Archive of Our Own

“Would you…” He stopped. His eyes closed, and he let out a breath, long and slow. His shoulders rolled inward. Tight. “Would...would it help if you talked about him?”

Her lip curled. He was being nice. She knew that. And he was a nice man, a good man. A brave man. She was used to something else, and even now, after everything, there were learned responses. Expectations.

“Would it help you?”

Not the thing she would’ve thought she’d say. She did that a lot: act (or, in this case, speak) before her brain had caught up. There was more to it now, of course. A shift that made her at once uneasy and elated.

Bodhi’s eyes snapped up to hers. They were very wide. His breathing ratcheted up, for half a moment.

There was a long pause.

“It could be both.”

All of her memories of him - save the one, the most recent, and even that was a dark, shifting thing - were hazy. Getting hazier, over the years, glazed and shadowy, and running at one end into other sets.

There were things that were bright and clear -- the glow of a lamp, the heat of a stove, her mother’s voice, a glance, a clipped bit of laughter. Damp earth molding around her knees and elbows, scrub grass scratching at her cheek, the smell of the rain and, on a breeze, the sea. Matted hair. She thought she could recall the way he smelled. But she was losing that.

It all had gotten tied up, at some point, with what had come after. She had dreams where the man in white and his polished-ash retinue melted into an ordinary patrol, the first she’d had a hand in killing. Her father hugged her, and then Saw closed his hand over her shoulder. His mouth moved. She couldn’t make out the words.

He’d found her in a bunker, and then he’d left her in one. It was kind of poetic, if she thought about it. She didn’t like poetry all that much.

My beloved…

She looked at him. He was sitting on a crate, his back to the wall, hands balled and resting on his thighs. Alliance colors suited him. Instructions came over the PA. They didn’t apply to him, but he jolted a bit, anyway, and peered out into the hangar bay.

She shrugged. “I’m not sure I know how.” She’d lined up a bunch of canned responses over the years -- used one of them the first time she and Cassian had spoken -- but none of them were right, now. It was interesting to her that the reason for that wasn’t because it was a fresh manipulation, but because it wasn’t a manipulation at all.

Bodhi nodded. It was a rapid, jerky movement. His fists opened a bit, then closed again.

What had Saw done to him? She wasn’t sure (it had been a long time since she’d been privy to his methods), and he hadn’t said. There was a pretty good chance that, one day, she’d go ahead and blurt out the question, at what would probably be the exact wrong moment. She hoped she could get a good enough handle on things to avoid that.

“I understand. I think.”

Silence, again, for a time. She didn’t have much longer until she had to go. She had a feeling he didn’t, either.

“Maybe, um,” he began. His eyes were fixed on the small square of floor between them. “Maybe I could, though?”

Why was she here? Why did she stay? They’d kept their end of the bargain. She hadn’t expected them to -- had to take the chance, of course, because she was out of options, but really -- and then they had. After the Death Star had fallen, they’d taken her aside, and said: you did as we asked, and more. You can leave, if you’d like. We’ll provision you.

She remembered the look in his eyes. She thought it might be false, because it was dark and there was distance. But in one of the burned-retina bursts, it was there, that flash of recognition, right before the bombs struck.

Sometimes, her body vibrated and her skin itched. She saw ships, unattended, and she wondered how much time she’d have. She wondered how far she’d get. And when on assignment, there were times she glanced at the world around her and saw a sea of exits. Opportunities, everywhere, to run and hide. It was automatic. She’d been assuming she’d wind up alone at the end of the day for many, many years.

She knew why it was different this time. Of course she knew. Something had stopped aching.

“It’s your soul,” Chirrut had said.

Baze had tilted his head back, shaken it, and sighed.

“Sounds silly,” she’d said.

Baze had made a sound low in his throat. “That’s because it is.”

“Baze Malbus, the Force is…”

“...making you senile.”

She’d almost smiled. Chirrut had taken her hand.

“It’s brighter, louder. You’ve started listening, haven’t you?”

Maybe.

Wherever you are…

She shifted. It had been good to make the connection. Thrilling, really. She had stale recollections; he had current ones. En route to Eadu, she’d wanted to pry his brain open.

Well, things had happened, and a few months had passed, and now her stomach was contracting. Familiar feeling. It had served her well in the dark, barren spaces that bridged her past and her present.

I have so much to tell you.

She wanted to hear it. And also, she didn’t. She had things to do.

It came to her in the middle of the night and only, of course, when she was with him. An anxious tension, a trickle of guilt. K-2’s voice echoing in her skull.

Because she didn’t like it, and because she was stubborn, she clutched his hand -- spread out, past her head -- more tightly, and pressed herself back into him, and pushed her foot between his calves, so she could entwine their legs. She laid with the useless fire in her belly and breathed in the way he felt against her until the thoughts ran up against a bulwark and receded.

She didn’t ever sleep with people on the regular, and there was something absurd about the fact she was doing it with a man who’d been ordered to kill her father.

Moments drifted up through the haze. Galen’s hand in Lyra’s hair. Her leaning toward him at the table, and him leaning back. Open faces. Her head on his shoulder, both of their eyes closed.

Her going back for him.

I am my mother, she’d been thinking lately.

She didn’t know how she felt about that. But she was keen to keep going back to and for Cassian, either way. He certainly did it when it came to her. And she didn't want to stop. She didn't want to forget his skin.

She’d talk to him about it some day. Probably.

...I hope you’re happy.

She glanced down at her chrono. There was movement, in the hangar. The skin along her scalp prickled.

There was something in her chest, something hard and heavy, and it tugged at her. She remembered darkness. The handle of a knife, knotting her palm, and the weight of a blaster at her hip. Days. Days. Every single one was crisp, perfectly preserved in her mind, panic and hunger and despair, but the time spent with her actual father was beveled and distorted.

She didn’t bring it up, ever. She changed the subject when other people did.

Bodhi leaned forward. He had a lot to process still, she figured. It wouldn’t hurt to help him out a little.

“Yeah, sure.” And then, quicker than she could stop it: “I’d like that.”