Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

› Lay your heart into my perfect machine

I will use it to protect you from me

I will never let you see what’s beneath

So good for you and good for me

We told ourselves we like where we ought to be ‹

D-182

It was all a mess: her focus, her mind, her convictions, her entire world. Jeron Sward had broken to pieces everything that she was and the cracks started to show. Her whole life disintegrating before her eyes.

It all started when Jyn Erso took her posting aboard the Basilisk—an Imperial I-class Star Destroyer serving under Captain Mullinore. It should have been nothing but a great opportunity for her, her first real assignment.

Jyn was a competent astrogating officer, the best of her division, graduated from the Academy with optimal scoring. She knew how to run trajectory equations and flight algorithms faster than any other officer. She knew how to spot counterfeit identifications and illegal ship signatures. Yes, Jyn was exceptionally good at her job—her superiors were pleased with her work. For the first time in her life, people didn’t see her as the daughter of a prime Imperial scientist but as Senior Lieutenant Jyn Erso, 10th Fleet, 88th Division, Imperial Space Navy.

Everything should have been great.

It wasn’t.

It wasn’t anything like she’d so long envisioned. The missions, the Empire; it tasted sour and bitter in her mouth. Was it what her father worked for with such fierceness? Was it everywhere the same, all there was to it? Nearing a year of deployment, Jyn couldn’t control the tremor in her chest anymore, ashamed and terrified by her own traitorous thoughts, each time she would witness more of that dreadful wrath the Basilisk carried with her everywhere she went.

She had relentless nightmares about it. She couldn’t close her eyes without seeing molten pieces of ships burning into the dark obsidian space, corpses floating into the void like particles of dust, frozen in their brutal deaths. Whenever they would come to face the Star Destroyer, their distress calls haunted Jyn over the comms.

Captain Mullinore wouldn’t take prisoners, wouldn’t let them escape either. The Basilisk left no survivor to warn others, only phantoms and regrets.

Each time Jyn was tasked to analyze the clearance code of a new starship, she secretly prayed for them to be who they claimed to be—because she would have to be the one voicing out loud the death sentence.

She hadn’t been prepared for how personal it would be, how cruel, and she couldn’t take it anymore.

That’s how it began at first: that one time Commander Sward found her completely wasted and crying her misery out on the lower-deck. Drinking was a violation of naval regulations and those who did it regardless usually had the good sense to not get caught. Not to mention the illicit way she had acquired her liquor (prohibited or not, shipmen always found a way). Jyn was in deep trouble and expected Sward to report her to her CO. She would get a strike; she could even get herself kicked out of the Navy if she tried hard enough.

But that would have been too easy. Jyn Erso wasn’t a quitter. She couldn’t dishonor her father like that.

Besides, Sward never reported her—even had the audacity to ask if she was okay instead. How was that for a question? She wanted to scream at him, to lash out, to hurt.

I gave the confirmation, it was me. I killed those people. What do you mean ‘are you okay?’

She didn’t say anything.

Something strange happened between them instead; she still hadn’t quite figured how.

Commander Jeron Sward was an austere man, distant and unapologetic. She had only seen him a handful of times around the Basilisk, always clad in an impeccable gray uniform, his coverchief reglementarily angled over his line of sight like a warning. He was the type of man to always be in charge of the situation, she figured. He certainly looked the part.

They wouldn’t mix, he worked above her clearance and they weren’t in the same department (her in the CIC, him with the Master-at-Arms). Yet, somehow, Jyn found something unexpected in his deep brown eyes that night. The comfort, the warmth, the closeness… The touch, the kiss, the heat. It took them by surprise and left them both stunned.

She told herself it was a one-time thing. It wasn’t. Now, it was out of control.

She didn’t understand what he saw in her, didn’t understand why he sought her intimacy as he did. One time was a mistake, two times—

Jeron Sward wasn’t a man to repeat a mistake, so it might have been something else. Deep down, Jyn convinced herself that he might have been as lonely and hurting as she was, left jagged and broken by everlasting violence. It might even have been true. Jyn didn’t know much about men; she wasn’t delusional enough to think she could understand this one.

She had just turned twenty and had spent all of her younger years training at the Imperial Academy on Coruscant. It never allowed her much time for sex, let alone for romance. She didn’t tell him the first time because it didn’t matter to her. If he noticed, he didn’t care either. He showed her how to touch him, how to enjoy it, how to forget that the whole damn world was on fire while they fucked each other like starved souls.

He kept on teaching her how to be his lover then, and Jyn started to learn how to be his partner instead.

Each time she would leave his bunk, naked and flushed, Jyn would feel herself sinking lower and deeper into that same spiral of dark void she tried so desperately to suppress into his flesh. It was the crux of it all; just like her, Jeron Sward was exceptionally good at his job. And his job was to be an Imperial officer; his job was to kill the people Jyn flagged as enemies. If she couldn’t forgive herself, she certainly couldn’t forgive him either.

She hated herself even more for the comfort he brought her each time he held her, for the way he would get under her skin with just the right words and a promise in his eyes. All too soon, love and hate started to blur together like colliding stars to blind her senses.

This inferno had no end, she realized, and no matter how hard she tried to tell herself she was doing it for the right reasons, it didn’t let her sleep any better at night. Worse: it made her hate Sward every time a little more. The way he would look at her with a softer expression, the way he would take her hand, almost like he cared about her, almost like he knew. The way he would make love to her as if he wanted to give her oblivion just for a moment—even if Jyn never spoke those thoughts to him.

She wouldn’t, of course. It was treason. But what if he knew, regardless?

She needed to end it to protect herself, to stop indulging in that growing feeling before it was too late. It made her weak; it put her at risk. She should never have fraternized with a commissioned officer in the first place. That, too, was an unpinned grenade ready to go off.

She had it all planned: everything she would say, or rather not say.

But it was easier to persuade herself when she wasn’t near him, because when she was… it was like a spell, or maybe like a curse. Jyn started to remember the warmth of his touch, the caress of his lips, and she operated like a drug addict seeking her next thrill.

Her favorite part was to strip him from his symbols of authority and death, to uncover the passion under the iciness of his appearance.

That night, she palmed him through his uniform, hard and ready and eager to have her. She tugged at his collar, unbuttoning the jacket and disrespecting the metal pin of his rank insignia like revenge. He jerked into her touch and bit her earlobe with a low grunt when she slid her hand into his pants. She wasn’t good, she thought, not like he was, not with his ease. But she was good enough to mess up his breathing and to feel the pulse of his nervous body in her hand. She was good enough to have him close his fingers around her wrist and ask for more with a hushed plea.

So they undressed, and they kissed, and they moaned as if they were one.

Jyn lost her breath, her fingers tangled into short brown hair, his head between her legs and his hands bruising the pale skin of her thighs. He gripped her with too much force: like a hostage, like a prisoner, but she allowed him all the same. He showed her what he could do with just his tongue, kissing her, sucking her, fucking her. Hot and humid and soft. He pressed her hips down, hard, her legs over his shoulders, open and subjected to his power. Jyn gasped for air, feeling like her heart would stop at any given time from the strain of pleasure. She arched her back, one hand coming to press on the wall by the end of the bunk. Her head fell back and she opened her eyes, looking through a single viewport opening on the infinity of the galaxy.

Stranded in the midst of the Maw Cluster, red giants and interstellar gas glowing, a faint amber reflected into her wide-open eyes when she fell apart and cried out the name of a man who didn’t feel like a stranger anymore. The ecstasy he brought to her was sucked deep into her core like a gravity well, and if Jyn had floated into deep space, she, too, would have attracted her own debris of stardust.

But she was pushed down into the thin mattress of a single cot, kept in place by the artificial gravity of the Basilisk, sharing her filtered oxygen with someone that didn’t feel like a threat anymore. Jyn trembled and whimpered, his solid hands mapping her body like a permanent extension of her nerves. She did the same to him, to learn and to remember.

Where her skin was almost intact and virginal, he was scarred and marked. She wondered without repulsion what he’d done to get such deep scars, why they hadn’t been erased with medical procedures. Maybe he didn’t want to—maybe he wanted to learn and to remember, too.

Jyn kissed him deeply. She wasn’t so new to this anymore. She knew what he liked; she knew how to bite his lips, how to caress his tongue, how to make him want more and moan into her breath. She dug her nails into his back, feeling the sweat pooling between his shoulders, down his spine, his skin so hot that it burned like a searing fire against her own. A fire vibrant enough to forget the coldness of outer space.

She rolled onto her stomach, his chest pressed flat against her back as he kissed her neck and bit her shoulder. Her hair was damp, sticking between her shoulder blades. He brushed it aside with one hand, his fingers curling into the brown locks. Jyn listened to his rapid breathing in her ear, almost matching the rhythm of her heartbeat. She moved her body under him to merge their forms together; to not be alone, to not be so small and vulnerable. As long as she was with him, she was stronger, she was bolder, she was worth something.

She was worthy of the need in his eyes.

He gripped her hips and pushed into her with a pleading sound, only matched by her own voice breaking past her kiss-swollen lips. The stretch of his presence would linger long after they’d parted, she had learned. Jyn didn’t have any data for comparison. She wondered if it was pure physiology or if her rebellious body required her to remember him, just to make her come back and beg for more.

He built up a gentle pace at first, his hands on either side of her waist, holding her, bending her, grounding her. His lips were in her hair, on her nape, on her cheek when she turned her face to the side. She couldn’t kiss him but she grabbed his neck with one hand, the other in front of her to brace herself.

Jyn felt the rush of blood coloring her cheeks, down her entire body, between her legs, where their bodies touched and merged in unison. His gentle pressure turned into long steady thrusts, fully engorged into her heat. She tried to keep her voice down, aware that they shouldn’t have been fraternizing like this.

If she was caught with him… well, Jyn didn’t care anymore. He didn’t seem to mind either, low groans leaving his throat as his pace became more urgent, more demanding. Long gone the distant restraint and the placid expression. Stripped from his Imperial uniform, Sward was a man made of flesh and blood just like the rest of them—if only when he was fucking her. And though she didn’t know what, Jyn knew that he, too, was looking to forget something unspeakable in their fabricated euphoria.

One of his hands slid between her stomach and the mattress, gliding between her legs to make her toes curl from unrestrained lust.

He spoke words she didn’t understand into her ear; his deep, alluring voice closing like velvet around her folding body, coaxing her into abandon. Jyn muffled her cries into his pillow, the sizzling tension in her muscles ready to snap taut. His palm pressed into her, his fingers parting her folds, slick from arousal. He slammed his hips against her almost desperately, their legs intertwined in the small space of the bunk. Jyn heavily breathed through her nose, her brain completely blank. Red stars, white stars, golden daze. She contracted around him, reaching back with one hand to grip his arm. A high-pitch moan rasped in her throat, still marveling at the new sensation of someone giving her an orgasm.

A short minute later, he came inside her, collapsing in a spiral of bliss and exertion. He rested over her, his face nuzzling in the crook of her neck, his violent breathing looking for relief in her perfume. Jyn brushed a hand over his face, unmoving, holding him close. They stayed silent for a long while, neither of them daring to break the neutral ground of their lovemaking.

Then, they had to part again.

Jyn found herself lying next to him, looking away, lost in the chaotic maelstrom of the Maw Cluster to conceal her own feelings. With a defiant stubbornness, she remembered why she couldn’t let herself grow accustomed to the lies of her heart—why she needed to smolder the embers before she could form an understanding of the foreign words he spoke to her.

She had to do it, close the door and run away before it turned into a wildfire she wouldn’t be able to control anymore.

As if he already knew what she was about to say, Sward stayed perfectly still by her side, attentive to her reactions. He looked at her with that same keen expression she had come to hate because it made her feel more naked than when he had his hands on her.

“It’s the last time,” Jyn said. “I can’t do this anymore.” And she hoped for her voice to be steady.

She expected him to ask questions, to be resentful, angry maybe—in the face of rejection. She hardly knew the man, she couldn’t possibly predict his reaction. She was still surprised to find that his reaction was better described as a lack of it.

Sward remained impassive, didn’t even breathe louder into the returned silence of his cabin. He didn’t flinch or put distance between them. He kept on tracing the curve of her waist with a reassuring gesture, pressed against her side, the heat of his body soothing her physical exhaustion. His gentle touch felt familiar.

It felt like an invitation to trust, like they could have fit even closer if they had tried. It made her sick with regrets and sorrow. It reminded Jyn why she desperately needed to end this, whatever this was.

“Alright,” he simply said. And there was no subtone to color his voice, no conditions, no reproaches. Just… a statement of fact. Pragmatic and clinical.

“Alright,” Jyn repeated, and this time, her quivering voice betrayed her.

He caught it—as if he already knew her better than anyone in her life. He rested his hand over her stomach for comfort, gently stroking her sweaty skin with his scarred palm. Jyn hated how he would make her feel protected just by doing so. She hated that she had never known how much she longed for that feeling before he gave it to her.

It was a lie—but it felt like a good one, the kind of lies people would live among like blind fools.

“Do you want to stay for a while?”

She turned her head to look at him, undecided. Why would she stay any longer? Why would he want her to? His warm gaze appeared unreadable anew; he would have made a brilliant spy. Jyn frowned and welcomed the fierce touch of frustration to distance herself from what might lie beneath, out of reach. Anger was better than a deceitful reverie.

Even so, her body had instinctively pressed closer to him in protest at her thoughts.

“Aren’t you going to ask why?”

She wasn’t sure what she hoped to achieve with this.

He didn’t raise his voice, didn’t harden his features despite her aggressive tone. He gave the impression that nothing she could have said or done would have shaken him. He was a man who had seen it all, or maybe he really was that emotionless. It felt odd. The sharp contrast between his placid persona and the passion of his touch, just moments ago, wouldn’t reconcile in Jyn’s mind. As if the person touching her wasn’t the same one speaking to her. If it served nothing but an act, he really was the best actor in the whole galaxy—only she couldn’t tell if he faked the gentleness or the detachment. It scared her to no end.

“Do you want me to ask?” Sward casually answered.

His warm fingers lingered on her stomach like an echo of their embrace. Jyn almost felt a burn under his palm. She swallowed with great difficulty, her mouth dry and her chest heavy with pain. “No… I suppose not.”

She was distressed and wasn’t as good as him at staying expressionless. Jyn looked away, fixing the monochrome wall in front of her because it was easier than to look into his eyes and see nothing at all. Did he dream of horrors and frozen corpses at night, too, or did he sleep peacefully? Could he pry her shameful secrets from her brain and judge her for it?

If she confessed to another living soul, maybe it would have made it easier to bear the agonizing weight of remorse. But it would have been a death sentence to condemn the Empire and Jyn was too much of a coward to meet her end so soon. So many things she wanted to do… Now, she wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

“What made you join?” Jyn asked.

She expected a snark reply or a dangerous warning. She was left confounded.

“Whatever I could tell you, you won’t find any meaning in it, Jyn.” Her name had a different taste on his lips. She had grown accustomed to his accent to the point of fondness. “This is something you have to figure out for yourself.”

She should have. But somehow, she couldn’t stop holding him like a lifeline, like a safe place, like a person she trusted.

“Sometimes, I wish…”

She bit her lip, hard. She couldn’t bring herself to say the words. It was too dangerous, even to him. She couldn’t trust, couldn’t allow the closeness and the warmth and the vulnerability. No matter how hard she wished for it, she didn’t have any future with Jeron Sward and they had dragged this pointless masquerade on long enough. It was hurtful enough.

Now, it was breaking her heart like shards of glass, already tainted with innocent blood.

Jyn made sure she could control her voice before she spoke again. “We’re right where we ought to be,” she said and tried to believe it with all of her resilience.

A breathless pause. The feel of his hand on her face, brushing away a strand of hair sticking to her temple.

“We are, Lieutenant Erso.”

So this was it then. No more Jyn.

She looked at him under the cold light of astral storms. She could have seen a million stars reflecting in the deep of his eyes, holding their secrets so far away from her reach. She knew they weren't playing in the same category. He was important; he had a purpose here. He had a cause to live for, something to fight and to die for.

All the things Jyn had already lost.

And yet, when she looked into his intense brown eyes, she couldn’t shake the insane feeling that maybe if she stayed a bit longer, if she looked a bit closer… she would have discovered them to be so alike. She would have fitted into his world of shadows, she would have stood by his side no matter the cost, stranded in the crossfire for him. She would have seen the same dying stars and held him strong, against all odds, when all the chances would have been spent in the face of war.

“I will remember you,” Jyn said in a bare murmur.

Sward leaned close to her face, kissed her lips with great care—like an ally, like a friend, like a lover. His breath lingered on her face one last time, the feel of his stubble against her cheek and the musky scent of his skin after sex to plague her memories. He smiled at her then, with sad eyes full of unspoken reasons and the corners of his mouth stretched upward. It made him look more handsome than she had known.

“I will remember you,” he said, “the girl with the stardust eyes… One day, you’ll stop wishing and you’ll start doing something about it.”

Chapter Text

D-121

On Alliance mission orders, one could find general guidelines for undercover operatives.

a) Agents must avoid drinking alcohol. In such situations and whenever possible, agents will consume non-alcoholic beverages. If the need arises, an agent may drink alcohol but should refrain from drinking in excess. (A no-brainer.)

b) At no time will an agent consume illicit or dangerous substances as a part of the undercover role. If a situation arises where the undercover agent is forced to use such substances, they should refuse. If the suspect persists, the agent(s) will extract themselves from the situation and terminate contact. (Again, a perfectly logical take… In theory.)

Finally, c) an undercover agent will not engage in sexual contact.

Cassian had long pondered on the absence of context for this last one; no countermeasure, no elaboration. As if whoever had drafted those absurd protocols couldn’t bear to extend on the implications of such acts. As if no one wanted to touch that can of worms from the other side of the mirror, safe and sound in their morality and virtue. Reality on the field was different and Cassian didn’t have that luxury—never had.

Cassian Andor, twenty-five standard, Rebel Alliance Intelligence, Coordinate division of Operations, had been operating undercover in the Imperial Navy for two hundred seventy-three days. That put it at two hundred days more than anyone else in the Alliance. And if Cassian had managed to preserve his cover for so long, it certainly wasn’t for standing his moral grounds.

Any means necessary, his CO had said—which truly meant… any means. Roger that.

So, during those two hundred and seventy-three days, Cassian casually mingled with the starfighter pilots of the Basilisk on more than one occasion. He deemed it the most effective angle of attack when trying to establish a relationship with flight personnel. The NCOs of the deck crew were also good candidates. A lot of stories were tossed around after missions and non-sanctioned booze helped to make them universal.

Cassian profiled the people surrounding him. For example: Nath Tensent, Vortex Squadron Leader, was a heavy drinker and a harsh talker. On the other extreme: Del Meeko, Chief Engineer and commonly referred to as “Chief” never touched a bottle and generally kept quiet.

Falling in the middle of the spectrum: Air Wing Commander Razana Frye.

Frye had a habit of showing up to clink cups with her pilots, to be seen and be heard, but never lingered long. She performed the act of comradeship almost as expertly as Cassian, yet perhaps more earnestly. It made it difficult to approach her without setting her sensors off. Some breeds of liars could smell each other off from klicks away. Luckily, Cassian’s motivations gave him the upper hand in the matter. Hence… c) sexual contact.

It hadn’t been his first try. Not onboard (abort thought, abort), not ever.

His current persona, Jeron Sward (ah, who came up with this one?), fit the criteria and made it enforcement of undercover identity. Everything he could do to transform Sward into a credible person, with flaws and desires of his own.

Gambling had been one of his preferred methods: less demanding, more fun, but could hardly be suitable on a Star Destroyer. Promiscuity it was, then.

Cassian wouldn’t martyr himself. Frye was an attractive woman, maybe not to his tastes (irrelevant; a man that doesn’t exist doesn’t have tastes), but certainly to Sward’s. She had a brilliant mind, too. So much that she outsmarted (and outranked) Sward by a long shot, even though she never tried to give the man that impression. She only asserted dominance in a cockpit, never on deck. She didn’t need to, respect flew her way at unanimity.

Cassian, although smarter than Sward, wondered on occasion if this wasn’t too much of a close-call for the sake of his mission. For now, he decided that the risk was worth it.

He needed a breakthrough.

Cassian lay flat on Razana Frye’s bunk. She liked to be on top. Fine by him. It didn’t do much for him but it made him last longer—which she probably enjoyed. He didn’t care beyond those parameters: please the mark to get an insight. He wouldn’t be that much of an asshole to pretend that the experience was entirely excruciating. Sward could enjoy some of it. Cassian, not so much.

The thin line between dissociation and fragmentation would drive any medic crazy. But no one had time to worry about it while people died.

In the privacy of her statecabin, Frye and Sward fucked like they’d done a few times already. They knew the drill by now. Her palms on his shoulders, her hips in his hands; hard, fast, relief from the stress of their respective jobs, a rushed thrill of endorphins. Nothing less, nothing more. She never talked during sex and, frankly, he liked it better that way. Cassian knew what to say and how to say it but using words had always been harder than using bodies in such instances. A degree of… fakeness that he was reluctant to cross, still.

Ridiculous.

Bottom line: he didn’t need to. Didn’t need to do much, either. Frye knew what she liked and how to get it. She might have been using him as much as he was using her—which was another lucky predicament in Cassian’s situation. It made it more bearable, knowing that they both got something out of this transaction. His motives, of course, were more damming and would remain inexcusable. Beyond the simple impulse of sexual gratification. But if he had nothing else to cling to, Cassian wouldn’t mind trying.

He didn’t often have that last rope, where others had been… vulnerable, honest, loving… the stare of her gold-flaking eyes through his soul—

Frye cried out and grabbed his wrists, breath coming out in short pants to match his own. She stopped moving as her body unraveled around him, pulsing where they connected. She might have enjoyed her orgasm seeing how she closed her eyes for a moment, shifting the weight of her body to sit back on his hips. When she opened them again, she ran her fingers along his chest. Cassian couldn’t bother to enjoy the gentle caress.

Half his brain capacity stayed focused on immediate inputs: his cock still hard and invited into someone else’s body. The other half analyzed. Most of the time, Frye’s microexpressions weren’t encrypted. She had no tastes for subtleties and deception: she meant her words and her actions. She didn’t waste energy on pleasing people. And if she offended someone, she considered it their problem, not hers. Imps or rebels, the majority of starfighter pilots Cassian had met fit that same profile. It wasn’t a surprise, then, when she pulled back with a half-smile.

“That was nice,” she said, brushing back her blond hair. “Gotta run, preflight meeting in five. You can finish yourself, right?”

Cassian snorted, folding one arm behind his head. “Sure.”

“Okay, let’s do that again sometime.”

Frye traced his jawline with a thumb before hopping out of bed. She put her clothes back on with trained efficiency (too many brisk wake-up calls would condition you to be able to dress-up in the complete darkness with no brain-power running), combed her short hair into a low ponytail, and grabbed her gear. Shiny black reinforced helmet (hers had a red stripe going down in the middle: elite pilot) on black jumpsuit. The sounds of her boots hit the deck while Cassian, for his part, still hadn’t moved. She nodded at him one last time and left without another word. Clean, easy, effective. A done deal.

Cassian waited for good measure. He thought about taking on her offer to ‘finish himself’. The rational part of his brain approved the idea, if only out of practicality.

Privacy had been nice (and put to good use) while it lasted, but the empty bunk on his cabin had been occupied since the last personnel boarding, a few weeks back. No matter the context, Cassian hardly felt in the mood to jerk off with another person perched centimeters above him. In her quality of Air Wing Commander, Frye was probably one of the only senior officers enjoying her own statecabin (CO and XO excluded). And she was charitable enough to share it with him.

So, yes, he should’ve used the opportunity to reset his body.

Instead, Cassian sat up, reaching for his uniform on the ground, and started to mindlessly dress himself. By the time he was done, straightening the heavy fabric on his chest, his arousal was long gone (nothing like putting on an Imperial uniform to turn him off). That discomfort would come back to bite him in the ass later on, something he had grown used to. Now wasn’t the time to think about it; his mind refocused on the high stakes of the mission.

He didn’t invite himself to Frye’s company for the sake of it.

For an ace pilot, she was a messy individual. Holofiles and flight reports crammed her working desk, monopolizing all of Cassian’s attention as he combed through it with a racing mind. Scoping for bits and pieces. Cross-referencing names and dates in search of the needed intel. Making sure to render the desk identical to the state he found it in.

No such thing as luck this time.

It left him bitter, made it harder to justify sleeping with the mark when he wasn’t making any progress. He used to be better. Re: why they sent him to do a job that no one thought possible, a lost gamble. But Cassian Andor could succeed, they had decided (somewhere in a room where no one ever had to fuck a stranger as if they meant it, while staying ready to reach for a weapon at any given time). The question remained open: could he really?

Leaving Frye’s quarters, Cassian walked back to his own berthing, below the hangar deck. His plan included hitting the showers room and plugging in a few hours’ sleep before his next shift. Sward’s job was straightforward but still required some attention. Cassian had the distinct impression that the Master-at-Arms didn’t like Sward (or maybe simply didn’t like anyone), and didn’t want to give the old man any reason to toss him in the brig.

Regrettably, the shorter path between point aurek and besh walked him right by that spot where—

‘Are you okay?’

She wasn’t here today, cramped between two dogged hatches. Small mercy.

As a matter of fact, he had barely seen her during the last two standard-months. Access to the CIC was restricted, off-limits for Jeron Sward. She slept below the flight deck. With roughly nine thousand officers on board, and triple the amount of enlisted, they wouldn’t cross paths except maybe in a mess hall or training room. They wouldn’t acknowledge each other, acting as if he didn’t know the sweet smell of her skin below her ear, down her chest, between her thighs—

‘I can’t do this anymore.’

The mere fact that he had found her that time, with such impeccable timing and emotional assertion, had been almost insultingly perfect.

Naturally, Cassian had done what he did best: assert, mark, exploit. Senior Lieutenant Jyn Erso. Daughter of Galen Erso, a priority surveillance target. A chance in a million. He couldn’t let it go to waste. For a while, he even hoped that she could be the missing piece in his mission—but it became quite clear that Erso had no involvement in any of it. She was scared, terrified, barely holding on.

He considered flipping her. Multiple times.

With a bit more time, he might have been successful. But she was too unstable, still—unpredictable, volatile. The risks outweighed the rewards: simple cost-benefits analysis. Cassian made up his mind and dropped the idea.

Why did he keep seeing her, then? If she couldn’t be used and couldn’t be recruited, she had no value to him. She was a waste of his time. But—kriffing’fucking’black’skies—the way she always looked at him…

A shameful truth: Cassian simply liked how she made him feel. That she made him feel, at all.

He hadn’t tried to come up with an explanation (why her, what’s different, why now) but he couldn’t deny himself that much. Maybe because he found her attractive, in a way Cassian did. Maybe because something in her felt familiar, though he couldn’t possibly name it. Maybe because of the way she undressed him, like an act of revenge. She wasn’t trying to fuck his rank. She wanted the man under the uniform and—after having spent so many days undercover—her insistence in finding him had been the only thing to remind Cassian that such a man, indeed, existed. She simply didn’t know how deep she had to dig to find him.

Would you like him if you did?

Cassian didn’t like to admit it but if he hadn’t walked on a drunk little officer that night, he might have permanently forgotten where to draw the line.

Living among these people, laughing with them, drinking with them—it wasn’t any different than any other factions he had known. Different uniforms, different sides of the same war. Like in any sample of the population, some people were better than others. But here at the bottom of the hierarchy, in the mundanity of simple soldiers, few individuals were truly aware of the nature of the Empire. Horrific decisions were drafted in secret and carried out with blanket justifications, fragmented. Most of them didn’t even have an inkling of the real targets.

Del Meeko fixed his starships, Razana Frye made sure to get her pilots home after each run, but Jyn Erso… Jyn Erso was terrified by her actions. She saw the Basilisk’s undiscerning ferocity, up there in the CIC. She knew who they were shooting at. It was she who gave the clearance.

Hard to pretend you were protecting the galaxy from terrorists when you pulverized unarmed targets. The Empire was the enemy, and any accomplice had to answer for it.

The plea in Erso’s eyes made Cassian realize how far he had slipped. This unshared secret of theirs touched something in him, a part of his heart mistreated and abused. He used her to feed the sheepish illusion that he could still find solace somewhere.

‘Somewhere’ happened to be in her arms for however long she indulged him. But the core fact that he had manipulated her, accepted her trust, initiated her to sex on the basis of lies; all of it made sure to remind him why he could so easily step in the boots of any Imperial scumbag. Going as far back as he could remember, Cassian had never been the hero of his own story. No one working Intel could. That wasn’t the job.

Someone needed to do it, regardless.

Cassian went straight to the showers room. Mid-shift. Barely anyone in sight. The Basilisk offered the luxury of individual stalls, if only separated by hydrophobic white curtains. Sonics were reserved to Command, the rest of them operated with (not-so-warm) water. Even relying on a power-plant so large that it required half the ship surface, domestic comfort wasn’t a top priority.

Cassian stepped under the showerhead, naked again. The first drops of water over his sweaty skin made him shiver unpleasantly. Soon, the sensation disappeared from his mind, entirely focused on erasing the memory of Frye. Soap coated his derm; he scrubbed until it hurt. His face fell forward, shoulders relaxing, wet hair sticking to his forehead and neck. Cassian closed his eyes and took a deep breath, propping himself upright with one hand on the durasteel wall.

Breathe in, breathe out.

He tried to. He couldn’t let it slip away… this wicked fantasy of her, with him.

If you trust me. If you find me. If you want me. Say you do.

When he showered, Cassian wouldn’t expose his back to the curtain, purposely facing the other way around. If someone decided to jump him (no telling as to when or how he could be discovered, only the certitude of constant danger pressing around his throat, waiting for that noose to tighten up), his reactivity would impact his chances of survival.

On rare occasions, Cassian would choose to face the wall.

His free hand brushed his stomach lazily, coming down between his thighs. He palmed his placid self with a strong grip, trying to remember how she did it. A rush of heat traveled to his stomach just thinking about her, causing his lower abdomen to flex in anticipation.

His whole body reacted as if a switch had been flipped, his cock swelling and hardening in his hand on command. The mapping of his nerves screamed up under his skin, still tangled from frustration, nearing the uncomfortable zone. But Cassian had no intention to stop this time. He shut his eyelids with more intent, jaws tight, blinding himself to the real world. Lost in the vacuum of his mind, the only place where he knew he could have her the way he wanted to. That sweet poisonous lie.

Jyn Erso kissed him and bit his lower lip, her small, electric body pressed to him. She stood on her toes to reach him, hands gripping his hips for balance. Cassian bent to return her kiss, circled an arm around her waist, and caged her between him and the shower wall. She moaned a low sound of content into his mouth, kissing harder, leaving marks on him. His hands ran down her body to worship and explore the burning skin under his palms. He found the curves of her strong back, of her firm ass. He squeezed her flesh, pressing her hips to him like a magnet, the friction of her soft body to relieve his erection. The hint of heat in the space between her thighs, slick and eager for pleasure, made him hard past the point of enjoyment. He wanted nothing more than to be inside her.

He needed her to get respite from the pain and the self-loathing and the loneliness. His lips claiming her mouth, her jaw, her neck. Feeling the pulse of her heart under his tongue, the ghost of her unsteady breathing where her chest heaved, the echoes of her voice.

Cassian made her turn around, sealing his torso against her back, never breaking his hold on her. That vulnerable trust to expose her blindspot to him… no way to anticipate or to defend… but still taking pleasure in it. Something he wasn’t capable of. It made his stomach turn from need every time.

She pushed back against his own gravity center, her palms flat on the shower wall for support as he curled his fingers around her hips. Arousal spiked up and down his spine, overwriting every sense, making it difficult to silence his vocal cords—but so intently focused on the initial response whenever he entered her.

(The feel of his closed fist, slowly coming past the head of his cock.)

She moaned again. He kissed the back of her neck, inhaling her sweet perfume like oxygen. She turned her head to the side, whispering: “Cassian.”

(His mind faltered, the image painfully shattering. Jyn Erso disappeared; his eyes opened to the steel panel. Cassian closed them again, barely breathing, all muscles cramped, his grip hard and unforgiving around his length. But he couldn’t stop now. He needed to see her, desperate to live in his fantasy to cope with the suffering of his guilty mind. Don’t go. Just a bit more. Let me have you.)

He planted his hand over her stomach, fingers spread, pulling her close to him. He stroked her wet skin, following a path to her core, and pressed his fingertips over a hard point. She whimpered and said his name again. This time, he didn’t try to fight it.

This could be real, he decided, if only for now.

Cassian moved faster inside her, each thrust slamming their bodies together in perfect unison. Her thighs trembled against him. Where his hand held her: fluid motion, feeling her blood pulsing through her entire body. The pressure of her walls around him like an invitation to pleasure. If he could hear her scream when she came… and the sound of her voice when she said: “Cassian, it feels so good—”

(Yes. Words. I want to hear them. Tell me.)

Cassian lost himself in his own urges, his hips jerking up… into her… where he still held her, panting on her neck, her back arched to him, the weight of her body wrapped in his arms… so tightly… until he couldn’t hold back anymore and came with an uncontrollable tremor. “ —Jyn.”

Unsure for a moment if the name had escaped his lips or not.

Just as abruptly as he had conjured her, Jyn Erso disappeared. Cassian opened his eyes, almost disoriented by his surroundings. The incriminating reactions went no further; his real breathing was barely an echo to the shameful things he had imagined himself doing. He unwrapped his fingers, let the water rinse his body clean and wash away all evidence. Caught into the collapsing storm of those afterglows, Cassian slipped under the wave of revulsion.

The fact that he could so freely use her image to get off was its own kind of perversion. But the fact that he needed to think about her to get off was… devastating, alarming, pathological.

How could he allow himself those kinds of fantasies when he had done so much wrong to her already? She had been smart to cut it short. He would’ve kept taking from her like the selfish asshole he had learned himself to be.

The water felt cold, now, regardless of temperature.

Cassian turned it off, listening to the sound of an adjacent shower. Droplets of water traveled the scarred lines of his body to the ground, gathering around his feet. His wet hair prickled the nape of his neck. A chilling sensation ran through him at the loss of warmth, at the deprivation of… everything he had just embraced for a short moment in time.

Now even harder to face the tasteless reality than it had been before—yet Cassian couldn’t find the self-discipline to stop himself. Another alarm sounding at the back of his brain.

Whatever. Some things can’t be fixed. Maybe I can’t, either.

From the few certitudes he had: he could never hope for Jyn Erso to call his name, and even if she did… it would never be to tell him those things he wanted to hear from her. There would never be a scenario in which Cassian obtained that happy ending, became the hero of his own story. Trust couldn’t be mended that far. Too late, now. He had taken too much, had lied too deeply. He didn’t have a reason to entertain that thought.

…but he kept the taste of her name on his lips, if only for shower stalls and empty nights.

Flip her and keep her, the most disastrous part of his mind screamed. It was tempting, for a while, to listen.

Chapter Text

D-67

Jyn liked to pride herself on thinking that having sex didn’t make her a different person. Maybe for the fact that no one ever gave her ‘the’ talk, she never viewed it as a rite of passage or a life-changing parameter, nor something she needed to do to be a grown-up.

She was a woman way before she let someone touch her. She didn’t give anything of herself away by accepting to share pleasure with another person.

Those convictions hadn’t changed. But Jyn had discovered different perspectives, whether she liked to admit it or not. For a starter, people didn’t give a damn about the prohibition of fraternization. She always knew it to be true, to some degree, but only now did she realize how unbothered everyone else had been acting.

Where to have sex on a Star Destroyer, you’d ask? A simple answer: anywhere you could. On a starship this size (her training manuals referenced a length of 1600 meters), possibilities didn’t lack. Many compartments and spaces, nooks and crannies going unmanned almost constantly. Navy personnel had a reputation for being creative. The only rule in vigor: to not get caught.

Jyn wouldn’t have bothered thinking about it before but now, she wondered if she was the type to get fucked against a fanroom wall. She had no desire to try, most of the time.

‘Most of the time’ was the real problem here. That slice of other times where she did want to get fucked against a wall, or anywhere else for that matter, was unprecedented—and the worst part of it: she always imagined it to be with the same man.

She tried to convince herself it was solely due to the fact that he was, indeed, the only man she had sex with. So, naturally, with no other data in stock, her brain would fill the blanks for her. If she started to seek promiscuity with others, she would stop thinking so damn much about that person she tried so hard not to think about. Solid theory.

Yes— No.

She didn’t want others. It complicated the equation.

Jyn had enough struggles to deal with. She couldn’t afford to add sexual frustration on top of everything else. But it had, during the last four-standard months, regrettably built up to a point where she started to shamefully regret her decision, learning the hard way that touching herself was no longer enough. What the hell had he done to her?

Jyn wished she had a friend to confide in, a person she could trust to talk it out and make sense of her traitorous mind—but the sheer idea of telling someone she had been fucking Commander Sward gave her a cold sweat. Never in a million years, she promised herself.

Jyn tugged at the collar of her dark uniform, trying to breathe like a normal person. She made a conscious effort to straighten her posture, chest up, shoulders back, wearing an invisible armor to stop everyone else to see right through her fears. Listening to the clapping of her polished boots on the deck, she felt trapped in the belly of a beast made of durasteel and hyperdrives. Each step she took, walking down the Basilisk’s busy walkways, vibrated through her bones like the tension of a vibroblade.

Paranoia wanted to feed her that every murmur, every sideglance glossing over her were the product of her actions. Were they discussing her reckless conduct? Had Sward reported what they’d done to his friends? Was she just another notch in his bedpost?

Jyn wasn’t delusional enough to think that she had it special in any sort of way, that he hadn’t done this with others. At times, she dared to think that they had shared something… real—for the lack of a better term. But he hadn’t fallen in love with her. He wasn’t the type of man to let himself go soft like that; she had seen it in his eyes the first time.

She wouldn’t have been surprised if he had a spouse dutifully waiting for him to complete his rotation and come back home. He never hinted at anyone. Jyn wondered where ‘home’ might have been.

Where is your home, Erso?

Lost in the vague outer space, floating somewhere between everlasting black holes.

It had been years since she had seen her father in the flesh, back when she was a sixteen-year-old cadet being dropped off at the Royal Imperial Academy. He didn’t attend her graduation, couldn’t travel to Coruscant because of some tight schedules. Sometimes, Jyn had the impression that he had been taken hostage by his precious work. Or that he’d found another child in it—a well-behaved, less disappointing one. He made sure to send her a nice present and a holocall, instead. Almost the same, she had persuaded herself. You’re a big girl, suck it up, it doesn’t matter anymore. It became easier with every passing year, maybe by the motion of repetition, erasing the distant memory of a ‘family’. Truth was: that sacred and fragile thing had died with Lyra Erso and nothing had been the same ever since.

Jyn didn’t like to pretend. It was easier not to. She was alone and would always be.

Did everybody else feel like she did, too? She imagined it held a certain truth. No matter the strings they tried to attach to people, in the end, they would all die alone. Little Jyn might have been frightened by that idea, fearing the abyssal darkness of the night. Lieutenant Erso had learned to find another type of peace in the vast, silent emptiness of the galaxy.

Tearing her eyes away from a side viewport opening up on the angry ionized streams attracted by the cluster, Jyn scanned her ID on a security panel. A little bip of approval cleared her to enter the CIC. On each side of the principal door, two Naval Troopers watched her every movement with offensive vigilance. She didn’t like those guys. No one did. Even the Stormtroopers Marines stationed on board made for a better company than those guys.

Keeping her thoughts religiously to herself, Jyn walked into the command center, ready to begin her nocturnal shift. She expected to be greeted by a simple nod of acknowledgment as she approached her station. Today, the navigating officer she was meant to replace (Endicott. Great.) kept his attention focused on his monitors, a harsh tension almost palpable in the air.

Jyn stopped behind the man’s shoulder, waiting to catch an input without disturbing the action. Concise orders passed through the CIC, and although no one shouted, the unusual agitation hinted at something concerning. From her pit of action, Jyn heard the nearby com-scan officer probing: “Holo-7-9, repeat.”

The distant voice came up again, half chopped up. Something appeared to distort the liaison, a fried circuit or a piece of damaged equipment. +ambushed by an un— left on— request emer— damaged navicomp+

“Sir, I think Holo-7-9 is declaring an emergency.”

“You think or you know?” asked the Officer of the Deck. Captain Mullinore wasn’t present at the moment, which probably saved the tech from an even less friendly inquiry. Approximation wasn’t tolerated inside the CIC.

“Unclear. Their comms are scrambled, I think—”

“What’s the last assignment for Holo-7-9?” the OOD cut with a harsh voice.

“A transport flight from Kessel, Sir. They were set to dock one hour ago but reported a delay on the ground. We’ve lost comm for a while due to the Maw.”

“Contact again.”

“Yes, Sir. Basilisk to Holo-7-9, please respond. Do you declare an emergency?”

A long silence stretched around the anxious personnel. Jyn quietly reached for a headset and plugged her entry on the console, trying for another frequency. Next to her, Endicott kept on juggling with a handful of other starships currently deployed on various missions, both in and out the immediate reach of the Star Destroyer.

“Holo-7-9, please state your—”

+ —sustained heavy damage from an explosive device,+ the pilot voice plugged in again with a sharp inhale. +Declaring an emergency, navicomp is offline— +

“They’re emerging right by the edge,” Jyn said, spotting a corresponding red dot on a monitor. “About six minutes inbound.”

“Clear them for emergency landing,” the OOD instructed, “and inform the deckcrew, isolate the area. Kessel, you said? Get a squad down there. Have Marines firing at anyone off that transport that doesn’t look Imperial. I don’t have time for a prison hijack.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Holo-7-9,” Endicott picked up from the com-scan officer, “realign with vector 1-5-8 and reduce speed for emergency inbound on bay-6.”

Jyn eyed the line of sensors in front of her, her mind buzzing from heavy background noise. Something spun in her brain faster than she could articulate it. Endicott was following the correct procedure, to a fault. She put a hand over her comlink to address him privately: “No, they’re too close from the cluster. They’ll get ejected if their navicomp can’t compensate the pull.”

A disapproving click of tongue answered her. The man still sitting in her seat looked up one second and gratified her with an irritated look. “I know what I’m doing,” he grunted. “They’re way over the margin error so don’t stress it out. Holo-7-9, reduce speed to—”

“Negative,” Jyn immediately cut out, addressing the pilot directly, “standby for instruction.”

“What’s your doshing problem?” Endicott hissed at her, fisting a hand over the console. “I’ve been doing this job longer than you, Erso. Whatever you think you know—”

She didn’t ‘think’ she knew. Idiot.

Ignoring the argument entirely, Jyn bent down and drafted a rough approximation of a new flight trajectory on an empty screen. “Holo, what’s your MGLT?”

+60 top.+

Jyn pursed her lips, displeased. Shitty maneuverability, especially in such a dangerous environment. Piloting near the Maw wasn’t for the faint of heart. With a damaged navigational system, whoever sat behind the control yoke that day was in for the flight of their life. Hopefully, she could assist.

Jyn focused all of her brainpower on solving the problem at hand. “Holo, drop by 9 strats and maintain speed. Flying you on vector 2-2-6.”

+Unable. Can’t recalculate— +

“That’s okay,” Jyn said. “I’m doing the work. I’ll guide you. Proceed to vector 2-2-6.”

+2-2-6,+ the pilot confirmed from afar.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Endicott loudly commented, gathering the attention of nearby people. “This is my shift, Erso!”

“Well, technically it’s been mine for over two minutes,” she said without intonation. She kept her eyes on the flight radars, hoping that Endicott wouldn’t be stupid enough to push it. He regrettably did, and she couldn’t say she felt surprised.

Standing up like an ejected neutron, the man decided to take a stand for his wounded ego. “Some of us weren’t commissioned because of our parents, Erso. Get your hands off my charts.” He made sure to raise his voice just enough that no one would miss it, which Jyn labeled as unnecessary rude. But what did she expect from a man willing to put his pride before the lives of an entire crew just to prove her wrong?

“Clearly not because of your competences, either,” she sharply replied. “Get your hands off my charts, Lieutenant.”

The use of rank perfectly registered as the insult Jyn intended it to be. If Endicott was determined to make it a personal matter, she wouldn’t shy away from low blows either. And whether he liked it or not, Jyn was a commissioned officer holding the same rank as him and his supposed superior-years-of-experience.

From the expression on his face, the stab might have hurt. She didn’t feel sorry for him. Endicott was a power-seeking moron. And a misogynist, too, apparently.

“I knew you were a bitch from the moment you set foot on—”

“What’s going on here?”

“Captain on deck!” the OOD informed with a slight delay.

Still busy checking her navigational systems to manually correct Holo’s trajectory each time they deviated toward the Maw, Jyn had to throw in a salute at Captain Mullinore. What a timing. It was clear from the serious look on the man’s face that the question hadn’t been for show. Jyn tried to come up with the simplest explanation possible but most of her attention was devoted elsewhere. Meanwhile, Endicott didn’t miss the opportunity to answer—and made sure to throw her under the AT-AT by the same occasion.

“Lieutenant Erso is ignoring protocols on an emergency inbound flight despite my clear instructions, Sir. She thinks she knows better than the entire Imperial Navy, apparently.”

“Is that true, Lieutenant?”

“With due respect,” Jyn groaned, a burn on her neck, “I never claimed that, but I surely know better than Lieutenant Endicott on this one. Now if you don’t mind, I’m a little busy trying to bring our people home.”

She couldn’t bite her tongue fast enough to stop the last few words. A lifeless impersonation of her training instructor voice’s rang in the back of her head: she might have to finish her shift in the brig for telling her CO to (politely) fuck off. Well, too late now. Until someone tried to physically stop her, Jyn decided to focus her attention on something more useful than immediate insubordination.

The tensed silence surrounding her was broken by Mullinore’s stark, passionless voice: “Carry on, Lieutenant.”

#

Jyn Erso was a creature of habits. She liked to be in control of her environment, aware of any threat at all times. She didn’t remember with precision when she had started to assimilate people with a casual level of threat, but it predated any distinction she’d come to form between Imperials and rebels. So, early enough.

Life had taught her that anyone who wasn’t her could not be trusted. She stood ready for the next treason.

Jyn entered the crowded mess hall on deck-C, joining the wave of mismatched personnel clocking off from the nocturnal shift (ship’s standard time). She gathered a tray of rations and sat down among a group of familiar faces, looking to choke down her food quietly. The conversation didn’t really pick up around the table. When a relay operator brought up her altercation with Endicott, Jyn simply shook her head and flashed an apologetic smile as to say: find your gossip elsewhere. No one insisted. Maybe they, too, thought that she was a nepotistic bitch.

She might have cared a few months back. Nowadays, not so much.

Holo-7-9 had docked on the Basilisk height hours ago. The first reports from deckhands had it that the shuttle was missing half a heat-shield paneling on starboard and had its navicomp completely fried by an EMP blast, not to mention all sorts of damage from subsequent ionization bursts flying so close to the cluster. In short: Holo’s pilot was a hero for crash-landing his piece of junk inside a hangar, the crew still breathing.

But it was Jyn who had made that possible. She’d helped saved those people. She’d done something good. She had her answer—

…and no one to share it with.

Between the constant exchange of mornings and good nights, Jyn left the table and went to clean up her empty tray. She walked by a group of Stormtroopers—the bone-white helmets neatly aligned at the center of their table suggested they were off-duty—and heard the terms ‘terrorists’ and ‘rebel spy’ threw around a few times. She didn’t stop to listen. She didn’t want to be reminded of the people they were fighting. Not when she could focus on the people to save, instead.

She was able to feel it blossoming inside her chest: that shy, yet fierce sense of purpose she had missed all along. She could almost dip her fingers into it and let it flood through her veins, extinguishing the burning emptiness inside her. Jyn felt ecstatic for the first time in forever. It could be enough, she decided.

If she could cling to this simple hope, it would be enough.

Over the white noise of soft chatter and cutlery sound, Jyn’s brain suddenly picked up the echo of something different. She couldn’t help but turn in the direction of his voice like a protocol droid to a cue. There, a few feet away from her, stood Commander Jeron Sward.

A rushed wave of heat flushed her cheeks just looking at him. He had his back turned to her, arms folded behind him, and yet she still recognized the sharp lines of his shoulders, the map of his neck. She had dug her nails into that same neck not so long ago, felt the sweat over his back, and his raging breath on her throat while—

Jyn snapped from the critical trajectory her mind had entered, a sting of nervousness in her guts. All this time, she’d been able to avoid him well enough. On the very rare occasions when she couldn’t—like this one—she’d simply pretended they never even had spoken to each other. Two perfect strangers in the compact mass of interchangeable soldiers. She had no reason to act differently today. He wasn’t even aware of her presence, speaking with a pair of starfighter pilots and a tall blonde officer that Jyn almost positively identified as the Air Wing Commander. She could walk behind him and discreetly exit the mess hall. He would not notice her. Or…

She could walk behind him and brush his hand, where his fingers held on the opposite wrist, unnoticed of the others. He would know it was her, somehow. He would excuse himself and follow her, not close enough to be suspicious. She would feel the weight of his stare while she’d walk back to deck-E, turn the airshaft maintenance corridor and—between the waste compacting hydraulics and the gas piping crammed on that level—wait for him in the unsanctified forgotten shadows of the Basilisk. To feel his hard body hungrily pressed against her, his lips on her neck, and his hands inside her clothes.

Jyn would fuck him right there and then if he’d ask, however fast he’d like, however reckless and unprofessional a conduct it might have been. And she’d like it… oh, she would.

Coming back to that place between space and time where nothing else could find her, the memory of his soft gentle eyes boring into her soul like a fusion of dying stars. The way he filled the void between her atoms more than anything else could, forgetting about duty and war and fear and pride. Only the warmth of his arms when he curled around her and whispered foreign words in her ears like their meaning was too important to be trusted into her consciousness.

Jyn wanted all of it again: the simple desire of being alive in a selfish and insignificant scale. Most of all, she wanted to see the golden shine of his dark brown eyes when she’d tell him that she had finally figured it out. She wanted his approbation, and she surprisingly didn’t hate herself for it.

This shameless fantasy died with the next beating of her heat, already dissolved by ruthless reality. Jyn adjusted the leather belt marking her waistline. She didn’t touch Sward’s hand like the lover she still wanted to be. But while she wouldn’t let herself hope for those beautifully tragic things, she still wanted him to know. So, Jyn stopped next to the four of them with a ball of anxiety in her stomach and nodded a salute.

“Commander,” she said—controlling her voice to the best of her abilities. Convincing enough.

If Sward was surprised, she would never know. He lowered his gaze on her, a filler expression on his face, and made a point to search for her insignia. “Lieutenant.”

So close to him, Jyn almost regretted her impulsive decision. No turning back without looking extremely stupid.

“My apologies for interrupting,” she said. “I was wondering if you’d have a minute to spare. I have a quick question about… work environment.”

Now, who’s looking stupid, Erso? Terrible mistake.

Waiting for a reply of some sort, she searched for it in his eyes more than his words. She couldn’t grasp a single of his thoughts, caged behind an unemotional, distant man that she had forgotten him to be. But this wasn’t her lover anymore—had never been, if she was horrifyingly honest with herself—this was the austere senior officer she had known him to be, walking without ever glancing sideways. Jyn’s little stupid hope collided with a wall of ice in the most brutal way, and she hadn’t been intelligent enough to do it in private.

“I’m not available, Lieutenant,” Sward replied. His tone wasn’t harsh nor insulting. It was the worst it could have been: void of any inflection, dehumanized, desensitized to her entire presence. “If you have an issue to resolve, go see the Master-at-Arms.”

Never before had it taken Jyn so much energy to simply push some words out. She wished she could have walked into a depressurizing chamber, threw herself into the vacuum of deep space, sucked into one of the Maw’s black holes and disappeared. It wouldn’t have felt very different from what she experienced at that moment… the incommensurable dread, the freezing burn in her heart… The next treason.

“Yes, of course. I was just… That was uncalled for, sorry, Sir.”

She turned around just as her voice started to crack. One step, two steps…

“Work environment?” mocked a feminine voice in her back. “That’s how the kids call it nowadays?”

“Spare me the stupid assumptions,” Sward said to her.

“You want me to believe you two aren’t matching the uniforms?”

Jyn couldn’t vacant perimeter fast enough. She couldn’t unhear it either, her senses acutely trained to listen to every bit of transmissions on every frequency.

“We’re not. Like you said: she’s a kid.”

“I guess she did want legal advice, then.”

“I wouldn’t mind advising her in private,” one of the pilots laughed in turn.

“That’s very low,” someone replied like a shared joke, “even by your standards, Tensent. She’s probably ten years younger than you.”

“Maybe, but TIE’s pilots don’t live long. I have to make the most of it. So if Sward isn’t banking on that attractive ass…”

Jyn didn’t want to hear the rest, she did not. She pushed through a group of engineers with a flagrant lack of politeness, almost out of the mess hall, safe and sound. The furious beating of her blood into her eardrums did nothing to cover the last residue of Sward’s voice when he said: “Help yourself. I couldn’t care less.”

Jyn was positive that she had never been in love with Jeron Sward—so she had to wonder, through the tears wetting her eyelashes, why it felt like her heart had been ripped off of her chest with a blazing knife.

Chapter Text

D-67

Cassian unbuttoned his jacket and set it flat on the nearby table, neatly folded to avoid any crease in the gray blend of fabric. Eyes down, he carefully rolled up the sleeves of his thermal undershirt, exposing his bare skin to the freezing temperature of the cell. His derm reacted with a shiver of protestation, trying to battle against the cold. His breath materialized in front of him like the vaporous white clouds curling around Fest’s mountains. He was twelve the first time he saw snow and had been fighting for half this time.

Cassian pushed that thought away before it could do any damage.

“Prepare for chemical burn of superficial tissues,” he instructed with a flat, emotionless voice.

Hovering above ground without a sound, the circular torture droid reconfigured its arsenal with a series of mechanical clicks before rotating towards the prisoner. The single red eye of the IT-O shadowed half the Balosar’s face with crimson light, masking away the evidence of fresh blood on the near-Human skin. The unintended illusion couldn’t prevent Cassian from smelling it in the air. Metallic. Iron-based. He’d long grown accustomed to it, not only for the hours he’d spend in a cell like this one but for all the lives he’d witnessed coming to an end—regardless of his involvement in the process.

Don’t try to escape it.

Cassian was involved. Cassian had made the choice long ago—still had the choice of all the others that followed—just not one he could justify. Not to him, not to the mission, not to the unspeakable things he’d already done in the name of a rebellion that couldn’t prevent horrors from happening to innocent people. But who was still innocent in this fight?

The Balosar strapped to the interrogation table had made his own choices and smelled that same sweet, sickening odor before. He’d done unspeakable things, too, when he decided to plant a bomb on the Imperial transport and engaged in a suicide mission. It hadn’t been set to detonate this early; that was a malfunction, or more probably a desperate attempt at taking some people with him the moment he’d been discovered by the shuttle crew. His likely objective would’ve been the Basilisk: waiting to dock on the flight deck and to destroy an entire squadron, or maybe to infiltrate the ranks and take out a critical target. Weaponry. Mechanic. Control and Command. Plenty of choices.

A blast powerful enough to tear off containment shields and destroy the command bridge, hundred of people killed, her corpse floating in the dark void of space, forever drifting away with that last expression of terror frozen on her face—

Cassian closed his fist to stop a twitch in his hand. He stepped closer to the prisoner, looking at him without really seeing him. He didn’t know much, but he knew enough. Half-confessions obtained between screaming pleas. Phantoms names. Partisans.

Getting closer to the truth would prove too dangerous to waste time on it. No point in trying, either. There was only one way to go from here: a choice Cassian had made before he knew he would have to make it. The thin gray line to walk… in a world of crimson shadows and abject lies.

The man’s eyes flickered to him in fear the moment he stepped in front of him. Cassian nodded at the IT-O.

“Begin,” he said.

The droid readjusted its altitude to target an exposed area of skin, ready to deliver a dose of corrosive chemicals precisely calibrated to inflict tremendous pain without shortening the prisoner’s survival expectancy. A single blink of its red censor: scanning the target’s vital signs before proceeding. Then…

Cassian moved his bare forearm in front of the Balosar’s chest, catching most of the burn. A spasm of agony ran through his entire arm, to his shoulder, extending to his chest like liquid fire. His heart hammered faster against his ribs. He grunted from pain, trembling on his feet, and caught himself with his other arm against the side of the interrogation table.

“What’s fucking gotten into you?” he hissed between his teeth, letting the physical trauma pierced in his voice for added value.

“I do not understand,” the droid sternly answered, its tone identical to every IT-O Interrogation Unit Cassian had ever encountered. “You put yourself at risk.”

“You’ve harmed me,” Cassian barked, his injured arm pressed against his chest helplessly. “I’m sending you to get a complete CPU diagnosis and you’re not to interact with any organics until I hear back from engineering. That’s an order!”

“Understood, Commander.”

Cassian watched as the droid floated toward the door, throbbing pain on the entire left side of his body. He waited for it to exit and for the reinforced panel to slide shut again before allowing himself to move. He couldn’t be sure of how long that trick would hold up. If someone were to check, the audio recording of that interaction would provide Cassian with an additional safety-net, but every interference, every discrepancy surrounding Jeron Sward slowly chipped at his cover and increased the risks of getting noticed. For now, he could only hope that no one would be looking too intensely in his direction.

Cassian fumbled around with his good hand, reaching for a small object secured in the inside of his boot. Stretching back to his full height, the modified transponder now in his hand caught the attention of the prisoner.

“You…,” he chocked, drooling blood. “Who—”

Cassian unsealed the compartment and flip a little white pill in his palm. He held the man’s gaze, watching as his tired and desperate brain painfully plugged the pieces back together.

“Rebel,” the man finally breathed and his blood-shot eyes dilated from the sudden rush of adrenaline. Cassian presented the pill to his lips without a word. Nothing to be said in such circumstances. Any attempt would have been a burning insult in the face of a condemned man.

“Help me,” the Balosar still pleaded. His antennapalps shivered from fear. A last desperate attempt, against all logic and pragmatism.

Blood ran cold inside Cassian’s veins. The pulsing pain of his burned forearm dissolved from his censors. A dark, suffocating weight closed around his throat, feeling like the air inside the cell had turned to solid ice. “I am helping you,” Cassian said, low and somber.

The prisoner’s reaction wasn’t instinctive nor immediate. Cassian followed it on his face like the transcript of an actual conversation. There. The exact moment of surrender, when all hopes crumbled down for the last time. No curse. No fight. Only one way out.

Cassian pushed the suicide pill past the man’s lips and watched him bite down on the affide crystal.

Any means necessary, Draven repeated in the back of his head.

#

“That’s crazy!” Tensent growled. “I’ve always told people to stay away from those sadistic ballsacks. I would’ve put a blaster hole in it, honestly.”

“It’s likely a spatial captors malfunction,” Cassian answered.

“Never too careful,” the man insisted, arms crossed over his chest.

“I hope they gave you a few days of sick-leave,” Reeka, another pilot from Vortex Squadron, said.

“It wasn’t necessary. They patched me up well enough, just a couple hours of bacta treatment.” Cassian rotated his now-healed arm to demonstrate. No residual nerve damages. As good as new, if it wasn’t for the ghostly sensations of remaining pain still plaguing his mind. Something to work on at a later time. His real concern—

“And that prisoner,” Razana Frye said, “I’ve heard he bailed out before you could finish interrogating him.”

Cassian put his arms behind his back, holding his wrist in one hand to monitor his pulse.

Frye was his most present concern. Something about the way she looked at him while she spoke. Cassian knew liars and players and spies and how the best of them managed to win those games of shadows. Frye didn’t care about the prisoner, nor about interrogations, but that dangerous flicker of heat in the center of her eyes was an omen of things to come. He was powerless to stop it. From now on, they would both dance around each other with a poisonous uncertainty—and Cassian’s only advantage was to have made it to her bed before she could start forming any define thoughts on the things she couldn’t yet see.

“Good riddance,” Tensent snorted, “fucking terrorists.”

Aren’t we all. The violence that we cannot end.

Cassian didn’t give voice to those thoughts: no one could question the Empire. Treason.

Jeron Sward wasn’t a traitor and diligently nodded his agreement. It started to become harder every time—not knowing which part of him still faked the repulsion, which part of him wanted to take comfort in the illusion of cohesion, which part of him had lost any capacity to feel anything at all. On both fronts. Ripped apart by pretending, buried under his fractured self. Not knowing on which side to sleep anymore to tame the pain. No one to hold him through the terrors disguised in those nights without moons.

How much time till I get myself killed— ?

Cassian missed the sound of her footsteps until she stopped next to them. His gaze locked on her with an initial burst of weariness. She’d kept her distances for months. He had trouble coming up with an explanation for that sudden change of behavior. What did she want? What did she know?

“Commander,” she said—and Cassian noticed how much effort she put into the perfunctory tone.

Convincing enough for her audience. He had the presence of mind to search for her insignia before answering her. In a starship this size, Sward couldn’t have known every single officer, let alone remembered their ranks.

“Lieutenant,” he said, and almost let her name slip. His grip tightened around his wrist.

He’d almost forgotten the color of her eyes. So close to her, he couldn’t escape the bewitching sight of her gold flaked gaze, the vibrant sea green dotted with little dust of light. He’d called it stardust once; Cassian had to pull back from its gravity like a minefield of erupting novae.

“My apologies for interrupting,” she said. “I was wondering if you’d have a minute to spare. I have a quick question about… work environment.”

Was that really the best she could come up with? It made no sense to him. Cassian didn’t want to play that fucking game anymore. Not today. He couldn’t excuse it, couldn’t indulge it. He didn’t deserve it. He felt terrified, like a whisper emerging from a part of himself that didn’t see daylight often, of what could happen if he did. The things he would say to her to make her comply… the things he would do if she didn’t. Cassian felt terror at the idea of losing his grip, of slipping too far, of using her more than he’d already done.

It was easy to have sex with Frye because she’d never looked at him like Jyn Erso looked at him now. A sharp pain stung between his ribs. Unresidual. Fuck.

Don’t think about it. Don’t you dare. // Flip her and keep her. You can have her. // You can’t. It’s abuse. You’re a lying piece of shit. She’s Imperial. // She wants it. Just once more. You’ll be gone soon anyway.

“I’m not available, Lieutenant,” Cassian said like a sentence. The fingers of his left hand started to get tingly from the painful pressure he maintained over his wrist—all he could do to contain the physical reactions trying to escape him. “If you have an issue to resolve, go see the Master-at-Arms.”

He wished he hadn’t been skilled enough to read her like a cracked file. To her credit, she managed to give it a good try. “Yes, of course. I was just… That was uncalled for, sorry, Sir.”

She mercifully turned around just when Cassian thought that she was about to lose it.

Get the fuck away from me. You don’t want any of this. If I told you… every time I need to get off, I keep thinking about fucking you senseless. I want you to be nice to me. I want you to want me. I want you to say my name—but you don’t know which one. This is not what sex is about. I would break you just to make you see my world, stardust girl. And I wouldn’t even regret it because someone has to pay for the crimes of this world.

“Work environment?” Frye mocked. “That’s how the kids call it nowadays?”

“Spare me the stupid assumptions,” Cassian said, too tired to even check his tone.

“You want me to believe you two aren’t matching the uniforms?”

“We’re not. Like you said: she’s a kid.”

His stomach flipped upside-down at the words.

She wasn’t such a kid when you decided to weaponize her distress and got her back to your bunk. She wasn’t such a kid when you put your mouth between her thighs. She wasn’t such a kid when she let you—

“I guess she did want legal advice, then.”

“I wouldn’t mind advising her in private,” Tensent laughed in turn, and Cassian willed himself to not even think about it. Hardly effective.

“That’s very low,” his teammate replied, “even by your standards, Tensent. She’s probably ten years younger than you.”

“Maybe, but TIE’s pilots don’t live long. I have to make the most of it. So if Sward isn’t banking on that attractive ass…”

What if he said something as obnoxious as ‘don’t ever touch her’, ‘I never said I wasn’t’, ‘she’s too pretty for your stupid face’ and tried to pass it as a joke? They would all laugh, call it a day, and never think about it again. But Frye was here—and she was watching. And somewhere down the line, Cassian drafted all the possible ramifications that would link him back to this exact conversation… and the dangerous implications that it would carry for Lieutenant Jyn Erso.

Cassian decided to cover his tracks—not for her, not entirely—mainly to abjectly feel better about himself.

“Help yourself. I couldn’t care less.”

He didn’t look above his shoulder. He didn’t possess antennapalps like the man he’d killed before breakfast. He couldn’t know for sure. He still did. He knew that she had heard him, and from all the terrible lies he’d fed her, this was the most painful to swallow because he hurt her.

Cassian fantasized about going after her, about finding a quiet corner to tell her that he cared. He fantasized about the way she would respond to that, and the soft vulnerability in her beautiful eyes when she’d forgive him—for everything. He fantasized about kissing her and convincing her that her side wasn’t the right side, that she would do much better fighting for freedom, that she could be so much more. He fantasized about telling her his name, and her whispering it in his ear while she lay under him on Dantooine.

But he never went after her. He never got to feel better about himself. And he wasn’t sure, each passing day like a countdown, that he would ever see twin moons setting over Dantooine again. Maybe for the best; Cassian couldn’t imagine coming back from this anymore.

He had forgotten how.

Chapter Text

D-33

Jyn ran through the monochrome corridor on deck-C, trying to escape the mocking stares surrounding her. They whispered and pointed at her relentlessly. She couldn’t discern voices, no matter how hard she tried, but knew that they were talking about her. Someone shoved a hard shoulder in her way. Jyn stumbled on her feet, the artificial gravity of the Basilisk pulling at her like a rogue object entering her orbit. The line of horizon tilted and began to spin. She almost fell to the ground, all landmarks lost. She caught herself on the wall at the last moment, hands on the pipelines.

“Jyn.”

She turned around, short of breath and lightheaded. The endless moving corridor had vanished, and all the people with it. Instead, she stood frozen between two dogged hatches on the lower deck. Jeron Sward materialized in front of her, his stern face half-eaten away by dangerous shadows. His dark eyes focused on her as he took another step in her direction, bringing them so closely together.

“Jyn,” he said again. “Listen to me.”

“No,” she tried to argue but found herself trapped between his tall body and a wall. With nowhere to go, Jyn looked up to meet his serious stare.

“I care. I care about you.”

“You’re a fucking liar,” she sobbed, hitting a fist over his chest. “I don’t believe you!”

“I have to make it right.”

“I don’t want to be with you. Leave me alone!”

Jyn had to wonder—horrified—why she would say such things to him when she wanted the exact opposite. But the words kept coming out without her approval, harsh and insulting. Tears brimmed her eyes while she gaped at him in despair, hoping that he would stay even if she continuously pushed him away and screamed for him to leave.

Jeron caught her wrists and lowered his face with a menacing tone. “Stop.”

She didn’t. She kept on fighting him. “Leave me the fuck alone!” No, don’t. Please, don’t. “Go away! Just go!” Don’t leave me, please. Everybody always leaves. Please, stay. Say you will. Say I’m good enough.

“Let me make it right,” he breathed into her hair, her hands sealed to his chest. “Jyn.”

Something about the way he said her name… And suddenly he had his arms around her and her chest was about to implode. Jyn stopped fighting. A wave of relief crashed upon her; someone had finally walked over that threshold for her.

The warmth of his body made her heart quicken between her ribs. She held him back, arms around his waist, hoping that nothing would change. She buried her face in the front of his jacket, his hands in her loose hair, gently combing.

“Let me make it right,” Galen Erso said, standing next to her.

Jyn gasped in fear, holding Jeron like a lost child. She didn’t want to face her father, not after all this time. It was too painful, too late; she didn’t know how to pick up the pieces anymore. Tears kept rolling down her cheeks and she shook her head. She tore her gaze away from the aging man and looked back at Jeron instead. His passionless face felt more familiar than the one of her kin. His lips curved upward slightly, the faintest trace of a smile around the corners of his eyes. He cupped her face between his palms and stroke her skin with a soothing motion.

Jyn forgot about her tears and her father and pressed herself against him again, hoping that he would kiss her. Hoping to make it alright. Hoping to find shelter. If he’d stayed, maybe—

He touched his lips to hers in a shameless kiss, stealing the air from her lungs. Jyn’s fingers curled around the fabric of his jacket, desperately holding him down to her. A searing fire erupted in her soul, burning brighter than any star ever charted. She kissed him back without breathing, parting her lips and dragging her tongue against his. A suppressed moan escaped her dry throat when he mirrored her. Jyn arched her body into the space he gave her. He molded his own into the curves of her, pushing her flat against the wall.

“You’re mine,” he pleaded in her ear, leaving red marks down the column of her throat. “Say it.”

“I’m your—”

He dragged his mouth back to hers and gently kissed her lips. “No, not that.”

Jyn took another trembling breath. She closed her eyes, their foreheads touching, and whispered: “I love you.”

“Yes. You’re my lover, Jyn.”

I am. I want to be.

Steady hands began to loosen up her clothes, running up and down against her skin with a pleasant burn. She grabbed his shoulders, messed up his hair with uncoordinated gestures. Jeron went back to kissing her neck, his wet lips unlocking panting noises of pleasure from her. Jyn let her head fall back in abandon. She shivered under the touch of his hands, expertly roaming over her craving body, tracing her waistline, her sides, her breasts. Grabbing and stroking. Coming down to slide over her hips, inside her pants and digging his fingers into her ass. Jyn’s voice cracked over a needy moan.

She followed the dynamic of his pull, spreading her legs around him while he dragged her up. They fumbled with each other in a chaotic hurry, caught in a mixture of blazing lust and desperation. It wasn’t as sensual and liberating as it seemed to be in those holos. Jyn felt a dangerous dread within herself—to be caught maybe. She knew their time was limited… but she wanted every second of it, regardless.

Jeron’s breathing felt hot and unsteady against her face. His musky perfume filed her every breath, making it impossible to think about anything else than the ache between her thighs. Jyn wrapped her legs around his hips and the hard leather of his belt dug into her muscles with discomfort. She did nothing about it, only chasing after the friction of him against her burning core. He moved with her, fully hard and straining against his uniform. She gasped his name and let him roll his hips, sending an electrifying jolt of pleasure up and down her spine.

She wanted to have him inside her, to feel his naked skin, the flexing muscles of his shoulders, to dig her nails into his back like she used to. But she couldn’t stop this; she couldn’t wait either, her body moving and responding instinctively. And fuck if she wasn’t going to come just like that.

Even when another layer of her subconscious started to intersect with her emotions, Jyn refused to open up to it. She needed this so badly. She needed to be with him.

Don’t go away.

Her arms spasmed around a ghostly form. Jyn’s heart jumped in her throat, free-falling into an abyss of exploding stars and black holes. She surfaced with a choked gasp, eyes wide open on the faint gray light piercing through the privacy curtain of her bunk. Jyn put a hand over her mouth, praying that no one had heard her, feeling her eyelashes still wet from heavy tears. Her whole body was drenched in sweat, hair sticking to her face and neck. Blood pounded into her ears with each beating of her furious heart, protesting this new, unwelcomed reality.

She pressed her thighs together, the coarse blanket trapped between them doing nothing to ease her painful arousal.

She couldn’t go on like this, dreaming about him night after night. Waking up like a sobbing mess. Stroking her fingers where she wanted him to touch her in a pathetic attempt to chase after the last remnants of his memory. Her hands were too small, too soft, too gentle. They weren’t his. But it was all she had right now and she was so close already.

Jyn bit on her hand to silence her cry of release when she came, eyes painfully shut and the agony of her lonely soul to keep her company.

It’s not love.

It’s never been love. You can’t be in love with someone that you don’t know.

You just love the idea of him. You just love the idea of being loved.

#

Jyn clutched the datapad to her chest, making her way through the busy flight deck. For all the time she’d spent on the Star Destroyer, she’d rarely ventured down there. The contrast with the CIC was staggering: a constant agitation that, even coordinated and following its own set of rules, buzzed around ships and maintenance equipment with loud noises and heavy chatter. Deckhands worked on the parked ships, pilots walked in and out of the area with helmets under their arms and stories about their last flight to exchange.

Jyn scanned the deck in search of a blonde woman. No such luck, but she advised a pilot with a cocky attitude that looked familiar hanging next to a docked TIE phantom.

Trying not to flinch at the memory of the humiliating interaction, Jyn gathered her courage and walked up to the man. Tensent, if she recalled correctly. She knew him to be part of Vortex squadron and, judging by the smug look on his face, he probably thought highly of himself. To be fair, most starfighter pilots did.

She might have broken that datapad in half if she held it any tighter. With a nervous lump in her throat, Jyn said: “Excuse me, sir.”

She didn’t remember his rank, and the man wore his flysuit rolled down around his waist, making it impossible for Jyn to get a clue. Some officers easily took offense when not using their actual rank. She hoped that Tensent wasn’t one of them.

“Look at that, are you lost?” he snickered with a half-smile. “Or were you looking for me?”

Jyn ignored the suggestive layer in that question. She’d be lying if she said that it was the first time she had to do it. It made her extremely uncomfortable at times, especially when she had to evade people above her rank with the persistent fear that it would come back to interfere with her work. But wouldn’t that make her a perfect hypocrite? She couldn’t fuck an Imperial commander and simultaneously wish for everyone else to keep their flirtation non-existent.

At least, Tensent was all smiles and no hands.

“I’m looking for the Ace, actually,” Jyn said. “I was hoping you’d seen her.”

“Am I missing some drama?” the man laughed.

“What?”

After another second or so of silence, Tensent said: “You just missed her. My guess, she’d be in her quarters.” That would have been Jyn’s next destination, regardless. She nodded. “But maybe you should try in a few hours. We just came back from flight rotation… she’d be pretty busy…”

“Yeah, I know you guys must be toasted,” Jyn winced. “I just need to catch her for a minute. Mission order. The XO will be on my back if I don’t get this done.”

Once again, Tensent flashed her an amused grin. She didn’t know the man enough to draw a conclusion but she wondered if he was laughing about her.

“Good luck, then,” he said and clapped his hand on Jyn’s shoulder. She didn’t think anything of it.

#

Jyn stood motionless in the middle of the pathway, her heart beating so fast that she experienced pain in her chest. The longer she would wait, the harder he’d be. She needed to knock on that door. There was no way around it. And no matter how hard she wished she’d never seen Jeron Sward walking into that room moments ago, she couldn’t drop her work and run away like a scared little girl.

Her previous conversation with Tensent saved her the effort of wondering if she was jumping to conclusions. She wasn’t.

It made perfect sense now. She wasn’t surprised. She always knew that she hadn’t been an exception. Jyn wondered if they had a good laugh about her after the mess incident… if Frye had asked questions. She wondered if the woman cared at all. Probably not. She couldn’t picture the Air Wing Commander concerned with silly things like relationships during times like this. It was more likely just about sex like everybody else on this kriffing warship.

Just like you.

She’d told the man that she didn’t want to do it anymore, so he moved on to somebody else. End of the story. There was nothing tragic in it, yet she felt like she’d just been betrayed.

Jyn had severely underestimated her personal issues. Every part of her made its due diligence to remind her that, of course, she would be replaced. Her own father had, why would any other man be different? Maybe if she’d been better… but Jyn wasn’t Razana Frye. She couldn’t compete. She couldn’t hope for someone to fall in love with her just because they had sex a few times.

Her thoughts kept spiraling downward from that point on, out of orbit, out of control. Her sweaty palms slipped around the edges of the datapad. Jyn wanted to leave so badly but she had orders. After a virtual eternity, she knocked.

It took several critical seconds before the panel door finally slid to the side, revealing Razana Frye on the other side. No such thing as cracking a door half-open on a ship. If she looked past the woman’s shoulder, Jyn could possibly have a visual on the entirety of the statecabin. She didn’t, determined to keep her attention solely focused on Frye. The Air Wing Commander was still wearing a black flysuit, the sleeves tied-up around her waist. Her dog tags hung low over her chest, and Jyn decided to use it as a focal point.

“Commander,” she said with a blank voice, “the XO sent me to review the flight routes for your next assignment.”

For a short moment, Frye didn’t answer. Something in her expression vaguely resembled surprise, but if it was, she had a way to mask it that made it hard for Jyn to decipher. She expected Frye to ask her to come back later. Instead, the woman frowned and gave it another thought.

“I haven’t been briefed yet,” she said, visibly displeased to be caught off-guard. “Where the hell are they sending us that I need a personal course with you? I remembered passing that class just fine, no offense.”

Jyn didn’t take offense in Frye’s reaction. As a matter of fact, she had expected something of the sort. The woman had countless hours of flight experience, some of it in the most inhospitable territories of the galaxy. She perfectly knew how to read a flight chart and, in any other setting, Jyn would probably have agreed that her ‘expertise’ wasn’t essential. After reviewing the directives on her datapad, she had a different opinion on the subject. So would Frye, once she’d look for herself. But that meant—

“It’s classified,” Jyn said, tasting the tension in her words. The awkwardness of that statement burnt through her. None of them were stupid. She could have waved at Sward with the exact same effect. “Here, I’ll let you review it and we can debrief when you have a moment.” Jyn passed the datapad to Frye. “I’m back on rotation at zero six hundred, but after that, I should be in the clear.”

“Alright,” Frye said. “I’ll catch you later.”

There was nothing else to be added to the subject. Jyn took a step back and threw in a quick salute before turning heels.

She tried to persuade herself that nothing terrible or humiliating had happened, which was clearly an improvement over last time. But with each new step that she took, breathing became increasingly difficult. Now that she knew, she couldn’t stop her mind from envisioning Sward and Frye together. Worse, even: they knew that she knew.

Were they talking about her, right now? Were they picking up the action where she had interrupted it? Did he make love to Frye as he did to her?

For Force’s sake, Erso— stop that shit.

Jyn slapped her palm against the cold control panel of the starboard turbolift. Then slammed it again for good measure—as if it could have magically sped up the process. She needed to do something. She needed an outlet for her raging emotions or she would implode. She dismissed the first thing that came to her mind. She would be caught dead before drinking or fucking someone like a kriffing cure ever again. She had a better idea, anyway.

#

Jyn slammed her fists against the boxing bag, keeping her wrists straight, correcting her posture. She moved back and hit again, mixing her moves, repeating the same combination over and over again to develop a kinesthetic feel for the action.

She’d been at it for a solid hour. Her muscles started to feel sore, her back drenched in sweat, but she kept going. Just a little more, she thought. Just a little more until she could pour out those feelings inexorably suffocating her. But no matter how hard she punched, how exhausted she made her body, she couldn’t get her mind to wear itself down.

The clock might have reset aboard the ISD Basilisk. The exercise room had slowly emptied, leaving Jyn short of witnesses while she tried to exorcise her demons away. So many conflicting signals buzzed under her brain that it made her dizzy. She punched again. Jab, jab, cross punch. Air tasted like metal. Jab, jab, elbow strike. Heartbeat furious.

The dread in her soul… returning. The abandon. The loneliness.

Warm brown eyes promising lies across cosmic storms.

Jyn struck the heavy boxing bag with a hard knee. It bounced from the chain. Her range was too close. A sharp pain traveled all the way up to her hip. She groaned and leaped to the side. “Fuck!”

“Are you okay?”

Jyn spun so fast that she almost lost balance. A tall silhouette watched her from the far corner of the room, so silent she hadn’t heard him—those same brown eyes constantly haunting her.

“How long have you been standing here?” she growled, breathing hard.

Jeron Sward took a step forward. “Not long.” Even while his body language stayed neutral, something in his voice sounded off. “You have a deadly right hook. Where did you learn?”

Jyn frowned, letting her tired arms finally fall down. “My father paid for private training. If she can throw a punch, she doesn’t need a dad, right?”

He walked closer. Jyn refused to back down. Tearing her gaze away from the man, she unstrapped her gloves. That small illusion of control calmed her beating heart, just enough that she could say: “If you’re worried that I’ll rat on you… I won’t.” She even had it in her to snicker with sarcasm. “Would be pretty stupid, considering…”

Jyn threw the gloves to the floor and started to undo the white hand-wraps that had prevented her from fracturing her bones during her workout. The tremor in her gestures was due to exhaustion, obviously. The knot in her stomach… harder to rationalize.

“I wasn’t worried about that.”

Good for you.

Jyn snatched one hand-wrap, right hand free, and shot him a bitter look. “Why are you here, then?”

A question she might have not wanted an answer to. For a moment, he seemed as he didn’t have one. She found it strange, alarming maybe, how a man that always had everything and everyone under control couldn’t give an answer to a question that simple.

The vortex kept on spiraling outward. Jyn pictured the ion bursts of charged particles ejected from the Maw’s Cluster. She imagined being nothing more than a black hole atom, a recipient of dark matter, with no other purpose than to serve the structure of the universe. No interaction, no light, no spectrum. Invisible. Undetectable.

Would he look past her without even trying?

“I should have come to you after last time,” Sward said, his voice so detached that it sounded like a distant transmission. “I know you heard me in the mess hall.”

Jyn squeezed the stripes of fabric in her palms to still herself. She’d been longing for this all along… and couldn’t find solace in it.

She recognized a pathetic attempt at apologizing—and had it been sooner, she would have reacted differently. But she couldn’t understand why now. What was the point? Just for his sake? Performative words, even if he claimed otherwise.

She brushed it off without compassion, keeping the walls up. “It doesn’t matter. You don’t owe me.” She meant it, even if it killed her inside. It was all for nothing. Fantasies weren’t meant to leave the dark realm of her solitude. It hurt too much to even hope.

“I want you to know— what I told them was only because I didn’t want them to pick an interest in you.”

Jyn did nothing to hide her puzzled expression. She didn’t know how to catalog this information; it didn’t fit any pattern. It made it harder to feign indifference, too. It made it so much harder to ignore the furious beating of her heart. “Those people are your friends.”

“I don’t have any friends.” The tone was stark, not a personal judgment: a statement of facts.

Jyn switched her weight from one leg to the other. She couldn’t justify the conversation, nor her conflicting feelings, but she still said: “They don’t seem like bad people.”

Sward held her gaze in silence, his strong presence almost intimidating under the rigid layers of his gray uniform. Jyn felt naked in comparison, only wearing a set of PT clothing. She would’ve loved to hide behind her own uniform, to maintain some distance—but right now, Sward was talking to Jyn.

“They’re not,” he finally said. “But I don’t do the same job as them… I don’t want to leave any trace, to anyone, pointing to you.”

This got her anxiety running and her gears spinning. What was he saying? She pressed her lips into a tight line, wondering how much pretending was left on his part. He looked earnest enough but Jyn knew better than to trust anything at first glance. Not with him. Not with anyone.

“Is this about the transport from Kessel? I heard people talking about that prisoner. They said you were the one interrogating him when he committed suicide.”

“I can’t talk about that.”

Right. Jyn had lost the bigger picture. It seemed that whatever Sward had wanted to tell her, they were done talking about. But the man didn’t leave. And neither did she.

The longer they stared at each other in the empty training room, the harder Jyn had to fight to stay composed. Unaffected by his proximity. Ignoring the reminiscence of everything she knew about him… The way his eyes lit up when he looked at her. The urge to reach for him—or maybe to pick up a fight with him. She wondered if she would have been able to tackle him to the ground.

A part of her wanted nothing more than to try.

The sweat on her skin had started to evaporate, leaving her shivering in the artificial atmosphere. Jyn licked her dry lips and cave in without warning. “I just wanted to talk to you,” she whispered—knowing that he would understand even without parameters. “I figured it out… like you said… and I just wanted to share it with somebody. With you.”

Her confession ended quietly; a far cry from the anger-driven confrontation she had imagined. She didn’t know what to expect in return but certainly not his next words.

“I’m not a good man,” Sward said. “I hoped that you wouldn’t want anything to do with me anymore… and if I just— I wanted to make it easier for myself.”

Easier than what? That’s the question Jyn wanted to ask, to shout. Instead, she said: “Did you fuck her when I left?”

The words escaped before she could entirely process them. It hit them both in unison like a tacit agreement of the situation. Sward didn’t recoil. Jyn stopped bouncing from one foot to the other. They looked at each other without walls for the first time of the night.

“Yes.”

She already knew but it broke her heart all the same. She didn’t have any excuse to look away from the truth. She wasn’t strong enough to stop her eyes from tearing up, ashamed of herself. And, as she looked at him through wet lashes, she registered how unhappy and miserable he looked. How much he struggled not to retreat behind a mask and protect her with empty lies.

“Did you like it better than with me?” Jyn asked with a bitter voice.

Disaster in progress. She had no logical explanation for this. And maybe it would do more damage than good but she needed to know or she would suffocate.

She started when he took another brisk step toward her. He placed both hands around her face. She witnessed the internal battle, heard the unhappy breaths escaping him, watched his attention shifting on her once more. The usual warmth in his eyes seemed to burn like a beacon in the night sky. Jyn saw the casual indifference cracking right in front of her, opening up the floodgates.

He nervously shifted forward, his forehead on hers. “I was thinking about you the entire time,” he choked out, “trying to remember how you touched me.”

Jyn didn’t know when she had moved but realized she was holding his wrists. His febrile pulse throbbed under her fingers, maybe as proof that he wasn’t lying. Too late for an escape trajectory now. She couldn’t recalculate. She tilted her chin up knowingly. Their lips crashed together. The kiss was imprecise, hungry, desperate, with hard teeth and short breath. She didn’t care. It wasn’t a kiss to feel love, it was a kiss to feel alive. A shock to her system. A signal to reset and realign.

All of her senses seemed to heighten at once. She let go of his wrists and pushed her fingers through his neatly combed hair. His hands slid down her back, holding her waist, and pressed her flat against his body. Jyn had to tiptoe, arms crossed around his shoulders. She bit his lip, opened her mouth, regained control, lost it again. He kissed her back with more care, his nose next to hers. The short regrowth of his beard on her skin. The feel of his tongue. The pull of his hands.

At that precise moment, Jyn couldn’t be bothered to think about anything other than him. His perfume, his touch, his weight. The way he kissed her and set her nerves ablaze. The feelings she couldn’t forget. A feral need to be close to him. She didn’t have words to express that sort of urgency.

It had been months since they last kissed. Five. Not that she had counted—not really.

It felt like taking her first gulp of oxygen after being left to asphyxiate in the cold, silent space. She couldn’t go without it. She had to find a way.

She had to do something about it.

When they finally parted, breathing hard and unraveled, he touched his face to hers with a sweet motion. He kept his eyes closed and rested in the hollow of her neck, his arms sealed behind her back. She held him there with a hand in his hair, her eyes wide open on the diffuse white light.

She felt the shift just as clearly as the physical one.

Terrified and worried-sick, Jyn forced herself to say: “I want to spend the night shift with you.”

Her heart stopped, waiting for an answer. She hadn’t forgotten: terrible idea, regulations, impractical, astronomically irresponsible. All so many reasons for him to turn her down.

His lips moved on her skin, to her ear, and at first, she thought she hadn’t heard right. “You’ll have to be very quiet for that,” he said.

And Jyn knew that they had both lost their kriffing minds.

Chapter Text

D-32

Cassian had never been a Force’s favorite but, at this point, it started to feel personal.

He’d crossed so many lines already, he didn’t even register this one. Too late. The things he’d never planned on doing, the questions she shouldn’t have asked, the lies he should have said to save it… He had no explanation other than the obvious: he’d become unreliable. A done deal.

Cassian Andor had lost control and no one was here to stop him.

Around 0100, ship-time, Commander Sward unlocked his cabin door with a small shadow behind him. On the top bunk, the other officer lay fast asleep. Unsurprising. The man had a morning watch scheduled, approximately five hours from now, and so did Jyn.

Cassian gestured for her to walk to his bunk. In the half-darkness of the small berthing, she quietly disappeared in the lower sleeping space. With equally silent footsteps, he crossed the room and stored Jyn’s training bag inside his personal locker, hidden from view. He collected her shoes and took some time to unlace his boots before getting rid of the gray uniform.

Every other night, undressing brought him some scraps of comfort—a performer leaving the stage, if only in his mind. Tonight, Cassian couldn’t escape.

From the mission… from himself. (Any means necessary.) The plea of a selfish man.

Down to a black pair of underwear, he joined Jyn in his bunk and closed the privacy curtain that he so rarely bothered to use. A faint glow of flickering reddish light persisted around them, caressing the familiar features of the woman lying next to him. The illusion of intimacy would’ve made it easy to forget that another person was sleeping above them. A dangerous game to play, hand too close to the fire. But, as he looked at Jyn facing him on her side, Cassian realized the horrifying truth: those rules were meant for Jeron Sward.

(Shredding the burden. Cutting ties. Depersonification. Desynchronization.)

Cassian Andor didn’t give a flying fuck anymore.

(an undercover agent will not engage in sexual contact.)

Their hands brushed. He couldn’t tell if by accident or design. Anticipation buzzed under his too-tight skin, his limbs ached. He’d engineered every one of the steps leading to this moment but he hadn’t accounted for the sleeping defect in his program. She’d cracked it open, extended the invitation, and he couldn’t rebuild the frontier around his dire need of (someone) her.

Cassian arched his tense body over her. He buried his face in the hollow of her neck, instinctively looking to hide the signs of imminent collapse. Years of suppression: the inability to show genuine emotions, the danger to break free from that pillory. His arms circled her with measured, silent gestures, trying not to shake. Not to betray.

Jyn mirrored his hold. She slid a leg between his thighs to fit closer—closer than she used to be. Something had shifted. The feather-light touch of her loose hair tickled his cheek. He breathed in the scent of her skin, palms flat on her back, her body molded into his arms like sacred salvation. He’d tricked himself.

This masquerade had always been for his sake, yes, and even now—when he had to pursue his leads—Cassian clung to her like a lifeline. The only person he hadn’t scared out of sharing something real with him. And he had done so much worse to others, but couldn’t forget how painful it felt, deep in his guts, to be the cause of her tears.

Why did it have to be her? What would happen when he would go dark, or (more likely) get killed? When she would discover the unforgivable truth—when he would fail to flip her?

Jyn’s chest slowly rose and fell to match his trained breathing, oblivious to the cheap tragedy playing in Cassian’s mind. He curled around her as much as he could, bringing every part of them together for as long as she would let him. Trying to confess his crimes without words… the last escape of a coward man, shadowed in duty and martyrdom.

He didn’t deserve to hold her but he’d been too weak and miserable to say it. The tentative warmth of her body reached him through thin layers of clothing, soothing.

You’ll be so cold if you stay, Jyn. You’re not meant to be here. I know where you belong.

He recognized the damaging vice: that same possessiveness returning, always. It made him sick to the core. Jyn wasn’t his, but he sure as fuck acted like she had no choice but to be.

After so long, maybe he’d finally been reprogrammed as one of them. Binary thinking. Theirs or mine. Imperial or rebel. Guilty or innocent. As if it meant anything at all… in this war… or any other. But the idea that he wanted something—someone—so deeply… out of sole selfishness. Terribly human, after all.

Was it inevitable? The result of too many sacrifices? The rebellion of a decaying organism?

You don’t get to have her just because you want to. She’s not the prize you get for labeling yourself as a pathological good guy. You want her to be your reward. But you don’t get to strip her from her agency. She’s not helpless. She’s not blameless. She has a voice. She has accountability. Ask her to choose. Make yourself bleed for it if you want it that much. If you care that much. Find out what you really deserve.

This was a betrayal, of himself and everyone else he fought to protect.

Her fingers spread in his hair, gentle and caring, sending a shiver of ease down his spine. Relief. Another mockery of his pathetic life: where everything else had failed (pain/promiscuity/intoxicants/psychotropics), he wondered how her touch alone could make it all so much more bearable whilst he felt like dying. He only knew that he hadn’t earned it.

Cassian dragged his hand up to her neck, searching for an answer by trial, gently brushing her skin with his thumb, feeling her pulse—so alive. They couldn’t talk but he didn’t need to. Didn’t want to. Looking at her was enough to share, better than lying.

The blazing heat of their kiss was nowhere to be found while he touched her like an astral mirage, which proved to be his last, fatal mistake. He’d bargained with himself: just one night off the logs. But he’d let himself hold her with too much honesty, even by his godforsaken standards. The blatant truth struck him like a blade, at last.

And no one had written guidelines for this.

Jyn Erso, for the first time, slept in his arms. Cassian did not. The hours went by, undisrupted during the rest of the night, while he blinked into crimson darkness. Never looking away from her. The agony was unbearable. If you’re the last face I ever see, it would be enough. At least, I know you cared.

The muffled sounds of the Basilisk—creaking and rattling of steel, distant ion engines, high-frequency electrical hums, constant airflow—made it impossible to forget that he was nothing but a dead man running on borrowed time. Yet, he wouldn’t give it back.

With Jyn curled up on his chest, and a faint sense of irony later, Cassian started to fantasize of another time and place. Aboard a rebel ship flying fastlines, or on Dantooine, maybe. Hell, he would get her anywhere—anywhere but here. How do I come back from this? How do I keep going? He’d already determined that Jyn wasn’t a candidate for recruitment. Taking a chance on her in spite of all his years of experience would only put a target on his back, at best. But he kept thinking about it, kept holding her like a fool, wondering if a god out there would take pity on that lost soldier dying to find a way back home.

By 0530, Jyn’s slow pattern of breathing started to show… irregularities. He let his focus shift on the weight of her body against him, let himself sink deeper—just for a second (liar)—and allowed himself to feel her.

The magnetic pull between the two of them; that same thrill of foreign emotions that might have corrupted his brain the more she kissed him. Cassian would’ve killed to let her grind on him but he couldn’t forget the delicate surroundings they were operating in. Before she could make any incriminating sound, he put a hand over her mouth and stroked her back to ease her from her sleep.

She woke up in a tremor. She recognized his presence fast enough that he didn’t earn a punch in the face. After seeing her training, no doubt it would’ve hurt.

They looked into each other’s eyes for a small eternity, heartbeat racing, so close that her breath felt warm on his skin. Jyn lowered her head, chin on his shoulder. She bore that criminal longing in her sleepy gaze… (the one he wanted to answer.) Cassian withdrew his hand just to brush the pad of his thumb over her soft lips, hypnotized by the way she kissed it. His broken mind even entertained the dangerous idea of fucking her right there, right now. Force knows he needed to.

She knew it, too, and did nothing to extinguish that fire. Her left leg draped over his hips and her lips slowly exploring his fingers, Cassian let out a frustrated sigh. The game wasn’t worth the trouble—should not have been. He followed the curve of her back, regardless, and slid one hand inside her jog pants, resting low on her ass. He only had himself to blame when Jyn decided that rolling her hips against his half-hard cock was an acceptable idea. Impossible to evade in such a small space.

Cassian had never lacked control, especially not on sexual impulses. He would have made a poor spy to override the mission parameters anytime someone tried to engage with him. But, right now, he hesitated between cursing her in five different languages and moving with her.

He’d obsessed over her so damn much during the past months. When he was alone, when he was not. But having her, here, now…

Jyn’s eyes appeared darker in the shadows while she cataloged his reactions. He caught her chin and tilted her head back, bringing her lips closer to reach. “Stop,” he carefully whispered.

“Make me.”

If he hadn’t been turn-on already, this would have done the trick just fine. Cassian blinked a few times to process it, a new spike of interest running under his burning skin.

From the first time that he’d undressed her, Jyn had never been hesitant. That buried, residual sense of self couldn’t get enough—wanted to know every limit, every nuance of her. Unweaponized. But it wasn’t, and it was madness. So why did he squeeze her ass and turn more of his body towards her?

“I hope I was in your dream,” he said over a murmur.

Jyn forcibly exhaled, their brows touching. “It’s always you.”

Cassian almost winced, unused to such incriminating words of endearment. His chest burned, heavy. It’s always you for me, too.

How strange to want someone, not just anyone. This one person elected among all the beings he’d ever encountered in this boundless galaxy. To have all his anonymous phantasms suddenly morphed into a pair of stardust eyes. He’d never felt that sort of irrational attachment before. Never felt the hard bruising in his ribcage at words like hers. Never wanted something for his own selfish gain more than her. It sprang so many questions in his mind.

But right now, Cassian simply wanted.

…to kiss her, to feel her naked, to make love to her, to come inside her.

…to hear her say his birth-given name.

Running in circles. Consent didn’t absolve. Wanting didn’t excuse. No matter the angle, shining a light on his actions only painted them darker. Cassian was drowning in a sea too deep to escape unharmed, crushed under pressure, forgotten from rescue.

The double-edged irony of his life wasn’t lost on him.

(Un)fortunately (depending on the scope lens), the waking sounds of his bunkmate put a sudden halt to their unruly conduct. They both froze, dead silent, tightly pressed against one another, and waited. It took nerve-wracking long minutes for the man to hop from his bunk, get dressed, and gather some necessities. From the sound of a rustling towel, Cassian imagined him heading to the showers. The door slid open. Following the man, his low-toned, customary morning whistling happily exited the space with him.

Cassian breathed out. Jyn kissed him.

‘It’s the last time, I can’t do this anymore.’

He kissed back just as eagerly. His brain flashed red.

She pulled at him and rolled on her back. Cassian moved on top of her. Her thighs grabbed a strong hold of him, forcing him down in the most agonizing way. Jyn moaned when he pressed his hard body between her legs, the few layers of clothing between them doing nothing to disguise the fact that he wanted to fuck her more than he wanted to breathe.

‘Aren’t you going to ask why?’

Her nails scraped the bare skin between his shoulder blades in a way, he knew, that would leave red marks for a few hours. She had the right to.

Cassian followed the intensity of her kiss without restraint, lost in her sweet taste. Their tongues met like the rest of their bodies, caressing and demanding. They found back the pattern of their kisses, heads tilted, perfect execution, muscle memory. It wasn’t supposed to be this simple, but with her… Jyn grabbed his hair and freed a low grunt from his throat. His hands roamed over her flesh, inside the clothes he wasn’t supposed to take off.

They had ten minutes, fifteen if hot water had held up the previous shift, before his bunkmate came back. It could’ve been enough… but it wasn’t enough. Not even close. How quickly would they assign another officer to the cabin if Cassian killed this one?

‘We’re right where we ought to be.’

Unsustainable path. Unreliable. Out of control. Breaking the kiss left him bitter and empty. The crude knowledge that it could be the last time he ever got to indulge made him miserable beyond words. He wanted her forever.

Ignoring the painful begging of his body, Cassian forced himself to say: “That’s your window. You need a shower before your shift.”

Jyn made a visible effort to catch her breath but didn’t move. She nipped at his bottom lip, hands on his shoulders. “Are you suggesting that I stink?”

A half-smile appeared on Cassian’s face, unexpected for such a bruised soul. He suppressed it by kissing her jawline, nose in her hair, coming up to her ear.

“You smell of me. And I need a cold shower.” Hoth-freezing cold. Does it make it better or worse jerking off thinking of you if you’re thinking of me, too?

It took a moment for Jyn to loosen up her legs around his hips, granting him virtual freedom. He hadn’t moved just yet when she asked: “Is this gonna take another five months before we talk to each other again?” The underlying sadness in her voice pierced through him like a blaster bolt.

I won’t last another five months, Jyn. Come with me, I’ll show you home.

Cassian kissed her lips again to shut his words. Never before had he been this fearful to go off script, spill his deeds at her feet, and beg for forgiveness.

Jyn wouldn’t go for grandiose ideas and heroism. She wasn’t fighting that kind of fight. She wouldn’t relate; she had too many issues of her own to be able to make that leap of faith. She read to him like a decrypted file, so easy to access. She needed to be pushed over to react. If he wanted to flip her… he’d have to come clean and punch where it hurt the most, to rip the mask off and show the unglorifying, nasty reality of this war… including his own terrible actions. A terrible bargain.

Whatever she thought she might have felt for him, it wouldn’t survive the blow. This little fantasy of his was hopeless. To get her out was to lose her.

“No,” he said like a man too comfortable in his lies.

Part of it was true and had nothing to do with his obsession of Jyn Erso.

Cassian took a deep breath, a last one to remember her perfume, and rolled off her. He opened the privacy curtain and pushed his legs over the edge to stand up, a hand on the upper bunk to avoid a head injury. (He should have tried to bang his brain upside down, just to see…) Walking to his locker on stiff legs, Cassian seeked control back. The effort seemed pointless, like holding sand in his hands. Most of it trickled through his fingers. Nothing to hold on to. His head pounded. He grabbed Jyn’s bag and boots and searched through his equipment before turning back.

She sat on his bunk, waiting, face flushed and hair down. Painfully beautiful. He walked her belongings to her, shielding his thoughts behind a spy face.

“Here, take this.”

Jyn extended a hand to grab the offered comlink. She raised a questioning eyebrow, surveying the non-standard, encryption-equipped model. “Unregistered?”

I will forever hate myself over this, Jyn. There’s no absolution for me. You have no idea what it truly takes to be at war. The things you do… why can’t you walk away on your own? Why did you let me do this to you?

“You don’t seem to mind breaking some rules,” Cassian said with a curved smile. “Keep it on you, I don’t want it into someone else’s hands.”

She nodded and packed the comlink with the rest of her belongings. Cassian waited for her to slide her boots on, unmoving. His skin had turned cold where she wasn’t pressed anymore. Bag hanging over her shoulder, Jyn eyed the door. She returned her attention to him. Cassian braced himself, reading microexpressions before she even formed the words.

“Are you still gonna be with Frye?”

“I’m not with her.”

The non-answer seemed to satisfy Jyn. It shouldn’t have. It was banthashit. She made it too easy but he couldn’t tell if it was for her sake or his own. Or, worse, for the sake of the lie. She might have been learning already.

Don’t do this to yourself, I’m begging you. I’m doing it for both of us.

Unless he hadn’t understood the question.

“Are you with me?” she said, unabashed.

Air left his lungs. Cassian’s skin shivered, a gravity-void in the pit of his stomach. Not for the lie, then. Once again, his attempts to restore some semblance of control drifted out of reach. He took a step forward. Jyn’s back leaned against the door. She raised her chin to look at him, his hands coming around her neck, gently holding her.

“Not here, not now,” he said—and let the truth unfold, his voice softer. “But I want to. If I ever get the opportunity… You have no idea how much I want to, Jyn.”

“I believe you.”

Cassian let out a weak breathing sound. He touched his face on the side of hers. His resilience was burning out faster than any ion thrusters, reaching a new critical low. “We’ll talk later,” he promised.

She turned her head, looking for a kiss. Eyes closed, lips sealed, hands in her hair.

“Below the hangar deck,” she whispered, “where we first met.”

“Yes,” he agreed.

Then the door slid open and she was gone.

Cassian stood in the middle of the cabin, petrified, damaged. Left alone with his ghosts and his guilt. Only when a salty taste touched his lips did he have the presence of mind to wipe his face and move on with his schedule.

#

Cassian scanned the flight logs, cross-referencing. In the middle of the deck, Vortex Squadron scattered away without the usual level of banter following Tensent’s pilots. Cassian’s eyes followed the leader’s black uniform until he walked out of view, leaving his TIE fighter to the deckhands. A fresh laser scar ran across the polished silver metal, right above the main transparisteel viewport. Close call. Tensent hadn’t reported any dogfight—and most likely would not.

Interesting ploy.

“Commander Sward,” called a voice behind him.

Cassian straightened his posture, turning away from the deck, datapad under his arm. “What can I do for you, Chief?”

Del Meeko, chief engineer, stopped in front of him, wiping his large hands with an oil-smelling rag. “I wanted to let you know that I’ve put the IT-O back at work, the one you had a problem with.”

Shit. Switching gears, his brain swiftly recalculated the most pressing issues. “Ah, good,” Cassian said, waiting for the situation to unfold without his input.

“I’ve done a complete reboot and diagnosed every sensor,” Meeko explained with a frown, “twice. But I couldn’t find the problem. I didn’t want to send it back without an answer, but it wasn’t up to me.”

“I understand.”

“I’ve never had a torture droid bypassing master-security and harming the operator… I’m not sure what to tell you. I suggest caution if you work with it again.”

Cassian observed the man’s face attentively. He had an over-honest friendly demeanor most of the time, which made it all the more easy to read the subtext now glaring in his eyes: I know it’s impossible for the events to have been as reported. I can’t prove it and don’t know what’s going on but you’re not fooling me. This is your warning.

Cassian was positive he wouldn’t get another one. He wasn’t even sure of the reason keeping Meeko from opening an investigation and passing on his concerns to higher authorities. Considering the incident involved the unforeseen death of a prisoner—before anything useful could have been extracted from him—this would have been standard procedure.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Cassian said, “thanks for the heads-up.”

“No problem.” Meeko politely nodded. “Going back to work.”

Cassian’s time on the Basilisk was coming to an even more abrupt end than anticipated. And while he resumed his mental mapping of Vortex Squadron, classified flight charts, and Razana Frye’s private conversations—a part of him dangerously remained fixated on Jyn Erso.

There were only so many ways to go from here. None of them included reciprocal love.

Chapter Text

D-2

“Get a transfer, then. I’m sure your father can arrange that.”

Jyn had a moment of weakness, breath itching in her throat. She hadn’t been prepared to hear those words. She’d never talked much about her father with Jeron but she figured—given the nature of his job—that he had made the connection early on. Not that it was a secret, anyway.

She still felt a jab of pain, thinking that he might have shared the views of some others when it came to the question of her personal merit. She wanted him to see her for herself. Jyn. Just Jyn.

“I don’t want a transfer,” she said dryly.

Behind her, the loud airflow pulsing through the ventilation system covered some of the crashing in her voice. Confined inside the small fan room, behind a closed hatch door, the lack of light would hopefully mask any other display of emotions.

She didn’t want to play the victim. She knew how she sounded… begging him to be there as soon as she’d escaped her shift. But he hadn’t been the one in the CIC today. He didn’t sit there while a mining shipment was engaged, departing from a neighboring system. He didn’t listen to the agonizing distress calls of unarmed transports being annihilated by rebel forces faster than their squadrons could intercept. He did not intrude on the last message one of the pilots sent to his family, knowing that the comms would be registered by the Basilisk—and the sudden void left behind when he failed to name his second child, out of time.

Yes, she was emotional. Yes, she was desperate. And Jeron didn’t get the right to tell her how to feel. It was unfair. She wouldn’t stand for it.

Jyn pressed her lips into a hard line, bracing herself for his next words. He might have been good at keeping everything away from her reach, but she’d learned some of his tells. The small things that he quite couldn’t control, it was all in his eyes. A flicker of anger in the ocean of his dark brown eyes.

“So what do you want?” he asked, urgency laced in his voice. He wasn’t cold, but she felt the intentional distance between them. “What do you want? Close your eyes and pretend it’s not happening? You said you wanted to do something useful. You can’t pick and choose what you care about because things get uncomfortable for you. This war isn’t going anywhere, wake the fuck up!”

Jeron slapped the flat of his hand against the wall, leaning on it as if he was too afflicted to stand on his own. Jyn gaped at him. She’d never seen him like this. Frustration was bleeding from him by every pore. The fire raging in his eyes was angry, accusatory. Over what?

She didn’t understand. She wanted to be angry, too. She had it in her, but it was more of a reaction than an impulse. A defensive mechanism, cheap and transparent.

“Don’t talk to me like I’m a kriffin’ child,” she managed. “You have no idea.”

If looks could kill, she would have been. Despite what she’d just said, she felt like a child (maybe acting like one) under his furious stare.

“I’m pretty sure I know how you feel.”

Her face burned with a new wave of heat. She pushed back. “No, you don’t!”

Jeron looked away for a moment. Jyn panicked.

In the back of her mind, that familiar, dreadful fear of rejection came back to mingle with her thoughts and blur the lines. Maybe she went too far. Maybe she pushed too hard. She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to shut him down. She didn’t want to be left alone. She had no one else.

But she couldn’t silence herself, either.

“I’ve been doing this job for a long time, Jyn.” If his voice didn’t change, he took a step closer, standing right in front of her. She resisted the urge to reach for him, too anxious to hear what he had to say. “I know that you’re scared… confused. I know that you’re questioning your choices, your actions. Everyone’s actions.”

Jyn’s heart stopped. A shiver of terror ran down her spine. She couldn’t possibly misinterpret the words.

The very reason she had vowed to stay away from him in the first place came back to slap her in the face. She fought to react, a burning lump in her throat, shaking on her feet. She always knew this had been a mistake. Now, she had to pay for it.

“If that’s what you believe… why am I not in the brig right now? Is it just because you fucked me?”

Her voice, barely audible, trembled on the last part.

“You don’t need to deflect,” Jeron said, all too neutral. “I’m not accusing you of anything.”

“Oh, aren’t you?” The sudden anger on her tongue tasted like acid.

She instantly regretted it (it’s not what I meant to say, please don’t leave me) but she couldn’t bypass the anxiety tumbling in her brain. Every word coming out of her mouth could be a death sentence if she wasn’t careful. Just because it was him didn’t change the nature of the exchange… She had enough paranoia to even consider a set-up.

“It’s hard when the world stops being black and white, isn’t it?”

He said the words with such unforeseen compassion that Jyn wondered if she had missed part of the conversation. Her eyes opened wider, her sweaty hands clutched against her chest like a barrier. She looked at him for what felt like an eternity, fighting so many wars in her mind. Her ears rang from the pressurized noises surrounding them, deafening, just like her scattered thoughts. Trying to find solid ground among quicksands.

At last, desperate, Jyn said: “The Empire is my home.” A performative lie, but she had to say it. If she repeated it enough, eventually, she would convince herself. Isn’t that what he wanted… ?

A fleeting expression crossed Jeron’s face, his jaws too tight, a vein pulsing hard down his neck. Then, it was gone and Jyn blindly tripped over its memory, wondering if the shadows had deceived her. Was it disgust? She didn’t know what to expect, but certainly not his hand on her arm, gentle, and his face closer to her. This wasn’t a fight anymore. Had she lost already?

“If you truly believed that,” he said like he had all the time in the galaxy, “you wouldn’t need me to hold you the way I do.”

She frowned, unable to distance herself from him. Unwilling to. “Why are you saying this to me?”

“You don’t need to pretend when we’re alone. You don’t need to be someone that you’re not.”

Nested under that deep layer of fear, a foolish hope started to blossom inside her too-tight chest. She knew she should have smoldered it, right there and then, but she failed to. She wanted to cling to it, to bask in it. Could it be that he understood? Could it be that he felt the same way? Too dangerous to ask, still, but Jyn couldn’t help but put a hand over his chest, holding the hemline of the gray uniform.

Stay with me.

“Is this the real you?” she whispered, unsure he could hear her voice.

He read her lips instead. The lines around his eyes softened. She’d noticed that shift, often, when he looked at her. She’d tried not to think about it, not to think about them. But the days went on and the dynamics were lost on her. It wasn’t about sex anymore, that much was clear. Hadn’t been since… maybe, never. She wanted something else, even if she hadn’t allowed herself to say it.

She’d let herself fall in love with the austere, distant, and unapologetic man that she’d discovered to be so much more complex than the blasterproof facade he displayed to the world—and it posed new challenges, all equally terrifying.

“A part of him,” Jeron said.

“Which part?”

“The part that wants to be with you. The better part.”

Jyn closed her eyes, wishing it could be enough. Please, stay. “Sometimes, I feel like I’ve known you all along… and sometimes, I realize I don’t know you at all.”

His hand brushed her cheek, curling behind her neck, messing her hair up.

“You’re thinking in absolutes,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be. Nothing truly is.”

Love has to be absolute, Jyn thought, because, otherwise, she didn’t want it. She didn’t want something that would betray her like everyone else. She wanted that all or nothing. She wanted what her parents had, what she thought they had. And, hidden from view, she already knew that Jeron couldn’t give her that. But who could, in times like these, when families were being broken apart each day? When lovers didn’t come home and children were left without parents? Jyn was too involved, now, to be left with nothing.

“I want to know you,” she said, “not just a part.”

“Trust goes both ways,” Jeron said.

She nodded, face against his chest. Nothing felt warmer than his arms around her. It was an addictive feeling, more powerful than logic or fear. A sense of security that Jyn hadn’t experienced since childhood. She hated herself for being this weak.

She pushed on her toes and circled her arms around his neck, holding him close. She breathed against his neck and let her lips touch his skin. The way he twitched just from that kiss gave Jyn a reason to leave another one just a bit lower.

Jeron’s hands traveled to her waist and held her there to help her balance. Soon, she had her fingers at the base of his neck, caressing and playing with the shorter hair. Her mouth came to his own. He tasted like his last caf, hot and bitter. Standing taller than her, he had to bend down to keep their lips touching, never putting distance between the rest of their bodies. He kissed like a man drunk on something stronger than liquor.

Jyn remembered her first kiss. She was seventeen, he was a bit older. He was in training to become a starfighter pilot. He always said nice things to her. She liked him. Dark hair, dark eyes, always a bright smile to greet her. She liked it when he waited for her in front of the Royal Academy. They’d been friends for a while, she could feel his interest sometimes… in the way he looked at her. She wasn’t sure if she wanted more. She waited, and waited, until he had to be shipped off-world to complete his training. Before he left, she kissed him at the depart bay, moments short of the dusk settling down over Coruscant.

A first kiss to say goodbye. Like so many things in Jyn’s life, her first taste of love had been one of loss.

She’d never seen him again. He’d been killed in action, two years later, taking with him his dreams of infinite skies and distant stars.

She never spoke of him to anyone. She never went to his funerals. She had said goodbye already… take with you all the things we almost were, and the ones we never had a chance to be. Three years later and Jyn had forgotten the sound of his voice. She’d forgotten every little thing she liked about him. But she never forgot the tears she cried the night she found out, and the promise she’d made to herself: the next time she’d kiss someone, it wouldn’t be for goodbyes.

Jeron knew how to do that. He always made it taste like love, even if he didn’t have to, and Jyn momentarily forgot about the struggles of her mind, surrendering everything just to live in his arms for a while. Relief from pain. Mutual comfort. Desire.

“I had a dream like that,” she said.

“Interesting.” Jeron kissed a spot right below her ear, mirroring her actions. “Tell me more.”

“What about we don’t talk anymore?” Jyn asked, her head falling a little more backward with each kiss he left down the column of her throat.

She hadn’t made up her mind about the extent of her suggestion just yet. She craved his affection and his touch. He had a special way of getting under her skin and it had been such a long time since they had any chance to be intimate. So, here, maybe not her first choice of location… but not entirely excluded. (At least, they were alone: a rare luxury.) Jyn decided to let him call the shots.

“I don’t know,” he said with a hoarse voice. “You make me feel horny.”

Jyn arched her back to perfectly mold her body against him. One of his legs slid between hers. Not a single atom of vacant space was left between them, colliding stars, the birth of a new equilibrium. She gripped his strong shoulders, his hands behind her to support her weight. Her heartbeat madly quickened, in tune with her breathing. Each time they touched… entropy at play… Jyn entered a new orbit.

“Yeah,” she said, “that’s what I meant… less talk, more hands.”

A short contained laugh rippled into her body from where his solid chest was pressed against her. Something she had heard so rarely that she almost gasped. It was gone just as fast… like he had been reminded of some unspoken rules preventing him from enjoying himself.

Jyn wanted to hear him laugh all day, every day. His voice felt like sunrise, just as much as the accent in his words when he said in her ear: “I know exactly what you meant, baby.”

An anomaly of space and time. Had it been anyone else with the nerves to call her ‘baby’, she would have punched them in the face. But on his tongue, it felt… different. Strangely compelling at that moment. Maybe because he was the first person in her adult life to call her something other than Jyn or Lieutenant Erso. A lot of firsts for just one man… She didn’t mind that teasing, then.

“Show me,” she challenged.

Jyn knew what she had asked for, but she still felt some surprise when her belt unclasped from her waistline. Jeron let it fall to the ground and started to unbutton her uniform jacket within the same breath. Jyn reached his lips again. He led her back with slow steps, his body like a guide, until she could lean against the wall.

Now, I really had a dream like this.

The intense memory made her blush, thankful to the monochrome dark for keeping her sheepish secrets. Jyn moved against him, his hands reaching inside her clothes, the warm touch of his rough fingers against her sides and ribs. She exhaled harder, shaken by the coiling desire at the base of her spine. His hands brushed up, cupping her breasts through the thin layer of her bra. Jyn closed her eyes again, unsteady on her feet. She moaned a low sound of eagerness when his thumb teased a nipple. His lips went back to her neck, biting the sensitive skin where people wouldn’t see, leaving his mark on her.

She disintegrated on the spot, crashing pieces of meteors entering the stratosphere. Nothing subsisted from her distressed brain, only the awareness of his proximity and his contact. The re-entering of a familiar system, smelling like musk and shaving cream. He breathed harder, too, chest heaving, suppressing his voice to hear her own.

Cold air ghosted against her naked skin, where her uniform had been pushed aside. Her jacket opened, falling from her shoulders, her undershirt pushed above her stomach. Her pants low on her hips, his hand inside it, gently moving and prying quiet pleas from her lips.

One of her hands stayed in his hair, where his face was pressed to her throat. Jyn breathed another moan of pleasure, louder, feeling hot and soft under his touch. He slipped inside her underwear, the heel of his hand flat against short, trimmed hair, putting a gentle pressure over a pulsing point. His fingers glided eagerly between her legs, an expanding feeling of lust inside her body. Her hips jerked against him, compelled to chase after that sweet ecstasy. He bit her earlobe with a groan and Jyn almost moaned his name, short of breath.

She thought about how much she wanted to be naked in bed with him again.

“I can’t leave you here,” he said into her hair. And it didn’t make sense but it was the only thing she wanted to hear for the rest of her life. “If I go… Jyn, you know this isn’t home.”

He kissed her swollen lips, hard, almost trembling.

Erratic and heavy breaths mingled. She felt the deep frown between his brows, where he pressed against her skin. Jyn chased after him, her teeth grazing his bottom lip. She still had a hand wound in his hair, the other came to his neck. His heartbeat felt like thunder. They were stalling for time, running away from something—and she didn’t know what. (War. Disaster. Everything.)

“Don’t go,” Jyn said, and it was almost an order, so certain that he could not leave her. “You have to stay with me.”

It felt so good to be this much alive.

“I’ll try for you.”

#

Jyn met with Razana Frye and her pilots in one of the Air Wing briefing rooms. She’d been appointed by Mullinore, over a month ago, to review the squadron’s mission and assist in the preparation. Departing from the ISD Basilisk, Frye and her squadron would intercept their target just outside of the Kessa system and escort the highly sensitive cargo shipment to an Imperial research center. The importance of the delivery had been made extremely clear to everyone involved.

Located in the midst of the Maw Cluster, the classified installation was surrounded by a virtually unnavigable cluster of black holes (which made it such an efficient hiding spot). The few safe routes to reach the research facility required impeccable skills and great precision. Any navigational mistake would result in a catastrophic failure, sending ships into gravity wells from where there was no escape.

Jyn had personally drafted most of the flight chart. Frye would be in charge of leading the convoy while assuring its security. The past months had seen an unprecedented spike in rebel activity along the major axis of transport. It wasn’t rare anymore to hear that the Imperial Navy had been cutting losses, as unthinkable as it might have sounded not so long ago. The enemy seemed to get more organized by the minute, and Rebel Intelligence was on the lookout for the Maw Installation, or so Command thought.

Jyn didn’t want to lose anyone under her care. Frye was one of the best pilots of the Starfighter Corps. She was more than capable of pulling a mission like this one.

The meeting ended twenty minutes later. With pilots exiting the room and Jyn dropping her professional face, she was left alone with the Air Wing Commander.

“Nice work,” the blonde woman said.

Standing on the other side of a holodisplay, Jyn slightly raised her head. “Thanks.” Cautious was the only word to describe Jyn’s attitude in that instant. She’d never earned small talk from Frye before. She was unsure if she wanted to indulge.

But Frye was a straight shooter. She leaned against the tactical console and crossed her arms. “I was surprised they trusted someone so young with a classified mission.”

Tension flared up across Jyn’s face. She straightened her back, not anywhere near as tall as the other woman, and watched her tone. “I’m the best astrogation tech on that ship,” she said.

Frye gave her an amused grin. “That’s not what I’m saying.”

“What are you saying?” Jyn asked, unmoving.

Frye stopped smiling. “What kind of pillow talk are you having with Sward?”

Jyn felt as if the artificial gravity had suddenly increased by 10g. Her throat constricted, suffocating, and a guilty silence plagued the room. She had so many thoughts at once, she didn’t know how to process any of them. Panic began to sink in while she relocated most of her energy just to maintain a neutral facade.

“I know he’s been seeing you for the past month,” Frye continued, unfazed, “because he stopped coming to me.”

Jyn stared in silence. What was she supposed to say to that? Deny?

“Take a breath. I don’t give a shit about what you do off the clock. But you have to admit, it looks hella convenient.”

Instantly, Jyn’s brain started to unclog. And it looked bad.

“What do you mean?” she asked, a defensive frown creasing her brows.

Frye uncrossed her arms, hands on the belt of her black uniform. Her sharp gaze reflected the blue light of the nearby holomaps like a signal to open fire. “Fucking the Ace… then fucking the navigation officer, as soon as you show up with classified flight charts. I just find it interesting. Of course, I have nothing to support the idea, but you’re a smart girl. The best on that ship. You know where I’m getting at.”

Jyn went rigid. Even the simple act of breathing seemed excruciating. Her first instinct was to defend him. ‘How dare you? What the fuck is wrong with you? We’ve been fucking way before that. He was mine before yours. This has nothing to do with a mission. You don’t know him. I’ll beat your face to the deck if you say that shit to someone else.’

But something else came with it.

“I’ve never discussed anything classified with him,” Jyn said, so tense she could almost hear her teeth cracking. “He never asked. Never.”

“Hmm. I guess time will tell. I hope I’m wrong, he’s a good laid.” Frye made a move to vacant the briefing room. “But if I die on that one, someone will have to make something of it.”

And the idea stayed.

‘Are you okay?’

‘One day, you’ll stop wishing and you’ll start doing something about it.’

‘ I don’t want to leave any trace, to anyone, pointing to you.’

‘ I know that you’re questioning your choices, your actions. Everyone’s actions.’

‘If I go… Jyn, you know this isn’t home.’

The idea… stayed.

Chapter Text

H-6

Fuck Frye.

Cassian had made a mistake. She was too smart for those games. She’d picked up the pattern. She’d ruined his influence on Jyn—

Correction: he’d ruined it himself by waiting too long. But what else was he supposed to do? He needed those coordinates. He couldn’t fuck up the entire mission for her sake. A single person couldn’t be this important, not even her. Not even if it killed him.

He’d got the job done, sent the intel to the Alliance. And did her so wrong in the process. Collateral damages. Non-innocent victim. The price of war.

‘I've never discussed anything classified with him. He never asked. Never.’

She sounded so abrasive while defending him. Ready to fight for him.

It was excruciating to listen to, when he knew how despicable he truly was. But Jyn wasn’t stupid either and her loyalty was only meant to face the world. She wouldn’t be so easily convinced in the privacy of her feelings. She would think about it, she would ask for proof. She would confront him for the truth.

Cassian was willing to risk it.

“This is your rendez-vous point,” he told Nath Tensent without an ounce of emotion. “You have six hours to prep your pilots. If you’re not there on schedule, you’ll be on your own. This is a one-time deal for extraction.”

The man hadn’t fully recovered from the shock of the confrontation. Still, he went down the practical route: “How do I know this isn’t a set-up from Counter-Intel? What guarantee do I have for my guys?”

“You’ll take my word for it because I just exposed myself as a double-agent. If we wanted you dead, we would let the Empire have you.” Cassian glared at the man, his back pressed to a cold wall. “The bureau has picked up on your little piracy runs and all the credits you’re siphoning, using the war to make profits. They’ll have you spaced out soon enough. If you like breathing, you’ll defect to the Alliance.”

Tensent ran a hand over his tired face, deep lines marking the corners of his eyes. Cassian waited in silence, arms crossed over his chest. He was confident that Tensent would follow his inherent pragmatism. His decaying loyalty wouldn’t get in the way of survival. He wasn’t the kind of man to die for honor. Still, upon flipping someone, a part of the process remained hazardous. A residual mystery. Unpredictability. Cassian’s job was to minimize its interference, but it never truly went away.

The last ten percent left to chance.

“What have you been doing all those months?” Tensent finally asked, the words burning on his tongue.

“None of your business.” Cassian uncrossed his arms. Shorter than his interlocutor, he still maintained assertion over the exchange by dictating the pace. “I’ll meet you on the deck in six hours. Don’t be late.”

“Are you leaving, too?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t believe you’re that Fulcrum guy,” Tensent said, half-intrigued. “What a fucking snake. I could get you spaced out.”

“You could,” Cassian conceded.

The blankness of his voice put an uneasy end to the exchange. They parted ways like strangers crossing a street, never looking back. Cassian retreated to his cabin, his fingers nervously clutched around the comlink in his pocket. He could almost feel it burning from the weight of his sins.

It’s almost over. It’s the way out. It’s what needed to be done.

Finding himself alone behind closed door, Cassian sat down on his bunk and crossed his hands in front of him. His forehead tilted forward until it rested on the cold end of that comlink. He’d spent so much time spying on Jyn’s conversations through the device, using it to achieve his own personal gain felt like an insult.

Cassian couldn’t open his eyes, fearing he wouldn’t be able to contain the trembling if he did. He needed control. He needed his voice to play the part, just one more time.

“I need you to meet me before your shift,” he recorded in his most scripted voice. “You know where. I need to talk to you. It’s important. Meet me there, Jyn.”

There was nothing else he was allowed to say.

Nothing else he had the courage to say.

Cassian sent the message and prayed that she would take the chance.

#

H-Hour

Cassian waited until he ran out of time.

Jyn did not come. He already knew she wouldn’t. He’d lost that game. He’d lost her. She wasn’t ready. She didn’t want to see the last remnants of her world crumbling around her. She didn’t want to see him for who he truly was. He couldn’t blame her. He’d lied to her all along. He’d used her in unforgivable ways. And there was no doubt in his mind that Jyn had pieced it together after her talk with Frye. If she’d faced him now… nothing good would have come out of it.

Maybe, in a twisted way, was she saving them both the unimaginable hurt of looking at the mess he’d created. He had to accept her last demonstration of love (because only love could have prevented her from getting him arrested and executed) for what it was, not enough to convince her to do the right thing and live with that memory for the rest of his miserable life. Nothing to be done about it anymore.

He had to leave Jyn Erso behind, however imperfect and complicit she was, the only woman he’d ever wanted to call his own, and no matter what came after, Cassian didn’t have the right to cry about it. Too much was at stake. A done deal.

Each step cost him more than the precedent, to the point where his throat started to burn, but Cassian marched on. It was a different kind of pain than anything he’d known, suffocating, paralyzing. No physical wound to keep his anguish directed somewhere. He couldn’t put a bandage on it and wait for the bleeding to stop. His mind felt heavy and numbed. The monochrome corridors of the Basilisk swallowed his footsteps like a fever dream. He reached the hangar on Deck-C before he fully realized it.

The temptation to look over his shoulder felt unbearable. One last look to confirm that Jyn had shut that door forever… (oh, how badly he wanted to see her standing there.)

Petrified by his own thoughts, Cassian envisioned the haunting future running ahead of him: the sleepless nights he would spend combing through intel for a glimpse of her name, the desolation of waiting to hear of her death, alone in the black obsidian space. Away from anyone that had ever cared about her. Away from him.

If you cared that much, you would have put your life on the line. You’re just a fucking coward too afraid to make your own choices. Easier to follow orders, always.

But his broken mind worked hard to seal the cracks, vainly whispering: It’s not ‘my’ fault… It’s others. It’s the war. It’s the whole fucking galaxy. Always.

I’m fucked up. It’s just who I am. They made me that way, so I do it to others. Balance. Revenge. Someone has to. Any means necessary… The greater good.

I’m sorry, Jyn.

I’m so sorry it was you that night. I’m so sorry it was me.

Cassian located Tensent, starkly waiting for him on the launching pad.

‘Don’t go. You have to stay with me.’

The memory of her voice lived in his mind like a death sentence.

Cassian wanted to crumble on the ground, holding his chest until he stopped breathing. He wanted to let his limbs shake and tremble, let his voice loose and scream in the face of the universe—with so much suffering that he didn’t know if he would ever be able to stop.

‘I’ll try for you.’

Just another lie. The faces around him didn’t register anymore, blurred into a homogenous background of secondary characters. Why did he stand there? Why did he do all the things that he’d done? What would be left of him when he would finally take off the gray uniform? How much farther could a man go? What if Cassian Andor could never return from the ISD Basilisk?

What if he’d already lost everything?

The mission was over. He’d done the impossible. He’d been the great spy everyone thought him to be—the best one, one from the lost causes. He’d granted so much more than his life worth to the Rebellion. Draven wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Cassian had put a blaster in his mouth upon returning. Others had done it before him. The dirty truth buried under the silver lining of victories. The price to pay. The sacrifices of, once, good men and women.

Cassian only hoped that the last thing he’d see before pressing the trigger would be a pair of stardust eyes looking at him with longing.

I’m so far from home. Farewell, love.

Before he could cross the hangar to join the departing team, Cassian’s brain picked up a misplaced detail. Something jumped from the depths of his subconscious like a lost transmission. He stopped and wondered. Upon closer examination, Cassian determined its provenance: stocked in his photographic memory, the black outline of a Partisan tattoo caught his full attention. He didn’t expect to encounter one aboard an Imperial destroyer, and certainly not on someone wearing a deckhand attire.

Training took over. Cassian picked up a tail on the woman as she walked towards a weapon storage unit. She readjusted her collar nervously, making sure to hide the spheric symbol on her olive skin, just a few seconds too late.

Cassian tried to project her next set of actions, wondering about strategic objectives. If he hadn’t been briefed by the Alliance, it was likely that the operation wasn’t a shared effort. Just like the Balosar sent a few weeks ago that almost blew up Cassian’s cover. Those fucking Partisans really seemed dead-set on clearing the Maw Cluster… but he couldn’t risk for the Basilisk to recall its squadrons.

Cassian increased his cadence to catch up with the individual. Either he’d been too obvious about it or the universe was trying to fuck him over.

She spared a rapid glance over her shoulder and their eyes locked for a millisecond. Fuck. Hers were dark and dilated by adrenaline and fear. The realization hit him beyond any doubt: this would end badly.

Cassian saw her drawing her hand behind her back. “Hey!” he shouted.

His mark sprung around, a blaster aiming at him. Cassian had nothing but a concealed blade on him. He jumped to the side, landing flat behind the solar array of a docked TIE fighter.

All hells broke loose on the launching deck.

From the personnel working around, few were equipped with weapons. It took chaotic moments for Stormtroopers to be dispatched and identify the frantic shooter. Meanwhile, lifeless bodies hit the floor in the middle of confused screaming. The remnant smell of oil was replaced by a coppery one, heat in the air.

Caught between the dangerous crossfire, Cassian stayed put on the ground, praying that Tensent hadn’t been shot dead. He needed to catch that ride before the CIC had a chance to lock down the whole ship. So much for timing—

A sudden change of gravity interrupted his thoughts. Cassian’s body jerked up and forward. The brutal deceleration sent him against the ship’s starboard wing. He fell back down the very next second, slammed to the ground, a grunt kicked from his throat and pain in his left shoulder. The roaring sound of an explosion had momentarily stopped all action on Deck-C. Lights flickered above them like a warning.

A closer explosion rumbled through the ship, sounds of crushing metal and blazing fires. For a moment, Cassian thought that the hold would break in half. The layers of thick steel contorted but didn’t break. The familiar, low-pitched alarm of the Basilisk started to ring in the swirling air like an after-thought.

Pushing on his hands, Cassian stood up to witness that the Stormtroopers had managed to kill the intruder. But not fast enough. His heart stopped beating when he realized the true horror of the situation. His first and immediate thought felt like a knife in the guts.

Jyn.

Ignoring everyone and everything, Cassian started running towards the closest hatchway available. He latched onto the railing of an upper walkway and pushed static bodies out of his way without care, hoping to reach the CIC. Hoping there was still a CIC to reach.

The blasts of the consecutive explosions had been violent enough to bend structures on the middle portion of the ship. Cassian came face to face with uncooperative doors and useless levers, forcing him to loop around for agonizing minutes. His mind collapsed into a sharp tunnel.

People ran past him in every direction. Some officers shouted orders around, looking for working hands. Cassian passively absorbed the important intel: spreading fire in three compartments, open damage to the bow and port side, depressurization in the command center. He couldn’t begin to imagine the damage done to the upper decks.

Fuck— Fuck!

A terror like he had never felt before propelled Cassian through the next set of stairs.

The raging heat of a fire licked his skin while he crossed the corridor adjacent to mechanical. Blue flames erupted through a broken paneling. Metal sheets and rivets piled on the ground among a cloud of abrasive black smoke, making it difficult to see and harder to breathe.

Cassian covered his nose in the crook of his arm and pushed through without pausing. His heart pulsed at an alarming rate. He reached the far end of the passageway, only to erupt among pure chaos. Sweat pearled on his forehead and down his spine while he stumbled around the horrifying aftermath, trying to situate himself on the upper deck. Lifeless bodies lay on the floor, blasted by the explosion, torn apart. The smell of blood ricked all around.

The repulsive vision of human remains barely registered into Cassian’s mind. He had seen blood and gore before, leaving him desensitized to a point of concern. He didn’t care, dear moons— he didn’t care anymore.

Cassian found the CIC entrance, or what was left of it. On the other side, a gaping hole through the many layers of durasteel opened on the crimson glow and black infinite of outer space, leaking oxygen and debris at an alarming rate. Lost to the Maw. Cassian crunched under a deformed railing to wiggle his way inside the room, ignoring the wounded and the chilling pleas for help.

“Jyn!” His scream came out broken and raw. “Jyn!”

The uniforms made it hard to distinguish between victims. Some had been burned, some covered in blood. Cassian felt sick to his stomach, thinking that Jyn could have been shredded to pieces by the initial explosion. If he never saw her again—

He couldn’t lose her. Not like that. He couldn’t. Not her. Not fucking her!

“Jyn!”

He stood in the middle of what he imagined had been the pit of astrogation. An energy line exploded above his head, sending white sparks in every direction. Cassian startled and ducked his head. The decreasing level of oxygen started to numb his brain. Panic closed his throat and his lungs. Looking around in desperation, Cassian felt ten years being drained out of him at once.

A shock wave washed over him when he finally noticed the small body of an officer, pinned down by a broken conduit. Cassian almost lost his balance trying to reach her. When he kneeled next to her, out of breath and barely functioning, all he could do was to exhale her name.

Jyn had her eyes opened and fixed the ceiling without a sound, one side of her face soaked from blood.

Alive. She’s still alive.

Cassian clung to that thought like a newly-found religion. He could work with that. He was a soldier; he’d been trained to manage crisis situations like this one. He knew what to do. But never before had it been so hard to keep that visceral panic away from him in order to react.

“Jyn,” he said, glad that his voice didn’t shake. “It’s okay. You’re gonna be okay.”

As he spoke, Cassian loosened the leather belt from his waist and secured the makeshift tourniquet around her bleeding thigh. A piece of durasteel had cut through her skin, sticking out sharp and lethal. Possibly damaging the femoral artery.

Cassian tightened the belt with a strong pull, causing her to cry out from pain. (Good, at least she didn’t have a pneumothorax.) Her whole body trembled in a state of shock as she laid there in a growing pool of blood. Cassian reached for her own belt next, and used it as a second tourniquet, higher toward her groin, trying to stop the catastrophic bleeding. He wasn’t gentle and he wasn’t attentive. She didn’t have that luxury if she intended to live.

“Jyn, stay awake! Stay with me!”

She was still gapping at the ceiling, shaking from pain and confusion—or what might’ve been a head injury. Cassian promptly strode over her and tried to entangle her from the crushed infrastructure. Waiting here for additional help wasn’t an option. This whole section of the ship would soon be void of oxygen and sealed off to contain the damage. Anyone left behind would be considered expendable. Him included.

Cassian grabbed her leg with both hands, brain entirely switched on survival mode, and forcibly un-impaled her from the CIC wreckage. If he thought he’d heard her scream before, the amount of pain piercing in her voice was simply horrific. All of his hair stood up on his skin. But he didn’t stop until he had her free to be transported.

Cassian grabbed her arm. Something fell from her hand. When he recognized the unregistered comlink he’d given her, nausea turned his stomach. Forcing his feelings down, Cassian secured her arm behind his neck. “Hold on to me.”

She didn’t. He slid one arm under her knees and the other under her armpits. When he pulled her up from the ground, she screamed again, voice hoarse and weak.

“I know,” he muttered between hard breaths. “It’s gonna be okay. Hold on.”

Cassian turned around and rushed back as fast as he could, Jyn in his arms. A ticking clock hammered against his skull, just as urgent as his beating pulse. He only had a few minutes to get Jyn down to medical before she died from a massive blood loss.

Cassian barked orders for people to move out of his way. Managing staircases and tight corridors while carrying Jyn proved to be a nightmare. Not as much as feeling his hands warm and slippery from her blood. No doubt that they were leaving a trail behind them as he walked among the raging chaos that the wounded ISD Basilisk had become.

When he finally emerged into the medbay, three levels lower, Cassian felt none of the relief he had hoped for.

“Medic!” he screamed around. “I need a medic!”

He wasn’t the only one.

The flow of incoming injured seemed relentless and, even among soldiers, the sudden and unexpected attack had left an atmosphere of helplessness in its wake. Medical personnel ran around shouting orders left and right, trying to organize a triage in the middle of the filling hallway. A few droids had joined the effort, providing additional light to help the insufficient emergency red halo glowing around them. It felt like a scene captured in a field hospital, sometimes during the Clone Wars.

A soldier likely recognized Cassian’s officer uniform (for once in his life, how fucking glad he was to wear one!) and directed him towards one of the available units. Heavily breathing from the effort, he set Jyn down on a sterile white spread. Immediately, the immaculate fabric soaked up from her blood. She cried out helplessly when he let her go—if he had to guess, this time more from terror than anything else—as she started to realize what had just happened.

Before he could move aside, Jyn gripped his jacket with a trembling hand. She looked so fucking young under the flickering lights. Her eyes, wide from fear, stopped on him with a spark of recognition. Cassian held her wrist, feeling her pulse weak and irregular.

“I’m here, you’re not alone.”

A levitating droid pivoted in the air to face the patient. Cassian had to bury a shiver of revulsion, seeing the IT-O hovering above Jyn like a predator.

“Female human,” Cassian said, “twenty standard, caught in an explosive blast. She’s got an open wound on the femoral and major blood loss.”

The droid sternly biped in response and spoke with a grainy voice. “Acknowledged. Please allow me to work while I stop the bleeding. I apologize for any pain or discomfort.”

It could’ve been a completely different droid. Cassian couldn’t be certain. But it was still a torture droid… now working on saving Jyn’s life.

She hissed and cried under the pain of the procedure. (She did have an open femoral that needed to be clamped.) Cassian wrapped a solid arm around her shoulders to keep her from moving. He would have given everything and more to trade places with her.

Jyn turned her ghostly-pale face towards him, desperate for help and comfort. He whispered words of reassurance into her hair, keeping his eyes on that droid at all times. Only when he spotted someone running by with a crate of anesthetics, did Cassian jump aside to grab an emergency injection. He stabbed it on her good leg and discarded the empty cartridge on a trail of equipment. Coming back to her, Jyn started to blink with a delayed response to his presence. Hopefully catching some relief from her wrenching agony.

“Jeron…,” she slurred.

“Don’t talk,” Cassian said, brushing her hair away.

Jyn shivered with clashing teeth. “I’m scared.”

“It’s alright, you’re doing good. You’re gonna be fine, Jyn.”

“Plea—se,” she choked out, tears running down from the corners of her eyes. And he knew what she was asking for. She was asking for him. Please, stay with me.

He couldn’t. He was fucked. He needed to extract. He’d missed his window. He was running on borrowed time. Staying any longer was a death sentence.

Cassian grabbed her hand and kissed her bloody knuckles. “It’s okay. I’m staying with you.”

Chapter Text

› My heart shattered apart with your sanity

Those stars have scattered across a haunted galaxy

Please, hold on through Heaven and Hell

Hold onto each other or I fear we won’t recover ‹

Jyn slipped in and out of consciousness for an indefinite amount of time. Never before had it been so hard to keep track of reality, her brain trapped under a cold blanket of fog. Lost into the void. Something prevented her from finding her way back. Each time she tried to surface, a weight pulled her back into abyssal darkness.

A dreamless night. A sleepless one.

Distant noises flowed around her at times. Some voices sounded familiar, an echo of memories her brain refused to access. One, in particular, felt like a stream of warmth amidst the terrifying emptiness surrounding her.

She wished she’d been able to hold on to it, to understand the meaning of those words that didn’t conjure any sense to her brain. But the everlasting presence of that voice became the new constant by which Jyn could grasp the reality of her world.

Whatever had happened, she wasn’t left alone.

#

D+1

The weightlessness of her body gradually morphed into a diffuse burning sensation, until it turned into a localized, sharp pain. Jyn sunk her teeth into it, following it to the edges of her consciousness. A background of chatter erupted in her brain, deafening, even in the absence of screams.

(Screams of agony. The dying of the Basilisk.)

Her hands rested over her stomach, under a small blanket. No— under a jacket. She closed her fingers around the fabric, feeling the sharp corners of a metal insignia digging into her palm. Uniform’s officer.

“Get the cat-2 ready for transport,” someone said, “and grab any portable defib you can find.”

Transport? Where to? (The blast of an explosion. The ship collapsing around her.)

“Do we have an ETA on Lexas Prime?”

“Engineering doesn’t think we can make it without astrogation. I’ve heard them talking about running aground on Mandrine.”

Mandrine. Kessel sector. Which meant: they were unable to jump. The CIC was non-operational. She’d been in the command center when—

(Blood. Imminent death. Jeron.)

She had tried to comm him, to say goodbye, but she’d failed to. Then, he was—

“Jeron,” she whispered, lips cracked and dehydrated.

Someone moved next to her. A hand lightly pressed to her shoulder. She turned her head towards it, still too weak to open her eyes, but she didn’t need to see to recognize his voice.

“Jyn,” he said, the wavelengths of emotions washing over her to soothe her restlessness. Relief. Home. “How do you feel?”

“Hurt.” Even the monosyllabic answer felt like a gigantic battle. She whined when his hand disappeared from her shoulder, wishing she had kept her mouth shut. But the touch returned within seconds, brushing her hair on the side of her face. It felt so nice, contrasting with the agony of her body.

“I think the anesthetic ran out. I’ll try to find you another dose of symoxin.”

“Stay,” she gasped with irrational fear.

Her throat hurt just from the word. Cracking her eyes open, she mapped the blurred contours of his silhouette, hovering above her. His hand pressed against her cheek gently, caressing her skin with his thumb. She wished she’d been able to hold him closer but she couldn’t find the strength to move her arms. She held onto his jacket instead, heavy against her worried heart.

“You need to rest,” he said, low and reassuring tone. “Close your eyes.”

She wanted to argue with him but keeping her eyes open proved too much of a challenge already. A disappointed sigh left her throat. She didn’t have the energy to cry. The helplessness she felt wrenched her guts. Too vulnerable, too weak, too fragile. What would happen to her now?

“That’s it,” Jeron said. He carefully tucked his jacket under her chin, voice closer to her ear. “You’re a brave one. Try to sleep. I’m not leaving.”

If he stayed with her then, surely, nothing bad could happen anymore.

I feel safe when you’re here. That’s what she wanted to tell him. All she mumbled instead was: “Aler’shevai.” —as her mother used to tell her, so long ago.

#

D+4

Jyn caught herself with a hand on the wall, swallowing the painful grunt trying to make it past her lips. She clenched her jaws harder and took another step forward, using the piping system lining the corridor like a handrail. A light sweat quickly broke on her nape, waves of discomfort radiating from her injured leg and spreading through her entire body.

She’d been told to stay put, to lie down and play dead, to facilitate her recovery. The synthskin and compressing cast holding her leg from falling apart were doing a decent job at the task already. She didn’t intend to be an unnecessary burden when resources and hands were stretched to such a critical point. Walking herself to the showers wouldn’t kill her (and she couldn’t possibly stand the hygiene crisis any longer). Besides, she needed to move to avoid a fatal blood clot.

At least, that’s the excuse she planned on feeding Jeron in case he woke up and noticed she’d slipped away. He wouldn’t be happy about it but she had little guilt about her deception. He needed to sleep or he would drop dead faster than her.

Halfway through her sluggish journey back, Jyn recognized a man walking in the opposite direction, arms busy with high-grade portable sonars.

“Endicott,” she called, stranded in the middle of the walkway.

The lieutenant paused upon hearing his name, the slight delay of recognition making Jyn wonder if she looked that bad. “Blast, Erso,” he said dryly, “you’re alive.”

Any other day, she probably would’ve been offended by such a reaction. Right now, the exhausted emptiness behind Endicott’s glare was as strong a testimony as it could get: this wasn’t an insult. Probably a relieved statement, even. Yes, she was alive. Some people were alive. Not that many from Command… Both Mullinore and Feneri had been killed, and with them, half the chain of command, leaving the ISD Basilisk adrift in the hands of too-little experienced officers.

“What’s all that for?” Jyn asked, eying the sonars.

Endicott gave her a disapproving look—the same type of look he used to gratify her with when she challenged his authority in the CIC. Today, though, “We need a semblance of guidance if we don’t want to obliterate what’s left of her.”

“I can help with astrogation.”

The man scoffed at her. “Weren’t you, like, dead three shifts ago? You look like you shouldn’t even be on your feet.”

“I’m breathing,” she deadpanned. “That’s good enough for now. Hey, did you hear anything from Frye’s squadron? They were comm’ing just before…” She trailed off, unable to vocalize it.

Endicott pursed his lips. “You don’t know? It’s been confirmed by Intel, simultaneous attacks. Their mission failed. Rebels took the facility.”

Jyn’s mind entered a fatal dive.

Her grip on the piping neared painful, scarring her palms on the hard metal. “Any survivor?” she heard herself asking.

“Frequency’s dead. You can pour one out for them.”

Eager to cut on the subject, Endicott resumed his journey, a last nod of acknowledgment for her sake. She didn’t try to hold him back or to gather more information. For one, she doubted he had anything more concrete to offer—and she wasn’t sure she could take it.

The shaking of her limbs had nothing to do with pain anymore. Jyn faced the wall, her breathing erratic. She closed her eyes, willing herself to stay calm, to stay composed. Hardly effective. A blinding rush of anxiety swept through her. Her chest burned. Her head heavier, ready to burst open.

‘I hope I’m wrong, he’s a good laid. But if I die on that one, someone will have to make something of it.’

It couldn’t be a coincidence, could it? She had all those pieces… now perfectly fitting together, while praying they wouldn’t. She had held off on joining him, as he’d requested, till the last moment… till she knew for sure. Until she could say that her instincts were wrong, that Razana Frye was wrong, that Commander Jeron Sward was loyal to the Empire.

He saved you.

Is it enough? Enough to trust—

All those people, an entire squadron, half a ship… so many more than she knew of, she was certain. Jyn pressed her throbbing forehead to the cold durasteel, fighting back a sobbing plea.

She had to be wrong. She had to.

But how would rebels have known about Frye’s mission? And how would they have known to synchronize an attack? How would he have known to comm her right before… trying to lure her away— or maybe, maybe… to silence her? No—

He could’ve left me for dead.

He could’ve gone away.

Pushing from the wall, Jyn marched on as fast as her body could carry her, ignoring the stabbing pain in her leg. By the time she reached the officer’s quarters, she was out of breath, her back drenched in sweat. By mere happenstance, Jeron walked out of his cabin at this exact moment. From the look on his face, numbed from too little sleep, she presumed he was looking for her.

Jyn came face to face with him, blood pounding into her ears. She saw the darkening shift in his gaze as he registered her expression and her stomach dropped.

She could’ve tried to ask questions. To explain the inexplicable. To rationalize and to seek a satisfying explanation. But the second she noticed the way he looked at her… the way he stayed silent, didn’t ask ‘what’s wrong’ or ‘are you okay’… the way he simply waited for her to say it. Almost begged her for it.

She wanted to punch him with desperate rage.

“You’re a spy,” Jyn said past the lump in her throat.

“Yes.”

One simple word and the last pieces of her world crumbled around her, turning into dead, cold ashes. He didn’t even have the decency to look surprised, let alone to deny it. Disaster in progress. Maybe more so violent than what she’d experienced during the bombing, because this time… this time, it hurt her soul.

“All this time… you lied to me.” She could barely push the words out, nausea in her throat. “Everything you’ve done… everything you said… I slept with you, I— And you, you just… you used me? For this?”

“I’m sorry, Jyn”

“You’re sorry?” she barked, barely short of a scream. “You’re sorry for the people you’ve killed, or for being a piece of shit, or for getting caught? I can’t believe— I fucking let you… I wanted… I’m so fucking stupid! I defended you in front of Frye, and now she’s dead because I— ”

She choked on the words.

“It’s not your fault,” he offered, inexplicably.

And she wanted to rip his guts out for trying to comfort her. The nerves of that scum! How could he be so damn calm?

“Did you have fun toying with me?” she spat at him. “Why did you come back for me? Just so you could keep your cover a bit longer? To see how many people were left alive? Did you ever plan on killing me if I got too noisy?”

She didn’t want an answer to that, but he gave her one anyway. “I’ll never try to kill you.”

She ignored every cue, from the cracks in his voice to the looming darkness in his eyes.

“Why not? Every corpse we spaced the last four days, did they deserve it? Because they were on the wrong side? Am I not Imperial?”

“I don’t expect you to understand,” he said through gritted teeth.

The haughty condescension unleashed her fury, at last. She pushed his shoulder with a violent blow, causing her own body to absorb the shock on her wrong leg. The sharp stab of pain only heightened her searing anger. Control slipping fast.

“I wish you were dead,” Jyn screamed, “so I’d never had to find out what a fucking piece of shit you are!”

She saw it in his eyes: the exact second everything fractured inside him. The irreparable damage she’d caused. The abject sentencing. Jyn witnessed the unbearable trauma, the void of darkness she’d freed. And she didn’t regret any of it. She had no empathy left for him, only hatred.

Jeron stood motionless in front of her, not making any attempt to escape her. “Me, too.”

Jyn wailed.

Emerging at the other end of the passageway, the black uniforms of Naval Troopers caught her attention. She didn’t hesitate. She didn’t have a choice. This couldn’t end any other way. This was the right thing to do.

“Troopers!” she screamed. “This man’s a traitor! He’s a rebel spy!”

She half-expected him to run away or to take her hostage. He stayed perfectly still, looking at her with those same ageless eyes she knew would haunt her for the rest of her life. His expression one she couldn’t begin to understand. Resigned. Tired. Relieved.

“My name’s Cassian,” he simply said. “I love you.”

Jyn opened her mouth over a silent gasp. She barely had time to feel the impact of his words, devastating.

Already, he reached for something dissimulated in his breast pocket. Her brain was painfully slow to realize what he intended to do. His fingers moved to his lips, ready to swallow a small cylindrical pill.

“No!” Jyn screamed and jumped into action. Her hand hit his arm with so much strength that the pill slipped from his grip. Jeron— no, Cassian looked at her with a horrified expression. Stars freeze over in the infinite galaxy.

“Why?” His distressed voice cracked over the word.

I don’t want you to die, Jyn thought instinctively.

She recoiled, breathless, facing that terrible fact. No matter what she’d said, no matter how she wished she’d been able to feel about him… in front of the dreadful irreparable, she couldn’t blind herself. No matter what he’d done, no matter how wicked and tainted he was, saying goodbye was the worst pain she could ever have to go through. But Jyn realized, all too late, that she had just condemned him to a fate far worse than an escaping death. And she couldn’t undo any of it.

She stepped aside, powerless, as troopers tackled the unresisting man to the ground. And now, now she wished he’d rebelled, escaped, fought back.

Now she wished she hadn’t broken his soul, just like he’d shattered hers.

Is this the last of you? Are we both gone beyond repairs? Together or separate— Stars, what did I do? What did I do to the man that pulled me back from that cold and silent death? I’m sorry. I’m sorry for wanting revenge. I’m sorry I didn’t stop you before. I’m sorry I didn’t see you before. Maybe I could’ve changed it. Maybe I could’ve saved you, too.

Forgive me, my love, whoever you are.

#

D+6

Jyn went through her lines of code for the hundredth time. Cramped behind a hatch door, her bad leg awkwardly sticking out just so she could fit on the side of a processing unit, cables and datapad in hands. That deep frown of concentration hadn’t left her forehead for the past forty minutes. Hair stuck to her neck, under the rough collar of a mechanic jumpsuit. The air vents kept blowing hot air in her face as she worked.

One mistake and everything would go to hell. Time to see if she was really that good.

Jyn scanned her calculations, brain spinning like a hammer drill. Vectors viable. Trajectory conclusive. Timing sensitive. A short window of action. A six-hour blackout due to planet rotation. It left little to no margin of error for life support, but the alternative was far grimmer.

Jyn sliced in the corrupting elements, mentally praying that the firewall wouldn’t pick up any of her work. She’d done her best with her current clearance level. She could hardly get a hold of Mullinore’s fingerprints nowadays. She’d considered ranking up beforehand, but with both the CO and XO positions filled so hastily, and given the current condition of the Basilisk, she truly doubted that the new recipients had received a new set of clearance codes already.

A virtual attack didn’t constitute a top priority concern, simply because there wasn’t much to attack anymore. Without an operational CIC, the Star Destroyer had been rendered to a harmless cruise ship (disregarding the Starfighter Corps, that is). But Jyn wasn’t trying to hijack a turbolaser turret and her lack of offensive actions might have been the saving grace of her operation.

After an ultimate verification, she disconnected the datapad with sweaty palms. She couldn’t waste more time on theories.

Jyn wiggled her way out of the maintenance log room. She put the datapad away and slung a black bag over her shoulder, stepping out of the shadows.

Deck-E was silent. Only the vibration of the solar ionization reactor rumbling through the damaged carcass of the Basilisk to keep her company. She passed through a set of doors without looking back, acting as if she had a legitimate reason to be here. As if she wasn’t wearing a uniform that wasn’t her. As if she wasn’t about to throw her life away.

She wondered, very briefly, what her father’s reaction would be.

Jyn scanned the forged ID card and waited for the blaster-proof door to unlock in front of her. She set foot into the brig and retrieved the blaster from her bag at the same time. Without pausing, she fired at the two Stormtroopers on guard duty. The white armors fell to the ground with a disturbingly soft sound, both stunned by the discharge of power.

Doing her best to keep her focus intact despite the sudden terror crawling under her skin, Jyn moved to the row of cells, looking for the correct identification. She’d never been down here. She’d never expected to be unless she found herself in real trouble… How ironic. She didn’t have the heart to laugh about it.

She quickly skimmed through the bloc, finding the man who had spent so much time on the other side of the line, now confined behind thick duraglass. Jyn forced the cell to unlock, sliding the blaster inside her belt to free her hands.

If she expected to discover him in rough shape, she hadn’t quite prepared herself for this.

Lying on his side in a corner of the room, Jeron— fuck, Cassian kept his eyes shut. His face didn’t look quite right anymore, maybe in the angle of his nose, his skin bruised and bloodied. He had his arms crossed over his chest, knees drawn towards him, as if trying to trap some residual warmth, although the air wasn’t cold.

“Hey,” Jyn said with a hoarse voice. She couldn’t bring herself to use any of his names.

Where her presence hadn’t sparked up a reaction, her voice did.

Cassian cracked his eyes open (as much as the bruising allowed) and weakly tilted his head to look at her. Flabbergasted, he braced the weight of his body on one arm, trying to push himself upright. The effort visibly cost him. Something painful dug at her insides, seeing him in such a state of misery. She forced moisture back to her lips.

“Get up,” Jyn ordered.

“What are you doing?” he asked in disbelief, craning his neck to see past her.

She frowned. “Get the fuck up, now!”

He complied and stumbled to his feet, holding his flank, shoulders hanging low. Had he always been so flimsy? The black undershirt seemed to eat his body away, the lack of uniform disturbingly insulting. It’s not his uniform to wear, he has no right to.

Jyn stepped back, interrupting her thoughts before they got too loud. “Come with me.”

“What are you doing?” he repeated, this time more urgent. Alarmed.

“You saved me, I save you,” Jyn stated. “So we’re even, and I’ll never have to think about you ever again.”

Hardly a lie; I’ll probably be dead by tomorrow. Let’s get on with it.

“I can’t let you do this,” he argued. He looked disgusted by the idea. “Not for me.”

That stupid son of a bastard. “I’ve already done it,” Jyn said, losing patience, “so don’t make me drag your ass and fucking move!”

Whatever objections he had, he didn’t voice it and decided to follow her. Jyn handed the tactical bag over when he stepped out of the cell, reaching for the blaster again.

“What’s that?” he asked.

She spared a quick look in his direction. “Survival kit.”

Jyn tapped her palm against the control panel. The negative air pressure followed them as they exited the jail section. No firing squad intercepted them on their way out. They probably had a couple of minutes before someone discovered the breakout. It was all she needed to get Cassian on his way.

Walking close by her side, he glanced at her a stressful amount of time but kept his mouth shut. Small mercy. Jyn stayed focused on her destination, using maintenance corridors and backdoors as much as possible. It might have been the circumstances but the few times they crossed paths with other personnel, no one even blinked at Cassian. Seeing injured crewmates might have been the new norm these days. It made her sick to the core, knowing what she knew.

“Here,” she said, opening up an airtight hatch door. On the other side, lining up against the small concave space, a series of escape pods waited to be launched.

Jyn went straight to unit AR-778. She snatched her datapad from the bag he still carried and nodded for him to enter the pod. Cassian paused in front of her, a hand braced against the hatchway. Something glistened under the veil of pain fogging his eyes. “Why are you doing this?”

“I already told you,” she cut. “Get in.”

He looked at the pod, breathing harder, and focused back on her. His hesitation irritated her to no end. They didn’t have time to sit and chat. She needed to fly his ass off that ship ASAP.

“Get in!” she insisted, pushing his shoulder. “It’s now or never. You’ll crash on Randa. There’s an emergency beacon in that bag. Wait for another six hours before using it. We shouldn’t be able to trace it, then.”

“Jyn…” His body shifted towards her.

She took a step back as if pulling her hand away from a hot wire. “Don’t.”

“They’re going to kill you,” he said, ignoring her warning. “You know that.”

“Get in that fucking pod.” She was light-headed from the rapid beating of her heart, blood pressure rising.

“I can’t leave you here.” He swung the bag inside and grabbed her wrist, almost a painful grip. “I can’t let you die for me. Come with me.”

A pathetic sound escaped her. She made an attempt at twisting her wrist free but he didn’t let go. She wouldn’t have thought possible for him to have much strength left. She was seconds away from punching him all the way to the escape pod. If she hadn’t been in such a precarious state herself, she could have manhandled him into cooperation.

“Don’t act like you care,” she cried. “You never— Just get away from me!”

“Come with me,” he insisted. His voice came out strong, dark, almost menacing. Giving orders. And for a perilous second, she wanted to listen to him.

“I can’t!” Beyond the ethics, there were technical limitations, too. Those pods were conceived for a single user, way smaller than the dual models stored below the flight deck. Less maneuverable, too, but thanks to the simplified interface: significantly easier to hijack. Hence the initial choice. She’d never thought it would be an issue.

She never even envisioned having such a choice. Why would he want her to come? She was the enemy. She was—

“Yes, you can,” Cassian dryly said. “I won’t leave without you.”

He tugged at her arm with surprising vigor and she stumbled on her feet, the datapad almost slipping from her hands. Jyn’s eyes widened with a mixture of fear and irritation. That insufferable shithead really made it extra hard to save him. Were all rebels so fucking aggravating? But the trepidation inside her chest… the almost hope…

“I can’t,” she snapped again, now on the verge of panic. “Not enough resources, the life support… for both of us— ”

“Shut up, Erso.”

Without warning, Cassian dragged her inside the small escape pod and she fell on his lap, bracing herself with a hand on his shoulder. The other still clutched her precious datapad over her chest like a lifeline. He hissed from pain under her weight but didn’t pause. A single kick from his foot on the door panel sealed the escape pod before Jyn had any time to react. The close smell of blood and sweat alerted all her senses.

Despite his miserable state of being, Cassian still managed to handle Jyn like an obedient child. He forced her to settle with her back to his chest and clipped the security harness over both of them, so tightly that she could barely breathe. Blast, this was going to hurt.

Cassian circled an arm around her waist, his labored breathing directly huffing against her cheek. “Now?” he asked.

Jyn looked at her screen, irritated to see a little blurring motion on the monitor—until she realized it wasn’t a display issue, but her own hands shaking.

The flight vectors still matched her calculations. Everything looks ready for separation. If she had successfully hacked the security system, no one would notice the single rogue pod escaping. If not, they would be blasted into melted metal in a matter of seconds.

At least, she wouldn’t die alone, she stupidly thought.

“I launch,” Jyn said, her voice ready to break. She pressed the command on the control panel and held her breath, feeling the single seat under them vibrating with the rest of the shell. It wasn’t built for two people and, despite sharing a harness with Cassian, Jyn was thrown forward by a brisk rotation. Cassian caught her with both arms just as the datapad hit the floor.

“Shit.”

The next moment, her stomach jumped in her throat as they were violently launched into space. She had never experienced a sensation as brutal. All of her simulation exercises had been… quite breezy compared to the horrifying velocity of a real emergency protocol.

Unable to keep her eyes open, Jyn gripped Cassian’s forearm with all of her strength. She couldn’t speak, she couldn’t breathe. Her whole body painfully vibrated against him. Her injured leg was on fire, a stabbing pain crawling up her spine, causing her to moan. If they survived long enough, they would both be bruised from the experience.

Jyn counted the seconds in her mind, waiting for an abrupt ending. He didn’t let go of her.

Seconds eventually stretched into full minutes, and Jyn could still feel the claustrophobic confinement of the escape pod. Still not dead. Something biped on the on-board monitor. She audibly gasped for air.

A maddening strength almost dislocated her neck when they collided with the planet’s atmosphere, retro-propulsors flaring up. Cassian grunted behind her, absorbing Jyn’s impact on his body like a sponge. More dizziness. Until, finally, a hard collision brought them to a full stop.

The disorientation was total. A deafening silence buzzed inside her ears, still dazed by the experience, then gradually faded away. Jyn started to register some inboard sounds again. Hydraulics stayed locked. No alarms, no apparent structural damages. She blinked into sheer darkness, the red glow of flickering electronics around them to discern primitive shapes.

She felt like she was fresh out of a boxing session. Everything hurt. Her thigh was sticky, the leg of her jumpsuit stained with a dark color.

“Slow down your breathing,” Cassian said.

Only then did she realize how hectic she was gulping for air. She made a conscious effort to regulate her heartbeat, the steady rhythm of his chest to guide her. Jyn didn’t want to risk breaking the confinement of the escape pod until proven necessary. Exposure to the elements seemed like a disgraceful way to die after all this. But with two people, the oxygen reserve would run out way before anyone could reach them.

This wasn’t the plan. She wasn’t supposed to be here, with him.

With careful movements, Jyn unstrapped herself. She stirred on his lap, awkwardly moving around in the small space. She managed to turn on her side to take some pressure off her leg. Pressing a hand to it— yes, definitely blood. Hopefully, it only needed a few more stitches. She could hardly remedy the situation for now.

Her head bumped against his shoulder, unwillingly. She tried to maintain some distance, uncertain and frightful, but her body couldn’t handle it. With a foot pressed against the opposite side, Jyn rested against his shoulder and closed her eyes again, exhaling from beyond the core.

He put an arm around her and that, too, she couldn’t fight. Sinking into Cassian’s protective embrace, she tried to believe, as long as he held her, that her fate could be something different than utter despair.

Deep inside, she wished she’d been with Jeron.

Amidst the agonizing silence, Jyn had all the time in the galaxy to dwell on the consequences of her actions. Too late for remorse, now. She’d committed treason against the Empire. She could never go back. She’d lost another empty home full of ghosts. Was it worth it? All for him—or for her conscience.

She would be meeting with rebels in a few hours and she had no illusions about what she could expect from that. She had killed so many of them while at her job, they would probably return the favor. Not before extracting any useful information from her first, she figured. Would they torture her or just ask nicely? Would Cassian do it himself? Like he used to on the Basilisk? Was it the reason he had wanted to take her with him?

What was the reason?

“No one’s going to hurt you,” he said.

His ability to read her mind like an open file enraged her. She shouldn’t be surprised. He’d probably spent months profiling her.

“Don’t lie to me,” Jyn says bitterly.

“I’m not.”

“I don’t believe you. I don’t believe anything you have to say.”

“I know you don’t. I know you’ll never forgive me.” His head drifted to her, giving the impression that he lacked the strength to keep it up. They pressed close, foreheads touching, holding on to each other like the lovers they weren’t anymore. The heartbreaking statement barely tempered how desperate they were for that touch. Minds and bodies disconnected.

“I hate you,” she said.

“I know.” He frowned, his arm tightening around her waist. “I know, it’s okay.”

Jyn fisted his shirt with one hand, barely stopping herself from hitting him. So much anger. So much hurt. How to live with that, when she’d planned on dying instead. She was drained to the core, a sun gone cold. The emptiness growing inside her chest swallowed everything she thought she’d found in him.

Lies. It had been lies all along.

“I fucking hate you,” she said again, suffocating. His lips brushed the crown of her head. He wiped the tears off her cheeks with the pad of his thumb. Jyn circled his neck, hiding her face against it, overwhelmed by the smell of his burning skin.

She never wanted to leave the escape pod. She didn’t want to face what would come next, for her, for them. This moment was the last equilibrium. A stolen in-between where she could still hold him and cry over how much she loved him.

“You’ll forget about me, Jyn. I won’t matter anymore.”

Shut up. Just shut up!

“But you belong with us,” he said. “You belong to this, you’ll see. And you’ll do something about it.”

Chapter Text

For the past eight hours, Cassian had tried to convince his brain that anything south of his collarbones wasn’t part of his body. An old trick learned from one of the older fighters on Kenari. What could you tell a kid with a broken leg to make it less excruciating while waiting for help that wouldn’t come? The leg registered as an isolated component. The pain was to be compartmentalized. He would be fine. He wouldn’t die.

Somehow, it helped.

With a bit more practice, he was able to rewire his mind to support the idea. To isolate any pain. To keep on functioning beyond a normal threshold. To keep him moving until the next extraction point.

Trapped in a decaying escape pod, with no means of self-extraction, no ETA, and nothing to keep his brain focused on, the trick didn’t perform anymore. Everything hurt beyond critical, courtesy of his time inside an Imperial cell. They hadn’t held back. He wouldn’t heal on his own, that was for sure. Cassian could only think of it as fair play, repayment for his contribution onboard the Basilisk. Fate spitting in his face.

Physical agony was the perfect companion for that of his mind.

(You should be grateful. She’s out. She’s safe. Instead, you’re lamenting over what you lost. What you couldn’t have in the first place.

Never yours—)

No, Jyn was never mine. Jeron doesn’t exist anymore. The end of the line.

Cassian entertained no illusion. Once they stepped outside that pod, nothing of them would remain. No more blissful lies. He would stay away from her if he had any pride at all. He couldn’t beg for forgiveness after what he’d done to her, and would never try. She deserved his last remnants of integrity, if only for saving his life with such reckless bravery.

Go on, Jyn. You’ll do great things for the Rebellion.

Maybe I’ll get to tell someone… ‘yes, Erso is brilliant like that.’ Shining like blazing stardust in my fucked up darkness. The sweet drug in my mind… Or maybe I won’t ever get to tell somebody. I’ll be dead soon enough.

It’s agonizing holding you here. The knowledge of a final time.

If we could go back… If we were fast enough, time would move backward. I’d get to meet you again. I would do things differently and become your ally, I tell myself while knowing I wouldn’t. I would always be the liar. And I would always fall for you. Constants of the galaxy. It used to bring me comfort; now it’s just another wound.

Torturing himself with such thoughts was the least useful thing he could do.

But Cassian Andor’s usefulness had forfeited eight hours ago.

#

When help arrived, half a day after initial contact, they weren’t sure what to do about Jyn. Cassian tried to explain her presence to the best of his cognitive abilities but it didn’t weigh much in the eyes of the team leader. Jyn Erso was marked as hostile and, despite her degrading physical condition, threatened as such: blindfolded and bound for transport.

Still, Jyn was in need of medical attention—and they wouldn’t risk wandering off their path for the sake of her. It was decided that she would be brought back to base with Captain Andor.

Another distant shock, numbed by the abyss of his mind, passed through his system when Cassian realized that ‘back to base’ didn’t mean ‘back to Dantooine’ anymore. He’d missed so much of what had happened to the rest of the galaxy, trapped in his world of shadows, scattered intel fed to him by fragments, that Cassian had virtually as much knowledge as Jyn when they pierced atmo.

A stranger among his own people.

(Did he even have people left?)

With a grim effort, Cassian staggered to his feet, determined to walk off the U-wing transport by himself. Jyn, on the other hand, had lost too much blood to be able to stand without support. A pair of rebels grabbed her under the armpits, her wrists still bound in front of her.

“She’s a defector,” Cassian reiterated, watching them handle her like a prisoner.

“I heard you,” the mission leader—a man in his late thirties sporting an anesthetic scar across his lips and cheek—replied. “She’s still going to be processed.”

Not much Cassian could do about that. He knew someone would look at her leg and make sure she was in shape before being interrogated but he itched to be there every step of the way. Physically. A stupid impulse. She wouldn’t forgive him just because they were being nice about it. She wouldn’t forgive him, full stop. No use staying around like a lapdog.

He had his own debrief with his CO to attend. Protocols to follow. Meaningless things to perform in order to regain some sense of self.

All of it seemed inconsequential. Parting with Jyn without being able to see her face, to look her in the eyes one last time, felt like the hardest step yet— for Cassian knew, the next time he’d see her, they would be strangers anew.

#

“Tensent?” Cassian asked, his beat-up body painfully supported by the back of a chair.

The air in the room stuck to his skin, warm and heavy, suffocating with moisture. The many electronics cramped inside dark spaces, cables running along corridors from distant power sources like serpents, constantly blew out hot air, adding to the offense. No temperature control inside the Massassi outpost; everyone walked around with sweating spots on their clothes. The ground felt uneven under his feet, rugged, dusty. Nothing hummed and buzzed in the bones, only the occasional echo of natural fauna piercing through tunnels of ancient stones. But for the most part, Cassian could hear the silent baseline of a planet.

The disorientation was total.

The gravity, too, was different—heavier. His limbs ached, blood pooling in his feet. His heart tired. He breathed as if jogging while his ass stayed put on his seat. (He worried about Jyn. Worried that the increased gravitation made it harder for her to heal and— No. Someone will set her up with a proper binder. Stop. Focus.)

“An agent intercepted the squadron three days ago. They’re confined to Arda I for now,” Draven said, his face an expressionless canvas. “Your opinion?”

“They will perform. Tensent is in it for his own skin, but he’s a great pilot.” Cassian pushed the datapad away from him, eager to distance himself from the last deeds of Jeron Sward. “Maybe given some time, he could get around to actually care.”

“We need the pilots, anyway,” his CO flatly commented. “Here’s to hoping he does a few useful runs before blowing himself up.”

Cassian stayed silent. He had no real affinities with Tensent. Anything that happened on the Basilisk… stayed behind. Anything except—

“The girl,” Draven picked up, leaning forward. “Why?”

“She got me out.”

“I can read, Andor.”

Cassian cleared his throat. He resisted the urge to shift on his seat, knowing Draven would add it to his evaluation. Hard to trick a man who taught you the tricks in the first place.

The older spy hadn’t been on the field in recent years, confined to tactical rooms and executive functions—someone needed to pull the ropes somewhere, someone needed to make sure the machine kept running, and senior officers couldn’t be picky about their jobs. (Not that many senior officers to begin with; they went where numbers were needed.) But Draven wasn’t working in Intelligence by mere fortuity.

Attentive blue eyes kept monitoring Cassian’s reactions.

“She’ll make a good element,” he said. “Astrogation, scouting. Either on flight support or logistic runs. From what I saw, she’s more skilled than half our current techs.”

“All very nice— but again, I can read.” The man crossed his arms over his chest. The flimsy brown shirt he wore wrinkled in the crease of his elbows, stained darker by sweat. “You picked her for her father.”

“I picked her for easy access,” Cassian corrected. “I didn’t think she could be recruited. My mistake.”

His CO twitched in front of him. A frown appeared on his face, hard to tell if it was from concern or annoyance. “Do you know how many times I heard one of my agents say those words?”

“Can be counted, I imagine.” —because when we make mistakes, we die.

To Cassian’s surprise, Draven then moved from his spot, reaching over the octagonal holotable to turn off a recording device. Off the logs. Concern, then.

“How deep are you?” the man asked in a low voice.

Cassian considered his answer carefully. Not for fear of repercussion; there wouldn’t be any for crossing too many lines. That’s what frightened him the most. The lack of consequences. From another mission, he might have accepted the hand offered to him by a trusted mentor. If he extracted sooner, maybe. If he still felt inside his guts the tinge of burning, resilient hope that kept driving him farther all those years. If he still had the certitude he could make a difference somewhere.

Now—

“Make sure you don’t pull the wrong move on Erso. Don’t alienate her. Give her some time and she’ll be valuable to the Rebellion.”

Draven had enough respect for him that he didn’t sigh in his face. His lips painted a downward arch. He chose not to probe further.

“I’ll keep that in mind, Captain. I advise taking some time to remember your own value. Might help avoid any more mistakes.”

A beat flew by. Without intonation, Cassian asked: “Who did you put on my suicide watch?”

“A friend of yours.”

He snorted. “Always punching down.”

Gathering the datapad and the transponder in one hand, Draven said without an ounce of sarcasm: “If it can dissuade you, no trick’s too dirty in my book.”

You should see my book, he thought.

#

Spies traveled light—or so the rumor had it. Cassian couldn’t say he was an exception to the rule; he hadn’t left much on Dantooine.

The worst loss had to be a pair of brown leather boots. Cassian, like the rest of this disheveled Rebellion, didn’t have many credits to spare. Not much of a uniform supplier for him and his peers either. Decent footwears were left to one’s appreciation and hard to come by in the ranks. Oftentimes even trade-off against other, smaller commodities.

Someone might have packed the boots and the rest of his equipment prior to moving to Yavin IV. Better serving another soul than being left behind for Imperials to scavenge. He couldn’t say he was overly attached to material things but, when he found himself assigned to yet another empty room, he regretted those scarce possessions.

No spare clothes to hang. No personal effects to shelve. Not even a holograph. Nothing reminiscent of Cassian Andor. Starting from ground zero once again.

The space was small—smaller than Sward’s quarters on the Basilisk—but private. A bunk almost at ground level. A thin blanket neatly folded on top of a bare mattress. No other furniture apart from a transport crate doubling as storage space and multipurpose table. Clean. Functional. Nowhere to hang a noose. Not much else to see. Nothing else to see: the room was barren of windows. (This bothered him the most.)

…while laying with her under the Maw Cluster’s amber glow and red giants…

Cassian marched on and put down his welcome-back package: a stock of painkillers, a toothbrush, dry soap, and a new comlink (monitored for the time being, as per protocol). He could have requested to borrow a datapad, browse news on the holonet or contact people, whatever he was supposed to do to kill time. He still might, later.

For now, he opted for lying down on his cot, the blanket bundled under his head as a pillow. He’d declined anything more than primary treatment for his injuries. He didn’t want to spend unnecessary time in the medbay. That left him with residual pains that could’ve been avoided but, really, even now, didn’t he have the right to—at least—feel something?

He didn’t sleep, but he drifted away.

He chased after her with his thoughts. Jyn Erso had been a lot of things to him during the past months—from mark to asset to lover to obsession to complication. What persisted after that, he didn’t have a word for.

From a rational standpoint, he knew his lust was a maladaptive coping mechanism engineered by his brain. It was easier to analyze, now that he wasn’t Sward anymore. Even as Cassian, he mourned the loss.

When he’d said ‘I love you’, he’d been true, coping mechanism or not; maybe it was still. But Cassian had loved others before without ever letting it affect his job. It couldn’t explain everything. Staring at the dark ceiling, he tried to narrow down the source of his agony. What he wanted from her… wasn’t love.

What he wanted was absolution.

A pathetic sound bubbled in his throat. He closed his eyes, feeling the room moving off axis, just like the rest of him. What would it take to repair the damage done by his collision with Jyn Erso? He could watch her, from afar, make sure she assimilated, make sure it hadn’t been for nothing. Or he could take an escape route. Maybe that would bring her some closure; the least he could do for her after all this.

It seemed as good a reason as any other.

The door opened without his authorization, locking mechanism temporarily disabled. (He’d lost his right to privacy for at least forty-eight hours.)

“Ahoy,” a pleasant voice called, “still alive?”

“Against my will.”

Cassian opened his eyes again and sat up, ignoring the protestations of his exhausted body. For a moment, there was gladness in the proximity of this friend. It’s been such a long time since he last saw Melshi. The man looked rougher, a dark scruff on his cheeks, harsh lines around the eyes—but he smiled without artifice as he stepped inside, unaffected by Cassian’s morbid humor.

“Happy non-death, then,” he said, “I brought gifts to celebrate.”

And indeed, Melshi slung a heavy duffel bag from his shoulder, landing it at Cassian’s feet. The man cradled a bottle of something in his left hand, a thumb slid through the handles of two tin cups. He set it down on the metal crate and sat next to Cassian, squeezing his shoulder with a crushing grip.

“You look like shit. Let’s drink.”

It felt— nice. (Fuck Draven.)

“What’s all this?” Cassian asked, curiously peeking inside the travel bag.

“Your stuff, well— what’s left of it. I came in a bit late but I won back the jacket at Sabacc.”

Cassian hadn’t expected to see the blue parka again. He ran his fingers over the crinkled white fur, feeling something that belonged to him for the first time in forever. (Under his digits, under his derm, under his veins.) He placed it aside carefully and kept digging inside the bag, increasingly surprised. He found a pair of pants ripped at the knee that he hadn’t had time to mend before flying off, old tactical gloves, a few shirts, blaster parts and a thermal scope that had survived immersion on Chemvau, a leather jacket with a bloodstain on the sleeve and a metal insignia pinned through it.

At the bottom of the pile: a sturdy pair of black combat boots.

“From Maddel,” Melshi told him. “She said it should fit.”

For a moment, the words evaded Cassian. He turned his attention to Melshi and asked: “She’s around?”

The man shrugged and poured the bottle’s content into the cups. “No idea. Last time I saw her, she was catching a flight to Lothal with Dodonna. Here—”

Cassian accepted one of the cups, feeling a little dent on the surface where he rested his sweaty palm. The translucent liquid smelled like kerosene and shone like oil reflecting sunlight. “What’s that?” he asked with a doubtful eyebrow.

“Life juice.”

They clinked cups and Cassian rinsed his throat with it. Immediately, the burn traveled through his esophagus, all the way to his stomach. He coughed on the back of his hand. “Why? Because it stripped you of it?” With a little grimace, he considered the rest of his drink. “Who brewed that shit?”

“A guy from SpecForces. You get used to it after a while; it’ll win you over.”

“Unlikely. That’s the worst moonshine I’ve ever had,” Cassian said dryly.

Melshi laughed, unimpressed. “You say that because you still have taste buds.”

They kept drinking in silence, then. Cassian let the bootleg alcohol annihilate the rest of his organism, hoping that it would reach his brain, eventually.

“It’s good to see you,” Melshi said after the second round.

Cassian nodded once. All he could do to offer the sentiment back. “You don’t have to babysit me,” he whispered. “I won’t do anything on your watch.”

“I’d rather you would. At least I could try to intervene.”

That discussion might have been awkward with anyone else but both were past that point. Mutual recognition between soldiers. The kind of bluntness forged from traumas. Useful, sometimes. Cassian had no energy left to pretend. What he broadcasted to the rest of the galaxy wasn’t a composite anymore. He was relieved Melshi could handle it without a flinch, even the ugliest parts. It made it a little easier to breathe.

“I’ve heard Intel talking about some kind of records,” his friend mocked. “You’re almost famous. I mean— you would if someone gave a shit about Intel.”

Cassian let out a breathy laugh, sarcastic. “I’m devastated.”

“That’s why I brought the booze.”

Humor left him without transition. He stared at the dancing liquid inside his cup, the corners of his mouth arching downward. His fingers curled tighter around the tin, trying to suppress the sudden trembling. “It was a bad job.”

“Shred it off. Whatever acting you did—”

“You think this is acting?” Cassian cut off. Anger pierced in his voice more than he’d like to admit. “Undercover is not acting. If you want to live, it has to come from you. This was me, all along, just looking through a different prism. A version you don’t want to know. Somebody you wouldn’t drink with.”

Cassian tasted ashes in his mouth. He could still feel the weight of the Imperial uniform on his shoulders and hear the sound of his footsteps inside the Basilisk. He could switch clothes, switch names, switch sides… but he couldn’t shred his skin.

Those memories didn’t belong to somebody else. But after all this time, it felt like the Rebellion did.

“Good thing I’m drinking with you, then,” Melshi said to drag him back to the present conversation. There was slight concern in his undertone, as if he was asking a question. He still surprised Cassian, asking next: “Want to talk about that woman?”

No, I certainly don’t.

But he said, voice like a knife: “Jyn,” because she wasn’t ‘the girl’ or ‘that woman’. She deserved that much. (She deserved so much more.) “Do you know who’s scanning her?”

Melshi scratched his neck. “Neoma, I think.”

Shit.

#

Cassian stayed hidden inside his quarters for the next few days, only stepping out to perform basic hygiene. Unwilling to mingle with others just yet.

Melshi came and went, every few hours or so, making sure Cassian was still breathing. They usually talked for a bit, usually not about something too meaningful. Keeping it light and easy to navigate. They joked about trivial things, about shared anecdotes. And it worked; it took his mind off the darker thoughts swirling inside his brain—but only as long as his friend stayed.

At one point, Melshi brought Cassian some foodstuff that wasn’t MRE, trying to lure him to the mess hall without success. Later, Cassian said.

On the second night, Cassian asked if Melshi had an unused datapad on hand. Laying in the dark with only a screen to illuminate his face, Cassian logged into the device. He was likely still being monitored by Counter-Intel, since they hadn’t cleared him to have any weapons around yet. But Cassian wasn’t after any sensitive info to trade-off in the unfortunate event he’d been flipped by the wrong side. He didn’t even want to send news out there.

Instead, he typed a quick search and pulled out the first result he found.

Aler’shevai — dialect, Aria Prime; an affirmation of affection or love, usually reserved for family members and spouses.

He abandoned the datapad and curled on his side as if he’d been kicked in the stomach.

A silent sob agitated his chest. Then another, louder. Soon enough, Cassian found himself unable to stop. For the first time since he could recall, he faced the wall in shame and kept crying. In the hollow of his ribcage: a throbbing, acute pain. And through his pathetic meltdown, the only thing he hoped for was for Jyn to hold him.

Chapter Text

Jyn had been living in fear for so long, watching her life fall apart around her like broken pieces of ice clouds. She had forgotten quiet seas. Only darkness persisted. A black field without horizon where the dimmest stars came upon to die silently. Losing him, she lost the last trace of that feeling, too.

What remained afterward was a cold, detached, numbing emptiness. A shell without desires.

She went through the following events without participating, left on autopilot. They didn’t need her to be here, really, because no one stopped to inquire. She moved when they told her to, she sat when they asked her to, she replied with monosyllabic answers and put on different, clean clothes when they offered the option.

She failed to see the point of changing from her bloodstained jumpsuit if she was to bleed on the new one, too. Regardless, she did not argue. She got a new set of stitches on her leg and a medical binder to keep the wounded tissues from swelling. (The increase in planetary gravity did not escape her. It hurt like a bitch.) No one made a move to threaten her physical integrity, which surprised her. Her escort simply kept her in chains and on sight, but the respite might have been over, at last.

A few cycles after leaving the escape pod on Randa, Jyn found herself inside the dark room of an unknown rebel installation, stone walls illuminated by backlit screens and tactical consoles. A briefing room, most probably. They seemed more organized than Imperial Command suspected. When someone pulled a chair for her, Jyn figured the interrogation was about to begin.

He did not show up. At least, nowhere she could see.

(Not that she hoped to see him.)

A tall woman with thick, ash-white hair braided on one side of her scalp walked in. From the dark blue pattern painted on her face, she might have been Sarkhai. Hard to tell; Jyn had never met one.

At first glance, the woman didn’t appear to hold any rank, seeing how she was no better dressed than the rest of them: disparate clothing and heterogeneous set of weapons. (That, at least, was true. This Rebellion seemed nothing more than a bunch of misfits sailing under the same flag.) With a discreet nod, the unnamed woman ordered Jyn’s escort to clear the room—leaving Jyn to reconsider her previous impression. Someone in charge, then.

Even so, the woman didn’t carry any type of equipment with her. Only a blaster holstered to her hip. Lethal, yes—but nowhere near the range of an IT-O Interrogation Unit. Jyn almost shivered at the thought of the torture droid having a go at her.

“My name is Neoma Karras,” the white-haired woman introduced herself with a neutral tone.

Were they always so forward with identity? (Not all of them.) Jyn kept her mouth shut, waiting for something terrible to happen. No need to answer. They already knew her name, and probably more than she would’ve liked, courtesy of Commander Sward.

Her eyes veiled by an empty stare, Jyn observed the woman settling in the seat directly facing her. Between them, a small console displaying a flat map of the Outer Rim painted another set of blue lines on the near-white skin of her interrogator. Behind Karras’ shoulder, the sole door made of standard steel stood out between two limestone colonnades. No doubt an after-thought to the general architecture. Jyn listed potential planets in her mind that fitted the puzzle.

“I’m here to make sure we’re on the same wavelength,” Karras continued to fill the on-going silence. “Captain Andor said you chose to defect.”

Jyn’s eyes snapped back on Karras. Captain Andor. So that was his name—Cassian Andor.

(Another painful twist of her stomach.)

She wondered why they entrusted her with that information. But even if she’d been a spy, the intel didn’t hold much value. Names only mattered when you were stripped of them.

“Can you confirm that to me?”

“What?” Jyn finally asked, confused by the passive interrogation.

“Do you wish to join the Rebellion? I need a verbal declaration,” Karras said. “Protocols.”

Jyn stared at the woman without a sound, hands still tied in her lap. This could be a scheme to gain her trust. Weren’t they going to test her? Did she want to join them? There wasn’t any other choice left, was there? From the moment she decided to free him, she knew her entire life would turn to dust. And yet, here she was still breathing.

Why did you do it, Jyn?

“What if I say ‘no’?” she asked. Morbid curiosity.

“Then you’re not my problem anymore and you’ll be passed along to someone else.”

Despite her answer, Karras’s attitude didn’t harden. Jyn considered her options.

“I’m not Imperial anymore,” she managed to say, voice cracking. The words tasted like acid on her tongue. A whole life left behind and for what; honor? The consequences of her actions. “I’d rather see… what you’re trying to do. If I was on the wrong side… I want to change it.”

Careful. Finding the horizon.

Karras smirked. “I guess that will do. Alright—” She walked over to Jyn’s side and unlocked the shackles while she kept on talking. “You’re gonna be on probation for some time, so don’t try to do something stupid. I’m going to build your file and hopefully find you a good fit, but this isn’t a gold star resort, you work where we tell you to work.”

Jyn refrained from massaging her wrists and kept quiet. She imagined they weren’t going to go easy on her. Nevermind that. She was used to following orders and working around the clock. This couldn’t be worse than her years at the Imperial Academy.

“Let’s start with something easy,” Karras said. She pulled up a holo-screen from the table-top and looked at Jyn through flickering blue light. “What identity should I register? You can pick a new one if you need a clean slate.”

Taken aback, Jyn considered the offer for a moment.

Did her name mean something to those people? Did it mean something to Karras? Somewhere, someone had to be aware of her father’s position. (Captain Andor certainly was.) That clean slate could be a polite way to let her know she’d be better off as the daughter of someone else. A bitter truth that left her unphased and unscraped; Jyn had stopped being Galen’s daughter long before leaving the ISD Basilisk. She could take the opportunity to match the ID with the new paint job.

Jyn Hallik had a nice ring to the ear but might have been too easy to trace back to her mother, defeating the purpose. She went for Lyra’s middle name instead.

“Jyn Dawn.”

“Any particular skills?” Karras asked. “The more specific you are, the quicker we’ll find you something exciting to do.”

Exciting.

Is fighting against the people I left behind supposed to be exciting?

If it hadn’t been easy while standing in her Imperial boots, she doubted it would be any easier on the other side of the line. But she had to do something, right? She had to see for herself and find a way to live with her decisions. She had to find the answer without even knowing the question because there was no other place left for her.

(Maybe it would help her forgive herself for being so kriffing stupid.)

But Karras didn’t care about Jyn’s moral conflict—and her questions were at least ones Jyn had easy answers to.

“I’m— was— an astrogation officer onboard an Imperial I-class Destroyer,” she said. “I’ve been formed at Coruscant Imperial University. Navy operations. Longform computer operations. Astrogation traffic. Calculation charts. Anything that flies, I can track and support.”

A discreet smile peaked on the woman’s mouth as she entered Jyn’s information. “Anything?” Karras emphasized, perhaps as a challenge.

“Yes,” Jyn flatly replied.

They could put her to the test if they needed convincing. Jyn wasn’t about to argue in a vacuum. But maybe she had misread the tone. A spark of interest lit the woman’s cobalt eyes when she looked at Jyn again.

“What about adaptability? We’re not running Imperial missions here.”

Jyn ignored the faint burn of anger inside her chest, knowing full well she wasn’t in a position to argue. She put aside her ego and stuck to facts. “I picked up a craft right before they entered a cluster and manually directed them to port once so, yes, I’d say I’m tolerably adaptable.”

A beat went by without Karras typing anything. She kept staring at Jyn, her angular face momentarily expressing more than she probably intended to. Curiosity. Interest. Just as fast, the glimpse of thoughts disappeared, replaced by an unreadable mask again. She still nodded, as if to acknowledge the information.

“Would you be able to slice transponders or cloak IDs?”

“Yes.”

“Interesting.” Karras cocked her head. “What about combat training?”

“I’m good in hand-to-hand combat,” Jyn said, although she never had to fight for her life, “and I can probably get a decent shot at a static target but that’s it. I’m not much of a shooter.”

The questions stalled for a while. Jyn didn’t expect much in the form of an orientation course but she still received some situational information. Mostly about the behavior they expected from her around the base. She would have berthing and food provided, and people to report to. Don’t go anywhere you’re not supposed to. Don’t do anything you’re not supposed to.

Lots of rules for a supposed bunch of rebels.

Had circumstances been different, she would have found humor in it. —but Jyn loved rules. Rules made her life easier when she wasn’t breaking them in the arms of a spy.

“Last thing,” Karras said. “We usually try to put you people together, to make it easier to assimilate… but Analysis dug your case and found some connections.”

Jyn frowned, unable to see where Karras was going with this. The woman stood up and went to open the door, gesturing for someone to enter. Jyn tensed on her seat, triggering a sting of pain at the base of her spine. If they intended to turn Captain Andor into her case officer, she’d rather bash her skull open against the wall. She wouldn’t put her new leash into his hands. No, thank you.

But it wasn’t Cassian Andor who walked into the room.

The walls closed around Jyn. Out of control. Horizon lost. Collision course.

If Karras added something before stepping out—which she might have—Jyn didn’t hear it, blood pounding in her ears.

“Hello, Jyn,” said a ghost from her memory, “it’s been a while.”

“You’re dead,” she breathed out, too shocked to move a finger. “You’re fucking dead.”

Spacedusted. Pulverized.

The man awkwardly standing in front of her had missed the memo.

Eyes blown wide, Jyn followed every one of his gestures as trying to find the error in the code. He couldn’t be the product of her mind; she noticed the subtle differences. Silky black hair now reaching shoulder-length and a deep, uneven scar tracing a darker line across the brown skin of his cheek and down his neck. Still, she’d recognized his smile in a million, however small and tentative.

Hadder Ponta dragged a seat closer and sat down, arching over, hands clasped like a silent prayer. Jyn couldn’t breathe.

“I’m not sure what to say first…” he said, purposely avoiding looking at her. “I don’t know if words matter but if you mourned me, I’m really sorry.”

“If—” Jyn half-choked on her saliva. That fucker. As if he didn’t know that she would cry for him. And, by all gods, she had. But she wouldn’t say that. “Does your mother know?”

“No.” He hunched over even more, likely under the weight of the remorse she read on his face clear as daylight. “Too much risk. I have to stay dead from this life. At least, for now.”

Her brain refused to power through. Submerged by a storm of violent emotions, Jyn lost the grip on her accusations. She gaped at Hadder in bewilderment. Three years since their last goodbye under a Coruscanti sunset and never once did she imagine being able to hear his voice again.

How fucking ridiculous for a twist of fate.

“You faked it,” Jyn licked her lips, mouth dry, “—the crash?”

“They really shot me down,” Hadder explained, looking at her briefly, “but it was part of the plan. I needed a clean way out. I knew the Empire wouldn’t bother looking for a body.”

“I don’t understand. When—”

When did you decide to become a fucking traitor? That’s what she wanted to ask. Burning irony. She didn’t say it aloud. She couldn’t. Maybe she didn’t have to.

“I enrolled because I wanted to be a pilot,” he said, his voice painfully somber. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted, Jyn. I knew I could never afford it otherwise, but they would teach me to fly at the Academy. They did. Then it was time to kark off. I never thought… When Karras said you were here— Shit, I never expected to see you again.”

“Bet you didn’t,” Jyn snorted, cold as steel.

He gave her a half-smile, moving the unscarred side of his face. A spark of warmth reached his keen, black eyes and for a second, Jyn was tempted to smile back. She didn’t. She wasn’t that girl anymore.

“You always gave the impression that you weren’t like the rest of them,” Hadder said. Jyn couldn’t decide if it was offensive or not. “I’m glad I was right.”

Are you? Who are they? Who are we? Us, them, nobody.

Jyn shifted on her seat, tugging at the seams of her too-large attire. Hadder looked overdressed in comparison, wearing a deep green flysuit and a weathered leather jacket, a colorful collection of patches sewn along the sleeves. Tokens from missions he had survived, maybe. On his left thigh: a blaster. Different model than Karras, smaller. Convenient for small cockpits, she presumed.

Did the Basilisk starfighters ever run into Hadder Ponta, the ghost pilot? Did the two of them ever cross paths unknowingly those last few years? Did she give the order that almost shot his rebel craft? A cold shiver ran down her back.

“Now, what?” Jyn asked, the bitter taste of resentment on her tongue. “We’re going to make a traitor gang or some shit?”

“Something like that, yeah.” Hadder didn’t touch her but she could tell, seeing him closing his fist, that he itched to. He’d always been one to grab her hand or throw an arm around her shoulders. He’d always been one to brighten the room, to make her dreadful days less dreadful. Nothing could make Jyn forget the agonizing grief in her heart today. Not even when he said: “I’m here to help you if you need. And be your friend, if you want.”

An alarm exploded in her mind. Different man, same tactic.

Throwing something familiar and comforting at her. An embrace to soothe the pain. A distraction to make her compliant and docile. Analysis, indeed, had a good case on her. But Jyn Dawn wouldn’t get fucked twice over by those people.

“I’m not seventeen anymore.” She pushed her seat back with one foot. “No need to make friends.”

#

The first few days, Jyn constantly ran out of breath simply by walking around. She’d spent so much time in space, dealing with moderate artificial gravity, that being back on the ground put a strain on her body.

This planet (Yavin IV, she’d learned), with higher gravity than Coruscant, tropical climate, and eighty percent humidity, was not the hideout she would have picked for a good time. At least, it had a twenty-four hours rotation so her circadian rhythm didn’t suffer the transition with the rest of her. Regardless, sleep hardly came to her at night.

Jyn laid awake in her cot, listening to the sounds inhabiting the old stones of the temple. The barracks had been arranged in haste, in somewhat impractical spaces that couldn’t accommodate other vital functions. Comfort wasn’t the essence. Still, the circular chamber where she bunked down with four others was more spacious than her quarters on the Basilisk. She could sit up without bumping her head on the top bunk and didn’t have to shuffle her way out every time she needed to come and go.

On the other hand, the company, although different, wasn’t much more chattier than her last set of roommates. Not with her. (Jyn had to admit she was the problem, after all.)

She hadn’t expected a warm welcome but it served as a confirmation that her Imperial background was out. She didn’t have information about the others, was barely graced with their names. One thing for certain, they weren’t cut off the same clothes and they made sure to convey the message across. They avoided her like the plague most of the time. Jyn couldn’t say she was dripping with disappointment. She hardly felt like socializing.

The one exception was walking around in the person of Hadder Ponta. Despite Jyn’s best efforts, the man hadn’t been deterred by her cold attitude and moody silence. (A surprise to note that Hadder hadn’t changed a bit with the years.)

With sparse enthusiasm, Jyn had to admit that it was nice to see a friendly smile at times. She still tried to maintain a safe distance between them. She had some moments of weakness. Thankfully, Hadder wasn’t around all that much. Although he’d been staying in the same dormitory (that poor soul put on buddy system), he flew off planet often enough, leaving Jyn to navigate her new surroundings by herself.

It made for interesting predicaments. And by interesting, she meant proton-bomb-unstable.

Since her debrief with Karras, Jyn had been put on repair duty, she suspected as a trial period. It made sense: they wouldn’t trust her to have access to sensitive coordinates and astromaps just yet. Fair enough.

She spent her time working inside the suffocating shadows of a busy hangar, smelling of kerosene and grease, rebooting flight computers and running maintenance checklists on navigating equipment. Once in a while, the electronics had a big, black-fused hole in the middle of the console—reminder that she couldn’t escape that reality.

No matter where she hid, whether inside the safe armor of a Star Destroyer or the sweaty dark corners of a distant moon, Jyn still lived in that galaxy and the fight now reached everywhere. Closing her eyes wasn’t an option. Fixing the stolen and damaged starships of a rebel fleet offered a purpose, perhaps an answer.

If she dared to hope, in time—a new life.

Not everyone was on board with the idea. The most evident example occurred at mealtime. Tired of eating cold MRE in-between X-wings, Jyn opted for a fancier option that day. The main place to get food around the base was a practical, barebone cantina, made of appliances evidently salvaged from the carcasses of larger cruise ships. A heteroclite field of tables and seats stood under a low ceiling of loud ventilation panels. All around, painted over the steel walls of the prefab hangar with fluorescent pigments, colorful graffiti and drawings gave it the signature of a pirate den. Not that she had ever set foot in one, but she knew any Imperial CO would have had a heart failure at the sight of such decadence.

Then again, Mullinore was already dead.

Jyn bitterly stabbed her block of spicy-green algae with a fork. It tasted better than MRE by a klick and a half. The potato rice wasn’t bad either. The insistent stares she could feel burning on her from across the room, however, had the tendency to cut her appetite.

No one much liked to eat with her except for Hadder and his pilot friends when they were around. Jyn sat alone that day, popularity queen. Rebels chatted and laughed loudly around her. The static of conversation buzzed between the walls, the atmosphere smelled of food, alcohol, and sweat. Two tables away, glaring over shoulders and talking among themself: a group of disparate individuals. From their attitude, obviously talking about her.

Jyn silently waited, watching, for them to make a move. Her fingers tensed around the fork, her shoulders squared, feet slightly turned outward.

She almost hoped they would.

Give her a reason to.

When three of them finally stood and slowly walked toward her, leaving empty trays behind instead of clearing the ground, Jyn figured a fuse was about to blow up. The front man, a tall, bulky Elomin with a broken tusk on his left cheekbone, carried two blasters at his belt. No doubt the others were armed as well. They wore camo-green outfits, heavy-duty. Ground unit if she had to guess, most likely guerillas. Holding a grudge and looking for somewhere to put it.

With her fork and tin cup, Jyn wouldn’t go far. She straightened her posture and raised her chin, forming a fist on her thigh as she watched them approach. A spark of heat cracked in the Elomin’s eyes. The fog surrounding Jyn’s mind finally cleared out, leaving her senses acute and alert.

Here we go.

A body appeared through her blindspot and stopped to her left. It gave a pause to the trio. Surprised, Jyn glanced sideways only to be punched in the chest. Metaphorically. But it hurt just the same.

Cassian Andor stood next to her, a tray of food in his left hand, his attention turned toward the group. For once, the subtext on his face didn’t need decryption. He bore a threat in his eyes and a dare in the way he carried himself. A layer of conversations quieted down around them, replaced by a silent tension.

Weighing options, a few steps away, the Elomin pursed his lips and gestured for his companions to follow. The three of them changed direction and exited the cantina, not without sending a last menacing glare toward Jyn. Or perhaps Cassian.

Far from relaxing, Jyn surveyed the rest of the room. Already, everyone had returned to their previous business. Whoever those people were, Captain Andor seemed to have enough authority that they didn’t want to be in the doghouse with him. In other circumstances, Jyn would have cared for further explanation. When the man slid his tray on her table and took a spot opposing her, the hair on her nape stood straight.

He paid her no attention, didn’t say a word, didn’t look at her. Like an empty soul, Cassian started digging in his meal, leaving Jyn to contemplate.

She’d never seen him under a sun, she realized. It carved his cheeks deeper and highlighted the finelines. His skin looked unhealthy, ashen even bathed in daylight. The dark circles under his eyes made him look sick. Maybe he was. Maybe he had a conscience, after all.

Not that she cared.

Cold emptiness swelled inside her heart. Her fingers twitched, eager to— No. Enough. Jyn casted her eyes away before being tempted to say something.

She had nothing to tell him. Nothing but regrets.

She gathered her plate with angry gestures and left the table without finishing her meal. She didn’t look back. She didn’t want to read him, she didn’t want to try. Back to work. Flight logs. Codelines. No emotion. No memories. No Cassian fucking Andor.

And that voice screaming inside her head? Just switch it off.

There’s no common ground to stand on. Not after what you did to me.

You’re a liar. You’re a stranger. I’m not going to stand in face of the disaster for you. I don’t deserve that guilt. I saved your life already.

I loved you once already.

Once was enough.

She didn’t want to know another him. She didn’t want to mourn another ghost.

Chapter Text

‘But if I die on that one, someone will have to make something of it.’

Jyn woke up with a burning scream caught inside her throat. The voice of Razana Frye still ringing under her skull like an alarm. Her haunting eyes casting judgment on Jyn, night after night, through the exhaustion and guilt and anger. There was no escaping the memories and all the souls that had died aboard the Basilisk. She should’ve been one of them.

She almost was.

Jyn relaxed her cramped limbs, trying to shake off the remnants of her nightmare. A layer of cold sweat covered her skin, clothes and sheets sticking to her aching body. She sat up in her bunk slowly, massaging the back of her neck with both hands.

In the dormitory, the sound of a hanger hitting the clothing rack pierced the quiet silence of the night. From behind a closet unit appeared the tall silhouette of a man in pilot gear. Hadder walked to the bunk on her left (brilliant idea of Karras, who was dead set on making friends out of them) and unzipped his green jumpsuit.

“You still have those dreams?” he whispered in the dark.

The tone was neutral, barely conversational. Jyn glanced at him.

Despite her best efforts, the man still hadn’t taken his cue to fuck off. To her horror, his attitude was starting to wear her down. Not like she had a lot of people waiting in line to offer friendship. So. She’d started talking to Hadder on occasion, and he wasn’t the worst option from the lot.

Keeping all those thoughts inside would drive her crazy.

She wondered if he understood her. He’d said he had bad dreams, too, but hadn’t offered details. Jyn hadn’t asked.

Did you dream of me?

“She was warning me,” Jyn recalled, unable to control the bitterness in her voice. “Before she died. She knew and she went anyway.”

Her knuckles cracked as she closed her fists in her lap. In a bunk nearby, someone shifted around and caused the weak frame to protest under the weight. It didn’t disturb their loud snoring.

“Were you two friends?” Hadder inquired.

“No. But that doesn’t change anything.” Jyn paused, a lump forming in her throat. “If you think she deserved to die, then so do I.”

“I know it’s not that simple,” he said.

“Do you?”

Back to the offensive. She couldn’t help herself. The rage overflowed, leaking through every crack in her soul, as soon as someone came too close. She didn’t want comfort. She didn’t want pity. But she couldn’t stand to let someone acknowledge it through their scope. As if they had a right to the horrors in her mind.

The man let out a frustrated sigh. “Jyn, listen… I know you’re mad at me, I get it. And I know it’s not the same but I had to leave things behind, too. Everyone has. You think you’re the only one who’s got to deal with traumatic shit around here? Well, think again.”

This wasn’t what Jyn wanted to hear right now. The pain was scorching hot.

“Where are you going?” Hadder asked as she put her feet on the dusty ground.

“Taking a walk.”

“It’s 0100.”

“So hopefully all the dickheads are asleep,” she muttered before grabbing an oil-stained jacket from her bunk and heading out of the sleeping quarters.

#

With a constant rotation of people working back-to-back shifts, the cantina was a place that never truly slept. At any given hour, rebels gathered to grab a warm meal, share a drink, or simply hang out around a table.

Jyn had no intention of getting drunk—her body had barely recovered from the past few weeks—but she figured that staring at colorful graffiti was better than exiling herself into the shadows of a bleak hangar. She’d come to see the charm of that place, after all. It felt more alive than the rest of the base. A glimpse of chaotic warmth amidst starkness. A respite from reality, maybe. No one wanted to think about the outside world inside those walls.

As she picked a lonely spot in the back of the room, where storage crates were cushioned with coarse blankets and throw rugs, a loud voice stopped her: “Ahai! Ponta’s friend, do you play Correllian Spike?”

Jyn glanced across the room. A small group was crammed around a circular table, cards in hands, a pile of credits and other goods in the center. Gambling was a popular activity inside the Cherry’s Luck. (Jyn wasn’t sure where that name came from and she hadn’t asked.)

The Human woman who’d called after her—a starfighter pilot—watched Jyn approach with a question on her face. Jyn couldn’t remember her name.

“I don’t have anything to bet,” she said with a shrug.

“You’re working repairs, yeah?” the other questioned again. “What about your next cut of salvageable?”

“Sure.”

“Done.”

They seemed desperate enough for someone to even out the number of players. Jyn grabbed a vacant chair and sat down with them.

The black-haired woman tapped the deck on the table once, whether as automatism or a good-luck ritual, before dealing the hexagonal cards to the party. “So, what’s the name?” she asked without looking away from the task.

“Jyn Dawn.”

No one reacted in any manner and Jyn relaxed a bit on her chair. The guy on her left peeked at his set of cards and flattened them back on the table, facing down.

“Dawn,” the pilot continued, stacking the rest of the deck in the center, “I’m Shara Bey. This is Dameron, Maddel, Gunner, Melshi.” She pointed at each of them with two fingers before placing a hand on the shoulder of the man sitting to her right, giving it a painful-looking squeeze. “And watch out for this one. Varta’s the biggest cheater on base.”

The Zeltron pushed her hand away, his red skin turning a deeper shade to betray his emotions. “Fuck off, Bey. You’re a sore loser.”

“At least I’m not a fraud,” she smirked.

“It’s called counting cards, my friend. Try it.”

The one called Maddel—a rough-looking Human with pale skin and dirty-blond hair—let out a mocking sound. “Wait, you guys know how to count?” she said. “I thought all those spins on g-force fried your brains.”

Far from taking offense, Bey snorted and leaned back in her chair. “Says the one who almost ate a grenade last week.”

Maddel peeked at her cards and shook her head. “Blast! I still hear ringing, I swear.”

Jyn had never heard someone discussing a matter as horrific in such a light tone. It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together. From their clothes alone (sturdy utilitarian attire, tactical jackets), Jyn guessed that Maddel and Dameron were fighting their fights on the ground. She’d hear the term Pathfinder going around. These two fit the profile. The gold-skinned Haloisi sitting on her right, too. The last man, she couldn’t tell.

“And you wonder why I’m winning?” Varta gloated, tossing two credits into the pot and drawing another card. “All of you are brain-dead porgs.”

Dameron kicked the leg of his chair playfully. “Watch it, blugslut.”

“You’re only winning 'cause Andor isn’t around,” Maddel snickered, throwing another two credits in the pot.

Jyn’s cards almost slipped through her fingers.

The game kept moving around the table. Every player drew or raised bets in turn, oblivious to the thunderous beating of her heart. All but that one man, Melshi—close-shaved head and grim expression—who kept glancing at her without a word. Jyn felt a growing urge to punch answers out of him.

“I’ve heard he got back,” Varta asked after a pause. “Is he dead or something?”

“Something,” Melshi said.

The stark tone startled his audience and raised Jyn’s suspicions.

“Oh, secret spy shit?” Varta said, looking at Maddel. “You guys are so fucking weird.”

Jyn reconsidered her first impression. Evidently, the friendly banter had taken a critical hit.

“You’re here to play or to gossip?” the blonde complained.

“Ah,” Varta smiled, white teeth almost glowing against his crimson lips, “that watchdog’s biting when you talk shit about Intel.”

“Did you just call me a dog?”

Although she didn’t raise her voice, Maddel rested her cards on the table. Jyn looked at each of them, gauging the situation. The last thing she needed was to find herself in the middle of a fight, giving more reasons for Karras to breathe down her neck. On the other hand, she was curious to see how those people handled conflicts. And what they had to say about Andor… Not that she cared about his whereabouts. Not really.

But a vindictive part of her was glad to know that Intel couldn’t sit with the popular kids.

“Guys, enough,” Bey warned with a menacing frown. “Varta, shut your mouth.”

Following her intervention, they resumed the round. Cards moved clockwise around the table for a while and conversation stalled. Jyn wondered if Shara Bey outranked the rest of them. (None of those fine people were wearing insignias in the middle of the night.) No matter how hard she tried, Jyn couldn’t picture herself playing Sabacc with her former officers.

“Iss true, though?” Gunner asked after a while, pulling Jyn out of her thoughts. “About Andor? Heard he got sacked for fucking an Imperial whore.”

Only a miracle kept Jyn from slamming both fists on the table. Or into the man’s head. Blood rushed away from her face so quickly that it left her skin cold and prickling. At this point, the others might have been able to tell something was wrong with her if it wasn’t for Maddel’s quick reply.

“He didn’t get sacked,” she argued. “Who told you that?”

She and Andor must have been close because she asked as if she wanted to beat the shit out of somebody. Jyn stared at her while increasing pressure cemented around the beating of her heart, suffocating her. She’d entirely forgotten the game by now, and so did the others.

“What about the rest?” Varta asked. “Did he get dirty with the enemy? Man, Intel sure has its own methods.”

Another deliberate taunt at Maddel. This time, she didn’t get a chance to reply.

“Cut the shit or leave,” Melshi said, his tone one step from outward hostility.

The Zeltron doubled down on it. Either he thought that he was a funny guy or he simply got off on pissing people off. In both cases, he was a kriffing asshole. The way he raised his palms and smiled at them, smugness written all over his face, made Jyn irrationally furious. Back on the Basilisk, people like him ended up in the brig or washing the decks.

“Hey, just wondering. Maybe I should switch branches.”

“Don’t,” Jyn snapped, “you’d be dead within an hour.”

All heads turned to her. She didn’t welcome the excess of attention. Once again, Jyn hadn’t been smart enough to keep her mouth shut.

“Aren’t you a mecha?” Varta asked, disdain evident enough. “What do you know?”

There was no use backing off at this point. She was going down but she was going down without shame. Not in front of those people. Never.

Jyn unlocked her jaw and delivered with her most glacial tone: “I know because I’m the Imperial whore he fucked.”

A beat went by as the shocking wave rolled through the audience.

“Ish’ka,” Bey cursed.

“Yeah,” Jyn trailed, pushing her chair back, “I guess I’ll take my leave now.”

Surprisingly, Dameron leaned to the side and offered an embarrassed smile. “C’mon, you don’t have to go. It means nothing.”

Jyn didn’t care to ask if he was referring to her relationship with Andor or to their comments. She’d heard enough of it for one night. What was she even thinking, coming here to play fucking Sabacc with some rebels that hated her guts? Wearing their clothes didn’t make her one of them, that much was clear.

“I’ve got a bad hand,” she concluded before turning on her heel.

She should’ve stayed in her bunk after all. If Hadder caught wind of it (which he most definitely would, seeing he flew with Bey), Jyn would never hear the end of it. Great.

Halfway through the dark corridor that connected to the adjacent hangar, rapid footsteps came after her. Jyn refused to glance back and kept on walking, dwelling on her anger. Still, the person had longer legs and caught up with her easily.

“Dawn,” Melshi called. “Stand your ground next time. Walking away will only make it worse.”

At last, Jyn stopped walking and let out a burning sigh.

“Did you hear me asking for kriffin’ advice?”

“Okay,” the man snorted. “I see you’re a natural at making friends.”

Of all the things, this one got under her skin like a razor blade.

Jyn crossed her arms over her chest and sent him a death glare. “With who, you? With people shit-talking behind my back and calling me a whore? Or with the people who actually treat me like one?” She could almost hear the crack in her voice and caught herself just in time. “No, thanks. I’m good.”

She couldn’t be clearer, could she? Hopefully, that would keep that shithead from arguing further. Jyn had some sleep to catch before her next shift.

Melshi studied her like a landmine he wanted to defuse. He had one of those faces—full of worry and exhaustion no matter the time of day. She supposed he had reasons to.

“You’ve got your perceptions really distorted, girl,” he finally said.

It took Jyn a trying moment to internalize it. This wasn’t about making friends anymore. She uncrossed her arms, feeling the traitorous urge to transform her anger into violence.

“Let me guess,” she sneered with a blank voice. “You guys are friends and I just have it all wrong about him because he’s such a nice guy.”

She waited for confirmation, although she already knew that she was right. No need to be a genius to read into the subtext.

Up until that point, she hadn’t thought she could be angrier.

“A nice guy?” Melshi said, mouth twisted. “No, he’s not.” —and that wasn’t what Jyn expected to hear. A sharp piece throbbed inside her chest. “But he gets shit done so others don’t have to. Do you have any idea what it takes to walk in his boots? What it does to the mind?” He pressed an index to his temple. “Until wars can be won by playing nice, we need the kind of man he is.”

Jyn forced herself to swallow, lips dry. Hard to hold on to her rage when she felt like crumbling into dust. But she couldn’t let the cracks in her sandcastle show.

“Your rebel propaganda is seriously slacking, comrade.”

The condescension didn’t impress him very much.

“You’re not better than any of us, Dawn. If you can’t forgive him, that’s fair. No one asks you to. Just make sure you can live with your decision.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jyn asked.

Melshi lowered his gaze on her, a conflicted expression pinching his brows closer. “Spies rarely get to see the happy ever after,” he spelled out for her. “There’s a lot of reasons Cassian Andor might deserve to die, but having feelings for you is not one of them.”

Jyn’s eyes widened from shock. “Fuck you!”

“Fuck you,” he countered with a rapid step toward her. Just as fast, his face angled down and he pushed his temper away. She had to give props to the control she didn’t have anymore. “Like I said… your choice. But just so you know, it might be a definitive one.”

She couldn’t unhear those dreadful words. —but she didn’t care, alright? She didn’t.

Why is there such terror in you, then?

Sticking her chin up, Jyn bared her teeth. “If I want to find him… where do I go?”

#

Standing in front of a closed door, heart bruising her ribs, Jyn couldn’t hear herself think.

Why did she come? What did she want? The impulse was buried deep within her, blazing like molten rocks, and she needed to carve it out with a knife. If she didn’t act now, it would consume her, feeding a black hole she couldn’t escape. Gravity pulling her in.

Jyn knocked on the door before she had time to bail out.

Seconds stretched the unbearable silence draped around her. Right. Middle of the night. But a ray of light peeked from under the steel panel. He couldn’t be sleeping.

She knocked again, more forcefully.

“Cassian.”

Open your door, dipshit.

Receiving no answer from the other side, frustration quickly replaced the initial apprehension. Jyn eyed the numeripad, weighing her next actions. Breach of privacy certainly was a far cry from his deeds. He would live through it.

Jyn input the code without remorse. A little sensor blinked green above her thumb and the door slid to the side.

She located Cassian inside the small room, not sleeping (good) but sitting on the ground, his back propped against the bed. The cold white light of a halogen lamp placed by his side cast a hard shadow across the floor. It took Jyn several seconds to notice the disassembled sniper rifle resting on top of the crate, as clean as factory standards, and ten more before she realized that Cassian had a perfectly assembled blaster in hand.

Resting on his lap. Fingers tight around the grip.

Jyn froze, chasing after her breath. She didn’t need to ask if the power pack was full. Her vision shrank into a dark tunnel. Morbid images flashed through her mind. Memories of a dying Basilisk crept back from the forsaken corners where she’d pushed them—smelling of blood and dead bodies.

“Cassian,” —but he still displayed no reaction, only looking at a blank wall as if he hadn’t even noticed her presence.

She ought to be careful approaching, wondering if he would shoot her by mistake. (Wouldn’t that be perfect?) Somehow, she just came to kneel beside him and snatched the weapon from his grasp. She threw it on his bed, out of reach. Allowing her lungs to resume function.

As he seemed to disconnect from wherever the fuck his mind had been, he gasped in her face. Shocked to see her. Adrenaline rushed through her veins. Jyn landed a furious slap across his face before he had any chance to speak. He barely flinched. Even so, it might have hurt because her palm burned. There was no turning back from this.

Jyn grabbed the front of his tunic and lashed out.

“How dare you?” she yelled, certain that her voice carried beyond the walls. “I lost everything because of you! I threw everything away just to save you! That’s how you’re going to repay me? By blasting your brain out? You’re a fucking coward!”

And although she kept on shaking him, he stayed as silent as a dead star, only staring at her with dark, heavy, extinct eyes.

“Answer me!” Jyn screamed. Do something. Fight me.

“Jyn.” His voice sounded alien to her ears—a distorted echo. Where it had always been filled with so much warmth… now, barren of anything but pain. “What I did to you…”

“There’s a word for what you did to me,” she spat at him.

But he knew. From the profound agony she could map on his sickly pale face, he knew. She thought that she’d feel better to see him suffer. She’d been wrong and it infuriated her. There was no justice to serve and no sentence to carry.

“I wish you’d let me die on that ship,” Cassian breathed out.

Jyn let go of his shirt and sat back on her heels, momentarily speechless.

“You said you loved me because you hoped that I would help you.”

Calculations. Exit strategy. It made perfect sense in her mind. She’d never questioned that fact because surely—

“I said it because it was true.”

A pathetic sound bubbled in her throat. She shook her head, feeling the line of horizon tilting once again. Cassian looked at her in expectation of the next blow. She’d never seen someone looking so lost. Blast him for hoping she would be the one to finish his dirty work for him!

“Do you even know what love is, Cassian?”

The name still hurt her soul. Stranger in disguise. Wasn’t it Jeron that loved me?

“Before you,” the man whispered, “I used to think that I knew.”

Lucky guy. But who was she to tell him that he had it all wrong? What did she know of love? She might have been the one nursing illusions. She didn’t remember much of her parents; she’d been too young when her mother died. She had loved Hadder with a young heart—and she presumed, only because he was the first person to show any interest in her. She couldn’t call herself an expert.

“One thing I know,” she said nonetheless, “love isn’t despair. I don’t want you to die…” She didn’t have the strength to explain and she hoped he wouldn’t ask. “You wanted me to join your Rebellion. Congrats, I’m here! And you’re not going to just walk out and leave me in this hellfire all by myself, you selfish bastard!”

Still frozen in place, Cassian searched her eyes. She wished she’d been able to read anything in his—to remember what it felt to find a sunset in his gaze. She didn’t recall the last time she’d seen his smile. She would have framed that fragment of time in a gallery of crystallized memories.

Chaos, always, defined the value of those rare glimpses of order.

“I’m sorry,” he said. Her stomach dropped with a sinking feeling. “I don’t remember if I ever said the words out loud… I’m sorry, Jyn.”

What could she say now? Were words ever enough? Were apologies bringer of a new dawn? She didn’t feel any better.

Jyn sat down next to him, her body as sore as a puppet forced to walk without strings for the first time. She placed her head between her hands, watching the elongated shadow of her legs on the ground. For a while, no one moved or spoke. They settled on simply co-existing in the same space without violence (all they were capable of, maybe).

By the time Jyn picked her head up, her anger had simmered down to distant resentment. It was a new kind of numbness. A different type of ache in her soul.

She couldn’t tell if it was better or worse.

“If you ever lie to me again,” she said above a murmur, “I will never forgive you. Do you understand?”

She had to look at him to be sure.

As if he’d sensed her thoughts, Cassian turned his face to her. “Yes.”

His voice was a vow in itself. Still, Jyn wanted to test him, to see him with his back to a wall. Only then would she be able to fully believe him. Only then—

“Did you pick me because of my father?” she asked.

He didn’t falter, didn’t evade, bloodshot brown eyes locked on her. “Yes.”

It surprised her just how much the truth hurt, still.

“Am I here because of him?”

“No. You’re here because you chose it.”

Would you have tried to recruit me if my name wasn’t Erso?

She would never get an answer to that question. She would never live the maybes and perhaps. She wouldn’t know what it’s like to meet and fall in love with Cassian Andor, rebel agent. Actions couldn’t be undone. Scars couldn’t be erased; not from this side of the line, not anymore.

She had to look at a physical one every time she put on a pair of pants. And yet she couldn’t decide if it was Jeron or Cassian who saved her that day. Living in her head was all too exhausting.

“Tell me something nobody knows about you,” Jyn asked.

Tell me something real about you.

He didn’t have to think long about it. Jyn wondered how large of a collection he had to choose from, how many fragments of himself he’d never shared before. How much of Cassian was a mystery to the world, to his friends, to her.

“I was your age when I joined the Rebellion,” he began, rubbing palms over his knees. “On one of my first solo assignments… something went wrong. I had to go dark for months afterward. To protect what was left of the mission. That’s what I told them.” She noticed the drop in his shoulders as he spoke. Had he always been so frail? The uniform concealed every weakness, every fear. Less of a man and more of an institution. “Truth is: I wasn’t running dark, I went rogue. I defected for four months, falling back into old habits… bad decisions. I almost didn’t come back to the Rebellion.”

He looked at her like he expected judgment. Like she could be his moral compass.

“Do you still want to run?” Jyn asked, genuinely curious.

His unkempt beard ate away the traces of a wounded smile. He must have hated himself so much for saying: “All the time.”

“Why don’t you?”

If she could just understand this one thing about him—

Jyn waited, looking at his lips, fearing that the words would escape her. His expression darkened again, replaced by an unscalable wall, an impenetrable blank canvas. She had to wonder if he was consciously doing it at this point. Defense mechanisms.

“Because there’s nothing else I’m better at. This fight…,” —he opened his palm and she could practically see invisible particles of sand escaping his grasp— “it’s all of me. All I am. I’ve given everything to it.”

It was a sensible answer. She should’ve been happy with it. Instead, revolt thundered in every corner of her body. His abnegation irritated her to no end. “You’re not a fight,” Jyn frowned, bitter. No more than I am. None of us are. “You’re just a man.”

In that instant, he seemed at a loss for words. How strange, how unusual to witness his silver tongue failing him.

Maybe Cassian wasn’t as bright of a talker as the roles he inhabited so seamlessly. Maybe his wit and manipulation were reserved for different situations, different crowds—Imperial ones. It felt so difficult, still, to distinguish the limit between false and true, between that man she didn’t know and the one she didn’t want to remember. A bottomless chasm between realities. A question governing all the others: how much of Cassian Andor had he poured into Commander Sward?

Part of her wanted to believe—with a heart still too young—that it’d been, at least, some.

Jyn folded over her bent legs. Thus far, she’d been nothing but betrayed, mocked, and insulted by those rebels pretending to fight for a greater good. Even so, she was tempted to get closer if it meant she wouldn’t have to deal with the only offense she couldn’t survive. Clinging to chaos to avoid another abandonment.

She might have hated him on so many fronts, but she hated herself even more.

“Where did you get the code?” he asked like an afterthought.

“Your friend Melshi.”

He closed his eyes briefly and muttered: “Fucking Melshi.”

“Don’t change it,” Jyn warned. She wanted access. She thought she deserved it.

His attention landed on the non-existing space between them. “I won’t.”

She could’ve reached for his hand. She could’ve reached for him. She felt nausea in her throat. Her neck burned from anxiety, sweat down her back from this fucking planet. She was tired—so tired. Would she sleep better in his arms? Would he keep the terrors and the ghosts away? Would he bring his own?

Could they pretend, even for just a few starless hours, that nothing had changed?

But gravity kept pulling, and they kept changing a bit more with each passing second.

She dug her fingers through her hair, staring at a stone ceiling. “We’re bad for each other,” Jyn said.

His voice carried something else than understanding. It carried, she realized with a bit of shock, tentative hope. “I’m not known for my healthy lifestyle.”

She looked back at him, seeing the possibilities offered to her. She could take anything she wanted from him, here, tonight. But she couldn’t trust that it wouldn’t be taken away from her again. Hope wasn’t enough for Jyn.

“I should go,” she said.

There was no hurry in her gestures when she stood up. Ashes had replaced the fire. Her limbs felt heavier, maybe because her body had a mind of its own and didn’t want to leave. She wasn’t sure she could call it a conclusion but talking to him hadn’t been meaningless. If only for keeping him alive a little longer. So maybe she would have time to figure out what she needed from him. How selfless of her.

“You should shave,” she said before leaving. “And take a shower while you’re at it. You smell like a dead tooka.”

A small, disheartened laugh echoed behind her as she stepped into the corridor.

Jyn didn’t stop walking until she reached her sleeping quarters. Opaque darkness welcomed her inside the dormitory. She unzipped her boots and abandoned her jacket by the end of her bunk. Without a word, she invited herself in Hadder’s bed and laid down with her back to him. He groaned and shifted to the side, trying to accommodate the bunk size. Relief flood through her that he didn’t push her right off.

She needed someone to be there—and it couldn’t be Cassian.

“Are you okay?” he asked with a groggy voice.

Jyn crossed both arms over her chest, fingers toying with the new set of dog tags looped around her neck. Longer and sharper than Imperial ones. There was still an indent in the polished metal where the previous ID had been filed off and replaced with hers.

She wondered who they used to belong to. Someone better. Someone braver.

Despite the night’s suffocating heat, Jyn’s lashes felt inexplicably wet. She whispered: “I’m not a nice person, am I?”

Hadder risked a glance over his shoulder. She felt his body moving. His head fell right back on his pillow but his arm reached back and landed across her hip. It was a weird way to hug someone, assuming it was the general idea, but Jyn wouldn’t be picky.

“Maybe not,” he said—and she liked him a little more for his honesty. “But you’re a good person, that’s more important.”

Chapter Text

Cassian stared at his reflection for just a bit too long, starting to catch every imperfection, every misplaced line that made his face not quite appealing—but still too subtle to make him unattractive. A matter of a few more years, he thought, a few more scars and broken bones. Would it make the spy games harder to play with an unflattering appearance?

Ah, now she had him thinking about a future again. She’d made an impression, alright.

Last night, Cassian only had an interest in the fastest way to take an exit and here he was making an inventory of his looks. Blast her. No point in reverting back. She’d demanded—no, she’d ordered him to get his shit together. Not in those terms, obviously. Worse ones.

Mindful of the pressure in his hand, Cassian made a last pass with the sharp razor blade, feeling the slight burn on the skin of his neck. Sometimes, the most archaic methods still make for the best results. Testing his impulse, too. Just an inch lower, to the left, and he would draw bright red blood. Slash his carotid and bleed to death with quick efficiency.

How lucky I am that my life isn’t mine any longer. Someone tell me, was it ever?

‘You’re not a fight. You're just a man.’

She’d made him furious with that one. What did she know?

Of him: nothing, everything. He’d been fighting for so very long, almost as long as he’d been alive. He knew what the legacy of Captain Andor would be—but what would be the legacy of Cassian, just the man? And what did it matter if there was something else left in him? He had no one left. No one but her.

All that he was, the good and mostly the ugly, all of it was hers now.

Shaved clean, Cassian stepped into a set of fresh clothes and headed out the washing quarters. Dawn had barely erupted over the horizon—not that you would notice from the dark corridors hidden inside the Great Massassi Temple. Even ambient temperature wasn’t a reliable marker because the heat of the day barely had time to disperse during the night, trapped inside the heavy blocks of limestones until the next sunset. Still, things could have been worse: it wasn’t monsoon season yet.

Walking straight to his destination without stopping to chat or grab a meal, working hard to uphold his reputation of complete ass (although the most commonly-used term might have been ‘intel whore’), Cassian wondered if she’d experienced tropical climate before. It could take a toll on you when you least expect it. But she seemed to be doing well enough, physically. He’d seen her walking on her leg with more ease. He could’ve accessed her medical file if he tried hard enough. He didn’t. Retroactive privacy was laughable on his part. Funny timing to discover himself a conscience, wasn’t it?

“...clear during the last debrief,” Karras growled as Cassian set foot inside a circular chamber lit with portable halogens and holotables.

She didn’t look happy—but he’d never seen Neoma Karras in a good mood. That might have been her baseline.

When she noticed his presence, the woman straightened up and pushed her white braided hair behind her shoulder. Whoever she was conversing with before Cassian’s arrival earned another curt reply through a comlink. She then sent them on their merry way with a final curse. Cassian racked his memory by habit; Sarkhai dialect, and it involved someone’s mother.

“Trouble?” he asked.

Karras punched the holotable with unnecessary strength to turn it off. “Ask me if space is dark.”

“Right,” he snorted and stopped next to the woman with cerulean face tattoos.

“You’re out of your pit of despair yet?” she asked before he could add anything else.

“Looks like it.”

“You could have cracked down on a few more hours of sleep. No rush.”

“You asked me to report for psych eval. Here I am.”

“There’s no real urgency,” she said, arms crossed to mirror the disapprobation in her voice. “I mean, you know, besides the war. We’re losing great with or without you, Captain. Whatever Draven thinks he needs you for, someone else can fill in. We’re all replaceable.”

“I’m aware.” Cassian scratched his mouth, weirded out by the feel of his shaved face. “I need to do something. The sooner you clear me…”

“If I clear you,” Karras cut.

“Come on,” Cassian sighed in annoyance. “I’m not a first-timer. I know how this works. As you said, there’s a war. People get fucked up. Moving on.”

“That’s what you want me to put on your eval?” she laughed, unamused and unimpressed. “Moving on.”

“You put whatever you want to put in it, as long as you send me back to active duty and not some sort of shitty desk job.”

“You’re fucking terrible, Andor.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

Karras finally uncrossed her arms and gestured for him to follow. “Alright then, let’s have a talk. And make yourself convincing so I don’t have to input too many lies.”

#

Jyn sat inside a cockpit that would have been dirty if there was enough light around. The only source of brightness came from the datapad she had in hand, alongside the faint glow of electronics on the main console. Through the frontal viewport, she had a panoramic view of the maintenance airshed. The long, desolate hangar was almost empty of ships. A pitiful sight. Either all their resources were currently in the black or they were down to a dozen light starfighters. Barely a squadron. Inconsequential against the seventy-two starships of any ISD attack fighter wing.

Cold sweat dripped down her nape at the thought. Could it be that bad out there?

Yes. Yes, of course, it was. She only had to take one look at Hadder, at Shara, or at every other pilot to know. And not only them. The foul mood had infiltrated every layer of personnel, from top to bottom, spreading around like a disease as rebels exchanged doomed whispers all around base.

Jyn wasn’t used to it. On the Basilisk, when something went astray, culprits got a double watch or any other sanction fitting the crime. But, ultimately, decisions and insights stayed confined to High Command. Maybe to senior officers. Everyone else down the chain of command blindly followed orders and clocked in and out of shifts to earn their paytransfert.

Even her, enjoying a front seat to the entire galaxy, had barely heard anything about the Rebellion. It was easier, she realized. Easier than making decisions for herself. Because if nothing changed, soon Jyn wouldn’t have any navicomp to run checklists on. And what then? What would happen if this failed? If the Empire crushed all resistance and emerged stronger than ever, an undefeated stronghold, a monolith, a giant beast made of steel and blood?

It was all Jyn had ever known and she never questioned it, but now, this familiar vision frightened her. Like an unaligned scope, the illusion had shattered. She could never unsee the ripples in the sand. Everything that was once her home had been forever tainted.

“Dawn,” someone called from the hull and Jyn almost jumped in the pilot seat, startled. “They want you in Command.”

“What for? I’m not done here.”

“How should I know?” the other snapped. “Move it. Draven’s in a bad mood.”

Not the only one, she thought as she watched the flight technician give her a side-eye. Any time she found herself around him, the man acted like she’d killed his whole family in their sleep. Well, maybe she had. That was the problem.

Deciding not to ask who the fuck Draven was and why she should have cared about their mood, Jyn unplugged her equipment and powered down the control block. Her bad leg was tired after sitting for so long in that weathered sit. She took long strides down the tarmac to push some blood to her extremities. Walking wasn’t a problem anymore. She’d healed quite well—quite remarkably, even, if she remembered just how gruesomely she’d been impaled on that wreck.

She barely had a limp, even if permanent. Sometimes an itch where the synthskin met the original product in a sea of ugly, twisty scars. In the Imperial Navy, she could have put her name down on a waiting list for cosmetic surgery. A very long list. Rebels didn’t have the luxury. The scars they earned, they kept. They were proud of them anyway, like a token of strength, a badge of honor. Coping mechanisms, most probably. Jyn didn’t mind her scars but she hadn’t found any honor in surviving a terrorist attack by the grace of a man that betrayed her. So, that was that.

She could run alright now, as long as it wasn’t to push records. She didn’t run to the headquarters that day but she strode fast. A part of her was curious. For the first time since she’d gotten here, she’d been instructed to leave the repair bay.

She dared to hope it meant—what were Karras’ words—that she’d earned something more exciting to do. Only problem was: she wasn’t sure where to find Command. She wasn’t about to ask.

Jyn followed the biggest power lines along the dark corridors, burying herself two levels deep inside the old stones. It made sense, protected from aerial strikes. If she crossed paths with people, everyone ignored her, assuming she knew where she was going and had a reason to. Confidence was key. Then Jyn stopped following cables and started following shouts—which was even easier.

She entered a circular chamber high of ceiling. In the center, a pit of greenish-blue light shone on top of a round holotable. It currently displayed a multi-layered map of a complex astro-terrain, with density of asteroid fields and any other astral objects that could obliterate a craft to dust. Several dots blinked on the canvas but Jyn stood too far to gather intel. Four people were gathered around the tactical map. They weren’t the only ones present, she’d noticed other stations cramped in the room and a steady chatter coming from operators wearing bulky headpieces, but they were by far the loudest.

One, in particular, was familiar to Jyn. With her white hair and ghostly-white skin, Karras stood out like a snow figure. Jyn had never seen snow, but she imagined.

She took a step to join them, not sure what else to do. The smell in that room was borderline unpleasant, reeking of old and humid. The air was hot and sticking to her skin. On second thought, she probably smelled even worse than the place. Fuel fragranced, directly brought to your nostrils from the source. Well, it was urgent, wasn’t it?

“Ah,” Karras called when she noticed her, “come here and tell them I’m right!”

Bold statement, alright.

“That’s the girl?” a man asked, seizing her up and down.

He was Human, light-skinned and light-haired, in his forties or older. She’d never been good at guessing ages. One thing she was good at: serving glaring looks on the verge of insubordination. That douche sported a General insignia. Bet she’d just found Draven.

“Jyn Dawn,” Karras introduced her. “She’s an astrogation technician. Expert one, according to her own words.”

Jyn tried not to react to the obvious jab. Weird thing being summoned for her skills just to be put down in front of the audience. She couldn’t say she understood how Karras worked. She didn’t try very hard either. She didn’t actually give a shit—but she was fully aware of the stares weighing on her. One mistake and she would be sent back to the repair bay for an indefinite amount of time. General Douche Draven didn’t put it into words but his facial expression was loud enough. Or the lack thereof. Eying her like she wasn’t even part of the furniture. (Impressive skill.)

“Be our guest, then,” he said, pointing at the holomap with his chin.

Jyn took a step closer, sweaty hands concealed in the crook of her arms. “What am I looking at?”

“We have a squadron running on fumes and the closest carrier isn’t close enough to intercept. Now, we could do a jump to the Jinata system but—”

“Jinata is under Imperial colors,” Jyn said. “Locked down, even.” Which would be suicide.

“Precisely,” Karras continued. “So use that big brain of yours to make it work. Otherwise, they’re already dead.”

“Jinata’s too risky,” another voice said. “If they manage to crashland somewhere with breathable atmo, we’ll put a SAR mission in the air. But what you’re proposing is insane. Not only approaching that system unannounced but sending a ship to meet them... They’ll be blasted into pieces on sight. I’m not even talking about the jump. You want to crash into a parked destroyer? Insane.”

He had a point. Several, in fact, and good ones. Karras dismissed the arguments with a click of the tongue. Jyn liked her a little, maybe.

“Well?” Draven hurried her.

“Two questions: how long and what are they flying?”

“They declared emergency twenty minutes ago,” someone informed her, “so about five and a half hours. All of them are flying TIE fighters.”

“Like what?” Jyn asked with a pensive frown. “Agressor? Phantom? Striker? Can you be even more vague?”

“Err...” The younger man peered down at his datapad in search of an answer. Not finding one, he opted to give her the pad so she could see for herself. She skimmed across the info on the screen. The chart looked nothing like Imperial documentation but the denominations were familiar enough that she knew what she was reading. Lancer series. Oddly enough, same models as carried by the ISD Basilisk. Which meant Jyn knew their limits better than the manufacturer.

“Six hours ten minutes.”

“What?” Draven asked.

“There’s an additional thirty minutes of lifesupport on those models, after blackout. The air goes through their rebreathers to filter CO2,” she summarized. “So, six hours ten minutes.”

“Does it make a difference?”

“Depends,” Jyn said, gazing at the little red dots moving on the projection screen at a painfully slow speed. “I need a navicomp. Can I talk to the squad leader?”

“Give me a viable plan,” Draven answered. “Then I’ll think about putting you in contact.”

First off, rude. Second, fuck you.

They weren’t about to be friends, but that was fine by her. Just another CO to report to.

She wondered. She wondered if he was the one to tell Cassian Andor ‘yes, fuck her into spilling Imperial intel to you. That’s your viable plan.’ And suddenly, Jyn tasted ashes in her mouth. The rage took her by surprise, each time. Like it would never die down. Like she would never escape it. One moment it lay buried underneath her skin, the next it squeezed her throat so hard that she couldn’t speak anymore.

She looked into the pale blue eyes of that man, trying to imagine what sort of orders he gave. Did he take pleasure in it? Did he think she deserved the assault because she was the enemy? Did he care about what it did to his brave little spy? Did he know he nearly killed the man?

“I can calculate the jump to Jinata,” she said dryly. “I know the security distances they use to exit hyperspace. The Navy has strict protocols about it.”

“No you can’t,” the man—who probably did the same job as her—replied, bewildered. “No, she can’t! Right?”

“I think she can,” Karras chimed in.

“Using a cloak ID, your carrier will be unsuspected until they’re at close enough range for visual inspection. If your squadron times it right, they could be picked up and jumped off again before anyone can react. The Navy won’t have time to scramble fighters to intercept.”

“And you can cloak it too, I suppose.” This time there was annoyance in the tech’s voice. She ignored it.

“I can.”

“What’s your contingency plan if the timing isn’t right?” Draven finally picked up, his voice lazy as if he wasn’t interested in this conversation. “If they miss a minute window and we now have a heavy freighter trapped in fire range? Or if your calculations are wrong—”

“Won’t be,” Jyn cut, her pride wounded.

“You’re willing to bet your life on it if I sit you on the bridge?”

“Yes.”

That gave him a pause. She couldn’t read his expression and she hated it. He spared a glance at Karras. “Quite the specimen you’ve brought in.”

“I don’t belong to her,” Jyn hissed. And it wasn’t Jyn Dawn talking anymore, it was Senior Lieutenant Jyn Erso. “And I sure as shit don’t belong to you. I’ve brought myself in. Now you’ve asked if I could make it work, I can. It’s not my job to think about contingency. You’re the general, right? Warfare is your department, mine is making astrophysics work for you. I can put you where you need to be when you need to be. For everything else, ask someone else. Sir.”

If she’d spoken to Mullinore like that, she’d be pacing a cell behind duraglass for a couple of days. Did they have cells in this place? Probably. Even rebels needed to maintain some semblance of order. With so many different paths of life, so many codes of honor, so many faiths... a common target could only unite spirits. The mundane crimes always persisted. And she might have been just in time to experience their disciplinary system. Since she couldn’t be demoted of a rank she didn’t have, she wondered what the next best thing would be.

“How soon can I get a flight chart?” Draven questioned.

Alright. She didn’t expect that. She licked her dry, cracked lips. “Like I said… depends. How old are your best navicomps?”

A sigh from Karras said ‘old’.

Draven squinted his eyes like a predator zooming in on his diner. “Better get started, girl.”

#

Jyn sat alone inside the Cherry’s Luck, her back to a wall, in a far corner where she’d come to enjoy the strategic position to spy on others. As per usual, the mess hall bristled with agitation, smoke, fried food aromas, and the acrid smell of hard liquors. She had a drink in front of her, to occupy her hands and appear as if she was nursing her mental health, but she’d barely touched it. It tasted like flavored kerosene.

It would taste even worse if she happened to remember her company the last time she got drunk. No thank you.

She just wanted to sit here so she didn’t have to sit alone elsewhere. There was a distraction in the proximity of others, even if no one talked to her.

Hadder wasn’t on the ground, she had checked—which set her list of friends in the negative range. Pity. What did she even need a friend for? To share her victory?

Her calculations had been right, of course, they would be. That ballsy plan of Karras had worked, so perfectly, in fact, that Draven couldn’t believe it. He stared at the monitors with a streak of sheer surprise on his face, the first real emotion she’d seen emoting from him. So the man was capable of human emotions, after all. He just chose not to share them most of the time. Good to know.

It took almost a full minute and the confirmation from a deckhand that their lost squadron had been picked up by the carrier for him to reintegrate his body. She wouldn’t have thought the man could be this relieved. Second set of emotions.

Jyn frowned, not really seeing past her cup. She wished she’d been more of an expert to decypher and understand people, but that wasn’t her area.

She wondered what Cassian had to say about the general, if he was the type to kiss his ass and his decisions. She wondered where Cassian was, too. She hadn’t seen him since the other night. All she knew was that he wasn’t dead in this room because she’d checked, one or two times. No more than four.

He could’ve had the decency to be around, that banthafucker, for when she did something useful. Congratulations would have been nice. That’s why he wanted her to come, wasn’t it?

But why was she thinking about him anyway? She didn’t need him to be proud of her.

Her daddy issues begged to disagree but she ignored the problem. And if she stood watch in her lonely corner, it wasn’t in hope of seeing him walking inside the cantina. Not at all.

Because she didn’t need him. She didn’t need anyone. Only herself and that blast awful moonshine on her tongue.

#

Cassian Andor didn’t show up but someone else did.

When she recognized the man in his black flight suit, Jyn almost choked. Now she knew why the squad leader had been so accustomed to Imperial operations, and why he’d answered her using the same lingo. It also explained how rebels were in possession of TIE fighters, although they’d stolen their fair share of Imperial material. That squadron was made of Imperial-bred pilots—defectors, just like her. Walking around in the boots of Nath Tensent and his Vortex Squadron. Fucking surreal.

When he saw her, Tensent recognized her right away. Maybe he had suspicions, too, and was looking to confirm them.

The man walked straight to her, head high and shoulders squared, as if he owned the place. As if he was still commander aboard the Basilisk. Nasty looks trailed behind him, unsettled by the group in obsidian gear among orange and green jumpsuits. Tensent didn’t give a flying fuck and neither did his squadron. How foolish those people were. How arrogant. How prime. Her people.

“Mothermercy!” the man smiled with teeth, “So you’re not such a good girl, after all. I knew we had the same friend.”

Jyn didn’t return the smile. Her chest hurt, blood pounding in her eardrums.

“I’m very sure we do not.”

“No? Ah, fuckbuddy then. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you’ve made it out alive. Was it you, just earlier, on the comms? That kind of precision screamed Imperial to me but I didn’t want to vex anyone. Not until I wasn’t short on oxygen anymore.”

She didn’t deny the fact and Tensent took it as an invitation to sit with her. So did the others, and soon enough, Jyn was joined by nine people. They looked insultingly well for having come so close to a suffocating death.

What a group they made, traitors huddling together to fend off larger predators. This wasn’t the way to go about things, and Jyn knew it. It was dangerous, reckless. She was supposed to assimilate. But as soon as the squadron started talking, as soon as these people started joking about their flight and what a brilliant rescue she’d done and what confusion they’d caused to an actual Imperial squadron… she forgot caution.

She even laughed when Reeka, a woman only made of muscles and sharp angles with deep dark skin and lilac eyes, told them to picture the look on the OOD’s face when he saw a rebel boarding craft emerging in his frontyard without warning.

Lots of heads were to be fired because of them or—more likely—demoted into abyss.

Jyn sat there and drank with people she’d only observed from afar on the Basilisk, people far beyond her circle. It didn’t matter anymore. The circle had shrunk and the pilots in black, with their familiar jokes and their familiar faces, felt like the home she’d lost. She had her gang of traitors, after all.

#

Rain. She didn’t remember the last time she felt it. But like everything else on this fucking planet, the rain wasn’t cold, as if it didn’t fall from the sky but rose from the soil. Only adding to the unbearable, ambient humidity.

It formed a violent, foggy curtain of grayish drops outside, drenching the vines-covered stones and turning dirt roads into mud tracks. Getting ships in and out of airsheds would soon be a logistic nightmare, which made her eager to see her little astronav stunt rewarded with a ticket to fuck off from repair duty.

Right now, Jyn still smelled the grease and motor oil staining the prefab of the storage unit under her boots. Even the rain, coming through the blunt opening under the assault of the wind, couldn’t wash the smell away. Jyn felt perspiration running down her arms, meeting hot droplets of rain on her fingers as she braced herself against a bulky crate coming up to her midsection.

Turned out, Tensent still thought she had an attractive ass. So she let him.

She didn’t know why she felt like it. He wasn’t her type. Maybe she was a slut, after all. Maybe she wanted to know what it felt like with someone different. Maybe she was desperate to fill that void inside her—to feel something other than pain for ten minutes. He made her feel at ease, somehow, even in all his rudeness, because he was what she’d always known. On a physical level, it wasn’t bad, very straightforward, not much to think about. But they weren’t lovers. They just fucked to satisfy a basic need.

Jyn wasn’t too impressed. Which was all for the better, she didn’t want to be. That was the whole point.

“Don’t come inside,” she warned over her shoulder.

Blast, she didn’t feel like cleaning that mess afterward. Tensent groaned in her hair, his hips thrusting against her, hands holding at her waist. He still smelled of space—if that was possible. Dark fuel, hot iron, black soot. She missed it. She missed the black, the silence, the infinite.

Here, now, everything was too mortal, too human.

Tensent did not come inside, for which she was glad. She heard him catch his breath as she pulled her pants up. He leaned against the crate, flysuit hanging low. “You didn’t finish,” he said.

“No.” Jyn pulled her hair into a tight ponytail without looking at him. She could’ve made herself come. She just didn’t want to let him feel her like that. She didn’t want to sit and chat either. She was already sobering up from arousal and bad ideas alike.

“I’m not rebel enough for you, is that it, Lieutenant?” Tensent snickered with a twisted smile. “I bet you took your sweet time with him.”

Jyn spun around. Her fingers closed around a wrench the size of her forearm and she hit the man in the stomach with it. Just hard enough to hunch him over, lungs empty of air. She threw the weapon at his feet with a loud thud, not even concerned by his reaction. Was she an adrenaline junkie now?

You stupid girl.

“I’m not a lieutenant anymore,” Jyn said, keeping her voice from rising, “and you’re no commander of mine. You’ve left the Basilisk, remember. If you treat me like I’m your bitch, I’ll bite your face off.”

#

Cassian dragged himself to his berthing on nothing but sheer will. Don’t put him behind a desk, eh? Convoy duty almost had him on his knees. How could he be so out of shape? He needed to do something about it, to get a fucking grip. Fastlike.

But first: sleep. Or transient coma. Whichever came first.

Only when he opened the door and took a step inside the dark room, the cot wasn’t as empty as he’d left it three days ago. Cassian froze, pins and needles running down his arms. His eyes quickly adjusted to the soft shadows, scanning his unsuspected guest. She’d torn off the blanket from all corners, almost like revenge, twirling it between her limbs as she laid on her side, arms pressed against her chest.

Cassian put his backpack on the ground with careful, silent gestures. He stripped from his jacket in slow motion, making sure the fabric didn’t catch on buckles. Jyn didn’t move.

He knelled beside her, barely breathing. The last time he’d watched her sleep under astral lights, she still loved him. It hurt like a gaping wound in his chest. Everything he’d let himself touch for a blink of time, everything that wasn’t his to take, things he could never have. But to trick everybody else, sometimes you had to trick yourself first. And he was so good at it. Always had.

His mistake had been to hope. Who could blame him? What did he have if not hope? Now reduced to cold ashes—and yet, Jyn was still here.

What do you want from me? Tell me, I’ll give it up.

Then, he noticed the shy tears in her eyelashes, running over the bridge of her nose and down to the palm pressed under her cheek.

Cassian lifted a trembling hand, pressing the pad of his thumb under her eye. Erasing traces. Tears kept coming and he let them. If he woke her up, she’d leave. He couldn’t bear the idea, so he let her cry in her sleep. Resisting the burning urge to lay with her and to put his arms around her.

All he wanted to do was to hold her, to feel her heartbeat under his palms, to build her up and show her his truth. But he couldn’t even ease the nightmares.

What was he still alive for?

Enough. He wasn’t a child, he wasn’t a martyr. He was just a man—and a man could act.

“Jyn,” he whispered while stroking her hair gently. “By whatever sun, it’s always a new dawn somewhere.”

She cracked her eyes open slowly. Cassian watched as she emerged from the horrors that inhabited her nights. Her gaze focused on him as if surprised to find him in his own room. He registered her microexpressions all at once, the twitch of her lips, the way her brows pinched together, her breathing going still. Conflict burned deep in her eyes like collapsing stars.

For a while, neither of them dared to move, only looking at each other. Then Cassian let his hand drift away, sensing the critical shift of tide.

He could read it all on her face. She hated that vulnerability built in her, the weakness of her own feelings. The things she couldn’t shove deep enough to suppress. She hated him for witnessing it, adding to an already long list, and now she could only leave or break.

But all she whispered instead was: “On the Basilisk… did you recruit Tensent?”

Confused by the question, Cassian knew he was about to walk into something sinister. But he’d promised never lying to her again and he couldn’t betray his word, even if his instincts told him to evade before he had a noose around his neck.

“Yes.”

“Well, congrats,” Jyn said, anger in her throat, “I just fucked him.”

Another layer of the world collapsed around him.

Cassian was wrong. It was his turn to leave or break.

Chapter Text

Looking into his hard, cold eyes, Jyn came to think she had made a strategic mistake.

Something frightening hid in his stare, something unfamiliar and so far out of her control. She didn’t know why she said the words, she didn’t plan to. A vicious impulse, just to see if there were consequences. To seek a reaction, to hurt, to take revenge. But it didn’t taste anything like she wanted it to and she didn’t understand.

“I’m not doing this,” Cassian said through his teeth.

She frowned. Doing what?

Although his voice barely came out as a whisper, he looked angry and resentful in the way he clenched his jaws. Exhaustion pulled at his face, more hollow without the camouflage of facial hair.

Jyn forced herself to swallow. She sat up, her undershirt clinging to her back uncomfortably. Echoes of her dreams still plagued her mind. The smell of blood and the voices of hundred chilling cries altering her brain’s chemistry. Always the same images looping under her skull to remind her what she’d escaped. Like a tether line, it kept pulling her back to him.

He was the only reason Razana Frye was dead and Jyn Erso was not. And if Commander Sward had taken another route through the ship that night, it could’ve been anyone but her.

Jyn couldn’t accept the chance of her fate. She wanted a kriffing reason why—and she knew there wasn’t one to find. No matter how hard she wanted to, she wasn’t anything special.

“That’s all you have to say?” she sneered, unable to rationalize her anger.

“You can do whatever you want, Jyn.”

The coldness in his voice hit her like an ice cloud, solid and sharp. Wasn’t he going to try, not even a little? Was it all that it took to push him away? Why were all the people in her life so eager to get rid of her? Of course, yes— she wasn’t nice, she wasn’t easy, she wasn’t well-behaved. What did she expect?

No one could ever want someone like her, not unless they had to pretend they did.

“I thought you said you loved me.”

Cassian huffed an unhappy sound.

“What does it matter?” he asked, bitter and spiteful. “Do you want me to curse, to fight, to cry? You can fuck Tensent. You can fuck the entire base and some! It changes nothing. I’m not doing this. You want me to hurt you and I’m not doing that dirty job for you.”

Speechless, Jyn had to take a moment to compose herself.

He still stood on his knees before her, yet she felt so small and fragile against his massive presence. She noticed the change in his posture, more composed than the last time she saw him. As if something had clicked back inside him. And if she fought to keep him from shattering, why was she trying to ravage him now?

She pushed her legs off the bed she’d taken hostage and Cassian sat back on his heels. In the dark shadows of his lifeless room, Jyn was tempted to touch his face. Even in this dreadfully hot place, she missed the warmth of his skin sometimes. Oftentimes. She remembered it to be soothing, unlike the solar flares of Yavin Prime. It came with a heaviness that let her know what the cadence of her heart should have been. She liked that feeling—following his orbit, knowing where the lines were and how not to cross them.

Her fingers ached to trace the underside of his jaw. She gripped the bedframe harder and pressed the metal into her palms until the pain distracted her.

“Do you ever let yourself feel something real?” she asked.

This, at last, enraged him. He looked at her with a menace in his eyes. Better than the complacent surrendering, she supposed.

“You don’t know what I’m feeling.”

“You’re right,” Jyn kept pushing, drunk on that need to reach the limits, “because you’re so good at your job.”

The frown cutting his face in half seemed painful. Part of her wanted to press a thumb on his forehead to ease it, to thread her fingers into his hair to see if it was still as soft as she remembered. She missed the closeness of his body, she missed the connection between them. It seemed so simple at times, like he’d known her better than she knew herself.

Now, Jyn had the sickening intuition that even fucking the entire base wouldn’t let her throw that pernicious agony away. Just as her dog tags, she would have to file down his imprint bare to the bones.

“Be careful,” Cassian told her after a difficult silence. “It’s a thin line between revenge and self-destruction.” That fucking man— “Trust me, I know.”

“If I wanted to self-destruct,” Jyn spat back, jumping on her feet, “I only had to watch you kill yourself.”

#

She marched outside as if leading an infantry charge through enemy lines.

The night sky had barely transitioned from the glimmering hues of many moons to a faint trace of violet dawn. Jyn wouldn’t know, as the dome above her hung obstructed by heavy, low clouds crying a relentless rain onto the ground. It only took a minute for her to be soaked from head to toes, the light clothes she had on her back doing nothing to shield her from the rain. That kriffing planet, I swear.

With wet hair plastered all over her face, she planted both heels in a muddy patch of terrain, behind the austere frontier of many prefab utility blocs.

There, the scream bubbled from her core to erupt in the air like a warcry. Long and painful. She screamed until her voice rasped and she had no choice but to gasp for another breath.

Then she closed her eyes and pushed her head back to let raindrops rinse her face.

“Feeling better?”

Jyn almost leaped back at the sound of that gruff voice thundering in her direction. So much for privacy.

Perched between two gigantic stone pillars, under the cover of a prominent ledge carved out of limestones, a bulky silhouette made of white and gray fur peered down at her. Jyn squinted through the curtain of rain and took a step closer, trying to discern the owner of that mocking laugh.

The sentient’s pointy ears rippled in rhythm. Due to their mane, which lay in complex beaded braids on one side of their face, Jyn thought they were Cathar, although she’d only ever seen one on the holonet. For a reason unknown to her, they’d chosen to hang a heavy-duty hammock between the two pillars and likely claimed the open spot as their personal quarters. Odd.

“Not even close,” Jyn said. “Sorry if I woke you.”

“You’re remarkably loud for such a small cub.”

Jyn arched an eyebrow. She saw the other patting the hammock with a foot full of black claws and took it as an invitation to intrude a little longer.

“Pyrepaw may share her morning food with you if you promise not to scream again.”

“Who’s Pyrepaw?” Jyn asked with the impression she’d already found her.

“I am Pyrepaw,” the Cathar beamed. She hopped off her hammock with the kind of grace Jyn could only dream of and came to sit on a dry, flat portion of carved stones, right between the legs of an old statue whose worshipers had long joined their gods. With a toothy grin on her face, she seemed only too pleased to explain: “It is not her blood name, Pyrepaw named herself to blend in! Clever, because it is a translation, you see.”

“A translation of your... blood name?”

Jyn had managed to climb the giant blocks covered in yellow and green vegetation to take shelter from the weather. Even standing, she couldn’t match the Cathar’s height. Once she was seated beside ‘Pyrepaw’, she felt every bit of a cub. A soaked one.

“Pyrepaw’s blood name is Raadami Asta’e Draralladeos,” she said with such a strong accent cutting her r’s that Jyn would've butchered it—and probably misspelled it, too. “Tribune of Cathar.”

“Jyn Dawn,” she offered in return, unsure of what a Tribune was and not feeling adventurous enough to make an enemy so early.

“Jyn Dawn. See, soft names! So Pyrepaw made one, too, for her warband.”

“I see.”

She didn’t. What the kriff was a warband?

“But only Pyrepaw and her warband call her like that!” she warned with a sudden whip of her tail. “The little wet cub... she should call her Dami. Dah-mee.”

“Dami,” Jyn repeated. “Why do you camp here? Aren’t you bothered by the fauna?”

“Only screaming Humans. Great nuisance.” Dami bared her pointy teeth, canines long enough to pierce Jyn’s arm. Unclear if it was a grimace or a smile. “They do not make beds big enough for Pyrepaw.”

Jyn shifted position, the weight of her body uncomfortable on her leg. “Right.”

The reality check slammed her like a 2g acceleration. She’d noticed that a lot of infrastructure used by the Rebellion had been stolen from Imperial factories, including ships, medical equipment, living pods... It only came in one size fits all: Human standards. The Empire had never been keen on diversity. Jyn could count on her fingers the number of times she’d encountered another species in the ranks.

Back on Coruscant, at the Imperial Academy, there had been a half-Echani cadet in the year below Jyn. A tall girl with silver hair and chalk skin. She didn’t last long. Jyn didn’t know what happened to her but she could only guess. And Echani were Near-Human. Now, to imagine Dami on a Star Destroyer, the whole crew would have been losing it.

An enjoyable idea.

“And the smell is bad inside,” Dami continued, nostrils flaring. “You, too. You smell like… (She hunched over and sniffed Jyn’s hair before pulling back, her muzzle scrunched in what appeared to be displeasure.) …a male.”

Okay. Hard punch.

Right now, Jyn smelled like sweat, dirty clothes, and probably like a wet hound. The fact that Dami could still pick up the scent of Cassian’s bedsheets on her made her blush like a teenager caught with her first boyfriend. Ridiculous. She flicked her hair back and cleared her throat.

“I was sleeping in someone else’s bed.”

“Ah! From your warband, then.”

“I don’t have a warband,” Jyn reacted in earnest.

Dami let out an indignant roar, tail sweeping the ground. Judging by the reaction, it was unthinkable. “Why?” she pushed.

Jyn raised her caution shields, ready to deflect. Maybe this conversation wasn’t such a good idea, after all. She felt like it would only take the wrong answer for the Cathar to tear her to pieces. Did she hunt prey with those teeth? Surely, rebels had some sort of guidelines about not killing their fellow comrades. But did any of them consider Jyn as a rebel? Or was she destined to remain an outsider wherever she went?

Part of the problem was her fault, always.

She’d never learned how to make friends, let alone how to keep them. She kept trying, she kept pushing herself, but she always said the wrong things. She was too brash, too arrogant, too cold. People disliked her.

She’d spent her childhood alone, tutored by brilliant minds too old to play silly little games with a child. The first time she had peers her age was upon joining the Academy. Sixteen—an astrophysics genius but too late for social skills. Teenagers were brutal creatures. There was nothing to be done at this point. Thankfully, she also knew how to throw a punch and crushed all combat courses. Fear was the only thing that kept other cadets from bullying her. Her father was his own sort of genius. Maybe he’d known all along that his little daughter would need it. When he stopped calling her Stardust and locked his heart away with the ghost of Lyra Erso.

Was the half-Echani a nice girl?

Jyn had never been a nice one and it kept her alive.

‘But you’re a good one,’ Hadder had said.

He was the only friend she’d ever had and now, she knew why. He’d never been entirely honest either, like two stars feeding on each other’s energy, periodically trying to absorb the weaker one. Maybe lies canceled each other out. Maybe it created an equal field. Hadder had never been threatened by her because he’d been the odd one, too. The traitor trying to blend behind enemy lines. Just like Cassian Andor.

How could she only fall in love with men made of smoke? Both were so close, and yet she missed the friend—and she missed the lover.

Blast, she missed that scum so bad and no amount of Tensent-like connect-disconnect would help it. She hated herself for being so… soft.

“I’m not much of a team player, I guess,” she forced out, noting Dami was still waiting for an answer.

“Then what are you doing here? Are you a mercenary? Pyrepaw doesn’t share food with mercenaries.”

She’d been reaching for a travel bag and had taken out a few rations in their non-descriptive foiled packaging when she stopped, arm swiftly retracting, and spat on the ground to make her feelings known.

“I’m an astronav,” Jyn said, now starting to feel weirdly cold. “I… helped someone escape the Empire.”

“Did they die?”

Almost. “No.”

Dami’s muscular shoulders relaxed under the dark-colored rain coat she wore. She tossed an MRE to Jyn. “Ask them to join your warband, then.” Her next words were foreign to Jyn in meaning and pattern, spoken in that same sharp accent of hers. She stopped herself and thought about it for a while. “Ah... how do you say... Blood is thicker than water of the womb, is that it?”

Jyn nodded, familiar with the Basic version. “It’s… complicated.”

“Core folks like complicated. Pyrepaw doesn’t. If you bleed with Pyrepaw, you can join this warband. Even if you’re small and squishy… and you’ll be useless until you're fully grown. But don’t fear, we don’t leave cubs behind.”

It finally dawned on her that Dami wasn’t speaking figuratively.

Jyn paused before she could take a bite of the high-proteinate algae bar she had in hand, already smelling the weird flavor mix they used for the purple ones. It always left a stain on your tongue and lips afterward. For now, her unstained lips sketched a sarcastic smile. “I regret to inform you that I’m done growing.”

Already halfway through her ration in a single bite, Dami groaned with a mouthful: “What do you mean?”

“Humans can be… small. I’m an adult already.”

A stunned silence stretched between them. Dami looked at her with smaller eyes, as if trying to enhance her vision. Very slowly, she outstretched an arm and guided Jyn’s hand toward her mouth, encouraging her with a gruff.

“Just eat. Maybe it isn’t too late.”

#

Jyn didn’t do inconspicuous very well.

She felt as if every eyes were on her while she walked back to the barracks. There, she had the displeasure to discover that Hadder had finally reappeared planetside. What a timing. Still, she was glad to see him. He greeted her with a warm smile, as he usually did.

“You look like shit,” she said. It didn’t steal his smile away.

“Aye, nice to see you too, asshole.”

Hadder folded an arm behind his head, laying on his bunk crossed-legs. Enjoying a well-deserved rest after whatever do-no-tell-Jyn mission had kept him and his squadron away from base recently. Jyn opened her locker, feeling the weight of his stare on her.

Fantastic.

There was no way to be sleek about it so she simply pulled the vibroblade from under her jacket and placed it on the top shelf.

“Karras cleared you for weapons?” Hadder asked, his voice strangely neutral.

“I thought breaking rules was part of the curriculum,” Jyn said, rummaging through her grooming kit to find a small mirror the size of her palm. “Are you gonna rat me out?”

“Me?” he laughed. “I wouldn’t want to wake up with a blade in my chest.”

Jyn glared at him, unamused. Hadder’s smile slowly turned upside down. He stopped paying attention to his holopad—currently spitting turbulent, aggressive sounds he called music—and extended a hand off the bed, pleading with her.

“Jyn, c’mon. I trust you. You know that.”

“You might be the only one,” she muttered.

“That’s what you think?”

“Isn’t that why you’re still sleeping next to me? Keeping watch for Karras? I bet Caldera Squadron has better housing privileges.”

“Hardly. Besides, I wouldn’t deprive myself of your charming presence.”

“Ha ha,” she sneered. “You’re a real jokester, aren’t you?”

“I’ve been told,” Hadder smirked, quite unimpressed by her sarcasm. “What do you need a vibroblade for?”

“Mutiny, murder, you know—the usual.”

He didn’t take the bait, which was revolting and comforting all at once.

Jyn had found the mirror and used a tin box containing a bar of unscented dry soap to keep it upright. The shelf was lower than optimal height, forcing her to bend her knees awkwardly. She untied her hair to let it flow on her back.

“I can’t be the old Jyn anymore,” she said in a grave tone. “The bitch died on that ship.”

Hadder kept quiet. He sat by the edge of his bunk, waiting for her to continue. She didn’t know if she had anything else to say.

Since she didn’t have any sort of brush, Jyn combed through her hair using her fingers. The ends were wavier than the rest due to the hairstyle she’d used most days since joining the Academy. Slicked back and tied in a low bun. Complying with Imperial Navy guidelines. Just like the uniform, it became part of her identity.

But that woman no longer existed. If she wanted a chance to figure it out, Jyn needed a fresh start. And this was the first step.

She unsheathed the weapon and took a good look at herself, trying to gauge the length of her hair. Quite impractical without a full mirror. She pressed the blade closer to her neck.

“Give me that,” Hadder sighed, “you’re going to stab yourself.”

He held out his hand expectantly, standing next to her.

Jyn had to admit it would be easier with his help, probably quicker too. Part of her wanted to refuse. She wanted to be the one to act. This had to come from her to mean something. But she’d already taken the decision (and stolen the weapon), and it wasn’t just anyone—it was Hadder. She trusted the banthafucker, however weird that might be after crying grieving tears over his fake death. Jyn had realized it wasn’t about her, it had never been.

Hadder Ponta had done what he needed to do, without asking anyone for permission. She had to respect that.

He was brave, resilient, and loyal—even to her, even after all this time.

He didn’t hesitate to offer his friendship to the broken mess of a woman he used to know, and never once bit back when Jyn tried to make him pay or to push him away. Maybe some people could want her around.

She placed the vibroblade flat in his palm and let out a heavy breath.

“Next time just steal scissors, you deranged woman.”

“But where’s the fun in that?”

“You’re not going to return it, are you?”

“Nope,” Jyn said, rolling on her heels.

“Don’t move,” he warned. “And don’t complain if it’s not straight. I’m a combat pilot, not a hairdresser. How much do I cut off?”

Jyn snorted a reply. “I’ve seen you fly. Nothing’s straight with you.”

She waved a hand above her shoulder to give him a length marker. The proximity of his body relaxed her. The smell of his leather jacket was a nice change from hangar fumes. She liked having someone touching her hair, taking care of a problem for her.

She liked having someone.

“Shut up or you’ll need a buzzcut,” he grinned. He couldn’t make credible threats to save his life. Not with her.

For the first time since she’d gotten here, the first time in weeks, Jyn didn’t want to disappear.

Chapter Text

Cassian had lost his desire to try.

It wasn’t a good feeling. It tasted like a betrayal. Every day he spent wearing Cassian Andor’s clothes made it easier to look back on Jeron Sward’s actions with analytic focus. It wasn’t an easy task pretending to be something you hate for so long, with such conviction. He’d let his love for Jyn Erso consume the man, consumed his mind, desperate to find an outlet to silence the outrage and the shame he had no space to process. Out here, in the real world, it wasn’t so simple.

He’d seen it in her eyes: the impulsive need for pain, vicious and ready to sink its teeth into him. She would destroy what was left of her just to get back at him. She didn’t even recognize the pattern. She’d never been there. Cassian had. She wouldn’t stop until nothing remained of them. Until Cassian started to hate her just as much as she hated him.

He wouldn’t do that to himself.

Better to pretend he’d never known her. Ignoring Jyn wasn’t even all that hard once he busied himself with work, seamlessly blending his every waking thoughts into the rebel machine. Symbiosis was the key. Forgetting his self entirely. Even when they found themselves in the same room, partaking in operation briefings, he could pretend. After all, Cassian had once been recruited for his lying talent.

Watch his best work at play.

“There’s a leak,” Draven said. It wasn’t a question. Coincidences like this didn’t happen. “The first convoy is lost, two cruiser-carriers destroyed. Half of Green Squadron is dead, the other half is engaged over Troisthe.”

Cassian’s stomach dropped. He didn’t know which half Shara Bey had flown in.

“There are pockets of loyalists to the Empire on Troisthe,” he said, recalling Intel reports he’d read not long ago. “Guerrillas controlling access to the entire food grid. They may have infiltrated our cell, been aware of the drop point.”

Cassian wasn’t contributing in any way, he realized, simply thinking out loud. Draven had drawn the same conclusions without waiting for him. Backlit by tactical displays and viewscreens aglow with astrocharts and status readings, the general stared at the six remaining members of Green Squadron. Six red dots slowly blinking. Six of their pilots.

“Send reinforcements,” Cassian risked. “We can still salvage this. Save the cargo.”

“What reinforcements?” Draven said somberly. “Gold Squadron is still dispatched over Lothal. Vortex Squadron’s comms are dead. We are stretched thin. This was our last shot at slipping through Imperial blockade, I can’t risk losing another freighter. It’s done.”

“Those people will starve.”

“Yes.”

A simple statement of facts. No one had the luxury of emotions left in face of the colossal losses the Rebellion suffered with each passing day. Exhaustion had crippled their war efforts. Now all they could do was to retreat and hope for the best, ensure that some of them would survive to carry on the fight. It wasn’t a war anymore, it was a desperate attempt at delaying the fatal blow.

“What about our men?”

Cassian was cut by the arrival of Caldera Squadron's newly promoted leader, following a deadly fight that claimed the lives of two of their own. The pilot’s face reflected the grief he suffered over his teammate's demise. He stood at attention facing Draven, helmet in the crook of his arm.

“General,” Hadder Ponta saluted.

“How many ships ready to jump?”

“Eight fully fueled, sir. Nine—without a rear shield. It’s the heads missing. I only have four pilots out of medbay, me included.”

“Four,” Draven muttered darkly.

“We’ll fly with four,” Ponta assured, glancing at the screens. “What’s the objective?”

Working nearby, Jyn stopped giving a shit about her station and shot the man a maddening look. Ponta missed it, focusing on the astrocharts. Cassian did not.

She cared about Hadder Ponta. Cassian had peeked at his file out of morbid curiosity after Karras mentioned him. They knew each other from their training years on Coruscant, had likely been friends. Maybe more than that. Whatever their relationship now, they remained close. Jyn’s reaction spoke volume.

Cassian experienced a twang of jealousy at the way she looked at Ponta, worried and displeased by the prospects of the mission. His mind wandered further, powerless to stop it. He pictured them together, as lovers, and tasted ashes in his mouth. It was puerile of him. Uncalled for.

But he would have given a lot for Jyn to look at him like that. To care, even a little.

“I can fill in,” Cassian said, because he couldn’t stand to see the look on her face.

Because she didn’t deserve to lose someone she cared about. Because he didn’t want her to be alone. Because it could never repair the broken trust but it was better than doing nothing at all.

So much for ignoring her.

Ponta frowned, oblivious to Cassian’s thoughts. “No offense but when was the last time you flew a starfighter?”

“You can’t hold formation at four,” Cassian answered flatly.

“This isn’t convoy duty. I can’t cover your ass in combat, Captain.”

“I wasn’t always working Intel, Lieutenant.”

He put more emphasis than politeness would suggest on the last word.

Shut the fuck up, bitchass. Don’t you see you have to come back for her?

“Squadron up,” Draven ordered, putting an end to it. “Dawn, calculate the quickest jump to Troisthe.”

“On it, sir,” she said after a short delay.

Ponta made a move to leave and paused by her station, briefly squeezing her shoulder. Jyn grabbed his wrist and held him back for a handful of seconds. They exchanged a silent look, surrounded by the sounds of a doomed resistance. Jyn had cut her hair above shoulders. It wasn’t the only thing different about her.

Cassian couldn’t watch any longer and walked out of Command.

#

“No!” Jyn argued over comms, trying to contain the heat in her voice, “They’re going to blast you into the black!”

+Hit me with suggestions anytime,+ the pilot barked at her.

She heard the blaring of electronics, multiple on-board alarms, the sound of dogfight, the pilot’s fast and erratic breathing in their mask. Particle volleys being fired into space, licking crafts, seeking a kill. She could almost feel the shadows of the Basilisk surrounding her, absorbing input signals on every frequency, waiting for the OOD to give the final order. But her tracking screens were a far cry from Imperial technology. They flickered on her, marks doubled, tripled and momentarily blurred the vectors she was studying. Jyn slammed a hard fist against the casing, prompting the radar to spurt back to life.

Piece of shit.

“Listen to me,” she growled in her headset, “TIEs have no shield. Whoever’s inside has never taken a hit, you copy? They will best you any time!”

+Nice pep talk, eh— Fuuuck!+ Evasive maneuver. Another close call. A plasma storm. +Dagger Six, they’re coming for you! Disengage! Now!+

On Jyn’s radar, Dagger Six’s mark went dark.

+…Caldera Leader, bombers incoming,+ came a familiar voice on a different channel. Jyn’s attention slipped away for a microsecond, heart thundering. +Stay in formation, repeat…+

“You have to slow them down,” she insisted over the Dagger pilot’s chatter. “Enter atmo. Aerodynamics.”

Their voice strained under stress, trying to fend off aggressors that outnumbered them three to one. +There’s nothing standing between them and civilians if I plunge!+

+Caldera Five, taking point.+

“They’re gonna lock on you,” Jyn said, ignoring the terror in her guts at hearing his voice.

+What if you’re wrong?+

“I’m not. It’s protocol to get the kill first.”

For a minute, they stopped talking. She followed the battle through her scanners, listening to residual activities from the pilot’s comms. Resisting the urge to scream at them. They’ve heard what she had to say but she wasn’t the one holding the yoke. She couldn’t make the decision for them.

+Dagger Leader, going in. All fighters, follow me.+

On the channel that Jyn wasn’t supposed to monitor, Hadder’s voice broke static again.

+…next time ‘round. Focus on the freighter. Take that bitch down.+

+Caldera Five,+ Cassian said. +Going in.+

#

+…you’re losing too much fuel. Eject now!+

+Canopy’s fucked. Gonna try to stick a landing on emergency runway.+

+Grab your fucking blaster and break it! You’re coming too fast— you have to ditch! That’s an order, Lieutenant!+

+Caldera Leader, going down.+

#

Jyn jumped off the repulsocar before it came to a full stop.

Days of heavy rain had turned the terrain into a mudslide. She stumbled forward, her bad leg awkwardly twisting as her boots failed to find steady ground under her. Yet she rushed on, ignoring everything else to run the last few meters on empty lungs. Her field of vision was a black tunnel void of landmarks. Only remained the sight of the rebel starfighter, one wing torn apart like a wounded bird, its body embedded between heavy trunks way beyond the runway’s end. The acrid smell of fuel overpowered the usual scent of the moon’s vegetation. Burnt ions. Soot. Dark space.

Jyn reaches the crash site before anyone else. She latched onto the first piece of metal she could find to climb on top of the damaged X-wing. Cold sweat ran down her back, hair sticking to her nape. Her mouth felt dry, heavy with a coppery taste. If a scream left her throat when she managed to balance herself on top of the canopy, she didn’t remember it.

She peeked inside, through broken panels of transparent metal, noticing the tangle mess of broken branches and metal bits. It was wrong. None of it was where it was supposed to be. It wasn’t meant to look like that, she knew.

(The CIC wasn’t meant to look like that. Her blood wasn’t supposed to coat the floor.)

Jyn gripped the canopy with bare hands, trying to make it budge on its axis. A frustrated grunt echoed in her chest, turning into a raging cry. She used a foot to kick it then, desperate to clear the opening. It produced a shrieking sound as it gave way. Not much. Just wide enough that she was able to lower herself inside the dark cockpit, taking a full breath of hot air. It reeked of oil and blood. Jyn’s hands trembled when she cupped Hadder’s face under his helmet.

“Hey,” she gasped, “talk to me.”

He looked at her through glassy eyes, surprised to see her. His breathing was slow and labored, barely ghosting against her sweaty skin. She looked down again, seeing the durasteel bar sticking out of his chest grotesquely. It had no business being there. No business hurting him. Not this man. Not her friend.

“Jyn…”

“You’re gonna be fine,” she said, but the words didn’t seem to belong to her.

(Displaced images flashed inside her head. The dark corridors of the Basilisk. Imperial siren. Lack of oxygen. Screams of agony. His voice telling her she would be okay. His hand holding hers.)

Jyn gulped for air, burning hot in her jumpsuit. People kept shouting orders all around but she couldn’t focus on the meaning of their words. Hadder’s pulse came out like a fading transmission under her fingers. She had to resist the urge to shake his shoulders, calling his name with an angry voice. He opened his eyes again, blinking at her. Like he’d already forgotten her presence.

“That was a shit landing,” she said.

The corner of his mouth twitched upright.

“So you worry about me, uh?”

“I wanted to be the first to tell you how much you suck.”

“I think… you care…,” he smiled. But it didn’t last long.

“Hey! Hey, open your eyes, you dick!”

She saw how much energy he put into doing it. Her stomach twisted painfully, fear closing around her throat. She looked up, trying to see what everyone else was doing, wanting to ask what could take them so blasted long. Shadows moved outside the cockpit. She felt the bulkhead shaking, rattling. They were doing something, for sure, she just didn’t know what.

“I just wanted to fly…,” Hadder slurred, “it’s so beautiful up there.”

She couldn’t tell. Was it the words or the way he said it?

At that moment, Jyn understood the tide had shifted. Inescapable. She stopped worrying about the rescue team. She stopped looking for an escape and slid closer, her hands softly around the sides of his neck, her body against his shoulder. She licked her lips and swallowed a cry. The world crumbled piece by piece around her but she couldn’t let it close its cold, merciless arms around Hadder.

“I know,” she whispered. “You’ll be able to fly again very soon.”

He didn’t believe her. They both knew it, but she had to say it.

The X-wing shook again, a piercing sound, sparks of energy and a welding torch somewhere nearby.

“I loved you, you know,” he said without looking at her, head hanging low. “We were kids... but I loved you.”

“I loved you, too.”

Jyn was able to feel someone close by, calling for a medic, calling for a gurney. Calling for more help. But they weren’t fast enough and nothing could stale time in face of unrelenting entropy.

“My mother… make sure she knows… everything.”

“Yes. She’ll be so proud of you, so proud.”

Jyn gently brushed his cheek, his skin ashen and cold under her touch. Insulting. Hadder had always been warmth, light, comfort. Hadder had always been that bright smile and caring eyes. Nothing remained of it. Only pain, blood, and disaster. Only injustice and war and sacrifice. Jyn wanted to scream. She wanted to tear the ship apart. She wanted to hurt it, crush it to pieces of worthless steel. That’s all it was to her. The worthless beast sucking life away from Hadder like a black hole feeding on his light.

“I hope… there are stars…”

“There will be,” Jyn promised. Hadder’s head grew heavier in her hands and he stopped speaking. He stopped breathing. He stopped existing. “There will be stars for you.”

Jyn rested her forehead against the side of his helmet, struck by the heaviness of grief. Paralyzed. She couldn’t see anything. A scream of agony bubbled in her throat, deafening in the sudden silence. All activity had ceased on the crash site. The whole forest seemed unnaturally frozen, like it was sentient. Like it knew.

A pair of hands gripped her from above, forcing her outside of the cockpit. She didn’t put up a fight, empty and hollow. She let herself be dragged away until she found herself back on the ground, cold to the bones in the open air. She kept her eyes closed, blinding tears ruining her face, and held tight onto the person holding her. It was Cassian. She knew it was him.

“I want him back,” she cried miserably. Ashamed of herself.

“I know.”

He caged her in his arms and put a hand behind her head, holding her like a child.

“I can’t… I can’t mourn him again. I can’t…”

“At least you were there. You were able to say goodbye.”

“I’m so good at goodbyes,” Jyn said, weeping against his flight suit. “I’m so good I have no one.”

Her heart throbbed from indescribable pain. She didn’t think it would ever cease. It pulled her under, down, down, down. Suffocating and boundless like outer space.

“You have me,” Cassian whispered, voice breaking on the last word. “It’s not much but you have me.”

#

Something was wrong with her ears. Jyn felt like she was trapped inside a fishtank. Disconnected from reality, she stared at the leather jacket in the center of the table, mission patches like badges of honor on the faded fabric. The newest one not having been sewn yet, laying on top symbolically. Caldera Leader. Knowing Hadder would never wear it again.

The moonshine in her hands stayed untouched. She couldn’t open her mouth. Sounds would have escaped her and she wouldn’t have been able to stop, then.

She merely sat there, inside the Cherry’s Luck, breathing next to others. The remaining of Caldera Squadron. Dami was here too, accompanied by another rebel Jyn didn’t know. And Cassian, a seat behind her, as silent as her. She felt the weight of his gaze locked on her. She thought of looking back. She wanted to, a few times, but she didn’t feel like herself enough. She didn’t want to break in front of the others. This wasn’t about her.

They swapped stories and memories of Hadder Ponta throughout the evening, reminiscence of moments Jyn had never known about. Yet it felt familiar in the way she knew the man who had been her friend had always been true to himself, always honest in his feelings. It was a comfort of sorts. Until silence rolled heavy over their hearts, stalling the talk. Jyn thought it was her turn to say something. To offer a farewell, to prove her grief for the sake of the living. But she couldn’t think of what to say, mind anesthetized. How terrible was that?

Just hours ago, she was talking to him and here she was, unable to remember a single thing.

“Stars.” Her voice sounded foreign to her own ears. She cleared her throat, shifting on her seat like she hadn’t moved in a million years. “He wanted stars on the other side.”

There were a few nods around the table, like she’d done her part. Like it was enough.

Her palms itched and burned around the tin cup. Dried blood had crusted over the cuts she hadn’t cared enough to clean. The rest of her body was numb to the core, offering too much leeway for her mind to wander. She didn’t want to be thinking right now. She wished for the pain to stop without knowing how to contain it. She thought of leaving the cantina, of taking Cassian with her.

Before she could decide, the night presented her with another option.

Jyn was on her feet before she could realize. Her hands were empty, so she must have let the drink go. She knew they were empty because she closed her fists, thumbs carefully tucked away. Ready to punch.

“Where the fuck were you?”

The question was directed at the man who’d just appeared inside the cantina. Nath Tensent in the flesh, dragging his provocative black flight suit with him.

Jyn had spent hours trying to contact Vortex Squadron. If they’d been there, if they’d done their fucking job, Draven wouldn’t have sent five pilots into the black. She knew about Tensent’s little scheme in the Imperial Navy, collecting credits like a merc. She knew he’d defected only to save his skin, always looking out for himself first. The man cared little about anything else. Whatever. She wasn’t in any position to judge. She didn’t give a shit. Until now.

Until Hadder Ponta had to die because Sir Tensent was too busy doing Force knows fucking what with blackout comms and a ghosted transponder. She was about to shred that scum to pieces.

“Jyn, don’t.”

Cassian’s voice startled her out of her searing rage. Low and heavy. Close to her with a hand resting on her arm. She turned to him, taking in the gravity of his expression, and it knotted her stomach to bits. His eyes looked darker in the ambient light, trying to warn her.

“Better put a leash on this one,” Tensent said.

His usual smirk was nowhere to be found tonight, his tone insulting rather than teasing. Something was off. Not that she cared. Not when he slapped her ass in passing as to remind her he’d fucked her already.

Jyn blinked wrong and Cassian’s fist collided with the man’s face. It all happened so fast that she barely had time to react. So much for keeping her cool, uh.

Tensent stumbled back, holding his jaw, momentarily stunned. It didn’t last. The retaliation came quick and caught Cassian with a punch low to his stomach. He bent down on a breathless cry, lungs emptied from air. Tensent kept going at him, grabbing him by the neck and punching him again. Cassian sent his elbow into the other’s face, prying another grunt of pain from the pilot. The two men grappled together in the middle of the cantina. Tumbling against stools and spilling drinks.

A febrile circle quickly formed around them. Onlookers started shouting as the flammable atmosphere left behind by too much hardships and too little hope started to catch ablaze. The Imperial black had no place inside a rebel outpost and people wanted blood to quench their thirst.

Dami roared next to Jyn, baring her teeth menacingly, and encouraged Cassian like he was her chosen champion. Others did the same, fists pumping chests, boots trampling the floor. But Tensent had two things going on for him: he was taller and bulkier than Cassian, and he wasn’t running on empty fumes.

The pilot sent his knee into Cassian’s mid-section. He let out a gasping sound, losing balance as Tensent tackled his right leg. Cassian landed hard on his back, head hitting the floor with a sickening sound. He took another punch to the face, dazed by the blow, arms locked in front of him in an effort to protect himself. Quickly losing his ability to fight back.

Jyn jumped on Tensent. She landed a merciless jab straight to his face. The impact moved all the way up to her shoulder. Wrists straight. Muscle memory kicking in. Years of training and the violence of a hurricane.

She cross punched him in the same breath, and aimed for his throat the next second. Hard enough to stop him from breathing. He produced a gurgling sound, eyes wide, trying to deflect her attacks with uncoordinated gestures.

Not so good with someone your size, are we. You piece of shit.

Jyn kicked his legs and sent him flat to the ground, dropping onto his chest and blocking him under her knee. She didn’t stop punching, knuckles turning as red as the man’s face. All of her hatred and despair suddenly let loose. Nothing to stop her. Nothing to distract her from the object of her fury.

She wanted to punch him until he remembered. Until he knew who he was fucking with. Until he understood how much he had fucked up. He had it coming, she told herself. This was all his fault.

You killed him.

Jyn screamed, slamming her fist down, again and again, watching blood and torn skin. She had thunder in her chest and drums in her ears. She didn’t think she would ever stop.

Unknown arms grabbed her around the waist, by the arms, pulling her up and away. She resisted fiercely; she wasn’t done. She kicked a solid boot into Tensent's stomach, heard him groan helplessly. She spat at him, heaving like a feral cat, trying to twist away from the restraining arms. She landed a last kick to his groin that sent the man rolling onto his side, moaning in pain.

“You touch him again,” she screamed over the crowd’s madness, “I’ll fucking kill you.”

With that, Jyn was finally dragged away.

“Let go,” she protested as soon as they stepped outside the cantina, shaking off strong hands and backing away.

She expected to get lectured about the fight. Expected to get sacked. Expected… something. Instead, she got Dami patting her back with a big paw, laughing her hoarse laugh and puffing in her hair.

“Now you can be in the warband with Pyrepaw.” Jyn opened her mouth but found nothing to say and closed it again. It only seemed to amuse the big Cathar. She lets out another roaring laugh. “You bleed with us, you stay with us. My people,” she said, pointing to Cassian.

Jyn scanned him from head to toe, short of breath, adrenaline still running ahead of her. “You okay?”

He let out a breathing sound, not quite a laugh, and grimaced for his pain. His face reminded her of something Jyn didn’t want to think about, blood dripping down his nose and a nasty cut above his left eyebrow. He held his ribs carefully, as if it could stop them from hurting. Jyn wondered about older injuries. He looked nothing as bad. It had been months since she broke him out from an Imperial cell but sometimes, bodies didn’t heal quite right. One nasty blow would do the trick.

Before he had a chance to answer, Neoma Karras materialized at the end of the hallway with impeccable bad timing. Still, probably better than Draven.

“What in the blazes happened here?” the woman asked, glaring between Jyn and Cassian.

“I fell,” he said without intonation.

“On a fist?” As no one volunteered information, Karras let out an infuriated click of the tongue. “Go get cleaned up, you look stupid.”

It didn’t sound like a suggestion. Cassian had a moment’s hesitation, looking at Jyn, but decided to leave the crime scene without arguing. Maybe trying to take some of the heat off. It wasn’t particularly effective.

“That’s how you’re blending in?” Karras asked her, evidently displeased by what little evidence she had. Yet too much to her liking.

“She’s done nothing wrong,” Dami growled, taking a step forward to physically shield Jyn.

To her surprise, the others backed her up as well. She soon had all of Caldera Squadron and two unknown heads on her side, swearing lies on their mothers and battling the Intelligence officer off. Karras threw her hands up, irritation written all over her face. “Fine. I don’t want to know. But I better not hear about this again, Dawn.”

“Nothing to hear about,” the Cathar cut viciously, tail wiping the air.

“Watch it, Raadami. I know you like to collect strays but those two aren’t cute.”

“Cute enough for Pyrepaw.”

Karras rolled her eyes and walked past them, shaking her head. Dami screwed her eyes after her. She waited for good measure before patting Jyn on the head, whispering: “Murderous cub. We keep her.”

Jyn couldn’t help it. She slumped against the wall and started laughing, disastrous emotions blending together into maddening exhaustion. The others started giggling, too. They all looked insane, wheezing and laughing in the dark. Jyn laughed and laughed until she cried. Ugly, loud sobs that wrenched her chest and had her nose leaking. She didn’t hide the pain. She didn’t run away. She cried and let them see, and some cried, too. And she knew if Hadder had been there, he would have said something terribly nice.

#

Jyn let herself in without a knock. She found him on his bunk, holding a pack of melting ice to his throbbing face. She came to sit next to him without a word. Cassian wasn’t sure what to say. This had been a blasted long day. Emotions were raw and unstable. Overcharged.

What he’d just witnessed inside the cantina… he didn’t know how to process it.

“Bad?” she asked.

“You should see the other guy.”

Unexpectedly, she gave him the shadow of a smile. A bit unhinged. A bit wounded.

She’d taken on Tensent like there were five of her. He’d seen her training on the Basilisk but there was a world between watching Jyn hit a boxing sac and watching Jyn demolish a man twice her size with nothing but bare hands. Cassian should have been ashamed that he didn’t get to finish what he’d started. That she had to step in to save his ass. It was unlike him to make a mistake like this, a mistake that could’ve killed him in other circumstances. Now he looked like a fool, and a weak one at that.

But all Cassian could think about was the rage in her words when she’d said: ‘you touch him again, I’ll fucking kill you.’

It was worse than looking like a fool. It gave him hope.

“Here,” she said, holding a palm up.

Cassian surrendered the ice pack into her hand, wondering if he had relinquished any decision making for the night. But Jyn was here and he didn’t want to see her leave.

She tugged at his sleeve until he understood. He lowered his aching body with his head on her thighs, looking up. Jyn replaced the ice pack against the worse side of his face. Her free hand brushed some strands of hair away from his burning face, gently combing it back. Cassian shivered.

He looked at her like a starving man, feeling his head breaking open and his world shifting out of focus. The same hands that had unleashed so much violence not half an hour ago now touched him with nothing but softness, leaving a halo of comfort behind. He wanted to purr under her fingers. He wanted to close his eyes and surrender to the feeling, yet unable to look away, even for a second.

“Jyn…”

“I didn’t come to talk,” she cut harshly. But her hand stayed gentle against his scalp.

Cassian swallowed. It tasted like blood.

Jyn’s thumb traced his forehead, avoiding the visibly battered skin. He shut his eyes despite knowing better than losing sight of her. Her touch stayed there to let him know she hadn’t disappeared. He felt like he was moving even as he stood still, falling down, falling into her arms. Collapsing into old lanes. His skin buzzed under her fingertips, hungry for warmth. Her legs were solid under his head, like an embrace. In the emptiness of his room, his thoughts threatened to drown him.

Cassian did all he could not to roll over and bury his face into her stomach.

“Stop,” she whispered, and he realized he was shaking from tension.

“Jyn,” he said again. Barely a sound wave.

He couldn’t tell what she saw looking down at him. The intensity of her gaze wrecked the last of his nerves. He couldn’t contain himself anymore, floodgates breaking one by one. He had no strength left to pretend he’d left all of his feelings into Jeron Sward’s hands. It would never be this simple. They’d gone too far together, they’d shared too much, no matter the names. Their bodies stayed the same. He felt it in the way her fingers tangled in his hair, the way she let her nails graze his skin.

“Please,” he mouthed, quiet as a whisper.

“I said stop,” Jyn frowned, moving the ice pack lower along his bruised jawline. “I’m the only one who gets to punch you.”

A broken laugh tore through his throat. He gripped her wrist, his other hand coming to seek purchase around her waist. She didn’t push it away.

“Don’t be stupid next time,” she said.

“I wasn’t thinking.”

“My point. You’re lucky he fights as bad as he fucks.”

Cassian grimaced, burrowing closer without realizing. He needed to hold her, to keep her to himself. He needed to anchor his heart between her hands before it could be washed away. He felt so cold, alone in his skin, ice against his face. The only spark of warmth lived where her hands rested over him. He needed to hear it.

“Do you care?”

Jyn fisted his hair tightly, almost to the point of pain. He opened his eyes, finding her expression hard and unapologetic. How could she be so small and fill so much space?

“We bleed together,” she said, “we stay together.”

Chapter Text

Planetside, it was the middle of the night.

It might have helped: sleep-deprived, lower cognitive abilities, less likely to question a last-minute change of personnel. Cassian walked the blackened tarmac with the same confidence he’d used to navigate the ISD Basilisk. He’d learned the trick early on. Just act like you belong, and you already do.

He whistled a short note to grab the recruit’s attention. A young one with coppery hair and a full face of dark freckles. Cassian didn’t know the name. Someone he’d never met. Someone green enough to still be impressed by Captain Andor’s pathetic signals of authority. He’d done his best—groomed, geared, his old jacket, rank insignia visible, the tactical boots from Maddel, an Imperial datapad in the crook of his arm, a rifle case in the other.

Now, it would only work on someone that had not been privy to the latest base gossip depicting Cassian Andor as a useless, broken nut-case only good for clean-up jobs. How the mighty had fallen. People lined-up to see it, to witness the crash site, hoping for blood. But today might have been his lucky day.

The recruit snapped at attention—body language screaming that he had not been half asleep on the job, I swear, sir.

“Change of plans,” Cassian said, and tossed him the datapad carelessly. “You’re on convoy escort for Dodonna.”

“Convoy?” the young pilot blinked. He’d managed to catch the datapad in extremis and couldn’t decide whether to look at the back-lit screen or at Cassian. “I’m supposed to fly a NRP to the Rim in ten.”

“I’m taking over. I’ve got a dead drop in that sector.”

“Sir? That’s…”

“I’m not asking,” Cassian frowned. “I’m telling you.”

A small, awkward silence followed. The pilot glanced at the datapad once more. There was, indeed, a resupply operation about to go live as detailed by the Intel briefing on the screen. Either Cassian’s demeanor had been convincing enough or the man decided that he wasn’t paid enough to ask questions. He nodded and mouthed a “yes, Captain,” before climbing the back ramp of a tragically old freighter. Possibly a D-80, or D-85. Civilian, no armament, in too bad of a state to be used as anything other than a glorified space taxi. At least, it had a functioning hyperdrive.

The young pilot soon reappeared with his personal effects over his shoulder and strode away just as fast. His footsteps echoed loudly inside the dark hangar but no one paid it attention. Satisfied, Cassian boarded the rusted shuttle and dropped his own bag in a rack before moving to the pilot seat.

The coated fabric was frayed over the cushioned headrest, irritating to the skin. The cockpit smelled of space… soot, iron, a tinge of sweat. Cassian flexed his fingers, trying to shake the tension off. He grabbed a headset and pressed a few buttons, powered on the onboard navicomp, and started his preflight checklist.

Now he just had to wait.

Jyn showed up a few minutes before the departure window. He heard her from a distance, the distinct rhythm of her uneven footwork announcing her rapid approach. She climbed aboard, ditched a bag on the side, and another into an empty compartment in the galley.

“Outer Rim, right?” she asked, a bit winded. “Sorry for the wait, I—”

She stopped dead when she caught sight of her pilot. Impressive, considering he was still facing the transparisteel frontal port. Her awareness of him knotted his stomach in ways he didn’t want to analyze. Not anymore. They’d spent so many hours being intimate, he knew her outlines better than anything else. And maybe she did, too.

“You can’t be serious,” Jyn said, voice hard.

Cassian pivoted the seat to face her, palms on his knees. “I’m just here to fly you.”

“Yeah, right,” she chuckled without humor. Head tilted, squinting. “What did you do? Did you threaten someone? Oh, I can’t wait for Karras to hear about it.”

“What Karras doesn’t know can’t hurt her.”

Jyn snorted. “Like we’re not talking about Intel brass—or do you all suck at your job? I don’t know what you think you’re doing but it’s a terrible idea…”

“It’s like you said the other night.” He paused, resisting the urge to lean on his hands. Keeping himself unnaturally still as if facing a trained interrogator. The words rasped in his throat, low and heavy. “We stay together.”

Her eyes opened bigger in surprise. It didn’t last. Soon enough, she shut down any emotion that started to show on her face. Leaving a blank slate behind, cold and distant. A lost transmission. It wasn’t hate—and that was jarring. Cassian had thought that he knew her, that he understood her mind, but at that moment, a small doubt crept inside him. Maybe he’d overstepped.

“Whatever. Do what you want.”

He exhaled. That was a far better outcome than he had expected.

#

The planet, Skuhl, was located in the R5 quadrant, not far from the Gordian Reach. It only took them a couple of hours to reach it through hyperspace. Hours that they spent in religious silence. Cassian faked to be absorbed by the ship console, monitoring computer activity and hyperdrive stability. It was a childish attempt at diversion when his passenger’s day job was to be an astrogation officer. And a mean one at that. Jyn knew full well that he was doing jack shit but she didn’t comment.

Coexisting in the same space—not peacefully, not yet, maybe… never, but at least nonviolently—was a big enough step.

From nonverbal clues, Cassian pieced together that she had been in search of some threads around the base. When she didn’t find any, she resorted to ransacking one of the ship’s medkits for synthread and a needle. It did the job. He glanced at her while she sewed the last mission patch on Ponta’s jacket with surgical focus. Once she finished, she spread the leather jacket over her thighs and looked at it for a while.

Nothing in her attitude betrayed internal thoughts. Against his most ingrained instincts, Cassian didn’t presume to know.

#

“Don’t follow me,” she said.

They’d landed at the local spaceport before sundown; few docking pads, limited services, mostly planet hoppers. Even their shitty shuttle passed for a beast of technology compared to the competition. Skuhl was as unimpressive up close as it’d been from space, flat and covered in grasslands. Not a lot of activity, not much to look at. The town barely covered a few klicks of land and only had one street: the main street. It made for easy navigation.

“I should go with you,” Cassian frowned. Hating the idea of letting Jyn out of sight.

“No.” Her angry, definitive tone had a cold edge to it. It hadn’t always been there. “I’m doing this alone.”

She’d retrieved one of the bags, carefully folding Ponta’s jacket with the rest of his belongings. There was so little to account for a whole life. A life he’d given to a fight he would never see the end of. It felt… unfulfilling. Unjust. And Cassian knew his own life would end the same way, packed into a duffel bag, with no one to be passed on to. It hadn’t bothered him before. Now, looking at Jyn as she strapped Ponta’s blaster onto her thigh and called it her own, a sharp needle twisted between his ribs.

“I’ll wait outside.”

“I said no,” Jyn erupted. The outburst surprised her, embarrassed by her own admittance of emotions. She closed her face off and looked away. “We don’t need to draw unwanted attention. It’s not like I can get lost on the way.”

“Right,” Cassian relented. Still hating the idea. “Comm’ me if something comes up. And don’t wander off.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, shut up.”

He watched her as she picked up the bag, canvas stretched around the outline of a starfighter helmet. She threw it over her shoulder, jaws locked, facing the back ramp. Cassian tapped the release button and the hull opened up with a difficult, grueling scritch. Cool air rushed inside, smelling of fuel and moist dirt. The last of a reddish sunset ate away Jyn’s shape as she walked off without another word.

It struck him then—how decisive she’d become. How she’d grown since the Basilisk. She wasn’t anything like the scared girl he’d coerced into his lies anymore. She didn’t seek his approbation, didn’t need it anymore. She was exactly who he’d wanted her to be: strong, brazen, unapologetic, untamed. And he didn’t know where to go from here.

#

Jyn left Hadder’s mother, Hadder’s home, and had to sit alone in the dark to gather herself. She hadn’t thought it would be that difficult. Perhaps the most difficult conversation of her life. She could say it now that she’d met her, Hadder had looked just like his mother. Grief struck her without warning and burrowed deep. It tasted like burning guilt. And to think she’d thought her problems meant something… What did it matter compared to a mother’s loss?

Jyn would never have children. She’d known that fact for a while, maybe not fully understanding her motives. Now, she did.

She couldn’t bear the idea of condemning someone else to the brutalities of life. So much heartache, so much pain. It felt unbearable at times, the weight of their mortalities. She missed Hadder. She missed her days at the Academy on Coruscant when everything had been simple and straightforward. Her life had been easy, back then, even if she’d never been good at being loved. Even if her father had forgotten about her and her loneliness had been her biggest weakness. She still knew what was expected of her. It’d been easy to perform and to earn respect because she’d been lucky enough to be born with a good hand.

Here, tonight, she was nothing. No one. She didn’t have any guidelines left. It made life so much harder. Crueler. And yet so meaningful. Her failures and successes were hers alone.

Jyn made sure to dry her eyes before walking back to the spaceport. (Through the fucking main street, what a joke of town this was.) She considered stopping by a diner only to remember she’d left her credits on the ship. She couldn’t say she was eager to be near him again—because nothing good seemed to come out of it when the two of them were involved—but she didn’t hate the idea of hearing his voice right now. He’d been so annoyingly clingy earlier. And, well, she didn’t have anything better in stock.

Blast, she needed a fucking hug right now.

Jyn dragged herself to the derelict starship, stomach into a tight knot, to find her pilot leaning against the bulkhead with his arms crossed. Waiting for her on the back ramp. He hadn’t even bothered to close it after her and now the ship would smell like this shitty grassy planet. She really didn’t want it to. She wanted to be back in black space, the weightlessness of a cool void easing her mind into oblivion.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” Jyn said weakly, and climbed aboard.

The solidness of the durasteel deck under her dusty boots took some of the edge off. It was familiar, expected. Comforting to be in a controlled environment. The back ramp retracted and closed, hydraulics singing, before a cool bluish light illuminated the ship’s interior. Night mode, energy conservation.

“How did it go?” Cassian asked—though his tone, careful and neutral, suggested that he was unsure if talking was on the table.

“About how you’d expect.”

Facing away, Jyn resisted the urge to run her fingers under her eyes. She didn’t know what she looked like but there was a slim chance that he couldn’t tell she’d been crying. Let’s keep it at that. All of a sudden, she was exhausted.

“I’ve heard back from a contact while you were gone,” he continued, and Jyn was thankful for the distraction. “I need to meet with them.”

She nodded, busying her hands with meaningless tasks like shedding her sleeveless jacket off. “Where?”

“On Five Points. It’s close enough but it forces us to go sublight because of space debris in the area. We could slingshot it in about ten or twelve hours.”

“I’ve heard of it. Not on glorious terms.”

She vaguely remembered the station being mentioned by officers. Officially under Imperial command, practically runned by mobsters and bounty hunters. Somewhere you’d go if you wanted to have a good time without people asking too many questions. She’d found it revolting, once. Now she saw it for what it was: the sort of decadent arrangement the Empire liked to profit from.

“That sounds right,” Cassian said. “There shouldn’t be any surprises but—”

“Yeah, I know,” she cut impatiently. “I’ll stay out of your hair.”

“No— you should stay close, in case it goes sideways.”

She made a noise. Not of acknowledgement or surprise. Just… a noise.

This was all so… bizarre. After Randa, she had expected him to vanish from her radar completely. Why would he stay around? Why hadn’t he left already? Sure, he’d been in bad shape at first. In very bad shape. But that was months ago. She could bet Draven would find him something to do as far away from her as possible if he asked for it. But he kept gravitating around her instead. He kept coming back no matter how hard she fucking pushed. Trying to prove something to her.

Blast, she couldn’t do this right now.

“Let’s go, then,” she mumbled, irritated.

She went to sit on the co-pilot chair to drive her point across. Her fingers drummed along the control panel, pressing buttons in sequential order until half the cockpit gleamed from red and orange light signals. Life support. Fuel distribution. Navicomp calibration. Hypermatter pre-stacking. Strictly speaking, those were all useful things to do before a flight. But even a trash can like theirs had evolved beyond the need of manually inputting each and every step. That’s what computers were for. So. Jyn looked competently busy in the same way Endicott had been at the end of every shift: doing absolutely jack shit.

Cassian sat beside her. “We should catch some sleep once we’re lane cruising.”

“Yep.”

“Okay.”

By all gods, anything was better than to suffer twelve more hours of that awful fucking silence between them.

#

The space station looked as bad as she expected. They were granted permission to dock easily enough, but that wasn’t surprising for a place catering to criminals. Cassian paid the thieving docking fees at the front desk and bullshited some unknown names for the both of them—like he had a list ready to access at all times. He probably did, with forged scandocs to back it up.

He wasn’t named Jeron this time and Jyn felt equally grateful and sick to her stomach.

Above the main entrance, a giant banner emblazoned with the Imperial logo welcomed new arrivals. Smaller posters called for volunteers to join the Imperial military, with information on how to reach the recruiter on the station. The irony wasn’t lost on Jyn.

Riding a turbolift to the main station hub, she tried to ignore how astronomically she’d fucked up her life. Well. Some would call it an improvement. She wasn’t sure what Cassian would call it. Come to think of it, she didn’t know much about him or his life. His life before. He hadn’t always been a rebel, had he? And why did he matter to her suddenly?

She peered at him from the side, half hidden by a curtain of brown hair. He’d swapped his uniform jacket for civilian clothes. Non-descriptive black. It reminded Jyn of the Basilisk. At the difference that he didn’t maintain a regulatory shave and looked rugged. It was a different kind of handsome and Jyn found it painful to witness, as if something was terribly wrong with her for finding him attractive at all. Shouldn’t she be repulsed by his person?

Not enough to let Tensent beat his ass. Not enough that she wouldn’t stab someone bloody to protect him if it came to that. Something was terribly wrong with her.

“For fuck’s sake,” she muttered under her breath.

Cassian spared a glance in her direction. “What?”

“Nothing.”

The quizzical look on his face almost made her laugh. Oh, she was so so fucked up in the head.

Coming out of the lift, Cassian led them through a central plaza. If the docks had looked bleak, the rest of the station took the crown. For one, the acrid odor floating in the air was nauseating. A subtle mix of detritus, rotten organisms, and urine. It made you regret not having a breathing mask on hand. Jyn scrunched her nose, doing nothing to hide her disgust. She would’ve been able to see the layers of grim on the living cubes, probably, if most of the solar lights above head weren’t burned out. So the whole place functioned through perpetual twilight.

“Cozy,” she deadpanned.

“It takes your breath away.”

That it did.

They followed the main line of foot traffic and passed by multiple shops, selling anything and nothing at exorbitant prices. That was space stations for you. Better not forget your toothbrush. By far, the most crowded businesses were food shops. Jyn wasn’t feeling brave enough to put her immune system through a trial. Hard pass.

Cassian walked a step ahead of her but she bumped into him enough times that it bothered her. They were crowded and Jyn wasn’t used to carrying a blaster. It made her nervous. Still, she wouldn’t have given it away. If she was to put her life in danger, she should’ve been able to defend herself. A fist fight wouldn’t get her far against a Stormtrooper.

The idea produced an unpleasant shiver down her spine. This was all so fucking personal.

“This way,” Cassian said, looking over his shoulder.

She followed him into a small alley, away from the crowd. She noticed a few silhouettes lining the humid wall of an unknown building. They huddled on the nasty ground, burrowing under covers so that nothing of them was visible. Street poverty was striking. And this was a horrible, soul crushing place to struggle. She didn’t think she’d ever seen a homeless sentient on Coruscant. She probably didn’t look hard enough. Oh, Jyn, you stupid bitch.

She swallowed her discomfort silently. Confronting her shortcomings was as ugly a spectacle as the wallpaper inside the narrow corridor. Abstract, colorful shapes looked back at her like something lifted from a bad trip on death sticks. Outdated, too. Belonging to the previous century.

Cassian marched down the hallway like a man on a mission. Jyn inwardly cringed when he pressed his naked palm against a shiny doorpad. They stepped inside a small room as poorly lit as the rest of this shitty brothel—or whatever the place was supposed to be. The bed pushed against the far wall sort of gave it away. Not much else to look at besides a three-legged table and a yellowed poster of a tropical beach resort (Come to Niamos!) pinned to the wall.

They’d traded the outside rotting smell for an inside moldy one. Jyn wouldn’t be caught dead sitting on that bed. Cassian, on the other hand, was tearing the sheets off and mauling the pillows looking for something. He found it under the mattress corner (terrible hiding place)—a datadisk.

“Just for this?” Jyn asked.

Cassian secured the prize inside his jacket, frowning. “We were supposed to meet.”

“Well, they bounced… Can’t blame them.”

“We should—”

The way he didn’t finish his sentence put Jyn on edge. Cassian was not a man to not finish his sentences. They should bounce, too.

Acting like a single cell, the two of them moved for the door. The psychedelic wallpaper burnt her retinas again but then, almost glowing in the semi-darkness like put under blacklight, white blotches emerged at the other end of the corridor, blocking the way out. Riot troopers by the look of it. Jyn froze.

A visceral terror descended upon her, similar to the one she’d felt breaking Cassian out. Knowing that it would only take one good shot to end her life. Simple as that. Worse, she was afraid they’d kill him. She fucking needed him.

Meanwhile, Cassian grabbed her hand and stirred them in the opposite direction. Walking fast. Faster. “Fuck.” Aaand they were running.

Now she was in trouble. Running was the one thing she couldn’t help but suck at. Her bad leg made it hard to keep up with Cassian’s furious pace. She was a dead weight to him, dragging her through corridors and stairs. Part of her wondered if he would let go. Cut his losses and flee. She’d make a good distraction for the squad shooting injunctions on their tail, too. But he didn’t.

He kept pulling her by the hand, making sure she didn’t faceplant as they went, glancing back sporadically as he led them through a maze only him had a map of. Next thing she knew, he shouldered his way through a door—a simple one, on hinges—and they were back outside. Immediately lunging into the crowd. Jyn was short of breath, panting through her mouth, by the time they slowed down. Not by much.

“Take it off,” Cassian urged her, taking his jacket off as he walked.

He ditched it behind a public bench without looking. He wore a cream-colored long-sleeved shirt under it. Jyn imitated him in a hurry. By the next street shop, she watched in awe as he stole a cap and a scarf with the dexterity of a seasoned pickpocket.

Cassian screwed the hideous cap over his head and tossed her the blue fabric. She draped it over her shoulders and pulled it on top of her head. They never stopped walking. Adrenaline coursing through her veins, Jyn risked a glance over her shoulder. She cursed, noticing the white armors fending the crowd a few meters behind. She had never known the dreadful fear Stormtroopers could inspire. She had never been on that side of the line before.

Their shitty disguises wouldn’t hold up against troopers’ facial scanning. They were done.

With an arm around her waist, Cassian pulled her aside. They dove inside another enclosed space. By the look of it, this was some sort of maintenance area. Huge vents blew hot, smelly air in their faces as they squeezed between vertical pipes. Jyn started to sweat, both from the environment and the situation.

“Here,” Cassian called.

It was so dark, she almost missed the opening. Jyn walked backward into an electrical shaft until her back hit solid durasteel. He joined her and replaced a heavy grid where it should have been, screening them from the other side. Only leaving a dim, filtered light to reach them. For a moment, Jyn felt like she was back on a Stardestroyer. The space was small and cramped and could’ve been one of the unmanned deck blindspots where she used to meet with Commander Sward.

“Thermals,” she whispered before her brain could cease to function.

Cassian gulped down a breath, trying to slow down his cardiac muscle. “Heating system,” he explained summarily.

In other circumstances, she would’ve asked how he knew the intricate layout of the station down to its heating system. Right now, it wasn’t important. In theory, their hiding spot could render them invisible to a thermal search, depending on the tech sensitivity and the thoroughness of the party involved. A lot of hazardous variables. But Jyn had no alternative to propose. In fact, she had been blatantly useless and took no pride in being so fucking unprepared. Her fingers grazed the blaster, making sure it was still there. Cassian felt the motion and turned his head to her. His breath ghosted across her forehead.

She realized, then, just how close they were standing. Chest to chest. Still breathing too fast. Nowhere to retreat to. She looked up and caught a glimpse of his eyes, glassy black in the shadows. She had a hard lump in her throat, thinking it could just end like that. At any given point. Because someone had ratted them out—just like she’d done to him, once.

‘My name’s Cassian. I love you.’

A weird noise bubbled in the back of her throat. But he had not loved her, not really. Because you didn’t wish for the people you loved to be someone else. Deep down, he must have known that. And maybe that’s why it cut so deep, in the end. Not because of his lies, because of his blind refusal to see her. Pushing down his idea of who Jyn Erso should’ve been onto her, just like everyone else ever had.

Did he see her now? She almost asked.

The filtered chatter of a squad comm’ shut her up. Jyn tensed on her feet. They weren’t far—closing in. In a moment of clarity, Jyn thought that she didn’t want to finish her life in an Imperial cell. She wished she had one of Cassian’s little fuckep-up pills. Goodbye, assholes. Did he have one?

She didn’t dare whispering. She stared at him. He was a good-looking bastard, after all. And he hadn’t left her behind, even if she was too slow and had made his life a living hell for the past few months. That, more than anything, meant something to her.

Jyn gripped his forearm. He hadn’t expected it, focused on the outside threat, and went rigid. She could almost hear his mind racing, but what could they even do? They wouldn’t stand a better chance running around blasting troopers like a fucking holodrama. Either they were found or they weren’t. Those were the outcomes. So Jyn pulled at his arm and he did not resist.

She leaned against him, head on his hard chest, and closed her eyes. His familiar smell made her sick with longing. Cassian circled his arms around her, almost crushing her into a solid hug. The weight of his head came to rest on top of hers and she dissolved into the embrace. It seemed like a lifetime had passed since he last held her. And it felt glorious, devastating, and arousing all at once.

She could die like that; who the fuck cared?

Jyn held onto him fiercely, fingers digging into the used fabric of his shirt. The faint traces of musk and sweat replaced the foul station’s smell. The air didn’t burn as much compared to the warmth of his body. She tried to pull him even closer, arms snaked around his waist. Nothing was enough. Cassian’s hand tangled in her hair at the back of her head, messing up with the scarf. She felt every breath he took. She felt the tension in his arms, the way his body fought to stay still. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him because she wanted to kiss him—and that frightened her more than troopers looking to hang two rebels.