Bodhi Rook Week 2018

Sometimes, they end up in Cassian’s bed. Cassian is higher up in the chain of command, he has his own room. Sometimes Bodhi will fall asleep without meaning too, whenever they’re up late and just talking – Cassian keeps odder hours as a spy than Bodhi does. Instead of waking Bodhi up, Cassian will just pull off his shoes and tuck him in.

Sometimes Cassian will do more work, sitting at his desk and staring at holopads. Sometimes he’ll sit at the end of the bed, so that the blanket around Bodhi’s feet is tight and warm. Sometimes Cassian will just get into bed.

Bodhi doesn’t fall asleep there on purpose, he just genuinely likes talking to Cassian and they both keep odd hours. He does sometimes wake up, in the early morning, when Cassian is still asleep, and he’ll consider going back to his own room because it’s so late, it’s early, but he doesn’t.

Sometimes, very rarely, they end up in Bodhi’s bed, which is just a little bit smaller and means they’re just a little bit closer. It usually only happens when Jyn is on a mission and her bed is empty, and Bodhi is working on some little bit of mechanics that he’s laid out in his room. Usually, in this case, Cassian will be the one to fall asleep first, because Bodhi is usually wired on caf to try and get whatever he’s working on done.

When Cassian falls asleep, Bodhi will do the same for him. They’ve both done this enough times by now that it would be weird, actually, if Bodhi woke him up to go to their room. Neither of them could begrudge the other comfort, not when they’re both so alone.

It’s very nice.

Sometimes, one of them will wake up crying, but the other won’t mention it. Cassian will usually wake Bodhi up if he’s having nightmares. The first time he had, Cassian had shaken him awake, saying his name. “It’s okay,” he says when Bodhi wakes up. Bodhi isn’t fully crying but he can feel tears on his eyelashes. “It’s okay.”

“Yeah,” Bodhi says. He doesn’t move to wipe the tears away, and Cassian does it instead with a gentle finger.

“Does this happen a lot?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m here,” Cassian says. He drapes his arm around Bodhi. “Close your eyes.”

Bodhi had. His nightmares have gotten better, so now Cassian doesn’t have to do this for him nearly as often, but it’s always a nice comfort to have him there when Bodhi jerks awake, barely able to remember the dream that had him horrified. Cassian will just drape his arm over Bodhi, not even needing to say anything. Bodhi will usually say thanks but often Cassian will be asleep again once he sees that Bodhi is okay.

Sometimes, when they’re awake, Bodhi will reach out and put his hand on Cassian’s hands. Cassian always looks startled for a brief second but his expression melts into somethings softer. Bodhi likes that.

Jyn tells him all the time that he’s being a dumbass because “everyone knows you’re together but you!”

“Well, we’re the ones who need to know, don’t you think?” Bodhi will say calmly. He doesn’t feel a need to rush this, he thinks Jyn is upset mostly because she has no patience for anything.

Jyn will groan and throw herself on her bed and the next time it’s empty, Cassian will be here in this room, falling asleep in Bodhi’s bed.

A little spring time Bodhi, for @bodhirookweek 2018’s Day 8.

96 is up, just in time for the last day of @bodhirookweek :D

Jedha is empty space.

Intellectually, Bodhi knows this, but that doesn’t stop his heart from crying out when he actually sees it. He knows this sector of space like the back of his hand. There should be a moon, right there, but instead it’s just debris that he knows is dangerous to fly through.

He does it anyways. He wishes he could reach out and touch a rock, a piece of his home, but he’s in this ship and that’s his moon and his family and his soul out there, floating in the void.

Space used to be comforting, in a way. Some people thought space was empty, but most pilots that Bodhi knew thought of space as freedom, as adventure. Instead of seeing it as a void, they saw it as possibility.

Bodhi used to see it like that too.

He presses his palm against the view shield of the ship, flat, like maybe that will take him just a little bit closer to Jedha.

He’d asked for leave from the rebellion, and he thinks his friends know he doesn’t have a plan to come back. Not a single one of them said anything. He feels guilty not bringing Chirrut or Baze with him, when they have just as much and more claim to the ashes of Jedha than he does, but he needs to be alone for this.

He doesn’t have a plan to not come back, he just doesn’t have one, currently, for returning. Right now he just wants to sit here and look at his moon for forever.

He’s not supposed to do this, but he puts the ship on auto, so that it starts to drift, and he leans back in the chair, looking at the port above him. Little bits of brown everything. Bodhi had always imagined the soul of Jedha to be brighter than this. He’d imagined it red, like the little flowers that bloomed all over the desert in spring, even though it was a desert. He imagined it glowing like kyber, he imagined it white and strong and singing like the force.

It’s just brown.

He doesn’t want to go back. “Sorry, everyone,” he says to the debris floating over his head. “I can’t.”

He doesn’t know how long he spends floating there – in a way, there’s no time in space. Looking up at the stars and the debris of this moon, he feels like nothing.

He’s a coward. He’s defected from the Empire and he’ll abandon the rebellion and he’ll – he’ll – he’ll what? He can’t stay here floating in ashes forever. Much as he wants to, surrounded by the bittersweet feeling of a lost home, he thinks his mother would back to life and kill him herself for doing that.

His ship beeps with an incoming message, light the controls up green. He reaches out and flips the switch to hear it. He wonders how long ago it was sent, but there’s no way to tell. There’s a long staticky noise and then nothing.

Bodhi sits up and peers at his control screen, but it’s impossible to tell with all the debris if there’s another ship out there. He checks the message against but its still just static. It could be nothing, it could be an accident, it could be a delayed message from the rebellion. “Is this a sign,” he says out loud to his empty ship. It predictably does not respond.

“Is that a sign?” He says again. Maybe this time Jedha hears him. He presses both hands to the front shield, then his forehead. He wants to be out there. He wants to be on Jedha. “Tell me, please.”

The debris also doesn’t answer.

“This is trickery,” he says. Does Jedha not want him to stay? “This is mean.”

He wishes he could feel the Force, if it was still here, in space. Maybe it is, he doesn’t know. But he can’t stay, he knows that now. Jedha knows that, most certainly. It welcomes him home, but nothing more. There’s no song that he can hear with his entire body, there’s no light.

He both hates and loves that Jedha can do this for him after it’s gone. He always used to think of home as a place to calm down, quiet his mind, and get some perspective. There’s nothing left and somehow that’s providing him the same peace.

This is, by Bodhi’s count, the fifth world he’s been to, and the 103th day. Almost a third of a year since he’s been home, since he’s seen his friends. He tries to keep track of the days, in a little notebook he carries around, but it’s meaningless and he knows it: a day in this world isn’t the same as the day in the last world, and possibly none of these worlds align with the time of the world he’s from.

It’s dangerous and exciting to be a traveler between worlds, but lately Bodhi’s just been lonely.

That doesn’t mean this world isn’t interesting, though. The sky is pink, which makes Bodhi feel warm all the time. He takes a picture with his camera and then tucks it carefully back in his coat – he doesn’t know if it matters, since people seem to have flying cars.

In the last world he was in, they hadn’t discovered electricity, and he’d been looked at very suspiciously for his clothing (a bomber jacket) and his camera (not even fancy, but to people who didn’t have fluorescent lighting…). It had been snowing and Bodhi was wet, and cold, and had no money to buy a room at the inn or any stew.

But Bodhi’s always been good at making friends. He tells good stories by the fire and he asks if anyone’s seen a girl who looks like him, a little shorter, with lighter brown eyes. He draws a picture for people to look at: please, she’s my sister.

No one had seen her there. In the last country, it had been snowing, soft and wet. It used to snow in the desert in the deep of winter, though it could never be called warm, even in summer. Someone lends Bodhi a cloak and he gambles his way through the rest.

He stayed there 15 days, doing whatever needs doing: sewing, hunting, taking care of horses. Like with every new world, he learns something new.

This world, he’s immediately stopped by the flying cars and the tall buildings. One man zips by on a motorcycle, hovering in the air, and Bodhi is so envious he stands on the corner for longer than he should, taking it all in. Everything is so sleek and shiny and white, he can barely stand to look at it. Maybe that’s why everyone is wearing sunglasses.

“Are you one of those retros?” Someone asks.

Bodhi frowns. “What?”

The woman asking has neon green eyes and blue hair and a huge grin. “Oh, you totally must be! A real-life retro! You don’t even have a biometric chip, do you?”

Bodhi blinks at her. “I don’t even know what that is,” he says truthfully, because it doesn’t seem like she was going to care or sound an alarm or anything like that.

She gapes at him. “Wow,” she says, and something in her left eye glows. “You’re totally unchipped!”

“I think so,” Bodhi says. “I’m, uh, new in town?”

“Oh, you have got to let me pick your brain,” she says, “Can I treat you to a coffee?” and that’s how Bodhi makes a friend in this world.

It usually goes like this, honestly. By the end of their coffee (three cups), the woman, Mari, has essentially explained the entirety of this futuristic world to him. He’s told her the basics – he’s from a rural area (not really, but he thinks anything would be rural compared to this), he’s looking for his sister, and he has memory problems (he does, but it won’t affected anything here, he just says it so people won’t find him strange when he doesn’t know basic concepts). Bodhi’s showed her his camera and his watch, and she’s told him he can stay with her for a few weeks, so long as she can continue to pick his brain.

It’s an easy trade, Bodhi agrees and then spends thirty more minutes grilling her about the basics of these chips. She seems to think that there are rural communities who refuse to use any basic brain or data chips, and since Bodhi’s pretty sure he’s chipless, it’s fine if she wants to believe that’s where he’s from.

Mari is nice, but that’s part of the problem. Bodhi spends seven days with her, doing odd jobs and such. She convinces him to come along to her engineering lab, which is thrilling, but mostly he’s just sad that he knows he has to leave. This is the price he paid to follow his sister.

When the witch of time and space had asked him what he’d give, he’d said “Just about anything.” His sister was his entire life.

She’d shrugged.

“Fair enough,” she replies. She passes him a watch with long cool fingers. “This will take you to dimensions. It will follow your sister.”

“Will I be able to catch up with her?”

“Yes, but I can’t say how long it will take.”

Bodhi slips the watch onto his wrist. It doesn’t tell the time, just shows a ticking hand that goes much faster than a minute. “What is the price?”

“Your connections,” the witch replies. “You’re someone who cherishes every person you met. You will not be able to take anyone with you, or tell anyone where you’ve come from. You will make friends but be unable to truly connect, because you will be leaving their world forever in a matter of days.”

“What about the friends I have here?” Bodhi asks, too aware of Cassian standing at his back.

“That is not the price,” the witch says. Cassian reaches out and just for a second, his hand lands on Bodhi’s back, just between his shoulder blades. It calms him.

“Then I’ll pay it,” Bodhi says.

“Best be off, then,” the witch says, and vanishes. Bodhi barely has time to turn around and look Cassian in the face before the watch face glows and Bodhi’s flying, disappearing, gone.

It hurts, all of it – making friends that mean nothing, though they mean everything to Bodhi, missing Cassian – the watch has taken him back home, a few times, though it’s been 103 days by his count since. He misses them. He misses his sister.

He eventually has to leave Mari, too. He doesn’t have a chance to say goodbye, like he hasn’t had a chance to say goodbye to anyone. He’s holding a wrench and the watches glows and he says “Oh, Mari -!” and then he’s gone, the wrench he’s holding coming with him. This is why he has a habit of wearing his backpack with him everywhere. He’s left too many things behind.

He knows this kitchen. He knows that man, looking at the swirl of magic. “Cassian!”

He drops the wrench and throws himself at Cassian, who staggers back. It smells like he’s making coffee and bacon. “What was with the wrench,” Cassian says, laughing. “You wanted to take me out?”

“Never,” Bodhi says. He refuses to let go. “I missed you.”

Finn is the sweetest child ever, and Bodhi isn’t biased at all, absolutely not. Finn is absolutely perfect and can do no wrong. This is of course how Bodhi ends up reading three different fairytales to Finn at bedtime, until Cassian pads in and stares at them both. “Bo,” he says gently. “It’s way past somebody’s bedtime.”

“One more story,” Finn protests, giving Cassian a million-watt smile. Cassian tries to be stern but he ends up smiling too when faced with the full power. “Come on, Papa!”

Cassian looks at Bodhi, who shrugs. He won’t pretend this isn’t how it goes every single night Finn wants a story, because they both know it is. Bodhi ends up on the bed for hours, reading fairytales and when he runs out of those, he tells Finn silly stories about how Papa and Baba met.

Just the rest of this one,” Bodhi says, and he pats the bed. Finn bounces his feet up and down to make the little orange cat, Toaster, try to attack his feet.

Cassian laughs and settles on the other side of Finn. He presses a kiss to the top of Finn’s head. Finn snuggles down farther between them in the covers. Toaster immediately stops playing with Finn’s feet and settles on Cassian’s lap – she likes him the best, even though Bodhi named her and Finn is the one who plays with her the most.

“Okay,” Bodhi says. Cassian’s hand is warm against the back of his neck. “Where was I-”

“The castle.”

“Right, of course, the castle,” Bodhi says. “How could I forget! So, in the distance, they see a castle-”

Finn falls asleep right after they arrive at the castle. For all his talk, he’s just six and his bedtime is very early. Cassian and Bodhi sit with him a while, comfortable and content.

“You’re gonna spoil our son rotten,” Cassian says, petting the cat, but he’s smiling ear to ear.

“You like it,” Bodhi says, grinning back. Raising Finn is the best part of their lives and they both know it, and they have a good son. Despite Cassian’s worries about not knowing the first thing about parenting, despite Bodhi worrying he’d be so nervous about a child that he wouldn’t let them be free to do anything, they have a very good son.

-

Finn and Cassian are in the kitchen, and Cassian has a washcloth pressed to their son’s face. They both turn to look at Bodhi when he comes in, carrying groceries, and so Bodhi notices the black eye immediately.

“Again?” Bodhi says, putting the bags down on the counter. Cassian looks a little guilty; Finn does not. He raises his head up proud.

Bodhi takes Finn’s chin in his hand and carefully tilts his face. The black eye looks bad, this time. “Is his nose broken?”

Cassian shakes his head. “Just a black eye,” he says. “Remembered to keep his fists off.”

“Hey,” Bodhi says, because they aren’t supposed to be giving their son fighting tips. Cassian shoots him a grin and Bodhi tries really hard not to smile back, because he’s still worried about Finn.

His nose is a little bloody, but Cassian’s right, it’s not broken. Again. The knuckles on Finn’s right hand are scraped and bloody too. “Finn,” Bodhi says. Finn rolls his eyes, already knowing a lecture is coming. He probably already got one  from Cassian, too. “You can’t keep getting into fights.”

“Dad,” Finn whines. “They were picking on Ienzo!”

Finn is a good kid, which is why he only gets in fights when people are being bullies. It makes parenting very difficult, because Bodhi doesn’t want to tell him that’s bad.

Bodhi pinches the bridge of his nose. Cassian presses the washcloth back to Finn’s face, cleaning off the drying blood under his nose. “Finn,” Bodhi says gently. “You have to stop fighting. You’re getting in trouble and you’re getting hurt.”

Finn frowns and clenches his jaw; it’s a look at Bodhi knows means his son is about to be stubborn. Bodhi says he gets in from his papa. Cassian says he gets it from Bodhi. Realistically they never had a chance of having a not-stubborn son.

“You deflected from the Empire,” Finn says, “You almost died like a billion times.”

Another part of the hard parenting this is that Cassian and Bodhi had done far more reckless, dangerous, and stupid shit that Finn has, and Finn knows it. It’s really hard to not feel exactly like a hypocrite when Finn’s arguing against him. Boy should be a lawyer.

“Hey,” Bodhi objects weakly. He didn’t almost die a billion times. “That wasn’t a reckless decision!”

Finn tilts his head. “Okay, but the others ones totally were,” he grins.

Cassian lets out a laugh, the washcloth falling from Finn’s face. It’s clean of blood now. “He has a point, love.”

Bodhi loves them both so much. He can’t stay mad at Finn, and Finn knows it, too, or he wouldn’t be grinning so much.

“Okay,” Bodhi says, relenting. He isn’t fooling anyone, his husband and his son know him too well. They all know he’s really only upset because he doesn’t like to see Finn hurt. They all know that Finn doesn’t pick fights or start them for the hell of it, and Bodhi is proud of Finn for standing up for his friends. “It’s very good of you to stand up for your friends. Please try to use your words so that I don’t have to see you hurt again.”

“Okay,” Finn says.

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

“Really!”

“Bodhi,” Cassian interjects, smiling. Bodhi smiles back this time, letting himself be happy with his family.

“I just don’t want a repeat of his broken nose!”

“It’s just a black eye, Dad,” Finn says, sliding off the stool and throwing his arms around Bodhi. Over his head, Cassian gives them both a soft smile.

“I love you,” Bodhi says, pressing a kiss to the top of Finn’s head. He’s getting tall, Bodhi hates it and loves it.

Bodhi and butterflies, for @bodhirookweek 2018’s Day 6 prompt : Recovery.

— Courage by Robert William Service

Bokan was nothing like him, Bodhi thought, despite their matching physical traits, it seemed they were parallel yet always in opposition. Bokan was never anything but himself entirely, brash and harsh where Bodhi was quiet, overcautious. His brother was strong, brave even. Something Bodhi never could imagine himself becoming. 

(Bodhi shuts his eyes and all he can picture is crumbling sand, the waves of people racing away from the widening chasm of his home, shuddering at the memory. If Bokan had been the one, if he’d known about the kyber and the planet killer first, maybe he could have done more. He would have tried, at least. Bokan would have fought and died for Jedha, the way Bodhi knows he should have.)

Bodhi stares at his twin, across the berth of the ship, and can’t think of a single defense. There isn’t a single sentence he could string together that would make the shame fade from his brother’s eyes, the anger and loss still heavy in his own heart. 

Unable to bear the quiet, the roar of hyperspace all too similar to… he lets the memory fracture, like all his others, burying it deep. Bodhi shakes his head, swallowing hard as he averts his eyes to his own hands, clearing his throat.

“Get some rest,” Bodhi tries, not looking back to catch Bokan’s expression. He turns and heads up to the cockpit, where he belongs, where he’d taken naive refuge for years. It was all he was good for still.