Chapter Text
She sees him: limbs splayed, head cocked grotesquely to one side. His Force energy flickers, faint, and now she’s running, leaping over broken bodies, the remnants of a Skytrooper, a discarded blaster. Lana’s behind her, calling her name—Callie, wait, it’s not safe! But her vision tunnels, a kaleidoscope of Theron and Theron and Theron…
Her footsteps echo, and his eyes open, lashes fluttering. After a moment, he focuses, finds her. Smiles. It’s a weak, trembling thing. “You came.”
Of course I came, she wants to say, but doesn’t. She shakes her head, dropping to her knees, hands flitting everywhere, checking for life, solidity. Confirmation, at the very least. They come back red, slick, streaked with horror. “No,” she breathes. “No, no, no…”
“Callie.”
“No,” she says, again, and her eyes fill with hot, shameful tears. She blinks, hard. Tries to remember the Code—there is no emotion, which is a lie; there is peace, which is even more of a lie. “Save your strength.”
The Force comes to her, then, as if on tiptoe. She grabs hold of it with both hands, tendrils wrapping around her wrists, and pulls—the distant sound of something cracking, and then, warmth, gushing through her. And out of the corner of her eye, she sees it: Her hands, glowing, blurred.
Theron sees it, too, and his eyes go wide, and it’s almost like they’re on Rishi again. Wobbly legs, earnest hearts. Soft, gentle touches. Only this time she can’t afford to lose him, possibly because she’s lost everything else. Still, there’s something in his gaze. She would almost call it devotion—the way his face contorts in the light of her healing energy, body arcing off the ground, as if to touch it. Reverence, maybe, or wonder.
“I thought knights couldn’t heal,” he says, and there—a flicker of a smile, her favorite smile, the smile he saves for her.
She laughs. A quiet, wracked sound. “Not funny.”
“Maybe not.” A wheeze. “But I made you laugh.”
“You must’ve hit your head.” Her eyes flick from wound to wound. She’ll never be able to fix him, she knows, but she doesn’t necessarily have to; she just has to keep him alive until someone gets here who can. “Where does it hurt, Theron?”
Silence. She can feel him fading—softly, like a sunset, receding gently in the distance.
Finally, “Everywhere.”
She doesn’t think. She presses her palms to the first wound she sees. Opens herself to the Force—that warm, thrumming liquid—and seethes.