Last time: Viran and Scamp interrogated Selina and learned she isn't going to speak with them.

Now: Oppie and Kait hear the news.

Chapter 3- Feeling Hopeless

"This nursery is really cute." Kait said, looking around at Lana's room. The room was painted a light purple color with a small railed bed that had recently been added since Lana had grown out of her crib. The dresser was covered in small hand painted designs, a rocking chair, and toys in the corner.

"Yeah, we spent a while decorating it. Drove Sasha nuts that she couldn't help out with the heavy lifting." Oppie said quietly looking around the room after Lana had finally settled down for a nap.

The two of them quietly walked out of the room, Oppie closing the door behind him very carefully but leaving it open just a crack so they could hear her. They also had her monitor patched into their coms so they could know when she woke up.

As they walked down the hall, back towards the main living room she tentatively reached out for his hand. As she took it, she noticed Op wincing a little bit and she let go quickly. "Is that getting any better?" She asked.

"Yeah, sorry." Op said, reaching out and taking her hand. Ever since he had been stung, the venom had wreaked havoc on his nerves, making it so that every touch, every brush of contact was accompanied by a sharp pins and needles feeling that made the entire length of his arm or leg or chest feel like it was on fire and being stabbed. "It's getting a little better every day, just like Kelce said it would."

"I'm glad." She said as they walked down the halls of Haven. "After such a long flight I was sort of thinking a shower sounds nice." She observed, glancing at him slyly.

"Yeah, it does." Oppie said lightly beside her. The last several days when he showered it felt like he had been under a spray of acid, but today it might actually feel halfway pleasant.

She saw an opening and she took it. "You, uh, want to go do that now before dinner?" She suggested.

"Sure." Oppie agreed.

Kait shot a shocked look over at him, trying to figure out what had happened to her boyfriend. "Reall -" She started to asked after a moment of surprise, before she was interrupted by RV coming around the corner of the hallway from the living room. She glared at the droid with venom in her eyes.

"Oh I apologize for interrupting, but Master Oppie you have a call," RV informed them.

"From who?" Oppie asked, as he shifted a confused glance from Kait to a hopeful glance at RV. "Did they get Cien back?" He asked. The operation against the Taipan was supposed to have happened several hours ago. And neither he or Kait had known if the lack of an update was a good thing or a bad thing.

"Mister Viran," RV answered. "He didn't say what it was, just that he needed to speak with you."

Oppie glanced at Kait. "Okay, sure we'll go down to the communications suite. Thanks RV." He said as they walked past RV to head towards the basement level where all the utility rooms were.

RV nodded and shuffled away.

They hurried down, eager to get any news about what had happened, hoping to hear good news of them recovering Cien and that their family was whole again and would be on their way home soon. As they entered the com suite they saw Viran's hologram waiting above the display table, and Oppie pressed a button to unmute their side of the call. "Viran, everything okay?" Oppie asked worriedly, seeing that he did not look like he was contemplating good news.

"Oh hey Op," Viran said looking up at him as he came out of the daze he was in. "Not exactly. A lot has happened since you guys left. I see you guys made it back okay. You guys doing alright?" He asked, absently.

"Yeah, Lana just went down for a nap." Oppie said worriedly. "What happened?" He asked.

"We found the Taipan and boarded," Viran explained, looking away as if he stared at something far away. "We didn't find Cien. She wasn't here."

"Oh." Oppie said, crestfallen.

"Did you guys find any evidence of where she might be?" Kait asked.

Viran shrugged with a bit of uncertainty. "Not really. We found her saber, her wedding ring and heart piece. She was aboard the Taipan at some point recently, but we have no idea where she is now." He continued, sounding exhausted, "Kyr tore the ship apart looking for her. But we are looking into the cameras to figure out what might have happened to her. And Sasha still sensed her presence when we arrived. We are assuming she is still alive out there, somewhere."

Oppie looked down, not sure what to say. "How are Sasha and Kyr handling it? Do you need us to head back out to meet you guys?" He asked.

Viran hesitated for a second before looking away. "I haven't seen Kyr in a while, but he is not handling it well. As for Sasha…" He paused. "Op, we found something else. Something that I really need your help with."

"What?" Oppie asked, his voice filled with dread.

"We found out who took Cien and possibly placed the bounty on Sasha." He paused for a long time, but it looked like he was ready to explode as he tried to finish his thought and was trying to keep his emotions at bay. "We found Selina," Viran finally replied, bitterly.

Oppie and Kait both slowly looked at each other before Kait finally spoke for the both of them. "What?" She asked incredulously.

"Somehow she survived what happened on the Gold Leaf. We don't know how. She's not answering our questions right now and demands to only talk to Kyr," Viran said, shaking his head, annoyed slightly. "But something is wrong with her. I sensed it in the Force when I tried to confront her. But also because when Sasha tried to use the mindspace to find out where Cien is, Sasha collapsed. Op, she is trapped in the mindspace."

Oppie's face fell. He closed his eyes for a moment before opening them again. "Okay, we'll contact Reya and see if she can watch Lana with RV and come out to meet you guys."

"Thank you for doing that. I wouldn't ask you guys to leave if it wasn't this serious, but I really need your help," Viran said, frowning. "We really need your help. With Kyr distraught and Sasha unconscious, things have become very complicated."

"You can count on us." Kait said.

"We'll be there as soon as we can." Oppie promised.

"Thanks guys," Viran said with a sigh of relief. "I'm sending the coordinates for our location now."

Oppie nodded. "May the Force be with you." He wished Viran as his hand moved towards the control panel.

"And with you guys," Viran said with a nod. "See you soon."

"Jeeze." Kait said as she swept her hair back after Op had closed their side of the call.

"No kidding." Oppie said, breathing out. "What a mess." He took a moment, "I'll go call Reya."

Kyr stared out the wall of transparisteel that looked out upon the rest of the 19th, and the Taipan they were surrounding as the fleet continued the exercise of taking the crippled Star Destroyer under control. Soon it would be on its way to a shipyard, to be scrapped or, perhaps, recommissioned in the New Republic's fleet. But his understanding was that they were shying away from using such war prizes in the fleet so that the image of the Empire did not tarnish the Republic's fledgling presence, especially since few things stood for the Empire more than their oppressive armada of Star Destroyers.

All these thoughts idly swam through Kyr's mind as he sat alone at a two person table and looked out at the ship with a sense of loathing, hatred and crushing despondency late into the night, or early into the morning depending on ones point of view. By now crews had been all over the Taipan to secure it, to make sure there weren't traps anything untoward aboard the ship. No one had found anything. No evidence of a prisoner, not even… a body. Which Kyr was thankful for, but his mind kept wandering in that direction, terrified that his wife's absence from the ship only meant something far, far darker.

"Hey hun." The Admiral said as she dropped two tumblers on the table and a bottle of corellian rum gently landed with a crystalline thunk.

Kyr looked up at her. "Hi Admiral." He said as he eyed the glasses and the bottle of rather good rum she had brought with her. "Again?" He asked, looking back up at her.

"I figured we could both use a drink." She said as she swung a seat out and sat down. "To celebrate." She said as she pulled on the little tab to undo the wax seal.

Kyr looked at her with confusion and almost a little anger. "And what are we celebrating? That we didn't find Cien or that Sasha is in the medbay?"

She glanced up at him as she unscrewed the cap. "That we didn't find Cien, which means that she got away."

Kyr looked at her with annoyance and then back out the window at the Star Destroyer.

"When you were missing," she said as she poured rum into the glasses, "she was just as lost as you were. She didn't strike me as the kind of girl to want to have a late night drink to wash away her sorrows though so I wasn't sure how to help." She slid Kyr's glass over to him and eyed him as he stared out the window. "I think fighting with Wynnie was the most helpful thing for her." She said amusedly as she took a sip of the rum and enjoyed the burn.

Kyr harrumphed but ignored the glass as he drummed his fingers, and then stopped once he realized he was doing it.

"Am I drinking alone or what?" The Admiral asked.

"I don't know if it means she got away." Kyr said quietly, still ignoring his glass. "I'm… scared," he admitted, "that it means she didn't. That she was taken somewhere else, or… worse." He said turning away, "that she was disposed of after… she was done with her."

"Do you really think she'd go that easily?" The Admiral asked. "I mean, really, she probably just got annoyed with them and left after she rolled her eyes."

That got a troubled chuckle out of Kyr that quickly faded away. "I... don't think she'd go that easily." He said quietly after a moment. "But we've already dealt with people that were prepared to deal with the powers they have. Sasha and Op nearly died because they encountered someone who had a plan for that." Kyr said, realizing for the first time that Selina had been the one to hire that bounty hunter and warn him about their Force abilities.

"What does your heart say?" Naderia Sulam asked him.

Kyr looked over at her wryly with a bit of shock. "What?"

She smirked at him and took a sip of rum. "Well, what do your instincts say? Those have always been pretty good."

He swallowed and absently reached for the glass, taking a sip and considering the question as he grimaced slightly from the strong drink and tried to suppress a cough. "What is that?" He asked, looking at the bottle more closely, seeing it was a really good bottle of rum.

"Imperial reserve special." She said with a smile. "I nicked it off a rear admiral we took into custody a few years ago. He didn't need it anymore."

"Ah." He said as he rolled the glass of amber liquid in his hands, watching it slosh a little. "I don't know." He admitted quietly. "My instincts are too clouded by too many dark thoughts and… wishful thinking." He sniffed slightly and wiped his eyes. "I just don't know what to do if she's… if they're…"

"Don't think like that, son." The Admiral said quietly. "She's still out there, I know she is. And the twins are safe, above all else she would see to that."

Kyr sniffed and wiped his eyes again, saying nothing as he tried to compose himself.

"When she was here in the same situation with you, she knew you were still here, but through some Force power connection I'll never understand, she knew you were in a pretty dark place." The Admiral started. "And she was in the exact same place you were, too afraid to hope that this might have a good ending. I'm going to tell you exactly the same thing I told her, when she finally broke down and started crying in front of me about it. Wherever she is, whatever circumstances she's in, she will come back to you. She will do everything in her power to come back to you. She made it through a lot tougher situations, it sounds like, when she had a lot less to come back to, and a lot less to stay for, right?"

Kyr swallowed and looked over at her. "She cried?" He asked.

"Yes." The Admiral said.

He looked down numbly, and pulled on the leather necklace he kept with him, pulling it out from under his vest. The crystal she had given him that seemed to glow with a faint summer's light. Her words rang through his mind as looked at it; Carry this with you knowing it carries my love for you, wherever you are. "I wonder if this glowing means anything?" He asked quietly.

"What glow?" Admiral asked quizzically.

Kyr looked up at her a little confused. The apparent glow from the crystal was faint, but it was there. "The glow from the crystal?" He asked, holding it a little higher for her to see more clearly.

The Admiral looked at him confused. "Hun, did you have more to drink before I got here?" She asked in an amused tone.

"No, it…" He stopped, looking at the crystal. "This isn't glowing for you?"

"No?" She said. "Should it be?"

He thought back to Cien's words, what she had said when she had done… whatever she did to the crystal before giving it to him on that mountain top as he looked at the mild summers light that emanated from it. "No, I suppose not." He said as he tucked it back under his vest.

The Admiral looked at him, her countenance falling to worry. "Son, you're going to get her back. You're going to get them back."

"Sasha was so sure she was there." He said, looking out over at the Taipan, at the windows that marked the VIP suites. "And we didn't find anything, except…" He paused, looking down at her saber, that was still clipped to his belt, and her ring and heart piece that were in one of his spare pouches.

"Maybe Sasha was sensing that stuff?" She asked. "When Sasha wakes up, maybe she can use it to find her?" The Admiral suggested.

He swallowed and looked away. "For Sasha, I'm just worried about if she'll wake up." He said quietly.

The Admiral frowned at him. "Have a drink kid."

He looked back over at her. "I feel like the bottom of the bottle isn't where I'll find any answers." He said wryly.

"You're absolutely right." She said, taking a sip, "but this stuff is good and I don't want it to go to waste."

He chuckled a little and took a deep swallow, gulping it down as it burned. He put the glass back down with a heavy clank as he tried to suppress a wheeze.

"This isn't like last time we did this." The Admiral said quietly as she topped off his tumbler. "You haven't lost anyone this time. And those you thought you lost then, your brothers, your sister, the girl you love so deeply, they're still here. They're not gone like you thought then." She said as she took a sip.

He picked up his tumbler and sloshed the amber liquid a little as he tried to keep his composure. "I know." He said quietly. "I know Op and Viran are okay. And regardless of whatever Sasha is facing she'll pull through. Deep down I know Cien's out there somewhere and I just need to find her." He admitted softly, "but I can't help but think it's wishful thinking."

"Well." The Admiral started, "it might be wishful thinking, but that doesn't mean it's not true."

"I keep losing people." Kyr said quietly, remembering the last time they had done this. "They came back, but mom, Anna, the rest of the family…"

"Emy." The Admiral added, equally as quiet.

Kyr was silent for a moment. "Yeah." He drank the rest of his rum in one gulp. "It should have been me that day." He said quietly.

"I think your wife would disagree. And your kids." The Admiral noted. "Not to mention the rest of your family."

Kyr just grimaced in response. "Yeah."

"And you know why she couldn't let you do that." The Admiral said, glancing at him.

He grimaced harder and looked away.

"Things worked out the way they were meant to. The galaxy is an unfair place, but it wouldn't give you all of this just to take it away. Call it the Force, call it the God or Gods that some planets believe in. The Whills, the Celestials, or the lucky credit chit in your pocket. The galaxy is a cruel place, but it's not that cruel. You will get your wife and your kids back."

Kyr smirked, ever so slightly. "You promise?"

"I promise, son." The Admiral said, taking a sip of rum.

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