Bodhi doesn't know how many days it's been since, white-knuckled and shaking, he guided his transport carefully through the graveyard of Rebellion ships in Hoth's orbit and out into the black. (Weeks? Has it been weeks?) Following scatter protocol, they've been jumping from system to system across the galaxy trying to ensure that they aren't followed or captured while Command re-groups.
It's the boredom of sitting for hours in the shadow of an asteroid or moon waiting out the time to their next jump combined with the terror of knowing that at any minute a star destroyer could appear in the system to hunt them down.
Like most of the pilots in the fleet, Bodhi is running on too many stims and too little sleep. It's beginning to make his brain ache and the edges of the world go wobbly. He should sleep. He knows he should sleep. The medic on board has even offered, more than once, to give him the drug cocktail that would counteract the stims and let him sleep for a shift.
But Bodhi can't.
Part of it is the stress of the constant Imperial threat. It's certainly what's keeping some of the other Rebels on board awake. They pass each other in the transport's small corridors on their off shifts and carefully avoid acknowledging their mutual insomnia.
The other part though — the bigger part — is knowing that if he sleeps, only nightmares wait for him. That final conversation with Jyn on Hoth curls around his brain during every moment of his waking hours. Awake he can carefully avoid thinking about it. He can avoid thinking about Jyn and Cassian and worrying if they made it out, worrying if they have enough supplies, worrying if he'll finally make it back to Hoth only to find them frozen to death from the cold.
(Avoid the aching fear that he'll never get a chance to tell them what they mean to him.)
Asleep he can't avoid those thoughts and he knows that his dreams would be all nightmares.
So here they are, days later, finally rejoining the rest of the fleet. As they exit hyperspace and Bodhi begins the shut-off procedures for the hyperdrive for the first time since their escape, a sigh of relief goes through the transport. The sight of Home One and its tiny fleet of escorts in a deserted corner of space, silhouetted against the blackness, is a relief for everyone on board.
Bodhi's co-pilot, an Alderaanian refugee who answers only to Sparky, lets out a sigh of relief in the seat next to him.
It's the first time they've both been at the controls since Hoth. With few pilots in the fleet qualified to fly the big transports and a lot of pilots killed in the battle or assigned to evacuate with the earlier transports, Bodhi thinks it's a miracle that even two pilots made it aboard this one.
"Home sweet home," Sparky says as Bodhi maneuvers their ship into Home One's main hanger. It's technically the other man's shift, but he's shown no inclination of taking the controls from Bodhi and Bodhi doesn't want to give them up.
He knows that as soon as his job as done, he's going to fall apart hard and he'd rather do that alone than in front of Rebels who are mostly strangers to him.
(He'd rather do it in the company of Jyn and Cassian, who've held him through more than one breakdown during his recovery from Bor Gullet and Scarif, but Jyn and Cassian aren't here. And might already be dead. He's trying not to think about it.)
Bodhi's hands don't shake as he squeezes the transport in between a scorched and partially disassembled X-Wing and the hanger's wall. The silence as he finally, finally powers down the ship's engine makes him feel like he's been suddenly ejected into space without a tether. As he steps down onto the main hanger's deck, the subtler hum of Home One's engines is only a minor relief.
A lieutenant from the Intelligence division is waiting for Bodhi and with a jolt Bodhi realizes that he's been the highest ranked officer on board the transport for the entire flight. He so rarely thinks about his own rank because he's always working with Cassian, who treats their little family as equals, and Jyn, who's never met an officer she didn't want to challenge and has, without fear or hesitation, told generals that they were addle-brained bantha-fuckers. To their faces.
(He has to curl his hands into the sleeves of his jacket to keep anyone from seeing the right one shake. (The engineering of the prosthetic on his left is too good—or not good enough—to shake because of nerves.) The thin, tan jacket he's wearing is one of Cassian's; Bodhi's been using it as an extra layer since practically the minute they set foot on Hoth.
It still smells a little bit like their Captain.
Bodhi doesn't let himself think about that. Not now.)
"Lieutenant Rook," the officer says gently and Bodhi shakes himself from his thoughts.
He waves a hand in mute apology for his distraction and a gesture to continue. The other lieutenant, a stocky dark-skinned man that Bodhi vaguely remembers from one of Jyn's combat classes, leads him quickly to one of Home One's meeting rooms.
(He remembers those classes, begun in the days after Scarif when both Bodhi and Cassian were too injured to move much and Jyn's restlessness was turning to aggression. He remembers watching the fierce joy in her face as she sparred with a Pathfinder or taught a new recruit to throw a good punch. He remembers the way her smile made her look years younger; it was like getting a glimpse of the little girl Galen had always talked about but that time and tragedy had worn away. Bodhi wants to see that smile all the time.)
They are quickly joined in the meeting room by both General Rieekan, Hoth's former base commander, and Major Derlin, the Intelligence division security chief for the base. With Bodhi's ship having been the last to leave the planet and the last to make it through the Imperial blockade, he guesses that the intelligence he can provide would be valuable for the fleet, though he doesn't know how much he can add to what they already know. He was more concerned with getting his ship past the star destroyers than he was with making note of details.
Any other day, being in the same room with this many high-ranking personnel would give Bodhi the shakes. (The last time had been the Council session before their mission to Scarif. Most missions now, Jyn and Cassian do all the talking and that suits Bodhi just fine.)
With a concentrated effort, Bodhi tries to drag his thoughts back to the debrief in front of him, but it does little good. The combination of fatigue, adrenaline, and stim withdrawal is making his thoughts skip uncomfortably and a subtle white noise press against his ears. The debriefing passes in a wavering haze and for the life of him Bodhi can't remember what he says.
The only clear moment is the loaded glance the officers exchange when Bodhi tells them about Jyn and Cassian, and Bodhi is much too tired to even try to interpret what they might be thinking.
The minute he's released from the debriefing, he follows a private down to the Med Bay and collapses into sleep.
Six hours later he is awake and shaking, cold sweat drying on his skin and a scream caught in his throat. The images from the dream remain seared in his brain and no matter how hard he presses his palms against his eyes, he can't force them out.
Jyn and Cassian, lying tangled together in the snow. Bodhi approaches, knowing that they're waiting for him, waiting for it to be the three of them together, a finally instead of the almost of the last three years. He reaches for them, but at his touch they turn to snowflakes and the wind carries them away.
They are gone forever and Bodhi is alone.
He's had this dream before. Usually, though, there is no snow and no Hoth and Bodhi only has to peek his head over the side of his bunk to find them sleeping in their own bunks. Usually Cassian and Jyn turn to stardust and Bodhi wakes with only a sense of regret for missing his chance.
He always convinces himself, in the dream's aftermath, that this will be the day he tells them how he feels. That he'll take their casual physical affection — the affection they allow only the three of them — a step further and plant a kiss on either of them. That he'll take one of their quiet sessions of sharing secrets in the darkness and tell them that he loves them both. That instead of ignoring those moments of crackling electricity where the three of them trade glances and the air feels like a storm about to break with the things they haven't talked about, he'll say something.
He never does.
And now he might never be able to.
The dream is worse, he thinks, when there's a very real chance that it will come true.
He draws his knees up to his chest and folds his arms around them, clutching his ankles to keep his hands from shaking.
"I won't let it."
He doesn't realize he's spoken the words until the sound of them breaks the dim stillness in his private corner of the Med Bay. His fingers clench and settle. The words feel right on his tongue.
"I won't let it happen," he says. "I'm going to get them back."
The shakes ease out of his limbs and his breathing comes easier. For the first time since the alarms started blaring across the base, he feels calm.
"I'm going to get them back," he says. "And then I'm going to tell them."
Whatever it takes, he will not lose Jyn and Cassian.