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The sound of the wrench echoing against his skull clung to Bix's ears, reverberating again and again. In some ways it was easier to remember that rather than everything else that happened. It gave her something to obsess over. Let her blame herself. Let her have some modicum of control. She rubbed her fingers along the windowsill, blinking the dryness out of her sleepless eyes. There was no longer any dust on the surface, so routinely did she sit at the windowsill. Cassian had left that morning.
When Wilmon had headed out, because they were all errand boys for Luthen now, Bix had draped one of the shirts he'd left behind over a chair in the dining room. Countless times she held the sleeve of the shirt as if she were grasping his hand, running her fingers over the fibers of the fabric as if it were his skin. Now, she held onto the sleeve of one of Cassian's shirts that he had draped over another chair while she'd been in a rare moment of sleep.
It was a pity she had nothing of Brasso’s to hold on to. Her throat felt scratchy. She closed her eyes and imagined them all sitting at the table with her. Wil laughing sheepishly at her teasing. Cassian tracing the outlines of her hands. Brasso putting an arm around her shoulder.
This was a haunted place.
It was early in the morning, but her exhaustion was weighing her down. Sometimes it was easier to be awake at night when the world wasn't watching. Sometimes it was worse, when she imagined monsters in the shadows. Monsters with the faces of Imperials. She'd stayed awake for Cassian that night, trying to memorize his features in the dark, trying to breathe safety into his lungs. Then she'd slipped into sleep for an hour or two until the monsters woke her up. Her muffled screams into Cassian's shoulder was the memory of her that he would take with him on the mission. Gritting her teeth, she prayed it wouldn't bring him bad luck. From her hidden spot, she pulled out the sleeping drugs that Luthen supplied her with. Just a droplet on her tongue. Just a droplet and she could sleep this all away.
____
“It works for a while, but the dreams come back worse when you stop,” Luthen had said.
By the time Cassian had returned and gone again, Bix had attempted to sleep without the drug twice and both times she'd gotten shakes and nightmares so bad she'd caved.
“You need me healthy” she had said. And I'm doing a grand old job at that, aren't I?
She imagined if Brasso were there with her. Come on, Bix, I don't want to see you become like one of those junkies on the streets.
Maybe he wouldn't say that. But last night she'd had a nightmare of his lifeless body crawling in the grass, grasping at her ankles.
Twisting the eyedropper around and around, she watched the blue liquid reflect light around the room. It was dusk and the blue mixed with the orange of the falling sun. She'd taken two droplets more than her usual dose. Oh, how she loved the colors. Peering dazedly at the light on the ceiling, she noticed a dark spot. Abruptly paranoid that it was mold, she sprung up from her seat to get a closer look. She was a bit wobbly on her feet and it was hard to stand still enough to focus her vision on the spot–she swore the ceiling was moving gently, trying to spite her. Dragging the chair over, she scrambled up and stood on it, peering at the spot. Not mold, rust. A metal circle, probably from a structural bar, very subtly peaked out in the center of the brown spot. Overwhelming relief washed over her. She teetered on the chair. Oh, fuck.
She didn't really remember falling, just blinking and finding herself on the floor. By the way she'd landed, she assumed she must've hurt something, but she couldn't tell what or where. There wasn't any pain. But she also couldn't get up. Fuck. The rust on the ceiling seemed to taunt her so she tilted her head to the side, feeling the coolness of concrete on her cheek. The chair was lying down beside her. For some reason, that made her laugh. But the echo of the laugh in the otherwise lifeless room felt like another mockery. Listening, listening, listening. Too much silence. CLANG. The sound of the wrench against flesh rang in her ears again. CLANG. Shivering, she pressed her ear into the concrete, hard. CLANG. She strained to hear another sound. Electricity. Electricity buzzed all through the building. Now that she had picked up on it, it was roaring. She forgot about worrying about her current lack of mobility. Bzzt. Bzzt.
The building was alive.
____
She was suffocating. This wasn't a quiet home. These ghosts were screaming, fighting to be heard over the electricity that she allowed to fill her ears. Bix! Bix! Bix! She imagined what Brasso’s death might've looked like. The crush of his bones. What had he thought of while he died? She imagined Wil torn apart by a bomb. She imagined Cassian's body drifting untethered in the vacuum of space. She clamped her eyes shut and poured hopeful thoughts into her mind for fear of willing evil into their fates. They would survive. They would survive. They had to.
She let a blue droplet fall between her lips. Then another. Another. Again.
The building wasn't their haunt. They would cling to her, wispy phantoms against her skin, raising her hairs like static.
It was her body that was suffocating her.
She wanted–no, needed–to crawl out of it. But she couldn't. Even though she had poured her guts out into the toilet the other day, her soul wouldn't go out with the vomit. The nausea came over her when she remembered being cornered. A distinct need to rip off her skin came with it. The best she could do was shower for hours, scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing her skin raw. She remembered most distinctly how he had smelled–sweat, must, and the faintest bit of stuffy, pollen-like perfume. No matter how much she scrubbed, it clung to her. Made her retch.
She wondered if the last memory Cassian or Wil might have of her was how she was after Mina-Rau, after Ferrix. A disgusting screaming creature, dirty no matter how much she cleaned. Changed. Tainted somehow in their minds. It made her vomit all over again, an attempt at expelling the last remaining pure parts of her soul from her body so at least that could be free.
It didn't work, so she settled on leaving the safehouse.
She wasn't technically supposed to. Sure, if she needed groceries she was allowed to take care of her survival needs. But she was not yet healthy enough for Cassian to truly trust her to be able to make it outside. He always left the fridge as stocked as possible before a mission.
If she wasn't supposed to leave the safehouse, it definitely would be frowned upon that she had showed up at a nightclub’s doorstep. Cassian had walked her by it, on their way to the park, the nice one that she liked, holding her tightly in his arms. But Cassian wasn't there to keep her safe this time. She wanted to say that she didn't need him to, but she could feel the effects of the drug burrowing into her bones. The truth was she no longer really cared. The danger was enticing because it was distracting. Sure, her drink might get laced with something and she might get kidnapped by a trafficker. But she'd become hyper aware of scenarios like that. Keeping herself safe would give her something to obsess over that wasn't murder or death or rape.
Pushing the door open, the deafening music and blinding lights wrapped around her like a blanket. Everywhere, bodies danced, crowding the floor. Holograms of Twi’leks twirled atop tables. There was color everywhere. The rainbow of drinks behind the bar. Neon glowing jewelry that adorned half the dancers. Swirling clothes. The gridded blocks that made up the floor. Strobing lights. The mane of tendrils on the head of the Mikkian beside her. It seemed to be a rebellion of its own against the sterile gray, endless concrete of Coruscant.
Feeling the music pounding all the way into her chest, Bix pushed her way to the center of the crowd. There certainly weren't clubs like these on Ferrix. Only rustic bars, or half empty ones. But watching the Rodian and Togruta flanking her sides, she began to dance easily, following their movements, throwing her arms in the air and nodding her head this way and that. The subwoofer seemed to thicken the air with sound, drowning her thoughts. All that light and noise, it was dazzling. The crowd moved to it in disjointed yet synchronized waves, drunkenly sloshing around the building like a silvery, shining school of fish. Bix didn't need a drink. She was drunk on the glitter of it all, the sparkling nature of it that appealed to the drug running through her system.
It could've been after five minutes or five hours, but either way it happened slowly. The Togruta’s montrals sunk down into their scalp. Brown hair sprouted millimeter by millimeter. Their white facial markings faded away. Purple skin turned tan. Their body became bulkier, more sturdy. Their eyes more sunken. A deep wound bloomed on the back of their head. And their features were carved away into Brasso’s.
Bix froze, gaping. The Togruta, Brasso, this spector, whose eyes were closed, kept dancing. Blood spilled out down their neck. Bix's hands twitched. She stumbled towards him, but she was disrupting the rhythm. A dancer's arm collided with her head. Falling to the floor, the colorful, colorful floor, she became entrapped by bodies. Someone stepped on her hand. A heel kicked out into her side. Little accidents like this bruised her body until the crowd’s endless waves adjusted to accommodate her presence. Down here she seemed to bounce from the stampede of feet and the beat shooting through the floor. Jostled around, she curled in on herself. Everything was starting to spin. She saw faces she recognized in the crowd. Ghosts, following her endlessly. The lights flashbanged her repeatedly, black dots smattering across her vision. The smell of sweat and alcohol became nauseating and tinged with that horrid perfume. The presence behind her, the sensation of eyes on her back. The feeling of being cornered. CLANG. She needed to get out. She needed to get out. Every way she turned was crowded with limbs and color and booming noise. A headache nestled into her forehead and her skull throbbed. She dragged herself across the floor. The mob did not part for her. She pushed through anyways, taking kicks to her flesh. It was too dizzying. Practically gasping, she couldn't get enough air. She sank her head between her arms. I can’t…
Brasso knelt before her, taunting her. She clenched her fists. You're not real. He reached out a hand. You're not real. She pushed herself up. Up, up, up. Stumbling, she almost fell back down. Brasso stood with her. Her whole body was trembling. She hadn't yet cried, but this illusion, this ghastly wisp was ripping her apart. Her eyes prickled.
She ran forward, on unsteady legs, and Brasso disappeared.
____
In another corner of the galaxy, Wil choked on the fumes of rhydonium.
Every orifice of his face burned. Yet his mind seemed to sharpen, his senses more aware. Was this rebellion? No. No, not the rhydonium. Not the clarity of mind.
It was the pain. The going on in spite of it.
____
The shakes were terrible. The nightmares were worse. But she didn't dare take another droplet. In fact, she'd poured all of it, her whole measly supply into the toilet and flushed it away.
At first, her terrifying visions became more vivid. Nightmares slipped into waking hours. She relived horrors, sometimes hallucinating so bad she thought she was back in the fields on Mina-Rau. Sometimes she thought she was back with Doctor Gorst. Mostly, she heard things. The wrench against flesh. Brasso’s crash. Wil laughing, then screaming. Cassian's even breathing, then Cassian choking. Gunshots. Tie fighters. Imperial commands.
She found a small old BT-6 unit that she began tinkering with. The metal beneath her fingers was cold and familiar. Yes, it reminded her of her old shop, back when she was Bix the mechanic instead of Bix the addict, but more so it reminded her of B2EMO. She missed Bee.
The hallucinations stopped after several rotations. The nightmares didn't. She would wake up screaming, or sleepwalking, and Cassian wasn’t there to hold her. Instead, she would curl herself into a ball on the floor and fidget with the BT-6 unit until her breathing returned to normal and her heart stopped racing.
She taught herself how to cook better and that helped too. The tactileness of finding her way through ingredients calmed her. Hard fruit rinds and the soft, juicy flesh within. Rough tubers and smooth vegetables. Letting herself have control over the knife above the cutting board, the heat of the stove.
She became a plumber, a carpenter, a home decorator–everything became a project. The dripping faucet. The slight stuttering to the door. The uneven chair legs. The rusty spot on the ceiling.
Sometimes things set her off. Footsteps from the floor above spurred her into a panic. She would find herself hiding in the kitchen cabinet below the sink before she even knew what she was doing. The ever-present hum of electricity made her unreasonably angry. When she couldn't sleep at night, she prowled the room cussing it out. Cooking Brasso’s favorite meal put her into a state of depression. Her limbs became too heavy to lift so she laid in bed and stared at the ceiling for three days straight. She only managed to get up when the lack of showering reminded her of the horrid perfume scent.
By the time Cassian returned, she'd developed a system. Adjust the BT-6 unit. Breath. Adjust the BT-6 unit. Breath.
____
On Yavin, staying cooped up was unbearable. She refused to suffocate again.
It started with fixing a toilet. After that, she started fixing everything on site aside from the ships which were already prioritized. Sinks, doors, leaky ceilings. Relatively minor inconveniences like a rickety wheel on a bot or a flickering hologram. The kitchen appliances, pallet jacks, staircases. Jammed guns that no one else had the time to deal with. Weather damage. Paint jobs. Even for holes in clothing, she learned how to sew. She untangled disorganized cords. She found solutions to tripping hazards. Jack of all trades, handyman Bix.
(And when she could, she helped out in the kitchen. The force healer prodded her to talk so she told her everything. There wasn't any judgement, just listening ears and comforting words.
Cassian listened too, of course, even though he knew it all by heart.
And when K-2so and Melshi came along she found that she liked confiding in Kay and Melshi was a good hugger.)
____
For the first time in a long time, not since Ferrix, Bix took a ship on her own. To Mina-Rau. Even before she landed, she swallowed around her rapidly beating heart in her throat. But when she saw the familiar fields she had to ram her eyes shut and count to ten, pressing the cold metal of the BT-6 unit into the palm of her hand.
As soon as her boots met the ground, Talia gave her a long hug and showed her where they'd buried Brasso. They found Bee there and Talia told her that he had refused to stop watching over Brasso’s grave.
Bix knelt down beside him, putting a hand atop him.
“Let's go home to Cassian now, Bee.”