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The sky is turning to pale grey when Jyn gets home. Not quite sunrise, but they don’t have much longer to wait. She turns the doorknob slowly, carefully. She doesn’t need to fumble with the key- Bodhi’s left it unlocked for her. Her chest pangs at the thought and she breathes through the ocean surge of run run run instinct that rises up in her throat.
She steps quietly through the doorway.
Jyn can move quiet as a cat when she wants to, a lifetime of watch your back and get away while you can and you know what to do , but it doesn’t matter. Bodhi’s been waiting up for her. He’s curled up on the couch when she comes in, big eyes blinking at her all dark and bird-like. His hair is falling loose over his shoulders. Her heart is caught in her throat.
He doesn’t question where she’s been; he doesn’t make her talk. He knows her so well. Knows she couldn’t get a word out now even if he asked.
He doesn’t say anything, just stretches out his arm. It isn’t clear who reaches who first- if he pulls her in or if she goes to him, but it doesn’t matter; she’s tumbling into him like he’s water in a desert. They twine together on the beat-up, worn couch, like survivors of a shipwreck treading water in a deep, deep ocean- huddled together amidst the terrifying expanse of home .
Force, she never thought she’d have a home again. Neither did Bodhi, she knows. They know each other so well.
--
Nights like these, it’s too much. She can’t stand it. The three of them, her and Bodhi and Cassian, as lived-in and worn-down as the couch, all soft and simple and safe . There’s a stormy ocean in her head and her surroundings beat down upon her, wave after wave. Their toothbrushes by the sink. Bodhi’s shirt hugging her shoulders. Cassian’s breath tickling her cheek.
It’s enough to drown her. She stays as long as she can, but soon enough the sounds of quiet breathing are washed away in a pounding, frantic chant of get out get away go now run run run and the dam inside her breaks. She leaves her bed and her boys and she runs.
It’s Bodhi that always brings her back in. Cassian- their perfect, beautiful Cassian- is a heavy sleeper. After so many years of war and fatigue, nights spent awake at the controls of a ship, chin propped on the rifle of a gun, he can finally rest. And rest he does. Some mornings they think he’ll sleep forever, but then there he is, squinting into the sun: all messy hair and lopsided smiles.
Ah , he’ll say sheepishly, is it that late already? as he presses absentminded kisses onto their heads while he stumbles through the kitchen. He’ll catch Jyn’s gaze from behind Bodhi’s back, a little conspiratorial grin etched onto his handsome face. She’ll roll her eyes. He’s ridiculous. But they can never bear to wake him.
And on nights like these, she counts it among her greatest blessings that Cassian doesn’t wake easily anymore.
No, it’s Bodhi that gets her home. They have each other’s backs like that.
--
Once, she ran all the way to the ocean, just so she could fall to her knees in the sand and heave all the air out of her lungs, choking on mama and papa and the feeling of Saw Gerrera’s arm slipping from her grasp as Jedha crumbled around them. She feels jaws snapping at her heels, hears the voices of the dead ringing in her ears. She spent most of a lifetime running because of her father- because of his name, because of his alliances, because he hugged her tight one day and called her stardust and said say you understand and she knew what he meant was don’t look back.
She never stays out past sunrise. But that day, she sat unmoving on the beach, blinking at the water until the sky turned gold. Bodhi came to get her. He silently, gently, brushed the sand out of her clothes. Then they walked back home and waited for Cassian to wake up.
Her father told Bodhi Rook a lot of things too. Things like you can make it right and be brave and listen to your heart .
Jyn wonders if Galen told him don’t stop or they’ll catch you .
--
Jyn presses herself tighter into Bodhi’s side. His skin is pleasantly chilled from the morning air. Mornings like these, he stays still and soundless. Lets her come to him. Tries not to spook her. It would feel condescending, if it was anyone else. But it’s him. They have each other’s backs.
--
It’s not Cassian’s fault, that he’s the most dedicated person in the whole damn universe. She tries not to hold it against him. But the simple truth is that Cassian has never turned his back on anything in his life, and she and Bodhi? They’re runners. If you stop moving, says the ocean in her brain, you’re dead .
She always called herself a survivor. She ignored the quieter voice, underneath, saying coward .
Cassian is the farthest thing from a coward. Bodhi too, she knows, but she also knows that some nights he wakes drenched in sweat and shaking with fever, and she’ll find him tucked into a closet chanting i’m the pilot i’m the pilot and he’ll look at her with eyes that remember so little of how far he’s come, and he’ll ask did i do it and is it over and i didn’t run, right? Please tell me I didn’t run. Please say I stayed and fought.
On those nights she cradles him close to her chest and swallows down the ocean in her lungs. Bodhi Rook didn’t run. She’s not going to run either.
The thing is, it’s claustrophobic sometimes. All of Cassian’s loyalty. In her worser moments it frightens her. It’s a quiet kind of shame, what she and Bodhi have, but he’ll always come find her, she knows. And she can lure him out of his holes.
It’s like Cassian leaving cans of food on the porch for the animals. He’s always been good with strays.
--
The sun comes and goes, splashing rosy pinks and yellows over the walls before clambering ever higher into what looks to be a cloudy, rainy day. Jyn looks up from where her face is tucked into the curve of Bodhi’s neck. The light on his face is muted but lovely. She noses softly at his jaw- a message, as best as she can give.
He looks down to meet her gaze and she watches as he sees the curve lingering at the corners of her lips, the renewed spark in her eyes. When he presses a kiss to the side of her mouth it feels like relief.
“There you are,” he says. Hushed. Reverential.
It’s almost too much to bear, but she stomachs it well, hiding her face in his chest for a moment before she reemerges. There’s laughter painted across his face but he mercifully contains it, for her sake. Day has broken like an egg spilling across the stove and everything feels lighter, sweeter, softer.
She ran away but her home stayed where she left it. She ran away but he unlocked the door and rubbed circles into her back until the sun came up. She ran away but she came back.
Back to Cassian, still asleep in bed. Back to Bodhi.
There you are, she thinks, watching him. She’d never say it out loud, though.
--
It’s as far into the evening as she could stand when the fatigue finally catches up to Jyn, and she crawls between the cool sheets of their bed to sleep until someone wakes her up.
She’s halfway between asleep and awake when Cassian comes in, conscious enough to hear him moving through the bedroom but not conscious enough to care what he’s doing. As he leaves she hears more than she sees him linger in the doorway.
“Long night, huh?” he says, wryly. Her heart skips a beat, but her eyes remain closed.
He bends down to kiss her forehead and when he stands back up she can’t resist a look at his face. He’s drawn, tired, but there’s something else- a kind of hollow sadness that she sees so often in Bodhi, in herself, but only ever at night.
Oh, Cassian , she thinks. He hasn’t seen her eyes open.
Still feigning unconsciousness, she makes a childish grab for his arm, pulling him towards her as if caught in the throes of sleep. He’s laughing at her, and he must think she’s ridiculous, but he’s ridiculous too. Cassian , she mumbles, and she’s won- he’s pulling off his jacket, crawling into bed with her.
The light is coming in where Cassian left the door open, but she doesn’t mind. Then, there are shadows falling across her face, and Bodhi is standing in the doorway, watching them. Jyn lets her eyes open. They look at each other for a moment.
She knows that he sees it too. They know each other so well.
How could they have thought Cassian wouldn’t notice? How many times did he wake up to an empty bed, and wait for them just as Bodhi had waited for her? But if he knew, she thinks, if he only knew how nice it is to see him sleep. We can never bear to wake you up, she thinks.
But Cassian has never cared about that. He’s never run from a fight in his life. He wouldn’t run from this one either, she knows.
Bodhi steps forward, shutting the door behind him, and the three of them sleep through the whole night together for the first time in a long time.