Last time: They made it to the Valor. Sasha and Oppie received medical care.

Now: Oppie wakes up.

Chapter 3- Thank You For Protecting Her

Oppie slowly came awake. For the first time in a week he awoke in a warm haze, and he registered the slightly itchy after effects of a bacta treatment. All the little aches and pains were diminished to the point where he could almost forget about them. He opened his eyes, looking around drowsily.

"Hey Op," Viran greeted him quietly from the stool beside his bed. He offered him a small smile.

"Hey Vir." He replied, "how's Sasha?" He asked.

Viran hesitated for a second. "I don't know. Kelce says she's doing okay, but no one has been allowed to see her yet since she got out of surgery," he explained, looking downward.

"But Kelce says she's okay?" Oppie pressed.

"Yeah, she's okay," Viran assured him, raising his gaze to look at him.

Oppie nodded tiredly and lay back into the bed a little. "We need to stop meeting in recovery rooms like this." He said wryly.

Viran chuckled. "Yeah well, that would mean not going on missions or jobs anymore and that doesn't sound like very much fun," he joked. "But seriously though, I agree. It has become quite a habit of ours in recent years."

"Are you okay?" Oppie asked, looking over at him.

"I was about to ask you the same thing," Viran said with a soft snort. He then looked away again. "I'm alright. I'm just glad you are both back with us and safe. It was hard this past week, but the others helped me get through it. That and the research I was doing on that Von guy."

"Find out anything interesting about him?" Oppie asked, a little curious.

"Well, he has quite a track record with doing rather unorthodox methods when it comes to bounty hunting. And he really did his research on how to take on Jedi before going after Sasha," Viran told him. "Also the fact that he got paid one million credits in advance to even set up that crazed hunt. And that's before accounting for the potential extra winnings he could have gotten if you two were both captured."

"I can vouch for all of that." Oppie groused, "He left us a holodisk explaining some of it, and Sasha and I heard some more from what the hunters said." Oppie finished tiredly.

"Yean, I figured, but I wasn't entirely sure. Anyway, aside from that, there sadly wasn't much else to it," Viran added with a frown. "Not even any information regarding the client that paid him for the job. So we have no idea who is responsible for all of this."

"Sounds like we have our next mission then." Oppie replied.

"Not at the immediate moment," Viran said with a smirk. "First, you two need to heal and get better. Then we should probably go home and get back to Lana. There we can regroup and figure out who is responsible."

"Yeah, going home sounds nice." Oppie agreed tiredly. "Viran I'm sorry. I feel like we almost lost Sasha because I wasn't able to protect her."

Viran reached up and placed a hand on Oppie's arm. "Please don't apologize. I know you did everything you could to protect her and take care of her. Like you always have for as long as we've known you. If it wasn't for you being there for her…" He hesitated for a second as he tried to find the right words, but when they came out, his voice cracked with emotion. "I don't know what would have happened. What I would have done. So please don't apologize." He begged.

Oppie just nodded, and went quiet for a while.

"Are you doing okay?" Viran asked, breaking the silence.

"Yeah." Oppie said, "just tired. I'm glad we're safe though. I…" Oppie trailed off, "I wasn't sure you guys would be able to figure out where we had been taken, I wasn't sure how we were going to get out of that." He admitted.

"I get it," Viran said with a nod. "When we got to Nivon 5, we had reached a dead end with where to look. If it honestly wasn't for Kitsu and Illara figuring out that it was Von Signa then discovering the ysalamiri scale, I'm not sure if we would have found you two in time. They are the real reason we were able to save you guys."

"I'll need to buy them dinner or something." Oppie said. "It's funny in a way. All those years we were on the run from the Empire, that was what I was scared of. Getting some bounty hunters on our trail and having to deal with something exactly like that. I thought all of that was behind us." Oppie said quietly, "and there were plenty of times when I was pretty afraid." He admitted.

"But we had the Force and some weapons back then. So we would have had better odds if it did happen," Viran said simply. "You guys didn't have either, at least not initially it sounded like. And there were creatures there that hunt Force users. I would have been scared too if I was in your shoes. Plus the both of you getting injured like that probably didn't help either."

"No." Oppie said, "and jungles and swamps." He groused, "no wonder both of us ended up getting infections from that place. I hope more people don't know about ysalamiri." Oppie said with a slight shudder.

"I hope so too," Viran said, shuddering too. "Cien and I weren't even on that planet for more than twenty minutes and it felt… empty without the Force. If someone else learned of those creatures, all Force users would be in peril."

"Yeah." Oppie agreed tiredly.

"Why don't you go ahead and get some rest," Viran suggested. "You've earned it."

"Okay." Oppie said drowsily. "Wake me if anything happens." He said, fading fast.

"I will," Viran said with a smirk. He sat there for a moment before standing from his stool. "Hey Op…" he started. But before he could allow Oppie the chance to respond, Viran leaned forward and gave his brother a hug. Oppie was a little surprised, but he wrapped an arm around Viran in return. "Thank you for taking care of her. And I'm so happy you're both back. I was so afraid I had lost you for good," he cried gently into Oppie's shoulder.

Oppie wasn't quite sure how to respond, he felt tears come to his own eyes as well at how close they had come to being lost. "Thank you for saving us." He replied.

"Of course, I'll always be there for you guys. You're my family, my best friend. My brother. You have been for so long," Viran said, pulling away. He reached up and wiped his face. "And we look out for each other."

"Thank you Viran." Oppie responded quietly.

"No problem. Thank you, Oppie," Viran said, smiling gently at him. "You should get some rest. We'll be here when you wake up."

"Okay, thanks." Oppie said as he rested back in the bed.

Viran patted Op's arm before moving away from the bed. "Be back in a bit. Rest well," he said. Oppie was already falling asleep as Viran left the recovery bay.

After visiting with Oppie, Viran decided to go rest too for a while in the quarters they were given by Captain Garret. However, as soon as he laid down on the bed in the room, sleep eluded him. He thought that after finally getting Sasha and Oppie back that he would sleep for a week as he was already so sleep deprived from the last one. But no matter how hard he tried to rest, he couldn't. He kept thinking about everything Oppie had said on the Shadow. Everything the two of them had to go through just for someone else's sick enjoyment of their suffering. He was grateful that they were both okay and that they were both safe. However, he couldn't get over the lingering fear he had in the back of his mind at just how close they were to not ever seeing them again. How close they were to being taken away to somewhere else, to someone else far worse than Myrkr if he had to guess. As much as Viran didn't believe in luck, they really did get lucky in finding them so quickly.

He laid there for about an hour with his hands behind his head as he stared at the ceiling, deep in thought. A knock to his door pulled him out of it.

"It's open," he called out, not really feeling like getting up to greet the person at the door who he sensed was Nova.

The door slid open and Nova poked her head in. "Hey, Viran," she greeted him. "You doing okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just trying to rest," Viran said before turning his head to look at her. "What's up?"

"I was just talking with Kelce and he told me to tell you that Sasha is ready for visitors," Nova informed him.

That woke him up. Viran shot straight up in bed and looked at her, wide eyed. "Wait, really? Why didn't he just call me?" He asked, confused.

"He said he was going too, but I offered to deliver the message," Nova explained.

Viran got out of bed and came over to the door. "Thanks. I'll head straight there," he said.

"No problem," Nova said as she stepped aside and allowed him to exit the room.

Viran waved her off as he took off in a sprint down the corridor back towards the medical wing. Thankfully their quarters were so close by that it wasn't a long run. He reached the bay in no time and entered in to find Kelce talking with the Valor's head doctor. Viran slowed his pace as he approached. Kelce noticed him enter and flashed him a quick smile before excusing himself from his conversation with the other doctor.

"I see Nova delivered my message," Kelce said with a chuckle.

"Yeah, how is Sasha doing?" Viran asked, jumping immediately to the point.

"Follow me," Kelce said as he started to move towards the ICU. "Sasha is in stable condition and is already showing signs of improvement, which is great news. However, I still want to keep a close eye on her and limit the number of visitors she has at a time so she can heal. So for now, I'm only allowing one person to see her at a time. I figured you would like to see her first since she is your wife."

"Thank you," Viran said.

"Of course," Kelce said as he led him into the ICU.

It was fairly empty inside. A few doctors moved around keeping the place clean, but also checking on any patients in the ward. There only seemed to be two patients from the looks of it. One of them was in the far back of the room with a curtain separating them from the rest of the other. The other was Sasha from what Viran could sense. Kelce came to a stop in front of the nearest curtained off bed from the door. He then looked at Viran.

"I must warn you. What you might see may be a little startling at first," Kelce warned with a serious tone.

Viran looked up at him as his brow furrowed in worry. He then looked back towards the curtain as Kelce drew it back. Viran froze in place the second Sasha was revealed to him. It took him a second to take it all in before he could even take a step forward. Sasha was lying on the bed, unconscious. Her hair was laid out across the pillow in messy curls from her braid that was taken out. Her skin was so pale and sunken in. Sasha was almost unrecognizable like this. She was also dressed in a medical gown that perfectly hid the wrappings around her midsection from her surgery. She was cleaned of all of the dirt and grime that was all over her body when they had first found her, and all of the small cuts were bandaged. However with the dirt gone, the bruises on her body were much more prominent. Her right arm was heavily bandaged around her shoulder and her arm was slung across her chest. Her left leg was wrapped up in a cast that was keeping the leg as straight as possible. She was still wearing a respirator mask that was helping her breath and still hooked up to an IV along with a few other machines.

"We haven't given her a bacta treatment yet, but once she wakes and starts making more progress towards getting better then we will do so. Then all those minor cuts and bruises will be taken care of," Kelce informed him, almost reading his mind.

"Thank you for everything you have done, Thane," Viran said as he made his way over to her side, taking her left hand into his. Her hand was so cold, it made him shiver slightly at it's touch.

"Of course," Kelce said. "I'm going to go get some rest myself, but Doctor Terill will be here if you need anything."

Viran just nodded as Kelce pulled the curtain closed and left him alone with his wife. He sat down in the chair that was provided for him and waited… waited for her to wake up. However, he had no idea how long it would be until then.

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