Private Long time coming

[Blaire Sal-Soren]

"Back here!" She called, not sure he would even hear her. Not only due to the fact that her place seated at a small table in the kitchen was unnecessarily far from the front of the home but add to that the fact her voice broke as she called out, almost as though she were nervous to be found by him.

Not nervous but afraid. Why should she be afraid? She'd called him. Brandyn, her older brother. Her best friend in the whole galaxy, the one person she knew she could trust with anything.

Thought she could trust.

Hoped she could trust.

Brandyn would know where to go to find how her. She'd invited him to meet at an old vacation home. Blaire wasn't sure if it was a home they owned or just one they'd used in the past but it was familiar all the same. She hadn't been back to the place since they were children, before Bran and Briana left, and still she had no trouble recalling half a dozen memories just from crossing the threshold.

It would not be the same for him though. When the Jedi crossed the threshold he would know something was amiss. The feeling was in the air.

He's early. She thought. Panic began to seep into her, commanding her to flee, to just leave.

Of course he is. I probably worried him. She shoved the fear down. Panic always came before the plunge, she knew.

Jedi or no Jedi. If Brandyn did not feel the wrongness as he walked through the dark house, Blaire had not turned on any of the lights, leaving majority of the house in an eerie pre-morning veil of sliver blue moonlight that was quickly being over taken by the soft light of the rising sun, he would be tipped off finding her alone in the kitchen sat at the table, A tray of ryshcate and a half finished bottle of brandy her only company.

There was no sign of her children. No sound, no toys, no nothing. Having just so recently been reunited with all of them, she knew it must look strange to be without them.

Blaire got up clumsily when he reached her and half ran, half drunkenly swaggered over to Brandyn throwing her arms around him in a hug. It was very likely this wasn't the first time Brandyn had found Blaire smelling like a distillery before dawn but combined with everything else added to the strangeness of their meeting.

"Thank you for coming!" She said still holding onto him. "Come sit down, have a drink with me. I made ryshcate, you have to tell me how they are." He words did not slur as much as would be expected, Blaire had some experience after all with keeping her drunkenness under wraps.

"How are, how are you? How's Cy?"

| Outfit: xxx | Tag: Brandyn Sal-Soren | Equipment: xxx |​

 

[Brandyn Sal-Soren]

“You know…” Brandyn said, lingering just inside the threshold, one brow arched as he took in the dim, moody atmosphere and the scent of brandy on the air. “We could meet each other... during the day… and sober… as well. It’s allowed.”

He tried to smile—tried—but the twitch at the corner of his mouth never quite made it to his eyes.

Crossing the kitchen slowly, he let his gaze sweep the space. No signs of the kids. No laughter. Just moonlight, shadows, and his sister—wrapped in something brittle and warm all at once.

He accepted the hug, though he didn’t return it right away. One hand lifted to her back, tentative at first. His voice lowered, softer now. “This place—gods. I haven’t thought about it in years.”

He pulled back slightly to look at her. “I gotta say… if this was just for ryshcate and sentiment, you’ve really gone all out on the dramatics. Dark house. Haunted lighting. Booze before dawn.” He squinted in that very Brandyn way. “...is this a cry for help or a Naboo socialite thing I missed while I was off gallivanting with Jedi robes and poor sleep habits?”

He gave a half-hearted chuckle. It was meant to lighten the mood, but everything about him was coiled. Watching her. Listening between her words.

He held her close, but didn’t take the drink. “I’ll pass on the brandy. I’ve got a long day of pretending not to be deeply alarmed ahead of me.”

"Cy is doing well," he said, only slightly lying.

He glanced sideways, not quite meeting her eyes. "What’s going on, Blaire?”

| TAG: Blaire Sal-Soren |



​

 

[Blaire Sal-Soren]

The panic was back. A different flavor than before. It was one thing to feel the fear before diving into safe water and another entirely to jump in the dark.

She thought she'd be safe with him, the way it had always been, but how long had it been since it was truly that way? He'd been gone for long, he had his life and Blaire had hers. Some weariness on his part was to be expected, hell, it would be welcome, it meant one of them was thinking straight but this, this was not mere trepidation.

He lied to her. To her. She could not say if she knew it to be a lie because she knew him, once that would've been the case, but now as he stood in this room judging her for Shiraya knows what, it was clear he was a stranger. It was clear that he saw her no differently than the rest.

What else would he see? A voice asked in her mind.

Me,

This is you.

And maybe it was. Drunk before daylight, and behaving in a way that turned her own family to strangers. She'd argue she was more than that but was she?

"What's going on Blaire?"

Blaire left him and sat back her table. She lifted the glass to her mouth but quickly set it back down without taking a drink.

"Have you gone to see mummy and daddy?" She asked her brother, the stranger who lied to and judged her. "I've tried. I've gone a dozen times, no wait, fourteen and I've never made so far as the steps. Less than half the time I couldbt even make myself go on the same street as to get to where they rest."

She could not look at Brandyn as she spoke and so she told her story to her brandy.

"I was going to go today but as you can tell." She picked up her glass and finished it in two big gulps "something came up,"

She poured another glass and ignored it. She poured one for Brandyn too.

"Tell me about the day they died,"

| Outfit: xxx | Tag: Brandyn Sal-Soren | Equipment: xxx |​

 

[Brandyn Sal-Soren]

How could his concern for her not grow? As Brandyn watched his sister, in the dark, he found himself instinctually reaching out to calm her with his presence in the Force. Even as she moved back to the table, Brandyn knew that this was not just one of their hang outs like the old days. There was a weight to the air.

And then she finally said what they'd both been avoiding.

Brandyn felt his entire being stiffen. His whole body stiffened, breath caught halfway between inhale and regret, and his focus narrowed to the immediate. Oh, we are having this talk then?

He knew it was coming. Blaire had been gone on the day that their parents were murdered. She had been absent at the funeral. She had been absent during his rampage across the stars - his attempts at revenge as futile as all the stories said they would be. Blaire was not to blame. She had been a prisoner, sequestered off on some Force-forsaken world by the Force hating cult that had cost them so much.

"I haven't been back to the Temple of Shiraya since that day," he choked out. He had turned his face away from her, to hide the glistening corners of his eyes - not that she could see them in this light.

"And I have not been to their grave since the funeral," he said, his tone barely more than a whisper.

Slowly, muscles protesting every move, Brandyn moved to sit down beside his sister. The glass of liquor was in his hand before he knew to think of it. He stared at it for a half a heartbeat, and then pulled it to his lips. The woody, fruity taste of the brandy hit him only after the alcohol took his breath away. The glass clinked against the table when he sat it down. The sound of it stirred memories.

"I was on Naboo that day. I went to confront him. Baros," he said, refusing any term of endearment for a terrorist, "he acted like he was trying to make things right."

His hands came to his face as he tried to smear the memories from his consciousness. "Damn fool. I could have helped. I could have saved them both. Bri...Cy...the three of us...we could have purged the poison from her..."

His words trailed off into a whimper. His hand covered his mouth, suppressing a groan that would like give permission to the tears.

"...I hate it so much. Blaire. He thought he was protecting me. Saving her. Saving us all. And in the end, he doomed them both. Briana came after me...to save me...after he..."

Another sip of the booze. Another gasp. Another covering of his mouth to suppress the sobs he knew were mere moments away.

His lips curled into a snarl as the lies fell out without filter. "If he had survived that day...I would have killed him myself."

.

| TAG: Blaire Sal-Soren |

​

 

[Blaire Sal-Soren]

Blaire sat in aching silence as Brandyn turned from her, his confession of not visiting their parent's resting place slipped from him begrudgingly as if he'd hoped to keep it to himself forever. The words were a mirror and they showed him things he wish not to see.

She understood fully.

He sat next to her and the confessions continued to reflect back a man that she hadn't known.

"If he had survived that day...I would have killed him myself."

Blaire took Brandyn's free hand in hers.

You sound like him,

So very much like him.

If this, if that, if only, then Brandyn would've saved them. He might as well be quoting daddy verbatim.

she smiled at her big brother. There was no reassurance to it, she had none, not for him and not for herself.

She couldn't begin to know how to make this better for either of them. That was not what she did. Blaire did not make things better, no matter how she tried and Shiraya knew that she tried. She tried over and over to be better, to feel better, to make things better for her, for Bran, for them all and each time she came up short.

"Would that fix you?" She asked him. "Did killing that man they locked you away for fix you?"

| Outfit: xxx | Tag: Brandyn Sal-Soren | Equipment: xxx |​