Paneau: capital city of Dalon
Rys'tihn Manor
3.2 APC

With a handful of officers at his side, Koril returned to the Manor's hangar as soon as he had made sure Elena wouldn't follow him. She had held tightly to Dirani in her arms ever since they had left the Paneau base near Hoth out of fear for the girl's safety, so thankfully, she had agreed to stay with the infant. She was still recovering from her concussion, as well, so Derek had been taken to another playroom to allow Elena and Dirani to rest undisturbed. And with the Lyrans split up between the two rooms, Koril could return to the search for Brylie without having to worrying about his family.

Major Jax and General Alec Kareu remained silent behind him as they walked through the Manor, which surprised him. He had shed his arm sling after changing into his uniform, but neither had said anything to him about it; either they had finally learned to not question him, or perhaps they were more concerned about their task at hand. He had left the bacta patch on, though, so it was doing its job, but he needed to be able to move unrestricted, especially if he was going to join the hunt himself. Nasu had suggested they try looking for Brylie at one of her childhood hideouts, and Koril was more than ready to put an end to her menace.

As he stepped further into the hangar, though, he slowed to a stop, sensing that something was off. He couldn't place it until he saw one Royal Guard transport sitting beside the Celestia, though it should have left with its identical twin it had arrived with earlier.

"Why is that transport still here? I sent those officers away with orders an hour ago."

Major Jax stepped around ahead of Koril to the transport, looking up into its lowered ramp. "They must have all left aboard the other; this one's empty, Si--"

Stopped mid-word by something he saw inside, Jax climbed the ramp and disappeared into the ship, drawing Koril's curiosity. Before he could follow Jax further into the transport, though, Jax quickly met him and ushered him back down the ramp insistently with an alarmed look in his eyes.

"The hangar has been breached, Sir-- Ensign Crowel is dead!"

As Jax continued to lead him away, Koril resisted, stopping him. "What! How?"

Anxious, Jax uncharacteristically fumbled for an answer. "I don't know... He--he was pallid, clammy..." Piecing it together, a look of haunted realization passed over his face. "He looked just like you did after your collapse, Sir."

Koril's mouth went dry as he understood what Jax was implying. "Spice," he breathed with trepidation, and looking about the hangar, an icy, numbing fear settled into his chest, nearly suffocating him...

"...she's here."

Still standing beside Koril at the transport's ramp, Jax drew his blaster, looking to the other guards to do the same. "We have to assume that the Celestia's been compromised, too. We need to get you out of here, Sir, another way."

Koril shook his head strongly. "No, I am not leaving my family."

"Then I will bring some of them to you!"

Turning to face Brylie as she stepped around from behind the transport, Koril was paralyzed from moving further, seeing her devilish grin as she held a limp, still Derek against her with one arm. Before any of them could react, Brylie swung her blaster up in her other hand and fired once, hitting Jax in the chest and sending him to the floor in pain. Shocked out of his stupor, Koril was too late to stop Jax's fall, but as he turned to help his friend, Brylie spoke up again.

"Don't!" she demanded intensely, training her blaster on him next. "Don't touch him."

Somehow Jax was still conscious but choked and gasped as he struggled to breathe, looking up at Koril with a mix of disbelief and fear that Koril couldn't stand to see, but neither could he tear his gaze away. If only Brylie had hit him instead; he wouldn't have felt it...

Raising his palm to halt his officers from returning fire, Koril looked back to Brylie, carefully studying Derek to determine if he was still alive. The boy was motionless, but Koril could see his small stomach expanding with breaths every few seconds. He was unconscious, but why? How had Brylie gotten to him so quickly? It was all so surreal and had happened so fast...

"Brylie...let them go," he begged, trying to keep his voice from shaking. "You've made your point."

But Brylie only shook her head at him, her eyes cold and emotionless after shedding her earlier grin. "No. He dies, you suffer."

Koril stared blankly, unsure who was standing in front of him. The Brylie he knew and had loved years ago would never have killed anyone, but she had nearly seventy deaths on her hands, and maybe even more before he could finish negotiating with her. Glancing back down at Jax who was still fighting to draw every breath into his scorched lungs, Koril forced the shakiness from his voice as he spoke to him.

"You keep breathing, Major. That's an order."

Though weakening with each passing second, Jax managed to nod, though his voice hardly worked. "Y-yes, Sir."

Koril swallowed hard as he returned to Brylie, watching his son carefully as his worry seeped into his tone. "What have you done to Derek?"

Still keeping her blaster on him, she grinned again, tightening her hold around the boy. "It was so nice of Ensign Crowel to bring him to me. Don't worry; he's just a little sleepy. He'll be fine...if I get what I want."

"...what do you want?"

Brylie's upper lip quivered as an unstable expression rolled over her features; a sudden, furious rage lit up her eyes, but she managed to withhold herself, seething her anger through her teeth.

"I want you...to suffer the same disgrace that I did."

Stunned but also perplexed, Koril rapidly thought through what he remembered of her betrayal. He had planned to propose to her the day of their one year anniversary together, but one of his squadmates told him that she had been seen leaving another pilot's home late the previous night. Before he could ask Brylie about it, the pilot had already proudly spread the word that he had slept with her, briefly ruining Koril's public image as news of the affair broke in Paneau's media. So what did Brylie mean, the same disgrace? A regular citizen without any political ties, she could have easily disappeared into the background elsewhere on Paneau without any further fallout, but as a Royal, always forefront in the public's sights, Koril was the one who had been disgraced.

Finishing her earlier thought, Brylie continued. "...I just hadn't expected you to still be so weak!"

Making the connection, he furrowed his brows. "You poisoned me."

But Brylie bit back heatedly. "No, I didn't! If I had, you certainly wouldn't have earned sympathy from the Paneau for nearly dying!" Calming herself again, she drew in a shaky breath to scale back her volume. "That was Lt. Macek's error. She apparently has as much trouble following orders as you do. She wasn't supposed to kill you...but she was supposed to get you addicted.

"With those other spice deaths going on all over the sector," she continued with a mad look in her eyes, "how...scandalous...would it have been for the Paneau to learn that their own High Commander...was knee-deep in it himself?" She laughed shrewdly, glancing at the other officers standing behind him. "You could have sworn on your father's grave that you weren't a user, but no one would have believed you! Not with a spice that potent! Its effects on you would have been incontrovertible. Then...then you would have known how it felt...to be completely innocent, but be cast as guilty by everyone who knows you...and by everyone who used to love you..."

As Brylie's tone quickly shifted to one of deep pain, Koril could only blink, listening as she altered the direction of their conversation and fell into memories of their aggrieved past.

"You wouldn't hear anything of what I had to say that morning. You...you of all people...you wouldn't believe me. You didn't even try to listen! How could you believe Tayner over me? Did you ever consider that he had made it all up?"

Again unable to form a response, Koril remained silent, glancing at Derek only when Brylie's gaze was diverted elsewhere. He could see the boy beginning to stir just slightly, but he kept his expression neutral so it wouldn't tip her off while she remained in an unstable state. As she continued again, her anger returned.

"Yes, I was at Tayner's that night. His wife had left him weeks earlier, and his little girl Lahti had been very ill for a few days without anyone to care for her while her father was flying missions. I took her dinner, before Tayner got home." She flinched reflexively, caught in her vivid eight-year-old recollection. "I tried to leave when he arrived. When he stopped me, I slapped him, but that only angered him further. I went home, not knowing that he was all too eager to slander me. And do you know why? Do you know why he told everyone that I had been unfaithful to you? ...I was simply a way for him to defame you...so he could retaliate for what your father had done to him.

"Tayner blamed Merli'il for his marriage falling apart. He was flying day in and day out for weeks at a time at the Security Council's request, and it was too much for his wife. She left him and their sick little girl, all because your father wouldn't expand the squadrons, but ran the ones he had into early deaths and broken relationships. So Tayner took the opportunity to strike at your father where he knew it would hurt the most...your image, and therefore, his.

"But...it didn't work. Your father somehow coerced his crooked contacts all over the planet to spin the fault on me alone...and then he used those same contacts to destroy my father's practice." Her eyes, still intense, began to tear up, but she angrily refused to shed them. "My father was an excellent, upstanding doctor. He had hundreds of loyal patients from all over Paneau, and he served them day after day with the utmost compassion and care...until one by one...they all stopped coming. He couldn't survive. He had to become...a garbage hauler. No one would have anything to do with him, except this company, which was mostly run by droids, anyway.

"I wanted your father to suffer through all this, too," she continued with malice. "He did us all a favor, though, dying in the Palace collapse after what he did to the Governors, but he didn't deserve such a quick, painless death. So I moved my sights to you, and you were such an easy target with your...cute little family." She again tightened her hold on Derek, but the boy only moaned lightly, still heavily sedated. "Those spicers had a new form they were trying to perfect, so I made a deal with them: I would run their 'field tests' if they gave me a sample of their highest grade, most potent spice, one that I had heard keeps its users addicted for years after one hit."

Koril stared in disbelief. "You killed all those people...Paneau, Salastryni, and Demmar citizens, and a former Paneau king...just to get to me?"

She gave him a confident grin. "Veon Banarecc wasn't my doing. The spicers took him out; he was getting too nosy for their liking. But I told you, the rest were tests. It wasn't my fault the spice was so deadly. I only killed two people, both of which had outlived their use."

Her proud, nonchalant attitude about the death she had dealt across the sector was sickening, but looking to the floor beside him where Jax still lay, he saw that the Major's condition was rapidly deteriorating. Jax's eyes had closed, and he only moved to weakly gasp in lengthening intervals; it wouldn't be much longer before his body shut down entirely without medical attention. Quickly getting frustrated, Koril returned to her, finally raising his voice.

"What do you want from me, Brylie? You have me. Take me! Do whatever you want to me! Just tell me what you want me to do!"

The intense look in her eyes deepened as she drew out every word for emphasis. "I want you to believe me! I want you to tell me how sorry you are for ruining my life! I should be your wife, not that personality-less black shell!" Roughly handling Derek, she turned him in her arms to face Koril, awakening the boy further as she became louder. "He should be my son! I should be living here in this Manor! I was supposed to be royalty!"

Startled even more by Brylie's loud volume, Derek began trying to weakly squirm his way out of her arms, but she wrangled him, holding him tightly against herself again as he began crying and earnestly stretching his arms toward Koril.

"Brylie!" Koril began to plead, stepping toward her until she brought her blaster back up and held it on him, halting his movement. Realizing he had to calm her first before he could get Derek from her, he continued, making his voice as sympathetic as possible over Derek's cries. "Brylie, I am sorry for what I did to you, and for what my father did to yours. It was wrong of me to ignore you, and I regret that you went through all that even though you were innocent. I can't change the past, but you have shaped your own future. You did so much for the Orphans of Dalon. I know you love children...I remember that about you. I remember that I loved that about you. That's why you helped Lahti, and why you adopted those two orphans..." Looking at Derek still struggling and crying in her arms, he could hardly keep his voice from breaking. "Brylie, he's terrified... Let him go, and I will do anything I can to repair this..."

Having exploited her weakness, Koril watched as the maniacal look left Brylie's eyes, replaced by sad realization. It was as though she had suddenly begun to hear Derek's frightened screams and immediately regretted her part in it. After a few tense moments, she shuddered briefly as she slowly lowered Derek to the ground, setting him on his wobbly feet. Derek didn't hesitate a second to run from her toward his father, and as Koril knelt to the ground and held his arms out to the boy, time slowed to a standstill when a single blaster shot rang out...and Derek fell limply into Koril's hold.

Unbelievable emotional pain exploded within Koril's chest, instantaneously stopping his heart with the sheer agony of Derek being killed. Brylie had probably already murdered Major Jax, his close friend and aide; how could he endure losing his son, as well? He somehow found the strength to turn the boy over in his arms, looking down onto his adorable face once more...

...but Derek was wide awake and alert, taking in a deep breath to give a loud, upset cry. Puzzled, he quickly looked him over, but he found no blaster wound on the boy. Still disoriented and unbalanced from the sedative Brylie had given him, Derek must have stumbled; he wasn't hurt. So where did the bolt go?

Looking back up at Brylie, he saw her still standing in place, having brought up and aimed her blaster at them both. Her eyes were wide but unfocused, and as Koril quickly turned with Derek in his arms, shielding his son from her, he realized why. She fell to her knees, then the rest of the way forward, dead before she hit the floor face first. A penetrating hole in her back smoldered as her skin continued to burn from the bolt's damage, but as Koril looked up to see who had fired the bolt, he didn't expect to see her.

Dripping wet as though she had just been swimming, Deilia could hardly remain standing as she lowered her blaster to her side, holding one bloody hand weakly over her upper abdomen that was just as blood-soaked. She looked pale and almost no longer alert, and passing Derek to General Kareu who had swept up beside him to disarm Brylie, Koril stood and sprinted over to Deilia, just able to catch her as she collapsed. He slowly lowered to the ground with her, sitting on the floor and cradling her upper body in his arms as she struggled to stay conscious. How had she been wounded so seriously?

"Deilia? Deilia!"

She trembled in his hold, choking as she gasped with little strength. Her abdomen wound was still bleeding, and as he pressed his hand over it, she cringed in tremendous pain, unable to breathe. As she became more still with the tense passing seconds, he tried to sound strong for her, but his voice still shook.

"Deilia, you have to keep fighting, okay? You are the strong one. You're...you're going to be alright. Okay? Deilia? Deilia!"

Unresponsive, though, her eyes closed as her head rolled against his shoulder, and he could do nothing to wake her. He pressed harder, desperate to stop the bleeding, but he could feel her heartbeat slowing down as his own matched it. He could tell that he was feeling her death through their twin bond...and he was powerless to stop it.

"Med transport is on its way, Sir," General Kareu informed him somberly as he stepped up beside him, holding a calmed Derek in his arms. The news did little to comfort Koril, though; Deilia was already far past any help she would get with the transport, if they could even have kept her stable enough during the trip to a med center. Trying to hold onto hope, though, he kept his hand over her wound, watching her face even as he felt her heart finally stop...

"Let me try, Koril."

As Koril looked up to the small voice, he was surprised to see Princess Ri kneeling beside him, her expression calm and determined. She had just turned eight a week ago, and though in the back of his mind he knew she was a Jedi in training, at the moment he couldn't process what she was asking.

She must have expected his reaction as she read his expression. "Rech's been teaching me how to heal while Mand's been gone. I can help her."

Still in denial that Deilia was dead in his arms, he eventually nodded to Ri, retracting his hand from Deilia's wound. Ri carefully placed both of her palms against Deilia's stomach and closed her eyes, earnestly concentrating as everyone around them watched her. Wanting to look anywhere but at Ri as she worked, he glanced over at where Major Jax lay, not expecting to see him conscious, much less looking over at him, as well. One of the officers tending to him was already pressing a bacta-soaked bandage over the blaster wound in his chest, and though he was still struggling to breathe, his eyes were sharp once more as their gazes met. Koril wasn't sure what his own expression looked like, but even in his weakened state, Jax tried to give him a reassuring nod, communicating to his High Commander that he'd survive.

But as Koril looked back down on his lifeless sister, his denial was quickly giving way to grief. Every second that passed was longer than the last, drawing out his agony until he thought he couldn't endure it any more...

After a moment, Ri sat back on her feet, removing her hands from Deilia's wound. Koril watched the girl, waiting anxiously for her to say something, but when Ri remained silent and only looked up at him with sad eyes, he sat in numb shock. The only thing he could think to do, he hugged Deilia tightly but still gently to himself, not caring that he was getting even more of her blood on him. There had to be something else he could do...

"She's lost too much blood," Ri told him timidly. "There's not enough left for her heart to pump."

Even if that were true, he thought, her heart should still be beating... Inspired by the sudden insight, he lowered her back down to his lap, and still cradling her carefully in his arms, he placed his palm over her heart. He had been told it was how Rech had revived him after his heart had stopped, using the Force to shock it; could he do it, too or would he cause even more damage?

Certain that he couldn't make it any worse, he closed his eyes and tried to make her heart beat...until he realized he had no idea how to. He had hardly even gotten a grip on the most basic Force powers, and his affinity was minimal at best. But he and Deilia had somehow forged a special connection recently, and the more he felt that slipping away, the more he tightened his grip on it, refusing with all his might to let it fade...

"High Commander," a voice distracted him as several sets of hands steadied him around his shoulders and slowly began lifting Deilia from his arms. Koril looked up to see a team of medics swarmed around him, having arrived in a med transport that was landed just beside him, though he hadn't heard its approach at all. They were carefully taking her from him to put her on a stretcher they had brought over, but he stood with them, holding her as long as possible. With their help, he gently laid her down, but before he could gather himself enough to ask them where they were taking her and make sure they knew that they had to keep her protected and secure, they were already whisking her away.

He tried to follow them, but one medic stopped him, stepping in front of him. "High Commander, we understand the situation," she reassured him calmly, holding him firmly by his arms as she met his gaze. "She will be well taken care of, Sir. Highest security and secrecy."

He could only watch as the rest of the medics loaded Major Jax into the transport, as well, leaving quickly for the closest med center. Only after the hangar was silent again did he realize how heavily he was breathing and how much he was still shaking, slowly coming out of his shock. The medic noticed it, too.

"Sir, are you hurt? Sir?"

All he could do was stare down at his hand as it shook, covered in Deilia's dried blood, but the voice behind him startled him.

"He wouldn't know if he were, ma'am," General Kareu quietly answered the medic for him, stepping toward him again. The General no longer had Derek, but behind him, Swip and Leikam were also approaching, and Koril saw that Derek had his arms tightly wrapped around Swip's neck. How much had happened without him realizing it? Had he blacked out?

Seeing the confusion in Koril's expression, General Kareu continued, lightly gripping Koril's arm to reassure him, as well. "We need to get you to a secure location, Sir, you and your family."

Koril didn't yet see all of his family, though, so he resisted Kareu's direction as he tried to usher him toward another transport he hadn't seen arrive earlier. Overwhelmed with anxiety and uncertainty, he brought his hand to his forehead and refused to move, until--

"Koril!"

Hearing Elena's voice nearly buckled his knees underneath him, but she was standing in front of him within seconds, looking up at him with worried sorrow as she caressed his cheek and searched his eyes. She didn't have to say anything to offer him her comfort; her touch was enough. But even as she pulled him into an embrace, he could still feel himself shaking, and he knew Elena would feel it, too.

"You're alright," she soothed softly, tightening her arms around him. "It's all over, and they're going to be okay..."

He held tightly to her, too...but he must have blacked out again. Before he knew what had happened, he found himself staring straight up at the gray durasteel ceiling of a small transport, lying on a bench as Elena was kneeling beside him. She was lightly brushing her hand through his hair and looking on him with concern, but again, she remained silent. Over the transport's engines, though, he could hear bits of conversation going on all about him if he focused hard enough on the voices...

"...found the dagger in Brylie's pocket..."

"...she had Derek's Crest, too..."

"...and how long was he out for?"

"...doesn't look like she'll..."

Suddenly overwhelmed with exhaustion, he couldn't resist; he closed his eyes and fell asleep just as quickly.