Chapter Text
Cassian thinks he doesn’t have anxiety because he understands that the worst-case scenario is often inevitable. People die, things are destroyed. Someday, this line of work will kill him, likely messily. He accepts that, and the concern he probably should feel never surfaces. Cassian is not sure if this makes him brave or stupid. K has leaned towards ‘realistic’ for describing him, but K’s version of reality is hopelessly pessimistic.
Bodhi, however, struggles with fear. His hands shake when his nerves are tested, and he stumbles over his words when he is scared. He hasn’t passed out, but it has been close, at times. He has an alarming tendency to turn gray when the warning signals sound, and he squeaks when someone fires a blaster and he wasn’t expecting it.
Cassian’s not quite sure how to react to that. He knows how to deal with Jyn; she has the same lack of concern he does, although she expresses it with rather more outbursts and anger than Cassian is comfortable with – he has never been all that at ease with displays of any kind of emotion. Jyn understands no-win scenarios, she understands debt. She knows that her clock is running out, the same as Cassian does.
Chirrut, too, seems to not struggle with his mind and his compulsive thoughts eating him – he surrenders to the flow, lets the Force and the universe dictate his path. He is more optimistic than the rest of them; he trusts that the balance will be restored. Cassian can understand being in the moment, although Chirrut’s faith is beyond him. Baze seems to think the same. Cassian thinks that Baze could ultimately care less what happens to the universe – because that’s not the universe he lives in, he lives in the universe that is Chirrut instead. Any anxiety he seems to feel is directed towards Chirrut – any time anything goes wrong, like it always does, Baze turns to him first. Chirrut before the mission, and before any of the others – it’s something that, maybe, in another life, Cassian himself would do for someone, but this is not a universe where that could be possible.
Bodhi’s blatant displays of fear, however, baffle him. Cassian has spent his entire life trying to suppress any visible emotion, because his worries and anxieties won’t help him win this war. He would have assumed that Bodhi, who chose to take on the burden of betraying the Empire that almost led to his death, would have a better poker face than he actually does. But no, Bodhi has fundamentally no ability to do that.
Chirrut, Baze, Jyn – they make sense to him. Bodhi makes very, very little. Cassian likes to blame that for the interest at all.
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It’s not just fear that Bodhi is more comfortable expressing, Cassian realizes, during their recovery. They have made it back to base – his ribs cracked, Jyn’s wounds bleeding. She’s otherwise okay, spitefire mad that they make her stay there overnight. Chirrut keeps pissing off the nurses by refusing to let them move Baze, whose side keeps dripping blood, out of his sight.
Bodhi is the most severely injured – hand and foot damaged beyond repair from the grenade – a grenade! – that he threw out of the back of the ship before it exploded; the doctors tell them he’ll have to have them amputated and replaced. His hair’s shaved, in order to access the burns along the side of his face. His dark eyes are much larger without his mane of black hair, and it makes Cassian uncomfortable, uneasy in his skin. Bodhi looks like something he should be protecting, in a way the others don’t, and he can’t, not when it hurts for him to breathe and the doctors won’t tell him where they put his blaster.
Cassian is used to recovering stoically. His life has been spent at war; he enlisted when he was nine. He is very accustomed to the idea that no one cares for him – drop the Captain, and Cassian is just another lonely man on a hospital bed. It stays that way until he can get to his feet and pick up the blaster; his rule of thumb is that his worth is based on what he does, not who he is.
Bodhi, however, more injured than he is, fusses over him – he suspects it’s because Baze and Chirrut have got each other covered, thank you very much, and Jyn refused to stay in the hospital wing at all. She caught the first flight out, going to get the mythical Obi-Wan Kenobi and Princess Leia. She’s not good at sitting still; Cassian doesn’t begrudge her for taking off.
But he also kind of does, because it means that Bodhi has no one to direct his compassionate anxiety at except for Cassian himself. He demands to be near him – Cassian initially thought it was because Bodhi didn’t want to be alone, but he’s come to realize that it’s more that Bodhi seems to think that Cassian will die without someone keeping an eye on him. Since K was killed and Cassian hasn’t uploaded the backup into a new body, Bodhi has designated himself as Cassian’s keeper.
Cassian is more befuddled than irritated. Why on earth would anyone want to look after him? He’s an adult, at the bare minimum. He’s a spy, he’s a killer, he’s a rebel – there are lots of reasons of why he doesn’t need someone to take care of him. Bodhi doesn’t seem to think that way – he shares his fruit cups (which Cassian has never gotten while in the hospital wing; he thinks that everyone’s a little soft for Bodhi, with his big eyes and stutter), he plays card games with his one hand, he tells Cassian stories from Jedha, when he was small.
Cassian doesn’t remember his family too well. His father was killed in a protest when he was seven, his mother died by accident, when a Storm Trooper shot her instead of the defector they were aiming for, when he was nine, just before he joined. He thinks his mother liked to put red dye in on top of her dark hair, giving it a ruby glow when she stepped in the sun, and he’s fairly sure his father smoked. It’s all conjecture, based on the faded flashes of images that linger just out of reach. He thinks he doesn’t have any actual memories; just the memories of what he thinks was possible.
Bodhi had a brother, Bokan, who he hasn’t seen in years – Bokan hopped on a ship out of the system, and only occasionally writes. He probably thinks Bodhi is dead, he says bitterly. He had two mothers – his father passed away when he was very small, and his mother ended up with their neighbor, a woman called Tella, that Bodhi always called mama. His ammi had a little topaz in her nose, and unusually pale gray eyes that Bokan got, and thick black hair that fell to her knees – she always held it back in a long braid, tied off with an emerald-green ribbon. His mama was plump, and loved bright colors, particularly pink, and could only cook soup, as she would burn anything else. Bodhi has a sad little smile when he talks about his childhood, which seems to be peaceful, and happy. His ammi died from a bout of flu years ago, and his mama likely died when Jedha burned.
Cassian is not good with feelings. He always figured he would die at war, would never have a reason to be in touch with his emotions. He does not feel much fear any more, but he sometimes feels like that means he gave up joy, grief, and hope as well. He feels flat, like a polished plate; things just seem to slide off of him. Nothing has really stuck before, but Bodhi’s waves of feelings scratch away the gloss, seep into the cracks left behind.
He can feel the secondhand emotion when Bodhi talks, or thinks – everything pours out of him, dripping off the sides of his bed, splashing down the hall. To talk to Bodhi is to be hit with a wave of feelings, and Cassian wonders how on earth he could have survived this long, being as easy to read as he is. Cassian’s universe has always punished love, always struck those who express hope, smacked down joy – maybe this is why Bodhi is lacking limbs, almost died in fleeing a planet they should have all perished on. That thought makes something deep in Cassian’s chest – the heart he long assumed was frozen, perhaps – clench up, tie itself into a tangle. He can almost feel his veins warming underneath his skin, a statue learning to breathe.
He gets out of the hospital before Bodhi does. When they’re discharging him, they’re measuring the inside of Bodhi’s arm, for the prosthetic he’ll need from here on out. When Cassian comes to say goodbye, he intends it as that – he’s been out of the fight for too long, they have to get ready to mount an attack on the Death Star itself, and there’s always something Cassian should be doing. But instead of saying that, he gets distracted by Bodhi’s smile, tight as it is with pain, and promises to keep visiting.
So he cannot leave. Bodhi’s relief is like a balm; it spreads over his wounds and eases something thin and brittle within him.
Chirrut, when Cassian goes to visit him, seems to sense this emotional turmoil. Glee is lively in his voice when he inquires after Bodhi, like the fact that Cassian’s been hit with the tsunami of emotion that is Bodhi is hysterical. Baze just seems like this is to be expected, as if Chirrut cannot let Cassian have his crisis in peace.
Cassian wonders, not for the first time, how long they’ve known each other. Years, he thinks. Must be nice, to have someone who stands by you like that. He knows Baze would have rather died on Scarif than leave Chirruit behind, that Chirrut would do the same. He wonders what that feels like, that level of devotion, of trust, of love.
He doesn’t ask them what it’s like. Baze and Chirrut’s love is a quiet one, as unending as the tides or the dance of the stars. It’s soft, it’s welcoming, it exists in a way that cannot be explained nor quantified, only admired.
---
Cassian tries to not think about dying.
It’s not useful, first of all. He knows his death is waiting for him, as it waits for everyone. His has always been close, reaching out for him with pale and icy hands. He keeps dodging the grasps; he’s not sure he can keep doing it much longer. Scarif was supposed to be his last stand; every day when he gasps awake, he’s amazed all over again that he gets to see the sunlight. He has no idea what could come after, if anything – the Jedi can leave remnants of themselves behind, drifting in the Force. Cassian’s not sure if he would want that, or if he wants everything to cease, fade to black, never to come back again. All the options are bad, in his opinion, so he tried to avoid it.
Bodhi thinks about dying. It’s a spiritual thing for him. Cassian has found him praying, before, murmuring to a god that Cassian has never heard of to keep his ammi and mama in peace and love. He was not that upset to find his hair gone when he awoke, after Scarif; he says that his religion dictates that the hair be cut after great loss, anyway. He wears a necklace, underneath his shirt, with a golden symbol of a chalice on it, an eternal flame alight.
He looks startled, when Cassian quietly inquires if he really thinks his ammi and mama are waiting, somewhere, for him, and shrugs. “Not sure,” he says. The stutter’s gone when they talk now, something that makes Cassian warmer inside than it should. “I just…I mean, everyone dies. Billions and billions have gone before. They haven’t complained, have they? So I can’t assume it’s bad. I hope I see ammi and mama, though, somewhere in the stars. There’s a lot I never got to tell them.”
Cassian purses his lips. “So if you aren’t that concerned with death…why on earth were you so afraid before Scarif?”
Bodhi snorts. “I was terrified, first of all, Cassian. Death is still an unknown; there’s a lot of life I haven’t had. Experiences I want, before I go into the black.”
“Like what?”
Bodhi thinks. His hair is growing back, a thick black fuzz along the curve of his scalp. The scarring is warped, pink, creeps down his neck – like the fingers of the reaper that Cassian can feel leaning over his shoulder. “Well,” he says finally, “I’d like to fall in love, once. I’d like to fly an X-wing – I never passed the tests. Mama had cousins on another planet – Yanda, I think; I want to visit them. I would have once said I’d like to go to the beach, but I think I’m a little over those, after Scarif.” He tilts his head, smiles at Cassian – who, for the moment, is a little touched by the purity that is Bodhi, plain and simple. “What about you?”
Cassian ponders it for a moment. “Well, I’d like to end this war-“ he starts, but Bodhi’s steely eyes stop him. Without the war then. Without the war, who is he? “I have no idea,” he says, honestly. “Go back to Fest? Repair K2, definitely. Uh…I guess relearn to dance, maybe.”
“You can dance?”
Cassian, feeling foolish, lifts his arms, stamps his foot, and twirls. He feels his jacket lift away from his body, momentarily feels the same giddiness that is one of those ghost memories from his faded childhood. “Yeah. My mother was a dance instructor. She taught me some.”
Bodhi is staring at him in wonderment, a smile playing at the edges of his mouth. “You should teach me, when I’m well,” he says. “I can’t dance, but then again, I’ve never tried.”
“I don’t know that much,” Cassian protests, feeling a hot flush snake up his neck. “And I hardly remember what I do know.”
Bodhi shrugs – an awkward, lopsided motion, since his left arm is gone. “You know more than me,” he replies, “And I’m sure that your body remembers. We can learn together! Quick, tell the nurse that’s my new physical therapy.”
Cassian shocks himself by laughing, a strained noise that he’s sure sounds more like he’s choking than happy. Bodhi doesn’t seem alarmed – he just grins at Cassian, teeth a pale yellow that speaks to too much caff, eyes bright and only slightly glazed with pain. His odd necklace glitters on his chest, and Cassian just takes in heartbeat that is that sight, the absolute wonder of someone being alive when they should not be – the miracle of life, the bizarreness of existence.
For a moment, Cassian wonders if he’s found something to believe in. It’s a moment of teetering transcendentalism, staring into the void of what Cassian could have been, what he could still be. It’s more than Cassian has let himself feel since he was nine, when his mother’s blood mixed with the snow of Fest and he knew that there was no one else to ever care about Cassian-without-the-Captian ever again. It’s terrifying, hovering on the edge like that; he’s not sure what he’ll find if he jumps.
He shakes himself out of it as a nurse bustles in, glaring at Cassian for getting Bodhi’s heart rate up. He steps to the side as the nurse fusses over Bodhi, but Bodhi’s eyes follow him - dark, compassionate, anxious.
Cassian’s not sure what to think, besides – maybe. Maybe this okay.