Jairdain did not reach for the glass, nor did she answer him immediately. Instead, she inclined her head once, a gesture that carried trust rather than certainty, and let the room settle around her as she drew a slow, deliberate breath that anchored her in the present before she allowed herself to step backward into everything she had survived.
"Stay," she said quietly at last, her voice steady but unguarded. "Not as a failsafe. As my brother."
Then she closed her eyes.
She did not need to summon the darkness, nor coax it forward with intent or ritual. It answered her the way memory always did, arriving whole and uninvited, carrying with it the unmistakable gravity of truths that had never fully loosened their hold on her.
Krest came first, as he always did, not as a monster but as a certainty. His voice had once been structure, direction, the promise that obedience would become purpose if she surrendered enough of herself to it. She remembered how safety had masqueraded as righteousness, how approval had felt like love, and how easily she had learned to mistake control for care. The shaping had been so thorough that it still lived in her bones, a foundation laid early enough to be mistaken for nature rather than design, and it had taken years to understand that what she had called discipline had been a cage.
Then Lykos followed, closer, colder, more intimate in his cruelty. Where Krest had demanded discipline, Lykos had offered necessity. He had taught her how to justify the unbearable, how to survive by narrowing her world until only the next decision mattered, until the erosion of self felt less like loss and more like efficiency. She remembered the precise moment she realized she was no longer merely enduring corruption as a means to an end, but functioning because of it, because the darkness had made room for her where the light no longer could.
She did not turn away from that realization.
She let it stand.
The losses came next, not as a flood but as a procession she knew too well to rush. The people who had raised her. The hands that had steadied her before the galaxy tore them away one by one. The empty places they left behind. The names she still carried. The guilt that had never fully faded, no matter how much she had grown, no matter how many lives she had saved afterward. The quiet, persistent question that followed her through every war and every victory, whispering late at night when the Force lay still.
If you had been stronger, would they still be alive?
The cloak answered that question eagerly.
The Force around her folded inward, not violently, but with suffocating intimacy, as though something vast and predatory had leaned close enough to breathe alongside her. The pull was achingly familiar, heavy with promise and relief, offering certainty where grief had lived too long. It did not demand rage or hatred. It offered clarity. It offered finality. It offered an end to doubt.
It urged her to stop choosing.
For a long moment, she let herself feel how natural it would be to finish falling, how effortless it would be to let the darkness close around her and claim what it had already touched once before. It remembered her. It wanted her. It knew exactly where to press.
And then she built the barrier.
Not from denial. Not from fear.
She anchored herself instead in what had come after the darkness, in what had grown despite it. In the weight of her family, not as a distant memory but as a living presence. Jax's steadiness, imperfect and hard-won, yet unwavering. The fierce, complicated love she carried for her children, each of them stubbornly themselves. And beneath it all, the quiet, fragile gravity of the life she carried now, a future that had not yet learned the language of war or cloaks or compromises.
I choose staying, she told that unseen heartbeat, the thought firm and unyielding. I choose you.
The darkness recoiled, not banished, not destroyed, but contained, pressed into a shape that no longer defined her. It remained present, acknowledged, honest in its existence, but no longer sovereign.
When Jairdain opened her eyes again, her presence had changed.
The cloak lay over her like a shadow worn openly rather than hidden, darkness acknowledged without surrender, restrained not by denial or force, but by deliberate, exhausting will. It was not elegant. It was not comfortable. The effort showed in the tight line of her jaw and the careful way she controlled her breathing, as though any excess might tip her balance. She stood, but only just, grounded by intention rather than ease.
"That," she said softly, her voice low and resolute despite the strain beneath it, "is the lie I will not believe again."
She exhaled slowly, deliberately thinning the cloak without tearing it away, knowing better than to rip something loose that had been allowed to settle. The darkness receded, not banished, not destroyed, but pressed back into containment, leaving behind the hollow ache of something narrowly escaped.
Then her knees buckled.
Jairdain caught herself on the edge of the table with one hand, the other pressing instinctively to her abdomen as the aftermath surged up through her in a violent, uncontrollable wave. Her body rejected what her will had endured, the cost finally asserting itself where discipline could no longer hold it at bay.
She turned sharply and retched, the sound harsh and unrestrained, bile burning her throat as she vomited onto the floor, her shoulders shaking as the last of it was forced out of her. There was no dignity in it, no attempt to mask the reaction, only the raw physical consequence of standing that close to the abyss and refusing to fall.
When it was over, she remained bent forward, breathing hard, one hand braced against the table, the other still protectively at her middle, anchoring herself with the quiet certainty that she was still here. Still herself.
After a long moment, she straightened just enough to look toward her brother, her expression pale but steady, eyes clear despite the lingering tremor in her frame.
"You were right," Jairdain said quietly, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, the admission carrying neither regret nor pride. "The worse it feels, the more honest it is."
She drew in another careful breath, grounding herself once more.
"And I will not do that again lightly."
Vulpesen
Jairdain Ismet-Thio
might not have shared the name of Torrevaso, but for all intents and purposes, she was as heir to its birthright as he was. And like him, she had known pain and suffering. She had stared into the void, and while she might have blinked, she had not broken. At least, not irreparably. That was the fortitude he required. 
