#force healer

The details of the scene.

Cassian has a blaster burn that is not healing, and one evening Bix tricks him into visiting a woman who works in the kitchens but who provides what we’d probably call faith-healing or alternative medicine clinics after hours (this seems to be a free service). Most of the time she makes no difference to her patients’ ailments, but “sometimes it even works”. The Force healer senses Cassian from a distance and he is immediately spooked by this, and even more so when she correctly identifies exactly where his wound is. She then attempts to heal it… and thanks him “For the clarity”, saying that “It’s been a very long time” and that she had thought her Force sensitivity had gone for good. She then asks if Cassian has felt it, his “strength of spirit… all that you’ve been gathering. Surely you must feel it? ”. Really unnerved by now, Cassian expresses deep cynicism, genuine irritation at Bix for subjecting him to this woo-woo stuff and snarks “I’ll work on that, I’ll let you know,” and exits in a very dark mood. 

Bix knows him well and correctly identifies the source of his anger: he’s frightened. “You scared him… that’s not easy to do,” Bix observes. Alone now the two women discuss what happened. The healer then asks who he is and is told that he’s a pilot and soldier - so, no-one particularly special. 

Then comes the key part of the scene. Bix says “Tell me what you saw”.

Force healer: “I sense the weight of things. Things I cannot see. Pain, fear, need.”

She explains that most beings are shaped by the past but that “some, very few, your pilot” are “gathering as they go”.

She concludes with: “He’s a Messenger. There’s some place he needs to be. Maybe you’re the place he needs to be.”

Analysis

1. The Force healer’s powers

I think the key here is that she identifies her abilities according to being able to sense three key feelings: “Pain, fear, need”. I think she demonstrates her ability with every one of these in this scene. 

Pain. Quite literally, she can tell where Cassian is feeling pain: his right shoulder. I think she can ‘see’ it there, sense a flux in the Force. Perhaps the healing gesture with her hand is to try to rebalance the Force in that precise location. The fact that Cassian was in pain was shown by his being unable to rotate his arm. Bix chastised him for trying to “pretend nothing’s wrong”, adding that if she were in pain she would try anything that might help. Either way, the crucial thing for the viewer is that whatever exactly happens, it works. Cassian is seen rotating his arm fully in the next scene and staring at the burn in a mirror where it looks visibly less red than in the opening scene of the episode. 

Fear. As Bix says, it isn’t easy to frighten Cassian. But we’ve seen before exactly what he does fear: loss He fears being someone who leaves people behind. And at this stage of the story the thing he fears losing the most is Bix, and that chance of happiness together. What is frightening to him about this encounter is that he very much resists the idea that he still has some part to play that might necessitate giving up their relationship, especially just when she has finally left the worst of her trauma behind, and they have very  likely been tempted to contemplate longer term plans for the future. 

Need This is the interesting one: “There’s some place he needs to be” says the healer, so she senses need in that sense. But I think she might sense need in Cassian too. So what does Cassian himself need here? The Force healer doesn’t seem to know. She says hesitantly to Bix “Maybe you’re the place he needs to be,” but it seems that Bix isn’t convinced by that - quite the opposite. I’ll come back to this one. 

2. What does the Force healer mean by calling Cassian a ‘Messenger’?

Messengers in the healer’s description are apparently rare but not unique. Obviously, we know that Cassian has been taking literal messages across the experiences of his life: Nemik’s manifesto, the truth about Narkina 5, in all the missions for Luthen etc etc. Each one of these is spreading the word of rebellion (often through his ability simply to survive and therefore spread word of atrocities) and leading up to the stealing of the Death Star plans, eventually to be transmitted to the Rebel fleet and Leia.

But I don’t think the Force healer sees these details. I don’t think she knows that he has or will be carrying literal messages. 

In short, I think it’s more about who Cassian is rather than what exactly he will do.

A ‘Messenger’ in the healer’s sense seems to be more about a person who ‘gathers’ as they move through life, ie. profoundly changes, and ultimately improves in some way, every time they have a key experience. “All that you’ve been gathering” is after all linked to her observation about his character - “the strength of spirit” she says immediately afterwards - rather than something more literal. But the ‘message’ is crucial because the person he has become through these experiences will enable him to have a profound effect on people he meets, from Vel on Aldhani, Melshi in Narkina 5, Niya the young Sienar engineer at the start of s2… and likewise for others to have a profound effect on him. For example, he listens to Nemik’s manifesto in the wake of Narkina 5; he wasn’t really ready before but now he has indeed become Nemik’s “ideal reader”. And those who know him best see him slowly become the man he could always have been had circumstances in his early life been kinder and he had not turned away from fighting back simply because it hurt so much. This role was dominated by Maarva in season 1, and in season 2 it’s taken on by Bix. 

The Force healer was inspired by Whoopi Goldberg’s character in Ghost - a fake clairvoyant whose genuine powers are awakened by the presence of a real ghost. So in that sense there’s definitely *something* about Cassian. Perhaps she can feel that the Force is with him, not to make him a Force user or even Force sensitive. But if it’s all about restoring balance, perhaps there’s a reason why she feels something so strongly here. Even if he’s more Force-used than Force-user.

The impact on Bix and the consequences of her faith in Cassian and the Force

The whole scene is a really moving one, especially on a rewatch as it’s possible to pinpoint it as the moment when Bix realises that she will probably have to make a choice for Cassian, that the need for him by the rebellion and the galaxy is more important than her own desire for the life with him they’d always wanted. It’s also really on-the-nose when the Force healer’s hand touches Bix’s, held over her belly. A hint at the child who Cassian will never know about because if he did the galaxy is doomed to Imperial oppression, and that child’s own future with it. 

It’s possible to read Bix’s choice as extremely cruel and prescriptive, removing Cassian’s agency and forcing him to commit to the cause that will ultimately kill him, well-intentioned though the choice might be. Two things about that. Firstly, - yes, that’s kind of the point. “We’ve all done terrible things on behalf of the Rebellion,” Cassian tells Jyn in Rogue One, and the post-Andor reading includes all our new characters who have done some pretty shitty things for the cause. And this is one of them. Moral choices that would be repugnant in normal cases become far more complex when made in a time of war. Secondly, there is a very good case for saying that Bix - like Maarva before her - knows Cassian (“I don’t remember not knowing him”, she poignantly says when asked how long she’s known him), perhaps knows him better than he knows himself. Maarva’s last words for him included the assurance that one day when his reason and emotion pull together “he will be an unstoppable force for good”. In her message, Bix echoes this with “we have to beat them, and I believe you have a purpose in making that happen”. 

Could any of these three women see the future? Maybe, but I don’t think it’s essential and you might prefer the interpretation that they don’t, or at least not the details of it. But I think the ‘need’ the Force healer speaks of could quite simply be Cassian’s need to be a rebel. His need to fight these bastards, to bring them down or die trying. “I’ve been in this fight since I was six years old!” he will tell Jyn, and there’s no lie there… his commitment levels, however, have wavered throughout, and after the hell of Ghorman he just wants out. And who can possibly blame him.

The different meanings of ‘Need’

Cassian's poignant last scene with Bix opens with her saying that he “needs to sleep” as she gives him the Space!Sleepy-time tea. (she needs him to sleep too, to be able to do this, because she knows the power of persuasion he has over her).  He tiredly teases, “Is that what I need?” But it turns out that Bix knows another thing that he needs. 

“We have what we need,” Cassian says after telling her (not giving her a choice about this, I notice!) that they are leaving for “somewhere quiet” in the morning. But she doesn’t believe him, any more than she believes his next words, that “The only special thing about me is luck”. As far as Bix is concerned, there’s no such thing as luck. She is now a believer in the Force and has faith also that there is some place Cassian needs to be, and he needs to get there before they can ever be together…

…because she knows that if he did abandon the Rebellion for her, he would not be in the place he needs to be. We know that there’s a literal meaning, because we know about Rogue One, but Bix doesn’t. But I do think that Bix believes that there is a particular purpose for which he is needed but *also* knows that at the end of the day… he would not be happy if they ran away together to that “somewhere quiet”. After all, he wasn’t happy before when he tried this, even before he was a committed rebel. On Niamos, he seems miserable and apathetic, adrift and without purpose, as he’s apparently been for years recently on Ferrix. Bix knew him when he was like that - gave up on hopes of a relationship with him because he was so deeply uncommitted to anything. Or, more accurately, trying to convince himself that he didn’t care about anything. 

But now, Cassian would be haunted with the knowledge that he could have saved people. That he could have made a difference. That he turned away from a cause greater than himself and his own needs. 

Casablanca (1942) is the big influence here, according to the Andor s2,eps 7-9 writer Dan Gilroy. Spoiler, just in case you haven’t seen this classic: … When heroine Isla thinks that she’s about to abandon her war hero husband and with him the Cause, choosing instead to stay with her lover Rick, in the famous final scene at the airfield Rick tricks her into thinking she’ll be staying behind with him. She’s distraught when she realises the betrayal, but he tells her he had done the thinking for the both of them and had decided that her place was with the Cause. And that she will eventually realise this: “If you’re not on that plane with Victor, you’ll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon - and for the rest of your life.” Like Bix with Cassian, he decides that not only does the cause require this sacrifice but that soon enough Ilsa will realise it. So he, like Bix, “chooses for the both of us” because like Bix he knows Ilsa well and loves her enough to be able to want her to do the right thing and be … in the place she needs to be. Literally and metaphorically. Casablanca ends here but in Andor we see the impact of the words: a year later and Cassian is prioritising the cause, poignantly deferring any reconnection with Bix, ostensibly because of the risk to her safety but also, most likely, because he now believes that she was right and fully respects that choice. 

Cassian’s little nod at the Force healer in the final montage can also be seen as a way of saying “You were right. There is something more to me than luck. I have a purpose - something I need to do. A place I need to be.” 

But most importantly, the place he need to be is - right here. In the Rebellion. Ready to sacrifice everything, including his life, should it comes to that. 

He’s a man with a purpose. He’s a force for good; unstoppable, except by death. 

In this sense alone, the Force is with him. 

Conclusion/TLDR

As far as the characters themselves are concerned, Cassian isn’t necessarily a special chosen one with a mystical pre-destined journey that is glimpsed in visions of the future. Instead, he’s a man whose path through life is made through choices - his own and others, and this is what can be seen as the Force guiding his journey. He’s not just where he needs to be literally at the end - he’s also the best possible version of himself: a man with a purpose, giving everything for the Cause. Burning his life to make a sunrise he’ll never see - but the next generation, including his own child, will.

….

You’ve come to realize that you can’t enjoy anything unless you’re enjoying it with him. So you didn’t leave when everyone else did, you stayed and you were certain that you’d always stay. No matter where he went, what planet or what galaxy, you’d be with him.

And if he ever decided he didn’t want your company anymore, you’d leave willingly. You’d give him anything he wanted, so long as you had the power to do so. You would leave should he ever want it, but you would spend the rest of your life thinking of him and keeping tabs on him.

Cal was glad you stayed, more than glad he was overjoyed. You were his best friend and his favorite person, the only one who could make him feel better with merely your presence.

You helped Cal on missions occasionally, but most of the time he insisted you stay on the ship. He couldn’t risk losing you, a fact he told you many times. He had never seen you fight, never seen you use your lightsabers. You knew you could handle yourself, but he didn’t. So you did as he asked, because you never wanted him to worry about you.

This was one mission you should have joined him on, something you learned when he got back on the ship covered in blood.

You didn’t see him at first, up in the cockpit fiddling with controls so you could get the hell out of there. But then you heard Bode yell your name as they climbed up the ramp. You glanced over your shoulder, seeing him holding up a barely conscious Cal Kestis.

“Cal!” You shout, jumping out of your seat to run over to him. “Cal? What the hell happened?!” You direct the question to Bode but don’t look away from Cal. You lift his head up, meeting his glassy and unfocused eyes.

“They came out of nowhere-“

“Who? Who the hell could manage this?!” You yell, pulling at his torn clothes and coating your hands in his blood in the process.

“Inquisitors.” He answers grimly.

“How many?”

“Two, they ganged up on us.” Bode shook his head. “Didn’t see ‘em coming.” He glances down at Cal.

“Where did they go? Did you kill both of them?” You ask anxiously.

“Just one, I think the other was still breathing but-“

“We need to get the kark out of here before they come back for us.” You glance at Cal before looking back at Bode. “You know how to work the controls?” You jerk your head back to the cockpit.

“Yeah.”

“Good, fly us out of here. And tell Ayfor to check for any tracking devices on the ship, someone could have slipped one on us.” You wrap your arm around Cal as Bode pulls his back, quickly rushing into the cockpit as you lead Cal back to his room.

You hear BD-1’s little metal footsteps following you. You push Cal onto his bed, sighing as you pull back and stare at him.

“Did you give him a stimpack?” You ask BD, listening to his series of beeps. “It didn’t help at all?” Beep. “Did you give him more than one?” Beep beep. “Do you know how much time we have?” You ask with teary eyes, heart thumping loudly. Boop. “Challenge accepted.”

You sigh and hover over Cal’s body, hands pulling up his sleeveless shirt. You rest both palms over the largest gash in his side. You presume that’s what’s causing most of the trouble and BD confirms that suspicion.

You wait a long time, what feels like years for his wound to close up and fully heal. After you finally pull your palms away, Cal bolts up in bed and his eyes fly open.

“Kriff, don’t scare me like that!” You yelp.

“What happened?” He asks, groaning when he feels the aching in his limbs and the sting of remaining injuries.

“Inquisitors.” You mumble, pushing against his chest. “Lay back down.”

“I can’t, I need to-“ He tries to stand up and you push him down harshly.

“Knock it off before I knock you out!” You yell at him. “You’re still hurt and you need to heal, you need rest! You almost died, you moron! Why didn’t you run? Why did you insist on fighting them?” You huff.

“Did Bode tell you?”

“No, I assumed. You’re predictable, Red. You’re always starting or continuing fights that you know you may not win! It’s like you have no sense of self-preservation!” You scold him, tears now rolling down your cheeks.

“Star.” The nickname gently slips past his lips. “Please don’t cry.” He begs, his voice cracking.

“I can’t lose you.” You blurt out. “You make me stay on the ship because you can’t lose me, but do you even realize that it goes both ways? I cannot lose you, Cal. I couldn’t bear it, just the thought of it makes me miserable.”

“I’m sorry, Star.”

“You need to take care of yourself. If I’m not there with you then you need to pretend that I am, imagine how much I’d be yelling at you and scolding you for being an idiot. Sometimes you need to run, Cal…so you stay alive and come back to me in one piece.”

“I’ll do better…I promise. I won’t leave you alone, I’ll always be here with you.”

“Lay back down and let me take care of you, okay?” You say softly.

“Okay.” He smiles, lying back down as he watches you climb on top of him, palms held out to heal the rest of his injuries. “Thank you…for healing me and calling me out on my stupidity.” He chuckles.

“Anytime, Red. And it isn’t necessarily stupidity…you just care too much and think too little. You just want to protect everyone all the time, so you get into fights because you think it’s better you than someone else. You can’t save everyone, no matter how badly you want to. But you can save yourself.”

“It’s just hard…knowing there are so many people out there suffering.”

“I know…it’s hard for me too. But…if you die then you can’t protect anyone. You protect everyone you can, everyone around you. If you die who’s going to save those people?”

“You would.” Cal whispers.

“I would…but you get what I’m trying to say, right?” You sigh.

“I do.” He nods slowly.

“Good.” You move away from him and stand back up. “Get some rest, I know you need it.” You try to walk out but his hand wraps around your wrist, gently pulling you back.

“Stay with me…please?” He asks sweetly, his eyes watering.

18 BBY, Jabiim

The inquisitor was relentless. He always was. Tracking her, hunting her, spinning his red double blade with the clear intent to kill.

And, Maker, he was close this time.

He’d cut her off from the others, separating her from reinforcements and backing her into a dead end gallery of the cave. And he was swinging his blade with hate, like she'd personally wronged him and had to pay for her crimes.

Rhea was tired. He was tiring her out on purpose, trying to lower her guard so he could slip a fatal blow past the purple plasma of her lightsaber staff. Both her hands were on the hilt, the callouses on her palms burning with how harshly she had to grip it in order to parry his vicious hits. And he kept pushing her back, step by step.

He had the upper hand.

And he knew it.

Rhea twisted her body in a desperate attempt to escape. She raised the blade, swinging back. She couldn't let him corner her against the wall. There would be no escape from there.

With a strained cry, she pushed his blade down, sparks flying as the red plasma caught the stone ground. Then she quickly lifted her weapon, and the inquisitor staggered back as the tip made contact with his helmet.

His hand instinctively rose to the right side – and to his surprise, he felt skin under his gloved fingers.

A large chunk of dark plastoid lay on the ground between them. He almost laughed. She'd never managed such a good hit on him before.

“Finally making this interesting,” he taunted, his voice flickering between altered and natural through the now-glitching vocoder.

Rhea froze, lightsaber raised in a defensive stance. That voice sounded... too familiar.

The inquisitor barked a dark laugh, then dropped his hand away from the hole in his helmet.

And her entire world shattered. Broke apart in tiny shards of glass that rained down on her with the force of a thousand hurricanes.

The crack was on the right side, wide enough for her to see half of his face.

And it was a clone's face.

But not just any clone's.

High on the temple, there was a tattoo.

The number five.

“No,” she gasped, eyes wide and quickly filling with tears.

She could see his right eye now. The iris was molten yellow, and burning red around the edges, corrupted by the hatred of the dark side.

Twisted.

Wrong.

But it finally made sense.

The familiar pull in the back of her mind.

The quiet whispers of the Force that there was something she wasn’t seeing.

The humming in her chest when he was near.

It was him.

All this time, the man sent to kill her had been him.

Her husband.

“Fives,” she whispered.

The inquisitor blinked, the snarl on his face melting away for just one second.

“You died!” Rhea continued, her voice rising in a strained cry. “Y-You died– h-how? How can you be here, Fives?”

“What did you just call me?” he shot back, a dangerous feeling fluttering in his chest. Something almost... warm. Ambers he needed to stifle before they could catch fire.

“I felt your heart stop!” she shouted, the raw emotion twisting in her chest almost as painfully as when that had happened. “You-You died in my arms.”

“You got the wrong man, sweetheart,” he scoffed, raising the red lightsaber.

But he didn’t get to strike his blow. The ground rumbled, a low, dreadful threat that quickly reminded both of them where they were: deep underground, in the heart of the mountain.

And then the entire cave was shaking – so violent that Rhea nearly lost her footing.

A ground quake wasn’t uncommon on this planet.

But this one was particularly forceful.

Cracks were rapidly forming on the walls and floor of the cave, while small stalactites hanging from the ceiling above them were beginning to break off and plummet to the ground.

Rhea took a step forward as soon as the ground settled – but the inquisitor raised his blade to block her path.

“We need to get out of here!” she shouted, voice tight with fear and urgency. “This place’s gonna collapse.”

“You’re not going anywhere!” he countered. “You are dying in this cave.”

“Fives, please!” Rhea uttered, tears falling from her eyes.

“Stop calling me that!” he roared, charging at her.

But he didn’t reach her.

The cave shook again – and this time the ceiling tore open. The wall behind her crumbled too, carving a new entryway to a tunnel that, judging by the faint rays of sun piercing through the darkness, must’ve lead out to an escape from this stone prison.

Rhea jumped back just as a massive boulder fell between her and the man trying to take her life. The man who once was her entire life.

He wasn’t as fast as her.

A piece of the boulder hit him in the head, right on the already exposed part of his temple, causing him to fall to the ground, his leg twisting unnaturally under his weight. And then his side took the worst damage: a jagged part of a tall stalactite punched through the flexible cushion covering his lower abdomen, and the inquisitor hissed out a loud curse.

Rhea watched the entire scene almost as if it was happening in slow motion, unable to do anything to prevent it. She swore her heart stopped in her chest.

The inquisitor was lying motionless on the ground.

The inquisitor who was her husband but also the monster who, for the past months, has been persistently trying to kill her.

The man who shouldn’t be alive. Who shouldn’t be able to wield the Force, yet somehow was now fully under the control of the dark side.

Her feet moved before her brain could even process what they were doing, and she ran to his side, dropping to her knees.

The dust floating in the air stung her eyes and scratched her throat, making Rhea cough, panic steeply rising in her mind.

This wasn’t happening again.

She wasn’t going to watch him die again.

With trembling hands, Rhea gripped his damaged helmet, gently pulling it off to reveal the rest of his face.

And it really was him.

Not a trick of the faint light produced by the bioluminescent moss that thrived in the darkness of the cave. Nor a trick of her tired mind.

Him.

His hair was a little longer and shaved on the sides, but he still had the goatee on his chin. He looked older, rougher… his face seemed permanently twisted in anger. But the faint scar on his eyebrow still curved the same way, and the one on his jaw was still in the same place. And so was every line on his face that she’d caressed countless times.

It was him.

But it didn’t feel like him.

His presence in the Force was like thick, black tar. It suffocated her when she tried to reach for his mind. And the once warm and kind glimmer of his life signature was now cold and repulsive, festering like a disease.

“What did they do to you?” Rhea whispered, tears welling in her eyes once more.

The inquisitor groaned, his molten yellow eyes slowly opening to stare at her through his daze. He almost looked… fearful.

Rhea stood to her feet. Then, with some difficulty, she grabbed the underside of his arms and dragged him through the gap in the cave wall, heart breaking with every grunt and wail of pain that left his lips. She didn’t stop until the air cleared of floating dust, and the light of day broke through the barrier of darkness with its proud boldness.

Her trembling hands went to work in an instant, pulling out the sharp stone that was stabbing him.

“Fuck!” he shrieked.

Blood gushed from the wound in a dark, steady trickle, and Rhea slid her fingers through the cracked armor plating. His breath hitched in a pained gasp when she placed her hand directly on top of it, and his body tried to jerk away when a calming warmth seeped from her touch.

“What are you doing?” he asked, one of his hands weakly gripping her wrist.

“Saving your life,” she replied, eyebrows knit in concentration as she called on the Force.

“Why?”

The Force answered her call. A soft blue light bloomed from her palm, mending the torn blood vessels and ripped tissue, weaving the flesh back together and calming down the pain and swelling. She didn’t stop until she knew he was out of danger.

“Because you’re my husband,” she said, voice breaking. “And I’m not letting you die again.”

“You’re lying,” he growled, his yellow eyes burning into her as he pushed her hand away from his body. He tried to sit up, but his knee was still twisted unnaturally, and the second he moved, a sharp, debilitating pain shot throughout his body.

Rhea shook her head, tears spilling with the movement. “I’m not,” she choked. “I don’t know what they did to you, but we’ll fix it, I prom–”

“Who said I need fixing?” he snarled.

“Fives–”

“That’s not my name!” the inquisitor spat through gritted teeth.

Rhea flinched. And not just at his words.

His mind struck hers in a violent blow, wrapping around her entire body like a cold vice. Rhea shivered, gasping for air as an invisible hand closed around her throat, squeezing without mercy. She reached with her own mind – a desperate attempt to drive him away. But she was so tired, truly exhausted from both the duel and from healing his wound.

There was no trace of him anymore. No glimpse of the kind, funny man that had once loved her. His mind, once her true refuge, was now dark and full of hate. And behind everything there was rage – and a perverse need for power she couldn’t recognise.

Her lungs burned as no air could reach them, and in what she thought were going to be her last moments, Rhea’s mind drifted to a memory from long ago. A cave, not too different than this one. The dry, hot air of Geonosis. His gloved fingers cradling her cheek. And his chapped lips finding hers for the very first time. 

She drew in a loud breath as he suddenly released his deathly grip, gasping and heaving to fill her lungs again. Her eyes found his face, streaked with blood and grime, and twisted in a grimace of confusion. But there was something else hiding behind his wide eyes. Something almost akin to… dread.

“Your… your filthy Jedi tricks won’t work on me,” he sneered. But the words didn’t carry the same weight as before.

“You saw that, didn’t you?” she asked. “You saw the memory.”

His expression hardened, almost disgusted with himself for the brief moment of weakness. He’d nearly snapped her neck. He’d nearly fulfilled his mission. He'd been so close.

“That wasn’t real!” he rejected, nostrils flaring.

Rhea fought back a sob.

He was looking at her like she was a stranger.

No. Worse than that.

He was looking at her like she was the enemy. One he loathed with every fibre of his being.

And yet, he wasn’t attacking anymore. He was watching her. Cold. Calculating. Like she was an echo of a song he couldn’t recall. A puzzle he couldn’t solve. An itch at the back of his mind that was driving him insane. And, Maker, was it making him angry.

The comm in her pocket rang, the sharp sound bouncing around the cave walls.

“Rhea, come in,” a voice sounded, urgent and worried. Kix – she instantly knew. “Are you okay? Come in.”

She fished out the comm, eyes never leaving the injured inquisitor in front of her. He was still weakened, still under the effects of a probable concussion – but a threat nonetheless.

“Yeah,” she breathed, trying to keep her tone steady. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

“We need to leave!” he replied, the words crackling with the unstable signal. “Right now! Imperial reinforcements are inbound. Rendezvous at the Remora.”

“Copy.”

The call dropped, leaving a deafening silence in the cave. Rhea looked at the man lying on the ground. His sharp, sickly yellow eyes were still locked on her. Still glaring as if she was nothing but a pest he wanted to get rid of.

It tore her heart from her chest, but she saw no other way.

She couldn’t carry him alone, especially not if he fought her every step of the way. And he would do that – there was no point in even asking him to come with her. The wrath in his mind was so powerful, it felt like it was burning her just to be near him.

She had to leave him there.

She’d only just gotten him back – and she had to leave him.

With tears streaming down her face, Rhea leaned in. The inquisitor flinched, but there was nowhere for him to go. She pressed a gentle kiss to his forehead – the place she used to kiss him goodnight, good morning, and goodbye before he left for a mission.

He froze.

He wasn't used to being touched with gentle kindness. Not anymore.

“Come back to me,” she implored, voice barely a whisper.

Then she stood, wiped her face and turned to walk away.

He couldn’t follow. Not with the broken leg and the throbbing pain in his head.

So all he did was watch as her silhouette vanished into the light, leaving behind an absence impossible to ignore.

His hands fisted in the dirt and his jaw clenched tightly. Another failed mission. Another disappointment to his Master.

But underneath the fury and frustration that festered in his chest, something small stirred. Something buried that was slowly coming back to life.

And it kept whispering her name.