Bodhi

To Lose One's Mind

Are you mad, yet?

The words returned to him first, out of the black. Sight came next, but slowly, and accompanied by a throbbing ache behind his eyes. When the swimming stains of color resolved into recognizable shapes, he saw only gray walls and a window like a cage. Prison. He was in prison. He was trying to defect, he must have been caught. Are you mad? Why did he think he could defect? No one can leave the Empire. No one can betray the Emperor. No one can escape him.

Bodhi saw what the one they called Lord did to the rebel prisoners he was assigned to transport. He did not see a lord, he saw a monster, and realized that he had flown the prisoners straight into its jaws and brought them to a fate worse than death. Bodhi would not follow a monster.

He is Bodhi Rook and he is not mad.

So he defected. He did. He did escape. And yet he was in prison. The monster found him, after all, a man who was more machine than human, and he had set a creature on him. It slithered up and grasped his face and squeezed at his mind. I believe you will find her. And Bodhi was swallowed by a lifetime of words and images, all rushing through him and out of him, drowning him in their cacophony. Everything shattered and he was torn from himself, left without name or reason. The last thing he heard as he slid into the black were the monster's gasping words.

"It is done. So, you told the truth. Are you mad, yet?"

Once, on recon, he flew out to the furthest reaches of a system, so far out that he lost all sight of planets and stars. He was alone in the emptiness of space and its silence was infinite. There was no up, no down, no right or left. No path for him to follow. Nothing. He was alone and he was no one.

The darkness greyed and blurred, shapes and movements came in and out of focus. There were noises, and men. Men's voices drifting into his cage. He was not alone.

"Imperial pilot!"

Pilot.

You must deliver this message.

Are you mad?

You must get the message to her.

How will I know her?

"What does she look like?"

"She looks like her mother." Bodhi raised his shoulders in a helpless gesture and waited in silence as Erso rubbed the palm of his hand down his face. "I don't know, it's been so many years. Her hair was dark. It would curl around her face. Her eyes were blue, but green as well. And she was small, even for a child her age, she was such a little thing." Erso's voice tightened into a rasp, and Bodhi let his eyes slide away for a moment to give the other man a moment of privacy. "She will be with Saw Gerrera, or he will know how to find her. Go to Saw, and you will find Jyn."

"I will try," Bodhi replied. His gut churned with anxiety as the screams of the rebel prisoners echoed in his memory. The chances of him finding Galen Erso's missing daughter with the help of a rebel fighter, even if he did manage to survive defecting–

"No. You must do this. You will escape. You will take this message and go to Saw Gerrera, and then you will find Jyn Erso, or she will find you. I would not ask it of you, Rook, if I did not believe you capable and trust you to do what is right." Erso's hands suddenly reached out and gently grasped Bodhi's face as if he was a child, lifting it upward so that their gazes locked. "I believe you will find her, and I believe you will help her." Bodhi was suddenly, strangely, calm. Now there was a path before him, and he could see it clearly.

"I will. I swear I will." Bodhi had made many promises before, all sworn to the Empire with necessary shouting and saluting, and now he was about to break them all. But this promise…this he could not break. This was something true. This he would never break. He felt the muscles in Erso's hands tighten around his face. The man nodded, smiled, and said a strange thing.

"May the Force be with you."

The prison walls crumbled and there were men calling to him as he scrambled to piece together the fragments of his mind. He ran with them (or he was pulled along, or pushed, he couldn't tell), into a ship, and then there was screaming, a terrible roaring of voices and engines and fire and earth rising up to swallow them all. And then, in the cold quiet of space, she was there. She found him. She was small, but not delicate. Her face was round and pale, and framed by a mess of dark hair. The eyes that met his were bright with a dangerous light. She held herself like a fighter, wary, and ready to strike. But her voice was clear and strong, and her words were true. Jyn Erso was a leader, and Bodhi Rook would follow her.

He hardly left her side from that moment on. Not just because he wanted to keep his promise to Galen to help her, but to help himself as well. Sometimes, without cause or warning, the dark nothingness crept back into him, and he would forget who he was or why he mattered. But whenever the black veil began to wrap around his mind, Bodhi locked his gaze onto her, and remembered. He recognized her every time. Her name appeared to him out of the void. Jyn Erso. Galen Erso sent her a message with a pilot. I was the pilot. And then the rest would return, his name, his past, and his purpose all surfaced from some murky depth, and all were drawn to her as if to a magnet. He would know her anywhere.

He wanted to tell her this, to explain why he was always staring at her, to apologize, or maybe to thank her, but these thoughts made him feel strange and inadequate. There were also stories about her father that he wished he could tell her, but words came to him slowly after the prison. He was never sure if he arranged them correctly, or if he was saying out loud the same words that were in his head, so he kept most of them to himself. Maybe, if they survived, if his mind recovered, if they had more time, he could tell her everything. He would tell her his own story, everything he knew about her father, about the path that brought them together. He would confess every awful thing he had done for the Empire. He would tell her about the rebel prisoners he took to Darth Vader, and he would ask her to forgive him. He would even admit that he sometimes imagined slowly tracing his finger over the curve of her upper lip, or tell her how very beautiful she was. But those thoughts confused and overwhelmed him, and words like that did not belong in war. If they had met in another time, in another place, maybe Bodhi could have said those things, but not here. So he listened and helped, and it was enough.

…

Something clattered onto the floor by his feet and he looked.

A grenade.

He knew, he knew.

He had always known. This was the path he chose for himself. They all chose it. None of them were getting out. But his message got through. Jyn could send the plans. She would. He knew she would. She had found him, after all. The path that brought him here had also led him to her. He would know her anywhere. He would follow her anywhere.

He hoped death was swift. Hers as well. He didn't want her to suffer. Cassian wouldn't let her suffer. He wished she could hear him now. He wanted to tell her –