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[imthepilot]

{From here}

Bodhi's room is little more than a bunk, a desk and a fresher. But the Bar seems to have taken pity on him and the bunk is now a double with enough room for both of them.

The sheets are clean, only because the rats took best advantage of Bodhi being out to change them. But the room has a sense of desolation to it.

Bodhi doesn't look well either, his skin flushed and his hands shaking a little. "Should we... rest? We have time. All the time in the world now."

Comments

[cook_the_rude]

Galen sits on the bed.

"Talk," he says, "rest, fall asleep when talking is done. Yes."

And crying, he doesn't add. Most likely, they will both cry before this is done.

[imthepilot]

Bodhi sits too, starting to shrug off the flight-suit. He's wearing a tee-shirt and shorts underneath. The sleeves of the tee aren't long enough to cover the four slender cuts, semi-healed and still angry across his right inner forearm.

[cook_the_rude]

"What happened?" Galen asks, reaching out to ouch the scars with a gentle fingertip.

[imthepilot]

"These aren't-" He swallows, his voice thick. "I needed to..."

[cook_the_rude]

Galen reaches out for him.

"Yes?"

[imthepilot]

He looks up at Galen with tear-stricken eyes. "It's... it was the only think I could feel. I... I'm dead. And without you-" His voice breaks.

[cook_the_rude]

Galen just hugs him close, at loss for words for a moment. "But now, I am here," he finally manages to say, his own voice very thick as well.

[imthepilot]

He buries his face in Galen's shoulder, trick tears starting to well now. "I couldn't go on, not without you. I was dead, but... but there was no rest, no force. Without you, there's nothing but grey." He sobs.

[cook_the_rude]

Galen holds him tight, kisses his ear-tip, waits for him to go on.

[imthepilot]

He doesn't, not for a long moment. It's too much. But he does try to cover the cuts. "I'm sorry. I'm not strong enough."

[cook_the_rude]

"You are," Galen says. "You did it all, after all. And it cost you -- everything."

He touches Bodhi's arms again. "Nothing to be ashamed of."

[imthepilot]

"Everything. Everyone." He looks up, his eyes wet. "Galen, they tested the weapon. On Jedha. They destroyed Jedha City. If Cassian hadn't wanted you, wanted to know how to find you. I would have been in Saw's cells when-" He buries his face in his hands, shaking wildly now.

[cook_the_rude]

"... Jedha??"

Galen doesn't even ask who Cassian is, he just pulls Bodhi close against his chest as an enormous wave of guilt and grief overwhelms him, too.

Jedha. The Holy City. Bodhi's family. Everyone indeed.

[imthepilot]

"Because I was there. Because they were afraid of the message. But it reached her. Even after Saw-" He goes green at the thought. "Saw... he didn't believe me. He thought it was a trick. He... he did things. To me."

[cook_the_rude]

Galen holds him, openly sobbing now.

"All because I sent you..."

All the sorries in the world aren't enough.

"And Jyn? She was there, when I---"

[imthepilot]

Bodhi shakes his head. He doesn't want Galen to blame himself. But he has to tell it.

"She was with Cassian, he was a rebel with the Alliance. Saw gave her the message before- before they killed Jedha. We got away on Cassian's ship. With two Guardians. Oh Stars, Galen. Jedha died before our eyes. And I couldn't watch."

He swallows, trying to focus on what Galen needs to hear. "She was just like you said, Galen. Jyn. She was so strong, so passionate. Lyra, I could see her in Jyn's eyes. Just the way you told me."

[cook_the_rude]

"So could I, when she was -- when I..."

Galen's voice fails him.

"All of Jedha..."

[imthepilot]

"On Eadu. She saw you, before-?" His own voice breaks. "It was my fault. After what Saw did, I should have known not to trust the Rebels. But Jyn was there. And she wanted to see you. I knew you would want the same."

[cook_the_rude]

"She saw me," Galen says, "and I saw her, and we talked. She was there, so I knew you had come through. But I -- I couldn't speak any more, I so wanted to ask her where you are, but I couldn't say anything because--"

He swallows.

"Because I was dead."

[imthepilot]

He clings to Galen, holding his lover close. "She was angry, Galen. She didn't weep, she didn't break down. She turned that anger into fuel, into armour. She took on the whole Alliance Council. And when they wouldn't listen, she... we stole the ship again, and went to Scarif without them. She was a leader, Galen. A hero."

[cook_the_rude]

"And you went with her, bravely, to the end?" Galen guesses, clinging just as much.

[imthepilot]

"She was all I had left of you." Bodhi answers bleakly. "I had to."

[cook_the_rude]

"You were with her when I couldn't," Galen says. "Thank you. Bodhi, I -- you ---"

His voice breaks again.

"Did you tell her?" he manages to say.

[imthepilot]

He shakes head head, hiding his face in Galen's shoulder. "She asked... how close we were. I couldn't... she- it wasn't the right time. Everything happened so fast, I didn't want to distract her."

[cook_the_rude]

Galen nods, and holds him close. "You thought you could tell her afterwards..."

Only there was no afterwards, for any of them.

[imthepilot]

"When there was time to explain properly. When she would have time... time to understand."

There was no way to explain his deep seated fear Jyn would never believe him.

[cook_the_rude]

"She didn't know me that well, as a grown-up person," Galen says. "Only that I loved her, and would do anything for her sake."

Pause.

"Not that that ever helped anybody I loved," he adds, voice full of self-scorn. "Not Lyra, not you, no Jyn."

[imthepilot]

"We were pebbles. You built the flaw, I carried the message and flew the ship, Jyn stole the plans and broadcast them to the Alliance."

He hugs Galen, kissing his cheek. "Larger pebbles destroyed it." He doesn't want to tell Galen about the second one he read about.

[cook_the_rude]

"Pebbles," Galen echoes. "And now, we're no longer necessary. Still, I'm sorry for what you had to suffer, before and after death."

[imthepilot]

He pulls Galen down to lay with him, holding him close. "You're here. We both are. We're not necessary anymore."

He's pale now, so tired, so wore out. "Please don't leave me?"

[cook_the_rude]

Galen lies beside him and holds him close.

"Never, as long as I" -- not live -- "have breath, and a body to move about in."

[imthepilot]

"M sorry." Bodhi mumbles into Galen's chest, "You should have lived. You should have had time with Jyn."

[cook_the_rude]

Galen holds him close, drifting off as well.

"So should you," he murmurs. "And she. All the pebbles got tossed aside when they were no longer necessary. That's what the Force gave us, in the end."

[imthepilot]

Whatever Bodhi says in return gets lost in a sleepy drawl as his arms tighten around Galen.

[cook_the_rude]

Dr. Hannibal Lecter wakes in the middle of the night in a strange bed, with a strange person weighing down one half of his body. He is warm, comfortable and rather bewildered.

The other person, male and compact and surprisingly strong, is neither Sinric nor Ganymede, far less Alana, or the one he would most like to hold, Will. He is a stranger who smells of spices and engine oil and dried blood and tears. So many tears.

Bodhi Rook.

And just like that, Hannibal remembers. He remembers the stranger who threw himself at him, but he also remembers a rainy planet where he's never been in his waking life (he's not been to any planets, not counting Earth), a futuristic if dark and bare installation, belief, spices, puns (such bad puns -- Hannibal cringes at the mere memory), rock-climbing and love.

Overwhelming, powerful love that wants only one thing: the well-being of the person he loves. It is a very befuddling emotion, almost as strange as that planet (moon?) he remembers.

Whoever would settle on a place that is only stark rocks and rainwater?

Hannibal gently, very gently, untangles Bodhi from his limbs and sits up. He is Dr. Hannibal Lecter, not Dr. Galen Erso, and should not be here. He may not be Galen, but he remembers Galen, and can just imagine how furious he would be if he knew that somebody else touched Bodhi in his stead, and how he would bottle that up inside himself, as not to scare Bodhi. He realises how much Galen would bottle up, and calm down with belief and pacifism, because he never wanted to scare the ones he loved.

Whoever would love so all-consumingly they'd forget about their own feelings?

Hannibal is actually glad that nothing else happened, due to the general exhaustion and inertia caused by the cold. Not cold. Identity and Memory Dysphoric Bronchial influenza, more like it. It's been another round of that one. It would be funny, if it wasn't so annoying. Autor had been there, and tried to warn Bodhi, and Bodhi...

Hannibal remembers the pride Galen had felt when Bodhi stood up and told that young man to get lost, and it is exactly the same pride Hannibal had felt when Will had brought him that neat cut of red meat, or coolly interpreted the gleeful savagery of Randall Tier's installation.

But not the kind of pride Hannibal felt when he'd thrown Will in to swim with the sharks, only to come out the biggest fish of them all. Not the kind of pride Hannibal had felt when Will bested him. It is a quiet pride, accepting a helping hand when Galen himself stumbles, his own shortcomings perfectly offset by Bodhi's strengths, tenderness over scars not because they hurt, but because they had been the greatest gift of all.

Bodhi would be so easy to throw into a chaos of anxiety and then made to worship the one helping hand reaching out to him; instead, Galen had focused on his strength and gone to scale rocks together with him. He would have been easy to send off into danger to prove himself; instead, Galen had gone out of his way (literally, a bad pun almost worthy of the man) to assure they were on the same page, they were in this together and knew they would do this for each other.

Galen had been a very lucky man, in his pilot. He was hardly more than a truck driver in space, but Galen had seen and felt the vast potential, the deep connection -- just as Hannibal had seen it in Will. But while Will had been a challenge (I don't find you that interesting.), Bodhi was an offer (You should let me know if you want something like that.) -- and Galen had taken it, just as Hannibal had taken the challenge.

It wasn't just what they'd said so, it had been in the listening, too. That opened the space for the becoming that followed. Bodhi had issued a challenge, too (Do you really believe that's how it will be used?), but Galen hadn't taken the bait. Instead, he had appealed to fate -- the Force, actually, as they called it in that universe.

A strange concept. Was it that which had compelled him towards Will the moment he set eyes on him? And had Bodhi ever cursed the Force for using him and mangling his mind, the way Will must have cursed Hannibal, as pointlessly but cutely as a cat mewling about having its claws clipped?

It was not something Hannibal wanted to think about, here, with Bodhi peacefully asleep beside him.

Quickly and resolutely, he got up, found something to write, and penned a note.

Autor was right -- I woke up to the realisation that I'm not Galen, but Hannibal Lecter, having been in the throes of that influenza induced identity dysphoria syndrome Autor had rightly been referring to. Words cannot confer how deeply sorry I am for causing you this pain all over again, and nothing that I might offer can possibly make amends.

However, please accept my deepest and most heartfelt apologies.

Yours sincerely,
Dr. Hannibal Lecter

Then, he picked up his shoes -- luckily, he hadn't divested himself of anything else -- and crept out of the room.