—The Star Trek:
Bodhi feels a strange sense of comfort. He's on a ship. He knows ships. It's a U-Wing, UT-60D model; familiar to him in ways he tries to comprehend. He recognizes the thrum of the engine all around him, an Incom Corporation rebuild of the Imperial standard 9XR. He knows ships. He knows this ship.
He sees himself in the pilot's seat, gliding through hyperspace. He sees himself on the passenger's chair; holding on tight and watching Jedha disappear into dust and cinders.
Which is real?
Bodhi understands the difference between past and present, reality and recollection. All he can't do is define which is which. It's as if strips and ribbons of his memory were taken out in spools and shoved back in rolls.
He knows that Bor Gullet isn't there in his mind anymore. He is gone, just like Jedha City. His mind starts reeling. His eyes blink rapidly, and his brain understands only the dust storm approaching, his arm slung around Cassian's shoulders.
It isn't real. Is it real? Is it just a memory: that shadow in the sky?
The planet killer…
Planet killer. Galen. Imperial pilot.
Bodhi gave up his life to keep the Empire's ambition a dream. "I'm sorry," he closes his eyes. "I failed you. It's all my fault. I'm sorry."
No one hears him or bothers to forgive.
There are people here. People he doesn't know. He's somewhere he doesn't know. It's all in his head. The shadows are weaving this into his vision.
No. This is Cassian's ship. You're safe in Cassian's ship, with the Alliance.
He opens his eyes. Bodhi doesn't know these people. But he knows where he is, and that's a start.
Bodhi watches them warily, before his eyes land on one particular passenger.
Galen is among them. Galen isn't there, and still he is. His eyes are watching Bodhi, blankly but looking at him nonetheless.
Bodhi raises his head to meet Galen's eyes.
It's a girl, a few years younger than him at most.
It's Galen, staring at him with every question of the universe in his eyes.
Jyn Erso, his mind says to him. Someone called her Jyn Erso. Her name is Jyn Erso.
How does he know that?
"You're Galen's daughter," he whispers to her, as if it's a secret they're keeping between each other. "Galen Erso."
Bodhi sees Galen's final embrace. It's his name that brings these memories.
It's his name that forces the girl to turn away. Her eyes avoid him, looking out the viewport or anything but him.
It's disappointment. Galen's disappointment. It's on Bodhi to stop the planet killer. But he couldn't. He can't.
Jedha is ashes because of him. All he knows is running.
Bodhi drags himself away to the cockpit. He sees a droid and a man in the seats of the cockpit. Kay-Tu and Cassian.
They're adjusting thrust madly, trying to ride the sea of dust and turn through mountains falling to make a maze.
Bodhi doesn't interrupt. He watches their hands splay over the controls, playing with the buttons and switches like they're only in a simulation flight and not their flying for their lives.
Bodhi sees a shadow creep over the cockpit as a mountain decides to fall.
He's going to die. Or maybe he's already dying in the arms of Bor Gullet, and his mind is making this for him.
Bodhi can't die. Not yet, when he hasn't done what he was allowed to do.
"I'm sorry," he yells against the roar of the ship.
Maybe it's meant for Cassian, but he doesn't hear it. Bodhi lied to him. There was never a mission; there was never a leave. There was only Bodhi doing what he knew he could. For Galen, who allowed him to.
"I lied to you." To Cassian. His friend.
He doesn't turn to face Bodhi. Maybe he doesn't even hear. Instead, Cassian snarls. "Come on!"
Then the sky cools from the pallor orange into blue, then black, before it shines and fills the viewport with white noise. The U-Wing leaps into hyperspace as Bodhi whispers one more time, more to himself than anyone else, "I'm sorry."
There is no other light on the overbridge but blinking dots of the controls and the glowing lowlight in front of them.
The screen is filled with an image of Jedha, what remains of the valley of the Holy City. The moon is ravaged by a constantly churning storm of sand, dust, ash and fire. The air of Jedha flashes with purpling crackles of lightning.
It's only a scar on the face of the moon.
This isn't the fate Krennic imagines for Jedha. His Death Star was made to destroy worlds, not wound them. But perhaps Jedha will never recover from such ruin. There is only Jedha's burning crust and its broken atmosphere left, revealing the pulsing core.
Perhaps it doesn't only destroy. The Death Star reveals.
"It's beautiful," Krennic murmurs, his face aglow with the new light of Jedha.
"I believe I owe you an apology, Director Krennic," Tarkin says against the silence of the Death Star's bridge. "Your work has exceeded all expectations."
"Of course it has," he replies, "But it can exceed more. What you've witnessed today is only an inkling of the Death Star's destructive potential. Surely you'll tell the Emperor as much?" You sound too eager. He moderates his tone. "This is, after all, his victory more than any other man's."
Tarkin swipes his hand through the air. "The Emperor prefers facts to flattery. I will tell him the way he knows it. That his patience with you has been rewarded with a weapon that will bring a swift end to the Rebellion."
"You're too kind," condescending bastard, "Governor. With this much power in his arse—"
The old man makes the same gesture as before: a demand for both silence and attention. Krennic smiles poisonously with obligation.
"I will tell the Emperor," Tarkin says, "that I will be taking control of the weapon I first spoke of years ago… effective immediately."
Taking control of—
Krennic curls his gloved fingers into fists as he tries to rein in his anger and quell it. He steps as close as one possibly can to Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin, and snaps. "We are standing here, amidst my achievement—not yours!" He lowers his voice into a hiss. "The people operating the station now are my people. They are loyal to me; and it is only my people who are capable of operating this station."
Of all the thoughtless acts to pursue, it is this that is most of all: threatening Tarkin openly. But Krennic has never been a man to live his life smiling meekly forever.
Tarkin narrows his eyes at him, inching his own face closer to Krennic. "Loyal?" He steps away with a laugh. "Do you remember the pilot that defected? The one from years ago?"
"What concern do I have," he answers in a faceless retort, "For a pilot who lost his mind three years ago?"
The cargo pilots for the DS-1 project were know-nothings to the genius happening under them. They were replaceable; a ransom fee for them need not be met like it had for Galen.
"And the stormtroopers you've liberated from Jedha," Tarkin smiles, "they all agree that the pilot was there, along with Saw Gerrera and his merry band of rebels."
"Then there's nothing left of them but dust."
There is a flaw in that idea, Krennic understands. There is a chance that someone might have escaped the havoc. A chance that is highly improbable, but not impossible.
Tarkin most likely smiles, but all Krennic sees is a sneer. "You think that pilot acted alone? Had it not been for my foresight of your incompetence, Director, we would not have looked into the issue and realized that the pilot was sent from the installation on Eadu. Galen Erso's facility."
Krennic feels his fury attempt to overcome, but it has made a fool of him once already. This time, he can't hide any surprise. "Impossible," he mutters as he starts marching towards the turbolift. "How come I was not notified of this years ago?"
As the silver doors of the elevator close, Krennic can see Tarkin watch him smugly.
The Death Star. Cassian remembers her say.
Galen's planet killer, too, has a name. And power, a dangerous amount of it.
The sudden shot of adrenaline and shock seems to have done the work of his liver, and there is nothing left to the warmth growing in the back of his head.
There is nothing left to Jedha City, and if they stay, nothing of them. Perhaps Galen knows, perhaps he doesn't. The Alliance should.
Cassian turns around to see Bodhi. He's the other problem of the equation. Saw and his Partisans have done something to Bodhi, something Cassian can't understand. His mission was to find and rescue Bodhi, but it seems there are other dangers for the former Imperial.
But Cassian needs to send a message first.
"Bodhi," he says at first. "Would you mind—"
"Cassian, I need to tell you something!" It's barely a sentence. More of a string of words said speedily. His eyes are in focus, compared to earlier on Jedha.
Cassian knits his eyebrows together. "What is it?"
"I—" Bodhi looks to be thinking on his next words, as if it's a poison he wants to retch from his system. "There was never a mission. I was never on leave either.
He pauses in thought as Cassian thinks. Bodhi lied to him. It's what he meant back on Jedha. He lied to Cassian, and the Alliance. But beyond everything, even if Cassian hadn't meant to, Bodhi became a friend.
"Galen had a message, back when I was on Eadu, I think. I took the message. I did it for Galen. He couldn't send the message, so I did. Those three years with the Alliance, I spent my time looking for Saw Gerrera. I lied about that, too. I don't regret it either."
Cassian forces himself to remain faceless. "Did you know what was in the message?"
Bodhi shakes his head with as much force as the shockwave on the surface of the moon. "N-no. I think so. I've had that message for three years. I've never looked at it."
Kay-Tu appears to be listening into their conversation.
"She's Galen's daughter, isn't she?" Bodhi asks.
Cassian nods, hoping the some stretches of Bodhi's mind remained from whatever Saw Gerrera had inflicted on him.
"Galen Erso's daughter," Kay-Tu sneaks in to the conversation, but doesn't turn his head away. "That would explain the lack of a few records." The droid turns to face them. "Would you like to know the chances of anyone you meet in a bar being a dead person, much more the dead offspring of a person you know?"
"Not really," Bodhi answers. Kay-Tu doesn't mean it, of course. The droid is only making a point.
"Also, Bodhi Rook," Kay-Tu says in his monotonous voice. "You owe the Alliance a new ship."
Cassian breaks a smile into his face as he escapes the cockpit to send a message to the Alliance.
He heads to the comm unit. Erso's weapon deployed. Jedha City destroyed. Bodhi Rook extracted. Please advise.
Cassian can imagine General Draven's reply.
Draven has never actually been fond of Galen Erso. The man has never said anything to Cassian, but the way he speaks bares his distaste more than it does his soul. Cassian was younger when it happened, but the vote to extract Galen Erso a second time did not come from General Draven.
The comm unit beeps brightly at him, with only a single word repeated in Private Weems' voice. "Return."
He nods. "Understood." Cassian turns away from the unit and yells to the cockpit, "Bodhi! I know you're on the chair. Set the course of Yavin 4!"
He makes for the passenger seats of the U-Wing transport. Chirrut is grasping Baze's hand tightly and chanting. Baze looks like a man seeking something else to watch.
Jyn Erso is only staring into hyperspace. The little lights spark her face and make her eyes look even wider.
Cassian sits right in front of her, closing his eyes and forcing calm.
"So," she says to him. "You knew my father." Her eyes are watching him. Cassian adjusts his seating, so he can properly stare her down.
To Cassian, Jyn Erso is a story. A little eight-year-old girl shared to him by Galen Erso. What he knows of her is that she is stuck in life as a little girl, who names her toys and likes cookies and waits for her father at the door of their home every afternoon.
In front of him is Jyn Erso. She is no more than five years younger than him in the least, but her eyes are those worn by men far more aged than he. They're the eyes that have seen it all and decided to go back to what they have. They're her eyes and Galen's. The shape, color and emotion are theirs.
"You have his eyes," he tells her.
She smiles at him. It's a sad sort of smile. The smile he makes when he remembers Fest before the Empire. The smile Galen makes when Kay says a joke.
"He thought you were dead, you know," he adds and watches her smile fade into nothing. "We all did. One of the survivors of the Lah'mu mission wrote about it." She isn't moving, but her eyes follow his words into the air.
Her face of nothing devolves into a grimace. "Add that to the list of things the Rebellion's done for me."
"You don't care about this? Any of it?"
Her eyes harden and the set of her chin tells Cassian he struck a nerve like a string of a guitar. "This rebellion of yours? Your Alliance? It's brought me nothing but pain."
Cassian sharpens his words. "Prepare to jump into empty space then, because we're going to the base at Yavin 4."
"I'm not going to the Alliance," she says with conclusion. Her face has chilled into something worthy of the frosts of Hoth.
"Yet you fight with Saw Gerrera and his Partisans."
Jyn Erso angers again. "I wasn't there for the fight. I can't care less about who runs the galaxy." Then why was she fighting?
"Not all of us have the luxury of deciding when we want to care about something, Jyn Erso." Cassian can feel Chirrut and Baze stare at him. He realizes it's the first time he's actually used her name…
He remembers asking Kay-Tu to research on Lianna Hallik, one of her names. Perhaps to hear of the things she's done, he'll learn something of her. Something that isn't shaded by the stories of Galen's memories. So that Jyn Erso will become a person, not a story.
He begins to walk away. Her voice chases him and runs down his spine. "I want to see my father!"
Cassian shifts his head over his shoulder, facing her but not quite looking. "The orders were to get Bodhi back to Yavin 4." He goes back to the cockpit.
Cassian Andor had the audacity to yell at her about the Alliance, and about Saw. Jyn knows why she's in the fight. She fights for the camaraderie between the rebels more than she does the cause.
Save the dream.
That's all the Alliance knows. Jyn wonders what to expect when she lands on Yavin 4, where the Alliance Base of Operations is. After Cassian retreats to the cockpit, the pilot comes out. He looks like a mess, almost as pathetic as she is.
She is disheveled and broken and lost. Deep down, he must be going through worse.
Jyn tries to remember the newspaper holodocs she took from her time as Tanith Ponta. Bodhi Rook, they said to her in glowing blue words. He's dressed in a stained black flight suit and wearing battered goggles over his long hair.
Bodhi takes the seat Cassian had just vacated, weaving and unweaving his fingers together. He looks like he hadn't slept in days. Like he expects everything around him—the cabin, the seats, and the bulkhead—to suddenly become sentient and swallow him up.
"How do you know my father?" Jyn asks him.
"Eadu," he says, "I think it's Eadu. I met him there. I think so, yes."
"You brought the message to Saw," she adds. "Did my father tell you anything else?"
He whispers to himself on the seat, not really looking up. At some point, his whispering gets louder. "Galen—he said—" Bodhi ducks his head. "He said I could get right by myself. He said I could make it right, if I was brave enough to listen to what was in my heart and do something about it." His lips work over and over again, forming sense out of sentences before swallowing them whole.
His mouth makes a silent laugh. "I guess it's too late."
Jyn has a hundred more questions, none of which she wants the answer to. Bodhi doesn't look like he wants to answer either.
The silence of the cabin and the darkness of the cave, Jyn listens to her father's voice. It's happening. I let it happen. I should've stopped it.
Jedha City is gone. Saw is gone. His people are gone. The little girl is gone.
Saw's last whisper howls and rounds into an echo. Save the dream.
Galen and Saw tear at her together, asking for something she can't give, something she can't lose. Jyn is hollow and bare, and what is left of her is still in the cave of Lah'mu. She can't give something she needs.
Save the dream.
The dream is an endless day on the backwater planet of Lah'mu. It's the Imperial ships descending on the farm, and Follante reminding her to be quiet. It's the smell of blaster oil against the grass poking out from the hill and silent thud of her mother hitting the ground.
Jyn closes her eyes. It's her choice, to look back at it. It's all she can still keep for herself. She's back in the cave. It glows blue with the ghost of Galen Erso and the silver shadow of Saw Gerrera.
Saw did not raise her. He taught her what she knew, what she tried to forget when she was alone. She surprised herself in the streets of Jedha, how much her muscles retain the fire Saw set in her. She hates him for that fire.
But Saw isn't the only presence in the cavern.
It is a Galen Erso she doesn't know. Not the brilliant man she was told of, who was sought by the Empire for his research. Not the gentle farmer she remembers, who was taken from her and has always loved her from between the stars.
There is another Galen Erso. All Jyn knows of him is a flicker of sapphire light in a dark cave that lives within her eyes. Words echo against the walls and repeat over and over and over. Words about love and happiness and loneliness. Warnings and excuses and plans and lies.
My love for her has never faded.
She doesn't try to stop the words. Each one tears at her, and she holds on to them as much as she can. They tell her to run but she doesn't.
Save the dream.
She opens her eyes because she can't do it. Jyn opens her eyes but Jyn is still in the cave. There is music to Chirrut's chanting and Bodhi's whispering, and it echoes against the dimming walls of rock and darkness. She doesn't reach for them, for the light of the sky above her.
She wants to climb out; oh, she does. But this cave is all she still has. Bodhi's whispering joins the chorus of her mind. The sound floods her ears as she tries to hear it over the dark of the cave.
My running will not save you now.
It will not save her either.
Maybe it isn't too late.
"Eadu?" Her voice is cloudy to her. "Is that where my father is?"
Jyn can see Bodhi's eyes from the window of the hatch. "Eadu's where he said his message came from. So is your father there? I think so, yes."
Galen and Saw yell into her mind, demanding something she can't allow them to take. All she has is the darkness of the cave and the voices of the people that were taken from her, silent and loud; demanding and gentle; angry and pleading.
No matter what it was she told Cassian earlier, all she has left is hope.
Yet she breaks anyway. She gives into the demands and the shame that bears down her neck. But she can't do it alone. Jyn can't be alone.
"You're a pilot, right?"
Behind them, Baze grunts unamusedly.