Chapter Text
Childhood, adults always say, is the happiest time in life.*
Whether that’s a hopefully comforting assessment or a hopelessly naïve one could be a matter of perception, or privilege. Or perhaps the decision depends on when childhood ends. When is a child no longer a child? By twelve standard years? By sixteen?
When Cassian Andor was 16, he went to war again.
When Jyn Erso was 16, she was orphaned for the second, but not the last, time.
When Bodhi Rook was 16, he lied about his age to enlist in the Imperial Navy.
When Kreyla Trozrela was 16, she killed her first, but not her last, parent.
Perhaps what ends childhood is not an arbitrary number of years, but rather what circumstances force children to do.
“In a kinder universe, she would have walked away from Scarif. I cannot imagine who she would have become, but I think she would have been extraordinary.”
- Mon Mothma, reflecting on Jyn's short life.**
Let us imagine, then, a kinder universe.