Last time: Kyr was tired of everyone walking on eggshells around him.

Now: Sasha and Viran have a serious conversation about the future.

Chapter 5- Never Leave Lana Alone

Viran slowly rocked the rocking chair back and forth in a steady motion as Lana rested against his chest. He had been trying to get her to go to sleep for the past several minutes. She was so cranky initially to go to bed, but now she had finally calmed down enough to relax against him, though she was still very much awake as she sucked on her pacifier. He was fine with that. He enjoyed moments alone with her like this. The moments where he could read her stories or do light meditation as she relaxed against him. Or where they could play with her toys and enjoy a laugh together. And when her first word had been Dada a couple weeks ago, he was over the moons of Artemis. She truly was daddy's little girl and he loved it.

It had been a couple of days since Kyr's outburst regarding how the family was acting around him. When that had happened, everyone was shocked by it initially, but slowly they stopped walking on eggshells around him and things started going back to normal. Tonight, they had just finished dinner with the rest of the family and it had reached Lana's bed time. Sasha was helping Kyr with the dishes. Cien and Oppie were preparing dessert and hot chocolate for the adults of the house to enjoy while they lounged around the living room in front of the fireplace for the remainder of the evening. Which left him with putting Lana to bed tonight. So he did what he normally did on the nights he put her to bed. He read her a story, changed her into her pajamas, and rocked her in his arms just like this. But unlike those other times, she was just not asleep yet.

"Is she finally asleep?" Sasha's voice softly spoke.

Viran opened his eyes and looked down at Lana who was still wide awake in his arms, but just very content. The little girl looked up at him, which made him smile, and then over towards the door.

"No, not yet," Viran answered with a chuckle before looking up at Sasha. She was leaning in the doorway with her arms folded across her chest, smiling at the two of them. Viran returned the smile as he looked at her. "What?"

"Nothing," Sasha said with a simple shake of her head as she came into the room. "I'll never get tired of the sight of seeing you holding her so lovingly like that."

Viran felt his cheeks redden at that. "The same could be said when you are doing the same thing," he said simply as she walked over to them.

"Fair enough," Sasha said with a chuckle as she knelt down beside the rocking chair. Lana smiled at her as she met her daughter at eye level. "Hi baby girl. It's bedtime sweetie. Night night time." She then mimicked the motion of falling asleep and snoring in a very animated way. She peeked one eye open to see if it worked.

Lana shook her head, but remained awake lying against Viran. Sasha rolled her eyes and smiled at Lana before reaching over to gently stroke her little cheek.

"She's content, just not sleepy," Viran pointed out. "She's been like this for almost ten minutes."

"You've read to her?" Sasha asked him.

"Yep."

"And she still won't sleep?"

"Nope," Viran shook his head. "If you have another idea, I'm all ears."

She looked around the room for anything that could help get the little one to bed. "Did you try her music box?" Sasha asked after a moment as she spotted the music box on the dresser nearby.

"No I did not," Viran admitted as he straightened up in the chair. "If I recall, it woke her up more than put her to sleep."

"She was also only a couple of months old, Vir. And didn't care what we did to try and get her to go to sleep," Sasha reminded him as she stood from her kneeling position to walk over to the music box. "It might work now."

"Well I'm up for anything," Viran said with a shrug as he continued to rock the chair. "But I'm also alright like this."

"I know," Sasha chuckled. "But at some point, you also need to go to bed. Or use the bathroom. Plus there is dessert waiting for us in the living room."

"Fair point," Viran conceded as smirked.

Sasha grabbed the music box and opened it. Slowly a very soft and beautiful melody started to play from it, filling the room with music. Viran glanced down to see if it was doing anything to help Lana get to sleep. So far, it was doing nothing. He gently patted her back in time to the music and that seemed to lull her, but she wasn't asleep yet. Then he heard Sasha start humming the melody. Viran glanced up to see his wife coming over to kneel back down beside them as she continued to hum to the music. He glanced down again to see that Lana was starting to doze off.

"It's working," he whispered gently. "Keep humming."

Sasha nodded and kept up with the humming. After a moment, the humming turned into light singing. Viran didn't understand what Sasha was saying, but he recognized the language to be Twi'lek as he knew she spoke it rather fluently. But that didn't strike him as surprising. It was the fact she was singing Lana a lullaby. He had never heard Sasha sing before. Hum, yes. Sing, no. Not once in all of his years of knowing her did she ever sing a song of any kind. So where this came from was out of nowhere to him. It was just like what happened with the deer a couple weeks ago. He couldn't help, but watch his wife in almost a trance as she sang to Lana softly with her eyes closed. Her voice was gentle and had perfect pitch to the melody. Honestly, if she wasn't a Jedi or a barkeep or a medic, a singer could actually be a viable profession for her, he thought as he listened to her pretty voice. As soon as the melody in the music box ended, Sasha opened her eyes and found him staring at her.

"What?" She asked, the blush on her cheeks obvious.

"I didn't know you could sing," he said, impressed.

"Uh… yeah," Sasha said nervously as she tucked her hair behind her ear as it all hung on her shoulders instead of being in some ponytail or braid or half up-half down look. He loved how it beautifully framed her face and how it flowed down to the small of her back. "I'm not very good at it. There's a reason why I never do it."

Viran snorted lightly as he stood from the rocking chair. "I may be your husband and have a biased opinion towards you and everything you do, but you're wrong, hun," he told her simply as he walked over to the crib and laid Lana down. "You have a beautiful voice. You should sing more often."

"Really?" He nodded. "I'll think about it," Sasha said as she came and stood beside him at the crib. He pulled a blanket over Lana, tucking her in before leaning against the crib frame. Sasha wrapped an arm around him. "But thanks."

"Of course," Viran said, smiling at her before looking down at Lana.

There was a comfortable silence between them as they just stood there staring at Lana as she slept soundly.

"It's crazy to think she is almost a year old," Sasha spoke after a long moment.

"Yeah, seriously," Viran said with a smirk. "I still remember the day I found out you were pregnant. I didn't believe it was real until I saw you with the baby bump. And now here we are."

"Yeah," she agreed. "Time has already flown by so fast since that day. And we both thought we weren't ready for children yet. Like we had said that a week or so before I found out. Not exactly great timing on our end." She chuckled. "But now I can't picture my life without her."

"Agreed," Viran nodded. "You know, we never really finished our discussion about kids and our future together before she came along." He added after a moment. "I mean we said we wanted kids at some point and to raise a family together, but we never went further than that."

"Well I'm happy with her and our family," Sasha admitted. "But why do you bring this up?"

"How many kids do you want, Sash?" He asked her, looking her in the eyes. "I know we don't need to have a lot of kids since our family already has a decent number of people who will love and care for Lana like Op, Kyr, Cien, Kitsu and Illara. But Lana is the only kid around here. And I'm not saying that Kitsu and Illara won't have or won't want kids, but they are happy as they are. And Kyr and Cien are still newly married. They might have kids one day, they might not." He looked down. "My point is this house is full of Jedi, Sith, and Mandos. We live dangerous lives and after everything that happened with the cartel a couple months ago, I don't ever want her to be alone. If she had siblings like we had each other and Op then they could rely on each other."

"Vir," Sasha said with a frown as she grabbed his hand. "How long have you been thinking about this?"

"Since I woke up in that cage and thought about the two of you," Viran admitted as he looked away. "That I might not see you again."

"Viran, I don't want her to ever be alone either," Sasha said simply after a long moment of silence. "But she will never be alone in this family. Whether she has siblings or cousins or just the others there for her, she will never be alone."

"I know that," Viran agreed. "But I was so afraid that I wouldn't see the two of you again. And so afraid that Lana might grow up without me. The mere thought of it shook me and still shakes me to my core. I don't want her to be alone. Honestly, I don't want any of the children we have to be alone. I want them to always have each other and the rest of the family if something was to happen to either of us."

"This really got to you, didn't it?" She asked carefully.

"Yeah, it did," Viran admitted before looking at her. "Have you not thought of it before?"

Sasha hesitated for a moment. "I'm not going to lie and say I haven't, but I don't want to worry about what the future might hold in that sense. I want to be there for everything Lana or the rest of our children do. Like their first saber lesson or learning to fly a ship or even their own weddings. I mainly focus on what could be for our family rather than the 'what if'." She explained.

"I understand," Viran said with a nod as he looked back down at Lana. "I guess it still just scares me is all."

"And that's perfectly understandable." She then looked down at her daughter. "But to answer your question, I think at least two kids is how many I'm willing to have. Meaning I would be willing to have another. I've always thought about the idea of at least two, maybe three kids since you proposed on that battlefield. And especially after the other Viran mentioned what happened to his family. But yes, I would like to have more kids."

Viran looked at her as a smile appeared on his face. "Really?"

"Yeah, but not immediately," Sasha said with a smirk. "As much as I agree that I don't want Lana to be alone, I also want to give it some time. Let's give it a couple years or so. Like maybe when she's like four or five before we have another. I mean I would love to have another kid, but I don't know if I'm quite ready to go through all of this again just yet."

Viran chuckled. "Fair enough. Then we'll wait."

"Speaking of waiting," Sasha said as she straightened up. "The others are waiting on us and I'm sure there are two cups of hot chocolate with our names on it that are probably not so hot anymore."

"Sounds good to me," Viran said. He looked back down at Lana. "Night, baby girl."

"Good night, sweetie," Sasha said. She leaned over and placed a kiss on Lana's forehead before leading Viran out of the room. As he reached the door, he flicked off the lights and closed the door shut.

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