HE HAS LEARNT TO recognize the rhythms of the day. From the first tendrils of dawn that slip through a window too high up & too small for him to reach or even think about squirming through & into his room ( bare walls, small desk, thin mattress, no company ) to the quiet industry of midnight when a scant force of rebel soldiers run back & forth, keeping watch while the rest of the force catches a few hours of rest, he knows the time of day by the noises & the slant of light through the window.
He knows that it is now nearly midday.
It is lonely here, much lonelier than he had thought it would be. He had thought that an Imperial facility, where he could trust no one & where he could not even reveal his true self to the silence of his own quarters, was the loneliest place in the galaxy. He was wrong. This is lonelier.
Perhaps because he knows there are people all around, people he could talk to, people he could meet & people he could help, but they refuse to acknowledge him.
He sits most days & stares at the wall, writing endless notes on numerous discontinued ideas from his youth. He has no one to transcribe them, so he doubts that they are readable or even remotely useful. But, it is something to do to pass the time, is it not?
His eyes drift down to the graphite clutched tightly in his right hand, sitting poised upon the blank paper. He had sat down half an hour ago, but he had not yet written anything down. He had been lost in memory, lost in thought. This confinement is doing no favors for his weary mind.
At the sound of someone at the door, he turns just enough to watch them enter. He expects Bodhi, who tries to visit each day, though can never keep to a strict schedule. His surprise, however, is evident, at the sight of his daughter.
‘Jyn!’ he exclaims ( thought the exclamation is hardly profuse; it is quiet ), ‘I did not expect you today.’
her skin is not her own. the doorway feels like an escape behind her, a convenient way out of the mess she’s let herself into here; she’s not sure who it is that steps forward far enough for it to slide shut behind her because she knows she’s not brave enough to have done it herself.
she’s made a point of keeping her distance. it is one thing for a desperate reunion on a stormy platform with x-wings screaming in the wind above them: the situation all but calls for grasping hands and unafraid hugs; it is something else entirely to face him again in the cold light of reality.
he’s a stranger made up in parts she no longer recognizes. the pieces she sees of him now don’t quite match up to the image in her mind, to the shadows of memories of before that have been burned through and sullied by the memories she’d replaced that version of him with. that same old anger sits ever-present, ready on the tip of her tongue, ready to lash out like the eight-year-old who’d been left behind by a coward. her fingers curl into a fist at her side but she forces herself still.
honestly, she’d never imagined that this might be them someday. not in all the time she’d spent with saw, not when she’d been on her own, not when she’d seen his message and his truth cut through the anger to the very core of her. this room feels as sterile and lifeless as the rest of them do and something about the fact that his quarters aren’t that dissimilar from her own is almost calming. they’re on a level playing field.
she wants to say something but she’s never been good with words and now, when she needs them, they’ve deserted her entirely. her mouth opens, then closes. a nicety: something soft and formless feels appropriate, but she’s never been one to ease herself into a conversation. her voice, at least, is even when she speaks.
“you didn’t leave me, then, did you?” she’d seen his message, she knows what he’d said; she wants the words again. she wants the admission without the flicker and hum of static between them. “you didn’t choose to stay away?”
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