Chapter Text
"Arrange whatever pieces come your way." --Virginia Woolf
“You do have a choice in this matter,” Jyn is told about her future marriage, but like all things in her life, the choice comes within narrow parameters.
You may choose a dog, but it must be a pure breed, easy to train, and small enough that it can sit in your lap.
You may choose your dress but it must reach your ankles, be designed by a fellow countryman, and be unadorned by trinkets least you look cheap.
You may choose a husband, but he must be an aristocrat, his connections must be of strategic importance, and he must be on the list we have compiled in advance for you.
You should love him, is nowhere on that list of particulars.
+
All the “adults” get to decide on the final candidates: her father, her mother, even her sensible Uncle Bail who gives her an apologetic shrug and then speaks of duty to the nation. The politicians even get a hand in it. Prime Minister Mothma adds names to the list with detailed explanations to the advantages of each, and Home Secretary Draven pushes perhaps one or two candidates who hardly seem fit for company but come from nations with important military ties.
“You will get the final say, Stardust,” her father tells her over dinner.
“Oh, well that’s a relief,” she says dryly, digging into her tureen of soup.
“You’ll meet them all, of course,” her mother adds. “We’ll hold a ball.”
“How old fashioned,” Jyn says, feeling sick to her stomach as the reality of her situation comes closer and clear in focus.
“Would you rather not?” her father asks her, putting down his fork.
“So what, I meet them, dance with them, and the one best at waltzing and small talk wins the prize? Wins me?”
“Jyn, you make this sound like a competition.” Lyra frowns and motions for the staff to give them privacy.
“If only it were!” Jyn says.
“And if it were?” her father asks curiously.
“Then I’d insist on pistols at dawn! Winner take all!”
“Jyn!”
+
Baze brings her the final list of candidates, his face grumpier than usual, which Jyn appreciates as it matches her mood. She’s in her library, which will eventually be converted into her future husband’s quarters, and she stares out the window with the view of the pond and wonders what he will be like, whoever he will be, and whether or not he will appreciate the view that she’s loved most of her life or if he’ll simply keep the curtains drawn.
“I do not understand the need to rush this step,” he grunts, placing the leather-bound folio into her hands.
“I suppose everyone would prefer to make this match before I actually have a chance to fall in love with someone myself,” she says, thinking of the first boy who had dared to find the courage to kiss her, and then to the young man at university she’d fallen in with, who had given her an inkling of what love might have felt like, even if it was only a poor approximation of it. But she still opens the folio, pulling out each clipped-together profile.
“I am sorry, but if they think they can reign you in, highness, then they are foolish.”
Jyn reaches out and takes Baze’s hand, squeezing it. “You don’t need to say you are sorry, Baze,” she smiles. “In part because I know you’re not.”
“What are the chances that you won’t have to do this, princess?” Baze asks, straightening himself up, checking his emotions.
Jyn fans out the stack of profiles, photographs of each candidate clipped to the edge of each packet. It’s a wealth of handsome faces and titles and names of repute. She pulls out the photo of the first face in the stack and glances at it--Cassian Andor of the House of Fest--then throws it back down on the table.
“The question is,” she tells Baze, “what choice do I have?”
+
“How many coats do I need to pack?” Cassian asks Kay, holding up a blue, fur-lined overcoat. His leather gloves lay on his bureau; his suitcases spread open but empty on the edge of his bed.
“Sir, one should suffice.”
“It’s much colder there, isn’t it?” he says. “And this is a mid-winter ball.”
“I’m sure the royal family has accounted for heating, sir.”
“You know I am not fond of the cold.”
Kay sighs and gives him a less than patient look that Cassian’s gotten used to over the years and takes no offense at. “If you end up as the princess’s choice, you will have to get used to the more frigid climates.” His private secretary trains his almost-golden eyes at him. “We can still send our regrets if you are having second thoughts, sir. ”
Cassian thinks again of his home and of waking to the scent of orange blossoms. He thinks of leaving it permanently and then of letting it down. An alliance with the House of Erso would be of great advantage; it would change many things. It strengthens his resolve to at least try .
He thinks next of Jyn Erso and wonders if she is a princess in a castle or a prisoner in one, and he thinks of her face, of her defiant eyes and feels something strange pulling at his heart from across the sea. He’s struck by a compulsion to meet her, even if it comes to nothing. “No, no,” Cassian says at last. “I’m determined to go.”
+
It snows on the day of the ball, a fresh sheet of white coating the castle grounds and showering guests in ice crystals that sparkle in their hair under the lights of the ballroom. Jyn laments that it’s not enough to cancel the whole ordeal, but it’s better than nothing. She’s always loved snow, the calm of a winter’s day, though it’s not enough to smooth over her nerves on this night.
“Relax, Stardust,” her father tells her, but he’s not the one being married off. “It’s just a dance. It’s just a way to meet new people. You don’t have to make any decisions tonight.”
She takes her father’s arm and enters the ballroom to the applause of the crowd. I’ve done nothing but be born to deserve this , she thinks, but smiles and waves as she’s been train and instructed to do, and her eyes wander over the crowd wondering where her various suitors lay in wait. “The list” is on her mind, and it is the duty of her Uncle Bail and Aunt Breha tonight to introduce her each and every eligible bachelor who had RSVP’d yes.
Jyn thinks again of sabotage: of belching in the face of a duke and cursing a storm in front of a viscount just to see how they would react to her to seeing a princess act like anything but. Yet she holds back. It’s just a way to meet people , her father had said, the patience obvious in his tone. She could be polite tonight at the very least.
It turns out, it’s not all terrible. In fact, some of it is fun. Lando Calrissian, an aristocrat from Bespin, is a fantastic dancer, though his cape gets in the way one too many times during their first and only waltz for her to accept a second. And Lawson “Wedge” Antilles, a baronette or something or other, from her own country, engages her in a long conversation about the navy, which turns out to be less dull than the subject should have dictated. On and on, Jyn cycles from bachelor to bachelor, gauging their faces, their temperaments, and their game . It is a game, afterall, moving pieces and strategy, with her (and her sovereignty) as the prize. But she plays it too. She’ll not be a pawn when she is meant to one day be queen.
“There were fifteen on the list,” she says to Aunt Breha later when they are resting and getting refreshment. She chugs down a glass of champagne. This is her party--she doesn’t much care who sees her doing it. “How many left to meet?” Jyn’s feet are beginning to ache from dancing and her tongue is tired from too much small talk. She pinches the bridge of her nose, feeling slightly lightheaded. Too much drink too fast, she thinks, but also too late.
“Two more,” her aunt tells her. “Your Uncle Bail is trying to look for them now.” Breha puts a gloved hand on Jyn’s arm. “It’ll be over soon, dear.”
“Let me get some air first then,” Jyn says, excusing herself. “I’ll be right back.”
It’s rare for Jyn to find time on her own. She has a whole court of ladies. A private secretary. Her own personal guard. Even her dog. She is rarely ever alone and yet, still so alone. To escape, she thinks--she wants to feel the cold winter air enter her lungs and feel the sting of snow against her flushing skin. Gathering her skirts, she makes her way through a darken hall away from the throng of guests, weaving her way to a private balcony that has been left closed for the event.
But when she presses open the door she finds that she’s the one who has interrupted someone else’s privacy.
“Sorry,” she starts, retreating, but the man on the balcony startles and turns, holding out his hands and saying, “No, no, it’s alright.”
Jyn steps out slowly as if to join him and sees his angular, handsome face cast in shadow and moonlight. His arms are wrapped around his blue overcoat, the coat itself dusted in white, and he shivers from the cold.
“Not from around here, are you?” she says.
He gives a small smile. “No. And you? Are you from around here?”
She returns the small smile; takes a deep breath of the night air. “You could say that.”