b r e a t h e
Brandyn Sal-Soren
Soon.
She'd been counting the days. The hours. The minutes.
The seconds. Heartbeats. The space between them.
Every time Cybelle thought that she had come to terms with this new reality where her fiancée was trapped behind bars and forcefields there was something that stole her feet from beneath her. Some new or old fight. Some new mission that sent her careening from one end of the galaxy to the other and back again because she couldn't fathom not seeing his face. She didn't glance up when the gates opened and merely did her best to meditate while she waited. To clear her mind.
Find some sort of peace, tranquility, and serenity. The emotions that she had been trained since her youth to accept before all others. But the sheer weight of months spent separated hung over her like a black hole pulling away her innate glow. Swallowing it. Devouring, her light. And so…
She meditated.
Cybelle would feel him when he approached. She knew him. And so, she stood like an angelic statue with seemingly endless patience while the legal clerks took their sweet time with his discharge paperwork. Pin-straight chocolate hair waved in her face from a gentle breeze but eventually settled to highlight and frame soft features. Her presence alone was in stark contrast to the sterile environment Brandyn had been held in for so long.
She thought…That after all this time…She was past it. Past emotion. Past feeling like the sun and moon had fallen out of the sky. Past, feeling like her heart couldn't beat on its own. She tried to acclimate. To do what needed to be done. But…When a bubble of warmth began to swell in her peripheral vision her heart began to race. Her eyes opened. Watching, while Brandyn approached.
Watching. Waiting—While the gate opened. So very, very slowly.
The sight of his face, so achingly familiar, so achingly handsome, caused something in her self-imposed tranquility to break. Shatter, like fragile glass. She moved quickly. So swift that eyes not trained to recognize displacements of air would miss it completely. Her arms were around him before she could think of what she was doing, how she was reacting, while her lips found his with something that was very close to desperation. So full of need. Her being felt like lightning trapped in a bottle that someone had decided to shake. He might not have expected it…But his sweet Cybelle seemed to have missed him so fiercely that she didn't seem to feel the need to breathe.
Or the need to acknowledge they had an audience.
Her thoughts were chaotic.
Miss you.
Love you.
Need you.
Safe.
Home.
Brandyn would feel them while the intensity of the things she hadn't said the entire time he was locked away rose to the surface. She was positive, supportive, and focused on the future but things could have very easily turned out far worse. Her left hand rose to touch his face…To cherish the fact that he was no longer confined. Her eyes stung while she kissed him, loved him, with everything she had to the point where she would have blushed on any other occasion.
Cybelle was one of the few who wouldn't make excuses for him this time…But she was capable of seeing beyond his actions to the man he truly was. Even, if he couldn't see it. Time stood still amid the bustling galaxy that neither condemned nor forgave as wholly as the heart could. Their closeness was everything the Jedi of the Old Order would have called sacrilege. But…Cybelle, was admittedly selfish.
She could never let him go.
Here, in her arms, he was safe. Here, he was understood. Here, he was loved.
When she finally eased because air was becoming an issue, she settled back on her feet that had raised to tiptoes. She felt dazed and the whole of it felt surreal. Topaz eyes fluttered open to take him in while the pads of her fingers found his jaw. Stroking, softly. Her lips formed a smile that was neither filled with joy or sadness…It was only longing. Such soft, sweet, devastating longing.
"…Hi..."
How eloquent.
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