Private What Did and Didn’t Die on the Vine

[Corazona von Ascania]

It hadn't been an easy night for Luciana von Ascania, which meant that it hadn't been an easy night for her parents.

Cora had collapsed back into bed after the last feeding. She was tired, but sleep wouldn't come. So, she did what any healthy adult did when they couldn't sleep: mindlessly scroll through her datapad.

The small screen washed her exhausted face in pale highlights and shadows. Her finger swiped upward to a numb rhythm, until it stopped, lingering on an image that was both familiar and foreign.

In the rubble of what had once been a Coruscanti district, stood her family crest. A banner of blue emblazoned with gold trim, fluttering in slow rolls of fabric within the ember-sown breeze. Cora stared for a good few minutes, then chalked it up to her lack of sleep.

She didn't sleep for the rest of the night.

—

Three weeks later.

Luciana had slept better after that night. To a degree, at least. Fewer wake ups, fewer feedings needed. Sometimes she slept uninterrupted for six, eight hour stretches.

Cora had set them up in the manor's garden. Lucy was on settled on her stomach atop a soft play mat while her mother took to pruning the rose bushes. Overhead, rolling clouds offered a reprieve from the summer heat.

"Hm," she went. "I don't like the looks of the browning on the edges."

Cora held up a snippet she'd sheared from the bush. Verdant at the beginning, dull at the end.

"Ah!" Lucy went. She raised one hand and smacked it on the mat. It made a nice sound to her ears, so she did it again.

"I think you're right." Cora held the sprig up towards the sky to better examine it. "It might be the heat, given how hot it's been over the past few weeks."

Cora lowered her hand and looked to Luciana. "What would you do to fix it?"

The babe gurgled in response.

"A bold suggestion, but let's try it.” Cora hummed. “I must say, you’re quite skilled at thinking outside of the box.”

Lysander von Ascania

 

[Lysander von Ascania]

Corazona von Ascania​

Whether during the silence of meditation, or that monotonous hum of long distance travel, the clash aboard the Trinity became an unhealed fracture in Lysander's psyche. The visual of his sister's gaze was always present; the betrayal, severed faith; it simply refused to dissolve into the ether of the past.

Landing the transport shuttle here required near reverent grace; the engines decelerated into a cooling sigh. Iron rich soil crunched under leather boots, unearthing childhood echoes and the phantom laughter. Stripped of the obsidian plates, aggressive pauldrons, existence felt dangerously raw. Nightstar was abandoned in the cockpit; the blade was far too violent, too cruel for this reconciliation; it was a weapon that only promised finality. Instead, the curved hilt was clipped against the hip. Drawing near, Lysander could hear his niece in the garden with a newfound, sharper.. coordination. For an uncle, that very sound was a bell that tolled for all the months and milestones claimed by his absence in the Core.

Cowardice flirted with the conscience; an almost motion of a hand toward the door handle, an impulse to retreat into the shadows of the ship. But ultimately, retreat had not once ever been an option for him. For better or worse, really. Reaching the perimeter of the garden, he broke the stillness. Knuckles struck a tap tap tap against the wooden fence.. from a man who lost the right to expect a warm welcome.

"Didn't mean to interrupt," the voice rasped, words thin against the garden’s soft breeze.

In his other hand rested a gift wrapped in a cloth; a guba bird.. a plush toy. He thought it might be something she could carry, or let it sit nearby like a tiny guardian. Something simple to hold and carry. For him, considering the mountain creature was born in a high place, it represented freedom, travel.. hope.

And, recently, the idea of returning home after a very long journey.

He offered the toy with a lift of his hand; it was a peace offering.. a white flag even. The Emissary had served as a bridge between Sith for the better part of six months now; but here on Ukatis, he would need Cora to be the bridge between himself and the youngest Ascania.

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

Cora felt Lysander long before he announced himself. She was certain that it had been the same for him, too; recent tribulations warped their bond, but it hadn't severed.

He spoke, and her shears paused. A thin, desiccated limb of the rose bush sat snug in between the pair of blades. There was a pause, then-

Snip.

If she hadn't been out here with Lucy, what would she have done? Tossed the shears his way? Cussed him out? She'd attacked him, and he'd refused to attack her. Imagine that – a Sith staying his hand from a Jedi assailant, and a Jedi striking at a person she thought she was protecting. Of course, the devil was in the details – but everything felt like a contradiction and nothing felt good anymore.

Cora broke from her reverie at the soft sound of gurgling. Lucy looked up at her, saliva bubbling from her gums (and around her singular tooth). In a way, her daughter had become something that would start to soften the sibling bond. A diplomat before her first year.

With a sigh, she rose, dusted the skirt of her apron and slipped the shears into a pocket. When she turned, the sight of Lysander standing there with a bundle in his extended hand made her still. She didn't know why, but simply seeing him now struck a chord she had tried hard to bury.

Cora paced over slowly and received the gift. The white cloth peeled away to reveal the plush toy: pink feathers, a large beak, and a pair of comically exaggerated eyes. She raised a brow.

"This is…the dumbest thing I've ever seen," she mumbled. "Lucy will love it."

Cora turned and moved back to the blanket, lifting her free hand as she did so. The garden's gate unlatched, a silent invitation.

"Look what your Uncle brought for you," she cooed, demeanor both softening and brightening as she knelt near the babe. Luciana let out a happy squeal as her mother placed the plush toy down on the mat, immediately reaching for the soft doll.

Once Lucy had ahold of the toy, Cora began helping her to sit up.

"How is your wrist?"

She didn't look at him as she asked, and despite her guarded, almost casual tone, he'd feel the guilt in her words. Lucy didn't, though – she was already gnawing on the guba bird.

Lysander von Ascania

 

[Lysander von Ascania]

Corazona von Ascania​

Unfortunately, this wasn't the first time in his sister's presence rendered him mute; the words lodged in his throat were like broken glass, too sharp to swallow.. too dangerous to spit out. Every stride toward him was like breaching a divide he'd personally carved out with his own hands. Guilt was persistent as a winter draft.

The Jedi he'd killed before her would have surely met their end by another blade, at another time, in another theater of this endless war consuming the galaxy. At least, that was the convenient fiction clinging to the edges of conscience..

Crossing the garden's threshold was less a reception and more a confession of his own unworthiness. Here, on Ukatis, the soil spat at his boots. Even Isobel Serraris , fresh from her visit, clearly outweighed him in family favor.

Tiny hands gripped the plush guba bird, and for a moment, warmth flickered through him as sunlight through a crack. Such light hadn't touched him since before the Prosperity. Upon the inquiry, a downcast of emerald followed, avoiding the sun. Digits flexed, testing the connection of his wrist; the joint was stiff as durasteel. Grip strength was a work in progress.

Gratitude failed to materialize. Fingers flexed again, before a colder dismissive flare arose; so, the chasm between them yawned wider. "You don't need to worry about it. It's fine. It'll adapt and be what it once was, or it won't, and I'll work around it. That's how it goes.." That was the only direction the Sith left him. Sentiment had been stripped from the lexicon he'd been molded to use. Naming pain belonged to a foreign tongue.

Silence settled; there was no animosity, but it was clearly stripped of 'peace'. Lucy's babbling tested the mask he wore so well; wonder danced behind the teen's gaze for only a few seconds.

".. She's gotten bigger."

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

Cora watched the slow flex of Lysander's wrist with something that wasn't quite approval. A soft hm emanated from somewhere deep in her chest.

"I will worry about it, Lysander," she insisted in that same irritating tone he'd recognize from their youth. "I've always worried about you, even when you were too far away to reach."

It mattered that he'd killed Jedi aboard the Prosperity. It mattered that she'd seen it, because it shed a little more light on the truth of who Lysander was. It mattered that she faced that reality, instead of consistently giving him the benefit of the doubt, and it mattered that she’d hurt him in the process.

It mattered that he'd come home.

Behind them, Lucy cooed and gurgled as she gummed on the plush toy. Cora knelt to retrieve her daughter, settling the girl into her arms.

"I remember holding you like this, you know. You were so small." She stroked along soft, dark curls. "Hair like sunbeams. I'd come visit you after breakfast, and you'd always smile at me."

Cora pressed a kiss to Lucy's temple, and she smiled at her Uncle through a mouthful of plush.

Cora lifted a hand, summoning a nearby maid and handing Luciana off. "Take her inside for now," she instructed. “It’s too warm out here.”

Lysander's sunlight had been eclipsed, if only for the time being.

Cora faced her brother, disposition firm but not unkind. "Why did you come back, Lysander?” Hands spread out to her sides in a gesture of openness. "Speak to me however you'd like. Tell me anything you'd like to get off your chest, just tell me true."

Lysander von Ascania

 

[Lysander von Ascania]

Corazona von Ascania​

There was static that refused to leave his inner ear, a ghost of the Prosperity, vibrating alongside the chirping of something in the distance. Gravel crunched beneath the boots as he shifted from one leg to the other, feeling trapped in a cage. Muscles across the shoulders sat in wax‑effigy stiffness.

Of course, that bite of air only intensified the sting of Cora’s words, landing squarely on the raw and open nerves of his conscience. Worry.. such a fragile, condescending word for the wreckage he brought back to Ukatis.

The heat of something defensive flared immediately, but a tug at his jaw silenced any chance of retort. Teeth clamped down on the soft flesh of his tongue. Truth, at least the unvarnished version, was not a weapon to unsheathe in front of a child. In some ways, not much different when standing between murderers of the Dark, meditating blood feuds, walking social minefields behind the Black Wall. He just needed to wait..

Eyes, clouded with the remnants of hyperspace jumps and the darkness of the void, fixed on the distant tree line, refusing to meet his sister’s gaze.

Cold invaded the garden the second the nursery chatter vanished with the wet-nurse. And that was when he finally returned to the other blonde, eyebrows lifting in challenge.

"Worrying." The word spat out like a curse.

Lysander's gaze burned with a cruel mix of exhaustion and irreparable hurt. He too found himself checking the grass, wondering if the plush toy had been abandoned. "Because I wanted to know if my sister was still alive." Lips parted as an inhale dragged through teeth. "Not physically," he clarified. "I was looking for the one who used to sneak sweets into my room for me. The one who would drag me through these very hedges when Father’s etiquette lessons felt like a noose. I wanted to see if that version of you was still here."

A hollow, mirthless laugh pushed away any chance of silence. "I wanted to know if she survived me." It hurt even more to believe the distance between them became a chasm no amount of affection could bridge.

"You fething idiot,” escaped before he could stop it. “You shouldn't have been there. You shouldn't have seen what grew out of the boy you used to take care of."

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

Cora expected the air between them to chill in Lucy's absence. She hadn't expected frost to creep through the garden like a wintry refrain.

The little guba bird, at least, had departed with the youngest von Ascania. Soon to be
covered in slobber.

Lysander's words hit her like a gust of frigid air. That wasn't what surprised her - she'd expected as much - but she didn't have to strain to hear the threads of longing that underscored the hurt. Once, she'd been his protector. Now, conflicted by grief and duty, she'd become his assailant.

He was reaching for softness. For a familial intimacy, a bond that didn't need words. Was destroying that another casualty in the war between Light and Dark? Before that question could even fully surface, Cora balked.

"Shouldn't have been there…?" Her nose wrinkled, the first note of displeasure behind the placid plane of her face.

"Well, I was there. I saw you. Who you came with, and what you did. Nothing will change that." Her lips twisted, needled by the particulars of his frustration. "Why wouldn't a Jedi be there to defend her brethren?"

It occurred to her that Lysander was wrestling with who he was, and her learning who he was. She couldn't discern whether it was guilt, or concern for her safety. Perhaps both.

"If I survived you?" she nearly snorted in surprise, but her tone conveyed everything. "I've survived a royal marriage, I've survived our father, and I've survived captivity of the Sith. And you think I can't survive a brat playing broody knight?"

Cora closed the gap between them, if only by a single step. The heat of the sun radiated closer, sweeping over the ice he'd laid before her.

"Here is my truth: you exhaust me, Lysander. You terrify me, Lysander, and yet I still can't love you any less. Because even when you rip planets apart and call it power or truth or however the Sith justify taking as many lives as they do, all that I want to do is bring you back home."

Then, she reached out, and grabbed Lysander by his shoulders. Before it could even register, she’d pulled her wayward little brother into a violent embrace.

She didn’t want to let go. Not again.

Lysander von Ascania

 

[Lysander von Ascania]

Corazona von Ascania
​

Something glacial made home in the Sith’s posture; the breath that ventured into his lungs refused to leave. Just porcelain and spite. The face she might’ve memorized in childhood drew itself inward, irises that once mirrored the birth of nebulas collapsing to the width of a blade. A loose wayward strand of hair stirred against his temple, the way a candle moves before the dark claims it.

“Survival sounds more like a way of saying you’re waiting to lose. Quit acting like all that history makes you invincible.. it just makes you a bigger target.” The fingers at his sides located each other interlocked, suppressing violence. “So spare me the righteous indignation.. you walked straight into a slaughterhouse.”

Backward, three careful steps; her Light pressed at him the way the Dark’s fever pressed from the inside out.. as if it were some physical burn. "You talk about home like it’s a place you can just walk back into. Like what’s been carved into my soul can just wash off with a little sisterly sentiment."

When she reached for him, a sharp pivot answered, shoulders leading the motion, pulling his frame into a wall. "Don't." The growl was rough as gravel. Something in him gathered itself for a second refusal.. and found nothing to gather; the materials weren’t there. The wall wasn’t coming..

Still, an arm rose to bridge some sort of divide, palm outstretched, one last checkpoint, where it froze. After a matter of seconds, it dropped as a breathless exhalation escaped him; and against every instinct culled by the Dark, stiff shoulders began to yield, leaving only the grief of a younger brother. Leaning in, the crown of his head buried into her shoulder, stature folding into the memory of his eldest sister's protection; he became the same small child who used to trail behind her in their youth.

“Don't you understand, Cora?" The words were no rehearsed Sith manifesto,‘twas an admission, stripped of all arrogance. "When we came for the Jedi Order.. the whole time I was just.. I was afraid of you dying aboard that ship.”

Within the sanctuary of her hold, the years of carnage began to suddenly shrink. “I don't care about the wars, or your Jedi, or some grand design. I—” The rest died in his throat as he swallowed hard. “I just don’t want to lose any more of my family.”

Lysander's hands flexed with tortured tension, trying to crush air between his palms, before surrendering and draping his arms around her. "Every time I close my eyes, I see another face fading into memory. and I’ve seen enough ghosts to last multiple lifetimes..” Not everything was voiced; furthermore, all the regret sat behind his teeth.

​

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

“Not invincible,” she snapped back. “And neither are you. How dare you try to make it seem as though I was out of line for answering a distress signal that you caused!”

How much of that righteous indignation was real, and how much was punishment? Was he underestimating her, or protecting her? Cora ground her teeth in an unsettling, ungraceful manner. "You're becoming like father," she snapped. "You've gained a bit of experience and you think you know what's best for me. For everyone but yourself."

Lysander had been right about some things; you couldn’t protect everyone. Not the entire galaxy. There was wisdom in knowing your limits, lest you stretch too thin to make a difference. That had contributed, at least in part, to the Alliance’s collapse.

“Sentiment is more powerful than you give it credit for,” she murmured, deflating. “And I think you know that. Why else would you have come here?”

It hurt that he tried to stay her touch, squaring his shoulders and steeling his posture. It hurt that it felt like a familiar reaction. Practiced and instinctive.

If there was one thing the galaxy had taught her, it was how to persevere through the hurt.

Lysander’s hand fell away, and together, they closed the gap between them. Just a little. Cora’s exhale mirrored his own, the line of tension in her shoulders dropping, and something in her chest finally eased a fraction.

One hand - cybernetic - cradled his shoulder, while the fingers of her flesh hand stroked his hair. Slow and rhythmic, warmed by the sun, trembling faintly.

“I-” she began, throat catching on a lone syllable and swallowing it down. “I didn’t know. I’d thought-“

What had she thought? That Lysander had given himself over to the Dark entirely? That he’d become a monster?

“I thought you’d strike me,” she muttered, ashamed. “And I was angry when you didn’t.“

When had her head come to rest against his own? When had she pulled him closer as if the gentle breeze threatened to tear him away again?

“I know you’re still capable of tenderness,” she whispered, hoarse. “I’ve seen it with Lucy. With Lady Serraris.”

Recent conversations with Connel Vanagor and Aurelian Veruna surfaced in her mind, echoing redemption, and Cora tightened her grip on his shoulder.

“I was jealous,” she admitted. “I never had the freedom to make the choices you did, and I saw you making the wrong one.”

Cora drew in a sharp breath and let herself feel the weight of Lysander. Real, living weight. It had a way of quelling her righteous anger and making her a little more honest.

“I want you to leave the Covenant and Sith, Lysander,” she exhaled in a breath that neither wavered nor held steady, like a thought that was tired of being held in. “I want you to come home. I want us to be a proper family again. But it’s something that you need to want, too.”

Pulling back, even just a little, felt like a sin. It was important to Cora that she held his gaze.

“Someday, the Force is going to ask us to make another choice.”

Lysander von Ascania

 

[Lysander von Ascania]

Corazona von Ascania​

The comparison to their father hit like shrapnel. A blade against his windpipe. Inside, something in Lysander's chest recoiled. Of course, Marcel had always haunted him in a different way.. stern, distant, flawed, but never cruel like those horrors Cora endured. It stung because she survived what he hadn't seen. Worse yet, memories of how he was kept at arm's length after the man passed. The man returned to the soil without him being in attendance.

A shuddering inhalation claimed his lungs; it felt already like a treasonous act to the Dark that'd propped him upright for so long. "I could never hurt you," came the words from a throat choked by too many unspoken apologies. "That would be the end of me. I'd sooner carve out my own heart than lay a finger on you."

Dark lashes swept down, hiding eyes that had witnessed the burning of star systems; his head swayed in mournful protest. Perhaps, unaware to many, a sanctuary of morality remained locked deep within the teen. Somehow, it remained untouched by the blood drenched path of his ascent. There was an absolute refusal to brig harm to any woman or child, a quieter defiance in his career which was defined by cruelty.

"Leaving the Sith.. it isn't a simple matter of walking away, Cora." His voice dropped to a whisper. "There are people out there who rely on me. Even Sith who.. care. Who.. love, in their own way." Some of the language felt misaligned. "I've built a family out there too. A dangerous one. Maybe to you they're monster, sure. But they're my monsters. And I'm too protective of what's mine."

Standing amidst the vibrant garden felt like some grotesque mockery, for it was also quite painful, and made Lysander feel smaller than the shadow he cast. Strength proved a double-edged blade.. whole cities turned to ash when letting go wasn't an option. "I want our family back, more than the power, more than the winning," the Sith confessed, eyes finally reopening to meet her gaze. "..more than anything. Even when I'm out there, surrounded by war the.. ghosts and my duty.. that's all I've ever wanted."

One ragged breath shook through him. "I just don't know how to do it. Creating the storm was easy, but I've built the walls so high that the exit is gone." Silence pooled for a matter of seconds. "About that other choice what did you mean by it?"

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

This conversation felt profoundly uncomfortable, as raw honesty often did. Exposed wounds they’d spent years burying from one other were finally allowed to breathe.

Cora almost couldn’t. Not with the salt in her own wounds. She’d feel lighter for it, maybe, after this was all over.

“Sometimes I wished you would have,” she rasped. Her fingers, still at his shoulders, flexed and curled as if she could anchor him to Ukatis’ soil. Despite everything he’d done at the will of the Sith, she’d see him not returned to that same soil for a very long time.

Was it fair to give a Sith Knight, one who’d had a hand in galactic atrocities, a chance at reprieve? Did a man who refused to harm his family, but bring harm to millions of other families, deserve chance to come home and live pleasantly despite his crimes?

Cora knew that it wasn’t. She desired it anyways. Offered it, even, and would leverage every string that she had to make it so after whatever theoretical imprisonment would come for him.

“Of course you did,” she whispered. To learn that he’d built another family in the Dark stung, even as she recalled the retinue he’d arrived with during the Ukatis winter festival. “Everyone needs to feel like they belong. Even monsters.”

And Lysander felt responsible for them. In an odd sort of way, the fact that he couldn’t walk away that easily made her a little proud. A little relieved, too, that her brother hadn’t diverged too far from who she’d known him to be.

“Monsters don’t always look like monsters,” she sighed. “They can have honor. They can be capable of affection. I…” Cora’s lips pursed, and she let her gaze focus on the treeline over Lysander’s broad shoulder before bringing him back into view. “I thought that I loved one, once.”

There was an information gap between the siblings. Lysander had asked Cora more about her life and well-being than she had in return. It wasn’t for lack of interest - it was fear that kept her from probing too much. Fear that she’d push him away, and fear that she’d hear things she didn’t want to. That fear, perhaps, had made him feel less loved.

Cora's brow pinched at his mention of the other choice. Her expression eased, but not into relief - into something less comfortable.

“I worry that someday, you may do something so egregious that my hand will be forced.” Moreso than it already had been. Had breaking his wrist helped anyone in the end? It certainly didn’t make Cora feel any better. The next breath of clear air that she took felt like drowning. “Or that the Sith will demand of you what so many are already trying to accomplish - the extermination of every last Jedi.”

As this war continued to churn, the stakes would only increase.

Cora found herself idly brushing back a blonde lock behind Lysander’s shoulder. She used to fuss over his hair before banquets and galas, even going so far as to chase him down the great hall with a comb at one point.

“What do you think would happen if you stayed here? If...if you didn’t go back?”

Lysander von Ascania

 

[Lysander von Ascania]

Corazona von Ascania​

Shoulders squared, Lysander held his ground as every fiber beneath the dark ensemble gave an offbeat frequency. For a moment his gaze fixed on the horizon of Ukatis, where light bent differently than it did from the many charred worlds also considered home.

Whenever his focused returned to her, he was painfully aware of her search for the brother that'd been lost in the archives of a darker, crueler life. That Emissary's mask he wore so rigidly continued to crumble, mind tallying risks in binary terms. If she helped him, would she draw the Order's wrath or even the Republic's ire? No simple truth remained in that tangled mess.

Momentary comfort too arose in memories of the few he'd called family at the Kor'ethyr Academy. "They're like mirrors, you know. They reflect everything I gave them. And I gave them my loyalty, my discipline, courage, and even honor." Not Jedi morality, but it was good to fight well, and with purpose. And to protect that unit; a lone blade always broke, a phalanx would not.

The mention of Horace twisted something in his gut; the name would forever be an infection. "I know you did, Cora." A lone leaf drifted between them, spinning through empty air. Where hatred once resided, there was only hollowness.

Countless months saw him entombed, where one constructed a fortress of Dark Side dogma, convincing himself that coldness would shield his kin, that his descent was payment for their safety. Only recently did that lie reveal itself as rot festering beneath the floorboards. For all the young Sith's influence, he questioned whether he'd become a coward hiding behind ideology.

Stillness reigned around him. A bird breached the tree line; twin emeralds caught the light before returning to his sister for an overdue confession. "Yeah, you're right. Monsters can love. They can also kill kings."

In her simple gesture, memories unraveled: mornings filled with protests from the comb she wielded mercilessly until every strand met her impossible standards.

Swallowing past the lump, he continued. "I'd spend every morning wondering who died because I wasn't there. If I didn't stay.. I'd condemn those who still believe in me." Lysander shook his head. "You think I want to be the sword held over your neck? I don't. But what if the void left behind sucks in something far worse than me?"

Witnessing the pain across her countenance, he found his feet shuffling backwards, retreating toward the garden's gate. With every inch of distance, a piece of his spirit severed. "I'm so damn tired, Cora," the pitch of his voice was brittle. "And I'm completely lost. I can't figure out how to leave, but I'm sick of staying." The words didn't flow; they crawled out from the debris of conscience. "Every choice lately feels like carving out a piece of my heart and throwing it away. I helped lay the foundation of that regime thinking I truly understood its purpose. Now.. I'm trapped in its walls."

Another step. "I'm sorry.. I just don't even know who I am anymore beyond that prison."

The brother she once knew would dissolve, leaving behind only a silhouette.