This is set at some midway point in the five years that the Outlanders are in carbonite freezing. I'm remaining fairly loose with the actual, precise timeline of the events at least. Thing I'm fairly sure of, though: that to somehow justify preserving Kaliyo's life in the opening of Chapter 10, I needed to give Khyriel incentive and debt enough he would hesitate to kill her. This was the result of that consideration.

She stared down at the floor dazedly, watching the shining tiles splattered by droplets of red blood. One … Two. More. How many would the floor accept, before there wasn't enough left inside her? Raina rather considered the puzzle for long, long moments, if only to distract herself from the room around her. The floor was a far more welcome companion just then, at least.

"You will speak."

The blood created a fascinating pattern on the floor, too. Perhaps if she canted her head just so, turned her face back around then maybe she could make a real picture of some kind. It almost looked like a feline animal, if you only considered the peculiar shape and curved angle of the blood just there. Patterns were singularly distracting, too, she thought.

"Tell us. We'll stop this, if you only tell us what we're asking."

Raina snorted at that particular bit of nonsense. So that the blood running down from her broken nose spluttered back up into her nostrils and left her coughing roughly harsh. She writhed against the bonds holding her suspended above the floor, pressing her chin down against her collarbone to try holding still long enough to catch her breath again. Wouldn't it be bad at this juncture, if she just died choking on her own blood like a fool ninny that couldn't manage a simple snort? "The distractions aren't working, little thing. Play a different game now."

Raina stopped, concentrating on the sound of his voice whispering so softly through her mind all over again. Teaching her, the way he always did. What steps to follow, what direction to turn so that she wasn't afraid and uncertain as she went along. Always, always watching out for her.

Although the first time she heard him there, he was screaming, rather. Screaming from fear and pain and sheer, unmitigated terror, "Lou! Help me! Stop her!" His voice made her jump and grab onto her father's leg, cuddle her face into the top of pappa's knee as if she could hide from the horrible sound trilling through her thoughts. Her father reached down to cradle the side of her face in the cup of his large paw of a hand, not looking down at her even as he continued pressing his friend to help, "You know what it is, to be a father. To want nothing so much as another day for your own daughter … Lucian, she won't last an hour on Korriban! I know it!"

Her pappa's friend leaned his head sideways to look over towards pappa, and Raina studied him carefully. He was so dark. Not his skin, not like her own mocha-colored complexion. It was more the way that he felt to her, like there was a core sense of anger and hatred burning inside him and utterly focused. Like there was some person he really, really hated more than anything, or something he wanted to keep them from doing. He was … protecting something. Or someone, maybe. Raina was confused by the wash of feelings and sensations, the colors and whispers of him that shined brightly enough to her.

So she studied the way that he looked, rather. He was human, like her and her own pappa. His skin wasn't so ruddy as her father's, though. He was pale instead, like so many of the people who lived and fought and worked themselves harshly under Sith rule on Dromund Kaas. But his hair gleamed like a midnight black, when the clouds chanced to part far overhead and you couldn't even see the stars from all of the city's lights.

Then he looked at her and she saw his eyes for the first time, and some part of her wavered with familiarity. Like she might just know him, understand him. Except that he was an adult and she wasn't, he was big and she was still so little – and he was going to die so much before she did. The knowledge was just there, just sitting in the center of her chest like a leaden weight and it hurt. Because she couldn't say anything, without appearing to be the most terrible threat and her pappa swore she must never tell people the things she saw. The death or the dying; that thing that whispered to her whenever it was close enough and thought someone needed knowing, perhaps.

But then the voice thrilled through her senses again and she whimpered weakly. The man's eyes narrowed down at her. Raina thought suddenly that she would never, ever forget his eyes. The calculation he considered her with, the studied appraisal. He turned to look at her pappa, "She isn't fearful of me. It's the Force, rather. What's it telling her?"

Pappa hesitated, "Lucian …" The dark-haired man only waved his hand dismissively, though. His uniform was finely starched and pressed, with several rank designations denoting him worthy of tremendous honors. The soldiers and personnel that angled sharply along the walkways nearby kept eyeing him with respectful deference, as if wondering if they should stop long enough to salute or acknowledge him. Except that he only paid notice to her pappa right then and barely saw the crowds moving around them aside from observing the others were far enough away they could continue conversing.

"I recognize the signs, Dace. I'm merely pressed for time at the moment, not fearful of anything the child might have to say." The man pappa called Lucian leaned his head backwards to look up at the tall building looming over their heads, until it looked like it was poking the sky itself in some threatening gesture of imperious authority, "The Sith are testing my son today."

Raina frowned, "He isn't Sith. Not like Loo."

Lucian turned to look at her like a whip, his brown eyes narrowed into sharp daggers as he looked at her. Pappa tightened his hand against her shoulder, pulling her even closer against his thigh as he angled his own body protectively in front of her. Lucian ignored pappa, though, and only grunted towards her, "That's what he calls his sister, in fact. No one else addresses her so."

Raina nodded slowly, "He doesn't like being afraid. But he won't be able to stop it, she's bigger than him and no matter how much he screams the servants run and hide."

Lucian straightened. He never looked at pappa, he never looked afraid. And he never once looked like he doubted anything she said. He just looked cold and angry and hard and very, very scary. He asked her, through a jaw that barely moved around the word, "When?"

Raina sighed and whispered, "The Sith are leaving now. And she is so angry at him. It will be … very soon now."

"You see him dying?"

"Maybe … There's blood on him, and he hurts."

Lucian suddenly seemed so very tall as he looked over at her pappa. He looked bigger and more frightening right then than her own pappa ever, ever looked. Like he was almost one of the scariest Sith that hunted her at night through her dreams, determined to carry her off to the hellish place pappa called Korriban. But he wasn't angry at her just then: "Apparently the Force itself is working to keep me from losing my son, Dace. It's enough then; I'll do what it takes to find your daughter somewhere safe and out of Sith notice, yes."

"Lou! I'll keep her from hurting you, Lou!" And his voice never left her mind again. Never since that moment, as she raced to keep up with Lucian Phyre. Stumbling along the carpeted hallways of the tall, tall building in Kaas City, with her hand clutched against her pappa's fingers and Lucian barking out orders as he strode angrily through the doors of his own estate in time to hear his son's screams for real, to see his little boy standing as straight as he could in front of his sister with blood spilling down over his face. His face that was so much like his father's …

Not even after Kaliyo told her he was gone, insisted it was so, "He's dead, Temple. Dead! Like toast in one of those fancy-assed machines in that pearly space he called a mess! Fucker didn't even stick around long enough to say buh-bye, just sent us off to shoot the bad guys and then bam! Whole ship he was on went up in flames! He. Is. Dead!" They argued and argued, over weeks that turned into months and he still didn't return. As the ships of damned Zakuul invaded and missiles rained down over Dromund Kaas itself, with Kaliyo laughing like a maddened animal as she pointed towards the flaming debris, "Would he ever let them do this, if he were alive, Temple? Would he?"

And Raina knew the truth. That if he could manage it, Khyriel Phyre would have done every possible thing he could to break the Zakuul war machines into brilliant, sparkling pieces that made for another pretty light show in the skies over Dromund Kaas, before he ever let them destroy his home world. She knew that!

But she still heard his voice, in her mind and in her spirit. Trilling, whispering and soothing her, "Don't forget. Don't ever forget." So she could not. She clung to that presence that was him, always him against her every single Force sense and never mind what anyone told her that was different. Kaliyo and then Vector, Lokin and Scorpio, too – none of them heard him like she did and none of them could manage to care and desire him so much. She had to know for sure, is what she only ever responded whenever they demanded, insisted she let him go finally.

Raina had to know …

"Emperor Arcann wants the Agent's son. We know he had a son by you, know he registered a union that produced a child. Concerted attention would have been given his progeny, because of his Sith heritage. And then there was you, of course." The toes of the Exarch's boots slid across her view, smearing the blood pattern on the floor as he stepped through it. Raina frowned down at the floor, trying to make sense of this new lack of discernible order, the discord caused by the Exarch's simplest motions. She blinked, barely listening as the Exarch kept speaking. What was he saying?

Lucan. They still wanted her son. But why? Lucan was not Force-strong, even if he did enjoy the brilliant turn of intelligence his father demonstrated so easily. What did Mako call Khyriel once? She laughed when she said it, Raina remembered: "A slicer's mind, without needing a single implant to make it work. That's your little brother, Kas." Is that what Zakuul wanted? Or did they want to make an example out of the Outlanders' own children, rather? What would they do to her own Lucan? To the others? Raina even mumbled the question past the blood dotting the corner of her mouth, "Valuable boy, right? Valuable to me, I know. But why you?"

The Exarch harrumphed, ignoring her curiosity. The bastard. "I wonder. Does he look much like his father?"

Raina actually chuckled then. Her nerves were twitching from the stimulation of the pain-inducing machines attached to her fingers, her back and shoulders. She hung limply against the bindings holding her in place against the flat surface as it rocked gently in suspension over the floor, and she just sniggered as she thought of her son.

Of course Lucan looked like his father! Only two of the children looked different than they were anything less than miniature copies of Lucian Phyre himself. Torian's daughter looked like her own father, rather. And then there was Sariel.

Quinn once regarded his son bemusedly, the silver-blue of his eyes and pale blonde hair that was so much different than any of Lucian's line, "I might have actually believed Sariel sprung from an entirely different mother, even. Except I verified his features up against those of Lusiel's own mother. He looks like his grandmother. Unfortunately." Quinn twisted a smile at Raina then, telling her, "It's too bad he couldn't have had horns, like Gaibriel's sons. So long as he still looked like Lucian Phyre, the way they do. Horns or not."

Lucan even shared the same kind of expressions on his face, as Khyriel would. The charm, the ready twisted humor and smiles, the blinking curiosity and sharp turn of his face whenever something caught his keen notice, the determination to know everything, anything and all the time, even right away – no, Raina never doubted her son was Khyriel's own child. Even if Lucan surprised the both of them so thrillingly, just in his conception.

It happened on Makeb, of course. He was made even as they fought to secure his father's life from the Dark Council's worried, anxious ire, even as the world around them was crumbling into sheer bits and fragments. He was made in the darkness, with Khyriel's breath in her ear as they huddled together in the dark and waited for the Empire's forces to discover and pull them out into the light again. And they didn't know it until days later.

She remembered staring up at the blinking message of the medical screen, listening to the droid droning its advice on proper care of a successful pregnancy. Raina remembered the wash of tears against her eyes, the way she blinked furiously, "But I can't get pregnant! They told me it wasn't possible!"

"The reproductive process of the human genome remains a rather extraordinary mystery, indeed. It is unknown why your system has allowed for successful conception." Raina only hugged her abdomen as the droid continued droning and droning, wonderingly ghosting her fingers against the curve of her pelvis where she imagined her own baby all nestled and cradled. Was he sleeping in there, she mused. Khyriel's baby! Then the droid intoned so mechanically, "The embryo's genetics identify it to be male. Would you like to name it now, or wait for its full gestation and birth?"

And Khyriel's own voice from behind her, the sense of him that drifted against her Force ability with marveling pleasure and deepest satisfaction. How happy he was right then, even terrified that she was on the world of Makeb as he fought so hard to keep it in one single piece. To walk into the room and hear the machine describing their child; he was awed, reverent nearly. He told her huskily, "We'll name him now. So record it appropriately, droid. My son is called Lucan." His son. They still wanted his son. It only didn't make sense. Fear rippled through her for a moment … "They can't have our son, little thing. You've kept him safe for me."

"You will tell us what we want to know, of course." The Exarch wanted to find Lucan. He would probably want to know where Lucan's cousins were, as well. Raina very nearly grinned as she imagined how well finding them might go for the Exarch, considering the forces that shielded them so utterly. Quinn's notion, of course. Because he was always certain their children would remain targets.

Quinn told them, "It doesn't matter what anyone says on the matter, I know my wife lives! She will remain Zakuul's enemy and they will seek out her children, her family, you and me alike. All of us! They will try to use us against her, and I will refuse them the chance. I will never again be used as a bludgeon against my wife. Not ever again." But he wouldn't tell Raina how he could be so utterly sure, no matter how indelible his certainty was. He only worked to perform precisely and certainly the motions he insisted were necessary.

And now Raina was glad for every bit of it. Quinn, she thought. I never wanted to owe you such a debt, but you've secured my son. I love you for that much.

Pain rippled along Raina's nerves again, the machines firing pulses of energy along her pain receptors with fast, vivid power. She tautened against the bindings, whimpering through her clenched teeth and writhing against the hard surface along her back. She finally opened her mouth, letting the blood from where she bit her lip to keep from screaming drop down onto the floor as she screamed. The Exarch screamed back, "Tell me!"

Raina whimpered, tried curling into a ball and couldn't. She felt like an animal caught in a trap and nearly desperate enough to rip against its own paw to get loose. She wailed and cried, tears dripping down along her bloodied jaw as she spat towards him, "I will not! Believe that, if you believe in anything at all! You … fuck! I hate you!"

The Exarch sniffed through the faceplate that obscured his features from her, leaning backwards onto the heels of his boots as he looked down at her. He murmured. Like he was having conversation over an afternoon's tea in the finest establishment back on Coruscant, perhaps. The prig, she thought. He said to her, "I saw him, you know. That day, when all the Outlanders were taken into the Emperor's meeting hall, to face the Throne itself. What is it they called him? Cipher, yes?" She wouldn't even tell them his name, Raina thought. And she bit her lip again.

The Exarch knelt down, until his face was aligned with her own and he could watch as she wearily lifted her eyes up to look him straightly. He sighed, reaching up with his gloved fingers to release the clasps under his neck that held his helmet in place. Then Raina could see his face, his eyes!

Lesin Tyn was a human, an oldster really. His hair was sparse on his head, only little brown shoots of fuzzy scruff that stood straight up on the very top of his head. His eyebrows were thick, though. A bushy line of black hair ran from one corner of his eye along his temple to the opposite side of his face, unbroken anywhere along the way so that it became like some dark and terrible threat against his otherwise pale features. But Raina only concentrated on his eyes, the hazel eyes set underneath that thick bush of hair.

"I thought your Agent admirable enough, the way he stood there. So defiant and ready. Like he knew what his fate would be and faced it with whole willingness." Exarch Lesin Tyn scowled then, "If only he could finish this one last task. I hated him then."

Raina watched his eyes, the way they glittered with anger and wrath for long moments. And she saw! The Force rippled and swayed, so that she finally found what she was looking for. The months and the years since she last saw him, held him, touched him – Khyriel! My own Khy! She found him right then, in the death of the man in front of her.

Raina lifted her bloodied chin, until her face was level with Lesin Tyn's own features. And she told him, "You will see him one last time, too. They'll come for you, both of them. But Gaibriel won't be the one that puts the blade so gently against your throat. He'll let Khyriel step close enough, so that he can look at me through your eyes. He'll say what day, what place … Because he wants me to know where and when. Then he'll say, 'Because you hurt her.' And then that blade will saw your fucking head off." Then Raina smiled, so that he saw the blood lining her own teeth, "I don't know where my son is, Exarch. Not for more than a year now. Quinn thought it wise enough, that none of us really know where they are. It keeps them safe from you bastards."

Lesin Tyn was white-faced and stiff as he straightened, until Raina could only see his thighs from her terrible discomfiting position. She looked down at the floor, at the smears of her own blood against the tiled surface underfoot. She watched the Exarch's boots shift along those fresher splatters of blood now and smiled again when he cursed heavily, snarling a command sideways, "Kill her. She truly doesn't know where the boy is. She's useless." He turned sharply on his heel, moving to leave. Raina chuckled as he went, sensing his aching desire to know what date Khyriel gave her through the Force. She knew his shoulders went even more stiff when he heard her laughter.

Then he was gone, and the technicians were maneuvering the table up, so that a whirring sound filled Raina's ears and new hurts consumed her for long, telling moments. She blinked up at the ceiling then, listened to the two men arguing over the best dosage in the killing injection they were preparing. And she smiled again when the door suddenly flew open and the men started screaming.

She lay there, idly considering the pattern the men's blood might make on the floor on top of her own. Until Kaliyo's face darted into her frame of reference and she was glaring down at Raina, "Fucking idiot! You fucking idiotic fucker! I told you not to do this stupid fucking stupidity of a thing! I swear to every god there is, this is the last fucking fuck of a time I fucking come to save your skinny runt of an ass, Temple! I so fucking hate you! I should just leave you here!"

"Wow, a whole eight fucks, Kaliyo. I think you're actually starting to care for me, if I warrant eight complete fucks and then an ass, too." Raina smirked up past the Rattataki woman, barely noticing as Kaliyo roughly jerked the bindings loose from around her slender frame. She only smiled as she looked up at the ceiling. At the blinking light of the recording device situated just above the table, and she said, "Quinn was right, Kaliyo. They're all alive."

"I miss you, little thing."