Work Text:
“Easy, take it easy!”
“Where’s the IV? Insert a line! We need to replenish her fluids!”
“Why the seizures? What the kriff happened to her?!”
The first thing Bo-Katan feels upon waking up in the medical bay is pure fear. That same kind of fear that turns her blood cold and locks her body until she can do nothing about it but sit there.
She’s only felt that a number of times. When Satine died, when Pre died, and during the Purge. She hates that she’s feeling it again now in her home.
“Sh… easy.” Gentle hands link their fingers together, and she recognizes Kix’s warmth almost immediately despite her frantic heart rate and the sudden lack of ability to breathe properly. “Bo-“
She can’t hear him. Bo-Katan’s eyes are flickering wildly back and forth - unable to differentiate between the medical bay of Keldabe Wren and her cell - desperately trying to search for a way out. She can’t hear him, but she can feel him.
Kandosii sa ka'rota, Vode An
Coruscanta a'den mhi, Vode An
Deep, slow singing erupts to her left. The Imperials didn’t sing.. much less entertain her with memories of her past. Not in a way that was comfortable or safe. So-
Bal kote, darasuum kote
Jorso'ran kando a tome
Sa kyr'am nau tracyn kad, Vode an
The frantic heaving of her chest gradually slows, and her fingers slowly loosen around the hands they’re settled in. Bo is greeted with memories of a room on a Star Destroyer and the ruins of Sundari. When a lone bes’bev played by the last living clone had permeated her heart and taught her the beginning of learning to love again.
She blinks. Once, twice, three times. The world slowly comes back into focus on her brother’s concerned expression.
“Kix?”
Kix smiles softly and lifts her hands to kiss the tops of them. “Yes.” He replies. “Take it easy, okay? You had a pretty elongated seizure on the Gauntlet while I was force healing you. How are you feeling?”
Feeling? Like she has no control over her life again, somewhat angry that her brother went against her wishes and healed her the one way she had always refused him. Feeling like she had failed, like she was the weakest of her family.
Feeling completely inadequate.
“You force healed me?”
Bo deflates when she sees his reaction. Almost immediately Kix curls in on himself despite the fact that Pontus and the rest of the baar’ure are standing right on the other side of the room, eyes evading her own. It's the same way he's reacted every single time she's done this in the past when he simply was just trying to take away her pain. “I did.” He replied. “Had no other choice. Your burns and scars from the electric whip were bad.. you have enough scars.”
She swallows the knot in her throat and nods. He saved her life. That was the condition - and he met it.
“Kix?” Bo asks softly.
“Hm.”
“Thank you.”
His expression contorts into one of relief as she shifts to face him and presses his free hand to her face. She’s safe now. Safe now. This is the beginning of the hard part.
Moving on.
***
Sara Kryze-Wren does not like it when her aunt Bo is sad. She’s barely come out of the medbay even though her buir has cleared her to get up and walk around, but Bo-Katan has done nothing but stare out the window at the mountains.
Daydreaming. Daddy says it’s a side effect of what the Imps did to her mind, and it makes her sad. She can make her ba’vodu happy again.
"Bo?” Sara calls out, cradling her loth-cat plush to her chest as she quietly pads into the medbay and toward Bo-Katan’s cot. She doesn’t respond. Sara can feel Kix standing on the other side of the room elbow deep in charts and requisitions - as he did them alot during the clone war, so Pontus often left him in charge of it - but she pays him no mind. Daddy would want her to help Auntie Bo. “Ba’vodu? Lise gar susulu ni??”
That seems to do something. Even though the pronunciations don’t quite roll correctly off her tongue, the question of can you hear me from the mouth of a five year old she’s been teaching Mando’a since she was adopted makes the ghost of a smile press against Bo’s lips. It’s the first time she’s been responsive since she’s been able to stay awake for more then ten minutes.
Sara is remarkably smart. She doesn’t know every word in Mando’a, but she knows enough.
“Elek, ad'ika.”
Kix’s head shoots up from the opposite side of the room to watch his daughter settle in his sister’s lap, brown eyes wide with concern as Bo gives her the gentlest smile he’s ever seen and presses a kiss to her head as Sarad buries her own in her neck. Remarkable. Even after being unresponsive for almost a week, the gentle spirit of her niece and his calming presence - accompanied by Alrich’s frequent visits, as well as Ursa’s - are the only thing keeping Bo-Katan’s heart beating.
When he’s finally finished, Bo-Katan is still awake but running her fingers through Sara’s hair. She appears to be singing.
Kandosii sa ka'rota, Vode An
Coruscanta a'den mhi, Vode An
It’s not the traditional version though. It’s the one he wrote for her.
Bal kote, darasuum kote
Jorso'ran kando a tome
Sa kyr'am nau tracyn kad, Vode an
Kix watches from the corner as Bo-Katan rocks back and forth - ever embracing the maternal side she claims she doesn’t have - and closes her eyes as she softly sings her niece to sleep. Part of him wonders if this reminds her of a different time. When Satine was around, when Korkie was a baby. Of the very things she misses so, so much. Maybe she’s too stuck in her memories to realize that baby isn’t Korkie. That he’s not Satine.
It doesn’t matter. It’s the lightest her spirit and her force signature has been since they rescued her, and she’s on the mend to being okay. Even if she is internally tormented.. she’s going to be okay.
Bo-Katan is safe now.
Nothing will hurt her again.
***
I can’t wake up… I can’t wake-
When she’s dreaming, Bo-Katan can’t escape her cell. She’s forced to watch herself be tortured by Imperials again and again and again and it just never stops. The image in the corner that’s always watching her shifts every few minutes. Satine, her mother and father, Korkie. None of them look pleased to even see she’s made it this long, let alone that she’s let herself be captured by Imperials of all things. She’s seen that disappointed look on her father’s face for years.
Please- please help, I can’t do this-
The last thing she sees is Satine’s look of desperation as if she’s trying to reach her before she’s shooting upward in a bed. What bed? Where is she? Did-
“Bo-Katan.” A gentle, deep voice calls to her left. Her eyes snap over in that direction and she reaches onto her hip by instinct for her Westar that isn’t there. “Easy, vod. It’s just me.”
Her heart rate slowly eases at the realization it’s just Kix talking to her, and Bo-Katan forces her eyes closed before she can cry. She hates crying. Crying is a sign of weakness.
As she’s doing this, Kix reaches outward to take her hand in his own and wrap it tightly around his wrist. He’s more than aware she’s been having a difficult time differentiating between what’s real and what’s not. The only time she doesn’t seem to do that is when Bo-Katan can recognize a heartbeat. Heartbeat means real.
Before she realizes what he's doing, Kix has eased her into his lap and tucked her head into his shoulder as he tightly wound his arms around her. Embrace. Warmth. It's such a perplexing contrast to the cold she's gotten so accustomed to knowing since being in that cell.
"Do you trust me with your heart?"
"Yes."
A drink in a Cloud City bar. Kix's laughter. The way the light reflected off of their gal. The clink of the glasses and how light she'd felt for the first time in ages. Being with people she could protect, people she loved, people she refused to fail.
"The room is as much yours as it is mine. I'm glad you like it.. I wanted to do right by your family, and my own."
"We're aliit, baar'ur. It's our clan."
"I'm sorry, what?"
"You heard me."
The memory of that conversation is what finally pulls her over the edge. Bo-Katan wraps her arms around Kix's waist and hides her face in his shoulder as she weeps, trembling violently as she does so. The sound of her sobs is drowned out by the gentle hum of another song - because that's just how Kix is, the gentle nature of his heart and the sound of his voice has this calming effect that just feels so safe - and it takes Bo a while to recognize it, but it's the song he wrote for her.
All the same, I missed you
Today has been okay
She swallows the knot in her throat long after the sobs have died and looks up at her brother's expression. "Kix?" Bo asks softly, fidgeting with her hands at the base of his spine as they simultaneously yawn.
"Hm?"
Today has been okay
"Is it safe?"
A long pause follows as he nuzzles her hair. Years ago, she would've never openly accepted contact like this, much less from him. It's been a long road to healing and recovery for both of them after all they had endured. Nights of sleeplessness and nightmares and quiet tears and self loathing had led them to this. To venturing to Sundari to see the graves of all she'd loved, to venturing to the moon where Kix's triplet had been buried. Of all the people she'd come to love, Bo-Katan had never imagined she would take a lone clone medic under her wing and call him brother.
And Kix had never imagined he'd find home again.
"Yes, Bo." Kix whispers. "You're safe now."
Bo-Katan’s breathing eases beneath his hands, and she falls asleep with ease in his embrace.