Last time: Cien rules in Dracul's place. And Kopesh receives a call from the Dark Lord.

Now: Oppie talks with his family.

Chapter 6- I Forgive You, Vod

Oppie stepped into the darkened recovery room, it was relatively late in the evening and he was returning to sit with Kyr, since it seemed like he should be here. He also enjoyed the solitude of the dark room, especially after a boisterous dinner with the rest of the family. Kitsu looked up at him from beside Kyr's bed, she was sitting on the stool reading a datapad, and she looked to regard Op with a slight smile.

"Hey." She said in greeting.

"Hi. We were wondering where you were." Oppie responded. He looked over at Kyr, still a mass of bandages, looking more like an ancient mummy than a Mandalorian warrior at the moment. He was still asleep, not having woken up. Sasha and the medical droids felt assured that he had not suffered any permanent impairment or lingering injuries, but he had been so badly injured he had still not regained consciousness. At least now it just looked like he was sleeping though, rather than laying on the brink of death. Sasha still hadn't described to him how close his brother had come to dying, though he had inferred from a few comments it had been far too close to comfort.

"I just felt like reading for a bit." She said, placing the pad aside. "Pull up a stool. We haven't had a chance to talk a lot."

Oppie walked across the room and grabbed one of the stools that was near one of the other beds, as he turned to bring it back he saw Kitsu chuckling to herself.

"Viran always rolls them over with the Force." She said, in explanation.

"Yeah. Old habits for both of us, I guess." Oppie said, as he brought the stool into place and took a seat. "He always liked to use the Force whenever he could. He must love being somewhere where we don't have to hide who we are." He said, considering it.

"I get that." She said, nodding. "How are you doing with everything?" She said, looking him in the eye.

"Fine." Oppie responded.

Kitsu considered him for a moment. "Everything that happened while you were gone must be a bit of a shock." She prodded.

"Yeah." He replied, noncommittally. "I think the hardest part was not being there for it, and having the time difference be so much. Everything was so different last week." He said with a slight grimace. "If I'd been trapped there for the full nine months or whatever, it would be one thing but I don't even have that sense of time having passed."

"That's a weird trick." She agreed. "One thing to have things change while you're gone, but it's completely different for this."

He frowned a little, "Three weeks ago, to me, you and I had never met, and I was on Vestora and I," He paused, looking at Kyr, "I thought about Kyr and what he had told me, but I never thought he and I would meet again, to be honest. And Sasha and Viran…" He trailed off, "everything changed so much."

Kitsu smirked a little. "Yeah, that must be a bit of a shocker. I remember back on Artemis you were so worried about them, like they were still your younglings to protect, but they've definitely grown. And, well, them." She added, with a small chuckle.

Oppie sniffed in amusement as well, but his frown still remained. "Yeah."

"How are you with that?" Kitsu prodded, looking him in the eye, asking in a quiet tone.

He considered for a moment, with a deepening frown. "If the order was still around, it would have been forbidden. I guess if the order was around they probably would never have even spent any time together, so it wouldn't have been an issue." He said, glancing down at his hands, clasped in his lap. "But we're not in the order, and I am happy for them, truly. They deserved to have happiness like that, especially after everything we've been through."

He paused, and Kitsu was kind enough to just listen. "I know Viran had those feelings for a while now. Sasha came down with the Tarkelian flu a couple of years ago, and she was so, so sick. I had left to go take care of some things, when I returned he was sitting at her bedside. He didn't know I had come back and I was just coming up to the door, and he told her how he felt. I remember I just backed away from the door and leaned against the wall for a while, just thinking about it." He paused again, relieving that memory, the worry for Sasha, the small shock of that moment and that revelation. "And I decided then that if something grew between them it wasn't my place to stop it. So I had a little bit of a head start to consider what would happen if they actually did end up together." He said, glancing up at Kitsu and smirking a little. He looked back down at his clasped hands.

"But it is a big change," Kitsu observed, "to actually have them be together, to actually have them be so…" she paused, considering her words.

"Grown up?" Oppie completed the thought for her, and she nodded. "Yeah." He frowned. "We've spent the last decade and a half running from the Empire, just trying to survive, day to day, week to week, always looking over our shoulder. Every now and then I'd try to think long term, what the rest of our lives could be. But then something would happen, and we'd need to run, never being able to catch our breath."

"And suddenly the ten year old younglings you saved grew up into twenty five year olds that have eyes for each other." Kitsu finished.

Oppie nodded. "And suddenly it's not the three of us. It's the two of them, and me. I don't know where I fit in," he paused. "To any of this." He added, looking around the dark room and encompassing the stronghold in his gesture.

"You're still their friend, you're still their brother. Even if they don't need you as their mentor and protector, that doesn't mean they don't still need you." Kitsu said quietly. "And your family and your place in this galaxy has only grown, not lessened." She added.

"I know," Oppie said.

"I know it was only a week or two ago for you since we last spoke on Artemis." Kitsu continued. "But they went through a lot to get you back. I didn't help them with the temples, but Kyr and I always stay in touch, and he let me know how things were going. The kids handled themselves through some pretty tough situations, and they impressed Kyr." She said, nodding at his unwaking brother. "That doesn't happen easily. You might not have noticed, but he's kind of tough on people." She said with a little smirk, and that brought a smile to Oppie. "They went through a lot to bring you back Op. As important as the two of them are to each other, they risked that to bring you back safely." She nodded at Kyr. "All three of them did."

After a quiet moment, Kitsu kept her glance at Kyr and continued speaking. "Did they tell you what happened?" She looked back at Oppie as she asked the question.

"No." Oppie replied, "I know it was close, but the two of them seem to want to avoid the subject."

Kitsu considered her words very carefully. "It wasn't close, Op." She said, and he glanced up at her. "He wouldn't have survived. He was nearly dead when I landed, and we wouldn't have had time to save him even if we'd had a hospital in orbit. For all intents and purposes he died."

He looked up at her as that news sunk in.
"Our suits monitor each other when we're in the same AO, and his vitals flatlined." She paused, swallowing, "Sasha brought him back somehow, some way I don't understand, and it still scares me."

Oppie said nothing, just looking over at his brother, feeling a wave of guilt wash over him. And the revelation about the extent of Sasha's powers was, in and of itself, a shock.

"I'm not telling you that to make you feel guilty." She said, seeing the emotions play across his face. "You need to understand that they did all that to save you, and they did it because they wanted to. Kyr held them off on the surface, Viran held off that Sith in the cave, and Sasha exhausted herself to the point of collapsing to save you, then to save Kyr. So don't ever feel like you won't have a place with them, they've more than proven how much you matter to them, and how far they will go for you." She finished.

They were quiet for a moment, Kitsu not having anything else to say, and Oppie not knowing what to say. "Thank you." He finally said, breaking the silence.

She nodded, and they sat together in the companionable, dark stillness of the room for a while.

Some time passed. Kitsu left the room to go see what Illara was up to, and maybe get some sleep. Oppie had found a datapad of his own, and was reading an installment in a fiction series he had found to be a fun escape over the years. His eyes felt heavy though, especially in the dark space, albeit the stool was uncomfortable for long stints and the literal pain in his backside kept him awake. He was considering heading back to the room he had adopted when Kyr showed some signs of activity. After a few moments Kyr's eyes worked their way open, and they focused on Op, with a slight moment of confusion.

"Su cuy'gar" Op said with a smile, echoing a now familiar greeting between them.

Kyr tried to speak and coughed a little, "I don't really feel like it," he finally said in a gravelly voice, Su cuy'gar was a mando'a greeting that translated to 'you're still alive.'

Op chuckled a little and regarded his brother.

"And you made it back," Kyr said haltingly, "that's good."

"Yeah, thanks to you and Sasha and Viran." Op nodded.

"I think Kitsu and Illara were there, too." Kyr grimaced a little. "And don't forget Tac, he sure won't let you." He added after a moment.

"Yeah, I owe all of you." Oppie said, "And thank you, Kyr. For everything."

"Don't mention it." The Mando said, "That's what family does for each other." He added after a moment.

Oppie swallowed, that was the first time Kyr had admitted that they were family since he had refused to help him all those years ago. He wasn't quite sure what to say.

"You did a good job with them." Kyr said after a moment, "Sash'ika's a little fireball and Sport is a lot of fun to hang out with." He added.

"I'm glad they met your approval, Kitsu said that's hard to come by." Oppie said with a smirk.

"Yeah, well." Kyr said, with a small cough. "She says a lot of things." He smiled a little at that. He looked over at his brother and he grimaced. "Op, I'm sorry." He finally said. "I'm sorry for being mad at you."

Oppie swallowed and blinked. "Don't worry about it." Op replied.

"I thought I'd lost you, and I'd never get to say I was sorry." He continued, rambling a little as he seemed to get fuzzy again. Oppie glanced up at the monitor and everything seemed fine, he was just tired.

"It's fine, Kyr, you saved me, and you kept Sasha and Viran safe. And I'm still sorry I wasn't able to be there for you." Oppie replied, not sure what else to say.

"It's okay Op." He said tiredly, his eyes refocusing a little. "I know why you couldn't. She reminds me of our sister." He added.

"Sasha?" Op asked quietly.

"Yeah." Kyr replied.

"I wished I'd known her." Oppie replied quietly after a moment of thought.

"You had your own brother and sister to keep safe." Kyr said back.

"I think we both do, now." He said, remembering how they had both talked about Kyr.

"Yeah." Kyr said, his eyes closing as he started falling asleep again. Then they fluttered open. "Op?" He said, as he forced himself to stay awake and say this final thing.

"Yeah?" Oppie leaned in closer.

"All those months we spent looking for you, and it was only a couple of weeks for you?" Kyr asked, losing his fight to stay conscious.

"It felt like a week or so, yeah." Oppie said after a minute, trying to figure out what to say.

"I think that makes me," Kyr trailed off. He fought to stay awake to complete his thought, "I think that makes me the older brother now." He nodded off then, his statement completed.

Oppie just sat there looking at his brother, and hoped he might understand him some day.

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