The medics worked in a blur around him—gloved hands, bacta sprays, compresses, and cauterizers moving with clinical precision. The tent buzzed with the hum of equipment, the faint hiss of the respirator keeping his breathing steady. Cassian sat propped against the angled cot, his uniform cut away to expose the mottled bruises that bloomed dark along his ribs. A bacta line ran from his arm to a small injector, the fluid glowing faintly blue under the sterile light.
Every breath was a fight. The pain carved through his chest with each inhalation, sharp and raw, but he refused the sedative twice. When one medic reached for it again, Cassian lifted a blood-stained hand and shook his head.
"No," he rasped, voice low but certain.
"Keep me awake. I was awake for the last one, I need to be now."
He needed to be
present. Needed to feel every pulse of pain, every sting of disinfectant, every reminder that he was still alive. Pain meant movement. Pain meant purpose.
The lead medic a grizzled man from his own regiment paused, meeting Cassian's gaze for a moment before nodding.
"Then at least let us tend to this wound, General. Please stay still." he muttered, the medic tending to the gash along his ribs with a slow, careful press. Cassian's jaw tightened, but his eyes never left the tent flap.
Outside, the noise of the camp rolled faintly through the canvas walls. Barked orders, the clatter of equipment, the murmur of soldiers who didn't yet know what to make of what had happened. He could almost picture their faces the disbelief, the whispers, the looks that would follow him when he emerged again.
And yet the image of the arena lingered....blood on the dust, soldiers frozen in shock, two men who should have been fighting side by side, were still at each others throats. He had seen it before. On beaches. In trenches. On a worlds where politics and pride had bled into the same soil.
One of the medics paused to check his pulse.
"You're lucky to be alive, sir." he muttered, trying for levity.
"Another inch and...."
Cassian's head lifted slowly, his expression still and unreadable. His jaw tightened against the pain, his eyes, those steady, green eyes, burned with a focus that made the young man fall silent.
"Luck." Cassian said softly,
"Has never had much to do with it."
He refused to flinch.
The medics spoke softly among themselves, worried about blood loss, about concussion, about the lung they feared had partially collapsed. But Cassian's mind was elsewhere on the image of Aurelian sprawled on the ground, bloodied and unrepentant, still clinging to the illusion of control even as it slipped from his fingers.
"Sir, you should rest." one of the younger medics urged, moving to adjust the light. Cassian's hand caught her wrist before she could. It wasn't harsh, but it was steady.
"No." he said again, his eyes hard, focused, unyielding.
"There's no rest. Not yet."
He looked past her to the datapad sitting on the supply table, the glowing readout of tactical reports from the Kenari site.
"Get me the situation update. We are going back into this mines." he ordered.
The medic hesitated, exchanging a look with her superior.
"General, with all due respect, you need to—"
Cassian's voice cut through the hum of the machines like steel drawn from a scabbard.
"Now."
The word landed with enough weight to silence them all. A beat passed before the datapad was brought to him. He took it with a grimace, blood still drying along the edges of his fingers, and began to scroll through the report. Every line of text blurred slightly before refocusing, but he read it all, one slow breath at a time.
His reflection shimmered faintly against the datapad's surface, pale, streaked with blood and sweat, his eyes hollow yet alight with something fierce. Determination. Willpower. Defiance.
Outside, thunder rolled faintly across the horizon. A storm was forming again over Kenari, the same as it had the night the mines had burned. Cassian glanced toward the flap of the tent, his jaw tightening, the muscle in his cheek ticking once.
"You'll have to hold still, sir." the medic said quietly, fitting the bacta patch across his side.
"If you move too much, it'll tear the tissue again."
He turned his head slightly, wincing, watching the tent's thin walls ripple in the wind. Beyond them, he could still hear the soldiers moving, the low hum of engines, the faint, far-off voice of Sibylla shouting until he couldn't hear her anymore.
He closed his eyes briefly, exhaling through the pain, letting it steady him.
When he opened them again, his gaze was clear, sharp, focused, burning with a resolve that even blood loss couldn't dull.
"Prepare transport." he said quietly.
"As soon as I can stand, we're moving again."
The lead medic looked up, disbelief flickering across his face.
"Sir, you can barely breathe."
Cassian leaned forward, forcing air into his battered lungs.
"Then I'll breathe harder." His voice was quiet, but it carried the weight of command.
For a moment, the tent seemed to still. Even the machines seemed to hesitate, as if the world itself was listening. Cassian sat back, the corner of his mouth twitching upward into that same defiant half-smile, the one that refused surrender even as blood soaked through the bandages at his side. His eyes, dark and resolute, fixed on the storm outside.
He had nearly died on the beach once, and again tonight, but he was still here. Still breathing, fighting to live.
Because he had never learned how to stop.
Sibylla Abrantes
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Cassian Abrantes
