reckless.

          bodhi  gives  a  jerky  nod  in  the  affirmative,  even  if  he  isn’t  sure  he  is  all  right.  he  doesn’t  know  what  bor  gullet  is  -  was?  -  exactly,  but  he  knows  what  it  did.  what  it  was  meant  to  do.  his  fingers  shake  in  her  grasp  -  a  gentle,  continuous  tremor,  one  that  hasn’t  stopped  since  he  came  back  to  himself  in  that  cell.  bodhi  hadn’t  truly  noticed  it  until  now,  with  her  hands  holding  to  his  one.  “yeah,”  he  replies,  looking  at  her  for  a  long,  quiet  moment.  what  did  it  take?  he  doesn’t  know,  yet.  everything,  maybe,  if  his  memories  keep  eroding  like  they  already  have.  or  maybe  just  clarity.

          “it  was  -  meant  to  …  check.  see  my  mind,  my  memories  make  -  make  sure  i  wasn’t  lying,  see  if  i  was  telling  the  truth,  but  it  -  saw  gerrera  said  it  takes  peoples  minds.  it  was  in  -  in  my  thoughts,  and  now  it’s  …  they  aren’t  -  right.”  there’s  something  unforgettably  wrong  about  something  other  than  himself  seeing  his  mind  -  his  memories  -  the  quiet  moments  and  the  frightful  ones,  and  leaving  pieces  of  itself  behind.

IT’S NOT THE SAW SHE KNEW,   but it sounds like something the saw he’d become would do.   on wrea he’d been angry and bitter and ready to spit fire at anyone who’d looked at him like they might betray him one day—she has no doubt that he’d arm himself with something that could reveal a person’s truths whether they’re willing or not and there’s nowhere to hide in your own mind.   not really.

it’s not guilt that creeps up the back of her throat.   she’s not sure what it is, acidic and upsetting where it settles under he tongue.   saw is the one to blame for bodhi sitting in front of her the way he is now, but he’s not alone in his guilt.   galen did this, too.   the empire.   the rebels.   he’s another victim of something bigger than himself that reached down into the darks of obscurity to pull him into a battle he didn’t need to fight and now he’s paying for it more than most would, more than those higher in rank than him ever would.   it’s not fair.

      Cassian vaguely remember reading on a file, a lifetime ago. Jyn’s father had tried to be a farmer, that hadn’t worked out either, had it? There was no running away, there was no hiding, because there was no place in the galaxy untouched by the Empire, whatever free worlds still existed were running on borrowed time. 

      “I have no idea how farming works,” he let out a chuckle, then it tainted as a thought sunk into his brain. He really didn’t know much of anything other than being a soldier, a spy. All his life, that was all he did with it. He had no stories about a father teaching him how to run the family business, of getting in trouble at school, of playing with other kids, being taught how to run the family business. His family business had been war, and all he was thought circled around it. “I could fix droids,” he ventured, more as a challenge to his own thoughts than an actual proposition. “I’m really good at it.” No one taught him that, that one he got on his own.

MORE DISTANCE BETWEEN THEM AND THEIR PAST   and she might have actually laughed.   the wound was still too raw to find it funny now, but sometime, looking back, it might actually be.   it was ironic, as if her story came full circle to this moment somehow, and she half-wondered, as she often did, if she would have found her way to this point even if she hadn’t made the choices she had.   was this inevitable?   if she hadn’t lied and promised she could fix a droid to gain passage on a ship, would she be standing here today?

what point really made the difference?

it begged the question of what kind of impact the decisions she made now would have further down the road.   she’d done her part, played the role they’d demanded of her, and she could go far more easily than she could stay.   for once someone hadn’t lied to her: she could go.   she had her freedom.   he could go, too, but she knew that even with all he’d given them already he wasn’t done with the fight.   he hadn’t yet found his freedom, if he ever would.   perhaps that was the point of death:   an honourable way out.