Thank you all for your interest! Now, meet Bodhi :)

Chapter 2
Please Do Not Resist

It was too soft. Everything was too soft. She was wrapped up in this infuriating softness. Her eyes blinked open slowly, taking in a pearly blue wall and fluffy white bedsheets. Jyn blinked. She rolled over to find herself face to face with a strange boy looking down at her.

Her body reacted instantaneously, fist shooting out to connect—hard—with his face, starting a stream of crimson flowing from his nose. Dark eyes grew wide with pain and fear before filling with tears as he clasped his small hands over the injury, shouting, "Baze! Chirrut!" and running from the room.

She hugged her legs to her chest for a moment, searching her surroundings. Where the hell was she? Why wasn't she lying on her hard mattress at Saw's, in her grayscale room, waking up to his banging on her door before the sun was up? Then all the memories of the night before came flooding back to her and Jyn leaped out of the bed, heading straight for the window through which an inordinate amount of sunlight seemed to be streaming in. She climbed on top of the desk for better access, planting her bare feet on the smooth surface and tugging against the window's seam with her whole body. It didn't budge.

"Please down from there," a calm voice called. She looked over her shoulder to see one of the men from last night—the skinny one, Chirrut, with the strangely clouded eyes. She threw her body weight against the window's sliding mechanism again.

"It's a fifteen-foot drop," the man said.

"So?" She continued to tug.

"Please come down from there," the man repeated.

Jyn could still hear the crying of their other child in the background. "No."

"All right." Chirrut stepped into the room and sat down on the bed. "Would you like to tell me what happened?"

"No."

"We don't allow punching in this house, Jyn."

"How's that working out for you?" she asked snarkily, throwing herself against the window again.

"That won't open," Chirrut said, ignoring her barb. "This is not our first rodeo, you know." He stood up. "When you're ready, you can come down and have breakfast. Bacon and eggs today, I think."

At the word "bacon," Jyn's stomach gave a strong, hungry lurch, but she ignored it as the man exited the room. She did believe him, at least, that the window wasn't going to budge. The crying was quieting downstairs, but she hopped off the desk and shut the door anyway. Then she surveyed her surroundings again.

There was a cup of pens on the desk. Those she could use. She inspected them quickly and picked the pointiest-tipped one that didn't have a clicking mechanism, then tucked it into the pocket of her jeans.

A momentary panic struck her and she dove for her backpack, digging through it until her fingers struck the small crystal necklace buried deep within. She pulled it out, the leather cord getting caught on her toothbrush before she disentangled them. The crystal was cool against her palm as she closed her fingers around it. For a moment she just sat there, holding it.

Her stomach gave a massive growl and she plunged her elbows into it, desperate for it to shut up before she remembered that Saw wasn't here to hear it. All the same, her heart hammered as she pulled the necklace—the noose, Saw would say—over her head and tucked it underneath her shirt. She shoved her backpack under the bed to hide it before creeping toward the door, opening it just a crack and listening.

"We'll make sure it doesn't happen again," Chirrut was saying. "But all the same, Bodhi—you should have known better than to sneak up on a new arrival."

"I was just curious," a new voice said. She presumed it belonged to their son. Before Saw, she'd rotated through in homes that had other children in them, but the other children had never been younger than her. "I'm sorry."

"It wasn't your fault," Baze said. Jyn waited for him to blame it on her. "We'll just have to give Jyn time and space until she feels comfortable enough to tell us what she needs." That was…different, but Jyn knew better than to trust it. The punishment would come later, she was sure.

Her stomach gave another growl and Jyn exited the room, closing the door quietly behind her. If these men were willing to give her food, she would take it. Better to formulate her escape plan on a full stomach than an empty one. She followed the voices to the kitchen, making note of the front door to the left of the stairs in between here and there. They all looked up as she entered the kitchen.

"Thank you for joining us," Chirrut said. He was standing at the stove and immediately began scooping some eggs onto a plate. Baze, wearing an apron, sat at the table next to the boy she had punched, who scrunched down in his seat at the sight of her. He still had a small smear of blood below his nose.

A dog lifted its head from being hidden behind the tabletop and growled, showing its teeth. Jyn jumped back but Baze was quicker, grabbing the red collar of the black-and-white dog before it could do anything else. "Kyber," the man boomed in a commanding voice. "Jyn is a friend."

"She is overly protective," Chirrut told Jyn by way of explanation. He indicated the sink. "Washing the blood off of your knuckles may help." Jyn crossed over to it and scrubbed the red off, refusing to look abashed. Baze released the dog after it laid its muzzle back in the boy's lap and he resumed stroking the top of its head. At least it wasn't a German Shepard, Jyn thought, but she didn't like the wolfish look to this dog all the same.

After the addition of a generous three strips of bacon, Chirrut placed the plate down at an empty seat at the table. Jyn approached cautiously and slid it to the opposite end from the rest of them before plonking herself down in the seat and beginning to shovel eggs into her mouth, scarcely stopping to breathe. Baze and Chirrut looked away until she had finished—although she didn't miss the significant glance they gave each other—but the boy stared at her, something unreadable in his dark eyes.

"What?" she demanded, and he flinched. A modicum of guilt bubbled up inside her, but she pushed it down.

"Nothing," the boy managed. "I'm…I'm Bodhi."

She shrugged, not giving a damn what his name was, and set into her bacon, tears strips off of it with her teeth.

"Do you have anything you'd like to say to Bodhi?" Chirrut asked carefully.

Jyn pretended to think about it. "No."

"Jyn." She glared at the man, transferred her glare to his husband, and then to Bodhi. The look in the kid's eyes finally made her break contact.

"I'm sorry I punched you," Jyn huffed. She'd been in trouble at school enough times to know it was over faster if she just said sorry sometimes and moved on.

"It's okay," Bodhi said.

"Don't sneak up on me," Jyn added for good measure. "Ever."

"I won't," the boy promised, looking just terrified enough that she actually believed him.

Chirrut was smiling, and he clapped his hands. "Good. Now all we have left to sort out is the dog. Give her a piece of bacon, Jyn, and trust me, all hard feelings will immediately be lost."

Jyn looked between the last piece of bacon on her plate and the dog. "You can always have more, you know," Baze told her.

Well, no, she didn't know that. It certainly wasn't true at Saw's and as far as she could recall it wasn't true at a lot of other places either. At first she considered the possibility of it being a trick and stuffing the bacon into her mouth anyways, but she couldn't see the point of these men doing so. She gingerly picked up the piece of bacon off her plate and held it out, flat on her palm. "Kyber." The dog bounded over and stuck its wet muzzle into her hand, gulping up the meat. It licked her hand and then placed its paws on her leg, jumping up to lick her face. Startled, Jyn just sat there until the dog had trotted off back to Bodhi again.

"See?" Chirrut said, still with that same satisfied smile plastered over his face.

"You said I could have more," Jyn accused.

"Help yourself," Baze grunted.

Scarcely able to believe her luck, Jyn darted around the table and soon had another plate piled high with the food. Not only was it plentiful, it was good.

"That's a weird name for a dog," she said finally when she was scraping up the last of her eggs. Her stomach was now feeling uncomfortably tight, but that was a million times better than hollow. "Kyber."

Chirrut shrugged. "Found it online." For some reason, that made both Baze and Bodhi laugh. Jyn made a mental note that these people were odd.

"She's a malamute," Bodhi said quickly, as if he was nervous that Jyn might punch him again for speaking. "That's like a husky, but thicker."

"Pretty close to a wolf," Jyn commented.

"Well, she's not a chihuahua," Baze replied.

She pushed her plate back, completely stuffed. "How about a tour of the house?" Chirrut suggested.

"I'll show you my room, if you want to see it," Bodhi offered earnestly.

A chance to see the rest of the house and find better exits than her bedroom window, that Jyn would take. "Sure," she said, schooling her voice into something akin to nonchalance.

"Cool!" Bodhi said shyly, getting up from the table. Baze and Chirrut glanced at each other, then began to round up plates. Jyn's brow furrowed—they were letting her alone with their son after she had punched him hard enough to make him bleed not an hour ago? An uncomfortable feeling curled up in her gut. Trust. Trust was stupid. They were stupid for trusting her.

"So how old are you?" Bodhi asked as they exited the kitchen. Kyber bounded after them, tail wagging, and Jyn had to remind herself not to flinch away.

She looked at him, debating whether to answer the question, but decided it couldn't hurt. "Twelve."

"I'm nine," Bodhi told her. "But my birthday is in twenty days, and then I'll be double digits too!" He led her to the living room, which was the room just past the kitchen on the opposite side as the stairs. "This is where all the games are kept and we have some cool movies too. My favorites are the ones with superheroes in them, so we have a lot of those. What are your favorite?"

"I don't know." He gave her that puppy-dog eyed look again. "I said I don't know!" Anger coiled in her stomach, along with a deep-seated unhappiness that she just turned into more anger.

"Everything all right in there?" Baze called.

"We're fine," Bodhi chirped back. "Can we have a movie night tonight?"

"I don't see why not," Baze appeared in the doorway. He inspected the two of them and the dog and then went back to doing the dishes.

Bodhi grinned up at her. "See, now we can watch a bunch so you can choose a favorite."

"Oh," was all Jyn could think of to say. "Thanks."

"You're welcome." Bodhi smiled, skipping—yes, literally skipping—off into the next room. "Here's the downstairs bathroom!" He pointed to a door at the end of the hall, directly across from the stairs. "And that's the garage."

"How many cars do you have?" Jyn asked, trying not to sound too interested. Foster parents probably weren't too careful with their cars with regards to twelve-year-olds. Saw had taught her to drive at ten.

"Two," Bodhi said. "'Cause sometimes Baze and Chirrut's schedules don't line up at the Whills and they have to take separate cars."

"The Whills?"

"It's a gym they work at. Baze teaches martial arts and Chirrut teaches yoga and meditation." Jyn made a mental note not to start a fight with Baze, although the man was the size of a tank and she probably would have avoided doing so anyway..

Bodhi scampered up the stairs next, so she followed him. He showed her the bathroom—"We share!"—her room—"But you've seen that already"—and his parents' room—"It's not nearly as cool as mine." The boy gestured toward the last unopened door, which he has obviously been saving for last since it was situated in between Baze and Chirrut's and the bathroom.

"Here's my room!" he said proudly. Jyn looked in without stepping inside his space. Deep blue sheets with sea life on them, a wooden desk that matched the one in the guest bedroom. "Look!" He pointed up at the ceiling, which was decorated with a swirl of clouds. "Chirrut paints, so he did that for me."

"Why do you call them that?" Jyn asked suddenly. "Instead of Dad and...Dad."

Bodhi ducked his head. "They're not my real parents. The adopted me. I was a foster like you before that."

Jyn looked at the younger kid with a little more interest. "Really?"

He nodded. "This is my forever home now." Bodhi crept closer, daring to put a hand slowly on her shoulder. Jyn used all of her willpower not to flinch away or knock him flat, and it occurred to her that it looked rather comical seeing that he was half a foot shorter than her. "They're good ones, so you don't have to be afraid. I love them."

"I'm not afraid," Jyn spat immediately, wrenching away. "I'm not afraid of anything." She glared at him defiantly, and his mouth quivered. Kyber pressed her nose up into her hand, distracting Jyn with the sudden cold wetness that when she looked back at Bodhi she wasn't quite so angry anymore.

"I'm sorry I said you didn't have to be afraid," Bodhi said in a small voice.

"Forget it," Jyn muttered. She wasn't long for this joint anyway, and they had fed her a lot of breakfast. The least she cold do was try not to screw up their ex-foster kid. It hadn't occurred to her before, but it explained now how two East Asian men had produced a South Asian-looking son.

Bodhi bounded back downstairs and disappeared into Chirrut's arms for a hug, with Kyber butting around trying to join in. Jyn didn't understand, so she lingered behind on the bottom step and played with her necklace. "Did I scare you?"

"It's okay," Bodhi assured her, emerging from the hug.

Chirrut caught her strange look. "Would you like a hug, Jyn?" he asked softly.

"No, of course not," she replied immediately, eyebrows becoming one angry line.

"They're really nice," Bodhi piped up. "Chirrut gives the best hugs."

"Hey," Baze grunted from where he was scrubbing dishes, still in his apron from breakfast.

Chirrut smirked at him. "Are you telling me you don't like my hugs?" Baze grunted noncommittally, and slowly all eyes turned back to Jyn, offer still open.

She stomped her foot against the floor. "Hugs are for children!" Then she ran up to her room, slamming the door behind her.

Jyn might have wanted one, but girls who needed hugs weren't strong. She had to be strong, so she could get back to where she belonged. With Saw.

She certainly didn't need their stupid hugs for that.