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“This might sting a little,” Ahsoka said, already distracted as she took Bo-Katan’s burned forearm into her hands.
Bo-Katan just watched, silent, as Ahsoka scooped some herb-smelling balm from a jar and smeared it over her damaged skin. ‘Sting’ was an understatement, and she clenched her jaw against the immediate sear of pain when Ahsoka tried to gently rub it in.
“Sorry,” Ahsoka whispered, her eyes flicking up to Bo-Katan’s face and easily reading everything there Bo-Katan was barely attempting to hide. She grimaced. “Here, let me just -”
As quickly as it had flared, the pain subsided to a tingling chill. Though she didn’t say so, Bo-Katan had a growing suspicion Ahsoka had added a bit of Force magic to her touch. Usually she would complain about this, having the Force used on her, but the relief this time was too great to turn down.
She sighed and closed her eyes, leaning her head back to thump against the bulkhead behind their bench.
“Did you see him?” Ahsoka asked quietly. “The person who did this?”
“No, not really,” Bo-Katan replied sourly, not bothering to open her eyes.
She and Ahsoka had just finished a supply run on a snowy planet full of second-hand merchandise, and they were loading Ahsoka’s shuttle in the port when an alien had come from nowhere to attack Bo-Katan with a flamethrower. Ahsoka hadn’t been nearby, already onboard while Bo-Katan settled the port fare on her own.
Thankfully, her beskar and plasma shield had protected her from the worst of the attack while she retreated to the ship - even if her arm had still been badly burned in the process.
She’d chosen escape over killing him, in the end.
“I think he was just after the bounty the Empire put on my head,” Bo-Katan added after a moment. “As despicable as bounty hunters are, it wasn’t worth taking his life when all he could do was throw some pathetic fire at me. He would hardly have been a match had I fought back.”
“I just wish you had said something about this wound earlier. I could have treated you before the pain got so bad.” Ahsoka tsk -ed irritably, focused fully on the burn.
“I’ve had worse,” Bo-Katan grumbled, finally opening her eyes again.
Ahsoka looked at her, curious and obviously expecting some kind of story, and Bo-Katan huffed obligingly, in a surprisingly giving mood now that the danger was passed. To an extent, anyway; enough to share some of her past, with Ahsoka staring at her like that, even if she didn’t exactly want to.
“Pre Vizsla,” she said shortly. “His favorite pastime on Concordia was burning down villages. I have a nasty scar on my leg from some of his fun.”
“Oh.”
Something in Bo-Katan’s stomach curdled as she spoke, both at the memories and at Ahsoka's displeased reaction. She frowned, suddenly not feeling very well. She wondered if the rocky moon they’d landed on was safe enough to get some air and just - walk.
She already regretted bringing it up.
“You never really talk about your time in Death Watch,” Ahsoka said quietly, not meeting Bo-Katan’s gaze as she focused again on the wound before her.
“What is there to talk about?” she snapped, almost pulling her arm out of Ahsoka’s healing grasp. “I was a bad person who did bad things. I’ve spent the rest of my life making up for it.”
Ahsoka glanced up at that, her eyes narrowed fiercely. “You are not a bad person, Bo. You never were.”
Bo-Katan snorted and, this time, she did pull her arm away. The pain immediately flooded back the moment Ahsoka’s fingers lost contact with her skin, but she refused to acknowledge this.
“I was. I still can be.” She stood, and Ahsoka just stared at her, startled and surprised but not doing anything to pull her back down. “I’m poison, Ahsoka. I always have been, from the moment I stepped foot on that blasted moon. Surely you know that by now.”
“Who - ”
“No one had to tell me that!” Bo-Katan cried angrily, unable to help the fury building like venom in her chest. She crossed her arms and sucked in a sharp breath as the burning pain radiated through her. “You want to know about my time in Death Watch? Fine. I’ll tell you a story, Ahsoka, since you so badly want to know.”
Ahsoka continued to stare, hesitation and concern written across her too-compassionate face. Bo-Katan wanted to shake her, wanted to scream and yell until Ahsoka saw what a monster she truly was.
Because Bo-Katan felt like a monster, as the memories spilled over, as her childhood and adolescence returned, unchecked, to the raging forefront of her mind.
She slammed the side of her fist into the bulkhead, her burnt flesh searing with pain as the contact vibrated through her arm.
She ignored it, turning her vitriol to Ahsoka instead.
“I was young when I joined Death Watch. A teenager. Satine banished me when she returned from her little jaunt through the galaxy with the Jedi and I had nowhere else to go, so Pre took me under his care. We were acquainted from our time on Mandalore during Satine’s absence, I went with him without question.”
Ahsoka was silent, rapt with wide-eyed attention as Bo-Katan spoke. And now the words were pouring forth like a spilled dam, unable to stop.
Bo-Katan hated each one that left her mouth.
“I had a single friend. Jarren. He was a new recruit, we were the same age and hit it off right away. Pre warned me not to spend so much time with him. Even now, still, I don’t understand why Pre was so against our friendship, but his dislike turned into some foul kind of hatred.”
Bo-Katan paused, swallowing harshly and blinking against the images her brain threw before her. She had never spoken of Jarren before, not since - not since this had happened, and even now she questioned her sanity, questioned her reasons for dredging any of this up.
It was so stupid, it all was.
She wanted to stop, to abandon her memory right there and walk away.
But Ahsoka was still staring at her with such a sad, pitying gaze, and Bo-Katan felt compelled, somehow, to continue, to show Ahsoka how wretched she really was. She turned her face down to study the metal grate under her bare feet, fiercely ashamed of herself.
“One day Jarren just - vanished, without a word. We were together the night before, and come morning...he was gone. Pre told me he got cold feet, that Jarren was a coward who ran back to his family and abandoned us, abandoned me. He told me that I wasn’t worthy of friendship, because no one would ever want to be close to me, sister to the ‘traitor-duchess of Mandalore’. I believed every word.”
“Bo -”
“You know,” Bo-Katan said, plowing over whatever Ahsoka was going to say, “Concordia doesn’t really get warm, not like Alderaan. It does have a mild season, though, when the deep frost over the earth cracks enough to melt for new things to grow. That’s when I found him, thirteen months later.”
“Found him?” Ahsoka repeated, a horrified expression overtaking her concern. She finally stood, as well, making to reach for her, but Bo-Katan stepped deftly away. “Bo, what do you mean?”
“His body,” Bo-Katan spat harshly. “Pre’s men barely even tried to hide him, and he was just - right there, in the valley behind our camp. The snow and cold had preserved him and even through the decomposition, I knew. It was him.”
Ahsoka stared at her, aghast. “How - how old were you?”
“Seventeen. I remember it clear as day. I actually remember his face dead and rotten better than I remember it alive. How sick is that?”
“It’s not - ”
Ahsoka shook her head, trying to approach Bo-Katan in the small confines of the cockpit and apparently thinking better of it before she did. “Did you, um, did you ever confront Pre about what happened to Jarren?”
Bo-Katan scoffed and turned her entire body away, staring out the viewscreen to the dark and rocky landscape of the desolate moon Ahsoka had found when she’d discovered Bo-Katan’s burned arm. She frowned angrily, the fury building like a sickness when she caught sight of her own reflection.
“Of course I didn’t.”
Several seconds of silence stretched between them. The pilot’s chair creaked as Ahsoka very slowly sat down.
“No one befriended me, after that. They were too afraid of me.”
“They were afraid of Pre,” Ahsoka corrected softly behind her, words careful.
Bo-Katan shot Ahsoka a quick, vicious glance over her shoulder. “They were afraid of me,” she said again forcefully. “Anyone who showed interest in me, anyone who tried to be friendly - they met the same fate as Jarren. That was because of me, because of who I am.”
“Gods, Bo, you were a child! Surely you don’t still believe -”
“Does it even matter?” Bo-Katan countered before Ahsoka could finish speaking. Her throat burned worse than the wound on her arm and she refused to turn around, to see the way Ahsoka must be staring at her.
Ahsoka stood again in a rush of movement, and Bo-Katan saw her reflection behind her own in the viewscreen. She tensed, waiting for a touch that hadn’t even come yet, and Ahsoka thankfully noticed the way her shoulders bunched, the way her jaw clenched, and left space between them.
“It matters,” she whispered.
Bo-Katan met Ahsoka’s frightened gaze in the reinforced glass and quickly looked away, hating herself more than she had in a long time. It was difficult to see herself standing beside someone as perfect, as pure, as Ahsoka, when she had brought so much destruction to the lives of so many.
“Bo,” Ahsoka hedged after a long moment, her voice very quiet and very gentle, “did he ever hurt you?”
Rather than respond, Bo-Katan shoved away from the viewscreen, her shoulder hitting Ahsoka’s as she passed, and she grabbed up her rucksack from the little bench where they’d been sitting by the entry ramp. The bag was old, nearly falling apart, and she did it no favors as she ripped the straps open and dug around in the hidden pocket inside. At the bottom was a small platinum medallion and she pulled it out, smacking it down into Ahsoka’s hand before Ahsoka could really follow what was happening.
“I took this off Jarren’s body when I found him,” Bo-Katan said cruelly. “It’s his family crest. He was holding it in his hand when he died. Did Pre hurt me? I don’t know, Ahsoka, you tell me.”
Ahsoka stared at her, expression hurt and her eyes watering with tears she quickly blinked away. Bo-Katan felt a sick guilt churning thickly in her stomach for everything she had just done, and she exhaled slowly, trying to rein herself back in.
It wasn’t working very well.
At a loss, she snatched the medallion back, giving it a quick glance before putting it carefully back in her bag.
Silence hung heavy between them, and Ahsoka stared at her with an open, genuine expression. Bo-Katan wasn’t sure what to do, what to say, or even if Ahsoka expected an apology for her outburst - for everything she had shared in the first place.
And there was still so much more, all the things Pre had said to her directly. The ways he had gotten into her head, the vicious and violent thoughts he left there. And then the physical things, too, the things that had hurt worse when she resisted.
His face, when he’d done them. To her, with her. The way he’d looked at her, when he’d touched her with such rage, when he’d encourage her to -
No.
She refused to give voice to those memories, not even to Ahsoka.
Not now, not yet.
Maybe not ever.
Her arm stung, and her chest felt tight with all the things she wished to forget. It was getting a bit difficult to breathe in the confines of the cockpit, but there was nowhere else in the tiny shuttle to go. Nowhere to escape.
Her heart began to pound in her chest, fluttering like the wings of an insect against her ribs. It hurt, everything hurt, and there was nowhere to go.
“Are you okay?” Ahsoka asked, words soft but still cutting sharply through Bo-Katan’s thoughts.
“Just fucking great, sure.”
The anger cracked over her tongue, falling flatly, and she frowned against the horrifying wave of panic that welled in her chest.
Something felt off, felt wrong. The air in this cabin was stale, suddenly, and she swallowed as if her lungs had forgotten how to breathe properly. She needed some space, she needed to get out of this tiny damnable cockpit on this too-small shuttle.
It was too -
Too small, there wasn’t enough space and she needed - needed air -
Ahsoka watched her cautiously, still several steps away but obviously ready to reach out at a moment’s notice. “You know none of what happened - to Jarren and to you, to Satine - it wasn’t your fault. You know that now, don’t you?”
Bo-Katan stepped back and back until her hip hit the bulkhead by the large panel to open the ramp. She just shook her head, not really hearing. Her chest hurt, felt too constricted to take a full breath, and she slammed her open palm on the button to lower the ramp to her freedom.
“I need some air.”
The climate was not exactly hospitable, and it was very cold as Bo-Katan stumbled outside barefoot and in her shirtsleeves. But it was open, and there were no durasteel walls closing in around her as the rocks beneath her feet dug furrows into her rough skin.
Ahsoka called out to her, though Bo-Katan ignored her pleas to return to the shuttle.
She ignored everything except for the bitter cold wind against her face, the acrid smell of the low atmosphere as it stuck inside her nose.
Her mind wouldn’t stop tumbling around inside her head.
She missed Jarren, she did. Why the bloody hell had she brought him up? Why had she told Ahsoka that blasted story? It made no difference, it wouldn’t bring him back, and it certainly wouldn’t change the things she had done.
And Satine -
It was no easier to breathe out here, and she pressed a desperate hand to her sternum where it fisted angrily in the thin fabric of her shirt. She was sweating, somehow, through the chill, and her top was drenched through with it.
She pounded her fist against her chest, then again, and again, as if she could steady herself, make her damnable heart beat normally. Again, again, again, again.
She felt sick, a wave of nausea hitting hard.
Fuck. Fuck.
She thought about Satine every day, every fucking day, yet she felt her sister’s loss far too keenly in that moment.
Because that - that was her fault too, and the biggest regret of her life. The one she would never be able to atone for, no matter how long she lived, no matter what she did for Mandalore in the future. Her sister’s blood dripped from her fingers with every waking breath she took.
A soft touch against her shoulder made her flinch violently, and it was only because of the exhaustion holding her in place that she was not able to continue running when Ahsoka wrapped a heavy cloak around her.
“It’s too cold out here, Bo,” she murmured gently, “and you’re not dressed for it. Come back inside. Please.”
Bo-Katan just shook her head mutely, words refusing to form in her mouth. Ahsoka sighed, only a step behind at her side on the rocky earth, but she didn’t argue.
“Very well,” she agreed.
She didn’t sound happy about it, but she didn’t put any pressure on Bo-Katan to move, either. That, at least, was a small blessing.
“Bo,” Ahsoka said again, and this time her voice was quiet, a little timid - almost like she was pacing around a wild animal. “I think,” she began slowly, “you’re having some kind of post-trauma response, like a - a panic attack, maybe.”
Bo-Katan barely heard her, really, but she still spat, “no,” as fiercely as she was able to even as the words coward, you’re a worthless coward, you have always been a fucking coward with this weakness inside you danced through her head - in her voice, in Pre’s, in Satine’s.
The truth of who she was, right there. A coward who buckled under the weight of her own memories.
Her throat hitched with dry sickness as she tried to suck in a breath, instead making her choke on the air, on the words. Nothing helped. Nothing would ever change her.
“You are not a coward, Bo,” Ahsoka said, still there beside her. Bo-Katan had almost forgotten about her, and she blinked, swallowing around her useless throat as Ahsoka’s feather-light fingers wrapped around her wrist, grabbing her attention.
“You are not a coward,” she said again earnestly, coming around to stare into Bo-Katan’s face even if Bo-Katan would not look at her in return. “Don’t listen to him. He’s still lying to you. Think of Jarren, Bo - think of Satine. Think of all the people who love you.”
“I’m not worthy of Satine’s love. Not of anyone’s.”
She hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud until suddenly Ahsoka was right in front of her, those delicate hands - those strong hands - on her face, forcing her gaze up from the ground until their eyes met.
“You are. You are, Bo, you are.”
Ahsoka kept saying her name, over and over, and it was that more than her words that kept her eyes locked on those sparkling blue ones, kept her world from spiraling away from beneath her feet.
Ahsoka seemed to know this the same way she plucked full thoughts from Bo-Katan’s foggy head, and her dark lips turned up in a gentle, calming smile.
“I didn’t even see your face the first time we met,” Ahsoka whispered softly, soothingly.
Bo-Katan clenched her jaw, her teeth biting together until they almost hurt, and finally tore her eyes away. Her heart wanted to tear itself apart already, and remembering that particular day did not help.
She sneered, unable to help herself, and hatred burned in her ill stomach. “Are you going to spout some Jedi nonsense about seeing my soul through my eyes?” she asked far more harshly than she meant to.
But Ahsoka’s hands were still so gentle on her face, and she just rubbed her thumbs over Bo-Katan’s cheeks, that kind smile still tugging her lips.
It made Bo-Katan want to cry, that touch and that smile. The ludicrous urge only brought on another burning surge of self-loathing and she would have pulled away if Ahsoka didn’t have her so firmly in her thrall.
“No,” Ahsoka finally said in response to Bo-Katan’s flippant question, “but I would have been able to see beyond your hatred. I would have been able to understand your pain, and the depth of your capacity to love. I would have seen you.”
Bo-Katan finally took a step back, away from Ahsoka’s warm hands and warmer gaze. “I still would have tried to kill you.”
“I know, Bo, I know. You weren’t ready to save yourself then, not yet.”
“You were afraid of me, the second time we met,” Bo-Katan pointed out coldly. “You told your friends to stay back when I walked into that hangar.”
“Yes, I did,” Ahsoka agreed, “I won’t argue that. But you took off your helmet and I knew who you were then, who you really were, and I was never afraid of you again. You’re not a poison, Bo. You’re not. Whatever lies Pre fed you as a child, they weren’t true, they never were. What happened to Jarren is not your fault. What happened to Satine is not your fault. Do you hear me, Bo? None of it is your fault. It is the fault of a man who had too much power, and used that power to hurt as many people as he could - including you.”
“How can you say that with such faith? After everything I’ve done?”
“Because it’s the truth.”
Bo-Katan looked away and noticed for the first time that the cloak about her shoulders was not her own old thing, but rather Ahsoka’s, a luxurious piece of velvet clothing lined with fur and very warm in this cold, cold place. It had been a gift from Bail; Ahsoka had only worn it herself a few times when the climate called for such a garment.
She ran a finger over the dark fur, her eyebrows furrowed in a bewildered type of fluster at such kindness, and something in her chest finally cracked wide open.
Ahsoka was there in a heartbeat, catching her as Bo-Katan’s legs gave way and lowering them both to the rocky ground.
“Easy,” Ahsoka murmured, but Bo-Katan could barely hear her.
There was a terrible ringing in her ears now, and her lungs - again, her lungs couldn’t get any air. She took great, rasping breaths, trying to fill them, and to no avail. Tears streamed over her cheeks, searing tracks down her frigid skin, as her insides burned and burned for want of air, for lack of breath, for a heart that could not keep pace.
She grasped her hands in the front of Ahsoka’s tunic, and Ahsoka in turn held tightly to her upper arms, not letting her fall even as her world spun dizzily away into a bizarre expanse of nothingness, of fear and anger and hatred and loss and terror - and so much numbness she couldn’t feel herself at all through the weight of it.
“It’s okay, Bo, you’re all right,” Ahsoka said softly, and all Bo-Katan could do was stare at her wildly, feeling as if she were losing her fucking mind.
“You’re safe, you’re safe, just breathe, you’re okay.”
How was she safe, how could she be okay, when her body was dying, was breaking apart around her, right here on this horrid little moon?
Everything was narrow in her vision, darkening around her, and she still couldn’t fucking breathe.
Ahsoka must have caught this, somehow, read her thoughts or something, and suddenly Bo-Katan was pulled fully into her arms and Ahsoka was whispering into her ear, her face pressed close against Bo-Katan’s dirty hair.
Air rushed into her lungs again, filling them with the moon’s cold, acrid atmosphere. She gasped, sucking in another breath, and another, and another.
“Slowly, Bo, slowly,” Ahsoka warned, her voice so calm and so near, and somehow still not enough. “At least try to yourself, okay?”
But she couldn’t, she couldn’t pace herself, and each gasp made her shake, brought her anger back, and her memories, and Satine, and what began as a wail turned into a furious scream.
Ahsoka held her tighter, a hand cradling the back of her head, as Bo-Katan screamed a second time, the agonized sound ripping through her aching throat and landing against Ahsoka’s chest. It was muffled there, but only just, and the remnants of it rang around them to echo off jagged cliffs.
“Oh, Bo,” Ahsoka whispered, pulling her closer.
She adjusted the fur-lined cloak, tugging it higher, more firm about Bo-Katan’s trembling shoulders, and tucked her head down against Bo-Katan’s neck. It was grounding, suddenly, to feel the steady puff of Ahsoka’s breath against her hot skin, and Bo-Katan squeezed her eyes closed, finally allowed herself to simply be held in the silence of it all.
Her heart’s frenetic pulse slowly, slowly began to return to its normal thump in her chest as she did her best to match her breathing to Ahsoka’s.
There was something wrong with her, there had to be.
To lose her mind like that?
Fuck.
She had come close to the precipice more than a few times over the years since Satine’s death, since she had lost Mandalore, but that was the first time she had not been able to pull herself back from that edge.
Maybe she was unstable. Had a screw loose. Whatever the saying was.
Crazy.
Ahsoka’s arms around her tensed. “Stop thinking those things, Bo. You’re not crazy, okay? You’re not losing your mind. You had a panic attack,” she added quietly, her words soft near Bo-Katan’s ear and this time not hurting so much as she heard them. “That’s all. You’re not crazy.”
Bo-Katan just scoffed, though she didn’t pull back, didn’t pull away from Ahsoka’s warm, steadying embrace. It was as if, in that moment, those arms were the only thing keeping her whole.
“You’ve survived so much,” Ahsoka told her softly, hand still cradling the back of Bo-Katan’s head. “More than people know.”
“It’s not always enough to just survive, Ahsoka,” Bo-Katan mumbled, her voice cracking.
“No, I guess not. But maybe we can figure it out together, now.”
“Maybe. Yeah.”
That was all the response Bo-Katan could muster, and it seemed to be all Ahsoka wanted to hear. They lapsed into blessed, easy silence.
Neither made any attempt to move.
A bitter cold wind howled across the inhospitably rocky ground, and Bo-Katan basked in it, relieved as her senses righted themselves again, as the chilly air filled her lungs this time without resistance, as her world came right once more.
Ahsoka ran her hand gently over the back of Bo-Katan’s head and asked, “Will you let me finish healing your burn now?”
The laugh that burst from Bo-Katan’s mouth was unexpected, loud, inelegant - all the things Bo-Katan was not supposed to be. But it was a comfort after the tumultuous journey of the last hour, and Bo-Katan grinned despite herself.
“If you insist, Lady Jedi. By all means, yes, heal me.”