Private The Weight of an Endless Absence

[Iandre Athlea]

The atmosphere on Bastion had shifted into something unrecognizable. It wasn't broken, not yet, but it felt hollow, as if the very soul of the planet had been scooped out, leaving only a shell of its former self. To a casual observer, the world still functioned. Officers continued to bark orders, and the pulse of the world hummed on, but the foundation had vanished. One breath, the Diarchy stood in its full, terrible glory. The next, it was simply gone. There had been no final stand, no grand escalation to mark the end, just a sudden, deafening vacuum that left the survivors wandering through corridors that now felt like a tomb.

Iandre Athlea moved through those corridors with a ghost's grace, her steps measured and her presence intentionally quiet. No one stopped her, and she drew no attention. The air was too thick with unanswered questions for anyone to find a focus. Beneath the surface of every hushed conversation lay a burgeoning confusion that bordered on panic, and deeper still, the scent of opportunity. The scavengers had already begun to circle, probers and watchers testing the fractures for a way in, but Kallous had ensured their intrusion was short-lived.

She found him standing in the center of the settled disturbance, where the remnants of the brief incursion had already been reduced to a heavy, stagnant silence. There was no lingering chaos or excess in the wake of his work, only a clean absence that seemed to suit him perfectly. Iandre stood still for a moment, her gaze sweeping across the space to read the aftermath before finally letting her eyes settle on him.

"Efficient," she said softly. It wasn't praise, nor was it a critique. It was simply a cold statement of fact.

She stepped closer, stopping just within a conversational distance. Without her armor or the visible markers of her rank, she felt stripped of the certainties that had defined her life. The mantle of a Diarch's wife, a woman of status and power, had evaporated overnight, leaving her as nothing more than a widow in a falling empire.

"They didn't expect to find resistance here," she added, her voice calm despite the hollowness in her chest. "The next ones will, but they will come regardless of who stands in the way."

A heavy silence passed between them, one weighted by their shared history and the sudden, precarious nature of their futures. Iandre drew a slow, controlled breath, her decision already made and solidified in the quiet of her mind.

"I will not be here when they arrive," she said, the lack of hesitation in her voice acting as its own kind of armor. "I need passage, Kallous. To Veradune."

She didn't elaborate on the name. She didn't need to. The destination carried its own gravity. But as she spoke, the rigid composure she had maintained began to fray at the edges, revealing a glimpse of the raw, disoriented woman beneath the mask of the Athlea name. For the first time, her steady gaze wavered just a fraction, a subtle shift that betrayed the vulnerability of a friend reaching out in the dark.

"And I would prefer very much not to make that journey alone."

Her eyes searched his, offering him neither a desperate plea nor a command, but an invitation into a shared exile, a quiet hope that in this new, empty galaxy, she wouldn't have to navigate the silence by herself.

Kallous Vulpesen

 

[Kallous]

Kallous hadn't had much time to internalize and process what had happened.

one moment, things were largely normal. He was entrenched in his studies, those around him went about their usual business, and the Diarchs were working on another one of their experiments. He'd understood it was a dangerous one, but he had confidence that the two Diarchs had sufficient power and experience to handle it. So he hadn't worried. But then they just, vanished. They ceased to exist, and their absence was almost tangible. He'd gone to see, and found nothing remaining of either of them.

From there it had been a blur, he instinctually knew there would be vultures and opportunists that would try to take advantage of this once it was discovered, and that they would be too inept to do so successfully and would only cause pandemonium. So he began his work straightaway, from Scholar to Assassin he purged the opportunists that would be looking for the opening once it came. He cut each of them down with cold savagery, leaving them no chance of survival, and making sure that when found they would put fear into the other, lesser men that would try to follow the same route. Both to clear the weeds, and to kill whatever others were readying to take root.

It had been a brutal affair, but it had been swift. And soon enough he was left standing over a gathering of them, when they had finally discovered that their sovereigns had vanished they'd congregated to plot appropriately. He'd ensured that none of them left that council alive.

He sensed someone approaching, someone who had the sombre presence of one who'd just been wounded. He wasn't sure he wanted to see her, she was a grieving widow who had lost the husband she'd only just wed. He didn't want to see what kind of expression she had. But also he knew that she had few others she could turn to at that moment, and it was his duty to see to it that what remained of his mentor's family was safe.

She entered the room, and made her request. The look of wavering dignity in her face nearly broke his heart.

"Of course," He answered her, pushing aside his own complex emotions in that moment. "It's the least I could do to escort you to safety. The Stingray is still housed in the Academy's hangar. I can take you there on that."

Vulpesen Iandre Athlea

 

[Iandre Athlea]

Iandre lingered in the doorway a moment longer than necessary, as if crossing the threshold required a certainty she no longer possessed.

Her gaze drifted over the room, absorbing the aftermath with a quiet, hollow recognition. She understood what had happened here; the air itself felt heavy with an absence that didn't need to be named. When Kallous spoke, her shoulders eased, not because the weight had lessened, but because it had finally shifted into a shape she could carry for a few more steps.

"Thank you," she said, her voice steady but thin, held together more by decades of discipline than by any current strength.

She stepped further into the room, though she maintained a careful distance. It wasn't a matter of formality, but of caution, as if getting too close to anything, or anyone, might cause the fragile glass of her composure to finally shiver and break.

"I cannot remain here," she continued, her words slow and deliberate. "Not like this. Not while the silence is this loud."

Her eyes flicked toward him, never quite anchoring, searching for a place to rest that didn't hurt.

"There is someone I trust. A friend...someone entirely removed from the reach of this shadow." She paused, her fingers curling faintly at her side as she grounded herself against the sudden, sharp chill of the decision. "I need distance, Kallous. Somewhere quiet. Somewhere where I can finally..."

She let the thought trail off, the unspoken conclusion hanging in the air between them.

Her gaze lifted then, meeting his with a sudden, flickering clarity that pierced through the haze of her shock. "I am not running," she added, the statement a simple, raw truth. "I will return. But I cannot face what comes next, I cannot do what the Diarchy requires, until I understand what remains of me now that he is gone."

Rellik's name wasn't spoken, yet his ghost occupied every breath she took.

She inclined her head slightly, a gesture that acknowledged both his offer of help and the grim burden he had already shouldered in their sovereign's absence.

"If you will take me to the hangar," she whispered, her dignity wavering but holding firm for one last walk. "I would be more grateful than I can say."

Kallous Vulpesen

 

[Kallous]

Kallous returned his saber to his belt, and stepped closer to Iandre. This woman who had been his Mentor's wife, and was now widow. He could see that she was being crushed under a weight heavier than his own. His Mentor had been a father to him, and he loved him like a son would love his father. But he could only imagine what sort of pain his Mentor's absence would cause the one who'd married him.

"Stay close," He told her as he began to lead her away to where the Stingray was docked. He would remain on alert, she needed a protector right now, and he would have to suffice.

He didn't dare speak more than he already had. He couldn't allow himself to be distracted from his mission. Not until they were in a safer place.

He wasn't sure if they would have anyone set upon them, he didn't think it had gotten that far yet. And he'd purged most of the opportunistic vultures already, so he doubted anyone would dare actually attack them. But nevertheless he remained ready in the event that it did happen. He hoped not, he didn't want to compound his friend's burdens.

He pressed onward, leading the widow through the corridors and passageways towards the hangar. It wouldn't take them too long to get there, assuming they weren't confronted by anyone. And if they were unhindered they would board the Stingray, and they would be off in the skies above Bastion, and ascending higher before the hour was up.

Assuming, everything went smoothly.

Iandre Athlea Vulpesen

 

[Iandre Athlea]

Iandre followed without question, though her compliance felt less like agreement and more like a ghost moving in the wake of the living.

Her steps were steady, measured by a lifetime of discipline that refused to fail even as the mind behind it began to fray. She walked with a precision that was purely mechanical, her attention fixed not on the winding corridors of Bastion, but on a point just beyond the horizon of her own thoughts. The world around her had become an alien thing, muted, distant, and drained of color. As if she were navigating through a thick fog that let her see the walls but kept her from feeling their reality.

"Of course," she murmured when he told her to stay close.

The response was immediate and perfectly composed, a relic of the Jedi training that had taught her to find stillness in the center of a storm. There was no tremor in her voice, no outward crack in the porcelain mask of her dignity to betray the fact that she was currently standing in the center of a total collapse.

But the fracture was there, widening with every silent footfall.

Her gaze drifted briefly to the side, catching on the sharp, utilitarian lines of the corridor and the rhythmic hum of the life-support systems. These were familiar anchors, details she had passed a thousand times, yet they no longer seemed to hold. They felt misplaced, like pieces of a puzzle from a different set, leaving her adrift in a space that should have been home but now felt like a tomb.

"This is…temporary," she added after a moment. The words were quiet, intended more for her own ears than his, serving as a desperate tether to a reality she wasn't ready to let go of.

She didn't speak with the frantic energy of the desperate, but with a terrifying, hollow certainty. "He will return," she continued, her tone as even and factual as if she were reciting the evening's star charts. To Iandre, it wasn't a matter of faith or hope; it was a fundamental law of her universe that had simply been interrupted.

Her hands remained at her sides, but her fingers curled into the fabric of her sleeves, a small, unconscious betrayal of the adrenaline and grief surging beneath her skin.

"There must be an explanation," she whispered, her focus locked forward. She didn't look at Kallous, fearing perhaps that if she saw the sympathy or the mourning in his eyes, the logic she was using to shield herself would dissolve. She needed the walk. She needed the movement. She needed to believe that if she just kept moving toward the hangar, she was moving toward a version of the future where the silence would finally end.

"Until then," she said, her voice dropping to a near-breath, "we proceed."

The words were a mantra. They were structured, rigid, and safe. They were a bridge over an abyss she refused to look down into, a way to keep her feet moving even as the rest of her began to slip into the dark.

Kallous Vulpesen

 

[Kallous]

Just as Iandre didn't dare look at Kallous for fear of shattering her fragile peace, temporary as it was, he didn't dare allow his own tempestuous thoughts to force their way to the surface. He compartmentalized, like he needed to do in that moment. He could meditate, think and process later, right now he had a job to do. And he'd be damned if he failed to see it done.

He couldn't deny that her words made it harder. He could hear it, the way she was... fooling herself. He didn't blame her, he didn't judge. He fully understood why, and didn't dare force her to face reality, not yet. It wasn't safe enough for that yet. No... that would have to wait.

It didn't take long for them to reach the hangar, and from there the Stingray was waiting for them. Thankfully, this wasn't enemy territory yet, if it ever would become so. There were no troopers waiting to stop them, the chaos of the event had yet to fully materialize. Assuming that remained unchanged their escape would be, hopefully, swift and uneventful. He didn't dare drop his guard, but logically he didn't believe they would meet any real resistance.

He approached the vessel and the gangway dropped for them, at which time he ushered Iandre in ahead of him before following behind and taking the pilot's seat. He engaged the engines, and they were airborne.

"Where do you need to go?" He asked her once they were leaving orbit and entering space proper. He hadn't asked while they were moving, but now that they were out of the immediate danger zone such questions could be asked, and conversations had.

Iandre Athlea Vulpesen

 

[Iandre Athlea]

The moment the Stingray cleared the hangar and the world outside dissolved into the cold, indifferent darkness of space, the last of the fragile scaffolding holding Iandre upright finally buckled. It wasn't a sudden collapse—she was too well-trained for that—but rather a slow, agonizing leaching of the strength that had carried her through the wreckage of Bastion.

She moved deeper into the ship's belly in a hollow silence, her hand brushing a bulkhead to steady a balance that felt suddenly, precariously wrong. The motion of the vessel shouldn't have unsettled her, yet for a heartbeat, she clung to the cold metal as if it were the only thing tethering her to reality. Discipline reclaimed her almost instantly, but the tremor in her touch remained etched in the air she left behind.

For the first time since she had found Kallous, there was nowhere left to run. There were no corridors demanding urgency, no crowds to navigate, and no immediate crisis to drown out the screaming void in her chest.

There was only the hum of the engines and the suffocating weight of the quiet.

Iandre lowered herself into a passenger seat with agonizing care, her movements stiff and deliberate, as if she were a machine struggling to remember the basic mechanics of existing. Once seated, her fingers interlaced in her lap, pulling so tight the knuckles turned a ghostly white, a silent war waged against the instinct to simply let go.

When Kallous finally broke the silence to ask about their destination, his voice felt as if it were traveling across a vast, impossible distance. Iandre didn't turn to face him; her gray eyes remained fixed on the viewport, watching the stars stretch into long, silver needles as Bastion and everything she had known diminished into a speck of dust behind them.

"Veradune," she whispered at last. The name sounded foreign on her tongue, less a destination and more a tether she was forcing herself to grasp. "We need to go to Veradune."

The words felt heavy, sinking into the deck plates like lead. She looked down at her hands, her gaze fracturing as the composure she had worn like armor began to fray at the seams.

"I should know what comes after this," she murmured, a sharp, unsteady breath escaping her that betrayed the absolute exhaustion of her soul. "There should be a place I am meant to return to...a reason to keep moving forward."

She didn't say the word home. She couldn't. Home was a shared geography, a place that required two souls to define it, and the thought of standing in those familiar rooms alone felt more violent than any battlefield.

Her eyes drifted shut, her head bowing slightly as she sought a center that was no longer there.

"He is alive," she said, her voice suddenly sharp with a desperate, terrifying conviction. "I would know. The galaxy would feel different if he were gone. I would know."

She was no longer arguing a possibility; she was pleading with the Force to confirm a lie she needed to be true. But beneath the steel of her words lived a fragile, breaking hope that was balancing on the edge of a truth she couldn't yet name.

A hand lifted slowly, trembling as she pressed her fingers against her brow, trying to push back the encroaching darkness.

"I just…" Her voice thinned, cracking like glass under too much pressure. "I cannot feel him anymore. It's just...quiet. Why is it so quiet?"

She didn't wait for an answer, dropping her hand back into her lap as the silence returned. Heavier now, intimate and cruel, broken only by the steady thrum of the ship carrying her further away from the last place she had felt whole.

Kallous Vulpesen

 

[Kallous]

Kallous likewise did his utmost to maintain his composure. Thankful that he had the pressure of someone needing him to remain strong, that pressure helped him to set things aside for now. This widow, for lack of a better word, needed him. Only one complication... he had no idea what he was doing. He'd never been much for people, he hadn't grown up in an empathetic way, and even after he'd left the path of selfishness behind, he still didn't know how to work with people. Let alone a grieving widow who had just lost her husband only days after she'd been married.

It was quite the conundrum.

It also didn't help that each time she spoke he heard her composure crumbling. It certainly didn't help his own to hear her start to crack. He couldn't imagine what she was feeling, but he could hear it in her voice. And it cut like a knife.

Kallous punched the destination into the navicomputer, made the necessary hyperspace calculations and once everything was primed he pushed the lever forward and the stars stretched into long streaks before giving way to the tube of the hyperspace lane.

Finally they were alone, he still remained in the pilots seat, just in case. But now it was more the ship's work than his. And he took the moment to think, closing his eyes and forcing his mind to quiet. Reaching into the force to ask it a question.

What now? He would ask it. Where do we go from here? How do I help her? CAN I help her?

These questions and many more were asked, but for the first time since he'd learned to listen, the Force was silent. Wholly silent. It was there, but the ocean that was usually ever changing, flowing and moving. Answering, telling, warning and doing... it's surface usually covered in waves, was still enough to be a mirror. He got no answers from it.

He glanced at Iandre, seeing her sorry state. Unsure of how to proceed. They had some hours before they arrived at Veradune, and those hourse were bound to be tense if something didn't change.

Kallous thought for a moment or two more, before finally speaking again. He wasn't much of a people person, but he knew better than most how emotions worked. He spent the first half of his life ruled by them. He also knew how dangerous it was to keep them contained for too long. So he offered the only thing he could think to offer.

"You're safe here Iandre. Noone is here to threaten you or judge. If you need to let it go, let it go." Was all he said, telling her that she didn't need to keep that composure she held onto so desperately. It wouldn't feel good in the moment, but to release those emotions would be far better for her in the long term than keeping them bottled up. And where better to do it than here? With noone to see.

Whether Rellik was dead or alive, he was gone from their reach. And Iandre would need to grieve properly if she wanted to continue in a healthy manner.

Iandre Athlea Vulpesen

 

[Iandre Athlea]

The silence following his words settled heavily through the cabin, not with the weight of awkwardness, but with a clarity that left her composure nowhere to hide.

Iandre remained exactly as she had been, hands folded tightly in her lap, while the rhythmic, pale blue glow of hyperspace drifted across the cockpit. For ten long seconds, she was a statue of disciplined stillness, the perfect image of a Jedi Knight who had spent a lifetime mastering herself under pressure.

Then, the reality of their isolation sank in.

There was no Council chamber here. No soldiers or survivors looked to her for reassurance, and no crowds watched to see if she would buckle. There was only Kallous, the silence, and the terrible absence she had been outrunning since the moment Rellik disappeared.

Her hands slowly loosened, not all at once, but with the cautious hesitation of someone releasing a weapon they had gripped for far too long. When she finally spoke, her voice was a fragile thread.

"Do not tell anyone…"

The words nearly fractured before they could leave her. Her head lowered, her black hair, meticulously gathered in fine, intricate braids, slipping slightly against her shoulder as she drew in a series of unsteady breaths, each one more jagged than the last.

"Please."

Then, the composure didn't just break; it simply gave way beneath the accumulated weight of a grief no one person was ever meant to carry alone. One hand flew to her mouth in a reflexive, desperate attempt to suppress the sound, but a strangled breath escaped anyway. Her shoulders tightened as years of Jedi discipline fought a losing battle against the sorrow forcing its way to the surface.

"I cannot…"

The sentence collapsed into tears that had been held back for far too long. Everything she had contained since Bastion surged forward, fueled by the crushing realization that she could no longer feel him, not through the Force, not through their bond, not anywhere. That silence terrified her more than death itself.

Slumping forward in the passenger seat, she wrapped one arm tightly around herself, her other hand still pressed against her mouth in a failing effort to remain quiet while the grief unraveled her from the inside out.

"He promised me…"

The words shattered into another broken sob. For the first time since Kallous had found her, Iandre stopped trying to look like someone capable of surviving this and simply looked like a woman whose heart had been broken.

Kallous Vulpesen

 

[Kallous]

Kallous couldn’t help but feel utterly and completely useless. He had no idea how to help this woman who had broken down right next to him. He knew it was good for her to process this, and he also knew that it would be painful for her. But he didn’t realize how much it would hurt him to hear her fall apart like this. He wanted to help, but he had no idea how.

He would let her cry for a while, pondering how he could help ease her pain. To help her however he might. And he came up empty. He had no idea what he could do here. He didn’t know people, and the force was silent with him. Whether that was from the aftermath of the ritual the Diarchs had attempted, or whether his struggle to remain in control dulled his ability to listen, he didn’t know. But that vast ocean was offering no current to ride.

All the while her sobbing tore at his heartstrings.

Still he had to remain strong. If for no other reason than to make her worse. She needed someone to be there and he had to be the one to do it in her husband’s absence. He refused to fail that.

The hours in hyperspace would pass by, and eventually they would exit hyperspace above Veradune.

Iandre Athlea Vulpesen

 

[Iandre Athlea]

Kallous did not need to say the perfect thing, nor did he need to solve her grief, untangle her thoughts, or fill the impossible absence Rellik had left behind. In that moment, the simple fact that he remained steady and silent beside her, instead of recoiling from the weight of her pain, became enough for now.

The tears came in waves after that first collapse, sometimes violent enough to steal her breath entirely and sometimes quieter, reduced to a trembling silence and exhausted breaths while she tried unsuccessfully to gather herself back together. Time had lost all meaning in the middle of the storm, and though minutes, or perhaps hours, may have passed, Iandre could no longer tell. She only knew that eventually the sharpest edge of the grief dulled enough for a heavy exhaustion to settle in its place.

At some point, she leaned back into the passenger seat again, though her posture no longer resembled the composed Jedi Knight who had first boarded the ship. The careful perfection was gone, replaced by loose strands of dark hair that had escaped her intricate braids and a faint redness lingering around eyes that had long since stopped trying to hide the evidence of what had happened.

When the hyperspace tunnel beyond the viewport finally dissolved into the stars of Veradune, the realization arrived slowly through the fog of her emotional exhaustion. Iandre blinked several times and drew in a long breath that still trembled faintly at the edges before she finally managed to steady it. For a few seconds, she simply stared out at the planet in silence before speaking in a voice that was rough from crying and less polished than he had ever heard it before.

"I should… I am going to clean my face before we land."

There was a faint trace of embarrassment beneath the statement now that the storm had passed enough for awareness to return, though it was not shame for grieving so much as it was for having completely unraveled in front of someone else. Slowly and carefully, she rose from the passenger seat and braced one hand against the bulkhead to regain her balance. When her eyes finally shifted toward Kallous, they remained deep and raw with a grief that was far from healed, yet they held a profound sense of gratitude as well.

"Thank you," she said quietly, her words simple, exhausted, and entirely sincere.

Then she disappeared deeper into the ship toward the refresher, leaving behind only the lingering silence of her grief and the quiet understanding that, whether Kallous realized it or not, he had already helped far more than he believed.

Kallous Vulpesen

 

[Vulpesen]

Vulpesen looked down at the beeping datapad on his desk, his brows lifting in surprise as he saw the message on the screen. Iandre was not someone that he would have considered himself to have had consistent contact with. However, she was an associate of one of the Diarchs and high enough on the radar that her arrival was one that required his immediate notification. The timing of her arrival and the Diarchs' mysterious departure was not lost on him. [Valde to ATC 43, send your ship to my private dock.]

Rising from his desk, he threw on his coat, picked up the datapad before making his way down to his personal landing pad. "Garlan, fetch me an honor guard," he barked as he passed his head of security. The soldier threw up a hasty salute and went off. For a brief time, the Valde's estate was a flurry activity, but by the time that Kallous' ship had descended past the clouds, Vulpesen would be there waiting for him, a squad of his men forming a steady double column. They were not there to protect their leader form a threat, but to offer their respects to an honored guest.

There, he waited patiently, he and his men staring at the bottom of the ship as it descended past the canopy of trees that surrounded the spires of Vulpesen's home. Iandre's grief was such that the Zorren ruler could feel it radiating out of the hold like the chill from an open freezer. Sickening and corrupting as all darkness was, yet completely warranted.

Iandre Athlea Kallous

 

[Kallous]

Kallous sat there and let Iandre cry for as long as she needed to. He had never been close enough to someone to know how she was feeling, but even he knew that it would hurt. So as limited as his ability to help was, he would do all he could. Even if it was only being there, existing in the same space.

Kallous watched Iandre leave to go clean herself up a little before he received a transmission, instructing him to bring his ship to a particular landing bay. Which he responded to immediately. [ATC 43 to Valde. Transmission received and understood, beginning approach.]

The Stingray would slowly fly in, slow down more as it approache the landing pad, deploy its landing gear and ease onto the ground. Then Kallous would stand up from the pilot's seat and go to the back to check on Iandre before they stepped out of the ship.

Still not sure how best to offer comfort, he simply put his cloak around her shoulders to offer her some form of comfort before they stepped out.

"Do you need a moment?" He would ask, "I'm sure they'd be willing to wait if you're not ready."

Aside from that, frankly miniscule, gesture. Kallous remained awkwardly silent, unsure of how to offer comfort, unsure if it would be appreciated or intrusive. Whether he would make things better or worse.

Once Iandre was ready to go, the gangway would open and the two of them would step out, with Kallous escorting Iandre down the ramp and to their new host. Who he hoped would be able to provide Iandre with more help than he could.

Vulpesen Iandre Athlea

 

[Iandre Athlea]

By the time Kallous reached the rear of the ship, Iandre had done what she could to reclaim herself.

The evidence of her grief had not vanished entirely, as no amount of cold water or steady breathing could fully erase what the last several hours had done to her. Her eyes still carried a faint redness at the edges, and a few strands of dark hair had escaped the careful braids she had partially repaired in the refresher, but the raw collapse from before had been drawn back beneath discipline once more, not hidden perfectly, but contained enough to stand upright beneath it again.

She looked profoundly tired now, not merely from crying, but from the kind of emotional devastation that hollowed a person out from the inside.

When Kallous settled the cloak around her shoulders, a small, quiet surprise flickered briefly across her features. The gesture was simple, awkward even, yet somehow that made it gentler rather than less meaningful. Her fingers lightly gathered the edge of the fabric against herself as she looked at him.

Then came the question: Do you need a moment?

For a second, she considered lying or saying yes simply because the idea of stepping out into the world again felt impossible. But another moment would not change anything, and neither would ten; eventually, the door would still open, people would still see her, and life would continue moving forward whether she was ready or not.

So instead, after a long breath, she gave the faintest shake of her head.

"No," she said softly. A small pause followed before the corner of her mouth pulled into something fragile but genuine. "I think this is as ready as I am going to be."

There was exhaustion in the admission, but honesty, too. Her gray eyes held his for another second afterward, quieter now than they had been at any point since Bastion.

"Thank you for staying."

The words were simple, yet they carried the weight of everything he had done without realizing it mattered.

Then, gathering herself one final time, Iandre drew a slow breath and straightened slightly beneath the borrowed cloak before stepping forward beside him as the gangway lowered and Veradune waited beyond the ship.

Kallous Vulpesen

 

[Vulpesen]

Vulpesen stood infront of his men, his hands folded infront of him as he watched Iandre descend from the ramp of the ship. "Welcome to Veradune," he siad simply, his golden eyes flicking between the pair as Kallous followed behind. It wasn't a leap to figure out what had happened. With the Diarchs gone, there was a power vacuum. Vacuums led to chaos, and chaos rarely agreed with those close to the past leadership.

Behind him, his men all took a step to the side, allowing for a corridor for Vulpesen and his guests to walk through back towards the main building of the estate "I take it you need a place to rest and recover?" There was sympathy in his eyes, but he did not push. Whatever Iandre needed, he was certain he could provide, and whether she wished to speak or stay silent about her ordeals; he would allow her that choice.

Iandre Athlea Kallous

 

[Kallous]

"Don't thank me Iandre." He told her gently. "I'm happy to do it."

Kallous was not a man who was largely capable of reassuring or assisting a mourning woman. But he saw a duty and he fulfilled it, and as unprepared and inept as he might be, he was indeed happy to provide whatever support he could. And as such he remained behind and beside the widow as the ramp lowered to the ground, and they stepped out to be greeted by an honor guard and their host who gave them a greeting.

Kallous, not being directly addressed, did not provide the man with an answer, instead allowing Iandre to have a chance to, though ready to step in and speak for her if and only if she needed him to.

Iandre Athlea Vulpesen

 

[Iandre Athlea]

By the time the ramp lowered onto Veradune, Iandre had rebuilt what composure she could, but it was a hollow shell that even she knew would not survive much longer.

The woman descending beside Kallous bore almost no resemblance to the poised Jedi Knight Bastion had known. Her grief did not merely linger around her; it bled openly into the Force as a jagged, fraying ache that resisted every desperate attempt she made to contain it. The disciplined posture she usually wore, as naturally as breathing, now looked agonizingly brittle, maintained only through constant effort and a sheer refusal to collapse completely in front of strangers.

Kallous's cloak remained tightly gathered around her shoulders, and her fingers locked into the heavy fabric near her chest as though anchoring herself to the only stable thing left in her universe since Bastion.

When Vulpesen greeted them, her gray eyes lifted toward him with agonizing slowness, and a tremor of relief flickered through the pain living behind them. This was not because the agony had lessened, and it was not because she believed there was any solution waiting for her here. It was merely the exhausted, bleeding relief of someone who had finally staggered somewhere safe enough to stop pretending she was surviving this with her dignity intact.

"Thank you," she whispered softly.

The words sounded painfully thin, for her throat was scraped raw from hours spent crying in the silence of hyperspace where no one but Kallous could hear her breaking apart.

The honor guard shifted aside to open a path toward the estate beyond, but Iandre barely seemed to register them. Her attention drifted unfocused through the movement around her because some part of her mind remained trapped aboard the ship, still reaching helplessly toward the terrible silence where Rellik's presence should have been.

Then Vulpesen spoke of rest and recovery, and the words struck her with startling force.

For several terrible seconds, her breathing faltered entirely while something sharp twisted through her chest. The implication buried in the word recover felt almost unbearably cruel in her current state, suggesting that there might someday be a version of her capable of standing upright without feeling hollowed out by grief.

Her throat tightened visibly as she fought to steady herself.

"I…"

The syllable splintered apart before she could properly form the sentence.

Her gaze dropped toward the landing platform beneath her feet while she struggled to regain enough control to continue speaking without falling apart again in front of all of them. When the words finally came, they sounded exhausted enough to physically ache.

"…I think rest would be wise." It did not sound like agreement so much as surrender. Only then did her eyes drift toward Kallous beside her. "He brought me here safely," she murmured quietly.

The simple acknowledgment carried the crushing emotional weight of everything he had endured during the journey, which included witnessing the complete and humiliating collapse she had tried so desperately to prevent anyone from seeing.

When she forced herself to look back toward Vulpesen, guilt surfaced immediately beneath the grief. "I am sorry if my arrival brings difficulty to your home," she said softly. Even now, shattered as she was, the instinct to apologize for becoming someone else's burden remained painfully intact.

Beyond Vulpesen's shoulder, the lights of the estate had begun to blur together through sheer exhaustion. Every part of her felt frayed thin from holding herself upright for this long, and for one dangerous moment, she looked frighteningly close to simply collapsing where she stood on the landing platform.

"I do not know what comes next," she admitted quietly, for the final remnants of practiced Jedi certainty were abandoned completely now. "I only knew I could not stay there anymore."

The words came out utterly hollow because the moment Rellik vanished, Bastion had not simply become painful. It had become a tomb she could no longer bear to walk through.

Vulpesen Kallous

 

[Vulpesen]

Vulpesen stood with the same customary calm he always brought in the face of tragedy. Loss was inevitable. What mattered was how one handled it. It begat problems, always. His course was one of finding solutions. At present, those problems were a weary grieving widow and her companion appearing on his doorstep in a whirlwind of confusion and uncertainty. The solution was simple; give certainty and security. "Your arrival is a welcome one, even if the circumstances are far from such. Stay as long as you wish and know that it is no imposition."

Vulpesen turned his body, stepping aside and ushering the two through the corridor of his men and towards the exit of the docks. "As for what comes next, I think a drink and some food would do you good. Collect your thoughts and yourself." His gaze turned to Kallous and his tail flicked as he appraised the man. "I don't think we've met. Vulpesen Torrevaso, Valde and Arch-Wilder of Veradune. Welcome to my home."

Iandre Athlea