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Yavin IV was hot and humid. Ferrix, the planet she'd grown up on, had been hot, but at least it was a dry heat. Yavin was like walking through hot soup.
Not that she was complaining, of course. She wasn't here for her health, she was here for the Rebellion.
Cassian might come and go as he pleased, but there was plenty of work needed doing on base to keep the entire operation running. Bix spent her time up to her elbows in engine grease, fixing ships and whatever else needed repairs, and that was her main contribution to this burgeoning enterprise. The sergeant who made the duty roster mostly knew what he was doing, so that helped.
She knew she was lucky to have the relative privacy of the yurt, instead of sleeping in the barracks like most others did. And she only had that through Cassian, who, by pure luck and by virtue of being one of the few people familiar with this planet before it had been fully turned into a Rebellion base, had scored these cush accommodations.
Bix didn't know if he realized, but she'd recently come to notice that this yurt was set up just like their little place on Mina Rau. Maybe her subconscious had been hard at work when she'd scavenged a few things to set the place up. Even though he had obviously never been here, sometimes she half expected Brasso to come stumbling out of the other bedroom, exactly as far away from hers as it had been on that other planet.
And don't even get her started on the pleasant breezes and refreshing rains they'd had. Someday she'd love to go back, perhaps when the Empire fell and she wasn't wanted by local law enforcement.
But for now, Yavin IV would have to do. She'd never been able to call it home. Bix didn't know if she'd ever really feel like she had a home ever again. Ever since her arrest and escape on Ferrix, everywhere else she'd been had simply been a base of operations.
She couldn't even use the word for this cabin she shared with the man she'd been referring to her as her husband for at least two years – for ease of conversation, since it wasn't anyone else's business what their exact relationship was.
Speaking of which, Cassian himself was a whole other problem.
Now, let's try that again.
Bix blinked to shake off the memory.
After he'd rescued her at his mother's funeral, and they'd all reunited before settling down on Mina, it had been easy to fall back into old patterns. He was already familiar, and one of only three people from her home planet for her to lean on. Of course they'd gotten back together. And when he was away all the time and she'd been fixing farming equipment, that had been fine. They lived mostly separate lives, but still had each other to fall back on. It had taken Bix most of that first year to start to heal from what had happened, but she’d had the time, space, and safety to do it in.
But then Brasso had died, and she'd nearly been raped by some asshole who technically wasn't a bucket head, but may as well have been.
Just when she'd been starting to feel like her old self again – she'd made a joke just that weekend! – everything she'd come to rely on had been stripped away and she'd had to flee again.
No wonder she couldn't stay in one place anymore.
And Brasso. She missed him so much. On Ferrix, he'd sometimes been more of a friend of a friend, him working the yard while she had her own business (with a little something on the side).
But on Mina Rau he really had been a pillar of strength, and the best friend a recovering torture victim could ask for.
Plus, Wil loved to tell the story of him hitting a corpo with Maarva's funeral brick, and Bix never got enough of it.
Brasso would never have a funeral brick.
bzzzzt
Would she?
bzzzzt
She rubbed a knuckle between her eyebrows to try to dispel the tension headache that was quickly building as the sounds tried to overwhelm her.
When they'd finally landed on Coruscant, after splitting up with Wilmon, all at Luthen's request (orders), Bix and Cassian had once again been the only two people they knew on an unfamiliar, hostile planet.
It had been almost exactly the same as the one he'd first arrived on Ferrix. He’d been half wild, barely speaking the language, and she'd been new to the area as well, just weeks after her mother had died and her father had packed them up to move to another continent.
They'd both been strangers in a strange land, and had clung to each other accordingly.
Looking back at their time on Coruscant had been more of the same. They stayed together because it was easy, and for operational security.
They were a half decent team, most of the time, when Luthen deigned to send them out together, or back when they'd been moving stolen goods.
But they were actually pretty terrible in a relationship. They couldn't even go to the grocery store without picking each other apart, to say nothing of the condescension, the unilateral decision making, and her own (thankfully resolved now) dependence on drugs just to stay semi-functional.
Force help her, that had been a hard year. She’d thought that killing Gorst would be cathartic, and in some ways it had been. She slept so much better knowing he could never do that to anyone else ever again, no chemical assistance needed. And she'd never regret pulling the trigger herself. This was a war, and he’d needed to go.
But she did occasionally wonder... She'd put the headset on him first, for no practical reason, just because she'd wanted to. Had he turned her into a torturer just like him?
screeeeeee
No.
She'd been well within her rights to make his last moments alive as unpleasant as possible after what he'd done to her. She'd probably carry it the rest of her life.
She was just different now, and that was just how it was going to be.
Cassian couldn't seem to see that. He seemed to think they were in a pretty functional, private relationship, playing house out here, rather than clinging to the familiar and being two rebels who just happened to be sleeping together.
More and more, she was feeling like she had one foot out the door of even the last vestiges of their relationship, but what concerned her most was that Cassian seemed to have one foot here on Yavin with the larger Rebellion, and one still firmly planted on Coruscant with Luthen specifically.
This was not a fight that was going to succeed on pure personal loyalty, the cause was what mattered. Why everyone continued to act like Luthen and Yavin were two loosely associated business rather than two allies in the literally named Rebel Alliance was a Force-damned mystery to her.
And she'd known he'd been downplaying his injuries. That one-sided decision making again.
When that Force healer had called him a messenger, she hadn't known what to make of it. (So she’d been having a rough couple of years and was getting a little spiritual with it, so sue her. It was better than the drugs.) But she had known she was getting sick of how things were between them.
She was starting to miss the days when they'd worked together as exes. They'd snapped and fought, but at least they'd actually mostly liked each other back then.
If she didn't get out of this yurt really, really soon, they wouldn't even have that anymore. Her brief conversation with Vel just cinched it – it was time to go.
There were lots of different places to rebel. All of them needed mechanics to keep them running. And some of them needed a push to get started, and also happened to be temperate most of the year.
If every place in the galaxy was going to suck beyond the telling of it, she may as well be among friends.
Whelp, there it was. She would put in for a transfer in the morning and send a ping to Cassian's device so he'd see it too. She had never mastered the art of the breakup message, no reason to start now.
Mina Rau, here she comes.