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[seenitbefore]

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[callsign_rogueone]

A stream of invectives that would shock his father half to death (and probably manage to impress Baze) go off inside Bodhi's head. This isn't--he doesn't--and Cassian sure as hells wouldn't want to be seen like--

But he's here, in Bodhi's room, and he's falling apart. This is happening, and he had better pull himself together and...and be half as solid as Cassian and Jyn have been for him. Even if he didn't want, with an aching fierceness, to do that for him, he owe Cassian that.

"Your name is, is Cassian Andor," he says, and now he's holding Cassian's hand between both of his, not just pressing reassuringly at his knee. "You're a captain with the Rebellion to re-restore the Republic. C-Captain Andor. You're, um, Rebel Intelligence, a spy, so I don't--I don't know all the th-thi--the details you know."

"On paper you're, well, you're our CO," there's that mouth twitch again, a little less strained now that they're not on the topic of Jedha. "B-but in reality we, we, we plan missions together, be-because Jyn's, uh, Jyn, and Chi-chirrut and Baze aren't, tech--nically with the Rebellion and I'm, I, I need to think them through. Orders, I mean. You, you let me."

You're Bodhi Rook? You're the pilot?

Bodhi strokes at Cassian's white knuckled fingers and sighs. "Does that--does any of that help?"

[seenitbefore]

In a way it does help. As he listens, with rising incredulity, Cassian can feel reality steadying under his feet, grounding him in what he knows for truth. He listens quietly until Bodhi's finished, and then he says, with absolute confidence, "No. That's not me."

He has no way of knowing that it's the same voice, the same level, clear-eyed look, that's lied to Bodhi before; but his grip relaxes a little, and his free hand comes up without his thinking about it to settle over Bodhi's, running a thumb over his knuckles in gentle counterpoint.

[callsign_rogueone]

"U-uhm," the stammer has nothing to do with nerves or holes jabbed through his psyche; this time, it's pure confused. "It's, it's not?"

All right. Sure. That might not be how Cassian sees himself. Bodhi's never tried to describe his squadmates as people before (he's given Jyn's physical description to law enforcement officers on half a dozen different worlds, but the less said about those instances the better), he may have put his foot in his mouth. A dark flush climbs up his neck, spurred on by the unusually pleasant sensation of trigger callouses sweeping over his scraped knuckles.

"I'm sorry. I don't--I haven't known you that long. If I got somethi-something wrong, I..."

[seenitbefore]

"I've known you for twelve years," Cassian says steadily. "You and Jyn and me, we're partners. You know? Our son's in high school. I'm a programmer. You run a garage with my youngest uncle. No space, no spies--" with a half-laugh, "no army anymore."

His hand stills then, though he doesn't pull away, and he draws a slow breath. "But that's not you either, is it."

[callsign_rogueone]

They are partners, him and Cassian and Jyn (and K and Chirrut and Baze), or at least he's hoped as much. Bodhi's tries to reconcile how it feels to hear that said aloud with the extreme time discrepancy Cassian seems to be struggling with, draws a breath to point out they were both children twelve years ago, when Cassian says:

Our son

He chokes on nothing, shoulders hitching forward as though absorbing a blow to the chest. The rest of Cassian's factoids register, but get shunted aside like debris from a deflector shield. A programmer? A garage? No Rebellion? By extension, no Empire?

"I--" he doesn't mean to snatch his hands away, exactly, they come up on reflex to grab at his temples. The dull ache constantly hunkered down behind his eyes stirs at all the uproar, pushing at the thin stitches of his psyche. "It's not, I don't, I don't think it is, but I--I have--trouble, with, with remembering what's r-r-real, where I--am, sometimes." His vision blurs, overlaps, Cassian's outline peeling into two separate silhouettes. Bodhi screws his eyes closed. "Buh-but I have to think I'd re-re--I'd know if there were a kid. If we were..."

Oh, this is bad. This is bad, he's meant to be holding himself together right now, for Cassian's sake, but what if it's all an extended episode of his own? All of it? Everything? Which 'all'?

He would know if he had a son, he tells himself. He would know if Cassian's touch on his knuckles were familiar. He would. He would.

[seenitbefore]

"Hey, hey, hey, Jesus, it's okay," and he's on his feet before he knows it, pure reflex, moving to sit on the bunk after all but not too close, not crowding him. "I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to - it's okay. No. You would. You would know. You wouldn't forget a thing like that, I know you wouldn't. That - that wasn't you," his voice going a little husky at the last. "It's okay, I'm sorry."

[callsign_rogueone]

I'm the pilot. Jedha's gone. I delivered the message. Galen's gone, but Jyn's alive. I'm the pilot. I got us off Scarif. We're alive. I'm the pilot.

These facts ring through him with the familiarity of long repetition. He was supposed to pick things that were true, things anyone around him could confirm if he slipped. These days, he doesn't need random rebels to confirm Jedha or Scarif or Galen, and piloting lives in his tendons and nerves. He picked these things because they were true. If he'd had any children or--or spouses, he would have picked those, too.

Bodhi drags his hands down his neck, fingers curling in the collar of his flightsuit. That wasn't so bad; he hadn't slipped as far as rocking or counting his breaths. The urge to physically hold his skull together has mostly passed. He can swallow and look around for Cassian, and be grateful that he's a little too tired to jump when he finds him at his side.

"You--you're sorry?" he rasps. "You're never sor-sorry. Not in so many words." His mouth twitches again, a little dry this time, a little sharp in ways Bodhi himself doesn't quite realize. "What's happening? What are--you're--all these things you're s-saying? What?"

[seenitbefore]

Cassian looks a little spooked himself - he's walked Bodhi through plenty of bad days, but never this bad, never with that kind of absolute, lucid horror in his face. He tucks his hands back under his elbows, to hold in his own shaking, and also to keep from reaching out and hauling not-his-Bodhi into his arms. "I don't know. I don't know what. But I am sorry. I didn't-- I should have stopped to think. I wasn't trying to mess with you."

A deep breath. "I mean, this is pretty sci-fi anyway, we're in Starbase Whatever The Hell and K's a giant robot for some reason. There might as well be a mirror universe."

[callsign_rogueone]

"Wh-what's a robot?" the idea of K as anything other than an eight foot tall, spindle-limbed hulk is as alien as anything else Cassian's said so far. Bodhi doesn't quite grasp the whole meaning of terms like 'sci-fi' or 'mirror universe' either, but the overall intent carries: Cassian is somehow as unmoored from this reality as Bodhi fears finding himself.

"I might...might know someone we can ah-ask," he straightens, hands slowly lowering to his lap. Someone who can read Cassian in ways Bodhi can't. Someone who might know what's wrong outside of a med-scan. "C-come on, we need to find Chirrut."

[seenitbefore]

"Who's that?" and for the first time in the past hour there's something distinctly Cassian-like in his expression, a wary reserve. (He's quite positive he doesn't know a "Chirrut", and now that he's reminded of the K-thing, he's a little afraid to ask who - or what - Bodhi proposes dragging him in front of.) "What are they going to do?"

[callsign_rogueone]

How does it make any sense for Cassian to know Bodhi, and Jyn, and K-who-is-a-robot-now-whatever-that-means, but not Chirrut? He'd met Chirrut before Bodhi! Nothing about this makes sense.

"I don't kn-know," Bodhi admits, palming the door open. At least he can be reasonably sure that Chirrut and Baze will be in their quarters, with second-shift just ended. They wake early, as good as a chronometer set to Jedhan standard time, but not this early. "He knows things, sometimes. He can t-tell when something's not...not right."

This is not for Bodhi to decipher. His head's still askew with thoughts of sons and partners and uncles. No manual exists for this, but the Force? Chirrut would have it that all things are possible with the Force.

[seenitbefore]

He does have to laugh at that - sharp and sudden and finely edged with hysteria, but honest laughter all the same. "You think we need a second opinion on that?"

[callsign_rogueone]

A laugh? A laugh instead of a half-stifled huff? Bodhi redoubles his pace, spasmodically glancing over his shoulder to make sure Cassian's still following. "I th-think we need somewhere to st-st-start."

Chirrut makes a much more sensible first step than, oh, Jyn. Bodhi's imagination shies away from conjuring up her potential reaction to suggesting that Cassian might not be Cassian at all, and he's just fine with that. He has enough trouble sleeping at night as things stand.

[seenitbefore]

There not being much else he can do, Cassian gets up and picks his way back through the jumbled room in Bodhi's wake. "Okay. Sure. Let's start." Start what, he can't help thinking; he's not sure how much further reality can unravel on him, but he doesn't want to find out.

Out in the tunnel again he falters for a moment, and has to walk fast to catch up to Bodhi's long-legged, anxious progress. "You sure you're okay?"

[callsign_rogueone]

Base corridors are never truly empty, powered-down, or asleep. So long as an attack could come at any moment, there could be no real stillness or quiet. Other beings paced the halls, executing tasks or taking advantage of the post-shift lull to stretch their appendages.

"M-me?" Bodhi doubletakes over his shoulder as he edges around an Ithonian. Grek, he thinks that's their name. "You're the one who, who, who's had a sudden personality transpl-plant."

[seenitbefore]

But when he looks, Cassian isn't listening. He's just processed the fact that the big lumbering shape they just passed isn't another robot, isn't, as he initially told himself, some strangely bedizened beast of burden; he's registered the flare of what might be gills, and the faint, earthy, utterly foreign scent, and most importantly the cool curiosity of the glance it shot him out of one cocked... eyestalk...?

"Holy fuck," he breathes, when he can breathe at all (Grek, after the one quizzical look, has gone on their way unconcerned).

[callsign_rogueone]

As far as Bodhi's aware, Grek and Cassian don't know each other. He thinks the Ithonian's a structural engineer or something, only knows that much because they were both consulted about the charging stations at the rear docking bays when the Rebellion started hollowing out this moon. Cassian's area of expertise doesn't exactly overlap.

Not that it matters, since he wouldn't stare at a stranger like that. Nobody would. This slack-jawed, glassy-eyed balk reads more like a Core worlder stepping outside the Imperial bubble for the first time.

No space, no spies, no army.

"Hey, um," Bodhi clears his throat as Grek makes their ponderous way down the corridor. "Ey-eyes on me?"

[seenitbefore]

"Yeah," refocusing on him gratefully - he doesn't want to stare, he does know better than that, but it takes the sound of an almost-familiar voice to short-circuit his paralysis. "Sorry. I-- Coming."

Aliens among us! he can almost see Djem saying, along with the smug grin that accompanies the kid's worse jokes - but no, he's not thinking about that, no. He stumbles a little as he follows obediently after Bodhi, and tries to concentrate on not letting the shakes get the best of him.

[callsign_rogueone]

A million contingencies clamor for Bodhi's attention: what to tell Chirrut (and by extension, Baze), how to put K2 off without rousing suspicion, how to explain to Draven - a man who does not and never will like or trust Bodhi Rook - that his best and most reliable spy has had some sort of personality transplant, how to keep this from Jyn, how to plot a course through the base that will expose Cassian to the fewest possible nonhumans--

He never gets further than acknowledging the one issue before four more pop up, no time to actually push for a solution in any single direction. And then, there they are, outside the quarters of the other two surviving Jedhans.

(That's not a label Bodhi likes to think about, much. He's taken to defining himself in other ways. But with one of those metrics standing beside him at a loss, he falls back into bad habits.)

Bodhi knocks. "Chirrut? Baze?"

[forceofothers]

There is, beyond the door, some grumbling and miscellaneous night noises of the variety made by two people who have lived together for decades in circumstances where they are frequently rousted out of bed in the middle of their sleep cycle.

And then the door opens to reveal Chirrut, covering a yawn with one hand and leaning on the door control with the other. Baze is not immediately visible, which doesn't mean he isn't awake in there somewhere. Lurking. Keeping Chirrut covered.

Habits that kept you alive take a long time to fade.

"Bodhi," says Chirrut. "Good evening!"

[seenitbefore]

Cassian looks up cautiously. It's a moment before he registers that clouded gaze and realizes that Chirrut doesn't acknowledge him because Chirrut doesn't see him, and a little spark of relief he hadn't even known was there flickers out again. He draws in a slow, steadying breath, glancing at Bodhi again and then back. He's not sure what to make of this guy, but at least he's not unsettlingly familiar.

[callsign_rogueone]

"Good, um, yes," Bodhi is painfully aware it's well past evening, and less sure than he'd like to be that Chirrut's greeting isn't a sarcastic reminder of that fact. It can be hard to tell sometimes, when everything out of the monk's mouth ends in an exclamation point.

"S-sorry to dis--to bother you, both, but," he takes a short step to the side, revealing Cassian. Not that he makes much of a visual barrier, or that such things matter to Chirrut in general, but it's still only polite. Baze is still hovering somewhere, after all. "It's Cassian. He's."

How to put this? Can Chirrut already tell? What if there's nothing at all strange about Cassian in the Force, or whatever?

"He's not hi-himself?"

[forceofothers]

"Indeed?" says Chirrut. Headtilt. "And where is he? What does this 'not being himself' consist of?"

Mischief enters his face. "Are we going to break up an indecorous activity?"

[seenitbefore]

"I'm right here," Cassian says, a trifle nettled by both the remark and the muffled snort from inside the room. "And I am myself, it's everything else that's gone crazy."

(Though of course, to their ears, he doesn't even sound like himself, not exactly - he sounds paradoxically young, his voice more expressive and less precise. More than that: he's not a noisy presence, there at Bodhi's shoulder, but the controlled calm, the shell of stillness that's as much part of Cassian as the shape of his words and the weight of his footsteps, that's nowhere to be found.)

[callsign_rogueone]

Chirrut won't see it when Bodhi flings his arms out as if to say 'There!! You see?!', but Baze might appreciate it. Bodhi also hopes he's seeing the miffed crinkle to Cassian's face, because that's a first. He desperately needs someone else to acknowledge how alien the expression - all expressions, really - is, how out of place.

"Yes, he's, he's here," Bodhi sighs, almost apologetically. "But it's not--Chirrut, I don't. I don't th-think it's him."

He rakes a hand through his hair, goggles hanging loose and forgotten around his neck. "I thought, m-maybe, you could..." Do exactly what Chirrut had done, though indirectly: confirm that he doesn't recognize the man standing across from him.