(no subject)

[imthepilot]

Bodhi can't help but get up and fiddle. He's slept so much since the accident, he finds it hard to stay still for too long. Even if holding Galen in the afterglow is magnificent.

Instead he investigates Galen's little kitchenette, seeing what he might have to work with. He's starving!

Comments

[galen_erso]

"They will miss the light," Galen says, grimly. "It's very painful to see a world treated like that. Which is why..."

[imthepilot]

"The Jedhean sun isn't always friendly. My sisters inherited my grandmother's light colouring. It was one of the reasons I worked so hard to get them off world. The SolJedha may be cold, but it burns harshly."

He cocks his head. It isn't like Galen to trail off like that. At least in his experience. "Why...?"

[galen_erso]

Galen closes his eyes, and shakes his head.

Not yet, not here.

"I know Jeddha," he says. "I've been a few times, with Lyra. It was still free then."

[imthepilot]

"Galen, look at me. Please?" Bodhi waits till he has Galen's eyes. "I understand. I understand you can't talk about your work. I get that there's a lot that goes on here that I can't know about. And I'm okay with that. I don't want you to ever feel like you're lying to me or anything, because there's stuff you can't tell me." He rubs his thumb over Galen's knuckles. "I love you. And I trust you."

[galen_erso]

Galen looks at him, his maroon eyes infinitely sad, and infinitely happy with love at the same time.

"I love you," he says. "And I trust you. I will trust you on the other hand of a rope on the rocks out there, too. As you wanted to try."

[imthepilot]

"I'd like that. If you would. The doc mentioned that getting out in the air would do me good. If it ever stops raining here, even for an hour."

He cocks his head. "What was Jedha like, when you visited? I've always thought the view must be very different for pilgrims compared to the people who live there."

[galen_erso]

"Completely," Galen says. "It was bright dust and a wild flurry of people interspaced with scarlet robes, and faces that seemed to have seen millennia, and then of course the kyber crystals. I first came to study them."

[imthepilot]

"The temple. I use to love sitting outside and watching peoples' dazed expression when they came out. The way it seemed to freak them out."

[galen_erso]

"It changed both of us," Galen says. "With bitter irony, I realise that I couldn't do the work I am doing without those experiences."

[imthepilot]

"Without having see what they were, before the were taken away?"

[galen_erso]

"Without having seen and felt the Force at work, there," Galen says. "This entire endeavour seems to be fuelled by bitter irony and total disrespect for the Force as much as the actual kyber."

[imthepilot]

"I never felt it." Bodhi shakes his head. "My mother, she dragged us in there as often as she could but... I never felt the thing that changed the pilgrims. I don't think she did either but she would never had admitted it."

He squeezes Galen's hand. "You still feel it. That means you must still be doing something right."

[galen_erso]

"It doesn't tell right from wrong," Galen says. "Even Darth Vader, the Empire's Sith lord, still uses it. It exists, never judging."

[imthepilot]

And there in lies the difference between the truth of the Force and the religious rhetoric he grew up with. "Half the stories I've heard about Darth Vader make me doubt he's real."

[galen_erso]

"He is," Galen says.

[imthepilot]

"I don't know if that's reassuring or terrifying." Bodhi admits.

[galen_erso]

"Terrifying," Galen states. "He is."

[imthepilot]

"I'm not going to ask. I don't think either of us want to talk about that scary individual."

He squeezes Galen's hand again. "Tell me about you? Do you have any brothers or sisters? Where did you grow up? I feel like I've done nothing but complain about my family but I know very little about yours."

[galen_erso]

"I'm an only child, and my parents were ordinary people from the planet Grange," Galen says. "My mother was a teacher, and she recognised early on that I was clever and made sure I had all the input my growing mind needed. I kept winning science fairs as a kid, and finally ended up getting fest-tracked to a very good education through programs of the old republic."

[imthepilot]

"Before everything when wrong." Before Bodhi's time. A slight reminder of the age gap between them. "It's a good thing. She wanted the best for you."

[galen_erso]

"And she got it," Galen says. "They both died in the wars, when the fighting happened to brush by Grange. Krennic took me to see it, in order to make me want to work for him."

[imthepilot]

The Jedhean curse that slips through Bodhi's clenched teeth would have earned him a beating from his grandmother. "What is it with that man?"

[galen_erso]

"He never got over the fact that I said no to him," Galen says. "He kept badgering me through much of my life, for this thing or that."

[imthepilot]

"You and he-" He asks, he sentence hanging in the air. A jealous ex could be even more dangerous than a vindictive commander.

[galen_erso]

"Never," Galen says. "But in hindsight, I think he may have wanted me. I openly said no to all his schemes to advance, his job proposals, his grandiose ideas because I was just not interested. I might not even have noticed what may have been his advances, when we were student. I later puzzled that out with Lyra."