#jyncassianbodhi

“Jyn,” Cassian admonishes, an unduly harsh note to his voice. The tone is one that always means trouble, and Jyn whirls around, eyes flashing.

“No, no, it’s okay,” Bodhi pants. They’re both scared. They’re both so scared that it’s making them snap at the tiniest things and that’s just making them angry and scared and, Force, that’s the last thing they need. “She’s right. I can go faster.”

It’s a brazen lie, and the fact that neither of them seem to catch it should tell him just how bad this is. Bodhi does his best to pick up the pace anyway. Forcing his legs to push against the ground, to grit his teeth past the surging agony.

He barely makes it to the end next corridor they cut down before his vision goes gray at the edges and his knees buckle under him.

“Bodhi!” he hears his name in stereo, because suddenly Jyn is there at his other side, helping Cassian lift him back up.  A hand cups his face, too large to be Jyn’s. But it’s her face swims into his vision first. Under the too-saturated station lights she looks pale. The unaffected mask of sheer grit that she oftens wears is gone. Her eyes wide, emotions cracked wide.

He hasn’t seen her look like this since Galen died.

“M’okay,” he slurs. It’s another lie. And yet again, he’s not called on it. He lets himself be dragged this time, his feet unable to stay under him. “What… what kind of idiot fires a blaster in a station anyway?” he attempts to joke. “Who’s training these stormtroopers?”

Neither Jyn nor Cassian laugh.

This was supposed to be a simple mission. It’s always the simple ones that bite them in the ass. They were supposed to make contact with with informants on the Arah station, get the data package, and ship out. Alerting the station’s stormtroopers had not been part of the plan. The shuttle getting seized had not been part of the plan. Neither had getting shot.

Bodhi’s back hits the cold wall, making him jump and his entire body seize up. He blinks the stars from his vision. They’ve reached the escape pods. Bodhi is propped up beside the hatch, Cassian’s hand at his chest the only thing holding him up at this point. He and Jyn are slicing into the control panel, muttering to each other in tense, clipped voices that Bodhi can’t quite make out. His head is throbbing. Everything hurts.

He trusts they can do it. It barely even occurs to Bodhi that somehow they can’t. Between the two of them, they’ll override the docking locks and mask their life signatures from the station’s control room. The two of them are the best slicers Bodhi knows, and probably the most skilled survivalists he’s ever heard of. They’ve gotten through Jedha. Scarif. Yavin IV. They’ve survived the Death Star - three times. Survived an entire battalion of troopers. What’s one squad?

But the pounding of armored boots are echoing ever closer. The distorted sound of trooper comms getting clearer. And Bodhi… he risks a glance down at his abdomen, and gently pulls his hand away from the blaster wound. It doesn’t bleed, of course, but it’s… seeping. The smell of burnt flesh wafts up to him, and Bodhi fights not to gag. Trying to figure out if the shot hit anything vital doesn’t help.

Right.

Bodhi pulls his feet back under him, and chokes back a scream as he hauls himself upright. He gently grasps Cassian’s wrist. His fingers twitch, absentmindedly delving under the sleeve of the spy’s jacket, tracing tendons and delicate bones. He savors every second of the fleeting touch. And then he slowly, painfully shuffles closer. “How’s it going?” he asks.

“Nearly done,” Cassian tells him. There’s a waver under the gentle answer. Something more than adrenaline. Something deeper and far more unsettling.

“The last thing is the coupling override,” Jyn clarifies. “Just a few more seconds. Then we’re out of here. There’s got to be a medkit in this thing.”

They don’t have a few more seconds. And Bodhi doubts an emergency medkit in one of these things can… well.

“Good,” he says quietly. His hand sticks as he pulls it away from the wound.

And he pushes Jyn and Cassian through the open hatch.

Their dismayed shouts are cut off as the door slides shut behind them with a pressurized hiss. Jyn is fast, she’s always been, almost as fast as Chirrut, and nearly gets a hand around the hatch before it locks. “Bodhi!” her cry is muffled through the glass.

“What are you doing?!” Cassian all but screams. “Open the door. Bodhi!” Bodhi ignores them. Ignores them pounding at the hatch, shouting his name. He punches commands into the control panel, thankful that the complicated slicing has already been taken care of. As usual, Jyn and Cassian have done all the hard work. They’ve pulled their own weight and his along with them, literally and figuratively. Just like they always have. But Bodhi can do this, at least.

Galen had once told him that if he were brave enough, he could always do the right thing. That if he listened to what his heart told him, it would never lead him wrong. So Bodhi had defected. He’d stared death and fear in the face and he’d lived. And then what?

He’d wasted it. He’d forgotten Galen’s advice.

He’d wasted so much time. Bodhi had spent so long being afraid and now… for what? There were no chances left, except this one.

He lifts his eyes again. Meets Jyn’s stricken gaze through the glass. (He’s doing this to her. He’s making her watch as her family leaves her. Again.) Meets Cassian’s anguished eyes. (Cassian knows. He knows all too well about tough choices. About giving it all for something.)

“I love you,” he tells them.

The fear he’s been clinging to isn’t here now. Because there’s no time for them to reject him. There’s actually a twisted satisfaction in watching their expressions go slack; in watching them read his lips; in watching the realization wash over them.

Bodhi smiles. It hurts. It feels like he can’t breathe. “I love you both so much.” His shaking fingers find the manual eject key. “Take care of each other.” He presses it.

The blast doors slam across the viewport, breaking off their muffled screams of his name almost before they reach Bodhi’s ears. He hears the pod’s engines fire, the rush of air as it’s shot from the station to safety.

And then there’s only silence. Silence, and Bodhi’s harsh, tormented gasps. Silence and the sound of approaching stormtroopers.

Bodhi draws himself up, a ruthlessly suppressed sob in his throat, and limps back the way they came. If he’s doing this, he’s going to give Jyn and Cassian every spare moment he can.

May the Force protect them, even if Bodhi has to give his last breath for it.

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