micyclethearcangle:

bodhi is pulled out of the orphanages of jedha; imperial propaganda will say, of course, that he is one of the many who chose to give his service to a noble cause, but the truth of the matter is; he is ten years old and skinny and wide-eyed, and the stormtroopers are faceless and so much taller than he, and one of them crouches down by him when they see him staring and tells him that there will be food and pilot training if he comes with them. 

he is ten years old and skinny and hungry and doesn’t know, then, that he is signing away his life when he signs bodhi on the line on the holopad the stormtrooper with the orange pauldron offers him impersonally. 

some of the men who teach him have the same face. 

( they’re not meant to see the stormtroopers with their helmets off. they are all cogs of a whole; officers and cargo pilots and armored troopers and maintenance workers, but there is little to no interaction between the castes allowed by the empire. camaraderie leads to hope leads to rebellion; everything remains faceless and impersonal. )

( except it doesn’t, not totally. )

some of the men who teach him have the same face and the same wiry white hair and the same tired looking golden eyes and bodhi thinks they get older too fast and tells them that, and they laugh, patting him on the shoulder and calling him shiny. 

they teach him how to fly and how to play sabacc and adjust his flight goggles and how the blaster weight is slightly unbalanced and how to handle the recoil. he overhears stories from them, too; stories from the war-before-this. he saw a jedi once, when he was almost too small to remember, but they say they fought alongside them. 

cc-2224 calls himself cody, and calls cc-4477 thire, and gives bodhi the name rook, affectionately, has called him rookie for fifteen years now, and when bodhi officially becomes an adult and a pilot for the empire, it’s what is written on his identification. bodhi rook. 

it’s thire who asks him for his clearance codes, when galen sends him off, and thire who sees the panicked look in his eyes; bodhi has never been a good liar, and thire knows it. 

bodhi doesn’t have a clearance code, but thire types one in anyway, and says in the same bored voice used for any other dismissal that his identification has gone through, that his code is operable, and bodhi’s heart is in his throat as he takes the message and flies. 

may the force be with him now, cody whispers, when thire tells him, later.