#rogue three

They gave their all to Scarif and the Rebellion. Their blood, their sweat, their tears.

Their friends.

Their hope.

And they would have given their lives too, but whether by the power of the force or tremendous stormtrooper and Imperial error, they survive. Barely. And they run.

Scarif takes nearly all they have, but not their hope for life; something imperfect and quiet, but theirs. The idea doesn’t gel at once, nor for all of them for some time. All they know once Bodhi is in the pilot’s seat and Jyn is inputting her hyperdrive calculations into the nav system is that they need to be away before there is nothing left of them but ash and regret.

Later on, they can debate morals and dedication; what makes a coward and what makes a survivor. Right now, they just want to live.

None of them are medics and the transport they steal has a medkit the size of a mouse droid. They nearly miss Cassian’s internal bleeding until it’s too late, and Bodhi and Jyn have to barter their skills for two weeks to pay for the treatment that pulls him past critical. Bacta tanks aren’t available so he has to heal the old fashion way but once he can walk, they’re gone again.

Healing is ugly and slow and not just physically. Jyn at least, had given up on ever being entirely healed or whole, and it takes months of limping from far-flung outpost to abandoned way station before they feel like they’ve outrun the war. When word reaches them that the Death Star explodes, they know. 

Someone was listening after all.

Jyn can barely talk, but she feels more than she can ever remember feeling. Happiness, anger, grief, sorrow; she feels it all and it makes her unbalanced and her head light. Cassian seems to go through the same, though he’s hardly one for talking about his feelings.

Instead, he keeps appearing where she is; at her elbow when she brings her head up from the data processor she’s contracted to fix, the tool she needs in hand; at her back and ready to clean up the mess she makes when she loses her temper and tells a persistent small world baron to back off and go pound sand; the last face she sees at night when he searches her out to ensure she has returned to her bunk before he lets himself turn in as well. He won’t let Bodhi or Jyn help him, so he works harder at helping them. She wishes on more than one occasion he would talk about it so she could talk about it, but he’s not there yet and he doesn’t have to be.

She can wait.

Bodhi doesn’t hide any of what he feels and it is a relief to have that. He talks constantly anyways, but now she really listens and he opens up. Puns and jokes are peppered amongst memories: the ruins he played on as a child, the time when he knew that he wanted to be a fighter pilot, the family he knows he will never see again. When she finds him, cheeks tear-streaked in relief and mourning in the early morning hours of the first day of knowing, she feels the heat of her own tears on her face; feels her own grief cloud her vision, and finds herself a home in his arms.

They don’t let themselves stop for longer than a week planet-side at a time, offering their work as cargo transport and mechanics to keep them flying. Bodhi, as it turns out, is a ridiculously good gambler, something which pads their pockets nicely until some Pyke Syndicate lackeys take a dislike to them and start asking too many questions. By the time they find any answers, if they find any, Cassian, Bodhi, and Jyn have long since gone.

A year passes that way, drifting, and Cassian feels like he could live this way forever. The two people he has come to know as home are there; they find work to keep them busy. Trouble rubs elbows with them more than he would like, but it’s not been the kind that has stuck. It’s peaceful and nothing like what he truly deserves for the life he’s lead but he clings to it. If not for their ship being a bucket of bolts, maybe they could go on past charted space and truly leave their ghosts behind but eventually, she really does spring a serious enough leak to ground them.