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The shuttle is silent.
Theron drifts in and out of consciousness. Lana grips the controls, brow furrowed in concentration. Caldis watches the valley shrink, a speck of green surrounded by endless brown plains. They pass through the atmosphere, clouds gray and thin, stars blurring to white streaks of light.
She doesn’t know what to do. What to say. His pain pulses red-hot, unbearable, at the edge of her awareness, and her body aches to relieve it.
“Go to him,” says Lana, without so much as a glance.
Caldis sighs. Swallows. Looks over her shoulder at him, sprawled atop a cot they found in the shuttle’s emergency supplies. His cybernetics flash green, yellow, and her breath catches in her throat.
She missed him.
“I don’t know what…” To do. To say. Even the thought of sitting next to him is enough to make her nauseous, fingers curling against the back of Lana’s seat.
“Neither does he.”
“I can’t believe you’re okay with this.” She’s playing at lightness. Stalling for time. “I thought you’d be more…”
“Angry?”
“You said it, not me.”
“There’ll be plenty of time for anger. But right now he needs us.” Lana looks over her shoulder. First at Theron, then at Caldis, eyes glowing in the dim light of the cockpit. “Needs you, as you need him.”
She thought she needed him. Perhaps at one point she did. But she’s grown used to this, his absence, its stagger and pull. For weeks after he left, her body made room for his, anticipating the shape of him, the space he once occupied. She charged into battle, expecting the sound of his blaster, and when she turned—chasing a glimpse of him, a telltale streak of red—there was only ever empty space. Bodies he did not fell.
She learned to compensate. Waited, eventually, for Rhyss’ signal; grew accustomed, with time, to Min’s voice in her ear, the constant stream of chatter. Lana met her every morning for a quick sparring session, grunts interspersed with peals of laughter. She bought new pillows, sheets cool to the touch. Soon, even their bed became hers.
Not too long ago, T7 asked her a question, one she didn’t know the answer to. One she thought about for quite some time.
Jedi = happy?
Maybe not happy, Caldis told him eventually. Not yet. But I think I’m getting there.
She looks at Theron again. His brow, creased with pain. If he were to leave, she’s sure she’d survive. But that doesn’t mean she wants to. Back on Nathema, she leaned into his touch, once, as if expecting it to be there. As if she’d already forgotten what it was like to live without him.
“Go to him,” says Lana again. “You will regret it if you don’t.”
She goes.
He looks different. She could blame it on the hair, the lack of red leather, but it’s more than that: a scar she doesn’t recognize; circles under his eyes.
She settles down next to him, reaching out. The mattress shifts beneath her weight, and his eyes flutter open, finding her immediately.
She pulls back.
“Hi,” she offers finally.
“Hey,” he rasps, wetting his lips. He peers up at her, eyes heavy-lidded, and it feels like devotion. Like he’s committing her to memory.
Silence, but for their breaths. She exhales, he inhales. The air between them shivers.
“Are you in pain?” It comes out hoarse, a whisper, so she tries again. Says his name, as if that will somehow ground her. It always used to. “Theron. Are you in pain?”
He shakes his head, winces. “I’m fine,” he grits out.
“You’re lying.” She can feel his pain, as sharply as if it were her own.
“I’m good at that.”
She thinks of Umbara. His form, fizzing red. You’ve become a symbol of oppression. I thought you’d end the cycle of war. The train explodes. All she knows is pain.
She thinks of Odessen. How she’d wake up screaming in the middle of the night, T7 at her bedside. Jedi = had a bad dream // T7 = administer tranquilizer? As the sedative took hold, she’d lie in bed, sweat-stained sheets tangled about her legs. Sleep would take her, and she’d cry, beg, desperate to stay awake. Desperate to avoid the dark, what awaited her there.
She thinks of Nar Shaddaa. The clinic, with its empty barrels of kolto, its piss-stained cots. Bodies, haloed in the glare of her lightsaber. Rhyss, sitting with her back to the wall. You can’t keep doing this, Callie. Sooner or later you’ll just burn out. She donned the mask, and it all fell away—Kira, the Alliance, the ghost of Theron’s touch.
Don’t worry, he said. You won’t feel a thing.
She thinks of Nathema. How hard it was to look at him. Her gaze kept slipping off, as if expecting him to disappear—there one moment, gone the next, like he is in dreams. You can’t imagine how hard it was, putting you through that.
“Of course you are. You’re a spy.” The joke falls flat. “Please, Theron. Let me heal you.”
Vitiate would call her spineless. Weak. But who can blame her, when his pain is her own. When, for months after Theron left, she spent her nights praying to the Force. Please bring him back to me. Please. Who can blame her, when he’s here, when every breath leaves him ragged and wheezing.
She’d rather be weak, she thinks, blinking down at him. It’s no great departure: her love for him has always been, in one way or another, sacrificial.
“I thought knights couldn’t heal,” he says, but the joke falls flat.
“That’s not funny.” She can barely get the words out.
“You usually laugh.”
“Theron.” She doesn’t want to beg. It feels like that’s all she’s done lately: beg the Force to bring him back, to keep him safe, to put an end to things. But now he’s here, and he won’t fucking let her heal him—
“Callie,” he starts, but she’s shaking her head, eyes wet, glittering.
“I just got you back,” she snaps, only it’s more of a sob. “And we’ve been too busy saving the galaxy for me to get mad at you, and I deserve that, Theron. I never get a chance to be mad, ever, and I loved you, more than I’ve ever loved anyone, and this entire time I thought—” Did you ever love me, or was that all part of the act? “I thought it was all a lie. And now you’re saying it wasn’t, and I believe you, I do, but it’s all so confusing, and I can feel you dying—”
His palm against her cheek, knuckles against her jaw. Just like it is in dreams, only this time he’s warm beneath her touch, alive. When she leans into it, he doesn’t pull away.
“—and I can’t lose you, Theron. Not again. A part of me died when you left and I’m just starting to feel like myself again and I can’t, I can’t—”
His hand finds hers. Tugs, weakly, till her palm is pressed to his flank. His jacket is soaked through. She can feel his blood, can feel it coating her skin.
“Theron.” A whimper. She’s begging, but for what? Clarity? A full night’s rest? A warm body to curl around?
“I never stopped loving you.” He tries to smile, but it’s weak, flickering. She can feel him slipping away. “And I’m not going to die.”
Lana says something. A flash of light: their jump to hyperspace.
“Because,” Theron continues, slurring a bit, blinking up at her, “you’re not going to let me.”
She stares down at her hands, pale and trembling, slick with his blood. How is it, she wonders, that after all this time, he still has faith in her.
I never stopped loving you. She thinks, dimly, that maybe he’s telling the truth.
“I just got you back,” says Caldis again. She reaches for the Force, finds it at the heart of her. When she tugs, the light unravels, a shuddering ball of heat.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
It sounds a bit like a vow.