The later the evening wore on, the deeper Briana's heart sank like a cold weight inside her chest, pulling the air from her lungs with every struggling beat, the further down it traveled. Her eyes kept sweeping the glittering crowds, scanning the couples spinning around the firelight, and over every dark-haired man whose height or bearing made hope leap painfully into her throat. But each time the crowd opened up and another joined their ranks, she was disappointed to find only strangers.
Around and around she continued to twisted the ring on her left hand until the skin beneath grew tender, as though the band had become a noose tightening around her throat and every frantic rotation was an attempt to work her fingers beneath the rope so she could breathe.
Vizion is not cruel.
She told herself. He would not ask her to wait for him and then simply fail to appear. He would not leave her standing beneath the lights of her ruined childhood home, wearing her mother's dress, wondering whether the man she loved had already decided the end of their future, and lacked the courage to tell her. He would not do that.
Perhaps his airspeeder had broken down. Perhaps some complication at the Temple demanded his attention. There was a dozen different reasons, and Briana turned over each explanation in her mind, repeating them as a though they were prayers to Shiraya, a hope against the fear steadily taking root inside her.
Surely, Vizion would not leave her waiting like this again, as he had on Hapes all those years ago, when everything was falling apart and she'd needed him most. They were not those people anymore, and surely, surely, he would not reopen that old wound so carelessly. But the silence in the waiting was suffocating, all the same.
Briana slipped the clutch from beneath her arm, opening it with a 'click' to withdraw her datapad. Its pale glow washed over her face as she checked the message thread once more, only to find that nothing changed. Only the remnants of their last exchange and the parting words, c
ome home on the screen.
And she did.
She'd come back to Evenfall and all its ghosts, put on her mother's gown, fastened Shiraya's moonfan into her hair, and stood beneath the ruins of her life... and he wasn't here. With a shaky inhale, she shut off the screen and tucked the datapad away before anyone could glimpse the hurt written plainly across her face. Her hand rose to her chest, pressing against the frantic beat of her heart as if she might command it into stillness. She'd held soldiers together across a battlefield, reached through the Force and steadied hundreds of frightened minds while the dead clawed their way back to their feet.
Yet she couldn't reason her own mind into believing she wasn't being abandoned.
It was best to slip away before anyone took notice of her rapidly deteriorating mood and she became stuck in a conversation with some well-meaning face asking where her fiancé was, offering that thin, polite concern that would shatter her last shred of composure. Gathering up the heavy, multi-colored folds of her dress, Briana threaded her way through the dancers and turned her steps toward Shiraya's Temple.
Why, she couldn't precisely say.
It was the last place she ever thought she'd seek out, going back to the place where they'd found the bodies of both her parents. The place where the very last thread of her childhood had died, and she'd understood, with a terrible finality, that nothing would ever be the same again.
But long before the Temple became a symbol and monument to her grief, it'd been a beautiful place of peace and serenity.
Unlike Brandyn, Briana hadn't gone searching for their mother's spirit after she passed. Perhaps part of her feared that nothing would answer if she tried. Perhaps another part feared that something would, and she'd have to face her mother's judgment on how well her eldest daughter shouldered the life left behind for her, or hear how often she believed she'd failed beneath its weight. Either way, it was best leave the unknown as that, in her mind.
But as a child, she'd always known exactly where to find her. When she needed Teyla rather than Lady Sal-Soren, she'd slip away to the Temple.
There, beneath the sheltering wings of the otherworldly statue of Shiraya, she'd often find her mother kneeling down in the quiet, stripped of courtly poise. Teyla always seemed different there, gentler. As though she could set down every title she carried and simply be her mother. It'd always felt safe, because of that. And tonight, with her hope fraying, Briana found that she needed her mother with the same helpless certainty she had as a girl.
Her feet remembered the way easily, carrying her beyond the reach of the festival music and up the familiar temple steps. She entered without hesitation, so certain she would find the sanctuary empty that she failed to notice the figure within at first.
In the dimness, she mistook them for part of the statuary, until she came closer and they moved.
Briana stopped short. The raw, vulnerable thing that'd driven her there, folding swiftly back behind her ribs, sealed away beneath well-practiced composure. Disappointment flickered through her, followed immediately by embarrassment. She'd come seeking solitude and instead intruded upon someone else's.
"Oh." Her brows furrowed and her fingers tightened around the folds of her dress as she took a step backward.
"I'm sorry. I didn't realize anyone would be here. I'll leave you to your prayers."
