He lifts his other hand. Hesitates a moment. Then brushes back her hair and traces the side of her face.

"I'm so sorry," he said quietly. "I keep doing this to you. …I don't even know if I'm out of it now or if this is just… remission."

…Of course… it could be said… any period of peace was always only going to be a remission.

…no, not "only". There was nothing "only" about that. It was still a miracle.

He didn't know how to tell her. He could barely formulate it for himself. I'm never alone. I'm always watched. I'm always judged. Anything I do that's not working as hard as I can to justify what I did to them feels like just too great an insult to bear…

Maybe she knows.

…He'd been free of it for a while. Did that mean it was possible to free himself again… or did something as dire have to happen externally as had happened to them on Scarif…

grim, sardonic: never thought of the Death Star as the cosmos's worst STERC machine


…which was an option that hadn't occurred to him to look at in this world. …He didn't think he wanted to. Try this—Neojedha—first.