first, almost hesitant, as if she feared that getting too close would make something inside him or her fracture. But once she crossed the midpoint of the atrium, restraint failed her. A calm, quiet, composed sister might have moved gently.

Bastila didn’t.

She closed the remaining distance quickly, stopping only once her arms were around him and there was nothing but the love of an older brother and his baby sister radiating from them. She released him only to raise one hand before she could second guess the impulse, hovering it inches from his cheek, near the place where flesh gave way to metal. The heat pulsing from beneath the plate was immediate and shocking. It made her inhale sharply.

“Brandyn…” she whispered. His name feeling like an apology. Like a plea. Like a reprimand she wasn’t sure she had the right to voice. Her eyes lifted to his, searching, hurting, angry in a way that came from love, and not judgement.

At her side her hand curled into a fist against her thigh as her chest tightened with too many emotions competing for space.

“You should have told me,” she said quietly, but the quiet was deceiving—there was fire in it, grief in it, the echo of all the nights she’d lain awake terrified of losing one more piece of her family. “Not "I am at the temple come and see me and my completely normal face". Next time you say, Bastila I need you because half my face is miss..” She swallowed a sudden pang of wanting to cry. “I would have come to you. Wherever you were. No matter what was happening.”

Her throat tightened. She stepped closer without thinking, the air between them narrowing to almost nothing as she threw her arms around him again.

“Does it...hurt?” she whispered. Suddenly realising how stupid that sounded. “What did Bri say?” She paused and pulled back to look at her brother. “You have told Bri?”

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[Brandyn Sal-Soren]

Brandyn had warning, but he let her surprise him anyway. One moment the atrium hummed with its usual reverent quiet, and the next he was being crushed against a familiar form. She was small, fierce, but shaking harder than she wanted him to notice. His breath hitched, the sudden pressure jostling the raw nerves beneath the faceplate. He kept still regardless. Bastila needed this. And a part of him…a part he didn't trust anymore…needed it just as much.

He let his gloved hand hover awkwardly at her back before resting there with a kind of fragile commitment.

When she finally drew away enough to take him in, truly take him in, he could see every emotion she tried and failed to mask. The shock. The pain. The anger. The love. It struck something deep in him and left his composure wobbling.

He swallowed tightly, jaw flexing beneath the durasteel when she reached toward his cheek. The heat radiating from the plate made her inhale sharply. He pretended not to notice. Pretended it didn't shame him.

Her question, "You should have told me," landed in his chest with the accuracy of a well-placed saber strike. Brandyn looked away, eyes dropping to the stone beneath them.

"I didn't want to drag you into it," he murmured, voice rougher than he liked. "Bri's off on her sabbatical. Haven't heard from her in weeks. She deserves the peace… nd we both know if I sent her a holo like this she'd be on the first shuttle screaming instructions at everyone in sight."

He tried to laugh, but it came out hollow, broken halfway through.

"I didn't want the…the fight that would come with that," he admitted. He flinched, visibly, at even the mention of their eldest sister. "She's always seen herself as the one who has to fix everything. I'm not in the mood to be 'managed' today."

He forced himself to look back at Bastila, meeting her eyes even as something unsteady flickered beneath his own.

"And I didn't want to interrupt whatever you had going on with the Outbound Flight crew." His tone softened, almost apologetic, almost teasing, but pulled tight with caution. "Rumours travel fast. Something about…raised voices?"

He tried, truly tried, to give the words a gentle lift, something warm, something brotherly, something light enough to counterbalance the steel bolted to his skin. But the attempt wavered, dipping under the weight in his soul.

"It's why I came," he confessed quietly. "Not this thing..."

He stopped. The grief clawed upward like a shadow too large for its vessel. Not that. Not now. He drew in a shaky breath. "I wanted to make sure you were all right." He said it like an apology. Like a plea. Like the one thing he still felt sure of in a world that had shifted under his feet.

| TAG: Bastila Sal-Soren |

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[Bastila Sal-Soren]

For a moment she could only stare at him, arms still wrapped tightly around his waist, forehead resting lightly against his chest because she hadn’t quite let herself move back yet. His voice vibrated through her ribs, low and apologetic in a way that made something twist sharply inside her.
At the mention of Briana, Bastila’s breath left her in a sound that was almost a laugh but not quite, like she was swallowing down a laugh that would have got her a stern look at the dinner table.

“Of course you didn’t tell her. She’d have chartered the whole Republic Navy and had it parked outside your window before dawn.” Her lips twitched, but the humour didn’t reach her eyes, they remained full of the same sorrowed shock as before. “And then she would have demanded to speak to whoever fitted the surgery…and the furniture…and the Temple floor…and a passing nerf if she thought it was part of the problem.”

But when he spoke of being managed; of being tired of being fixed, she sobered instantly. She understood that more than she wanted to. She understood it more than she liked to admit.

Slowly and reluctantly, she eased back just enough to see his face again. Her gaze lingered on the exposed half of his expression, searching for the pieces he wasn’t saying. She had recognized the flinch when he mentioned Bri. She recognized the brittle edges when he spoke of dragging her into it.

“Brandyn,” she murmured, brow tightening. “You don’t drag me anywhere. You are my brother. I come because I choose to.”

Her fingers hovered once more near the plate, she was hesitant, gentle, and fiercely protective. She didn’t touch, but the intention was enough to make her throat ache.

Then he said it.

Raised voices.

Her entire body went still.

Her spine straightened. Her shoulders tightened. Her eyes flashed with something defensive, embarrassed, and entirely too revealing. She looked away so abruptly it bordered on comedic; except there was nothing funny behind the tension that seized her.

“Oh.” The single syllable was forced out like she’d been punched in the diaphragm.

She crossed her arms over her chest, one hand gripping the opposite elbow as if physically holding herself still might stop the flood of emotions that wanted to roar out of her.

“That was…” She cleared her throat. “It was nothing.”
She actively avoided his eye, especially the glowing red one. “Well it was… something. But not…” A frustrated noise slipped out. “It wasn’t what people think. I mean trashing the meditation room was probably an overstep...”

She paced one step to the side, then back, then stopped entirely because movement wasn’t helping.

“He said something that he shouldn’t have. I reacted in a way I shouldn’t have.” Her jaw clenched. “And before you ask, no, it wasn’t about you. Or your face. Or anything like that. I mean how could it have been, we didn’t know about your face.”

She risked a glance up at him, cheeks flushed with equal parts anger and humiliation.

“It was just… me being… I was being me.” Her voice wavered. She scowled at the floor as if it personally offended her. “Dominic was being Dominic, you know how he is.”

She shoved out a breath and finally lifted her eyes to him again.

Then it hit her. She had said his name. She instantly went quiet, she knew she had made a mistake. Dominic and Brandyn had been friends once upon a time. Bastila had faint memories of them being boys around the manor grounds. Brandyn had also been kept out of the loop of Bastila’s more…exotic interactions with Dominic. He was blissfully unaware.

Until right now. Where Bastila had taken one big boot and stepped in it.

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[Brandyn Sal-Soren]

For a moment, Brandyn simply watched her unravel. Her arms crossed, her shoulders tightened, and she paced like she was trying to outrun her own pulse. Then she said the name. And he felt it hit somewhere deep and unexpectedly tender.

He exhaled once, slow and steady, the way any good Jedi should. But it wasn’t a Jedi who spoke next. It was her brother. “Bastila,” he said with a quiet dryness that carried far more affection than reprimand, “I grew up with you. You do remember that, yes?” He tipped his head faintly, the metal of the faceplate catching the skylight with a muted pulse.

“If you think your childhood crush on Dominic was subtle, I assure you...it was not. Not even a little. You followed him around the manor like some starry-eyed moon orbiting a very smug planet.”

He offered a ghost of a smile, dampened by whatever cast a shadow across him. His attempt at humour was gentle, not mocking. Meant to bring levity, not judgment.

“And I’m not bringing it up to embarrass you,” he added softly. “Just…to say I remember. And I notice things. Especially when they concern you.”

He reached out then, offering his arm in the old noble way their mother had drilled into all of them. “Walk with me?” he asked.

He guided her toward the gardens in a slow, composed manner, at least on the surface. Beneath it, every shift of his weight tugged at the raw, burning nerves under the plate. The pain pulsed in a hard, sharp rhythm. He masked it well, but not perfectly. Each few steps, a faint hitch in his breath gave him away.

Still, he continued, keeping her hand looped through his arm like something precious. Their mother would have approved. Finally, she would have said, one of you kids remembering your manners.

Branches bowed gently overhead as the pair entered the garden’s quiet shade. Brandyn let the silence settle for a moment, breathing through the discomfort, before he spoke again. “Raised voices. Meditation room damage,” his tone was even, and warm, “you don’t have to pretend it was nothing. Not with me.”

He glanced sideways at her, yellow cybernetic lens flickering faintly, organic eye soft with concern. “I came here because I heard you weren’t all right. Not to judge you. Not to drag out secrets.” He let out a tight, shallow breath. “But because you’re my sister. And if someone said something that hurt you…no matter who it was…I want to know.”

His hand shifted slightly against her arm, steadying her....and, perhaps, steadying himself.

“I’m listening,” he said quietly, “if you want to tell me.”

| TAG: Bastila Sal-Soren |

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[Bastila Sal-Soren]

She stopped walking almost immediately as Brandyn spoke. Not because her brother had said something sharp. He also didn't push. He never would and that was precisely why she couldn't take another step.

Gentleness had always been her undoing, within her family she had forever been the one with the purest heart. At least until…

Her hand slipped from his arm, falling to her side with a softness that contrasted violently with the storm clawing beneath her skin. She stood very still for a long moment, the breeze shifting strands of her hair while the Force around her tightened like an inhale that refused to exhale.

When she spoke, her voice was quiet, it was not weak, but it was definitely stripped bare.

"It wasn't an argument." Her throat worked around a breath that wasn't steady. "It wasn't raised voices. It wasn't me being frustrated or emotional or…" She shook her head, slowly closing her eyes as if to fight off the way the memory burned. "It wasn't that."

Her arms folded tightly across her chest, but the gesture wasn't defensive. It was bracing. Holding herself together before she came apart again.

"It broke me, Brandyn." The words left her in a devastating spill that matched the tear that came down her cheek. She looked down, Brandyn was there going through something far beyond the petty grievances of his younger sister, she was almost ashamed…

"He said no. That he wasn't mine. That he wasn't his own." Her breath shuddered. "He said it like… like I was asking too much. Like wanting him was something shameful."

Her jaw flexed hard enough to hurt, she felt pressure from her teeth on the inside of her cheek, a nervous trait she always did when nervous in front of her siblings. "And something inside me cracked. I felt it. Like a faultline giving way." She wet her lips, and stared at nothing.

"I said things I didn't know I could say. Things that tasted like metal, like winter, like…" She hesitated, voice tightening. Like you all tell me Father was like.

Her eyes squeezed shut.

"I called him pathetic. I told him he was weak. That he cared more about what the Senate thought than what I felt. That he was… nothing I could rely on." Every admission she made cost her something. She felt it with each word, she knew Brandyn would feel it too.

She took a step back, hands curling into fists at her sides. "And then I walked away?" Her head bowed, unable to meet his eyes. "I should have calmed down. I couldn't breathe. I didn't stop seething."

Her jaw trembled.

"I went into a chamber and…" The breath that left her was ragged. "I destroyed it."

Her voice didn't change, there was no expected crack instead it just emptied of any emotion. "I ignited my saber without knowing I'd drawn it. I tore the room apart. Tables. Walls. Consoles. Doors. I kept swinging. I couldn't stop."

She swallowed, hard.
"I heard him. In my head."
She paused.
"Do you hear him?"
She realised what she was saying was madness and rather then push it any further she stopped and gave Brandyn one pleading look.

A faint, broken sound escaped her,
"I didn't want to tell you."
Silence pooled between them, heavy and thick and undeniable.
"You are going through so much already at home and Briana… I can't, I can't bring myself to tell her. Plus Blaire wouldn't understand. We are all broken and I can't add to that." She fell back into her brother's presence.
"Here I am bawling my eyes out over a boy and you've lost half your face. I am the worst sister. Well second worst."

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[Brandyn Sal-Soren]

He didn't answer for a while, but he did respond. Brandyn's arms wrapped around his little sister and pulled her in close. Memories of how annoying she used to be, or rather how annoyed he would become because she wanted to spend time with him, flooded his mind. He wished to be able to erase those thoughts from his past self so that there would be no hinderance to her believing how precious she was to him now.

"Dominic has always been a bit of dickhead," Brandy muttered, cheek mooshed against the top of her head, "and I say that as his friend."

He squeezed her. Wishing he could take all the pain away. Ripples of their father's sins still undergirded all their pain. "I will have to report the outburst to the Council," he muttered mournfully, "but I have managed to play distraction on the report in order to give you time to put measures into place ahead of the report. If you can look forward thinking, repentant...even...we can mitigate the consequences. The new Grandmaster is nice, if not a little...hectic...but she also seems a stickler for Jedi behaving like Jedi..."

The unspoken truth was there. Briana would have been more merciful, but she wasn't in charge anymore. The Sal-Soren name did not have the same purchase in the temple as it once did. Things were becoming...bigger...than just their family.

Do you hear him?

His stomach tightened. She didn't have to say who. He understood. But also felt an instant chill. "What do you mean, Bast?" He whispered, hoping she would not hear and answer, "are you saying you hear...our father?" He couldn't call him dad.

"You are never a burden, Basty. Never. We are Sal-Sorens, and Sal-Sorens will fight, squabble and annoy each other, but when the slag hits the duracrete...we are family."

He thought back to the days that his father forbid he and Cybelle Sal-Soren from being together. And he thought about the elation of their reunion, their expression of love, the beauty of their private life and their love. If he could ask anything for Bastila it was to experience a similar sort of love that he had been blessed.

"One thing life has taught me about love is that sometimes it is the right person, but the wrong time...but when those two line up...you have to fight like hell for what you want," Brandyn said, "do you love him, Bast? Or just the idea of him?"

| TAG: Bastila Sal-Soren |

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[Bastila Sal-Soren]

She didn’t fight him when he pulled her in.
She folded into him the way she had when she was younger and much smaller, when she would run into his room because the nightmares came with shapes and teeth; when Brandyn’s arms were the one place in the galaxy that nothing could reach her. She pressed her forehead against the seam of his collar, breath shaky, hands gripping the fabric of his tunic as though she might fall straight through the floor if she let go.
For a moment she didn’t speak at all. Even when Brandyn insulted Dominic in that overly affectionate, but also accurate way; Bastila only let out a trembling exhale that might, under any other circumstance, have been a laugh. Today it was something softer. Something bruised.

"I know," she murmured against him, voice muffled, "I know he is." She sniffed and tried to avoid wiping her face against his top. "And I know I was worse."

She pulled in a small breath as he spoke of reporting the incident. The word Council made her spine stiffen, but she didn’t break the embrace. Her fingers curled tighter into his sleeves instead.

"I know you have to," she whispered. "It’s why I said it. I broke things I shouldn’t have touched. I said things I shouldn’t have said. The Council will want answers." Her breath shook.
"And I’ll give them. No lies. No hiding."

He made mention of the new Grandmaster, of the safety net that was Briana being gone. This made her smile slightly.

"I shot her once you know? Ala. I stunned her, and Lorn. He hated me for it. I think that’s why he’s taken on my training, to make sure he can get the chance to stun me back at some point."

Her throat tightened, emotions were getting mixed now and she didn’t know how to handle it.

"Thank you," she added quietly, "You shouldn’t have to face questions on my behalf. But I’m grateful."

She leaned away now, letting go of his sleeve and she realised just how much taller than her he was. Then he asked the question she had feared, the response to her own.

Do you hear him?
Her entire body went still as she ran through it in her head.

The garden breeze brushed the curve of her cheek. Leaves rustled above them. Somewhere, a fountain bubbled in its endless cycle. Bastila swallowed, hot and painfully aware of how thin her composure suddenly felt.

"I don’t hear him like a voice in the air," she said slowly, carefully, as if the words themselves might summon something.
"It’s like he’s in my head."

She knew how insane it sounded…
No, to her; Baros was the charming, influential father they all praised.

"It was the voice he used when he used to train me for the socials. The one he used to keep you three in line. The one that apparently knows exactly how to press down when I am weakest."
She breathed through a shiver.
"I saw him too. Well it's not Dad; but I saw him he sits on the edge of my vision when I get…well when I slip."

She lifted her head, meeting Brandyn’s eyes and for the first time in a long time there was fear in hers — real and unguarded.

"It’s just a memory though I’m sure of it, Bran." She swallowed hard.
"Just a bad memory."

She shook her head once, small but sharp, allowing Brandyn to shift the conversation. Something in her face softened, then flinched, then opened in ways she clearly didn’t expect as he asked about love.

"Love?" she repeated, as though the word itself was fragile. "I don’t… I don’t know if that’s what it was."

Another breath. Slow. Unsteady.

"I know what I feel. I know what I hoped for. I know what I saw in him, or thought I did. Something gentle. Something safe. Something…"
Her voice caught.
"Something that made me feel like maybe I wasn’t just a weapon the Order was polishing."

She still stayed close to Brandyn.

"I want him, it’s like…I can’t quite explain it," she admitted softly.
"It’s like an obsession. Whenever he is close I can’t not fall into this pattern of behaviour. It’s like I need him. Not the idea of him. He isn’t some noble match or political convenience to me. I want him. The man who looked at me in the gardens. The man who said my name like it mattered."
She tried to hide the pain.
"And I thought…maybe he wanted me too."

A small, aching smile ghosted across her lips.

"But maybe you’re right. Maybe it was the right person, wrong time."
She shrugged.
"Or maybe I loved a version of him he wasn’t ready to become."

She hugged her arms around herself.

"I think we Sal-Sorens are just cursed," she said finally.
"No happy endings for us. Except you; you get the happy ending. Although you had to become butt ugly as a price."

Her voice became teasing, smirk blooming as she eyed the plate on his cheek.

"I’ll take being beautiful and heartbroken thanks."

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[Brandyn Sal-Soren]

Brandyn went still. Not stiffly. There was no jolt, no recoil, but more in that slow, heavy way a man freezes when he hears something that crawls beneath his skin and takes root in his spine. Her words didn’t just trouble him. They terrified him. But he didn’t let it show.

He lifted a hand, brushing his thumb along her upper arm in a grounding, careful way. “Bast…” His voice was quieter than before, thinned by something he didn’t name. “Seeing him at the edge of your vision…hearing him in your thoughts…that isn’t something we pretend away. Not with our history. Not with all that is at stake.”

The Force shivered faintly around him, concern taking deep root. She was someone he could fix, while things in life felt so unfixable.

He didn’t press her. Didn’t demand details. He couldn’t. Not when he himself was keeping far darker things to himself. Cybelle unresponsive, their child gone, his nights carved open by grief he couldn’t afford to lay on her shoulders. Not yet.

But he was still a Jedi. A Council member. And her brother.

“We’re not ignoring this,” he said softly, firmly, “you’re right. It might be memory. It might be trauma. But it also might be your mind trying to show you something you’ve never faced head-on.”

He let out a slow breath, the motion tugging sharply at the sensitive flesh beneath the plate. It showed, just for a second, in the flicker of his eye and the tightening of his jaw. But he smoothed it away. “We should explore it together.” He turned them slightly, so the temple gardens stretched out before them. The wind brushed across his faceplate, cooling the metal but not the burn beneath.

“There are places in the galaxy…nexuses of the Force...where visions take form. Just not Dagobah.” He offered a faint, almost wry huff. “Stars forbid. I have no intention of crawling through mud while half my face is still cooking.”

He tried to laugh. But it didn't sound real. “We go together. You won’t face this alone. Not again. Not ever.” He tilted his head, studying her with the warm, steady intensity she had known since childhood.

“And as for love,” he murmured, voice roughening at the edges, “Bastila Sal-Soren does not…cannot…love halfway.” A smile flirted with his face. “Your feelings aren’t foolish. You care because you’re capable of seeing what someone could be. Not everyone has that gift.”

He drew in another breath, shallower this time, pain reflecting to the back of his neck.

“But the timing is wrong. And that isn’t your failing alone. It’s his too.”

Brandyn lifted her chin gently with two fingers. “Happy endings are only ours if we make them ours. You don't know my ending yet. And I don't know yours. I...for one...am not done fighting for mine. And I won't let you quit on yours."

"And for the record...this," he tapped the metal lightly with a knuckle, "is ruggedly handsome, thank you. Very fashionable. You'll see it in holomags next season."

| TAG: Bastila Sal-Soren |

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[Bastila Sal-Soren]

She listened to him, not lazily, no; she really listened, to each word he said like it could be the last thing he ever said to her. But when he touched on seeing their father in the edges of her mind, the storm inside her threatened to crack. She was forced to pull in on something inside, something that shifted her expression into a smaller, tighter place.
She took a shallow breath in before following it with a slow exhale and then a quiet, almost dismissive lift of one shoulder.

“It’s…nothing,” she said. There was none of the expected sharpness or defensive tone in her voice; just a tired matter-of-fact.
“A flicker. A trick of the mind when I’m pushed too far. Memory, reflex, whatever you want to call it.”

Another shrug, this one much lighter and looser. It was the body language she used whenever she’d decided an emotional topic was no longer up for discussion.

“He doesn’t get to take up more space than that. Not anymore.”

She brushed a stray strand of hair from her face, letting the motion act as her full stop on the matter.

“Besides,” she added, glancing up at him with a small, wry twist of her lips, “if we start digging into every psychological ghost our childhood left behind, we’ll be here until the next rotation. And frankly, you don’t have the face for extended introspection right now.”

Her eyes softened with a flicker of genuine affection that cut through her dry humour.

“I’m fine, Brandyn. Or I will be. That…moment was a moment. I’m not living in it.”

Then, quietly but firmly, she redirected, not back toward herself, but toward him.

“You realise if we go to Dagobah you’ll rust?”

She stepped a little closer, studying the plate on his face with that concentrated little-sister worry she tried to hide behind teasing.

“So no Dagobah. No mind-caves. No trauma archaeology.”
Her brows lifted.
“Not today, anyway.”

Her hand tugged gently at his sleeve, a strange instinct from when she was much younger, yet one she had never grown out of. She found it anchoring, grounding, and protective in its own fierce way.

“Let’s just…sit. Breathe. Touch grass. Or whatever Jedis are supposed to do when everything turns to shit.”

And then, because she could never resist when the opportunity was handed to her—

“And for the record? The plate isn’t ruggedly handsome.”

She let that sit for just a moment.

“It’s tolerable. At best.”

But her smile; that beautifully small, warm, and real, gave her away.

OUTFIT: XoXo | TAG: Brandyn Sal-Soren EQUIPMENT:

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[Brandyn Sal-Soren]

Brandyn blinked once, slowly, then huffed out something between a sigh and of a laugh. “Tolerable,” he repeated, as if tasting the word. “Maker, Bast…if that’s you trying to comfort me, no wonder Dominic fled for his life.”

He angled a look down at her, mildly wounded big-brother expression engaged, hand pressed theatrically over his chest.

“‘Ruggedly handsome’ was generous, you know. I was giving you a kindness. A gift, really. But fine. Tolerable. I’ll live with that.” He smirked, resting in the humour and hoping he could heal them both. “Well, mostly live. Half my face seems to be negotiating other options.”

He let her sleeve-tug pull him down beside her beneath the nearest tree, lowering himself with a soft grunt he tried (and failed) to disguise as dignified. The metal over his skin twinged sharply as he moved, but he forced the discomfort into a tight exhale and settled beside her anyway.

His shoulder brushed hers. “Touch grass,” he said thoughtfully, “not quite what mother would have prescribed, but I like it better already.”

He glanced sideways, eyes narrowing just a fraction in amusement. “And for the record? If we’re keeping score on looks, I’d rather be ‘tolerable’ than…absolutely gaga over a certain friend of mine.”

He lifted a brow, the picture of smug, older-brother knowledge. “Oh yes. Don’t look at me like that. You think I didn’t notice? That little sparkle in your eye when you were not even a teenager yet...every time someone so much as mentioned Dominic Praxon? Practically tripping over yourself.”

He leaned back, looking entirely too pleased with himself. “You should have heard yourself when we were younger. ‘He’s so tall, Bran.’ ‘He walks like a senator, Bran.’ ‘He has such nice hands, Bran.’”

He mimicked her voice, badly, and intentionally so. “Honestly, it was painful. You were a menace.”

His smile became gentle and he lied through his teeth...for her. “But if we’re keeping a tally of heartbreaks, little sister, I think you’re still ahead of me. Faceplate or not.”

He nudged her knee with his. “So go ahead. Get it out of your system. I can take the teasing. I’m…tolerable, apparently.”

| TAG: Bastila Sal-Soren |

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