Last time: Sasha and Viran enjoyed a quiet, romantic moment alone.
Now: There is something wrong in the Force.
Chapter 9- A Strange Presence
A cool autumn breeze swept across the lake after the passing of a long, bright summer. Winter was approaching, but it was far from mind as the sun still shone as if it would be summer forever more. Looking about the scene one could easily be forgiven for thinking that it would last forever as well. The lake shined like rippling glass as the tiny wave crests caught the sun and shimmered like the facets of crystals turning in the light. The blanket she was laying on was a little scratchy, and there were trails of small insects trying to make their way to the half eaten basket of zherries.
Cien adjusted herself a little. Her stomach, flat as it ever was, but there was a part of her that felt like that wasn't quite right. The twins, Roselyn and Noah, should be there. She swept her hand down across her stomach and wondered vaguely where they were.
"You'll spoil your appetite if you eat more of those, Cienestra." Her mom chided her with a soft smile in her voice.
"Mom?" She asked, turning and catching a faint glimpse of her hair glowing in the sunlight as overhead Sith fighters and transports came in across the lake.
She fell in a heap in the audience chamber on Korriban. She got to her feet, trying to support her swollen stomach with her arm as she got up, casting a suspicious eye around the scene. The doors were flung open and a Sith Lord walked in. Dracul, hidden behind his deathly helmet, with the tattered corpse of Kopesh behind him. Her breath caught, she was frozen in fear seeing him approach her.
"You thought you could betray me?" He asked, his deep voice rumbling through the chamber. "You thought you could take what was mine away from me?"
She tried to say something but her voice caught as she was absolutely frozen in terror. Part of her tried desperately to move her legs. But she couldn't.
"You thought I was lost to the void, and when I returned, you stole everything from me." He stated. "And you thought I would… forgive you." He said, spitting the words out.
"Please." She pleaded quietly.
Dracul reached up with both hands and grasped his helmet, lifting it off his head, slowly. And the helmet dropped to the stone ground as if in slow motion before hitting with the sound of a hammer falling on an anvil. She looked up at the face that was revealed.
"You are not deserving of forgiveness." The Sith Lord said.
"Sasha, please." Cien begged, looking up at her. The face that was revealed under the helmet. Her sister.
"End her." Sasha ordered.
Cien's head whipped around to see a dark robed version of herself, darkend, twisted by the darkside into something demonic as she swung her saber for her stomach.
She awoke with a startle.
"You okay cyar'ika?" Kyr asked worriedly.
She was laying against his side cuddled under his arm on the sofa in the living room. Her datapad had fallen to her side, and Kyr had been quietly sitting there reading something or other from his own pad.
"Yes." She stated.
"You sure? You were thrashing around a little there." He pressed gently.
"Yeah, just an odd dream." She said feeling a crick in her neck as she adjusted herself to sit up. Her back also hurt, as it had been starting to over the last few weeks.
"I know I get weird dreams after I have too many hot peppers with my mid afternoon ice cream." He said sympathetically.
She shot him a wry look as she sat up and rubbed her neck. "It is a fine combination." She said defensively.
"I know." He said in understanding with a slight grin. "What was your dream about?" He asked, a little worried still.
"Nothing." She said as she tried to push the last vestiges of it from her mind.
He looked at her for a second, knowing better than to try to press for anything more. "Okay." He said.
She hesitated for a moment. "Part of it was sitting on a picnic blanket, the picnic blanket next to my mom." She said after a moment. "I think." She said, a little unsure.
He looked at her quietly for a moment. "Was everything okay?" He asked quietly. "Is everything okay? You don't think it was…" He asked.
"No," She said, guessing that he was asking if it was like the experience she and Sasha had with their parents. "Just a dream. It was at the lake, with the basket of zherries, and there were ants trying to get to them." She said absently.
"Ants?" He asked, he couldn't help but smirk a little at that detail.
"Yeah." She said distantly. "She admonished me not to have any more or they'd spoil my appetite. I… I never remembered her voice before." She said. "And then the ships came."
"This ships?" He asked.
She glanced over at him and swallowed, then looked back forward from the sofa. "That memory I told you about, by the lake when my dad was chasing me. What happened after that was I remember a couple of Sith transports and a wing of fighters coming in. I don't really remember after that, but I think it was from the day they came and took me." She said quietly, rubbing her stomach. The twins were picking up on her anxiety and she could feel them getting a little agitated from it as well.
"I'm sorry." He said, quietly as he wrapped an arm across her shoulders and pulled her close.
"It's okay." She said quietly.
"No, it's not. I'm sorry that happened to you." He said, picturing the cute, adorable bubbly little girl she had to have been based on what had come out of her shell over the last few years. Imagining the Sith kidnapping that little girl made his blood boil.
She felt her emotions swinging a little bit, like they had been ever since the twins had come along, and she tried to hold back a sudden bout of tears that annoyed her. "I think they killed them that day, everyone wherever it was I lived." She said. "They died because of me." She said quietly.
He was quiet for a moment. "No they didn't."
"They came because of me and killed them." She said, with a sniff and trying to hold back tears.
"That's not your fault cyar'ika." He stated. "None of that is your fault. The only ones who are responsible for that are the ones who actually did it." He said gently as he held her close.
She didn't say anything as she tried to hold back tears.
"What was her voice like?" He asked.
She swallowed, and thought for a moment, trying to grasp the threads of that tenuous memory as the dream faded from her mind. "Like a warm, soft blanket on a cold day." She said quietly.
He glanced at her with a little surprise for a description like that. Then he hugged her a little tighter. "And were the ants trying to carry the basket away?" He asked.
"No." She said, a little confused as she sniffed again.
"That's good. The little pests are known for carrying them away. Can't trust them with pick-a-nick baskets at all. Them or bears." He said.
She smiled a little despite herself. "There weren't any bears." She stated.
"That's good, otherwise it would have been unbearable." He said.
She pursed her lips. "Just like your puns." She said with a slight smirk.
"Ouch." He said. "I need a doctor, I didn't come prebeared for bare knuckle brawling."
Cien rolled her eyes as she tried to suppress a chuckle. "Sasha won't help you if it's because you've been making puns." Her countenance wavered slightly as she remembered the other half of her nightmare.
"Back to talking about ants again, then, if we're bringing Sash'ika into this?" Kyr asked.
Cien couldn't help but chuckle a little bit. "Shi'kebise darjurir gar gratiirnuhun." She said with an open smirk.
He looked at her with a pained expression, "gar'hokaanir cyar'ika, jii'gar darjorso'ran nuhun?"
She thought for a second and glanced up at him, "jorso'ran?" She asked, not familiar with that.
"Ori'ruug'la par jurir." He replied.
She rolled her eyes. "Bic dargev!" She said exasperated.
He started laughing. "Seriously though, are you okay?" He asked.
"Yeah." She said, feeling better for Kyr's jokes. "I-" She winced ever so slightly. "They're being Mandos again..." She said with a glowing but annoyed smirk as she felt another kick.
"Need me to tell them to stop?" He asked.
"They didn't listen to you the other times." She said as she took his hand and pulled it down to where the kicks were.
He held his hand in place for a quiet few seconds and felt the tiniest of kicks under his palm and he smiled. "Think it's Rosie or No'ika?" He asked quietly.
"I don't know." She said. She felt bad that they had grown a little anxious from her feelings before, and she tried to send comforting thoughts their way, letting them know everything was okay.
"We really need to get started on the nursery." He said after a moment.
"Probably." She said. There was a part of her that didn't want to think about them being away from her in some other room.
"Let's go see if we can find those paint chips from when Sash'ika and Sport were working on Lan'ika's room." He said, getting up.
"Why can't you ever call anyone by their names?" She asked, getting up with him to go help rummage for wherever they kept paint chips.
"What do you mean cyar'ika?" He asked, perplexed.
"Never mind." She said with a slight grin.
Sasha sat cross-legged in the training room in deep meditation. She found herself doing that more often since Caranas and healing after Myrkr. It brought her a sense of calm as it always did when she immersed herself deep into the Force. As she relaxed and slipped deeper into her meditative state, she could sense everyone in the house. She could sense Viran in the hangar working on the Forerunner and she could sense Lana with him, most likely 'heping' him work on the ship. She could sense Kyr and Cien in the living room. Kyr seemed distracted, so she guessed he was playing a game of some sort, or reading. And she could tell that Cien seemed to be at peace, which meant she was probably asleep. Sasha understood that feeling of needing to rest a lot since she did the same thing when she was pregnant with Lana. As she thought about Cien, a strange feeling suddenly came from her sister. She seemed distressed. A nightmare possibly? Or the twins were giving her trouble? She made a mental note to check with her later.
As she made that note though, she suddenly felt something else. Sasha furrowed her brow in concentration as she tried to figure out what it was. It felt distant, like it was millions of light years away from her, and felt dark, disconcerting. But she couldn't pinpoint what it was exactly. And as she pulled out of her trance and pushed the feeling aside, it seemed to linger in the far, far depths of her mind, as if waiting for its moment to strike or make its presence more known. After a few moments, Sasha tried to forget about it as she pushed herself up to her feet and left the training room, done with mediation for the day.
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