Somewhere in the galaxy...
Her arms were slogged down by the mud.
Jyn spat wet hair out of her mouth. Taking a risk, she plunged the butt of her blaster into the mud in an attempt to haul herself up enough to carry on climbing. They had been told to count on the rain, but not of how it would turn the terrain of this godforsaken planet into a swamp of dirt, mud and now craters as the TIE fighters above them kept throwing grenades into their troops. She was freezing, but she blinked up at the rain and felt her arms burst free.
She grabbed the back of Melshi’s jacket, hauled him after her as they carried on up the hill. The mud thinned out thankfully the further up they climbed, allowing her to finally sprint, boots squelching every time her heels slammed into the ground. She heard thunder crash somewhere, saw a blaster bolt shoot straight through the head of her commanding officer not even ten feet away. She winced, but kept running.
“This is Rogue One contacting the general! Come in, General–”
Ignoring how her heart had suddenly leapt into her throat, Jyn yanked the comm out of her ear. Rain splattered immediately over the device, but she still managed to patch it through to the right channel. “Mavine can’t come to the comm right now,” she said, shoving it back into her ear.
“Careful, babe,” she dove into the mud, covering her head. The explosion boomed over her. “Remember, this is a public channel.”
She heard the slight snort of derision. “This is Rogue One, in position. What’s your ETA?”
Jyn glanced up at the top of the hill. Sure enough, she could just see the freighter waiting for them through the sheets of rain, lit up by the occasional lightning strike. “However long it takes to get to the top of the hill.”
“It better be soon. We’re about to lose our shield generator, after that we’re all as good as dead.”
She clambered herself back to her feet. “MELSHI!” she screamed, and incredibly her comrade heard her over the storm. He threw himself to her side and she grabbed at his arm to keep him from staggering back down the hill. “Help has arrived,” she yelled. “But we don’t have much time!”
“Considering how many times Kay has been banging on about fixing the bloody shield generator, I’d say bugger all!”
“Perfect,” Melshi gritted his teeth. “COME ON, LADS! OUR RIDE IS HERE!”
She thought of getting the kriffing mud out of her hair, of feeling his hands on her skin again. That was how she powered through the burning muscles of climbing the hill. Only feet from the top, however, a team of ‘troopers disembarked from a landed TIE fighter and she swore as she skidded to a halt. Melshi also hesitated, but she shoved him on as she immediately blasted the nearest one through the chest. “Keep going!” she said. “Keep fucking going!”
He didn’t stop, and neither did the shots. She did her best to allow Melshi break through to safety and buy time for the last of their team to scramble up the lowered landing platform. By the time the ‘troopers caught up to her there were only five left. It was more than she usually liked to gamble on. However, she still stood her ground and slammed her shoulder into the first one, using the momentum to swing his body around and blast him into two of his buddies. Her gloves shreaded as she punched and she could barely see through the rain. Perhaps that was how the last ‘trooper managed to shoot her in the thigh before she could.
She hit the mud hard, her cry of pain lost to the storm.
It hurt like a kriffing bitch. If only it had been the shoulder or something, she could have powered through that. Instead, she only managed to haul herself forward an inch or so before her leg felt like it was burning and she collapsed back onto her forearms. She forced herself to breathe. Breathe. Keep breathing.
She knew the protocol. Get out, that had been their order. The mission had clearly failed, there was nothing left to salvage, nothing more to gain from staying. They had fallen back and their goal was to get out as quickly as possible. She was just another number, another body without a face. There was no one left to heroically leapt out into the rain and save her. Her vision blurred as she tried to stand once more –
The landing platform was closing –
This wasn’t going to be how it ended. This wasn’t it. She hadn’t spent over a year deployed to the other side of the galaxy to have it end this close to him. She didn’t care how much it hurt, she was going to fucking make it.
It was only once she had thrown herself onto the retracting ramp when she realised that she had been screaming the entire time she had hauled herself over the hill.
“You must have been keen to see me.”
The bacta patches starting to kick in, Jyn turned from where she was clinging to the wall of the shuttle’s main hold. Her teeth were chattering and between herself and her team, they had managed to drip mud literally everywhere, but she felt a thrill of something white hot shoot straight down her spine. Cassian pulled the microphone off his head as he smiled at her and she scoffed.
“Nah,” she said. “Didn’t fancy dying in the mud, is all.”
He shook his head, his smile softening out slightly. “Hey.”
“Oh, you know,” she shrugged. “been better. You?”
Within two strides he crossed the space between them and engulfed her in his arms. Wrapped tight around her waist, she let him pick her clean up off the floor, adjusting her hurt leg so that it didn’t get jostled. Despite the cold, despite the pain, she suddenly felt warm. Like she was home.
She buried her freezing nose into his neck and murmured,
“Cassian, I’m still covered in mud.”
He just held her tighter.
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