Private Whispers in the Rain

[Meya Liefi]

Tag: Brandyn Sal-Soren
​

Meya once again said absolutely nothing while he spoke. When her eyes finally locked with his again, he would actually find a reaction there, though subtle like it usually was with Meya. It was the smallest tilt of her head. The faintest shift behind her goldens. Realisation. Something unexpected dawning on her.

“You know, it has been a very long time since I’ve enjoyed the company of a stranger so quickly.”

It was likely not what he expected her to say, not after accusing her of gathering information to manipulate him, or after his minor lash-out. He had given her plenty of information through his behavior, but not everything she wanted to know. So... perhaps her reaction would make her seem insane, but there was no teasing in it, either. It was simply the truth as she understood it.

“You should also be aware that I have ordered my men not to lay a single finger on you.” The orb turned slowly between her fingers again. “You are mine for the time being.”

And then she waited for the faintest change in the air. Something almost imperceptible, a sensation rather than a smell. It wasn’t the Force, it was the strange biological ability carried by her Sephi ancestry. A tool her body possessed, an instinctive defence passed down through generations, capable of rendering another being unconscious.

If Brandyn resisted the sensation, through whatever means, she would keep watching him closely, adjusting her plans. Maybe he would lash out at her if he felt something off.

If she was actually lucky and unconsciousness claimed him quickly, Meya would simply catch him rather than allow him to strike the floor. Though with his size compared to her lithe frame, she would find herself on the floor as well, his head coming to rest in her lap, her knees folded under her. Black hair and golden chains drapped around her rivory face as she stared down at him.

She would not kill him. The next step, however, presented a possible problem. Keeping him unconscious for as long as she required could prove considerably more difficult than putting him down in the first place. She had no idea what his abilities were.

Spoiler: If she is able to keep him unconscious for as long as she wants

Brandyn would eventually wake to an unfamiliar sensation across the left side of his face. Meya had worked on it. Marked his flesh. She wasn’t certain if what she did to him was permanent, or if in the long term it only would make it worse.

He'd be lying in a bed within the medical bay aboard the ship, not chained or bound in any way. The room had been altered enough that it was no longer quite the sterile environment he might have expected. Several instruments had been moved aside to make room for equipment Meya had apparently decided she needed. Small containers of liquids and powdered materials sat arranged across a nearby work surface, while thin metal instruments rested in precise rows beside them.

Meya was in the room too. Standing at the opposite side, partly absorbed in the small apparatus held between her fingers.

 

[Brandyn Sal-Soren]

Tag: Meya Liefi
Attire: Link​

"You really shouldn't go doing something like that," Brandyn said, with a quick push passed her. She was too close. And hearing a Sith was enjoying his company was not exactly a good thing for a Jedi to hear.

Force, he felt tired. He thought. Though sleeping was definitely not happening, not when she anywhere nearby.

"My wife was just telling me the other day how much she loves being around me," he said, stifling a yawn that over took the end of the statement.

He felt a slight heaviness in his steps. Almost lumbering to the wall on the far opposite side of the room from the elven Sith. "No...I belong to Cy...belle...what is happening?" He was stumbling through his words now.

Eyes blurring, Brandyn leaned against the wall. His hands lifted to his face. His left hand palmed the faceplate, while his fingers dug in around the metallic medical device, and he pulled on it.

The pain. The agony. It radiated from head to toe, and for just a moment he overcame her powers. Pushing up, he stepped forward, pain, suffering fuelling each step. He snarled, heavy, nasally breaths of a man who refused to go down.

"You!" He accused. "You are doing this..."

The cloying, annoying voice of training, his mother's whisper, in the back of his head, pushed back against the darkness he tapped into and sent the shadows fleeing. But with it, went the power to resist.

Brandyn slumped. First to one knee. Then to the other. And then face first into the floor of the ship.

----------​

The moments after waking were spent in a daze. And awkward, different feeling daze.

It took him several moments to be able to sit. But when he did, his hand rose instinctively to his face. "What...did you do to me?"

 

[Meya Liefi]

Tag: Brandyn Sal-Soren
​

Meya's eyes turned toward the Jedi, settling on him with the same attention she had given him before. "I altered and reinforced your flesh to halt the burning. I have considerable experience with this sort of work, but you are the first case in which I have attempted to treat this particular kind of damage. It is possible your condition may deteriorate again."

Her gaze briefly moved toward the altered side of his face. "Pressure upon it may still cause pain. In time, that may lessen. It may also remain."

Whatever she thought about the situation remained hidden behind the same cold, distant expression she often wore. Her mouth relaxed, her golden eyes steady and unreadable. "There is one other complication." The words left her lips with the same unnatural flatness.

One of her hands rose, her fingers coming to rest near the same place on her own face where his hand rested on his. She did not touch him. Instead, something unseen seemed to tighten between them.

More than likely, sharp and immediate pain would begin under and around his altered flesh; a feeling as though the skin had suddenly been drawn so tight that it might almost snap.

Something had been left behind when she worked upon him. Not merely altered flesh, but a connection. A fragile one, perhaps, one that could deteriorate with time, but a connection nonetheless.

Her voice did not enter the room, but it began to address something she had noticed just before he hit the floor.

"You are aware, I assume."

The words appeared within his mind with none of the distance of spoken language.

“Pain. Anger. Fear. They can all be used to...”

She needed words and gestures for much of the work she performed, specific Dathomiri incantations and movements helping her shape and direct the Force with precision.

But this was different. Meya did not move. Everything in the room did.

The instruments scattered across the worktable lifted at once. Containers slid and spun across the surface, their contents shifting inside them. Thin metal implements rose from their precise rows, some rotating slowly in the air. Equipment that had been pushed aside stirred against the floor. The apparatus in her hand trembled, while loose chains, tools, vessels, and every other unsecured object around the medical bay seemed to answer the same invisible command at precisely the same instant.

Nothing was thrown. Nothing struck the walls. It simply moved for a stitch in time.

More telepathic words arrived when everything settled. “...strengthen yourself. If you had utilised it more fully, perhaps you would not be in a weaker position.”

 

[Brandyn Sal-Soren]

Tag: Meya Liefi
Attire: Link​

Brandyn could feel his chest heaving, each breath pushing from his nostrils like a bull preparing to charge. Each word. Each paltry attempt to explain how she had failed to do what he had not permitted.

Pressure indeed brought pain. The same underlying ache that had followed him for months, that same ache that he had begun tapping as fuel. It was there, but now fainter than before — and only when his fingers explored the wrongness of his flesh.

"You had...no right..." He spoke with all the hubris of a noble-born son of Naboo, though growled through his teeth as would a beast.

And then she touched her face. He gasped immediately, the new side of his face pulling taut like hide over a drumhead. The glare spoke what he could not, a rising disgust and hatred for the woman across the room.

She removed her hand. The tension across his face eased.

He was on his feet now, unaware that he had moved when the tautness of new flesh had taken him.

His artificial eye and natural alike narrowed as he stalked across the room, his presence manifesting as a shadow across her. Jaw clenched and hands tightly balled into fists, he listened to her through the Force, but did not offer a reply.

"The pain was mine. You had no right to intervene." The words fell out of barely moving lips.

It was his. Rightfully so. The pain had been earned. And she had robbed him of his penance. Replaced with something foreign, something touched with the sins of Dathomiri Magick.

His hand sought his absent lightsaber.

One swift motion and she would be gone. One heartbeat. And he would be free of whatever new hell this was.

Do...not...lecture me on pain, he said through their new connection.

He towered over her, and yet his heart beat for fear. Fear that she could do as she pleased. Fear that his anger would not be enough to save him. That the love of his family — his beloved — would betray his need for power once more.

Brandyn stepped away, shoulders drooping slightly as he walked to the other side of the room.

"You...you had no right..."

 

[Meya Liefi]

Tag: Brandyn Sal-Soren
​

The witch's chin lifted slightly as she looked up at the man looming over her. Despite his anger, despite the hatred in his eyes, he’d find no apprehension from her. Not in expression, movements or the Force.

Meya simply stood there in thought, studying him as she had been from the start.

Her actions had triggered a far stronger reaction from him than she had expected. It brought another realisation to her. The way he had beaten that man. The way he had reached for the wound on his face as a last-ditch effort to draw upon the pain when he had been pushed to his limit. And now this. Anger, fear, hatred. They came to the surface with surprising ease, far more readily than they had in any Jedi she had encountered before.

When he walked away, the corners of Meya's mouth pulled downward by the faintest amount. "You are too afraid even to try striking at me." There was no triumph in her voice, only the cold certainty of an observation. "How pathetic."

"And you...the Dark Side is practically spilling from you. How long... how often have you been drawing on it?" Finally, some emotion entered her voice. Curiosity, though there was still a certain distance to the way she spoke.

A thoughtful hum rolled from the back of her throat, accompanied by the sound of her steps as she moved slightly closer towards a counter.

"That title you carry." Her hand lowered, placing the instrument she was carrying down. It clinked against the surface, almost punctuating the next word, "Jedi." She allowed the title to linger between them for a heartbeat. "That no longer belongs to you, does it?"

Annoyance began to change her posture. Her shoulders drew back almost unconsciously until they were perfectly squared, and the rest of her body adjusted with them into a more rigid stance. She had thought she was speaking to an actual Jedi. And even if he did not lie about his title and role, at least spiritually he was not what he told her.

Another thought surfaced just then in her mind. "And your ritual mate..." The words came more quietly, almost under her breath.

She remembered how often he had brought his wife up since they had met-over and over and over-and the way he had spoken about her.. so much of it had been odd. She loves being around me. Not I love being around her. The distinction lingered in Meya's thoughts.

Her fingers shifted slightly, curling inward, before her right hand rose. The Force reached outward during her movement, wrapping itself around Brandyn and seeking to draw him back toward her. She did not know whether he could resist it, and that uncertainty was part of the reason she tried.

If his resistance failed, she would pull him across the room, turn him in the air to face her, then force him down before her onto his knees, bringing him back into the space he seemed to despise so much. Her golden eyes, still almost lifeless-looking, bore into him as she regarded him from above.

"Who are you really trying to convince when you keep saying all those things about her?" She leaned down, bringing her face closer to his, the golden chains in her hair giving a quiet clink with the movement. "Do you truly belong to her, or is that a lie too?"

Meya allowed her frown to deepen by another fraction. "Truly, how pathetic." One of her eyebrows rose next. "And I had every right. My strength gave me it. It was my desire to repair you and you couldn’t stop me.”

 

[Brandyn Sal-Soren]

Tag: Meya Liefi
Attire: Link​

His back remained turned towards her. Each word cut across his soul on levels she could not possibly understand. Her disdain washed over him but found no place of permanence within. For none despised Brandyn's weakness more than Brandyn himself. It left scarcely any room to care for her opinion of him.

"I can find my way back," he said quietly to her accusations of behaviour not befitting a Jedi. "Once my mission is done...I can go back." He didn't say it for her to hear, but as a reminder of the promise he gave himself each time he overstepped. Every indiscretion could be repented of. Every dalliance with the devil could be recompensed.

He needed rid of her. If only for a moment. He needed to calm himself. To reconnect with his purpose and centre. He could not do it with the witch casting her torment upon him.

Stepping towards the exit, Brandyn drew upon his training and experience hiding amongst enemies of the Jedi. Similfuturus had become easier of late, since starting his search for Gianna, and in this moment he excelled. His doppelgänger remained standing where it had been, while Brandyn himself stepped forward into a place that light and the Force bent around him.

The Sith reached out, taking his doppelgänger in her grasp and forcing it into submission. Her words cut still, but from this distance, watching it all play out against a Brandyn that was not...it all felt satisfyingly dissociative.

She wasn't wrong. He and Cybelle had grown distant. She had stayed safely on Naboo. He had endeavoured to find their child, following every scrap of a lead imaginable. And he had been absent in her time of grief, just as he had been absent during her labour. They did not speak the sweet nothings anymore. They barely spoke. Even with Cybelle's attempt to pursue intimacy with him, he had left when a lead had been presented.

Brandyn had never deserved her. And now he was doing a good job of showing why.

The image faded, the doppelgänger merging with the light around it and dissipating like mist. The light and Force-twisted deception shimmered before dropping away with a marbled liquidity.

"You think you know me."

His head tilted, almost in pity.

"But you only know what I have let you see."

 

[Meya Liefi]

Tag: Brandyn Sal-Soren
​

The reality was, Meya wasn’t simply annoyed. She was angry because she so desperately wanted to peel back the layers of a Jedi. Truly understand one. It was something that had lingered at the edge of her mind for years.

Now this…

It felt as though every time she managed to find her way above the water for a single breath, the undertow dragged her back beneath it. Back into the darkness, alone again, with a body exhausted from swimming and clinging to that last fragment of hope. With fingers so numb she could barely feel them anymore.

And yet, far above her, there was still a flicker of light, distant and wavering against the dark surface.

She would let this man leave when they were finished. Nothing she had learned had changed that. Killing him had never been her intention. But there were other things she intended to do.

Brandyn dissolving before her finally pulled Meya back into the present, her brow rising without her even realising as she processed what she just saw.

When he reappeared elsewhere, her deep frown remained pulled taut. He had genuinely caught her by surprise. Genuinely, and it made her pause far longer than she wished to acknowledge.

His words, however, had the opposite effect he likely intended. They brought her back to herself, gave her something solid to stand on. Her posture adjusted again, regaining her composure, and a single, defiant breath escaped through her nose before she answered. “So there is more for me to learn then.”

He had done nothing to discourage her fixation on him.

“But that can wait. We’re already on Tund, and my men believe they’ve discovered an underground facility. Return to your room. Your lightsaber and a gift will be waiting for you there. You’ll be collected again once I am ready to depart.”

Spoiler: Open if time skip preferred

Spoiler: The Gift

A simple black box with gold trim would be waiting for him. Inside lay several lightsaber hilts with unbled crystals, arranged neatly within the dark interior, with a small note placed on top of them.

“An old collection. Unsuited to my tastes these days. - Meya” ​

-----------
​

Meya waited outside her ship in her ebony armour, her helmet concealing her face with its dark, angular plates. One of her hilts rested near the small of her back, while the other was hidden up her left sleeve.

Tund’s wind moved around her, tugging at the loose fabric of her cloak. Her men moved around her, tending to preparations as she stood quietly, watching and waiting.

 

[Brandyn Sal-Soren]

Tag: Meya Liefi
Attire: Link​

Being dismissed like a servant made him bristle. But it accomplished his desired ends, so he went along with it without complaint. Time away from the witch would do him well. He needed a moment to collect himself, meditate — try to find some light to which he could cling.

Not trying to fight his way out of their initial meeting was becoming a greater regret with every passing moment.

Back in the small closet that counted as guest quarters on the ship. Brandyn sat and examined, but dared not touch, the repairs on his face. A sullen disgust rested in his core. It was a face he recognised but it carried a certain wrongness to its nature. Something about the flesh felt held together, almost like it was bound by unseen threads.

An hour passed, his reflection along to keep himself company. A man he no longer recognised. Not the man that his wife and fallen in love with. Someone else. Someone he almost became years earlier when hunting the ones that killed his parents.

Brandyn was changing. He could feel it. The further he went, the more it cost. And the exponentially greater toll he would need to pay to repent of the darkness that he allowed to guide his way.

"You are doing this for her," he whispered, as his fingers traced the edges of the box the Sith had left for him.

He had hesitated to open it. Why wouldn't he? The woman was someone who took, and did not truly give without attaching strings aplenty.

The box clicked as it opened, causing him to startle briefly. Within the box lay a few ornate saber hilts, and some crystals that could eaisly pair with the blades. But the note, the note gave him pause.

Turning his eyes towards the door, Brandyn narrowed his eyes as he considered the implications. "You were a Jedi?"

--------​

When he disembarked the ship, he noted the woman again — now identified as Meya, though he would not be so inclined to call her by her first name.

The wind chilled his face immediately, a feeling she would no doubt feel upon her own face, but he gave that no thought. Instead, he plunged ahead with the typical Brandyn determination.

Though not saying anything, he did take note of her attire. The wind, again, revealing more of the shape of her than he wished to perceive. It was their connection though — her presence hummed quietly in the back of his mind, like an itch demanding to be scratched. The satisfying of that urge was likely only to forge a greater bond — something he could not afford.

The acrid waste of Tund stretched before him, as he marched towards the entrance of the facility. Flanking him were two of her men, whom he looked at with a sidelong glance. "Stay here, behind these rocks. I will get the door open."

Almost instinctively, he pushed through the connection with Meya a subtle imploring to trust his abilities. "Just let me handle this," he muttered to her, as if that would cover for his indiscretion.

Before stepping out form behind cover, Brandyn shimmered with the light, and seemed to step between the layers of its spectrum, vanishing from sight.

Minutes passed. The window continued to blow the rancid scent of the wastelands over their position.

And finally Brandyn reemerged, stepping through the tear in light itself, back into their presence. "There is a side entrance that is unlocked, held open...I checked the facilities systems and the door will not be pinged by the security subroutines for another few minutes. We should be able to get inside without detection..."

His attention turned towards Meya the Sith.

"Unless you intend to announce our arrival?"

 

[Meya Liefi]

Tag: Brandyn Sal-Soren
​

A hum, so loud she could not ignore it, moved through the Force and drew Meya's attention toward him as he descended her ship's ramp. She still was not entirely sure how she felt about the connection.

Not simply because it had been unexpected, but because he had not been what she expected. The disappointment still churned somewhere in her stomach, still clawed at the edges of her mind. There was another layer to it, too. She had not allowed herself the time to truly absorb the situation. No one, no one, was close to her, and yet this man's presence in the Force now drew her attention more readily than anyone else's.

Their connection was pulled at again before they even entered the building; the sense urging for her to trust him. The combination of the sense and his.. words caught her off guard. It had been years since anyone had spoken to her that way, with such expectation that she would allow them to act.

Even during her brief time with the Sith Covenant, she had never become deeply enough involved in its structure for anyone to address her with that sort of assumption.

Still, she allowed him to continue. Though her golden eyes narrowed slightly, and her back straightened out of instinct as she watched him vanish into the light. She didn't like it. She didn't like at all not understanding what she was seeing. It only made her more certain of what she needed to do once this facility was dealt with.

His reappearance and challenge of her competence prompted a single answer at first, “Grantis.”

Meya looked over her shoulder toward an Arkanian man standing nearby. He looked nervous, his fingers fidgeting against one another without seeming to realise he was doing it. One of her men seized him firmly by the shoulder and began guiding him toward the open entrance.

“He’s one of our best slicers. He’ll get into the first panel connected to the security system and fool it for as long as possible.”

There were other complications to account for, personal communications between staff, independent security systems, concealed escape routes, and whatever else the facility's designers had thought necessary. For now, though, this would suffice.

— Inside the facility —​

With a single gesture of her right hand, one of her lightsabers snapped into her fingers at the summons of the Force. The blade ignited with a sharp snap-hiss. Crimson light spilled across the surrounding metal and bled into the recessed seams of the walls.

Narrow passageways stretched ahead. The sterile chill of recycled air clung to the corridors, carrying the distant hum of machinery from somewhere deeper within. Meya did not know exactly what to expect, but for the most part, her attention remained fixed upon the objective.

Something about Brandyn's presence, however, the new sensation of it within the Force, kept intruding upon her usual focus. Her jaw tightened at the thought. Until, without warning, two security guards appeared at the far end of the hallway, still engaged in conversation with one another. Catching sight of them, Meya vanished within a single heartbeat, disappearing into a plume of green mist.

She reappeared among the guards an instant later, her lightsaber already driven through the chest of the nearest. The body sagged around the blade before Meya moved again, pivoting, carrying the saber with her in a low sweep that sliced through the next guard.

But she did not advance. It was then she allowed herself to turn back toward Brandyn now that she had two bodies at her feet, and despite the threat of others appearing at any second.

“You’re aware that my goal is to kill almost everyone in this building?”

He still had not told her why he was here. If it was to simply shut down the building, for data, or for a certain person.

 

[Brandyn Sal-Soren]

Tag: Meya Liefi
Attire: Link​

A spike of frustration — entirely not his own — bit into Brandyn's mind. The Sith was distracted. He watched the two approaching security guards, a split-second plan forming to use them as cover for an escape, but Meya's focus turned to them before he could move.

Brandyn lunged forward, hand outstretched to pull her back, but his fingers closed on nothing but empty, green mist.

Brandyn staggered as a wave of agonising sorrow slammed into his chest through the Force. It wasn't his pain. It belonged to the first guard, whose life tore away from him in a flash of blinding agony. In those final, desperate micro-seconds, the man's consciousness cried out into the ether — a fractured, weeping plea for a daughter, a son, a wife.

The grief cut straight through Brandyn. His hand slammed against his sternum, his fingers gripping his tunic as if he could physically hold his own heart together against the phantom ache. The second guard fell with a wet thud, leaving only the sterile smell of scorched flesh.

He forced his hand to drop to his side. He forced his legs to move. His stride toward the witch was slow, deliberate, and entirely unthreatening, though his boots nearly slipped in the fresh blood pooling on the durasteel. He understood her efficiency, but he searched the empty air for her motive and found nothing but a void. How could she carry this casual butchery so lightly? The faces of those he had been forced to kill still haunted his sleep every night. Killing was only ever a heavy, miserable act when necessary at all.

Stepping over the bodies, Brandyn closed the distance until he stood just to her right. He leaned in, his voice dropping to a low, conspiratorial whisper.

"See. Now you have me wondering." He was looking over her, refusing to look at her blade. "What is your purpose for coming here?"

The temptation to use their connection lingered. Such an easy way for her to feel what he could do. But Brandyn did wonder if she would know too much, perhaps even sense his desire to protect the staff in the facility.

"You just want to kill people?" Brandyn turned his head, his eyes boring into the harsh black helm, searching for the predatory yellow of her eyes beneath the visor. "This is a mothballed facility. These men...they don't have to die."

And if she killed the one person who knows where she is?

The thought rose quickly into his mind before he could shut out the word, before he could stop it leaking through their connection.

Gianna.

Brandyn's eyes narrowed instantly, a hard, silent warning freezing his features as he tried to back away from the thought, while still indulging their connection. Do not speak it.

He drew himself up to his full height, his spine straightening with the rigid, unyielding posture drilled into him since childhood. The desperate Jedi vanished, replaced by the commanding authority of a son of House E'Eeverwest.

"Send your men back to the ship," he commanded, his voice dropping into a smooth, aristocratic barrette that brooked no argument. "We don't need them."

He stepped closer, closing the physical gap between them, offering a desperate bargain wrapped in a nobleman's promise. "They will purge the mainframe if they know everyone is being...killed. I can hide us from view...I..." His voice cracked just for a moment, the reality of what it meant to lose the information in the database fully resting now on his shoulders. "...I need that information. Please..."

The noble pride wilted, leaving only the raw, bleeding desperation of a father exposed through the Force. He leaned in closer, his voice a ragged whisper.

"Meya."

 

[Meya Liefi]

Tag: Brandyn Sal-Soren
​

Once again, Meya found herself looking up at Brandyn as he leaned over her. This time, however, her visor reflected his face back at him, her eyes scanning every detail of it from beneath the visor. She was still watching for the smallest microexpressions, the slightest changes in tension or posture, continuing to establish his baseline.

His question received an answer as quickly and as cold as the air around them. “You’re correct. Their deaths are optional. However, purging this facility of life would send a greater message to those who fund it.”

There was no sense of desire for their deaths around her, and no pleasure in what she had done. There was nothing to sense but a cold void.

“The bodies can be...” A name broke through their connection before she could finish speaking again. Gianna. It did not arrive like a thought. It was closer to a scream. With it came everything attached to it.

Fear. Desperation. Sadness.

And something else… love.

Meya went still. She had almost forgotten what that felt like. The only person she had ever allowed herself to feel it for had never loved her. She had barely cared for Meya at all. Meya had simply been the young fool she had found easy to manipulate.

It was odd… to be reminded of her now.

She needed to know more. But Brandyn had already begun barking commands... at her, the one in charge here. The sephi visibly bristled. Her grip tightened around her lightsaber hilt. The fingers of her free hand twitched at her side. A faint crease pulled at the corner of her mouth again. This man had developed an irritating talent for drawing reactions from her.

Then he came even closer. Close enough for her to feel the warmth of him again. Close enough that when his desperation reached her, she was backed against wall.

Her breath caught. The emotion pressed against her from the connection with such force that her body reacted before her mind could make sense of it. Her fingers curled even tighter around the hilt. Her shoulders stiffened. For an instant, she could not distinguish where his desperation ended and her own thoughts began.

“Stop it,” she whispered in a single breath. Her right foot moved as if to go backward, but it only reminded her that her back was against a wall. A sharp breath entered her lungs next, then came even more quiet words from her, spoken unsteadily, against her will, “Stop... stop taking advantage of our link.”

She knew, even then while overwhelmed, that he might not be. Maybe it was out his control. That thought made it even worse.

Quickly Meya realised the ache in her hand from holding onto her hilt so tightly. She loosened it slowly. It didn’t help her much. She did not know what to do with any of this. So she looked away from him.

Her gaze returned to her men down the hall while she forced her thoughts back into order, rebuilding the distance between herself and everything she felt.

In an attempt to further centre herself, she made a small movement- her thumb pressed against the activator on her hilt. The crimson blade vanished with a soft hiss, leaving only the sterile lighting of the facility reflected across her visor.

The truth was that even before his emotions had reached her through the connection, she had already become more interested in why he was here than in what she had come here to accomplish.

But now, facing the reality—the intimacy—of this link, she wasn't certain that her interest had been the right choice.

Meya reached up with her free hand and pressed it against the center of Brandyn's chest, attempting to push him back. She did not have the physical strength to force him away. In order to make him move she would need to draw on the Force, but for the moment, she waited to see how he would react as she issued her own commands to her men, “Leave the facility, but cover the exits. Anyone who attempts to leave is to be held until I am ready to decide their fate.”

After another breath in, then out. Meya slowly looked back at...him. “That is... the best I'm willing to do. You understand? Do not push me further.” The words came quieter than usual, the edge in her voice subdued but still present.

 

[Brandyn Sal-Soren]

Tag: Meya Liefi
Attire: Link​

It was entirely unexpected. The control he felt in the moment that she stepped backwards. The roles reversed. He was imparting upon her some, even small, degree of dominance.

It was like watching the first moments of an ancient tree toppling in a forest. It felt inevitable. Like the physics of the universe were attuned to its fate.

He looked beyond her mask. Beyond the saber he knew she was toying with. And into her eyes. Searching for understanding of who she was. And he found...confusion.

The fatherly love she had felt through their connection seemed to create an echo. And it caused her confusion. The realisation snapped Brandyn out of whatever slope he had just been quickly descending, and with a few blinks caught a sight of his face in the reflection of her mask.

It didn't look like him at all. Not the new flesh. Not the prosthetic eye. Not the scarring. But the expression.

He stepped back, and away from the darkness he saw etched across his face. Had this been the same face that Briana Sal-Soren had seen the day he murdered the Unblessed scientist. Was it the face that Cybelle Sal-Soren saw when she looked at him now?

His eyes turned towards the floor. Darting about with each fleeting consideration as to his own state of mind.

"Take the bodies with you too..." Brandyn said to her men. He understood the blood would still be there, but that would create different sorts of questions than dead guards.

A pensive glance was given to Meya, who seemed to be regaining her composure, even as he lost his again. "The link...yeah...I think you are right," he muttered. But even then, it was right there, easier to reach for than his saber hilt.

Leaning again on the words of his mother, her training when he was just a child, Brandyn centred himself as best he could. His confidence was not fully restored, but he wondered if it ever could be when linked with a Sith.

"Right...let's go," he said, pulling them both into a space between the light — both Sith and Jedi alike disappearing into nothing.

"This is easier...with physical contact," he muttered, as the next t-junction was approached. It was not something he cared to have happen. But it was nonetheless true. And if he wished to keep the guards alive, some concessions would have to be made.

Their path was simple, even to the point of watching two other guards chatting about their favourite holos as they wandered by the invisible pairing. But as with all infiltrations it was always the door that was the problem.

The invisibility hid their forms, but it wouldn't hide the sudden hiss of opening pneumatic steel. If anyone was monitoring the security feed or standing right inside, a self-opening door in an empty hallway would scream trouble.

The Aurebesh across the top of the door in question read: Data Archives. Brandyn could hack the door with little problem. He had done it for years.

But again. This was not his first time doing this.

"Just...give me a moment to get this door open." Hopefully, the Sith was not inclined to more brazen forms of entry.

 

[Meya Liefi]

Tag: Brandyn Sal-Soren
​

Everything she had felt through their connection still swirled somewhere in her mind, but for the most part, Meya had managed to pull herself back together. She simply reached out and took his wrist. Contact did not bother her when she had enough control, both physically and mentally.

She allowed him to focus on his ability and on finding whatever he was looking for, but the sensation of the Force wrapping around them was not the only thing occupying her thoughts.

What she had learned through their connection only made her more certain that hiding what else she had done while he was on her table had been the right choice.

The blood she had taken from him. The ritual she had performed in order to fulfill a... duty shared by every Sister in her clan. If only she could refuse the duty. It was the last thing Meya wanted to do, but the last time she had returned home, it had been made painfully clear that the choice was not truly hers. Eventually, it would become that or have her Sisters and Brothers try to drag her back to Dathomir and keep her there.

The thoughts distracted her until his voice broke through them. Another one of his orders.

She did not obey.

Her posture straightened partly out of defiance, and she stepped forward instead, splaying her free hand against the door. Nothing visibly changed, but the section beneath and a large area around her palm became insubstantial, as though the material were no longer there.

“Go.”

She tugged on his wrist, indicating that he could pass through the altered section of the door now.

Whether he went through the doorway she created or not, she did.

Beyond it, the room was empty. There was no staff waiting inside, no guards, no immediate sign that anyone had discovered their intrusion. Only the steady sounds of multiple large consoles working in the background filled the room; fans humming, quiet electronic beeps and occasional clicks of machinery.

Meya stopped just inside. One threat had been dealt with for the moment, but another had begun to occupy her thoughts. Brandyn could sense things through their connection. Perhaps he could sense that she was hiding something from him.

Even so, she would not admit it.

He could not force her. Not to her knowledge. What she had done… that secret she planned to bring to her grave.

“Hurry and look for what you must. When I extract what I want, I’ll be destroying everything afterward.” Her voice had settled back into the cold, emotionless state it had carried before.

The experience was finally receding from the forefront of her mind, allowing her thoughts to clear again. Back into that cold, calculating space. She was considering returning to her original plan once Brandyn got what he had come here for. Once she saw it. Observed him. Sensed it through the Force.

 

[Brandyn Sal-Soren]

Tag: Meya Liefi
Attire: Link​

Something unsettling washed over Brandyn as he opened the casing on the door controls. A thought, more a whisper or hint to a thought, that brushed across his mind. He could not grasp the form of it, the substance slipping through his understanding like waterlogged sand at the beach.
By instinct, his jaw had tightened. And his eyes cast a sidelong look of suspicion — one that she would be well accustomed to at this point — at the Sith. When she phased through the wall, Brandyn simply twisted his arm out of her grasp, and continued his work on the door.

"Karking...lying...son of a mud munching...Bantha hide..." The Sith was hiding something. But of course she was. He could feel the worry lessen as the physical contact was ended. It was all the confirmation that he needed that the source of the abstracted fretting was her.

The spliced wires were touched with a third frayed wire, the spark opened the door with a loud clang. When Brandyn walked through the door, his posture was rigid...gait precise...and distance was maintained as he circled around the central console the opposite way to the Sith.

"You don't do trust. Do you?" He said, more as a way of distracting than truly engaging in meaningful conversation.

For half a beat, his eyes searched, and quickly found, the location of the central data core. The sealed chamber looked well protected, not not unreachable.

Back turning to Meya, he approached a workstation, and began with closing the door to the room. Again, the loud clang reverberated in his very skull, bringing a wince of displeasure.

// SEARCH PARAMETERS: Force Sensitive Subjects

// RESULTS: 5

// DISPLAY LIST: Request Denied

"Sithspit," he muttered, while his fingers flew over the controls.

// MAINFRAME OVERRIDE: Password Required

// PASSWORD: FortheUnblessed

// PASSWORD: Denied

His time undercover with the Unblessed had not served him particularly well in this instance. Especially seeing as most of the members he interacted with were thugs, and the type of people to use such an obvious password. It really was too good to work twice.

Stooping down, Brandyn put his hand to the plate covering the internals of the terminal access. His hand began to vibrate slowly, then faster...before the metal plate sheered off of its fixings, and clattered to the ground.

"You know...I still don't know what it is you are looking for here," he said casually. Again, another attempt at keeping her busy, this time while he hacked the logic module on the system.

As he worked, the screen continued to show signs of activity.

// BYPASS INITIATED

// LOGIC MODULE: Tamper Detected

// COUNTDOWN TO LOCKOUT: 05... 04...

His hands worked faster, noting the small count down node that began flashing within the terminal.

// LOGIC MODULE ACCESS GRANTED

Popping up quickly Brandyn jumped to his feet and tapped away at the interface, first thing being to shut down the alarm that was about to sound. And then tried his search again.

// SEARCH PARAMETERS: Force Sensitive Subjects

// RESULTS: 5

// DISPLAY LIST: List of Force Sensitive Subjects

Spoiler: List

[SUBJECT 01] SPECIES: Twi'lek (Lethan subtype) AGE: 14 (Standard Years) M-COUNT: 11,200 STATUS: Alive (Fugitive / Location Unknown)	[SUBJECT 04] SPECIES: Zabrak (Iridonian) AGE: 6 (Standard Years) M-COUNT: 7,900 STATUS: Stasis (Awaiting Transport)
[SUBJECT 02] SPECIES: Mirialan AGE: 32 (Standard Years) M-COUNT: 8,400 STATUS: Dead (Terminated / Sector 4 Purge)	[SUBJECT 05] SPECIES: Nautolan AGE: 21 (Standard Years) M-COUNT: 9,100 STATUS: Stasis (Subject Unstable)
[SUBJECT 03] SPECIES: Kel Dor AGE: 102 (Standard Years) M-COUNT: 6,800 STATUS: Dead (Remains in Stasis)

He read the list twice. His physical posture didn't break, but around him, the cold currents of the Force began to sour, shifting into a darker, heavier shade.

// SEARCH PARAMETERS: Force Sensitive Subjects \ Infant

// SEARCH RESULT: No entries found

He tried again, his fingers typing with a touch more intensity.

// SEARCH PARAMETERS: Force Sensitive Subjects \ Baby

// SEARCH RESULT: No entries found

He tried again, this time with firm, crunching keystrokes.

// SEARCH PARAMETERS: Force Sensitive Subjects \ Two-month old

// SEARCH RESULT: No entries found

A white-hot spike of despair broke his focus. Brandyn balled his hands into fists and smashed them directly down onto the interface. Plastic shattered. Internal wiring snapped beneath his knuckles, bruising his hands and crippling the console, but the desperate rage wasn't finished. With bleeding fingers, he dragged his hand across the half-broken manual overrides.

// DATA CORE ACCESS: Granted

The heavy casing around the central data core hissed, sliding upward to expose the decade-old mainframe, radiating the thick, mechanical heat of a computing system under immense stress.

A snarl etched itself into his features. Brandyn reached to his belt, and in a single fluid, violent motion, his lightsaber ignited. A brilliant flash of emerald green illuminated the dark archives as he plunged the plasma blade deep into the heart of the data core.

He snapped the weapon off. The core spat a violent torrent of sparks, the overhead lights flickering and dying into emergency red shadows. On the ruined terminal screen, a final, bleeding line of text splashed across the glass.

// DATA CORE COMPROMISED, SYSTEM CRITICAL

Brandyn didn't look at Meya. He kept his eyes on the dying smoke of the machine.

"No one gets what they want...today."

 

[Meya Liefi]

Tag: Brandyn Sal-Soren​

A violent torrent of sparks reflected in Meya's eyes. For a moment, she simply stared at it. Then something in her snapped, pulling her out of that quiet, cold void in her mind as the Force erupted from her.

A wave of power tore outward from Meya. Durasteel walls groaned and cracked in its wake. Console screens shattered, sparks spraying across the floor as circuitry burned out. Loose equipment was thrown from its mounts, crashing against walls and one another. As the disturbance travelled beyond the room, it shuddered the structure itself.

Meya’s golden eyes burned with unmistakable fury, her jaw clenched so tightly that the muscles along it stood out under her skin.

But her body gave no indication that she was planning to move forward towards him. A single word tore from her throat instead, “WHY?!”

For one fleeting second before this moment, back in that hallway… buried somewhere deep in her mind, Meya had wondered if he truly felt something for the people here. That maybe… he was closer to what she had been searching for after all.

He wasn’t. Not if he was willing to do this.

The Force surged again, violently, sending another tremor through the room. Cracks raced farther along the walls. Lights burst overhead, plunging sections of the room into darkness as the remaining illumination flickered erratically across the wreckage.

“NOW I MUST RIP THE INFORMATION FROM THE MINDS OF THE PEOPLE HERE!” Her voice echoed through the ruined room.

Then, quieter, the word escaped her again, almost as though she were asking the question of herself. “Why...”

Meya vanished in a sudden eruption of green mist. It burst outward from her form, swallowing her silhouette for a fraction of a second before collapsing in on itself and leaving nothing behind.

The witch reappeared closer to the entrance, her thumb already pressing on the activator of her hilt. The crimson blade sprang to life with a sharp snap-hiss. Red light immediately washed across the durasteel walls, bleeding into the cracks and reflecting off the wreckage scattered across the floor.

The familiar hum of the blade cut through the blaring alarms as she began moving down an intersecting hallway.

Ahead of her, the facility was already descending into chaos. Men and women ran through the corridors, some rushing toward exits while others disappeared behind the heavy doors of panic rooms.

 

[Brandyn Sal-Soren]

Tag: Meya Liefi
Attire: Link​

He didn't cower, but he certainly did crouch to shelter the best he could as the room groaned and reverberated about them. Her reaction was...intense. He could feel it shaking, not just the room, but his core. Her anger funnelled through their connection.

He felt it too. The anger. The rage. For a moment it took him, washing over Brandyn's better senses, that were already tempered by his loss and frustration. As she left the room, he followed.

His green blade swung through the air in a broad arc to point towards her. "What part of mothballed do you not get?" he yelled, but pushed the words even more forcefully through their connection.

There was nothing here for her now. The minds he had touched had sung their sad, pathetic song of men who knew nothing, in a facility of people being paid to protect something they knew nothing about. All except a single technician.

The truth of his thoughts filtered through the connection as a muffled half-thought, just as Brandyn recoiled and pulled the information within himself. Pulling his blade back, he felt the sudden, panicked chill of realisation wash over him. His actions had cost lives, but they didn't have to cost all of their lives.

"Meya..."

He said, panting as he pushed back on the connection and her rage that threatened to sweep him away.

"Meya! Listen to me..."

He stepped forward nervously, and then back again for his protection.

"Listen...to me..."

Breaths forced through his nostrils, all in time with his pounding heart.

"I know these people. I know their procedures...the one person that has access to the backup...that knows anything...he will be on a ship off-world in minutes..." His words fell out in a hurried, hustling attempt to reason with her whilst she was in the throes of madness.

"...I'm sorry...I shouldn't have done that...but spare these people...and I will take you to the one that knows..."

His saber held at the ready should she lash out. Eyes begging. Spirit pressing against the connection with one singular thought: "It's my fault...not theirs."