“Fuck,” he whispered as he swung his legs over the side of the bed and dropped his head into his hands. Over two years after Xaja’s murder at Zakuul’s hands, and the grief hadn’t eased at all. If anything, his nightmares about her were getting more and more vivid. He wasn’t sure yet if this was better or worse than the ones he’d been having previously, the ones where his overactive brain decided to imagine what her final moments alone before her death had been like.

At least being alone in the dark as he was, with only Tee-Seven for company, there was no one to witness the tears on his unshaven cheeks, or the shuddering of his hunched shoulders as he tried to smother the grief again. He balefully frowned at the chronometer on his ocular display -- two in the morning, local time. He had a feeling he wouldn't be going back to sleep tonight, not with the lingering fear and grief drowning him.

"These dreams of you are gonna drive me mad," he finally mumbled as he wiped a hand over his eyes and took a shaky breath. He'd all but given up meditating, given how the Force seemed to have drop kicked him over the last couple of years, but maybe trying again now would calm him down after the nightmare. Leaving the bed, he knelt in front of the window that looked out over the Eternal Swamp beyond the city walls. He then closed his eyes, focusing on his breathing as he tried settling into the patterns Master Zho had taught him. In, and out… in, and out… in, and out--

Help me, Theron. Please!

Theron swore and flopped onto his back as Xaja's voice whispered in the back of his mind. "Never mind," he groaned, "I've already gone mad." When he had said he would have done anything to hear Xaja speak to him again, he hadn't meant being haunted into insanity by dreams of her. It shouldn't have been you. It should never have been you…

"Fuck, I miss you," he brokenly whispered to the empty air above him. "I want you back." He bitterly snorted. "Why can't I hallucinate you lying beside me where you belonged?" If this was the Force's way of giving her back to him in some form, it was a cruel comfort. He was pretty sure this counted as proof that the Force hated him personally.

"I'm sorry," he finally mumbled, squeezing his eyes closed as he felt tears trickling down his skin again. A low hum emitted from the corner -- no doubt Tee-Seven offering his concern -- but he couldn’t respond. He could only shake his head. "I need you back, Xaja. Never should’ve let you go to begin with. This just... hurts too much without you." He took in a shuddering breath. "I don't know what to do without you here."

So much for not getting attached, he thought with a snort of sarcastic amusement. He tried to tell himself to not risk it with the pretty Jedi during their time together on Rishi or Yavin IV, and that was even during happier times when she had still lived, a bright spot in his galaxy. He clenched his jaw in an attempt to smother down his grief and tried to think about something else… anything that had the hope of getting his mind off of Xaja, his dreams of her, and the regrets he carried with him.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hours later, as he was sipping a mug of lukewarm caf and scowling at his datapad, he gave a start at Tee-Seven’s sudden beep of warning. The droid’s sensors had picked up someone walking down the alley toward Theron’s cramped residence -- someone walking quietly, but not exactly sneaking about. Frowning, Theron got to his feet, setting the caf down and reaching for his blaster. No one should have known he was here; no one had reason to be knocking on his door, the raps echoing in the stillness of the apartment.

Cautiously, Theron cracked the door open -- and a second later, wasn’t sure if he was relieved his visitor wasn’t one of Marcus’ operatives coming to track him down, or more uneasy that this was an Imperial asset looking him in the eye. “Nine,” he sighed, easing his grip on his blaster. Cipher Nine might be a notorious sociopath and an infamous Imperial spy, but Theron was at least reasonably sure that the old man wasn’t here to end him. If Reanden Taerich had wanted him dead, he could have killed him easily enough on Nar Shaddaa last year.

“You’re a pain in the ass to track down, you know that?” Reanden dryly said by way of greeting, shifting his hands into his jacket pockets. The older spy’s hair had gotten more grey in the last three years, and there were new lines on his face, but those calculating dark eyes were still as sharp and piercing as ever.

“Apparently still too easy,” Theron grumbled. He crossed his arms and leaned against the door frame. What the blazes had Cipher-kriffing-Nine been looking for him for? He settled for a direct approach. “What brings you out here?”

Reanden paused, dark eyes glancing to the alley for a moment. “That’s a conversion best not had out here,” he finally said, his voice low. “You mind?”

Barely keeping from rolling his eyes, Theron stepped back to allow the old man inside. His tone was acerbic as he gestured to the shabby room. "Make yourself at home." The door was secured behind him.

Turning, he watched Reanden survey the one-room apartment with its scarce furnishings, lazily shrugging one shoulder. "I've seen worse," the old spy as he sat in the one chair in the room. Somewhat surprised to not hear a snarky comment from the old timer, Theron found himself sitting on the bed as Tee-Seven started happily beeping upon recognizing their visitor. Even more surprising, he watched as the elder man patted the droid’s chassis with something approaching affection. "So this is where you ended up."

"Busted him off Coruscant when I left," Theron shrugged casually. "He was being wasted in a military hangar."

"Same time you took the Serenity?" Reanden offered a tired smirk as Theron started. "Heard about that through the vine."

"... Xaja would have hated her ship being left to rust in a hangar," Theron protested, for a second certain that the old man was ready to tear him a new one for stealing -- no, liberating -- his late daughter’s starship.

"She would have," Reanden agreed, his voice quiet, sombre, and definitely not the verbal fight Theron had been expecting. “Definitely the Corellian in her.” 

Theron frowned as the old spy looked down at his hands, the normal snarky demeanour fading into a familiar heartache. “You didn’t sneak onto Zakuul for a social call, old timer,” he finally said. “And you definitely didn’t drop in to catch up with me.”

“Bite me, kid,” Reanden muttered, glaring up at Theron for a second before seemingly standing down and sighing. “There’s a lot of people searching for your hide in particular, but, no, that’s not why I’m here. I’m here on unrelated business -- only just figured out you were onworld about two hours ago.”

“And you tracked me down because…?”

“Because I figured you’d have a personal interest in this.” Reanden unflinchingly met Theron’s gaze when the younger spy frowned in confusion at him. “Sorand… has a theory that he’s asked me to look into, and I believe Lana will only be a couple of steps behind me on this.”

A personal interest for Theron that Cipher Nine would be involved with… and on Zakuul…? Maybe, he thought, the old man had an idea to kill Arcann directly for what he’d done to Xaja. And Darth Imperius was clever, with his own reasons to hate Zakuul -- perhaps father and son had figured out a plan. Or had Korin gotten into something? “What’s up? You find some sort of a vulnerability in that half-metallic bastard?”

“Not yet.” Reanden opened his mouth as if he were going to say something, paused, then shook his head. “What do you know about Force bonds, kid?”

Theron frowned in confusion. This was not where he’d expected this conversation to go. “Not a lot. Connections that form between Force-users, usually people close to each other.”

“Like a student and their teacher; a parent and child,” Reanden slowly agreed, “or siblings.” Theron felt his frown deepen as the older man looked at him. “Sorand had... formed a bond with Xaja, presumably some time during the Revanite incident. He’s been having intermittent dreams since…well, since the attack; they’ve been getting more intense over the past few months.” He sighed and raked a hand through his hair, an uncharacteristic sign of anxiety that Theron wasn’t used to seeing from him. The next statement left in a rush: “He believes there’s a chance that Xaja might have survived the attack. He suspects that if she's still alive, she’s probably on Zakuul, and she's in some sort of danger that he can't identify.”

For a second, Theron felt hope flare within his chest, his heart in his throat -- then reality kicked back in, and he felt his shoulders slump. “Dreams? If dreams were real, Taerich, I’d be piloting a Hutt pleasure barge overrun with gizka. The only dreams coming true now are nightmares.” He blindly gestured with one hand toward the wall, and the Spire beyond it, as if to prove his point. "You saw those reports of what happened to Marr’s fleet. There's no chance she made it."

"He swears up and down that he can feel her, or at least feel something where his bond with her was -- and he says it feels nothing like the broken bond he had with his mum.” Reanden grimaced, shifting forward in the seat. He rested his elbows on his thighs, fingers interlaced over his knees. “Look, I'm about as Force-sensitive as you and have no idea what a bond is supposed to feel like, but I trust my kid. He wouldn’t… offer hope where there isn’t any. He’s not that cruel." He shrugged. "At the least, I promised him I would do some snooping. Figured you'd be interested."

Sorand was a pretty sane, reasonable Sith, Theron knew. Unless the siege on Dromund Kaas had driven him completely insane… but Reanden, even with his clear biases toward his surviving children, should have been able to recognize that. So if Cipher Nine thought Imperius' hunch concerning a long-dead Jedi was worth investigating…

But if they're wrong? Theron raked a hand down his face as he stood up and paced to the window, then back again. "I can't do this," he heard himself whisper. "Getting my hopes up, and then finding out it was a false hope… I can't do that and lose her again." He had done that enough with the first reports of the infamous Outlander assassin, whispers of whom indicated they matched Xaja's description, unless there were other tiny, feisty redheaded women with blazing green eyes and blue lightsabers. Nothing had come out of that.

"What makes you think I can?" When Theron glanced over, he was struck by the tangible grief in Reanden's dark eyes, the sorrow making itself evident in the stoop of his shoulders. This wasn’t the Cipher Nine of legend, infamous saboteur and assassin -- this was a grief-stricken father. "My children mean everything to me, my daughter included. I need a confirmation, one way or another."

"Fuck," Theron muttered as he stared out the window for a moment longer, then finally looked back at Reanden. "If he's wrong and we're chasing a false hope, and she's still de-- still gone…"

"And if he's right, and Xaja's alive and in some sort of distress? Could you live with yourself if you didn't even try to help her?"

Help me, please…

Theron groaned and sat back down on the bed, the mattress creaking under his weight. Weird coincidence that Nine would show up with this new theory after last night's dream, he thought, and felt himself frown. The Force didn't operate in coincidences like this, did it? He wished he had Master Zho's guidance right then -- or Hells, even his mother. Somehow, he felt like Satele would at least offer some sort of advice. And he would take any answers he could get right now.

"I... dreamed about her last night," he heard himself admit quietly, before his brain quite caught up to his mouth. "It was different than the normal nightmares about her. She was… she was scared, and kept saying 'he's hurting me'. She didn't say who 'he' was, but…" He bitterly laughed and raked his hand through his hair. "And now I'm hearing her voice in the back of my head. I think I'm losing it."

When he finally looked back at Reanden, the older man was frowning in thought, clearly considering what Theron said. "Sorand thinks he felt her fear too," he added at length. "Said he could feel pain and cold -- thinks they might have been from her end of the bond. He didn't say anything about her being hurt by anyone though. I haven't been in contact with Korin, so I don't know if he's having dreams too."

"And you haven't…?"

"Pfft. Do I look like the type of person to have dreams from the Force?"

"You're as likely as me, old timer."

"One of us didn't get thirteen years of Jedi mind training as a kid." Reanden shrugged. "Not to mention you've been onworld longer. If Sorand's right, and Xaja's here, proximity probably can't hurt."

The idea that maybe, just maybe, Xaja was somewhere on this damned rock turned the spark of hope into a tiny flame in his chest. Theron closed his eyes against the sudden desperate yearning to have her in his arms right then, and for a moment was grateful Reanden couldn't sense his feelings. "You've got some sort of plan for looking, right?"

"I've got about forty percent of a plan," Reanden acknowledged. "You and Tee-Seven share what you've turned up so far, and we might have more of a plan before Lana turns up."

"Forty percent isn't much of a plan," Theron dubiously pointed out, not mentioning he was pretty sure he only had about five percent of a plan to search for Xaja himself… and only thirty percent of a plan to kill Arcann, which was rapidly being bumped down the priority list.

"This coming from the guy who blew up a Sith warship in his underwear."