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The world descended, and he ran.
Alarms whooped and buzzed. The comms system crackled, burst with instructions, uttered in cool, measured voices, belying their underlying intent. The flow of traffic was at odds with him. Arms, elbows, shoulders knocked into his. He pushed past them.
“Andor? Where the hell’re you going?”
He could fight. He would fight, given the opportunity, but that wasn’t what they wanted or needed from him. Not right now. They didn’t relish the thought of having to reassign his network, of saddling some unlucky kid with the task of rebuilding the trust, the cachet. They didn’t want to have to deal with Albarrio sector sans him; didn’t want to have to shift around operatives and stations, at a time when the Empire was sharpening its gaze. They wanted him alive. He was supposed to be on the first transport. It would be a near thing, now, for him to board on time; it wouldn’t be much longer before the ion cannons were fully charged. But he had to take the chance.
He was becoming the sort of man who’d do that. He hadn’t been, before. All of his risks had fallen within a certain set of acceptable parameters, and barring unforeseen circumstances, he had always gotten himself exactly where he was told he needed to be, exactly when he was told he should be there. Change had come on the heels of a single collapsed order, a single break, after twenty years of forced impenetrability. A nexus of need, drawing him in; a pair of green eyes, hammering away at him.
There was a loud boom. Loose wires, dangling from the ceiling, swung into one another, ends connecting. They sizzled and spat sparks. The ground heaved, and he lost his footing, pressed his hand to the wall. A woman in a cold-weather flight suit stumbled into him. She clapped him on the back before continuing on her way. The shield couldn’t have fallen yet; Imperial troops had only just engaged them. Still, the knot in his core, the trembling ball of anxiety that drove him forward, pulsed, made him shiver, quickened his heartbeat. He exhaled. A cloud of frost curled around his face.
At its end, the passage narrowed and angled off to the right. The curvature of the walls was broken by piping; thick coils, roped together, and wide, metal cylinders, wire shielding, criss-crossed the floor. The sound of his footfalls changed into a muted crunching. Snow, a thin layer, perpetual. It was hard, if not impossible, to keep it out, and they weren’t yet generating enough power to melt it. They were hardly generating enough to heat the barracks.
The world shook again. They wouldn’t ever.
The bay on this side of base was the smallest of them, housing only a handful of speeders. All of them had been deployed. The edges of the space were lined with scaffolds, crates, inert machinery, sandwiched between columns of ice. The shield doors were open, and already, clusters of infantry were jogging through them, out into snowblind and blaster and cannon fire. Over the din of equipment shifting, and soldiers calling out to one another, and officers shouting orders, and the alarms, still, the alarms, he heard his own blood, rushing in his ears. He might be too late. He might have come all the way here, only to find her gone.
He had just gotten back. He had spent weeks away from base, a length of time greater than the amount they’d so far spent in one another’s company, the agony of distance gnawing at him, a new sensation that he hadn’t quite been sure how to handle. Somewhere between touchdown and debrief, he’d figured it out. It had been obvious; he’d been doing it since he’d met her. But there hadn’t been time, and now, there was all of this.
He couldn’t be too late. He’d never been too late for her.
His pace slowed. His gaze swept over the hangar bay. So much movement. Quick, purposeful. A squad formed up around its leader, hurried, single file, toward the outside. She wasn’t part of it. He walked forward. A few men paused and cast him glances, went about their business, silent. The knot grew. She had to be here. He had to have made it in time.
Something about AT-ATs broke over the comms, the message half-lost in static.
“Cassian?”
He turned. His body thrummed. Her cheeks were red. Her hair was tucked under her helmet. There were lines around her eyes, over the bridge of her nose, where her goggles, now on her head, must have been sitting.
She belonged on the ground. She was good at that sort of fighting. He knew it. He admired it.
Right now, he hated it.
“Jyn.”
“What are you doing here?” She grabbed his upper arm. “You’ve got to go.” He stepped toward her, until his face was swimming in hers.
“I couldn’t…” He paused, breathed through his nose. It was part of his job to be good with words, but she made him need to think them through. “I didn’t want to leave without…”
Another explosion. The base rocked; darkness fell, lifted, fell again. There was an electric hum. The lights were dimmer, when they steadied themselves, and the world groaned, and off in the distance, he could hear someone screaming. He and Jyn had been thrown closer together. One hand was on her elbow, the other on her back.
Their eyes met.
“Erso!”
Her jaw tightened. She peered around him.
“C’mon, we’re moving out!”
Her brow curved downward. She looked back at him. Her eyes were cloudy. “I have to go.”
“I know.”
There was so much to tell her. There was so much to do with her. When she was at his side, it felt right. It clicked. He’d never had that with a human partner. He wanted, so very much, to keep her there.
He swallowed. “At the rendezvous point. I’ll wait for you.”
For a moment, she said and did nothing. The sounds of the battle beyond, outside, grew louder, crawling their way up a bitter crescendo. Her lips parted. She nodded. Her hand moved down, and her fingers wrapped around his. He squeezed them.
“Erso!”
The knot blossomed, as he watched her speed away from him. It spread up into his chest, into his throat. It clung to his legs, like a weight, as he rushed back through the tunnels of Echo Base. It transformed into something that felt very much like panic. He wanted to be out there with her. He wanted to hitch himself to her, as he already had, as he always would, so long as he was given the chance.
“I’ll wait for you.”
He would.
He would for a very, very long time.