I can't stop thinking about how utterly alone Bix is. Even surrounded by the tight-knit community of Ferrix, she is so isolated and lonely in terms of actual human connection.
As far as we can tell, she has no family. She's not older than her late 20s, but her parents are implied to be dead, seeing as she inherited their salyard. She's been running the place on her own for years, hired Timm a little while ago, started dating him probably since she's so busy she doesn't even have the time to meet anyone else. She avoids him as much as possible, she doesn't tell him anything about her life, and she only comes and finds him when she's been drinking and she can't sleep, uses him more as a distraction than a companion.
Her relationship with Cassian, once so close in their youth, has become strained and distant and he only shows up every few months, only when he needs to ask a favor. And in response, she pushes him away too, rejects his attempts to ignore the distance that's grown between them, not with any bitterness or anger, just a deep, exhausted sadness.
She smiles and greets her neighbors as she walks by, but the smile drops as soon as she passes. They all know her, but they don't know her, really.
Salman Paak knows the most about her operation, but even he doesn't know the details. He's not really involved; Bix was the only one to use the radio, and Salman met Luthen only once, then turned the operation over to Bix. Bix and Salman have a friendship that extends beyond just business, but they hardly ever get to talk; the first thing he says when Bix walks into his shop in episode one is that he hasn't seen her lately. She has ties to Brasso and Maarva and others in the community as well, but hardly sees them either.
Whenever we see her, she's perpetually in motion, always busy, always worried, always finding something to do with her hands, or somewhere to go, always having to do something, just to avoid the prospect of being still with her thoughts. She keeps moving to avoid that terrible quiet, keeps the noise dialed up as much as possible, just staying ahead of that crushing loneliness that envelops her life even when she's surrounded by people.
And of course, that's just the beginning.
She may not be thriving, but she's surviving, she's holding herself together, she's keeping an iron grip on whatever stability she can find in her life. But thenâ Timm's betrayal. And before she has time to process that, his lifeless body is tumbling down the steps before her eyes, and she can't reach him, and she's alone, and there's blood in her eyes and her head is spinning with a fresh concussion, and she's alone, and he's dead, and she's alone.
But eventually the Paaks find her and release her and drag her away and she drags herself up and cleans up the mess and tries to piece the shards of her life back together. And when Cassian shows up at her door, even knowing how dangerous it is, how the whole city is crawling with soldiers looking for him, she can't summon urgency or anger or fear. She's just too exhausted. There's only tiredness in her voice when she tells him he can't be here, only blunt resignation as she tells him of the dangers, only sadness and bone-deep exhaustion at this same distance, this same pattern, as he leaves again.
So she keeps going. And she takes care of Maarva and Maarva is dying but she takes care of Maarva and she tries to contact Cassian to tell him and she knows it's a hopeless, dangerous mission but she does it anyway. And so she's cut off from her only off-world connection as the radio is shut down forever, set adrift, but there's no time to think about it, because then she's being dragged into an interrogation room. And there's Salman, tortured and unconscious, being dragged away for execution, and the guilt is enormous, it's all her fault, but how could she have known that the punishment for owning a radio, just owning a radio that someone else used, would be to be tortured and killed, but of course it's still all her fault and the guilt is consuming but there's no time to feel it, she locks it away as she locks eyes with Dedra, channeling everything into the defiance she'll need to make it through this.
But there's no making it through this. There's no way to maintain her resistance or her dignity or even her mind and body, not as they were before. And when she's been alone with this torment for weeks, when can hardly stand, can hardly speak, her only solace is the distant beat of a funeral drum and the words of a dead friend. And then she's on a ship away from the only community she's ever known, her and Brasso and Wilmon and Bee and Jezzi all together but all alone, not looking at one another, not speaking to one another, just exhausted, just processing more than anyone could process in a lifetime.
And now what? Even as she heals physically, even as she can walk and speak again and begin to look forward, how can she possibly explain what she's been through? This torture that no one has heard of before, that left no marks save for the deep scars on her psyche, that sounds so implausible she almost questions the reality of it all herself. How can she possibly explain? Would they even believe her? What if they don't believe her? What if they don't understand? Or maybe it's even worse if they do, if they look at her with pity, if they treat her like she's fragile, if they speak to her like they don't quite know what to say.
Where can she go? She has to go back to Ferrix, there's no other option, she feels the pull of those ties that can never be broken. And yet, even with that deep need to return, what is there to return to? Most of the people she cared about there are dead. The idea of rebuilding her old life is almost laughable, how could anything ever be normal again? Could she even be normal again? This mind, this body hardly feel like her own now.
And yet one thing is always unchanging: she is still alone, always alone, just the same as before.
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