Summary: Backstory to the fight Cassian and Jyn have after Eadu
Warning: Character death, angst
A/N: Haven’t written anything awhile, but just watched Rogue One again and wanted to write a backstory to this scene! It’s kind of dark, but hope you like it.
We ran down the dark hallway, following Jess to her ship, getting further away from the cell we had spent a week in. My injured leg was slowing me down; I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up.
“How much further?” I call ahead.
“Not much! We just have to get to the end of this hangar and we are homeward bound!” She yells back over her shoulder. The fact that the rebels had decided to focus on this star destroyer at this specific moment was just too good to be true. The force must need us for something. My breath was getting ragged and I could tell that Cassian was tired too. The lack of food and water for the past couple of days was taking its toll and quickly. We turned another corner and I can see the space open up at the end of this last corridor. Almost there. Cassian grabs my hand and pulls me toward the entrance to the hangar. We have to pull off to the side, wasting precious seconds for our escape to let technicians and mechanics fly past us, back into the depths of the ship.
“Lucky us, there will be no one left in the hangar.” Cass says, his voice low. He gives my hand a quick squeeze. I squeeze his hand back, giving him a small, excited smile. Even though we are so close to leaving, I begin to feel a sense of uneasiness and dread. After the last of the Imperial workers exits the hangar, we rush to our escape route. Each step we take is quicker than the last, knowing we don’t have much time left before this whole ship blows. We make it halfway across the floor and stop, shielding ourselves behind a support beam in the middle of the space.
“That’s my ship right over there.” After taking off her imperial hat and loosening her jacket, Jess points with her blaster to a small cargo ship maybe 200 feet away. “I am just waiting for these guards to move from the fighters on our left.” Cassian and I peer around the lieutenant to see four stormtroopers inspecting other, larger imperial cargo vessels. To our right, the fuel containers used for topping up the ships started to creak, adding to my need to get on Jess’s ship and at least a lightyear away from this star destroyer as quickly as possible.
“Is there any way we can distract them?” Cassian asks. I can see the gears turning in his head, always trying to strategize.
“Guys I really think we need to move soon.” The tanks opposite us becoming noisier by the second.
“Y/N we can’t move until we figure out this trooper sitch.” Jess says. I start to move out from the support beam into the open floor space to get a better look. All the stormtroopers look very occupied with their inspections, hasty to get things set before they got the order to evacuate, an order that was imminent.
“They aren’t looking we should just make a run for it.”
“Y/N/N, hang on a second.” Cassian sounded as anxious as I felt. The feeling in my chest that something wasn’t right was so tight I almost couldn’t breathe. I reach for Cassian’s hand and try again.
“Cass, I think we should—” BOOM. Blinding yellow light from my right was the only thing I saw as I was slammed backwards into the cement support beam. Something shot into my side, but it was nothing compared to the sickening crack that could only have been my skull hitting the beam before everything went dark.
I hazily regained consciousness. I don’t think much time past because I could still feel the blistering heat from the explosion of the fuel tanks. I couldn’t see. I feel the panic rising in my chest and try to movie my hand up to my face to wipe away whatever was in my eyes that was blinding me but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get my hand to my face. I couldn’t move anything.
“Y/N!!!!” My heart felt like it was caving in on itself. I had never heard this level of fear in Cassian’s voice for as long as I had known him. “Y/N, Y/N are you okay? Oh my God.” I could feel his hands on my skin ever so lightly, grazing my forehead and cheek. But it was a far away feeling, one that I wasn’t quite sure had actually happened. I felt a dull but deep pain in my right abdomen, and my head felt so, so pressured. I tried to speak but the words wouldn’t form. I couldn’t move my mouth.
“Y/N talk to me PLEASE. Say something, move a finger, baby anything.” He was panicked now and so was I. I couldn’t do what he asked and I wanted to so badly. I feel as though my whole body was shrunk into my head, like my legs and arms and the rest of my body was sucked back up into my brain. Cassian kept trying to have me do something, anything to show him a sign that I was alive, but I couldn’t and it was killing him.
“Baby, I need you to stay with me. I need you to stay alive so that I can propose to you. I have the ring and I have been planning this for months so I need you to pull through for me so I can do that okay? Can you do that for me please?” His voice broke on the last word and I can feel his arms on my shoulders, desperate for a sign. I was overwhelmed with emotion. I wanted to give him an answer, even one tear would do it. Nothing.
“She’s still got a pulse, we’ve got to get her on the ship. It’s the only way she has a shot Cass.” Jess’s voice. She survived too. I felt myself lifted from the ground and the wound in my stomach started to throb and my head felt like it was ready to fall off.
I was set down on something hard. I had to assume we were in the ship now. My mind was getting foggy.
“Stay with me. Stay with me.” Cassian’s voice was low as he set down to work next to me. I could faintly feel something soft wrap around my head and a cool substance began to fill in on the back of my skull. The same cool sensation was just barely felt on my wound in my side. Bacta. My heart felt like it could soar. There was a chance I could make it. Jess called from the cockpit.
“How is she?” Her voice sounded really far away. “She is still breathing and has a pulse. I’ve got bacta patches on her wounds, but the sooner we get home the better. You better fly as fast as you can.” Cassian gripped my hand but the sensation in all my limbs was faint. The blurriness in my mind was inching closer and closer together, threatening to take over completely. That bacta better work faster.
“I love you. I love you so much, you’ve got to stay with me. You’re all I have left.”
I wanted to tell him that I loved him too; that he was the only one I would love for the rest of my life. I wanted to tell him that yes, I would marry him when he asked, and that we would see the end of the war together. But my lips wouldn’t cooperate. I couldn’t even feel his hand on mine anymore. Breathing was getting so so hard. I was so tired.
“No, no Y/N, Y/N, stay here, stay with me. Please, stay with me.” I grabbed her hand so tightly I was sure I was breaking bone. I couldn’t feel a pulse. “Y/N breathe. Breathe for me.” My voice broke on the last word. She was gone. She was gone and it was my fault. If I had just listened to her in the hangar we would have all been safely heading home. I flinched when I felt a hand on my shoulder. Jess didn’t move her hand, she just slowly kneeled down beside me. “I am so sorry.” And I broke. I fell back onto the ground, face in my hands. This was my fault. I don’t know how long Jess sat there with me, one hand on my shoulder, but when I looked up we were just finishing up landing procedure.
The med team came aboard and gently lifted Y/N up and onto a stretcher, covering her body with a sheet. All I could do was watch as they took her away from me. Someone helped me up, I don’t know who, but they guided me down the ship ramp and back onto solid ground.
“Who is that under the sheet. Who is it. WHO IS IT???” I heard a man’s desperate voice yelling and looked up. Two people were holding back a young man, Y/N’s brother, who was screaming at the top of his lungs. My fault. He looked up, saw me, threw off the mechanics who were holding him up, and made a straight line over to me. “HOW?? YOU DID THIS. YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO PROTECT HER. TO KEEP HER SAFE. HOW COULD YOU.” He delivered a swift right hook and was restrained before he could do anymore.
Soaked, Cassian did a mental tally of those on new ship they had hijacked. It looked like everyone made it back onboard. “Ion thrusters low until we cleared the storm.” He instructed the droid.
“Understood.” K2 immediately jumped into action at Cassian’s instruction. Before Cassian could say anything else, Jyn cornered him.
“You’re in shock.” Cassian stated matter-of-factly. He just wanted to get off of this planet. Off of this cargo ship as soon as possible. Jyn, however, had a mind for a fight.
“You went up there to kill my father.” Shit. He looked away from her.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re in shock, and looking for someplace to put it.” I know the feeling. Cassian tried not to think about the accident so many years before, but he was failing. Jyn was persistent. “I’ve seen it before.”
“They know. You lied about why we came here and you lied about why you went up alone.” Cassian was so exhausted from the events of the last day and a half that he snapped. “I had every chance to pull the trigger. But did I? Did I?”
Jyn was just as angry. Cassian recognized the fire in her eyes. It was the same fire that Y/N’s brother had in his the day he brought his sister home for the last time.
“You might as well have. My father was living proof and you put him at risk. Those were Alliance bombs that killed him!”
“I had orders! Orders that I disobeyed! But you wouldn’t understand that.”
“Orders? When you know they’re wrong? You might as well be a stormtrooper.” The last comment hit so close to home that he couldn’t fight it anymore. The memories came flooding back. His family. His friends. And Y/N, the only person he had left to fight this war with, dying in his arms.
“What do you know? We don’t all have the luxury of deciding when and where we want to care about something. Suddenly the Rebellion is real for you? Some of us live it. I’ve been in this fight since I was 6 years old. You’re not the only one who lost everything. Some of us just decided to do something about it.”
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