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misskatieleigh · 7 years

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One for Sorrow, Two for Joy - The Final Installment

Firstly, thank you to everyone who’s been following along on this adventure. I never expected to get such a response for what started as a midnight idea in @semisweetshadow‘s head. For now, this is the final installment for the Rook twins. @proto-kitteh and I will be editing and posting a cleaned up version to AO3 in the next couple of days, so keep your eye out for that and let us know what you think.

For the time being, here’s where you can read the beginning:

Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four - Part Five

Art by @clawsou - Art by @shima-spoon - Art by @canadian-girlfriend

Gif set and photo set by @semisweetshadow

If anyone else created something that I missed, please let me know and I will add it!

And finally - the end:

One year later…

Bokan shivered, walking down the open ramp into the hangar at Echo base. He reached up and pulled his cloak tighter around his neck. “Which Sith chose this place as a base of operations? I grew up on Jedha, but this is just ridiculous.”

Chopper rolled down the ramp behind him, chirping indignantly.

“It doesn’t bother me… yeah, good for you, freaking asshole.” Bokan grumbled, but he patted the droid on the head as he rolled past. “Go get an oil bath, you bucket of bolts!”

Someone started chuckling, walking up from behind the ship. “Making friends, I see.” Bokan looked over his shoulder, a grin breaking across his face at the sight of his brother.

“We can’t all be the the poster child of the rebellion, Lieutenant Rook, but I get by.” Bokan stood and walked down to wrap Bodhi in a hug.

Bodhi tugged on Bokan’s cloak, rubbing the fabric between his fingers. “Don’t think I won’t be stealing this from you.”

“Heh, you can try.”

It had been a year, but Bokan still marveled at the fact that it could be so casual with Bodhi. They didn’t get to communicate much, and most of what he was doing wasn’t anything that they could talk about over open comms anyway, but he knew that Bodhi had found his place here and he was proud. They didn’t need to have the same methods to make a difference.

Bodhi patted him on the back and stepped away. “Are you going to be on base long? Cassian’s due back tomorrow sometime.”

“I’m surprised you let him go off without you, Andor tends to find trouble I hear.”

Bodhi snorted. “I can see why you’re still single, I don’t let him do anything. Besides, I’ve got K-2 to keep an eye out for me. He’s very…protective since we got his memory chip uploaded to the new unit.”

“You mean annoying? Yeah, I’ve got one of those, too. Keeps life interesting at least.”

Bodhi adjusted the goggles on his head, a nervous tic he’d had since they were kids. “Hard to believe we get to have a chance at that, huh? An interesting life.” He took a breath and twisted his lips into a fair semblance of a smile. “Any life at all?”

Bokan took his own deep breath, felt his damaged lungs ache at the stretch, and looked around. “That’s the point of all this, isn’t it? To get that chance? Shit, I’m gonna have to thank Andor for saving my ass one of these days.”

He watched his brother’s face soften at the mention of his boyfriend and wondered at how he could have stayed away from his family all those years ago. “Come on, you can buy me a caf and we’ll catch up. Where’s Erso, harassing Dameron still?”

Bodhi laughed, loud and bright. “Caf’s free, loser. I’ll let Jyn fill you in on her escapades, she tells it different every time anyway.”

They walked off together, but not before Bokan reached up to pat his ship, his home, fondly. “Yeah, we’ll all get dinner. I know Hera wanted to talk to you about the mods she made to her B-wing. As if I wasn’t good enough to touch her baby.”

Bodhi’s laugh echoed through the whole hangar.

Cassian shifted the pack slung over his shoulder and groaned as in banged into a bruise on his hip. He could hear Bodhi in his head already, fussing over all his accumulated injuries since they last saw each other. It was nice, in a way, to be cared for. He hadn’t had that in a long time. Kay worried about him certainly, but not in the same way.

Bodhi seemed like he’d been hoarding all his compassion and caring for years, storing it away while the Empire chipped pieces from him. That might have been what Galen had seen in him, a man holding the best part of himself apart so it wouldn’t be corrupted by the slow crush of Imperial occupation.

Once Bodhi had finally accepted that he was free, that no one was waiting around the corner to sell him to the Empire, all that compassion and caring had come rushing back, and Cassian had found himself at the center of that focused energy. What could he do in response but allow it to surround him, fill up all the hollow places inside?

Cassian still bore his scars, still ached where the metal ribs and spine joined with his own bones, but somehow he had managed to find joy and he wouldn’t give that up for anything.

Cassian rounded a corner, turning down the hallway to the quarters he shared with Bodhi. The corner of his mouth lifted into a smile as he saw Bodhi come out into the hall, talking to someone with his head turned to look back over his shoulder. Cassian slid his pack off his shoulder, letting it drop to the floor and stepped close to pull Bodhi into his arms. Bodhi tensed, then relaxed against Cassian, clearly realizing who had wrapped their arms around him.

Cassian tucked his face against Bodhi’s neck, inhaling his familiar scent and pressing into the warmth there. He could feel Bodhi’s pulse, thrumming strong and alive, and he pressed a kiss there, ever thankful for its presence.

From inside the room, someone groaned. “Oh, get a room already, would you?”

Cassian pulled back just far enough to let his voice carry. “I’ve got one, and you’re in it. You might want to get out of there before I give your brother a real hello.”

Bodhi bit his lip, grinning, and really, how could Cassian resist kissing him then? He cupped the hinge of Bodhi’s jaw in his hand, angling their mouths together, warm and familiar. He could feel Bodhi’s smile, his mouth curved up at the edges. Then he hummed softly into the kiss, melting against Cassian. He never wanted it to end, pressing back in for another and another until Bodhi pulled back with a laugh.

“Welcome home, love.”

One nice thing about dying for the cause was that K-2SO was able to leverage the Alliance’s gratitude into better assignments. Now he did strategic analysis for the whole Alliance instead of things like maintenance, and he went with Cassian on all but completely solo missions. In addition to his own satisfaction, Kaytoo had not missed the fact that the Cassian was better rested, better fed, and less prone to injuries and mistakes than before. He made very sure that Draven and the other higher-ups didn’t miss it, either, which at the moment was why he was leaving the Intelligence center before anyone else. Humans could be so touchy sometimes.

«Aww, they kick you out, Legs?»

Kaytoo sighed at the familiar voice. “Hello, Chopper. Yes, they seem upset by my perfectly factual observations.”

The astromech scoffed. «Organics always hate it when you tell it like it is.» He rolled alongside Kaytoo, apparently content to follow him. That was fine with Kaytoo, given that he was mostly just wandering to kill time.

«Well, most organics,» Chopper amended.

Kaytoo chuckled. “You really like Bokan, don’t you.”

«Who said anything about him?» Chopper denied. «I was just allowing for statistical inevitability.»

“Of course,” Kaytoo said. They’d made it to the hangar, and he started a long circuit hugging the wall. “So, what about our bet?”

«Which one?» the mech said, rolling to avoid a loose hydrospanner. «We haven’t come across anything bigger than a corvette in the last three months, and you haven’t done any undercover work in that time, either.»

Kaytoo shook his head. “No, the one about Bokan and Hera.”

«Ha!» Chopper rattled triumphantly. «I win that one. He definitely likes it when she bosses him around, but he knows she’s out of his league.»

“Nothing?” Kaytoo eyed the astromech. “No flirtation? Not even any accidental innuendo?”

«Zip,» Chopper declared. «They’re completely professional. You owe me a shock prod upgrade.»

Kaytoo sighed. “Fine. But in another thirty-six days you’ll owe me three micro-detonators.”

Chopper threw his pincers in the air. «I can’t believe your humans. They already bunk together, it’s not like getting married would be a big step after that. It’s just paperwork.»

The astromech was good at a lot of things, Kaytoo reflected, but it gave him a nice warm feeling to be better at some of the intricacies of human interaction, or at least his humans’ interaction. “It’s not. Not to them.” Which was true.

Also true was that he’d calculated a high likelihood Bodhi would propose to Cassian in the next two years, but he wasn’t going to tell Chopper that.

«Fine, whatever.»

They kept moving along together in relative silence for another few minutes. When their path started curving back around to where they’d entered, Chopper waggled his antenna suggestively.

«Wanna hear about the people Bokan picks up on shore leave?»

Bodhi sat on top of a crate in the shuttle hangar, dangling his feet over the edge while the crew of the Ghost loaded supplies. Bokan was arguing halfheartedly with Zeb about the best place to store ration bars. He was so glad that Bokan had found his place with the Alliance, as secretive and dangerous as it was.

Maybe if he’d spent more time trying to see Bokan’s side of things, back before he’d disappeared with Saw’s partisans, maybe they’d have found their way to the Rebellion sooner. That was a pointless train of thought though, considering all the little steps along the way that had brought them to this point. Who would Galen have entrusted his message with? Would they have made it through Saw’s test? Would Hera have ever noticed Bokan to recruit him for her crew? It made his stomach ache to think about it. His mother would have just said, ‘all is as the Force wills it.’

He was just glad that the Force seemed to like him and his brother, at least a little bit.

Bokan knocked on the bottom of the crate, startling Bodhi out of his thoughts.

“We’re about loaded here, Bo.” Bokan rubbed the back of his neck, tilting his head back to look up at Bodhi. Bodhi pushed forward and slid off the crate, dropping to his feet in front of Bokan. He brought his hand up to Bokan’s face, fingers skimming over the edges of the barely visible synthskin. He wanted to say so much, about how grateful he was for Bokan shielding him, for saving his life, about how proud he felt whenever someone mentioned the crew of the Ghost, awe in their voices. There weren’t enough words to tie around all those feelings and he wasn’t sure Bokan would accept them anyway. Instead, he wrapped his arms around his brother and said a traditional Jedhan farewell.

“Khuda hafiz, bhai*. Stay warm and come back to us soon.”

Bokan smiled, leaning forward to press his forehead against Bodhi’s. His voice was rough when he spoke, though neither of them mentioned it.

“I’ll see you soon.” Stepping back and shooting off a half-assed salute, Bokan smiled and winked, his synthskin shimmering in the light of Ghost’s engines powering up. “This place is a lot more lively with two Rooks around!”

He turned and walked onto the ship and Bodhi watched him go. ‘May the Force be with you, brother.’

(* Goodbye, brother)

Special Note - the K-2 and Chopper section was written by my wonderful co-author @proto-kitteh

#bodhi rook #bokan rook #one for sorrow two for joy #rook twins au #rogue one au #thank you to everyone who stuck it out to the end #sniperpilot

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