Fixing Our Broken Pieces || The Bad Batch

Chapter 16: Please Let Me Go

"This can't be you, it isn't," she denied. Soundlessly, he took her hands and intertwined them with his own. The way he looked at her, straight at her shot her with guilt.

"Orla, you have to let go." He spoke with maturity. Orange and yellow lights gradually lit up from the portal and she took a glance behind him to witness the image of fire burning around the portal. The heat lingered on her face and she couldn't tear away from the blinding colours.

"We'll see each other again. I believe that."

"What is this?" She took one look at his burn marks and one look at the fire and dread settled. In front of her was the death of her little brother.

"Why, why are you letting me see this?" she choked up.

"So you can let me go, so you can move on." He rested a hand on her shoulder, at peace, to get her at peace as well.

"To watch you die?"

"No, to know that if things didn't go the way they did then I wouldn't be where I am. I wouldn't have survived the Empire and I wouldn't have found my family. It's to thank you, it's to help me move on and to help you move on. Stop letting this guilt eat you alive."

Your fire will burn out she thought of what Hunter said. If she knew Caleb survived in the long run without her then she didn't need to worry about him anymore. But why did she have to move on, why now, what happens in the future where she can't grieve for her brother?

"I'm never gonna see you again, am I?" she said with a sad smile, starting to come to terms with the truth.

"Maybe, maybe not. What was that you told me, the day you left?"

She remembered that day as if it was yesterday, recalling everything she could have said and didn't.

"So I suppose I'm asking you the same thing then. What does your heart tell you?"

She blinked a tear away. She knew the truth, after she had left him on Coruscant they must have not reunited until this moment. The force brought her here to accept he was gone. To accept his death before it had even happened. To accept that he lives a long life without her, but he's ok.

"It tells me no, we won't."

"Then this is goodbye."

"I guess it is." She hugged Caleb one last time, taking in every last second before he departed back to his portal where he would die. He took one last look and smiled goodbye but she couldn't bring herself to smile back.

They separated for the second and possibly the last time.

The portal closed and disappeared and Orla was left in the darkness of space, all alone. Until she could feel a cold chill on the back of her neck and the sound of a lightsaber igniting. She turned her head and a triangular portal, which wasn't there before, that was perched only a few feet away. The luminous red glow grew her eyes up towards the familiar face of Dooku. She realised it was the same man who had come before her on Bracca a day before.

"Fight me." Dooku's voice boomed out as if he were speaking through a loudspeaker. With all her grief and despair in one quick movement, she pulled out her lightsaber with a flick of her wrists. Her hunger to fight only grew smaller after every second of looking into the Siths bulging yellow eyes. Until her strength was gone in a blink of an eye and her blade collapsed back into her hilt. Dooku pulled a face of scepticism as she returned her lightsaber and backed away.

"No." She firmly declared, her voice wasn't as loud but she still spoke with confidence and her head held high. Dooku scoffed,

"Haven't you always wanted to know which apprentice of Yoda was stronger? Which of the runaways is more powerful in a duel? Haven't you always wanted to fight, well this is your chance. Fight me, and you'll know if Yoda was right to pick you."