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There was only one secret in the relationship that Jyn and Cassian had managed to cobble together over the past three years.
Bodhi Rook.
She'd only spoken of him once, about five months after Cassian found her.
He'd found her, sobbing, on the floor of her room. Her had hands clutched a crumpled photograph -- a younger, smiling Jyn, and a thin, brown-skinned boy with his arm around her.
The boy was Bodhi Rook, Jyn had said, tears trailing down her face. And today was the first year's anniversary of his death.
(Cassian still didn't know the nature of her relationship with Bodhi Rook. It drove him crazy sometimes, the wondering.)
(Were they friends? Enemies?)
(Had she loved him?)
That thought made Cassian feel dark and cold, like something rotten was pooling in his gut. He didn't like feeling jealous of a dead man.
( He was jealous)
He moved on with his life. Jyn stayed and fought by his side, the only one besides Kay who had ever bothered to stay with him.
(It hurt, sometimes, being able to hear the thoughts of other people around him. People's thoughts were their innermost truths, and most truths were ugly, mean-spirited things.)
(It was Oscar Wilde, who'd understood it best, when he said that the truth was rarely pure and never simple.)
But he had Jyn, and he had Kay -- and it was easier, not knowing what they truly thought of him.
(Sometimes he wondered if Jyn might not find her eyes constantly drawn to him in the same way his were to her.)
(But then he remembered Bodhi Rook , and he forced himself to step away.)
(He refused to hurt Jyn in that way.)
When Draven gave him the call about a powered attack on a chemical research lab, he came and he sat through the briefing with the other unit leaders.
When Draven showed them the blurry image of the bomber, caught on an ATM's security camera, Cassian's heart skipped a beat.
It was the boy from Jyn's photograph -- older, wearier, his face lined and worn, but still the same.
After all these years, they had found Bodhi Rook.
-------------
Jyn Erso couldn’t believe what was happening. The thoughts flew through her head faster than she could process. The fire in her veins sparked erratically, in response to her tangled emotions.
Bodhi is alive.
(That was good. That was so, so very good; that her best friend, her brother , who she had long assumed dead, was in fact alive.)
Bodhi is a traitor .
(That was not good. When Jyn had met Bodhi -- when she was fourteen and he was thirteen and a half -- he had been timid and shy, disinclined to talk to anyone. By the time he died, he was sixteen years old; sure of himself, if not quite confident, but still gentle. Bodhi Rook was the last man she would have expected to set off a bomb for thesake of destruction.)
Bodhi is a bastard.
(He had to be, to have been alive all this time and not tell her.)
“Did he have powers?” Kay asked suddenly, his golden-eyed gaze still far away, connected to the Mainframe.
“What?”
“Bodhi Rook. What were his powers?”
“He didn’t have any,” Jyn responded. Bodhi had never been anything like her, or the other powered individuals Saw had picked up over the years.
(She never knew why Saw had kept Bodhi around, if he didn’t have powers. On her more charitable days, Jyn liked to pretend that Saw had wanted her to have a friend.)
(On her less charitable days, Jyn thought that Saw just didn’t want to go through the hassle of hiding a body.)
“That’s not possible,” Cassian said, turning his laptop to face her, pointing to a specific spot on the crime scene photos. “Look. There were corrosions at some of the steel support beams. Something ate away at the building, compromised the structural integrity to ensure it went down.”
“Probably an acid, or some form of corrosive, stored energy,” Kay’s eyes focused back on them, signalling that he was done with his perusal of the Mainframe. “But there’s no way he could have made it through security with a bomb and a vial of acid. There was a disproportionate amount of security onsite for a chem lab owned by some obscure fertilizer company.”
(“So he’s a walking, talking internet browser?” Jyn had asked, when she was first introduced to the steel-gray humanoid.
“Kay was originally programmed as a security enforcer,” Cassian replied. “He still has a most of the combat and surveillance mods installed. He invented the Mainframe when I couldn’t remove his central communication cortex. It gives him something to link to, so he doesn’t feel empty, but it's a closed system, so no one else can access it.”
Kay had turned then, and looked at her for the first time. “Jyn Erso,” he said, his voice modulated in a way that was almost human, but not quite.
“Kaytoo.”
“You are very short,” he said, in the same tone. “And annoying. I warned Cassian about the repurcussions of saving your life, but he would not listen.”)
“That’ not acid,” Jyn said, in the present. “Look there. The corrosion’s infinitesimally linear. Something cut at it, with small... blades.”
“Autonomous nanotech doesn’t exist,” Kaytoo said, as Jyn glanced at him in surprise, “it’s still experimental, and highly dangerous. Nothing controlled enough to accomplish something like this.”
“Saw used it all the time,” Jyn replied. “They were his favorite weapons. He had a supplier, in a warehouse downtown, but they disappeared years ago.”
“I found Bodhi Rook,” Cassian interjected suddenly, his eyes flying open in alarm.
(He always closed his eyes when he felt someone else's mind. He said it helped him focus.)
“Where?” Jyn asked, leaping to her feet.
( Bodhi is alive. Bodhi is a traitor. Bodhi is a bastard. )
“Outside.”
Jyn stopped, at the window. It was pouring down rain outside -- yet another gray, gloomy day -- and most of the pedestrians hurried along, hoods drawn up and umbrellas out.
One man stood, in front of the building across the street, his face turned up to the rain, his gaze fixated directly on Jyn.
He was older, now; his hair longer, tied back into a ponytail. His face was lined, and hard -- like his expression had been set into a permanent scowl.
(Bodhi had only ever smiled, when she knew him before.)
--------------------------------
The rain poured down on his head, cold and hard and wet.
He noticed, but he did not care.
There was a woman, standing in the window, with brown hair and bright green eyes that shone even in the dim light of the rainy city.
He knew her .
He knew no one. He was no one. They called him the Weapon and that’s what he was.
A man joined her -- latino, with the build and stance of an operative. The telepath, that he had felt reaching into his mind, who pulled her away from the window and out of his view.
He knew her .
There was a humanoid robot, with them in the apartment, as well, though it did not come into view. The Command had told him about these people, had told him of the dangers they posed.
They posed no danger to him. He was the greatest danger.
He knew her.
He knew no one.
I… I know her.
(Who am I)
--------------------------------------------
Hidden away inside the Command, Director Orson Krennic stoo trembling with fury.
"What do you mean, we lost him?"
"I don't know, sir," the terrified tech said, careful not to make eye contact. "The tracker in his arm is tied to its power source. He couldn't have turned it off without removing the power core, and we specifically programmed that to be unbearably painful."
"Find him!" Krennic hissed. "Find him and you had better hope to high heaven that he's undamaged, or else I will see to it that tou are held personally responsible!"
"Now, now, Director," a snakelike voice called admonishingly from the shadows. Governor Tarkin grinned evilly at Krennic as his hologram flickered to life. "There's no reason to be cross. The Weapon isn't so far from its course that we can't still see it."
"Governor," Krennic bit out through his teeth. "I wasn't aware that you would be here today. I thought you were preoccupied with that crisis in the Mediterranean."
"Lord Vader is more than capable of handling Malta in my abscenece," the snake replied. "You, however, appear to need a helping hand in all your ventures."
His long, white fingers drummed against the gray metal surface of the desk he sat at as Krennic spluttered indignantly.
"It would be such a waste, wouldn't it, if you put all this work into such a project as this just to be found unfit for command?"
"I will not fail," Krennic swore, cutting off the communication.
"Find it!" He growled at the tech, as he left.
I cannot fail.
--------------------------------------------
“They’re in his arm.”
“Nanorobots?” Jyn asked, her eyebrows raised in skepticism. “Living inside Bodhi’s arm? What is this, a comic book?”
“I’m a telepath, you're pyrokinetic,” Cassian muttered. “What does it sound like?”
“Nanobots have distinct heat signatures,” Kay continued through their comms. “Extremely concentrated; they need vast amounts of energy in an extremely condensed space. That’s the main issue with autonomous nanotech; the energy sources just aren’t enough for them to be programmed with more than a few simple lines of code without imploding.”
The warehouse where Saw used to get his nanotechnology had stood empty for years, in a part of the city where no one with good intentions ever ventured.
(They’d driven past the burnt-out remains of the house Saw had abandoned her in on the way there. Jyn had turned her eyes away and pretended she couldn’t still feel the smoke that had choked her lungs that night.)
It was still drizzling outside, the raindrops pattering the metal surface of the warehouse like a hailstorm of bullets. It was cold, and drafty, and Jyn felt Cassian shiver.
(She’d been standing close to him -- too close, closer than necessary. Her breath had hit his shoulder and the side of his neck; she could smell him, cologne and sweat and the worn leather of his jacket, cool against her cheek.)
(It was for warmth, she told herself. The fires in her veins made her body temperature that much hotter than that of normal humans.)
(Just for warmth.)
“Cass?” she asked, and she felt his back move as he took in a deep breath before he pulled away and turned to face her.
“Someone’s here. I can’t… there’s something wrong. I don’t know--"
All the fluorescent lights came on suddenly, dim, flickering. The giant crates and boxes that had loomed up in the darkness stood partially exposed now, old and disused in the half-light.
“You need t--” Kay’s voice cut out in her ear. Static replaced it, static that sounded with a faint sort of scratchy pattern.
It reminded her of something--
“Get down!” Cassian roared as he pushed her out of the way, just as the sounds of gunfire filled the warehouse. They rolled to safety behind one of the rusty old shipping containers.
Cassian closed his eyes as the sounds of gunfire continued. Some of the bullets ricocheted off his mental shield, heading back for the men who fired them.
It wasn’t enough, though. The gunfire continued unceasingly, wave after wave of bullets pelting the corroded metal of the ancient shipping container they hid behind.
The fire lept joyfully in Jyn’s veins, eager to be released, sparking wildly in anticipation of a fight.
Jyn summoned the warmth to the surface with a smile.
It had been far too long.
-----------------------------------------
He walked.
His heavy footfalls fell in perfect rhythm, the perfect soldier, the perfect Weapon.
He entered the warehouse to the sound of gunfire and fighting. Men grunting, bodies falling. The absence of sound when a bullet hit flesh, the clacking it made when it missed its target and hit against metal.
Finally, it was his kind of music.
He hefted his M4A1 carbine, and smiled.
And then the inferno descended upon them.
------------------------------------------
Jyn the person did not like destruction for the sake of destruction.
She hated collateral damage -- even when she was younger, when Saw had insisted that it was necessary. She’d always tried to save the ones she could.
(In her first battle fighting alongside Cassian, she’d run out to pull a four year old girl from the crossfire.)
(He’d saved her life, that day.)
(She’d trusted him implicitly, ever since.)
Jyn the fire loved destruction.
The flames burst forth from within her, powerful, unstoppable. The room flared with heat, with golden light. The fires roared, danced, burned; they moved swiftly, unceasingly, orange and bright and fierce, devouring everything in their paths.
There were screams, from the soldiers who fired upon them, as the fire burned away their flesh; as their bodies were consumed by the inferno.
Jyn felt a grounding, calming presence on the farthest edges of her mind. It kept her in control, kept the flames from devouring her, from erasing all traces of Jyn-the-person.
(It was the closest Cassian had ever come to reading her mind. He kept her grounded, when her fire raged, kept her from turning into the beast she had been on the night he’d met her.)
(They were a team.)
There was a figure, who strode out into the midst of her firestorm, without heed. The flames burned at his flesh, but he did not waver. He kept walking.
Jyn saw him, coming closer, and her flames died down around him.
(She didn’t want to hurt him, not even now.)
Bodhi Rook stood before her, his face expressionless as a stone. The machine gun he held in his hands was pointed directly at her.
The flames died down. All the other men were dead.
(Cassian breathed steadily beside her, his eyes still closed. His presence at the edge of her mind had disappeared as soon as the fire returned to swim in her veins.)
“Who are you?” Bodhi demanded. It hurt Jyn’s heart, to hear him speak like that -- harsh, and angry, and emotionless, where once he had been quirky and funny and kind.
(She missed her brother. She had spent all these years missing her brother, and now he was here--
But not really here.)
“You know me, Bodhi,” Jyn replied. She kept her voice soft, gentle, as if she were talking to a feral animal.
“I am no one.” His voice came out in a monotone, like the words of a chant repeated for so long that they had become meaningless. “I am the Weapon. The Weapon serves the Command. I am no--”
“You’re Bodhi,” Jyn interrupts, taking a step closer, then two, until she’s only a single arms’ length away from him.
The muzzle of his gun hasn’t wavered from its target in the center of her chest.
Jyn moved.
---------------------------------------------
There was something wrong about Bodhi’s mind.
Jyn’s mind was unusual, in and of itself. Her flames shone , in the mental landscape that Cassian had come to know so well, leaping and dancing. They formed a wall, a protective barrier around her thoughts.
Kay’s thoughts were electronic pulses, sent throughout his cryoelectric cortex. Cassian could not read those thoughts, either.
Bodhi’s mind was like a river stone. Hard, unyielding, its surface carved smooth and even.
It was unnatural, how even and still his mind was. There was no turmoil, no thought movement at all.
If he could read a dead man's mind, Cassian imagined that this was what it would feel like.
He heaved a mental sigh of relief when Jyn managed to kick Bodhi's gun out of his hands, sending it clattering across the metal floor and out of reach.
Cassian watched as Jyn reached out her hand to touch him, just lightly on his shoulder.
She whispered something that Cassian could not hear.
Then there was a spark, deep in the heart of Bodhi’s river stone mind. Cassian watched the thought take shape, watched it travel into the realm of consciousness.
And then he realized what it was.
(The first independent thought that the man had entertained in a long while. The first time since his mind had been turned to stone that Bodhi had chosen to do something of his own accord.)
(It should have been great strides, in returning to Bodhi his self-determination.)
(But giving the man his free will was not worth this sacrifice.)
(Nothing was ever more important than Jyn's life.)
Cassian barely had time to shout a warning and knock Jyn out of the way before Bodhi whipped his semiautomatic out of his holster on the back of his vest and fired.
And everything turned to fire and pain and darkness--
------------------------------------------------
There was blood.
There was so, so much blood.
There were multiple wounds, along his abdomen, from the bullets fired from Bodhi’s gun. Jyn knelt next to Cassian, trying desperately to staunch the crimson that leaked through his shirt.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don’t do this to me, Cass.
Please, please, don’t do this to me.
I can't lose you .
(I love you)
Cassian’s eyes flickered open, and he gazed up at her. Blood came up through his mouth as he clumsily raised his hand towards her.
Jyn grasped it in her own, whispering to him. “You’ll be okay, Cass. I promise. You just need to stay with me.”
The crimson soaked through the jacket she’d been using the staunch the blood flow. His hand went limp in her own. His eyes closed.
“Stay with me, Cass. Goddamnit, Cassian, you cannot do this to me!”
“Step away from him,” Bodhi said, pressing the muzzle of his gun up underneath her chin for emphasis.
“No,” Jyn replied, obstinately, trying to go back to tending to Cassian. She could feel the blood draining out of him, every second bringing him closer to death.
If he died--
"Step. Away."
---------------------------
The Command had told him not to harm them.
And he had listened, even as the soldiers he commanded fell, dying in her flames
(Who was she. Why did he know her?)
But then, he had a thought. He, the perfect soldier, the perfect Weapon, had a thought.
These people are dangerous.
Too dangerous.
He had taken action before he even fully realized his thought.
The telepath fell to the gound, half a dozen bullets ripping holes through his torso.
He did not feel remorse. He had never felt remors.
(He watched, as she knelt over the body of the telepath, begging for him to live.)
He did not understand.
(A Weapon does not need to understand. A Weapon points and aims and fires.)
(He wanted to understand. He wanted to understand why this woman was so familiar to him, why she cared so much for the telepath.)
"Step away from him," he ordered, his gun finding its way under her chin. She blinked up at him defiantly.
"No."
"Step. Away." he commanded again, his voice hard and cold and deadly.
The telepath convusled beneath them, his blood pooling on the metal floor.
The nanobots slammed her into the wall behind him, keeping her pinnned as he knelt over the telepath.
It was very nearly too late.
-----------------------
Jyn's head ached from where it had fallen against the wall when Bodhi pinned her there. She could feel the buzzing around her wrists and ankles, holding her there.
Bodhi clasped his -- silver, glinting, oh Force he has a metal arm -- hand around Cassian's throat, pulling tight.
Jyn struggled, trying to get free. Trying to stop this.
Bodhi released Cassian and stood, his semiautomatic still clenched in one hand.
"Are you going to shoot me, now, too?" Jyn asked.
Bodhi is alive.
She'd been so desperate to believe that, when they found out, but it wasn't true. It wasn't true, because the man who stood before her, who looked like her brother, was not him.
Bodhi is a traitor.
She hadn't wanted to believe that. Hadn't wanted to imagine that her best friend -- her brother -- had changed to the point where he was no lonher recognisable as the person he had once been.
Bodhi is a bastard.
He'd tried to shoot her, had hit Cass instead. Cassian was dead -- dying, she corrected herself (Cassian couldn't die) -- because Bodhi wasn't Bodhi anymore.
Bodhi is a killer without mercy.
"You never talked about your father," Bodhi mumbled, staring from the gun to her, and back again. "You... you had sparks, in your veins, and... stardust in your eyes."
"Yes," Jyn responded, hesitant.
(This was the voice of the Bodhi she knew.)
"Why do I know you?" He asked, looking more lost and afraid than when Saw had first picked him up off the streets. "Who are you to me?"
"Family," Jyn replied, and she fell to the ground as she felt the nanobots retreat, swirling back towards Bodhi's metal arm.
She ran to Cassian, first, and felt for a pulse, for breathing, for anything that meant he wasn't dead.
Please, Cass.
She turned back towards Bodhi -- to yell, or scream, or cry, she did not know -- but he was gone. Vanished, as if he had never been there.
There was a buzzing, against her hand.
Cassian's hand brushed weakly against hers where it lay above his heart. She looked back down, in shock.
He's alive.
(Nanobots. Bodhi's nanobots, keeping Cassian alive until she could save him.)
(Her brother was alive.)
"Hurts," he murmured. "Jyn."
"Shh, Cass," she responded, just as Kay's voice cut back into her comms.
"--assian. Cassian, can you hear me. Please respond."
"Kay."
"Jyn Erso. I advised you as to the futility of confronting Bodhi Rook, but no--"
"Cass got shot, Kay. We need an extraction asap. It's... it's bad."
"En route," the android's voice came through after a moment. "If he... if something happens, I will... find the parties responsible."
"I know, Kay," Jyn replied, before signing off. She gripped Cassian's hand tighter in hers.
"Stay with me, please."
------------------------------------
In the darkness of the Command, he stood silent and still as a statue.
The Director was furious.
(He could tell. He could tell through the way he huffed his breaths, hunched his shoulders, paced when he should have stood still.)
"You failed me."
He said nothing, as the Director leaned in closer. Close enough that he could see the bags under his eyes, smell his breath. He did not flinch.
"Failure is unacceptable. Failure requires a reset." The Director grinned wickedly.
He still said nothing.
"Who are you?"
(He remebered the woman, who had known him. She had called him Bodhi.)
(I am nothing. I am no one. I am the Weapon.)
He said nothing. He no longer knew.
"Who are you?" The Director screamed. "Answer me!"
He stood still.
"You are the Weapon!"
Bodhi Rook stood still, and did not speak.
I do not know what I am.