Darkness Within

Underprepared

With her head back against the wall, Kira watches as the other three members of her family stare down at the holo table, all of their faces illuminated by the artificial blue light. Her annoyance with her brother has been rising significantly as he spends every day now following their father around like a puppy, doing anything and everything he can to gain even the smallest amount of recognition or affection from Ben.

Both of the children know that Ben favors Kira for reasons that are unknown to them, but as a result, Kira finds that her brother spends an unhealthy amount of time shooting into the dark with attempts of success, hoping he can find something that will allow him to outshine her.

She has no desire in listening to whatever it is they're droning on about but she watches as their father smiles and clamps his hand down on Zyan's shoulder in a form of congratulatory "good job," to which Zyan smiles and nods back at him, eliciting an eye roll from Kira.

Tipping her head back to look out the window to the hangar, she allows her mind to wander but is sure to keep her mental walls up as to not tip any of her family off to the truth. The weeks have been passing slowly, broken up by the occasional lunch and evening walk twice a week when Temiri is on post overnight, but overall, the time between their sweet encounters moves far too slow while their short allotments of time together are over in a blink of an eye.

She wonders if she gives him the same kind of crazy butterflies that she feels anytime she can sense that he is near. It's exciting, the constant draw to someone making it nearly impossible for the two to stay apart. Kira wishes she could talk to her mother about this openly instead of waiting for her to go on one of her reminiscent tangents where she smiles like an idiot and her eyes go all starry. While Rey probably loves her daughter's curiosity when it comes to the old stories of her and Ben's puppy love, she is completely unaware of the ulterior motive behind Kira's endless follow-up questions.

'Kriff, you're annoying,' Zyan breaks through her thoughts in their mental connection and Kira brings her head up sharply to look at him.

'How did you do that?' Kira retorts silently, looking back at him, both of their faces deadpan outside of her eyebrows that are involuntarily scrunching together from confusion.

'Twin thing, you can't hide from me,' he shrugs and looks back down at the table to make himself look busy.

'That's not fair.'

'Life's not fair,' Zyan responds with a sly grin on his still face, his eyes twinkling at her while he waits for a challenge.

"Zy," Ben says sharply and the teenager turns back to him, leaving his sister alone and she stands up to walk to the window, leaning the front of her legs against the protruding window sill and crossing her arms.

It has become an even larger annoyance now that they have figured out how to communicate through the force without tipping their parents off. At first, it was fun and they were able to plan quite a bit without their parents knowing, but now, Zyan rarely uses it for good and instead spends most of the time he communicates with her in that fashion just pestering and taunting her.

An alarm on the table erupts into the gentle murmur of the room and all four members of the family along with a couple of other offices and generals turn to the table. Captain Gabel's figure, clad in shiny metal armor, helmet in hand appears on an elevated part of the table.

"Gabels, what's going on?" Rey snaps and leans forward onto the table across from the small figure, her face serious and tense.

"We are retreating ma'am," he responds simply and glances over his shoulder at an unknown target.