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Jyn Erso was apprehensive. Baze just stared at her, with an eyebrow raised and a challenging expression on his face. “Come on, little sister, just like I taught you. Hit the board in the right place, with the right amount of strength, and it will break”
“I’m going to get hurt” the girl complained.
“You might get hurt if you do it wrong”
“And if I do it right?”
“Well, you’ll probably get hurt too, but it won’t matter because of how proud you will be. Now come on, I trust you. We’ve been training!”
Baze held the board as high as Jyn’s shoulders. Jyn took a small step back and stared angrily at the piece of wood. She closed her eyes and raised her arm slightly. Then, as she exhaled, she released her fist towards the board, punching it just below the middle, but it was clear she was holding back from her full strength.
Her knuckles hurt anyway, so Jyn let out a high-pitched scream that it could be heard from the small place she saw as her new house. It was nothing but two rooms connected: one where they slept, and the other, smaller, where they kept food, clothes and weapons.
Chirrut came through the first room’s front door as quick as lightning and went straight to Jyn’s side, on the middle of the street where she was training with Baze. The monk sat down beside her and fumbled the air until he finally found the girl’s arm, and quickly but delicately grabbed her hands.
“Did she break the board?” asked Chirrut, moving his head towards Baze’s direction. The other man let out a small sigh.
“Not yet. But she would have if she hadn’t given up half the way through”
“I didn’t give up!” protested Jyn “Maybe I’m just not as good as you thought!”
“You’ve punched me before, little sister, and I know that you’re pretty strong for a five-year old”
“I’m nine”
“Hey, you two, maybe argue later. Baze, go get the bandages and the ointment, her knuckles are hurt” Chirrut interrupted, sounding more serious than he used to.
“Why me?” protested Baze.
“Because I’m blind and she’s a hurt child! Be quick, Malbus!”
Jyn laughed and Chirrut could feel Baze’s eye-roll. But he knew neither of them was as angry as they sounded, and that was just their way of messing with each other and taking care of little Jyn Erso.
***
They had stumbled upon the girl around a year before, cold, hungry, afraid and utterly alone. She had left her home planet on a smuggler’s ship, and eventually landed in Jedha, where she stayed in the streets, begging and stealing food.
When Chirrut first walked by Jyn with a bag of bread, she tried to steal some of it, noticing that the man was blind, but she was caught in the act and given a lecture. Chirrut gave her bread anyway and brought her home with him, asking about her Kyber crystal necklace. Baze didn’t even ask any questions – he just accepted Jyn’s presence there, and quietly grew fond of her.
Jyn couldn’t stop thinking about her father and her mother – after all, they were brutally taken from her, for reasons a child couldn’t fully understand, but she didn’t mind her new friends. Baze was grumpy, and Chirrut never shut up, but they made Jyn feel safe when nothing else in the universe would. They gave her food and shelter – and eventually, some fighting lessons.
***
It was already night. Chirrut was sitting on the small area covered in grass right behind the house, which was his failed attempt to have a garden. The monk had his eyes closed and a small smile rested peacefully on his lips.
Jyn watched from the door on the back of the room, sitting on the floor with her head back against the door frame. She wondered what Chirrut was thinking about. Jyn would often try to meditate like he did, but her mind was never calm enough. She had the feeling that she would just make a fool of herself if she tried, and Chirrut would laugh at her – so Jyn gave up on meditating.
Something similar happened with Baze’s fighting lessons, Jyn realized. He would always tell her what to do – where to throw a punch, how to kick someone in the right place so you can get away from the fight quickly, and the only reason Baze hadn’t taught her how to use a blaster yet was because Chirrut didn’t approve of a child shooting people. However, Jyn wasn’t great at fighting either. She trusted Baze quite a lot, but not enough to not be afraid of getting hurt. She couldn’t get herself to use all her energy when fighting.
As she thought of this, Jyn got angry at herself. Why couldn’t she just be good enough? She wasn’t calm enough nor brave enough. But when did her courage abandon her? Was it not her instincts of survival what brought her to Jedha, to safety and to her new friends? Why did she become such a coward all of a sudden? Where did all that fear come from?
“Are you all right, little Jyn? The Force around you feels… troubled” asked Chirrut, his expression still as peaceful as before “What’s on your mind?”
“Nothing” she lied “I’m just tired”
“Go to bed, then. It’s too late for a young girl to be awake”
“Where’s Baze?”
“Walking around the city. You know how he likes to check if there’s any trouble before we go to sleep” Chirrut answered, finally opening his eyes and ending the meditation. He grabbed his staff and got up with one quick move “It’s the only thing that can calm him down at night”
Jyn got up and went back inside. She grabbed more comfortable clothes and went into the small division they made with some curtains on the corner of the second room, so she could change clothes with enough privacy.
Baze arrived right after the girl laid herself on her mattress.
“Is everything alright?” Chirrut asked, sitting on the opposite side of the room.
“No problems. Well, not anything that can disturb us, anyway” Baze answered. He kneeled and messed with Jyn’s hair “All good, little sister? How are your knuckles?”
“They’re fine” she answered, giving a shrug. She wasn’t feeling much pain, thanks to Chirrut “Kind of bruised, though. They’ll be good soon”
“I hope so, because I’m not giving up on you. We’ll make you break that wood board”
“Give her some rest, Baze. Jyn, time to sleep”
“Fine. Goodnight, Chirrut, goodnight Baze”
Jyn turned her face to the wall and closed her eyes, as she heard Baze’s footsteps walking away from her.
***
Jyn couldn’t really sleep. She kept thinking about what Baze had said earlier about giving up half the way through the punch, and the girl felt angry at herself again.
She got up in the middle of the night and looked around. The room was dimly lit by some candles on the middle of the floor. There were no windows, and the doors were all closed. Baze and Chirrut were sharing a blanket, deeply asleep. At some point during the night Chirrut had rolled around and now he was lying with half his body over Baze’s torso. Baze was snoring, and didn’t seem to mind it – and he didn’t notice Jyn waking up either.
She crawled over to the back door and opened it very slowly, trying not to make any noise. Chirrut moved a bit and mumbled something about poisonous berries. Jyn bit her tongue trying not to laugh. The monk always talked when he was asleep, and Jyn wondered what kind of weird dreams he had.
The small garden was pitch-dark, but Jyn had been smart enough to grab one of the candles and bring it with her. She saw the spot where Chirrut liked to sit and meditate, marked by a circle of rocks he had made himself. Baze’s guns were kept inside the room, but the dreaded wood board was lying on the grass. It was almost as if the object was mocking her. Jyn Erso, too weak and too scared of hurting her knuckles to break a piece of wood.
Jyn looked at her hand. Her fingers had been covered with bandages and the scent of herbs came from the cloth, coming from the ointments that helped ease the pain.
Her knuckles were a bit sore, and a sharp pain hit them when she tried to stretch her fingers. But leaving the board there was not an option.
Jyn was moving before she realized it. She went back to the room and grabbed Chirrut’s staff, which was lying on the floor near the spot where he and Baze were tangled. Careful not to make a sound, she went back to the garden, with the staff in hands.
The staff was strong – Jyn had seen Chirrut use it to beat thieves who were annoying him as he walked on the street. On the few times Jyn was with Chirrut when dangerous people got near, she was amazed by the monk’s ability with the staff, using it to knock enemies down quickly and in just one move. Sometimes Jyn thought Chirrut was just pretending to be blind, but immediately after he would hit a wall or trip on some bricks, and his blindness became obvious again.
The wood board was still on the floor. Jyn had put the candle by the door frame, and was now staring at her enemy, holding Chirrut’s staff in her bruised hands.
She closed her eyes and tried to focus on her objective, trying to find encouragement words.
Her thoughts drifted immediately to her father and how she missed him. After all, he was the one always telling her she could do anything she wanted. His little stardust.
Jyn saw her mother’s body lying on the ground again, and that terrible imperial man standing while stormtroopers searched her house. Jyn thought of the evil men who threatened her father and all that they had taken from her, all the pain she had suffered for the past eighteen months.
The Kyber necklace seemed to heat up in her neck. Jyn felt something she had never felt before, something she could not explain – hatred, anger, sadness, determination, all mixed up, but Jyn didn’t know how to identify those feelings. She didn’t even want to, because the only thing going through her mind was the immediate need to crash that wood board.
And so she did. Standing a few steps away from the board, she raised her arms high above her head, and quickly moved it down, with all the strength of her small body fueled by her pain-stained memories.
The board split in two pieces with a loud noise. Jyn, however, was not satisfied. The bad feelings still filled her brain so she kept hitting the pieces of wood time and time again, screaming while she did it.
“Jyn? Jyn what on the universe was that?” Baze’s voice came from somewhere behind her. He grabbed her arms so she would stop moving and took the staff from her hands “We woke up with the sound of something breaking, and your screams, we thought you were being attacked!”
The girl sat down on the floor, her chest moving up and down quickly as she breathed short breaths. Jyn felt her knuckles and arms hurt, and a terrible headache. Baze’s voice was angry, but his face was filled with worry. He quietly stared at her for some time.
“Baze, she is crying” Chirrut murmured. He was standing on the door frame, so quietly that Jyn did hadn’t noticed he was there. She also didn’t notice that she was crying until he pointed that out “What were you doing, little Jyn?”
“I was breaking the board. Like Baze wanted me to. But I didn’t want to get hurt so I grabbed your staff. I’m sorry” she explained, now feeling the tears rolling down her cheeks “No one ever said I need to break it with my hands”
Chirrut came closer and kneeled, touching the pieces of wood that were scattered around the floor.
“You did quite a good job with this board” he murmured “We heard you screaming. Are you alright, Jyn? Why are you crying?”
“It’s nothing” Jyn lied, but the emotion in her voice betrayed her “It’s just…my knuckles. They were hurting so I screamed and cried”
“You said they weren’t that bad” Baze said, crossing his arms “And why didn’t you wait until tomorrow morning?”
Without nothing to say, Jyn just cried harder, now also adding “shame” to the messy pile of feelings.
Chirrut now was sitting down beside the girl. He put an arm around her shoulders and brought her close to his chest, in a very protective hug. He held Jyn as she sobbed. Baze stared at both of them, standing up by Chirrut’s side, but seemingly unable to do anything to comfort the crying child.
“I miss my parents” Jyn mumbled, among her sobs “And my home. I wanna go home, Chirrut, I wanna go home”
“I know, my dear” the monk shook his head lightly. His expression became darker, sadder. Baze knew that expression very well. He was in pain for not being able to help “I’m afraid we can’t take you back to your parent’s farm. But we can offer you our home here in Jedha”
“You’ve been here for a while, little sister” Baze finally said, also sitting down near the girl “I hope you know by now that you’ll always have a good spot to sleep and some of our awful tea whenever you want it”
“My tea is not that bad, Baze”
“I’d rather drink a Hutt’s pee than that thing you call tea”
This comment managed to get a quick chuckle out of Jyn. She wasn’t sobbing anymore, but still held on to Chirrut for a few moments, before moving away and drying her tears with the back of her hands, like nothing had happened.
“Thank you” Jyn murmured, looking at the ground “I feel better now”
“Are you sure?” asked Baze, raising an eyebrow.
“Yes, I’m sure”
“Really sure? Because last time I asked how you were feeling, you lied to me about your knuckles”
“I’m serious this time” Jyn guaranteed, and gave him a shy smile “But I have a headache. I think it’s from all the crying”
“I can make you some tea” Chirrut suggested, smiling as well.
“Hasn’t the poor girl suffered enough?” Baze protested.
“Let’s all go to sleep, then” said the monk, getting up.
Jyn got up too and held his hand to guide him back inside. His staff was in Baze’s hands and he could have found his way even without it, but Chirrut appreciated Jyn’s gesture, so he did nothing to stop it.
***
The three of them went to their small room. Chirrut was the first to lie down again, and Jyn went to her mattress right after him, while Baze stayed awake for a while longer, sitting quietly in the dark, apparently lost in his own thoughts.
Jyn was almost asleep when he sat by her side and poked her head.
“Hey, little sister, are you sleeping?”
“I was about to”
“Sorry” Baze made a pause, as if he was thinking of what to say next “I just wanted to tell you that it’s alright if you breakdown and cry sometimes. At the end of the day, you’re just a kid”
“I know. I just wish I could be tough like you, or smart and calm like Chirrut”
“Chirrut? Smart? He must be the biggest fool I’ve ever met. Are you sure we’re talking about the same person?”
A small movement from the blind man made both Jyn and Baze look at his direction. Baze started to suspect he wasn’t actually asleep.
“I’m not all that tough either. I get scared too” he continued “And angry, and sad. Just like you do. I might not cry now, but when I was a kid, not much older than you are, and I first arrived at the temple, I cried all the time”
“Did you lose your family too?” asked Jyn, not sure if that was a topic Baze was willing to discuss.
“Yes. Evil men took away my mother, and my father, and my grandfather” Baze turned his head to stare directly at Jyn’s eyes and put a hand in her hair, petting her head “And my little sister. She looked a lot like you”
“I’m sorry” Jyn murmured.
“It was a long time ago. It’s sad but…you get used to it. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, Jyn, is that you don’t have to deal with sadness alone”
“Thank you, Baze” Jyn said.
She than sat down in her mattress and gave the man a hug. Baze laughed and pressed a kiss to her head.
“You’d better sleep now, little sister, or you’ll be too tired tomorrow and Chirrut will give the both of us a good, long scolding”
Jyn lied back down as Baze went to his own mattress. He looked at Chirrut, and by the way he was trying to hid his grin, Baze was sure he had been listening to the whole conversation.