Last time: Cien fought Selina and tortured her in the mindspace.

Now: The fight is finally over.

Chapter 13- End of Selina

She awoke, back in the compartment with an absolutely atrocious headache. Selina was pinned against the wall still, and Cien lowered her to the deck of the shuttle. Selina was limp, and Cien looked at her for a time before moving on with her life. She grabbed her buy'ce, and she walked out of the ship, sealing the airlock behind her. The shuttle had crashed, it was damaged, but it was still air tight. She wasn't sure if the life support system still functioned, but if it didn't then that probably meant that Selina only had a day or so before she suffocated. Which would be fine. She turned back to the ship, and used the Force to shove it out of the hangar bay, and it floated away. Just another piece of debris that was the remnants of this battle.

She turned and headed back towards the Shadow Runner, putting her buy'ce back on.

"Copper seven we have the rest of the team. Do you need exfil?" Cien heard Shades call out over the Copperheads channel.

"No, I have my own ride." Cien responded as she eyed the Shadow. "Tac, where are you?" She asked switching to his channel. The Gold Leaf seemed like it was in rough shape, and it definitely felt like a ship that was on the losing end of a lopsided battle.

The message finally returned. He was stuck.

"Where?" She asked, and she looked over at a maintenance hatch, concerned after he gave her directions. She used the Force to pull the grating away and she looked down the way. "Tac?" She called out verbally

She heard a distant whistle, and she crouched low, trying to find him. She turned a corner and stopped. There was a droid there, but it wasn't Tac. But it looked just like him but with different paint.

It whistled at her, and her buy'ce translated the binary.

"Yes, I am." Cien answered.

The other droid turned and led her down the path, and she turned a corner.

"Oh, Tac." She said quietly, looking at his burnt shell, his damaged leg.

He whistled at her indignantly.

"Oh, no of course not." Cien said. "Let me help." He only had the one wheel and he had gotten tipped over from an explosion, and the other droid hadn't been able to nudge him out of the wedged position he was in. She used the Force to pull him out.

He whistled at her, and Cien looked back at the other droid reading the message he sent introducing her. "Well of course she can come."

The other droid whistled a happy bleep bloop and followed along. They made their way out of the maintenance crawl space, and Cien was glad to stand up. She and the two droids made their way across the hangar and up the ramp of the Shadow. Cien made her way around the core of the ship, out to the cockpit outrigger. Some of the systems had been repaired. The engines and repulsors at least. But a lot of the ship was still badly damaged from being shot down.

And the cockpit window was blown out. For a split second she hesitated before she realized she was in her armor. She had grown so used to wearing it over the last several weeks that she didn't realize she was wearing her Mandalorian armor anymore. Kyr would probably like that. And she smiled, realizing she was going to see him, to her home. She basked in the dim glow of his bright light in the back of her mind as she flipped the switches and activated the Shadow Runner.

It shuddered, and it struggled. But it was the Shadow Runner, and it pulled through. She pulled it out of the hangar. And she realized she didn't have comms to ask the Defiant for permission to land.

She switched over to the general com channel that let her talk to Valiant or the Copperheads. "This is the Shadow Runner." She commed, "can anyone guide me into a berth on the Defiant? I don't have their channel." She asked, only feeling slightly uneasy at the gigantic hole in front of her where the cockpit viewport should have been.

"I got you Shadow Runner." She heard Hassens voice over the comline as she saw an X-Wing swing down towards her. "Follow me in."

The Shadow Runner had to dock in hangar five, since it was the only one with additional space to take such a large craft. It was also the furthest from the entry to the rest of the ship. She came out of the cockpit outrigger and down the hall, and she saw Tac giving the new droid his own little verbal tour of the Shadow Runner. She went to the ramp and lowered it, and a crew was already at the Shadow assessing the damage. She hurriedly walked over to whoever looked to be in charge.

"Can you see to my droid being repaired?" She asked.

"Who, Tac? Absolutely." The tech said, moving up the ramp. "And we'll get the Shadow fixed up here soon."

"Thank you." Cien said, already hurrying to get into the Defiant. The battle outside seemed like it was quieting down as she had flown in, and fighters were returning to the hangar to rearm and refuel. The Gold Leaf had been crippled, and it looked like it was turning into more of a policing action now, to take the ship and the crew into custody. She had noticed the huge ship had not been firing back, so perhaps someone had taken it upon themselves to surrender the Gold Leaf once Selina had disappeared from them.

She swept through the hangar, and as she made it in, she saw the Copperheads U-Wing landed next to the Spirit. No one was there, though, so they must have already offloaded. She went through the all too familiar doors, heading to the all too familiar medical wing. She walked down the corridor and turned, following the same path she had when she had first arrived. And she stopped, seeing the Admiral standing there as if waiting for her.

"Is he here?" She asked as she walked up. If the Admiral was here he had to be.

"Yes." The Admiral answered.

"Is he okay? I need to see him." She said as she moved to walk into the suite.

"Hun, he's being taken care of." Admiral Sulam replied, but she held up an arm to stop Cien from moving forward. "Kelce is in there with his medical team, and he's letting Sasha sit in in case he needs family."

"I need to be there." Cien said, looking up at the Admiral with annoyance. "He stayed at my side when I was recovering."

"He did that because you were under threat." The Admiral said, "he's safe here. He wouldn't want you to see him like this. Let them get him cleaned up and treated."

"I need to be in there." Cien repeated as she went to move past the Admiral.

"Cien, stop." The Admiral said in a commanding tone, and she gently grabbed Cien's shoulder to root her in place. "We've had to help people who came back from circumstances like that before. He's a mess right now."

"I've seen that before." Cien growled.

"Not when it was someone you cared about." The Admiral retorted.

"Let me go." Cien growled.

"No. He wouldn't want you to see him like this. And you don't want to see him like this." The Admiral repeated. "Go back to your quarters for a few hours. I know you won't sleep, but relax for a little while. He's safe. Kelce is treating him and feels confident he'll be fine. But this is just the start of a very long road for him."

Cien stood there seething.

"Kelce is going to keep him under for the next day or so." The Admiral said quietly. "It doesn't matter if you're at his side, he knows you're here and that you saved him. Go back to your quarters and rest. Clean your armor up so that the first thing he sees is you sitting at his side in a suit that doesn't look like you've just been through hell. Again."

Cien looked down at her armor, realising it was covered in the remnants of the battle she had just been in. Oil and lubricants from the droids she had smashed through. Carbon scores from the blaster bolts that had pinged off her armor. Blood that had sprayed from the men she had cut through. She suddenly felt very tired as exhaustion hit her like a hammer, and all the little strains from the battle prodded at her, now that her adrenaline rush was wearing off. Her ankles from when she had arrested her flight to the ship. Her muscles tired from the exertions of combat. From holding the ship back in the hangar bay. The pounding headache she had been ignoring from spending too much time in someone else's mind at an accelerated pace.

It suddenly hit her, now that the rush was over. Now that her entire family was safe. Now that Kyr was safe. And she slumped, as the tension she had held for the last several weeks, ever since she had had that dream about Ikari, and she and Sasha had left in the middle of the night, bled away. The stress of these past weeks hit her like a physical blow as she could finally relax.

"He'll be fine. Go rest." The Admiral prodded her, seeing the change coming over her, finally seeing a Cien that wasn't riding a knifes edge. The Admiral pulled her into a hug. "You rescued him, now go rest so you can be there to save him."

She hugged her back numbly, relaxing into the embrace, and she nodded. She pulled back, and noted Wynnie had entered the small waiting room.

"I'll walk you to your quarters." The petite girl offered.

Cien nodded as she turned to leave, and they started going down the corridors together.

"You okay?" Wynnie asked.

"Yeah." Cien replied absently. "You?"

"Yeah." Wynnie answered. And they walked together in companionable silence for the next few minutes. Upon reaching the guest quarters Wynnie parted from her at the door, and Cien stepped into the silent, darkened room. She collapsed into the bed and fell almost immediately into a deep sleep, untroubled by any nightmares for the first time in weeks.

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