Burned and buried all I carried

[ouzel]

WHO: Luke, Cassian, Jyn. Open to Leia as well.
WHERE: Wyrmwood (a bar)
WHEN: Feb 7th, evening
WHAT: Rebels raise drinks to honor the fallen
WARNINGS: Rogue One Spoilers. People drinking. I'll add more if it becomes pertinent.

The fact was, there had been more of them.

There'd been Rey, and Lando, and Bodhi... the latter was enough for Cassian to want to raise a glass to, but honestly he was feeling a bit overdue for having more than one drink in an evening.

So was Jyn.

Why not, then, drink with one of the last remaining Rebels who knew what the Death Star meant? Besides, Luke was the quintessential 'good kid' and Cassian hoped to hell whatever his role in the Rebellion was going to be that it wasn't ever to become intelligence.

That way lay madness, salt, and bitters.

This way, in contrast, lay tequila, and probably several other types of things; Cassian had tried to pick a bar that was a: quiet, b: possessed variety and c: wasn't full of weird flashing lights or strange motifs. Just a nice, semi-dark bar.

Should be great.

Comments

[ouzel]

With a glance in Jyn's direction, and the reassurance that she doesn't want to speak, Cassian takes a breath.

"To Bodhi Rook." Cassian raises his shotglass. "Of NiJedha. The pilot." Despite wanting to close his eyes, Cassian keeps them open. "Without him there would have been no Rogue One. Without his conviction, his courage...and his sacrifices, the Death Star never would have fallen." A nod to Luke. "A good man...in a galaxy where good men are difficult to find. You are loved, and you are missed. May you be one with the Force, Bodhi."

Cassian slams his shot back and exhales loudly through his nose. "Okay."

[taggingwomprats]

Bodhi. Luke only met him very briefly, but he'd seemed like a good sort. Decent kid. His twitch into a small frown and then he recovers himself and plucks a shot glass from the array that's been prepared and raises it with a sober nod.

"To Bodhi. He - all of you - you made my trench run possible. You're the reason I was able to blow that thing I to so much stardust. Thanks. To him and all of you."

Luke knocks back the shot and slams itdown with a little 'hoo'. He picks up a second shot and holds it up, considering it for a moment. This one is an interesting shade of green.

"To Dak. A good gunner and a good friend. Sorry I couldn't get him out. He... died so that we could get Echo Base evacuated. He died so that a lot of other people could live. May the Force be with him. Where ever he is."

Shot number two, down the hatch.

[realists]

Jyn's own echo of Bodhi is soft and quiet, shot burning down her throat and making her eyes water.

Then Luke calls the remains of the Death Star stardust and Jyn finds herself tossing back another shot between Bodhi's name and Luke's consideration. He names a friend and her heart twists uncomfortably as she swallows back another shot.

He's a good kid, she thinks, even if he's older than her -- he probably is. She'd died before he even made it to the Rebellion as far as she can tell. He's pretty in a blonde way, which isn't particularly her cup of tea, but boyishly handsome all the same and he smiles, already, so much more than she or Cassian or Bodhi. It's odd, after so many years of the Partisans and being on her own, but seeing someone that has obviously seen Some Shit™ and is still capable of such genuine, good-natured sweetness sets her at ease enough to offer her own toast without fear of having to defend it.

She selects a honey colored shot that smells buttery and holds it aloft a few inches above the table. "Galen Erso. He wasn't a rebel but he died to protect the galaxy and me." She licks her lips, looks up at Luke Skywalker, the man that destroyed the Death Star. "My father helped build the Death Star, but he also built the trap inside of it. He was the reason you were able to blow it up, we were just messengers."

[taggingwomprats]

That's not a part of the story that Luke has heard before. He just knows that the Death Star had a critical flaw and that a group of rebels had managed to liberate the plans that pointed out the flaw. Not that it had been intentionally built into the weapon. He sucks in a breath and picks up a shot, something amber colored, something that smells smoky. He rolls it back and forth, brow furrowed as he considers her words. Then he nods and he glances at Jyn.

"He sounds like he was a good man. That was... brave of him. Working and hiding what he wanted to do for all that time and then making sure that someone knew about it - that we knew about it. That saved us, I guess. I made that shot, but without him... It doesn't do anything, does it?"

He still remembers running desperately through the corridors of the Death Star, feeling as if the station was going to swallow their little group whole. He remembers the battle over its surface in flashes; half remembered glimpses. Flashing lasers and the thrum of adrenaline in his veins and that moment of almost complete inner peace when he turned off his targeting computer, even though he was still mourning Biggs (he'd taken his shot thirty seconds too late). He knocks back his and lets the alcohol burn all the way down. The glass goes down with a faint 'clink'.

[ouzel]

The shot Cassian takes for Luke's friend is one of the striated purple concoctions, sweet and sharp all at once. He breathes through it with the ease of someone who has had a lot of shots in a short amount of time before.

"Galen Erso was a good man." It's a shame, in Cassian's very unimportant opinion, that history will not remember him well. But that's the problem with history, isn't it? Those who die in the wrong uniform, in the service of the wrong power, don't tend to be well-remembered.

Much like the dead in wartime, and thus the entirety of Rogue One.

Now, though. Cassian looks at Luke. "What do you think of all this?" This being Eluvio, which he indicates with a broad sweeping gesture, before his arm ends up stretched alongside the back of the booth where he and Jyn are sitting. Because Cassian is content to end the list of the dead there, or else they might be remembering them all night.

[taggingwomprats]

"What, this place?" Luke fingers another shot-glass, contemplating knocking back more of whatever the heck is in this thing. He's already two or three in, though, and he knows it's going to catch up to him pretty quick. So he holds off and tries to pace himself. He glances up at the ceiling, as if that will tell him something more about the ship and the people in it.

"Feels strange, if you ask me," He opinions after a moment, "What are they trying to do? Are they a science ship? A long-range colony vessel? All of the shops and amenities makes it feel like some sort of giant pleasure cruiser. And I haven't seen anything that makes me think they're actually studying much of anything."

He pauses, frowning, then continues, a bit quieter, "And we left a planet to die. I felt it go - I-"

Luke runs a hand through his hair, gaze distant, "My old teacher described Alderaan going up as a million voices, crying out in terror and suddenly silenced. That's about right for what just happened."

[realists]

Jyn's watched Jedha City die, she lived (???) through the Death Star's destruction of Scarif, she knows what it can do -- intellectually. When Kay had passed down the information from Leia that the Death Star had been used on Alderaan, that is literally killed an entire planet, a planet that Bail Organa was on at the time...

It's hard to move past things she's lived through, trauma from a future she won't get to live seem to be equally as hard. Her hands knot together under the table, fingers twisting hard enough to turn her knuckles white, tendons standing out on the back of her hand as the memory of the roar of Scarif exploding around them rushes over her like the tsunami of water that had be rocketing toward the beach.

She exhales sharply, a whoosh of air, deciding to ignore Jedha and Scarif and Alderaan and Oros entirely until the panicked tightness in her chest subsides. "It can't be science, they would have sent out actual trained scientists to conduct their research on the planet, not volunteers with absolutely zero training or general basic know-how to collect uncompromised samples."

[taggingwomprats]

Probably the best idea. Luke rolls with thesubject change. After all, he's still worried about what they're doing here, what their mission ultimately is, and how he's going to end up getting home. He leans forward, fingers tapping against the table as he nods in response to Jyn.

She's tense.

"Yeah, exactly. None of us have any training in their procedures and they assign us these random jobs - they made me a joke editor! What's the point? Do they want us to succeed? Are we really doing something worthwhile? None of it adds up."

[ouzel]

Cassian's hand drops from where it rested on the edge of the curved booth seat to rest between Jyn's shoulderblades. He doesn't move it at first, keeping his eyes on the table in front of them and the man across.

"They wanted Alpha and Beta teams to succeed. Volunteer soldiers with no clear allegiances to whatever force backs this ship, given a scarce amount of intel and set loose. We succeeded, and the planet died not a day later.

I'm too suspicious for coincidences."

[realists]

"They wanted that--" Her hands release only to wave her hand, struggling to remember what the damn objective of the mission was in the first place. Though to be fair, she wasn't on the mission so secondhand information is all she's going on. "--Thing."

Yeah, nailed it.

[taggingwomprats]

"Whatever that thing was," Luke adds ruefully, "Did they just take it from the team as soon as they got back on board?"

He runs a hand through his hair. He still doesn't like any of this and likely won't at any point in the near future.

"I wonder if they knew what would happen and that's why they didn't tell us anything."

[ouzel]

"I didn't have it, but I assume so." He doubts Re-L or Sombra or Sam or whomever ended up with it once they gott off of Oros got to hold on to it for long.

"They paid us, for the work. Which is interesting when you consider that the only place we can use their currency is here."

[taggingwomprats]

"Sounds like a few planets I've visited," Luke oberves wryly, "Pay them in something that they can't use anywhere else and they'll never leave."

Which isn't true for him, because he'd like to get home at some point, but he also has no idea where he is. He fingers one of the shot glasses and spins it in place as he thinks.

"It feels like they expect us to get on with everything and not complain. And - is everyone here someone who's been dragged along for the ride? Is anyone here a part of the original crew? Was there an original crew?"