Thank you so much for reading, everyone. It was a long road, and I'm glad to have had you along for the ride.
There’d been a night, in Cassian’s childhood, when he’d thought he was going to die.
The thought itself wasn’t particularly remarkable. He’d had it plenty in the years since, often multiple times in the same day. When it came now, it was muted, distant, numb. More than once, he’d welcomed it, accepting its whispered promises of rest and, if not absolution, than a fitting end.
But that night had been the first time, and for all that it had been a child’s delusion, it lingered. He’d been six, freshly orphaned, among people he as yet hardly knew, some his age, many not. The power had gone out (or, more likely, had been cut), and they’d had only one another and their shared rage to keep them warm. In the depths of the night, the grief and despair lurking around the edges of the anger had crept in. Such big emotions for a child. Impossible emotions. The wind outside had howled. Snow had whipped against the narrow pane of the window above his head. He’d shivered beside another boy, pulling himself into a tight ball, growing colder than he’d ever been and convincing himself that he and all the rest would be dead before dawn.
They hadn’t been, of course. They’d lived through the night, and all the ones to follow. They’d gone out, confronted the Guard (the Republic! Remb’s words, his deranged bygone allegiance, seeped into the memory, slick and greasy, like used blaster oil). Thrown rocks, bricks, bottles, whatever they could pick up. Graduated, over time, to more sophisticated weapons and methods, to more organized cells. And all the while, Fest had tried its very best to encase them in ice.
He couldn’t remember whether he’d hated it before his parents had been killed. It was possible he hadn’t.
Now, he was back there, or as good as, on some terrible, exaggerated parody of it, on a world that was trying to kill him, that would kill him, and Jyn besides, if they didn’t somehow manage to run through three klicks of snow before they froze. It wasn’t that he wouldn’t accept it on some level, under these circumstances, with her. They’d helped buy the Alliance time; it would regroup, and carry on without them, and there was no one else with whom he’d rather lay down his life. But he didn’t want to. Force help him (had it ever?), he’d discovered on Scarif that he wanted to live, and the desire ached in a way it hadn’t since he’d been that little boy. How bitter it would be if the will was snuffed out just as he was fully embracing it.
Do you like your Rogue One laced with Empire Strikes Back? Because I sure do. And that’s this chapter’s vibe (well, that and some things Jyn and Cassian need to talk about).
One more chapter to go!
Jyn stared at the dark of her rack curtain, willing herself to lie still. Footsteps, starting and stopping; the rustle of fabric; a pause, a sigh. The other two had already left. She still didn’t know much about them, and doubted she ever would, but she suspected this one was Kelis -- a born straggler, from what Jyn had observed.
The door opened, closed. Minutes passed. Silence. Jyn peeled back a corner of the curtain. She was finally alone. A quarter hour listening to them get dressed, swap banal early morning conversation, loudly avoid talking about the thing she knew everyone wanted to talk about. They wouldn’t have cared if she’d gotten up with them; her schedule wasn’t their concern. But she’d rather they know as little as possible about her comings and goings, and she sure as shit didn’t want to have to talk to them.
She swung her legs over the side of her bunk. Yanked her boots on a little too roughly, laced them a little too tight. The waiting irritated her, and she’d slept terribly -- shallow, her mind and body primed for a fight; the low, ever-present hum of the base mingling with the breaths of her bunkmates, growing louder and louder, burrowing into her skull. Her skin felt like a restless hitchhiker. She needed to move, to act, to answer the alarms going off in the back of her head. To do something more than sit at a desk.
The next chapter is here, with only two more to go! And I’m determined to finish this story once and for all. :)
As usual, thank you so much for reading.
Within five minutes, they were on the move.
The tunnels were thick, tighter and narrower than they’d felt before, closing in, bearing down on him. Faces, bodies -- not too many, given the storm, but strange, now, all of them. Jyn was a hot presence beside him, an oasis in a cold, power-strapped world. They moved with purpose -- not fast enough to call attention, but not slow, either.
Cassian’s thoughts raced. It wasn’t so long ago he’d told himself he was detached, calm, calculating. He’d even acted the part. But that wasn’t so; it had never been so, had always been a lie, and despite Eadu and Scarif and her, a part of him had clung to it. He’d clung to it so tightly that it had blinded him right when he most needed to see clearly. His failure was spectacular.
And then, still, there was her, and the price of her involvement, and the swirl of emotions borne of it. Someone had followed her. He’d worried about it, suspected it, but to have it confirmed… She could protect herself. She was strong, more than capable of neutralizing a threat. There was no good reason to keep up this preoccupation with her safety, and she’d made it clear that she didn’t want him to, and yet she’d kissed him not so long ago, and the desire was there whether he wanted it to be or not -- the desire to absorb blows meant for her, to take her kriffing tail and drive him through the floor.
When I find him, I’ll kill him. A strange, discordant thought, given how much he’d agonized lately over killing. But for this, for her, he’d make an exception.
It’s taken me a very long time to get this up. Hell, it’s been taking me a very long time to write this fic, period. I’m sorry, y’all.
Anyway, this chapter’s a bit longer than the others, and it’s a turning point story-wise! Also, as a heads-up: it does contain a very small (as in: it’s a single paragraph) NSFW scene.
On with the show. :)
Jyn was frustrated.
She wasn’t where she’d expected to be, and hadn’t been all day. First thing, she’d been told to report to communications. Again. There was still that vacancy, and she’d done a decent job demonstrating her competence, and that was rationale enough. She’d swallowed her objections, sucked it up. Settled into her assigned station, tossing a nod to the woman beside her, faking the appropriate social niceties. She figured she’d power through it, and then go and get on with the day she’d planned to have.
She hadn’t.
They’d pulled her from the monitors sometime after she’d eaten lunch. Told her they needed her to help review field audio. She’d been led to a small closet of a room. And that was where she’d been, through the afternoon. That was where she still was now.
She queued up the next file. It was static, mostly, and the conversation was garbled, but its pace was noteworthy. Greater than normal comm traffic, she wrote. Bursts at 00:00:20, 00:00:32, 00:00:53, 00:01:13, 00:01:27, 00:01:56, 00:02:17, 00:02:41… The timestamps ran together. She rubbed her temples, glanced at Lars, her partner. He was a seasoned cryptanalyst, ostensibly there to decrypt anything she wasn’t familiar with when not reviewing his own files. The real reason was to keep her on task, whether he knew it or not.
“Anything on that last?” she asked. It came out flat.
He blinked at her. His face went slack for a moment, as if he hadn’t quite understood, and then his brows drew inward. “Not yet,” he said. “Takes time, you know.”
“Of course.”
There was a pause. He may have nodded; she couldn’t be sure, the movement had been so slight. In the next instant, his eyes slid off her face and glazed over. He bent forward. Pressed a headphone to his ear. Tapped a stylus against his desk. The work reclaimed him, utterly and completely. They might as well not have spoken at all.
She let out a breath. The audio had ended, and he wasn’t paying attention. There were sparks on her fingertips and in her veins. She hadn’t been alone all day, which meant she hadn’t been able to follow up on any leads or on either of the names Cassian had given her, which meant she had nothing, and she was getting twitchy with impatience, and she had an opening, now. She should take it. She should switch over, access the personnel file. He’d never be the wiser.
Her hands hovered. Not so long ago, it wouldn’t have been a question. But she was calculating risk differently these days.
Cassian follows a lead, and then regroups with Jyn, and he and she tackle a relationship problem in the only way that they know how: awkwardly.
Plenty of angst ahoy.
[AO3]
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He still hadn’t spoken to Draven.
He’d gone about his day, scraps of intel tap dancing on his chest, and he hadn’t messaged him. Hadn’t gone to him. It wasn’t unprecedented; he’d acted outside of the chain of command fewer than two months ago. And there’d been times before that, too, when he’d chosen to keep mum, and had done what he’d needed to do on his own, for any number of reasons. But this was different. He knew it.
Now, it was early evening, and he was moving through the East Passage, toward its set of barracks, knowing that he could have, should have, been going to the general’s office, instead. He could have saved this for later, and still had time to spare before meeting Jyn in his quarters (assuming she was going to show). Yet that wasn’t what he was doing.
Remb hadn’t really implicated Draven. It was all subtext and supposition, drawn from withheld information and little more, and yet, the notion that it could point to something was turning and wouldn’t leave him alone. His stomach rocked and rolled from it. It was silly, on some level. He’d gone head-to-head with Imp commanders, and had lived to want to forget it. If he’d been asked, he would have pegged that as the harder thing to do. Well, what had he ever really known?
He rapped on a door. A pair of Sullustans walked past, speaking in their native tongue. He wasn’t practiced in it. They used several words he didn’t recognize, but that he could guess from context wouldn’t go over well in polite company. Hard day for them. Something about a malfunctioning astromech.
He could spin this, at least. He was gathering more information. It would excuse the delay. And it would give him extra play, buy him time to consider how to meter his words.
Of course, there was another reason, too.
At length, a woman of his height answered the door. Despite her youth, her hair was the color of Hoth. Her eyebrows climbed when she saw him.
“Captain Andor.” She was surprised.
“Ensign Konn.” He cocked his head, peering around and behind her. Two sets of racks, top and bottom, flush with walls that curved over and around them. A desk. A closet. A storage chest. It was small, cramped, and vacant, save for her. He’d expected that; he’d checked her bunkmates’ schedules. Still had to confirm. “May I come in?”
“Um.” She frowned, hesitated. He hated the way that made his thoughts start cycling. He was here, following up, but he didn’t want to suspect her. It would mean… “Sure.” She took a step back and to the left. He moved past her, eyes still sweeping, catching on the corners, on the undersides of the top racks, and then on the bottom ones. On the light fixture. He could be more thorough, but that would be a tell. There was always a trade-off: look for bugs, and give yourself away; decline to look, and risk them being there.
He heard the door close behind him, turned toward her. She was still frowning.
“It’s been a while.”
“It has,” he agreed. There was a picture on a shelf. He settled his back against the bunks opposite from it and crossed his arms. Funny thing. He’d never let himself feel guilty about the way he handled his acquaintances and his recruits. They were all there to do a job, and it was a job that mattered more than anything, including personal connections. He wasn’t callous or cruel. He wouldn’t leave someone behind if he could help it, and he'd be helpful and supportive when a comrade needed him to be. But he had always maintained a professional distance, and he’d rarely gone out of his way to spend time with anyone. If he’d ever felt lonely, well, he’d had the one real friend.
Don’t think about it.
He sure felt guilty now. He’d felt guilty from the moment he’d recognized her name, and he’d felt it again when he’d decided that she’d be the first one he spoke to. It was partially because of Jyn (how many changes, how fast, Force, he wanted to see her). It was also because… It would be another blow, another punch to the gut, if she turned out to be an actual suspect.
Marin Konn had been one of his first recruits. Years ago, back when it had still been new for him. He’d struggled with it, in those days. The contradiction of it all had thrown him. He was a spy. Spies sold a fiction. Recruiters sold a truth. He’d spent so much time perfecting his ability to lie -- dropping into personas; professing beliefs and attitudes he detested; acting contrary to his ideals and values; befriending and obeying those he hated; betraying and killing those who’d come to trust him. Closing off. Shutting down. Compartmentalizing. What would he do, now that he had to put his actual self into the job? Knotty prospect. Probably should have been a warning sign, that he’d come to view deception as easier, and preferable, to honesty.
Of course, it had gone well in the end. He’d done fine; better than, really. There was a sense of relief in it. He’d run into new recruits on base, and there’d been that familiar jolt -- mark, out of context, be mindful, what’s your story, recite -- and then...nothing. Nothing, because there was no story to keep up. They knew who he was, or at least where he belonged. He’d found that he liked that. And he relished the fact that he didn’t have to do all of the terrible things that his other tasks required of him.
He’d gladly done it again. And again. He’d excelled, and gone out alone. Cultivated an altogether different sort of network. Landed himself control of a system. Control of a sector. It had become the part of his job that he liked best. It was little wonder that it was the part that had been taken from him, and the part that Draven had dangled over his head.
What will I say to him? What can I say?
He’d tagged Marin in those early, uncertain days. He’d been very nervous, and he’d been very open, because he hadn’t figured out where to draw the line. She’d really thought he was her friend, and maybe he kind of was, for a time.
He felt sick over this.
She sat down on the bunk he’d guessed was hers. She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her thighs. “So. What’s up?”
Straight to the point. He appreciated that. “I need to ask you about an assignment you were on, three weeks ago,” he said. “The transport mission.”
She sighed, shook her head, smiled in a resigned sort of way. “Yeah. Okay.”
There it was. She didn’t say it, but she didn’t have to: he hadn’t spoken to her in how long, and now he’d come around, and it was for this. There were a lot of people who would have had the same reaction, although their numbers were thinning. He’d gotten better at not giving the impression of friendship.
He forced himself to focus. “Your crewmates -- how well do you know each of them? Had you worked with them before?”
“Uh…” She crinkled her brow. She looked like she hadn’t expected him to go in the direction he had. “Yeah, with both of them. Dedeker more, though.”
“What’s ‘more?’”
She paused to think. “He and I work together...I don’t know, six or seven times a year? Harish and I almost never do.”
All right, then. Now he knew she’d gone with two others, and he knew their names. Her name was recorded right before one of the gaps in the log, and he doubted she would have gone alone, and he’d been loathe to access her mission records after visiting the flight deck. Checking the shifts of her bunkmates had been risky enough. So, he’d gotten her to name them for him. His chest rose and fell. He recognized both names, although he couldn’t put a face to either. That didn’t matter so much. What did matter was that neither of them was new to the Alliance, and both of them had spent some time at Yavin, before and after the Battle of Scarif.
A corner of his memory itched.
“What’s your impression of them?”
“What do you mean?”
He shrugged. “Do you like them? Dislike them? Are they good at their jobs?”
“I wouldn’t say I’m friends with them, but I get along with them okay. Dedeker’s a little aloof, I guess, but a lot of people are.” The last was said with added emphasis. He ignored the dig, and she narrowed her eyes, and clasped her hands together. “Captain, what’s this all about? Did we do something wrong?”
He tilted his head back. Not you, he wanted to say, just them. “Not necessarily.”
There was a silence, as if she expected him to say more. He didn’t. Her posture changed. She nodded. “Okay.”
He nodded back. “How did the mission go?”
“It was successful.”
“Did anything unusual happen? Did you run into any problems?”
She blinked. It looked, to him, as if there was something she’d wanted to say, but then decided not to. There was a knot in him, and it tightened. He told himself that he couldn’t be sure it meant anything, that it probably didn’t. She was a person being questioned, acting like a person being questioned. “We had some engine trouble when we were leaving Refnar. Other than that, everything went fine.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Routine stuff, you know, should’ve been caught during maintenance. Dedeker fixed it, no problem.” She huffed. “I put a complaint in when we got back.”
Well, that was something. “Nothing else?”
“Uh, no.”
He straightened. The heater switched on and filled the room with its white-noise hum. It was less information than he’d wanted, but it was also enough. He could ask more, push more, and there was value in that approach. At the same time, it could reveal his hand, and he had to play it close.
“Thank you, Marin,” he said, after a beat. He took a step away from the racks, arms still folded. She was wearing that resigned smile again.
“You’re welcome.”
He moved toward the door. Shea Harish and Aramis Dedeker. He’d add the names to the list he already planned to give to Jyn. He’d check that a complaint had been made. He’d send a message to the base on Refnar, verifying the engine repair, and asking whether anything else had happened. Marin wasn’t stupid; she would have swept her ship. And she would have told him if she’d found trackers, or anything else. She would have. He’d recruited her. She wouldn’t lie to him. That wasn’t how it worked.
His thoughts veered toward Remb. Hells, he didn’t want to kill these people. There were so many he hadn’t wanted to kill, and he wanted it all to stop.
“Hey, Captain?”
He turned back.
“You ever wanna stop by, you know, just because. You can.”
His ears rang. He forced himself to smile, and then left without responding.
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It was 20:30. Jyn wasn’t there.
He tried not to pay attention. He tried not to be disappointed yet, and he told himself that he wouldn’t be, because he’d already thought she might blow him off. He tried not to acknowledge how full he was, how the tension in him was tugging at his temples and hairline.
20:32, and he tried to ignore the fact that he felt queasy. He called up the mental exercises he used in the field. He berated himself. He wondered, about many things. He again thought of Draven, about when he’d go to him, and about how he’d phrase his report.
20:35, and she was at his door.
They stood there. His heart fluttered. There was no attempt to put on an act for passers-by, on either of their parts. That was a first.
“Hey.”
“Hey.” The word felt crisp and dry.
She stepped into the room. Kept her weapons on her person. It wasn’t threatening, that; it was a sign of withdrawal. She looked up at him, and then down, and then off to the side. He watched her shoulders edge up as she took a breath, watched her chin tilt.
Had he felt awkward last night? He couldn’t be sure, because whatever it was he’d felt then, it wasn’t anywhere near as uncomfortable as this. He had no idea what he was supposed to do or say. Of course she was still mad. Of course. It was Jyn, and he’d expected her to be. He had spent all day thinking about this moment, thinking he’d know what it would be like, waiting and wanting (and wanting to share with her, unload, shed it all and sink in), and now he was standing and staring. Heart thumping. Steady, not too fast, not unlike the way it did when he was slipping into an assumed identity.
She shifted some; her eyes glanced off of him, bounced around. He realized he was squaring and steeling himself as if he was working. He wasn’t shutting down, far from it, but he’d look as if he was.
She wasn’t saying anything. He should say something.
“I have a lead.” Really, Andor? That’s how you start it? “I’ve got some names.” There was so much more to it than that, but nothing more would come.
Her lips parted, then closed. “Good.” Another shift. “I can probably check them tomorrow, if that’s what you want. I’ll have terminal access.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
“Right.” A pause. Long. “I’ve got some things of my own,” she said.
He nodded dumbly. Silence. Breaths. Eye contact. Her jaw was tight, and so was his. The air was heavy, around him and in him, in his chest and in his throat, and everything was...clogged. There was a whole torrent of impressions and longings and explanations and words and all of it was lodged in a thick, cotton-mouthed something or other. He felt a knot of anger, or frustration. She wasn’t talking to him, and he was not talking right back. It was ridiculous, foolish. Operationally, he wouldn’t stand for it; there were things to be said and done, and yet here he was, and here was she. The overhead light was behind her head. It filtered through her hair, limned her face. Her eyes were so green.
He took a step toward her. She straightened again. “Jyn,” he said. He was surprised by how breathy his voice sounded. “Look…” It was stuck. He forced it. “Earlier, at the breach…”
She cut him off. “We’re doing this, then?”
Of course they were. Why wouldn’t they, when it seemed like it was consuming everything? The air needed to be let back in the room. “Shouldn’t we?”
She hooked her thumbs into her coat pockets, and moved in a way that wasn’t quite a shrug. Her eyes once again slid off of his. “There are other things.”
He blinked. He was taken aback. This wasn’t like her. She was reserved, in many ways, but so far, he hadn’t known her to shy away from confrontation. She could be brutal in her embrace of it. It struck him that that might be part of the problem. You try to protect me in your own way, don’t you, Jyn?
“There are,” he said. “We’ll address them.” He leaned to the side, tried to capture her gaze. It took a moment, but she got the point, peered at him, head turned, lips drawn, tension in her, tension he hadn’t wanted to see again. This was stupid. It shouldn’t be happening. It had to be dealt with. “We need to do this first.”
Eyes locked back onto his. Teeth grinding. More silence, and his heart, thumping, in a way that he recognized, and in a way that wasn’t like anything he’d ever let himself feel.
“I can handle myself,” she said, at last.
“What? I know that.”
“You put yourself in harm’s way, and you took me out of it.”
The thing that might be anger flared. “You think I can’t handle myself, then?”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“I was fine, and I needed someone to lead the second team. Someone I trusted.” But he knew exactly what she meant. And he knew that she was right, at least partially, because he’d wanted her on the less risky course. He admired the way she fought, and recognized and respected her expertise, but… If she was hurt, because of the way he’d read a situation, because of orders that he’d given…
Well. There wasn’t really any way out of that, was there, given who and what they were and what was going on. Ridiculous, all of it. He was going to give her a set of names, and she was going to look into them. She was going to provide him with her own bits of intel. She was going to continue helping him and he was going to continue tying himself in knots over the question of her safety, because that was the way that things were.
Her bottom lip trembled. She was still holding herself back. “It could have been someone else.”
“No, Jyn, I’m not sure that it could have been.” He closed his eyes. Even Eri, the sapper he’d assigned to her, whom he’d known for nearly a decade, couldn’t be trusted as well as she could. He probably should have found that odd. He didn’t. “What would you have had me do?”
“Treat me like…” She paused, struggled, visibly. “...like we’re a team. Like I’m working with you, not under you.”
He huffed. “We are a team. I came up with a plan based on something that you noticed and suggested. But I had taken command of the response, and…”
“You sent me away!” The words did not echo. They struck the walls, and dropped, heavy, to the floor. She had drawn herself up, as she said them, and moved closer, her tone rising, her fists balling, and suddenly, it clicked. Her eyes widened, and her mouth opened. He realized it was only just now clicking for her, as well.
He hadn’t thought… Compartmentalization. What an excuse.
“Oh, Jyn.” His shoulders sagged. How many people in her life had left her, or had ordered her to leave them? Some of it was reflected in her record, and they’d talked about it a little; she’d asked him about Fest, so it had only been fair. But he knew he hadn’t gotten the whole of it. What he did know was that it had happened, and that it had kept happening. And, stupidly, he’d gone and made it look like he was going to do it to her, too.
He pressed his thumb to his temple, dragged his fore and middle fingers across his forehead. How could he not make it look that way? They wouldn’t always be able to stay together in a fight. How was he supposed to handle that, especially since he did outrank her, and it would draw the exact wrong sort of attention if he acted like he didn’t?
He found himself thinking dour thoughts, traitorous thoughts. It was too hard. It was all just too hard, and he was no good at it, and the only thing that really mattered was the mission, regardless how…
No. No, that was a mistake, that was a long, slow, rotting pain that hurt some allies and left others dead. He would do what she required. He had already decided. He had already cast aside his old mode of living and given a piece of himself to her, and he would not turn away from that. He couldn’t. He needed her. She was safe. She made him want to be better.
His fingers twitched. He longed to reach for her, but he wasn’t sure she’d want that.
“I know you were fine,” she said.
He didn’t think she did, if the movement of her jaw and the thickening of her voice were anything to go by.
“But…” She pressed her lips together. “That doesn’t make it feel any better, having to…” She trailed off.
For a handful of seconds, he just looked at her. I didn’t mean to make you feel that way. I never want to make you feel that way. “I...don’t really know how to do this.”
She tilted her head, moved as if she were squaring up, and yet edged closer to him. There was an almost-smile, like the one she’d given him in the data vault. “I know,” she said. “It’s hard.”
Should he push it? It might not be the time. But it was something that needed to be taken care of. If they were going to avoid drawing too much attention to themselves, if they were going to survive, then they needed to work out some sort of balance. There had to be a way for them to act appropriately in the field without him summoning bad memories.
“There are going to be times when I have to give you orders, if only to give the right impression.”
She eased back a little, and her posture stiffened, but her eyes didn’t leave his. He held her gaze and leaned toward her, until his face was close enough for her breath to wash over it. He wanted this point to stick. He wanted her to feel the truth of it. He saw a change in her before he’d even spoken, a ripple coasting down, through head and neck and shoulders. “But I will listen to you, and I will not abandon you.”
Can you really make that promise, Andor?
She blinked, and creased her brow. Swallowed.
“I mean it,” he said.
Her breaths quickened. There was a pallor to her that hadn’t been there before. He wondered if he’d screwed up. But then, slowly, she nodded.
“All right.” So quiet.
He did reach for her, then, hands wrapping around her upper arms. Her head dipped, and her fingertips landed lightly on his hips. He itched to embrace her, but something stopped him. The same thing, he wagered, that was stopping her. She tucked her head under his chin, and her nose struck the hollow of his throat. He focused on that, on the flush of contact, on the heat of her, spreading outward and sparking along the surface of his skin. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. One of his hands moved to her neck, squeezed, then drifted further up, to the back of her head, above her bun. Her grip on his hips was firmer, now, but there was still a pocket of space between them.
He wondered if he ought to put less of this on her. There’d be less confusion, that way. But, of course, that wouldn’t help in situations like the one they’d been in this morning, and it wouldn’t make him worry any less about her. Besides, he wanted to work with her. They functioned well as partners. He didn’t want to lose that, and it.was obvious that she didn’t, either. He smoothed her hair, rested his head on top of hers. This was so much more complicated than he’d thought it would be. He wasn’t a fan of that. But he wanted her, and he wanted this fragile thing that existed between them. Needed it.
Her breaths evened out. The fabric of his trousers bunched in her hands, which then crept to his waist. She looked up at him. Less guarded, now, her chest rising and falling, measured. She was very warm. “Are you…” Hesitant, unfinished. He got the meaning well enough, though. It surprised him, because he hadn’t expected her to shift focus so quickly. He supposed it meant they’d done an okay job of resolving things.
And they did have more to talk about. Once they’d started putting it off, he’d have kept on, as long as she needed. He hoped she realized that.
He considered how to answer. Doubt and paranoia, second-guessing, self-directed turmoil -- it was all swirling just beneath the surface. He’d ached to be able to share it with her, and now that he had the opportunity, he had no idea where to start. He let out a chuckle. “I feel like I’m losing my damn mind.”
The muscles of her face moved, in a certain way. He was getting to know her expressions, subtle as they could be, and he read concern in this one. Incredible. She’d been so mad at him! But, well, that was her, wasn’t it? Arguing with you one moment, shielding you with her body the next. She inclined her head toward the bunk. “Sit down,” she said.
He nodded, and let her lead him, her fingers sliding along the curve of his waistband and landing at the small of his back. She sat beside him. Her hands curled around the edge of the mattress; her knee knocked into his and stayed there. He soaked up the lingering contact.
And then, he told her everything. He started with the things that were operationally relevant -- the S-threads, the gaps, the names, the trajectory of his investigation -- and then he spoke on the rest, on all the bits cluttering up the spaces in between. Remb and Marin and Draven, his churning thoughts, confusion, lapsed faith, shifting loyalty, guilt. There was no particular order to any of it, and it felt...strange. It was so new. He didn’t do this. He didn’t open himself up. Compartmentalization. She made him want to, had already gotten him to, but he felt exposed. He felt selfish.
She was silent, for a long while. She watched him, listened, waited. Whether it was because she couldn’t think of anything to say, or because she thought it was best, he couldn’t tell, and he found that it didn’t matter. There was a lot that she could have done that she wasn’t doing. It turned out that that was more the point.
“It’s...a lot,” she said, some time after he’d finished speaking.
“Yes.”
She sighed. Grabbed his opposite shoulder, pulled him to her. Turned, pressed her forehead to his. Their noses brushed together. Silence, again, but the acceptance in it, and in all that she was doing, was very clear. It was astounding.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
“For what?”
He shrugged. She harrumphed. He pulled back, and brushed her bangs behind her ear. If he was being honest, he wanted to kiss her, but there was more, and they had to go over it. “You said you had something?” He hoped she understood.
She frowned. “You sure?”
The mission might not be the only thing that mattered, but it mattered, nonetheless. “Has to be done.”
She smirked. “You probably should’ve let me tell you, then.” She was teasing him. That was as sure a sign as any that they were okay.
“Jyn…”
She flashed a smile that was gone as quickly as he’d noticed it, then paused, and shifted her eyes to a spot on the wall beside his head. “We intercepted a transmission. I had to turn it over to Draven, but I know where it’s wound up.” She furrowed her brow. “I don’t think…” A heavy breath. “I know you’re worried about him, but I don’t think you have to be.”
He blinked. “What?”
“He’s on your side.”
He wasn’t sure how to take that. He should have been relieved, but there was something else there, something implied in her tone. He couldn’t put his finger on what it was. Is she just trying to reassure me? Well-intentioned insincerity? No, no, that wasn’t her style. Troubled feelings, and no place for them to go. He’d have to think on it and ask her again later. “Anything else?”
Her gaze dropped to the floor, then moved back up to his face. “When I was on patrol, I checked on the South Passage.” Her throat worked. “Have you talked to Aldes at all since this morning?”
Nervous energy seeped into his gut. “No, but I read her report.” There hadn't been anything unusual in it. “Why?”
She pursed her lips. Her brow furrowed. The professional in him sat up, at attention. “I don’t think the generator malfunction was an accident.”
-
-
He sat on the end of his rack. Jyn’s heels were touching his hip, through the covers. His back hurt. He was cold. It reminded him of nights long ago, nights he tried not to think about, but that this rotten place couldn’t help but call to mind. He made no move to cover up.
He couldn’t quiet his thoughts. He’d messaged Voya. They were going to meet tomorrow. He was a patient person; he’d had to be. He should have been able to lean into that. But there was a tickle in the back of his head, and it was nagging at him.
He was remembering something. He’d been remembering it since he’d spoken with Marin, and he couldn’t figure out what it was. He rubbed the sides of his head. The stress and turmoil were getting to him, affecting his mental processing. It had been a long time since that had happened, but then, he’d never dealt with something like this.
The blankets rustled. Jyn stirred beside him, and he looked back over his shoulder.
“What are you doing?” she asked, voice husky from sleep. In the low light, he couldn’t make out her expression.
Thinking. “Nothing.”
She drew up her legs, tenting the blankets, and eased herself down the length of the mattress, coming up beside him. “You need to sleep.”
He didn’t say anything. This close, he could see her eyes, and strands of hair, broken free from her bun. The side of her hand grazed his. They hadn’t had sex; they’d just wound themselves around each other, grasping, holding tight. He felt better now than he had before, but he was still off-kilter, and he was amazed that she’d stayed, after everything had been said and done.
Of course, he was amazed every night she stayed.
She must have taken his silence as acquiescence, because she grabbed his upper arm, just above the elbow, and tugged him backwards. “C’mon. Don’t make me drag you.”
He let out a breath. Well, he could lie awake as easily as he could sit awake, and he could hold her, maybe, for a time.
What was it? He could feel it, just out of reach, and there was a sense that if he could grasp it, then something would fall into place.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the flash of the indicator light on his datapad. It pulsed against the corner of his desk and a small patch of wall, white on white. He frowned. Levered himself up, and moved over Jyn, who heaved a sigh.
“It’ll be there in the morning. If it was urgent, they’d have comm’d.”
“I know that.” And he knew what she was trying to do, after he’d bared himself to her. This was compulsive on his part. But how could he not be compulsive, when his world had gone as mad as he felt? He padded over to the desk. He heard a muted thump behind him, as if Jyn had let herself fall back onto the mattress. The datapad’s heat spread over his palm. The message unfolded -- encrypted -- and absorbed the bottom half of the screen. He sucked a breath through his teeth. He’d expected it to be from Remb, or even from Voya.
Instead, it was from Draven.
“Cassian.”
She’d been right, of course. It could wait until morning, and was explicitly intended to. Draven wanted to see him. He was to report before the start of his regular shift. Well. No more waffling, then.
He walked back to the bunk, and rolled into her arms.
SO, this chapter took forever, and I’m sorry! It was surprisingly hard to write, despite the fact that it contains the very first scene I envisioned when I started planning this fic. I wrote a version of it over a year ago! And then another. And then another. And this is kind of a combination of all of those versions.
Anyway. Really hoping to get the ball rolling on this and get updates out faster. Fingers crossed!!!
[AO3]
Draven’s office was a small, high-ceilinged square that lay down a blunted corridor, past one end of CIC. It was sparse, functional. The walls were rough and snow-touched. The overhead light was fickle, like so many other lights, in so many other parts of base. He could have gotten something better, if he’d wanted to; some of the other members of High Command certainly had. But that wasn’t who he was.
Jyn stood at ease, in front of his desk. She felt strange. She didn’t particularly like him, and she knew that he didn’t particularly like her, but he’d seen that she could be useful and get a job done, and so he was fair toward her. That was fine. It wasn’t ideal -- irritating, if she were being honest -- but it was fine. Decent, even, as far as working conditions went. Still, the skin along her temples ran tight. He was holding a datachip. It contained the anomaly she’d found. She hadn’t had a choice; she couldn’t very well not report it, not without potentially arousing suspicion. But handing it over… If he was part of the enemy, then she’d just given them a means to cover their tracks.
Dangerous path to venture down, that. It was Saw-think -- the paranoia that had frightened her more and more as she’d neared her end with him, that had blossomed in full by the time they’d reunited on Jedha; that had found its own twisted voice in the version of her that had wandered, aimless, homeless, and hopeless. But how could she not go down it? It had been a warning, when Cassian had mentioned Draven last night. Different context, sure, but the overall implication was pretty clear.
She wondered how he managed this, how he handled the duality of thought. She wondered what he was doing right now. She was mad at him; she wanted to see him. She needed to talk to him about this, about what was happening, about what she’d found, about what she’d had to do with it. She needed to confront him. He shouldn’t have shielded her like that. He shouldn’t have acted like her CO. How could he not act like her CO when, at the time, he had technically been her CO? What the hell had she expected him to do? Treat her differently just because they were together? What did that even mean, really? Force, she was all screwed up.
A thought occurred to her. It made her feel queasy. She pushed it aside.
“What’s the duration?”
“0.19 seconds,” Jyn said. Then, almost as an afterthought: “sir.”
He sighed, planted an elbow on the desk, and leaned into his hand. Pressed his forefinger to the side of his nose, curled the rest of his fist around his chin. The light dimmed, for a long spell, and when it came back up, it glinted off the chip. “I doubt we’ll get much from it,” he said, “but I’ll have A9G-57 analyze it.”
Well, that was something. Maybe.
Draven rubbed the chip with his thumb. “During the breach...” He tapped his nose, once, twice. “Toward the end of the outage?”
“Yes. Probably wouldn’t have picked it up, otherwise.”
“Mm.” He fell silent for a moment. Then, he nodded, and let his hand drop, and put the chip down. “Regardless what we’re able to make of the transmission itself, it’s good to have caught it. Well done.” It almost sounded like he meant it. Not that she cared.
He bent forward, over his desk and his datapad and a small stack of flimsi. She watched him, and waited. There was a way, if they really needed to, to get the message back. She couldn’t be the one to get it; that’d raise an army of red flags. And it might not even matter, anyway. To a certain extent, it was enough to know simply that it existed. But Cassian needed every scrap of information she could get for him (she’d keep doing it, she needed to, she had to be useful, she could handle herself and he shouldn’t have put himself in harm’s way), and beyond that, the state of the message after it was passed to the droid would be telling. She hoped she’d be able to tell that it had been altered.
She caught herself, swallowed. Here she was, already assuming it would be altered. Dangerous mindset, easy to slip into.
Draven was still hunched over when he spoke again. He was writing. He did not look at her. “It’s my understanding that you were at the South Passage this morning.”
The shift was jarring. She drew in a sharp breath. Heat spread through her chest and crept up her neck. A prickle of anxiety, drifting in the center of a surge of anger. Are you kidding me. It was a neutral statement, dropped all on its own. No preamble, no further explanation, nothing, and yet she knew. She knew exactly what he meant. And for all that she’d expected it -- for all that the thought of it had brought her up short at the edge of Cassian’s quarters -- it still struck hard enough that she struggled to keep her features neutral. It was one thing for a peer like Voya to give them looks, and another altogether for General kriffing Draven to point it out.
She gritted her teeth. “I was.”
“You spend a lot of time in that part of base.”
Her anger swelled, straightening her already rigid back, and her thoughts turned over. People talked, of course, and it was part of his job to know everything he reasonably could about what went on on base, so it didn’t necessarily mean that she was being watched. But, oh, it sure sounded a hell of a lot like she was being watched. Combine that with the assignment he’d given Cassian, and… What else did he know? What else had his people seen her doing? Several caustic retorts ran through her head. She clenched her jaw and didn’t say them.
Took a lot of effort.
At length, he stopped writing. He looked back up at her and interlaced his fingers, elbows at angles, forearms pressed against the desk. “It’s none of my business who you see when you’re off-duty, Erso.”
No shit.
“But I’d advise you to exercise caution.”
In an instant, the heat dissipated. It sped off down her spine. She felt her expression change, despite her best efforts; felt her forehead crease. Felt a click in the back of her head. Her eyes slid to the datachip, then snapped back to him. She watched his gaze shift upwards, to one corner, and then to the other. They made eye contact. He held it. The air thickened. The light spat out an electric buzz.
Slowly, she nodded.
He looked at her for a moment longer before unclasping his hands and dipping his head, returning his attention to his desk. “Thank you for bringing this to my attention.” Writing, again. Detached. “You’re dismissed.”
For a handful of seconds, she hesitated. That wasn’t at all what she’d expected. Her legs were heavy. But she moved them, forcing herself to turn to the door.
She didn’t bother to salute. He wouldn’t see it, anyway.
...the hell?
The door swished shut behind her. She was dazed. She had trouble making sense of what had just happened, trouble figuring out how to feel. She already had enough crap to work through. She shook her head, lifted her wrist. Twenty minutes until her patrol shift started. Enough time to log out of her Comms station and beat feet to the hangar. She walked, fast. A rebel in the passage scoffed and stepped out of her way.
Her breaths came slow and deliberate. They might be able to rule him out. That was good, wasn’t it? It would be good for Cassian; it would help him, in more ways than one. But Draven had given her another warning on top of the one she’d already gotten, and she really didn’t like the thrust of it.
If he was clean, then he was on Cassian’s side, not hers. She didn’t matter, except as a possible obstacle. It was reassuring and familiar (when had she ever mattered? Being her father’s daughter didn’t count, because that wasn’t about her). It was also a stone in her gut.
She squinted into the dark of Communications. The others there weren’t looking at her. Discretion, and all that. Maybe someone would ask her later, in the passages or in the mess, if they were that sort, and if they got up the nerve. A couple of them were okay with her, had been among those who’d given her a smile and a clap on the back in the days after Scarif. Sometimes, they even said hello. She’d have to think of something to tell them.
Did Draven suspect someone in particular? Was it general? Knots, tight and pulling tighter. He wasn’t the only one watching. Over the years, her restlessness had gotten her into a jam or two, to put it mildly. But she wasn’t an idiot. She wouldn’t have been able to survive for so long if she was. She always checked and double-checked and minimized, when possible. But apparently, in this case, it wasn’t enough.
If I can’t do it…
That queasy feeling again. She had to talk to Cassian. She was terrified of talking to Cassian, because it was seeming more and more like she’d have to back off. The worst of it was that it wouldn’t even have to be a practical consideration. He’d shown that earlier. He could decide it was too risky because he didn’t want her to be at risk, and he could ask her to lay low almost as a favor, and that wouldn’t be the same, but it would have the same effect. Sure, they’d still see each other, but it would be the start. She knew how these things went.
In the end, either way, she’d wind up alone again.
The passages were cramped from the shift change, and she drew in on herself and flattened her profile, navigating the bodies with long-practiced ease. She buzzed, like she’d chugged a gallon of caf, with the tense kind of energy that set most people to pacing and drove her to get punched or shot at or locked up. It was the strange, delicate irony of her life, that she was both smart enough to survive and also, seemingly, determined to find a way to die. And that was supposed to be the point of all of this. Finding something between the two extremes. Living for something else, the way she’d once done, if she drifted back far enough, before Tamsye Prime, and parsed through all the crap. Well, part of that something was Cassian. Part of it was repaying his steadfastness, being there when he needed her. Or just...being.
Kriff.
She needed to get her brain to slow down. She needed physical movement. She forced herself to think of the patrol route, of the endless plains and mountains of ice, of the cold and the quiet. She wasn’t a particular fan of any of it, but she’d be active, once she was out there, and she’d have a focus, and she could breathe fresh air and find any number of tactile things to occupy her mind and senses. It’d get her straightened out. Maybe. Hopefully.
At least she wouldn’t be bent over a console.
She reached the hangar with three minutes to spare. The quartermaster’s was nearly as crowded as the corridors had been, and she found herself tapping the ball of her foot as she waited to collect a set of outer gear. Personnel brushed past her, some briefly catching her eye, then looking away. Hard to say the reason for it, but she knew that, at the moment, she probably didn’t look terribly friendly.
It was after she’d collected a subzero jacket, a mask, and a pair of goggles that her assigned partner approached her. His stance was wide, and his shoulders were rolled forward, and he was already buckled into his coat (his own coat, not a shared one from general supply), the one that, save for the color, reminded her of Cassian’s. Good thing, she thought, that she wouldn’t have to look at it for long.
In greeting, she flicked her jaw toward him. “Solo.”
“Erso.” He flashed her a quick, lopsided, not-quite-smile.
“Surprised you’re not patrolling with Skywalker.” She’d frowned when she’d seen his name beside hers. She didn’t have a problem with him (he knew what he was doing well enough, if you could get past the cockiness and the snark -- materially little different from the other smugglers she’d known in her lifetime), but she didn’t expect to work with him. They ran in different circles and lived on different shifts.
“He’s running exercises with Rogue Squadron.”
Jyn’s chest tightened, and so did her fists. Her next breath was shallow and hard. Two words, halting, uttered by a man she would have liked to get to know, echoed in her skull.
She swallowed. Turned her head, shrugged on the coat. “I see.” Moved her fingers over the fastens, cinched the belts, the uppermost one digging into her ribs. It was a poor fit, like her issued thermal, but it wasn’t as if there were many to spare, and it was the closest available to her size. She wasn’t going to complain. After all, she at least had access to a coat. In fact, she had access to two different ones, and one of them she even got to keep with her own stuff. Quite the luxury.
She started walking, gloves cradled in her arm, mask and goggles hooked over her fingers. Han fell into step beside her. A man passed them going in the opposite direction, clutching a datapad, head bowed, and Solo twisted sideways, avoiding contact with both the stranger and Jyn.
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you, anyway,” he said. “This makes it less of a hassle.”
She glanced at him. They had interacted very little, in their time on Echo -- enough to each get something of the measure of the other, and not much more. She’d seen him in passing, and heard talk about him (and, boy, did people talk), but that, of course, was different. She couldn’t think of any reason for him to want to talk to her, and she didn’t have any reason to seek him out, either. And she certainly couldn’t think of any reason why he’d do what she was pretty sure he’d just implied he’d done.
“Don’t see how. Unless you plan on hugging my ass and making this take twice as long.” In truth, she wouldn’t mind being out there longer than necessary, but that was neither here nor there.
He huffed. “Very funny.”
“Sure.”
They had emerged into the hangar proper, and were within a few meters of the shield door, which was wide open. At the threshold, a handful of fresh powder caught on a gust, spiralled upward, nearly struck the ceiling before collapsing and fluttering back down. Jyn heard a low bray. She turned to see a handler leading over a pair of tauntauns.
“Look, let’s cut the crap and get on with it. You have a reputation…”
Heat, again. Rising up from the pit of her stomach. “So do you.”
He adjusted the tack on his tauntaun. “...so I went and read your file.”
The hell is this? She regarded the bright white expanse of Hoth with longing. Her skin was crawling, and every single person she came across today seemed to exist solely to needle or confuse her, or both, and her head was spinning, and she really, really needed to get outside and be alone.
“Oh?” She thrust her foot into a stirrup, grasped the pommel, hoisted herself up. The animal’s scent assaulted her nostrils.
“You’ve, uh, heard of the Pathfinders?”
Her head snapped to him. She’d hooked the strap of the goggles around the back of her head, and was starting to pull them down. They hovered, now, in hands that had gone still. Yes, she’d heard of them. She even knew a few of their names, from the winnowing she’d done for Cassian.
Solo was astride his own saddle and was tugging the edge of his hood into place. The fur spilled over his forehead. “You have a background in guerilla warfare, you have explosives and hand-to-hand combat training, you’re okay with a blaster, and you managed to sneak into an Imperial base. More than one, if you can believe Imp records.” He smiled in that lopsided way, again, but it stuck around longer this time. “You’d make a good fit.”
There was a second -- although it felt like much, much longer -- when she had no idea what to say, how to react. This was the second conversation she’d had in less than an hour that had veered off in an unexpected direction, and it felt a bit like getting whiplash. The intent behind his words resolved itself, and she decided that yes, yes, it was as she’d suspected: he’d gotten himself paired with her on purpose.
So, it appeared, he could try to recruit her.
Her hands started moving again. She settled the goggles over her eyes. “I already have a division.”
“C’mon, kid.”
Kid?
“Don’t tell me you like being in intel.”
The knots in her stomach tautened. She felt her anxiety like a plucked string, its vibrations flowing up and down and outward.
“What makes you think I don’t?” She didn’t, of course, most of the time. But that wasn’t why she was there.
“Call it a hunch.”
They were moving toward the door. The tauntaun’s gait was high and rough, even at a walk. In a certain sense, she was accustomed to it, but her thighs would ache later on, as they always did. She checked the frequency on her commlink, synced it with Solo’s, and reached up to her mask. His was already secured across the lower half of his face.
“So,” he said, voice muffled, “what do you say?”
Her heart thumped hard enough for her to hear it. He was right that it would be a good fit for her. It aligned with everything she’d been taught, with all of the things she’d done growing up and couldn’t stop doing once she’d been cut loose. It would be active. It would be an outlet.
She thought of Saw. She thought of a night, late, when she was 14, going to him with something, something she could no longer remember, but that she was pretty sure was some stupid teenage bantha fodder. He had meant to be alone. He was leaning forward. His hands were covering his face, and when he’d pulled them back, his eyes were wet, and so were his fingers.
She thought of Draven. She thought of silent footsteps, mirroring her own.
She thought of Cassian.
What if she had to back off? What if she couldn’t safely help him anymore?
What if he was okay with that?
Putting himself in harm’s way like a...
“I’ll think about it,” she said, securing her gloves. She needed to talk to Cassian.
Han nodded. “Well, don’t think too long. I don’t like being yanked around.”
She also needed this patrol. Kriff, her head was a mess, and she had to get it in order before she went and did something really stupid.
“Got a preference?”
They’d be splitting as soon as they were out the door, touching base from time to time, keeping comms open. This, she didn’t give a second thought to. Even with everything; even with her nerves fraying and her brain working overtime, with her lingering anger and her restlessness and her boredom and confusion and fear and astonishment and all the rest, the answer was obvious. The transmission had come during the breach. And she wasn’t out of the game just yet.
I’ve realized recently that I’m actively avoiding working on ‘Static in the Signal.’ I care so much about it that I’m terrified of screwing it up, and that results in me jotting out 20 sticky notes’ worth of outline (yes you read that correctly my process is literally sticky notes) and then going “okay I did a thing and that means I don’t have to actually write tonight.”
TO THAT END, I am deadlining myself. This has worked before. It can work again.
June 1st, nearly a year from its start date: ‘Static’ completion or bust.
