Running
(NB chapter fic, non canon-compliant; a companion piece to “Escape”)
Chapter 1
He’s become strangely used, these last few days, to running. And to acting on impulse. These last extraordinary days of his life, which so easily could be his very last days, too.
Once you start acting on your first quick thought, time after time, like this, it has a certain momentum. The heart wants to do right, but also to live. So when the grenade lands in the hold, bouncing with its tin-metal sound, he doesn’t hesitate for a second. He’s on his feet and leaping over it, straight out the hatch into the crossfire, because he’s the last man aboard alive and he wants to stay that way, and there’s a slightly better chance outside than in. He runs hunched over, praying. A part of his mind laughs at what he’s doing – trying to avoid getting hit, really, Bodhi? In all this shit you’re still trying to duck, still praying, still running?
Behind him on the landing pad, Rogue One is blasted heavenwards. Wreckage and shrapnel rain down on Bodhi Rook as he runs. He’s going to be running in his last breaths, it would appear. He wants to live.
He breaks through the belt of trees onto the next pad in time to see Chirrut dead on the sand, and Baze, bleeding, fallen a few yards off, turning to look at his beloved. Another grenade explodes and the blast throws him bodily back into the undergrowth and snatches the howl of grief from his mouth. It snatches the very air. He knows they’re dead.
He gasps and chokes, struggling to his feet, ears ringing, blinded by smoke. Starts running again.
He’s limping harder now, the leg wound a tearing pain at every step. He can feel blood in his boot. He runs and ducks and yells his rage and pain and terror. Blaster bolts fly past him. Blood splashes in the sand, in the shallows. The salt water stings.
Another landing pad. A ship. A little, pretty thing, practically a yacht, some senior officer’s private jaunting car or Captain’s gig. Breath ripping in his throat, blood in his footprints and his heart, Bodhi flings himself aboard and into the pilot’s seat. No time to think, no time to panic about keying in the wrong codes or firing up engines and exhausts in the wrong order. He does think of it, his brain running at treble speed, even as he tells himself there’s no time, even as he hits keys, bang, bang, bang; hears the engine start to purr, an absurd sweet sound in the racket of battle. The vibration kicks in, soft as a kitten’s heartbeat, and he hauls on the launch lever. The yacht takes off into the firefight.
She handles like a dragonfly, the most exquisite piece of flight tech he’s ever touched. In any other situation it would be comedy, or heaven.
He flies through the storm, dodging blasts and phaser fire, the delicate little ship almost dancing through the air as he steers towards the transmission tower. He’s their only way out, he has to get there in time.
Beyond the stark line of the tower the whole sky is filled up. Scarif has a twin suddenly, a new full moon looming over her sunny seas. Bodhi gapes at it. There’s only one thing it can be.
It fires. Green lasers vivid as hate, ripping the world open. The ship is spun off course by shockwaves as the energy slices down. He wrestles it back under control, searching the ground frantically.
There. At the foot of the tower. Movement. So far off. Too far off; the worst of nightmares, to see them and be unable to reach them. He turns the yacht anyway, banking, flying straight towards the oncoming blast wave. He’d know those tiny figures anywhere, even stumbling and struggling as they are, even so far away. The boiling sea advances. He’s steering into his own death for them, and he sees Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor embrace, lost and alone on the beach, as the shockwave billows forward and cuts him off from them.
Bodhi’s scream hurts his own ears. But it’s too late. They’re out of sight, they were always too far away. The blast will reach them and he can only choose, but it’s no choice; fly into the flames and die with them or run and live.
He almost does fly into the destruction. Cassian, dead. All of them dead. What is there to live for now? But he wants to live. He’s still running, he still wants to live.
He pulls up and guns the engines, pushing for altitude, running for the sky. Compared to Scarif Base burning behind him, his friends and every last thing he loves burning, the blaze of clearing the stratosphere is nothing.
He dodges and ducks through the ongoing space battle, barely seeing the destruction, the wrecks, the swooping fighters and slow monstrous flagships. As soon as he’s in clear space he inputs calculations he’s done ten hundred times, and makes the jump to hyperspace, and home.
He wants to see the red beauty of Jedha one last time before he dies.
But the face of home is a beauty marred now by a scar half a continent wide. He orbits the planet and knows his home is no longer there. Every street he’d ever run along as a child, every wall he’d ever climbed, every rock he’d ever played on, gone. Everyone he knew, the last few of his family, the last of his friends, all gone. Old friends and new, old hopes and new, all dead.
He’s starting to cry at last as he calculates new coordinates. He sits staring down at the mutilated face of his loss, while the system calibrates and aligns. He can never go home.
He takes the yacht into another jump knowing he will not come back.
Once safe in the flickering blue nowhere-yonder of hyperspace he wraps his arms round himself and begins to sob, and then to howl out loud. Tears pour down his face. He can’t bear it, and he must bear it, and he cannot.
He hears Cassian Andor’s last words to him over and over: Keep the engine running, you’re our only way out of here. Over and over. Life will be agony, for the rest of the time it lasts. He failed them. He killed them. He killed them all, he killed the captain, he killed Cassian.
He’ll never see him again; those beautiful eyes, so kind, so guarded, so hopeful at the last, will never look at anything or anyone again.
Bodhi cries until he’s sick and light-headed, until he wants to throw up, until he is worn out. He falls asleep in the pilot seat, and wakes hungry and cold and drowning in despair. His leg has grown stiff, and every muscle aches; the wound opens again when he moves, and the pain brings on another wave of exhausted tears. But the yacht speeds on, and leaps into real-space again, over Yavin 4. He sits crying at the controls, his running done. He still wants to live.
Chapter 2
The Comm has been shouting at him for some time before he registers it, and realises the voice addressing him is taut as a garrotte with suppressed fear.
“Unknown vessel, identify yourself! We have weapons locked on to you. Identify yourself or we will fire!”
He scrabbles for the microphone, shouting “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot! Rogue One, call sign Rogue One!”
“The hells you are,” says the Comms operator angrily.
“No, please, you don’t understand, I am, I am! I’m the only one left, I’m the pilot. Bodhi Rook, I’m the pilot…”
“Rogue One was lost with all hands!”
“I know, I know, I saw them, I couldn’t reach them, I’m the pilot, please don’t shoot!”
For a moment there’s no answer, and he is starting to try and calculate coordinates to jump again, his brain chasing thoughts that skitter like raindrops on ice. Of course there can be no refuge for him here. He’ll just have to run and keep running, for the rest of his life.
“I know that voice,” a second operator interjects urgently. “That’s the pilot.”
“Yes!” Bodhi yells, all the half-grasped figures scattering from his mind again. “Yes, it’s me, it’s me!”
“Bring him in,” says the second voice. “Stand down defences.”
He makes himself breathe and breathe again, and say almost calmly “Thank you.” The little yacht sails down, still handling like a spirit even under his hands that shake now with stress and the end of stress. It lands as sweetly as a leaf on water.
Bodhi unfastens his seat belt, powers down the engines, remembers that’s the wrong order of doing things, remembers none of it matters anymore. He stands up and his leg stabs him. He looks out at the chaotic landing field, at flight crew and ground crew working and running, ships preparing for take-off, the line of big hangars ahead. His friends will never see these things again.
He climbs down from the entry hatch and feels the solid surface of Yavin 4 under his boots.
His friends will never come back here. Cassian Andor will never feel the kind ground underfoot again.
They are all gone into atoms, he thinks as he staggers across to the people running towards him. All gone back to dust, dust and the fire-breath of stars. Those wise, kind, watchful eyes, burned out now.
He faints on the concrete, just short of the outstretched hands of help.
**
He’s debriefed, at length, by men and women who do the job diligently and professionally, without emotion. They pass the roles of interrogator and sympathetic listener back and forth amongst themselves, never letting him relax and trust any of them. He knows it’s necessary, he is a traitor after all; but it’s a strain nonetheless, enduring the games they play, testing his veracity. Once, he snaps and shouts at them to bring their Bor Gullet and be done with it. Blank baffled stares greet his outburst, and he subsides. The creeping monster that sucked its way through his every thought, even that, now, is dust.
Once, he cries. But it’s too easy an excuse, to settle for misery and the label of having been broken by his experiences. He fights through the tears and refuses to run.
That’s when they tell him about Alderaan, and that the plans were recaptured. And for a time his resolve breaks indeed.
But in the end he wants to live, and to help others do so. It may be a tiny end-game, one man’s decision smaller than a single atom in a galaxy crashing to ruin, but he wants to go down holding true to the values and hopes his friends died for.
**
When the news arrives of the rescue, of Senator Leia Organa and the plans both saved and brought home, he stands at the back of the council chamber listening to the debate. Last time he was here, he stood just behind Jyn, right at the front, willing her arguments to be heard and understood, shaken to the heart when she was rejected. He sensed that he was barely seen, standing there at the centre of the debate. It seems far more natural to be where he is now, behind a wall of people twenty bodies deep. He’s in his proper place, unnoticed, an object of indifference to all.
As soon as the council disperses he hurries to offer any service he can, in the fight that’s to come.
He flies evacuation transports, for the base hospital and then for civilian personnel, nineteen solid hours of hyperspace jumps as they try to save as many people as possible from the approaching Death Star. By the time he lands back at Yavin Base for the fifth time and learns the news, he is dizzy with tiredness, and his newly healed leg is aching again; but he’s allowed no time to sleep, for the biggest party he’s ever seen is erupting. He finds he has no choice but to celebrate with strangers the victory he worked for with dead friends.
He feels strange, adrift, looking from outside himself with disbelief at the unimaginable luck they’ve had.
There’s a lot of drinking, but Bodhi doesn’t drink. A lot of shouting and singing and dancing round bonfires. He sings, picking up the words and the tunes by ear, and joins in the dances though he doesn’t know the steps. He sits beside one of the bonfires and watches an improvised firework display; gets kissed, and disciplines himself to kiss back sometimes.
But all the time, he can see in his mind the faces that won’t appear suddenly, waving in the crowd, and hear the voices that will never cheer alongside his.
Still, it is victory.
Chapter 3
The day after the battle of Endor, the day after victory, he presents himself at headquarters and tells a weary-eyed duty officer he wants to join up. He’s a pilot, and a good one; he can learn to fly anything, it’s the one thing strength he has confidence in. He wants to be useful and this is the only way he can think of.
A hung-over recruiting Sergeant takes his details, swears him in and instructs him where to go to get fitted for a flight suit. Then looks at her computer screen again and says
“There’s a tag on your name in the system. Mon Mothma wants to see you.”
“No, that can’t be right.” He doesn’t mean to say it aloud but it’s true, this surely must be a mistake.
“Right here, I promise you. You don’t want to keep the Commander-in-Chief waiting, do you, Private?”
Hearing himself called Private for the first time is odd, and then suddenly comforting; it’s a start, a first shadow of belonging again. He essays a salute and is sure he’s doing it wrong; tells himself to practice in front of a mirror. But the Sergeant grins, good-humoured, and sends him on his way.
The Commander-in-Chief is almost as relaxed, though she doesn’t have the bleary demeanour of most of the base this morning. She greats him kindly and offers him a seat. Her personal office is small and calm, bright with sunshine from a big window overlooking the forests and towers. The desk she sits down at bears a file of papers, a potted lily with starry white flowers, a carved chunk of ochre-red sandstone. The stone is beautiful, red as homecoming in the clear sunlight streaming through the window.
“I realised I had never thanked you,” Mon Mothma says. “I wished to rectify that.”
He blinks. “Oh. It doesn’t matter. Ma’am.”
“It was an unjust omission,” she says gravely. “The last few days have – been pretty eventful. But none of this would have happened, none of it could have happened, without your courage. Thank you, Private Rook.”
He wants to tell her he doesn’t deserve thanks, but hers is not a face used to rebuffs. The best he can think of is to say weakly “It was a – a group effort. Not just me. Not even mostly me.”
She nods. “Nonetheless. We cannot thank the rest of the crew of Rogue One, though we will celebrate their names. There’s due to be a ceremony, medals for the pilots who fired the kill-shots, a memorial to the dead. It’s not the sort of thing we’ve done in the past, but the mood is in favour of some kind of official recognition. I wanted to ask you if you would be willing to take part. Receive a citation on their behalf, perhaps?”
She is asking, when she could order him. He feels that intensely; this is the good side of the rebellion, the counterbalance to that chaotic council meeting when the lack of consensus destroyed any chance of a decision. The rebels don’t compel free people, and he is a free man, even now as a serving soldier.
He imagines how the team would have reacted to being honoured; the mixture of emotions, deep pride and deep discomfort, cynicism, awkwardness, serene gladness… In that company, surrounded and held in their equal confusion, he could have owned his own joy and proud embarrassment, could even have delighted in them. He could have hidden among his friends and looked into his confused heart, and found a balance there. But this? – standing up alone in front of dozens, maybe hundreds – for all he knows maybe thousands – to represent the dead and be honoured for them? – this is not the same at all.
He swallows and tries to lecture himself into acceptance. It’s recognition of their courage, not of his lack of it. Recognition for Cassian’s leadership, his years of dedication. Himself, just a vehicle. He tries; but it’s no good, and he says so. “I can’t. I’m sorry, I just can’t.”
“I understand.”
“I’m the one who left them there,” he adds. He, Bodhi Rook, the traitor, the coward, the untrustworthy, to be the face of the heroic dead? “No way does anyone want to honour me!”
“That isn’t true, I assure you.”
“You don’t understand”.
“I think I do, actually,” says Mon Mothma, cool as ever. “It’s natural to feel pain at being the only survivor. And I can’t blame you for being reluctant to take part. I shall have to attend, and I wish I did not. The rebellion has always regarded this kind of spectacle as something the Empire does, not us. I regret the fact that so many people feel a need now to change this.” She gives an almost imperceptible sigh. “I’ll request you be excused from attending. We could say combat stress, maybe?”
“Thank you.” He doesn’t care what reason she gives. He’s ashamed of what a relief it is, not to have to do this.
The Commander-in-Chief takes something out of the folder in front of her and offers it to him.
“I wanted secondly to ask your views on this. It’s only a mock-up as yet.”
He takes the sheet of paper, bewildered, and sees it’s a design for a poster. The Heroes of Rogue One, written across the top of an image of them all. His heart swims, turning like a seal in his breast. He hasn’t seen their faces for days, and there they all are suddenly. Baze looking grim, and Chirrut grimly cheerful. Tonc, who died in the hold of Rogue One beside him; Sergeant Melchi, and Sefla, and Basteren; Pao, showing his teeth. Men who’d never given up, and men who’d known the dark for far too long and then tasted hope again.
There was Jyn, all clear-eyed certainty, pugnacious and alive. The droid, somehow managing to look both confident and sour despite its expressionless face.
Himself. Looking surprisingly calm, considering how terrified he remembers being.
Cassian. Lean and determined, grim as the Guardians, resolute as Jyn. Eyes full of fire. So alive.
He realises he’s been gripping the sheet and staring at it for several minutes. Numbly he says “What is this?”
“Recruitment campaign,” says Mon Mothma quietly.
He tears his eyes away from the faces of the people he couldn’t save. No, no no no, please, no… “Please take me off it…”
Her mouth is an expressionless line. “I have been pushing for you to be kept in.”
“I’m sorry, I just can’t. I can’t! I’m not a hero. I left them there! Everyone knows it, people stare at me, everyone knows I’m the man who took them there and left them to die. You should use Cassian as your poster hero, he gave you his whole life, he deserves to be praised and immortalised like this. So do the others. Please, not me.”
He puts the sheet of paper back emphatically on the desk, pushing the dead man’s eyes away from him.
“Very well.”
Is he supposed to wait to be dismissed, or can he ask to leave? Is it acceptable for him to ask a question? He has no experience of interacting with anyone so senior; the Empire’s strict adherence to hierarchy saw to that. There is a silence.
She sits quietly, without impatience. He’s trying to steady his rapid, panicked breathing, and realises she may be waiting for him to get calm again. The idea she may see him as meriting her concern is both a jolt and a reassurance.
At length she says “So, have you given any thought to what deployment you’d like? I can’t promise anything, but if there’s a particular base you would like to be assigned to, say, it might be possible to arrange that much, as a token of thanks.”
“What deployment I’d like?” He gapes. “I don’t understand.” Surely if he’s a soldier now, he’ll be obeying orders, going where he’s sent. He’d hoped that that way he can be a nobody once more. “I – I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.”
“You’re a pilot. Is there a particular squadron you had in mind? We’re re-naming one; would you be interested in serving in Rogue Squadron?”
His heart twists inside him again, and he says shakily “No, no thank you…” But there is one thing he has thought about, a good deal, this last week. “Ma’am, may I ask a question? Were there any survivors? From Alderaan?”
She presses her lips together for a moment, and her eyes lose their calm. In a low voice she says “From the planet itself, no. The destruction was – total. But” – she inhales and raises her head slightly – “from off-planet, yes, a great many. Everything from diplomats and trade attachés to merchantmen, to holidaymakers and even criminals in gaol. All of them refugees now.”
“What are we doing for them? We should do something – we must.”
Mon Mothma nods her head. “There’s a team assigned, to escort any vessels from Alderaan here, and collect individuals who lack transportation. It will be a huge undertaking, but we will bring them to Yavin 4 and give them the hope of a future. Now that there is hope to give. Is that the mission you would like to be assigned to?”
He can’t bring back his friends, or his family, or his home. But he can give his life to atone for failing them. He can run with the desperate, the betrayed, the homeless, and bring them home.
“Yes,” he says. “Please. Yes.”
Chapter 4
By the time the new settlements on Yavin 4 are well-established, and every citizen of lost Alderaan who wants to come there has been found and rehomed, Bodhi Rook is a Sergeant himself. He knows there’s no chance the promotions were another tacit reward for surviving Rogue One, because in the intervening months and years he’s logged more flying hours than any other pilot in any search-and-rescue team in the entire fleet. Two years without a single day’s leave of absence; he has just one thing to live for, and that’s his work.
He still dreams of Scarif.
The first year it was every night. He feared sleeping, but his exhaustion would always overtake him in the end, and then he’d be there on the sandy shore, walking slowly through the battle. Somehow in all the chaos of shooting and explosions nothing ever hit him in his dreams, though he’d see figures fall to left and right, shot, struck down by shrapnel, blasted apart by explosions. Everyone falls; people who were there, people who were not, people he didn’t even know back then, people he hasn’t seen since he was a boy. His family and childhood friends die all around him, and refugees by the hundred, and fellow-fliers, co-pilots, ground crew. He sees Galen Erso there, over and over again, and Mon Mothma and her generals, and the senators who stood round the council table that fateful day and refused to join the assault. All of them dying on the beach at Scarif Base, everyone he’s ever cared about or respected, or wanted to trust, or wished he could have saved.
Every time Chirrut and Baze are there with them; sometimes already fallen, sometimes still on their feet and fighting with a gracefulness and skill that leaves him wanting to cheer, until they are cut down and lie dead in one another’s arms, in their blood. The soldiers are there, battling on and falling one by one, or waiting helplessly with bound hands, trapped prisoners, until they are mown down by AT-AT fire. Even the droid is fighting in his dreams, yelling insults in its cool voice, both forelimbs modified into giant blasters; but K2 falls as well, and the spark goes out in the metal-rimmed eyes, night after night.
He sees Jyn and Cassian, every time, either right ahead of him or far off; always standing face to face, a foot apart. He tries to run to them but his legs are weighed down and he can barely keep moving. Blaster bolts and projectiles fly around the couple as though an invisible force is protecting them; he tries to shout to them to use it, to feel it and use it, the Force will protect them. In the hideous din of fighting they don’t hear. Always. Never. They move together and embrace tightly, a tiny moment of intimacy in the middle of the battlefield; and are gone, as the final blast obliterates everything.
The body grows accustomed to broken sleep, and Bodhi keeps going, even when he dreams the same dream three times a night. He jolts awake with a gasp and lies sweating, listening to his heart try to hammer its way out of his ribs. Hears it steady itself and grow calm again. Tosses and turns and at length goes back to sleep; and is back on the beach, screaming at Jyn and Cassian to save themselves as they die holding one another.
He tries to tell himself he doesn’t know why they are embracing in his dreams. Knows he does. They always embraced with their eyes. All the dream does is let them touch as they never could in life.
He talks to doctors, and is offered counselling, which means reliving that day even more frequently than he already does, and medication that deadens his sleep, but also replaces his appetite with constant nausea. He isn’t blessed with a physique that can bear throwing up after every meal for very long. He stops taking the pills. He talks to a red-robed cleric, who can at least remind him of the clear faith he had as a child, before the Empire came. She reassures him that he is doing the right thing, that his friends and family would be proud of him, that the Force was with them when they died. It’s a comfort; but comfort doesn’t stop the dreams. He learns to get on with life on five hours’ sleep instead of seven, most nights.
It takes a long time before he notices that sometimes there’s a night with only one bad dream, or none at all. The change is very gradual; slowly, over many months, the five hours of sleep increase to six. When the Alderaan refugee mission is finally wound down, and Bodhi Rook is reassigned to Hoth, he feels like a new man.
The nightmares do not stop, he is beginning to suspect they never will; but with this latest change they become, again, less frequent. On Hoth he’s too cold most of the time to be anything but exhausted, and he sleeps deeply most nights, for the first time in two years.
He does supply runs for a while, there, either bringing goods in to Hoth or running blockades to carry aid elsewhere. It’s a happy, busy few months. Until the Base falls.
In the chaos of the evacuation he is grabbed by an officer shouting for a pilot; he scrambles up the gantry-way he’s pushed towards, onto the flight deck of a GR-75. He’s confirmed to himself a long time ago that he really can fly pretty much anything, and he’s trained for the large transports, but he’s never yet taken one up for real. Now he finds himself at the controls of the largest ship he’s ever flown. Almost a thousand lives are depending on him. There’s cannon fire all around as they clear the atmosphere, and the heavens are full of Imperial ships, slow-circling monsters the shape of teeth. For the first time in over a year his hands and his voice shake for a moment, before he makes the jump to hyperspace.
It’s not a regular trip but an escape, running with no end point, the cold stability of Hoth vanishing behind and an empty future ahead. All the hope of two years, falling like a kicked snow-castle.
He wakes up three days later with a burning fever and is sent to the on-board med-bay. It’s his first illness since he defected.
“You have over-stretched yourself,” the medical droid tells him snippily. “Your body is too worn out to resist the virus. I am putting you under orders to rest.”
But a week later he’s back at work. Resting means having nothing to think about. Having nothing to think about means thinking about everything, and out of the blue after months of self-possession he finds that thinking about it means dreaming about it once more, fighting it again and yet again and again. He falls ill a second time and this time is confined to the ward until the medical staff confirm him fit for active duty.
At the end of the prescribed ten days, they refuse to do so.
He reads and watches holos and tries to keep awake. The med-droids give him sedatives and dream-reducers, and he throws up, and is kept under supervision for another three days. Then longer. His sick leave marked “extended” in the medical file.
He’s fought the dreams so many times now. He thought he’d beaten them. He knows he’s ill.
There is psychological help available but it’s prioritised for combat veterans, and Sergeant Rook has only ever flown search-and-rescue and humanitarian aid, and troop transportation, and emergency supply runs, and a few weeks here and there of blockade running; and before that seven years of cargo shipments for the Empire, living in constant fear and loathing himself for it, every day.
He doesn’t think he deserves to have counselling. He tells the doctors so, surly with misery, and it takes a crisply delivered bawling-out from a droid even ruder than the late K2 to get him to accept he must ask for help.
Strangely, the first breakthrough in his counselling comes less than a month in, when he breaks down and admits that he can only remember his friends’ faces now when he dreams of them. His waking memories have grown blurry; even looking at the old recruitment handbill he keeps hidden in his locker can only bring them back with the same expressions as they have in the picture.
He had probably the worst crush of his life on Cassian Andor and now he cannot remember the Captain’s face or his voice, except by allowing himself to sleep and dream of him dying. Is it not enough to feel so much shame at having survived, when others so much more worthy died? Must he himself consign those precious brilliant eyes to oblivion nightly, and forget them every day?
Slowly, gently, very kindly, the counsellor leads him through the minefield of pain, and helps him for the first time to plot out a pathway that doesn’t lead to despair. He knows the Captain was fierce and alive, brave and kind; knows he died for something he believed in. They all did; and they saved not only the rebellion and the dream, and billions of lives, but also him. He owes them everything he has, life, sanity, the chance to do something worthwhile with the remainder of his days. She lets him talk, and asks questions he’d never considered. He hears himself say one day “No, I don’t think Cassian would have wanted me to do this to myself, I think he’d have loathed it. He wanted the rebellion to win so that people could live better lives and be free and happy, not so they could hate themselves” and in a quiet, undramatic way that realisation feels like a new morning.
That night he sleeps without sedatives, and dreams only once; and it’s not of the battlefield but of a sunny room in Yavin Base, where he is giving a distracted recruiting officer his name and qualifications, and asking to join up. The officer writes the details down and asks him to sign; the pen turns into a flowering branch as he offers it to Bodhi, and he looks up and smiles. It’s Cassian. They shake hands and Bodhi wakes in disbelief, with his heart racing.
In the end, he’s off active duty for three months, but the counsellor recommends him for light duties, and he begins again.
He hasn’t seen the last of the nightmares, but once again, very, very slowly, there are fewer of them, and the harmless dreams become more frequent, the sort where regular illogical dream things happen, where pens turn into trees and his lost friends are willing to smile at him.
He vowed to himself two years ago that he would live the life his friends had not survived to see.
He renews that secret oath now, to himself and to the dead; and goes back to work, flying another aid delivery mission.
Chapter 5
At thirty he’s a Lieutenant. The Concordance has been implemented and slowly something like peace is being restored. He wonders if there will be less for him to do, less meaning for his life now, but if anything there is more, for the years of civil war have left billions homeless, and worlds too many to number are crying out for help to rebuild.
At forty, when the final remnants of the Empire’s work are believed cleared at last, he’s a Captain. He’s never flown a fighter in an engagement, but at every other kind of mission a being can serve in, Bodhi Rook has excelled. No-one in the entire Alliance has more experience of the management and delivery of emergency rescues, the logistics of aid missions and humanitarian assistance. People seek him out for his input. His advice has saved lives and mitigated disasters; his life has been a blessing for millions.
He’s long ago laid his ghosts to rest, with love and gratitude for all he learned from them.
At fifty he’s a Commodore, and beginning to consider retirement. He’s had something he never dreamed of when he was young, a career; and not just any career but one spent doing good work. He has learned to feel a kind of satisfaction, a self-acceptance, knowing it was only for that work that he’s received promotion. He’s lived the most spartan of existences and has enough credits saved to buy himself a pleasant small home on a comfortable world if he chooses. But he’s never really enjoyed his periods of shore leave and R&R, planet-side. A quarter-century of being constantly busy, constantly useful, has left him reluctant even to try doing nothing. He’s not at all sure he’ll get anything out of it, even if he’s lucky and it doesn’t bring back nightmares decades old.
He’s shying off from dealing with the question, and reports are starting to come in of the First Order’s expansionist policies. Raids on shipping, then full-blown attacks on independent or Republic-aligned worlds; always with an excuse, some tale of intelligence reports and suspicions of terrorist bases, of mysterious civil insurgencies and local powers requesting assistance. The Republic issues protests and expels diplomats, and tries to pretend this new danger will behave rationally if it’s treated rationally, that it will keep to its own side of the galaxy, that it will not break the Concordance.
He’s seen it all before. His heart twists inside him, and then steadies, and is firm. He won’t run, not from this resurgent evil; he knows exactly what the First Order are. The inheritors of hate, the heirs of the people who destroyed his home and killed everything he’d ever loved.
When General Organa begins formally trying to challenge the policy of polite protest, Bodhi is one of the first to support her. She argues and pisses powerful people off in council; he casts his vote for her plans. She gives up appealing to the Senate and begins sending her own break-away missions, gathering intelligence or looking for ways to support the non-aligned worlds under threat; she takes action and rallies resistance, and he’s with her. He still remembers a council meeting when no-one could agree to take a necessary risk, and a belligerent young woman who decided to take it anyway, on her own if need be. He remembers her force of will carrying enough people before her to win the day, in the end. Himself among them. He’s lived ever since on time borrowed by their courage.
He pledges his allegiance now to the General and her goals.
Dozens of officers, the experienced and tired who never want to see another Empire, and the young and eager who want to commit themselves to their ideals, follow Commodore Rook into the political wilderness, to join the Resistance.
His home is now once again a single room in officers’ quarters, on a hidden base. It feels like a homecoming. He stops worrying about retirement; there are far more serious things to be dealt with and his flying skills are back in demand as the Resistance tries to make the most of the often-outdated ships it can muster or steal. Bodhi is busier than ever, and happy, despite the quiet fear every rebel shares, that they will not be enough to hold off the coming war.
He receives a message one day from the General, asking him to join her at the base hospital.
General Organa hasn’t been well the last few months, ever since the news arrived of her husband’s murder. She drove herself relentlessly on in the aftermath of that blow, and along with the rest of the Resistance, Bodhi has watched with concern. Hearing she’s in the hospital now, he panics. Although it’s incomprehensible why she would send for him in such a situation, nonetheless he imagines her bedridden, helpless, perhaps dying. Yet another person he loves and respects and aspires to be like, brought low by this endless battle against oppression. He spurs himself into something approaching a run, and arrives for their meeting out of breath and tense.
She isn’t in bed. Isn’t even under medical supervision. In fact she’s sitting in a small room adjoining the Physiotherapy gym, and looking more cheerful than he’s seen her in weeks as she chats to two young men. He recognises the one standing up as Commander Dameron, one of their best and bravest pilots, one of the heroes of the recent fighting. The other is seated; a young man, slim, good-looking, and currently running in perspiration.
Dameron is smiling broadly; he stands to attention crisply and the General laughs as Bodhi tells him “At ease, Commander.” Everyone is beaming. He feels as though he’s just missed hearing a grand joke. He tries to catch his breath surreptitiously.
“I’m glad you were able to come so quickly,” General Organa says. “Finn, this is Commodore Rook; Bodhi, I’d like you to meet our newest recruit. This is Finn. I hope you’ll be able to help him adjust to his new life.”
By the looks of it, the younger man has just completed some kind of strenuous physio work-out. A stout brace is wrapped around his torso and he’s wearing grip-gloves on his hands. He’s wiping his face with a towel and he smiles past it from Bodhi to Dameron to the General and says a cautious “Hello.”
Dameron brings forward a wheelchair, and bends to help him up from the bench he’s sitting on.
Bodhi says “Good to meet you, soldier. I’m happy to help, Ma’am, although I’m not sure how much help I can be.” He has no experience of working with disabled veterans. What is he here for? And how can the young man be a veteran anyway, if he’s also a new recruit? It doesn’t make much sense.
And then the name clicks, and he says “Oh, wait, you’re the young man who? – you’re the Stormtrooper?”
Finn looks stricken for a moment before replying in a quiet voice “Yes, sir.”
Dameron lays a hand protectively on his shoulder.
It would have been good, Bodhi thinks, to have people stand beside him like that, all those years ago, to have had someone support him as he learned to live again. A counterbalance against the many who looked askance, who read in his face the guilt bleeding inside him, and wondered if he was trustworthy. This is the defector who helped them destroy Starkiller Base. The unlooked-for hero, the rebel of conscience; the real man who stepped out from the unassailable faceless ranks of white puppets. His eyes are so bright, bright as his heart must be; and, Force alive, he’s so young.
He knows how much courage it must have taken, for this boy to stand up and do the things he did. Knows intimately and deeply how hard that choice must have been, and how hard it will go on being. People will doubt Finn even though he’s committed his life to them; people will look at this eager, brave young face and see a traitor, and expect him to prove himself, no matter how many times he does so.
He knows without a second’s hesitation; he’ll do anything in his power to help. He reaches out, and now he’s beaming too. “May I shake your hand, young man? It’s a real honour to meet you.”
Finn shakes his hand, but his expression is uncertain.
The General says kindly “Finn has been worrying that he’ll never really be accepted here. I thought it would do him good to meet a fellow-defector.”
Finn gapes “You?”
Commander Dameron grins. He knows the story. Perhaps everyone does, Bodhi thinks, mildly surprised even now by the idea.
“Commodore Rook betrayed the Galactic Empire to come over to the Alliance,” says General Organa. “And as you can see, he’s made a solid career since then, and done a great deal of good. In fact I’d say he’s something of a hero around here. If anyone can advise you on learning to live with us, it’s him.” She stands up, and Bodhi and Dameron both straighten and salute. “I’m so glad you’re making such a good recovery, Finn. Boys, take care of him. I’m counting on you.” She smiles at them all and leaves, a small walking sun-core of dignity.
“So,” Bodhi says, taking her vacated seat. “What can I do to help you, young man?”
The ex-Stormtrooper sighs. “I don’t know… I don’t even know enough to know what I don’t know, if that makes sense.”
“Well, let me start by telling you that this won’t always be easy, but it will always be the best decision you’ve ever taken. And any time anything makes you wonder if you were mad to follow your conscience, don’t forget there will be people like me, like General Organa, like Commander Dameron here, who will stand beside you no matter what.” He wishes he could say more, but only one other thing occurs to him; words that call up a long-ago memory, words so potent to him that although they may sound odd now, he does add them after a moment. “Welcome home, Finn.”
Chapter 6
Bodhi mentors the boy Finn for several months. It’s clear from the start that there is something very special about this modest young man. He cannot remember when he last felt so intently that someone was a fulcrum, a being about whom others would gather and from whom they would draw courage. Probably not since he was no older than Finn himself; meeting Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor, all those years ago. It’s a joy to him now to see someone as brave and committed as them, not ignored and oppressed by orders but alive and thriving, applauded for his courage. But his recovery continues, and in time it takes Finn away. If it were not too melodramatic a way to look at the chaos of life, he’d say it was his destiny.
Bodhi tries not to worry about the lad. There’s already too much to worry about, if he allowed himself to. The First Order’s aggression continues unabated. He is just one soldier, but he must do his duty, just like Finn.
He refuses a desk job, for what feels like the thousandth time. Instead, he requests transfer onto the rescue mission for the millions of Hosnians made homeless by the single ghastly use of the Starkiller. The operation has been struggling on for months, and the monumental task of co-ordinating it properly is painfully familiar, but it restores him even as it also breaks his heart all over again. So many refugees, none of whom can ever return home, their whole system reduced to dust floating in space, a scar on the face of the galaxy.
And things are not going well. The Resistance has terrible set-backs, and for a time it seems as if they are doomed to fail in their fight. If this is how it’s going to finish, Bodhi decides, then he will at least fight through to the end. Too many good people have given themselves selflessly for this cause; he can never do less, without betraying their memory. Memories he still holds dear, even now. He will, they all will, endure, somehow.
He reminds himself of young Finn, bright-eyed fulcrum of hope, and of all the people who need someone like that to renew their convictions and inspire them to stand and hold their ground. The Finns and the Jyns, and the Cassians; the guiding lights who don’t go out, even at dead of night, even when everything dies. He can’t be one of them, is sure he never was and never will be such an inspiration; but he can still stand and do his best.
He carries in the breast pocket of his jacket a copy of an old recruitment handbill. The original is now too dog-eared and fragile to touch, but he had it framed years ago; it hangs on the wall of his room on base, next to an ancient watercolour of Jedha City. He looks at the copy sometimes, at the faces that are now vivid only in this one picture.
He wonders sometimes whether there is any hope. Reminds himself there always is. Reminds himself of the day he was told that you take each chance, until either you win, or the chances run out; and that that in the end is all there is to it.
At possibly the lowest point in the whole campaign, he accepts an assignment to a training camp, passing on his expertise to a group of recruits who will be running blockades throughout the Torranix sector. Most of them are more than capable pilots but have never studied logistics in their lives. He wishes there was time to give them more than just a short course, time to take them on training runs and real-life simulations. But these days, the Resistance has to take learning speed over learning depth. Time is more precious than the finest ores and gems. Bodhi works to bring the youngsters on as fast as possible; sends them to replace people lost in battle or taken captive. Begins work with the next contingent as soon as they arrive.
The tide of the times is against them right now; maybe always will be. It doesn’t entirely surprise him when Worru’du Base comes under attack.
He’s felt for a long time that his luck would run out, one of these days. Perhaps he is too old for the fight. Perhaps he should have taken one of those admin postings, or sneaked away and tried to enjoy a few years of retirement, let others do the hard work and bear the wounds, now.
He finds himself instead hiding out, underground, in a bunker three miles from the main base. He’s sent the recruits on ahead, getting them off-world in the only spaceworthy craft they could snatch; their lives, their training, their youthful strength and energy, are more use to the Resistance than his. A handful of civilians and ground staff escaped with him and through a spy-eye they watch as First Order troops burn their headquarters to the ground and torch the remaining ships.
They have food for four or five days, perhaps more with careful rationing, but water for three at most. If help can reach them at all, it will take at least a standard day to get there from the nearest Resistance-held system. He’s the most senior officer there, and on the evening of the second day he decides to take the gamble of calling for an extraction. Then issues suicide pills, in case the message is intercepted.
When help arrives, it’s in the middle of the night and it isn’t an official extraction at all but a damaged freighter. A voice crackling on the Comm unit saying “Is anyone there?” and a ship looming in the shoulder-high grass, a tall dark-skinned woman with braided hair running towards him as he peers out of the access tunnel. She greets him gladly. “I caught your distress call when I put the channel on to make my own. I can trade you space for help; I need a co-pilot, mine got shot on Galand by a First Order patrol. How many are you?”
“Sixteen. Two with minor injuries.”
She looks over his shoulder at the figures gathering behind him; points back at her ship. “Can any of you fly one of these things?” The ship looks Bothan, and it’s a good size, a boxy dark bulk against the moonlight and the star-field.
“You’re Resistance?” he counters. If she isn’t, he’s a dead man anyway. But this is such a crazy way to begin an entrapment that he’s pretty sure she’s genuine.
“Hells, yes! What do I look like?” She grins as more bleary faces appear round him in the tunnel mouth. “Hi, folks, I guess I’m your ride out of here. Is there anyone here who can help me fly my ship?”
She gestures again towards the craft behind her.
“I’m a pilot,” he says. If they’re going to get shot down running, it will be good to be at the controls of a star-ship again at the end. “I think everyone else is ground crew or civilians, though.”
“One pilot is all I need. Okay, people, get aboard. I’m Lieutenant Shammen, by the way, Deyaa Shammen.”
It’s a Jedhan name, and he grins in the near dark as he answers “I’m Bodhi.”
The other base staff are hurrying past him, into the open hold of the ship; light pours down from the entry port and catches on the pips on his uniform.
She curses. “You’re a Commodore? Damn and blast, if they know there were senior personnel here they’re probably monitoring traffic all over the sector by now.”
“Can you just get us off-planet? We’ll decide what to do about me later? I’m responsible for these people, I need to know they’re on their way to safety.”
Deyaa Shammen nods. “Yes, sir.” She leads the way onto the freighter. “Let’s get moving, people.”
Once into the relative safety of the hyperspace lane she turns to him. “I can only think of one thing I can do with you and your people. Luckily it’s easy to get to from here. It’ll mean you’re all out of active service for a while, but it’s your best bet to lie low unnoticed.”
“You know a safe house?”
“Yep. I know the people who run it. It’s the start of a whole network, an Underground Railroad; runs right through the Ag Circuit. My Mom helped run the routes into it for years, I’ve been going there since I was a kid. You may have to be separated, but it’s the best way I can think of to get you all out of a mess like this. And the people who do this run always use old tin cans like this rig; so nobody’ll think twice about me ferrying a whole bunch of you.”
“Fine,” Bodhi says. “And thank you.”
He’s tired, after two nights without sleep, watching over the fifteen souls hidden with him beneath the grasslands. A safe house sounds painfully appealing suddenly.
He sets the co-ordinates Lt Shammen gives him; his new destination, for who-knows how long. Salliche.
Chapter 7
He sits in the co-pilot’s seat, watching the hectic blue swirling past the main viewport. It’s hypnotic. They’re on course and holding steady and there’s relatively little for him to do, and he catches himself yawning. Shakes his head and says “I ought to warn you.”
“Yes, sir?” says Deyaa Shammen, after a time. After another pause she prompts him “You’ve never flown a Bothan freighter before?”
“What? Oh, no, it’s not that. I’ve had no sleep for the last couple of days. My reaction times may not be at their best.”
“But you can fly this thing, right? Sir?”
“I can fly anything,” Bodhi tells her ruefully. “I am a pilot. But please keep me talking, so I don’t nod off.” He looks away from the blue of hyperspace smearing across the windscreen, focuses on the controls in front of him again. “I probably could fly in my sleep, but I’d rather not try the experiment just now.”
“What should I talk to you about, sir?”
“Anything you like. And please, don’t feel you have to keep calling me ‘sir’. I’m in charge of the people in back, but this is still your ship, Lieutenant… Tell me about where we’re going. It sounds as though you’ve done this trip before.”
“Oh hells, yes. My Mom used to courier people here during the Civil War and when things started getting hot again a few years ago I picked up her old run since I already knew the ropes and the routes, and the people.”
“They can’t be expecting us; is that going to make any problems?”
“I’m sure they’ll be cool with it. I’ve done this run three, four times a year since I started, Galand to the Ag Sector and back, and half the time I don’t know what I’m picking up till I get to the drop-off. Some trips, it’s a pile of shipping containers or something, and sometimes it’s people looking for a hide-out and I’m the one who got the job because I can get them to Solondori. The Hallik’s have been running this network for a good thirty years, they’re used to unexpected arrivals. It’s just a railroad run like a hundred others to them.”
“Any passwords or anything I should know?”
“Not for a formal delivery like this. It’s probably different if you arrive freelance. Back in Mom’s day it used to be that you had to say you wanted to be a fruit picker.”
“You want to be a fruit picker?” It’s certainly not what he expected.
“Yep. There’s a long tradition of itinerant labour in this system. That’s why it’s so easy to cover up bringing people in. You’re all supposed to be farm labourers looking for work.”
Bodhi realises something; turns in his seat and calls down into the hold “Everybody, you’re going to need to take off uniform jackets, anything with insignia, anything that makes you look like Resistance. We need to look like farm workers if we get inspected.”
“There’s a false floor in the starboard compartment, you can hide stuff there,” the Lieutenant adds over her shoulder. “Once we’re through customs we can get gear for you.”
Weary groans from the people in back; but he sees jackets being stripped off, shirts turned inside- out so the stripes are hidden. Hopefully it will be enough; Deyaa Shammen seems to think so, anyway, she nods and turns back to the controls.
“You’re very certain of these people,” he says.
“I’ve known the whole family since I was six months old. Solondori’s been the major entry point for the network for forty years and it’s never been hacked. The Halliks know what they’re doing.”
“Okay, that’s good to know…” He yawns again. “Damn. Tell me about – tell me about your ship. I noticed your operating systems are pretty high-spec; did you ask for the additions or did it come like that?”
“I built that myself. I like customising things, getting them to their highest capability. My Pa’s an engineer so maybe it runs in the family. My Mom once cannibalised an Imperial TIE fighter to build an escape ship, so there’s that to live up to, too. I’ve just been tinkering with ships all my life.”
“Your family name’s Jedhan, isn’t it?”
“Yep. I’ve never been there, though. Pa won’t go back, says he can’t bear to.”
“I know the feeling. I was born in the Holy City.”
“You know what he’s talking about, then. Those evil bastards.”
He grins at the casual frankness, and at the way she’s accepted him asking her not to call him “Sir”. Lt Shammen has a mixture of calm good sense and belligerent assertiveness that delights him. She reminds him of everything he’s admired, over the years, about the rebels. That whole “never give up” view of the world. It took him so long to learn to think like that, after a childhood living under those whose message was “never believe you can change this”; and to her it comes naturally.
So long as there are people like this fighting, surely there’s still hope. Like knowing young Finn; it’s heartening to see there is always another generation who won’t accept being trodden down and held in slavery. There have always been so many things wrong with the way they fought, the way they dithered, the way the cynics argued for the crudest possible direct action and the politicians for no action at all, or only for actions that would get them re-elected next year. But there have always been the quiet people, and the cheerful loud ones, who do their jobs and hold their ideals close, and do not give up.
In the end, he does doze a little, sitting upright in the co-pilot seat. Just for an hour or so. No dreams. He wakes and feels everything still solid, the Bothan ship still flying, the Resistance still fighting on, Lt Shammen still at the controls.
“Thank you for letting me catch a nap,” he says, and she grins sidelong at him and tells him he needed it, and besides, this is an uneventful as any flight she’s had in months.
Suddenly they are coming out of hyperspace and sweeping into a planetary system, approaching the misty blue ball of Salliche. He looks down at wide green continents, skeins of shining rainclouds, the miniature drama of a giant lightning storm over the southern ocean. The Comm unit comes on with a buzz, and Deyaa Shammen answers it and gives a string of authorisation codes to the bored-sounding Imperial Landing Controller speaking from planet-side. And then they are swinging down through the upper atmosphere and the cloud banks below, and coming in along the flank of a long range of low, rounded hills, in steady light rain.
“I already pinged my friends,” Deyaa Shammen says cheerfully. “They’ll be there to meet us.”
As far as he can see, the landscape is farmland, and green; stock animals grazing on hillsides and meadows, fields of ploughed red earth blushed with the first growth of crops, orchards full of spring blossom and new foliage, the delicate colours blending in the muted cloudy light, soft and fresh, acre after acre.
It’s all so peaceful; unnervingly so. It’s beginning to scare him, how easy this has all been. Can escape really be this simple?
The soil colour haunts him, that faint sheen of green over that terracotta-red. It looks like Jedha after the winter rains. The standing fields, the groves and orchards below the ship, all those are far too green; but that red plough-soil is precious and beautiful, a ghost in his eyes, a tiny momentary echo of things he lost more than thirty years ago.
Even if this is the day when finally everything goes wrong, he can remember home now and feel satisfied. He’s done his duty and held his truth, for decades; he’s avenged the destruction of Jedha, the dead of Alderaan, the lost souls of Scarif, as best he could. He’s lived the life that Cassian Andor laid down his life to build. He won’t die ashamed.
They land at a small spaceport on water meadows in a river delta; just three landing pads, and farmland all around, right up to the perimeter fences. There’s a big open-backed skimmer truck just arriving at the main entrance, and the driver looks across at the freighter coming in, and waves. Bodhi sees a young man, slim, dark-haired and bearded. Deyaa waves back from the viewport.
A guard in a creased uniform waves the truck in, hops onto the back to ride over to them. Deyaa says “Better check your people are ready.”
For a moment he feels again that twinge of alarm. Everything is going so smoothly. It can’t be this easy. Is this the day his long, long run of luck is finally going to run dry? He scrambles through into the hold, pulling off his jacket with the shining pips on arm and shoulder as he goes; rolls it and carries it under his arm. His mouth is dry as the gangway opens. But the inspection is ludicrously casual; just that one trooper, glancing inside and taking a head-count, Deyaa handing over scan-docs that are barely scrolled through. Either this is rigged, or someone somewhere has been paid a lot of bribes; or there actually are places where the First Order’s ruthless efficiency has not yet taken root. Maybe this really is the perfect place to run a safe house.
The young man from the truck is waiting, parked right outside. At close quarters he’s scruffy and handsome; mid-thirties at a guess, untidy collar-length hair, clear brown eyes and a smile that goes out to one side first and then the other. He’s grinning at Deyaa Shammen, and she marches down the ramp to greet him.
It’s all too easy, too easy. He hates this nagging, oppressive feeling of premonition but he can’t shake it. This is all going to go wrong.
They climb into the back of the vehicle. The young man introduces himself as Esperanz Hallik, shakes hands, scrambles back into the driver’s seat, Deyaa climbing up alongside him to chat. They drive for half an hour, through paddocks and groves and along the river bank on a way-marked route above a levee. The air is fresh and smells of recent rain, and insects sing in the orchards. At last the truck turns into a gateway, and bounces down a farm track between ranks of trees, towards a group of farm buildings.
The farm is all whitewashed timber and red tiles; twin frame barns piled high with bales of fodder, low workshops and outbuildings around a big old house with a stone-framed door and lines of gleaming windows. Fowl scratch in a vegetable garden in front of the house, and across a broad muddy yard; stout post-fences pen back a pair of healthy-looking banthas. There’s another skimmer truck parked beside one of the barns, stacked with crates, and as the last of the party climb down stiffly from their ride two people emerge from one of the buildings. They hurry over; a man a little younger than Esperanz, equally dark-haired and good-looking, and a younger female with olive skin and cropped blue-black hair. They both hug Deyaa Shammen for a moment before surveying the strays she’s brought with her.
“Volunteers?” asks the woman.
“Yep. Sorry about the unexpected delivery. Now of all times, too; Esper just gave me the news. Galen, Em, I’m so sorry.”
“Thanks…” says the second young man quietly.
“I can move them further on, if you’d prefer, see if one of the other houses can take them in?”
“No, it’s okay, stay, please. We’ve been trying to carry on, it’ll do us good to have some new arrivals to think about.”
“I’ll get Ma,” says Esperanz. “She’ll want to meet you all. Can you get everyone inside?” He lopes off towards the farmhouse without waiting for an answer.
“I’m Emren Hallik,” the young woman says to the whole group. “This is my husband Galen. Right, let’s get you all indoors and then we’ll sort out who needs what. I can already see someone’s limping; Gale, do you know where Hosk is?”
Bodhi stares after the second young man as he nods and heads off. Galen. However many years is it since he heard that name? It’s never been fashionable, but he knows that if he’d ever had a son, he might have called him that. How curious to meet a Galen now...
Emren Hallik leads them past the animal pen into a large cruck barn, Deyaa strolling beside her talking in a low voice. Since he can’t see what else to do, he follows with the rest of the group. He wonders what the bad news was. His tiredness is starting to catch up with him again, and knowing that makes him still more ill-at-ease. If anything goes wrong now, he’s going to need to be quick and decisive, and he feels neither of those things. He’s still responsible for fifteen other lives. His own, in the end, doesn’t matter; but he’s seen missions go wrong, teams not come back, too many times before. He’s responsible for getting these people safe home. He’s no longer sure he’s up to it.
He sits down slowly, on a straw bale at the back of the barn.
Maybe he is too old for this game. He’s only sixty-one, but he’s been working pretty much without ceasing, all his life. Maybe that desk job would have been a wise move.
The barn smells of stored grain and fresh-ground flour, wholesome and dusty, with undernotes of sweaty animals and something fruity and fermented. All around him now people are slumping onto the planked floor or sitting on crates and hay-bales. Everyone looks as weary as he is. Slanting afternoon light works through the planked walls and paints their faces in stripes of gold and shadow.
Dry fodder stalks prickle him through the seat of his pants, the wheaten smell is making him want to sneeze. Warmth seeps into him, a soothing touch along each bar of sunlight. He shakes himself; he can’t afford to fall asleep, not now.
Emren Hallik is talking, describing fresh clothes, sleeping arrangements, a mess hall behind the farm, a local medic who’ll see the injured personnel sorted out. Behind her a door slides open, the full height of the building, and the pattern of light and shade moves, flickering across the rows of weary listeners. Two figures, silhouetted; one of the men and someone much shorter, a woman carrying a data pad. They begin to move through the group, and he hears voices speaking one by one, names being taken and logged. His hands tighten into fists and he digs his nails in.
The figures are in front of him. He’s going to be one of the last to give his name. He looks at the woman with the pad as she approaches. She’s quite old; white-haired, with a round, kindly face and a mouth that has smiled a lot in the past but is expressionless now. Blue-green eyes, almost as tired and sad as his own. Eyes that widen, slowly, unnervingly, as they look at him; in shock and disbelief, and something more; alarm, perhaps, or horror.
So, this is it, this is the instant when things go wrong. This is what that subtle tug of premonition has been whispering about to him, this moment, this being seen by someone who sees what he is. Someone he feels horribly, totally, known by and seen-through by. He doesn’t know what in all the hells is going on, but certainly something is, because that is not the way an agent logging arrivals at a safe house looks at an old man like him.
Bodhi Rook stands up calmly, because damn it, he’s been holding his ground for thirty-six years, he isn’t going to start running again now. He’s the senior officer present; he’s responsible, he brought his people into this situation and whatever it is, he’s going to face it on his feet. He straightens up and puts his shoulders back, and gives his name, and rank, and serial number.
The woman stands staring at him.
After a long moment she puts out her right hand and touches the sleeve of his shirt, and his arm inside it. He tenses. Her mouth opens but no words come out.
“Ma?” says Esperanz Hallik. “Are you okay?”
She has to pull herself together visibly; she pushes the data pad at the young man saying “Take the rest of the names, please, I – I can’t”- and turns back to Bodhi. Still staring, still wide-eyed. “Is it really you?” Her sad, tired face has fallen open, like a broken thing.
“Do I know you?” he asks helplessly.
“Ah,” she says. “Oh, I don’t know how to say this. Yes, yes, you did, once. You don’t remember me. Bodhi, it’s me; it’s Jyn.”
It is Jyn. The reason he is known by those sea-coloured eyes is because they are the eyes of a dead woman, a woman who knew him once and trusted him, and was betrayed. Jyn Erso.
Bodhi’s knees give way and he sits down hard on the straw bale. “Uh…” His lips have gone numb, he can’t remember even the simplest words. She’s still touching his arm and he stares at her hand, incredulous. It’s a thin strong hand, the fair skin heavily tanned and scattered with small scars. There are crescent-corners of dirt under some of the nails. She must be, what, fifty-six, fifty-seven? The white hair had deceived him into thinking her much older.
“It is you,” she says. Her voice is small, as though she hasn’t enough breath to speak up. He raises his head and looks at her.
“It’s you,” he echoes. It’s her. “Jyn! How? How did? -”
She suddenly starts and looks around; at her son, staring, at the other faces clustering around, some listening openly while others politely pretend to be oblivious. Her expression twists painfully and he feels her tremble as her grip tightens. “I can’t do this here,” she says, and steps away from him.
He breathes deep and pushes himself to stand up, shrugging his jacket on again; follows her out of the barn and away from the astonishment there. His own shock walking beside him , tearing the oxygen from his brain. He goes across the farmyard unsteadily in the late afternoon sunlight, and Jyn, white-haired frail Jyn, leads him into her home and down a stone-flagged passage, to a large room at the rear of the house. There’s a giant double stove and bake oven, a long table set with benches; huge dura-steel pans hang from nails in the walls. A wooden dresser holds enough crockery for several dozen people, and on the topmost shelf is a set of old-fashioned holo-frames, running on low power; little groups of silvery ghost figures, standing looking about them blithely.
Jyn turns in the middle of the kitchen and faces him. Her posture is almost confrontational, and now he knows it’s her she’s unmistakable. Jyn, who escaped. Somehow. Jyn, who has a son; no, two sons. Esperanz and Galen. Jyn, who lived and paired up with someone and had a family, and runs a safe-house network in the Ag Sector.
He didn’t kill them all.
She says “We thought you were dead. We saw the ship blow, it went up like a firework. I’ve never forgotten it, seeing that, knowing we were all doomed. If we’d had any idea you were still alive…”
We. She keeps saying we.
He manages to reply. “I thought YOU were dead.” Horrible, hopeless, obvious words. Words that do not excuse him, because now nothing can. He didn’t kill them all; but he still left them. “I thought you -”
Jyn interrupts, shaking her head. “No, no, we made it. Deyaa’s mother picked us up. Ell. I’m so glad you didn’t die, that you’re alive! But if we’d known you were alive we would have…” She breaks off with a gasp.
He’s seeing it all again, the advancing cloud of fire and steam, the vaporised stuff of the planet itself rolling in to block his flight path and cut him off from them. Jyn and Cassian, holding one another in their last embrace. He imagines she’s reliving her own memories of those same few seconds, and shivers. But she lived. And - we. She said we, and again we, she keeps saying we.
“I had nightmares about it for years,” he tells her.
“Yes. Yes, we both did, too.”
Jyn is beginning to cry, and he wishes he could, too. His mind is ringing like a hollow sphere, like something struck and left echoing, a cave nightmarish with darkness and the ghost-voices of bats. He remembers the two slim, handsome men outside. Dark hair and beards, brown eyes, keen smiling faces. Long slightly hooked noses, narrow jaws, high cheekbones. Esperanz. Galen. Her sons.
He knows he ought to be telling her everything, he ought to be asking how she survived, how they came to be here, how did all that happen, that and apologising, explaining, begging her forgiveness. But the only words that come out are “You keep saying we. We. Jyn, who else made it out with you? Was it – was it Cassian?”
It has to have been Cassian. Surely those two bright-eyed young men are Cassian’s blood.
She said we, she said we…
Jyn puts her hands over her face, and standing in the middle of her sunlit kitchen surrounded by all the clutter of a good and busy life she cries as though her heart is breaking.
He’s steeling himself for the words she will say next, because this can only mean one thing. It wasn’t Cassian. She lived, she got over it, she met someone else and had a life. That’s what she means by this “we”. It was only her who survived; “we” is whoever she paired-up with, after.
Bodhi breathes and breathes deeper, and waits while she cries.
Even those few moments of thinking Cassian Andor might have lived have hurt him with a feeling like a hard cold punch, a blow somewhere deep in his gut. He swallows and stands his ground, to hear the inevitable. He’s an old man, and this shouldn’t matter as much as it does; but it does. He failed someone he loved, once, over thirty years ago, failed him and left him to die, and his whole life from that day to this has been built on atonement for that death. Why would that change now?
He makes himself walk over to Jyn, makes himself put his hands on her forearms gently. He’s shaking almost as much as she is. She raises her face to him; she’s shorter than he remembers, but her expression still has that clear-eyed certainty, and her voice even choked with tears is strong.
“I’m so sorry,” she says. “He died last month.”
There’s a strange sense of delay before the gut-punch of shock comes again. It WAS Cassian, he did survive, he lived and loved her and had a family with her; and now he’s dead.
Last month. Only last month.
“Now of all times,” Deyaa Shammen had said apologetically when they arrived here. “I’m so sorry,” she’d said. This is why. This family, taking him and his people in, saving all their lives, they’re in mourning. They’ve lost a husband, a father, a father-in-law. They’ve lost Cassian.
All this time, he was alive; but it’s too late to do anything except slowly let himself hug Jyn, and bow his head as she puts her arms round him in response; and, finally, begin to cry.
Later - a good while later, maybe as much as hours, he can’t be sure – she has got him to sit down at the table and has put tea in front of him, and bread and blue cheese and a jar of sour pickles. Two cups, two plates, two sets of cutlery. She’s made him eat, and taken a few bites herself to keep him company. It’s odd, and charming, to know that short-tempered Jyn grew up to become a woman who shows care by feeding people. The bread is fresh and the tea is hot, and very welcome. The sun is low now, oblique light filling the kitchen and gleaming on the crockery and the hanging pans. He asks “What happened?”
“To Cass?”
“Yes.”
“It was his heart.” She runs a hand over her hair, fiddling with the bun at the nape of her neck. “It was very sudden. He was out in the upper pasture, taking fodder up for the banthas. It was a beautiful spring day, he’d been talking just that morning about what a wonderful day it was. When we found him he’d fallen in the long grass. He was looking up at the sky. The medic said it would have been instantaneous, that he wouldn’t have suffered at all. He looked more surprised than anything else.” She looked at Bodhi with a faint smile. “This is the first time I’ve talked to anyone about it. It feels strange to put it into words. I’ve always known one of us would die, either I’d leave him or he’d leave me. We were due to go together, on Scarif, but things didn’t work out that way. We’ve had thirty-six years of borrowed time. And now I can’t get used to him not being around.”
It feels crass to ask, intrusive to the point of cruelty; but he can’t bear not knowing. “Were you happy? Did he – did he have a good life?”
“We were very happy…” Jyn’s voice shakes, but she’s smiling again. “Truly, we were. He’d had – we’d both had – lives that weren’t really more than just surviving; and then this. Neither of us had ever expected to be so happy. Oh Bodhi, yes, Cassian had a good life. He did things he believed in. He saved so many lives. He was a brave man who lived his truth, and he was a good husband and a wonderful father. He had a happy life and I was happy, and so blessed, to be with him.”
She pushes back her chair a little unsteadily and goes to the dresser; takes down one of the larger holo-frames from the top. “Here – this is Galen and Em’s wedding, three years ago.” She brightens the image intensity, and sets it down on the table-top in front of him. “The whole family.”
A shining group of figures caught endlessly hugging and smiling, turning to one another and back in a feedback loop of happiness. Galen and Emren are in the middle, Esperanz and another woman, and another younger man, to their left, throwing grain and petals over them; Jyn and Cassian to their right. Through the faintly silvered cast the holo lends to other colours, he can see that Cassian’s hair and beard are grey. He is smiling, lines creasing the corners of his dark eyes; he has one arm round Jyn’s waist and with the other hand, over and over, he reaches into his pants pocket to produce another handful of flower petals and throw them at his son and new daughter-in-law. The sound is turned off but Bodhi can imagine the laughter and the jokes.
“Who are the others?” He points to the two figures he can’t put names to.
“That’s Esper’s girlfriend. Douny. She’s lovely. She’s a midwife, she works at the Solondori med-centre. She’s the one who put us in touch with Dr Hosk. And the other man – that’s our youngest. Bodhi.”
“Yes?” He looks across at her, puzzled.
She shakes her head for a second. “His name is Bodhi. Bodhi Hallik, officially; we’re all officially Halliks. Cass was Willix Hallik from the day we arrived her, I was – I am - Lianna. The boys know their real family name is Andor but none of us ever use it. False names are very odd at first and then you just forget about them, they’re part of your life, like having boots on your feet and gun at your side, and a baby in your arms.”
“You called your son – after me?” It’s a pebble in his throat. Bodhi Hallik; Bodhi Andor. Esperanz, Galen, and Bodhi. “I – I don’t deserve it.”
Jyn shakes her head again, firmly this time. “Don’t say that. Cass always said you were the bravest man he’d ever met. We always knew if the third child was a boy he’d be a Bodhi.”
He picks up his mug and takes a long gulp of the cooling tea, trying to mask the fact he has no words to speak.
“Esperanz,” Jyn says “Is ‘hope’ in Cassian’s native language. He would have been Esperanza if he’d been a girl. And Galen is for my father, obviously.”
“I always used to think if I’d had a son I’d name him Galen.” It seems safer to go sideways in the conversation than to stay here, looking at this astonishing idea of Jyn and Cassian’s child named after him; to think of them honouring him, never forgetting him. He picks at the crumbs on his plate. Cassian remembered him.
“You have kids?” Jyn’s voice is warm, and he wonders if she’s imagining his life as like hers. A farmhouse, tall sons, maybe grandchildren to come; building something, saving something, happy to remember the love you’ve lost, even through tears.
He sighs and says “No.” Hesitates, looking at her. There are things he can say, and things, he suddenly feels, that he cannot. He trusts Jyn, and maybe one day he’ll admit the whole truth, but it would be unfair to do it now, when her bereavement is so new. “I would have adopted, but – my work – it would have meant being an absent father so much of the time and, and, I didn’t want to put a kid through that if there wasn’t another parent at home with them, and I – I never met the right guy.” He looks away from the sadness in her face. This was meant to be the less-painful version of the story, not the version that would make Jyn cry again. He’s shaking slightly inside. But it’s probably shock. “It’s okay,” he says “I would have been a lousy husband and father.”
“I doubt that very much.” Jyn reaches out and lays a hand over his. “Why are you being so hard on yourself?”
“All I’ve ever done,” Bodhi says “Is run away.”
She raises an eyebrow, and for a second she is the caustic quick-tempered woman he remembers. “Running away? Is that why I see all those pips on your sleeve, Commodore? Seems to me you’ve got a strange way of running. Bodhi, you must’ve atoned for your time with the Empire a long time ago. I cannot believe you have anything to be ashamed of. How did you earn that rank if all you’ve been doing is running?”
“Well…” He looks into her eyes. Pugnacious still under all the motherliness, tough as a thief, all clear certainty and bravado and solid core. He always liked Jyn; he really couldn’t blame Cassian for having loved her. No more than he could blame her, for having given her love in return, to the man whose memory he’s tried to live up to all his days. “It’ll take a while. I’ll tell you my story if you tell me yours.”
“We’ve got all night. Tell me about your life, Bodhi. Tell me what you’ve done with yourself, all these years.”
He tells her his story, sitting at the kitchen table with the hologram smiling up at him. Finding, carefully, the words to explain his life, to her and to himself; all the decisions, all the choices and fears, the will to live, the same of death, the memories that guided him and had to be repaid. Finding, slowly, that perhaps, in the end, he has been strong enough, and he has done enough. Finding that in the end he is telling one life, well-lived and full, to another.
Finding himself beginning to smile back, at the kind remembered face in the holo.
Perhaps now at last, here in the sunset in Cassian’s home, he can stop running, and rest.