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Jyn wasn’t good at following plans. She had been once, but not for a long time, not ones she hadn’t made for herself anyway. She’d been taught a plan for years as a child, run drills with Mama and Papa, pretending it was a game, knowing it wasn’t. And then it hadn’t gone to plan. She’d wound up alone in a hole. Mama’s fault, that one.
And there had been a plan on Tamsye Prime, sure enough, and she’d followed it every step of the way, the perfect soldier. And then it hadn’t gone to plan. She’d wound up alone in a hole. Saw’s fault, that one.
So Jyn preferred it this way: follow the plan all you like but make damn sure you’re the one that breaks away first. Improvise, stay armed, and stay alive. It worked. She’d grown up regimented and regulated, until she tore the bonds away, ran half wild.
The Alliance dossier on Lieutenant Erso used the word “resourceful” as a euphemism for “unpredictable”.
- - -
Cassian Andor was six when his father died. He’d been in the Rebellion, in some form or another, for longer than even most of his elders. A spy, a fighter from before the fight was really a fight – he was something of a mystery to all but a few.
The assumption, among the majority of those that knew vaguely of his history, was this: that Andor had been idly recruited by a passing rebel in the fallout of the protests that had killed his father; that that person probably shouldn’t have taken advantage of a child’s desolation and turned it into a weapon; but that Andor was an asset to the Alliance now and that the past was the past.
The truth was this: that Cassian had sought out the fight; that, six years old and ripped apart with grief, the child had been out for revenge; that Cassian had not always been dependable; but that his reserve and caution were cooled rock from the lava of youthful rage.
Cassian had put himself where he was, voluntarily if not exactly willingly, and when he’d run out of rage to stoke the fire of action, he’d tried using hope, and when that had burned to little more than an ember, he’d relied on orders to keep him moving. He’d grown up half wild, until he found himself adrift and in dire need of direction.
The Alliance dossier on Major Andor used the word “dedicated” as a euphemism for “lonely”.
- - -
Cassian knew all there was to know about Jyn’s childhood already. The facts, anyway. Her age, her place of birth, her key associates, her activities. He didn’t know what her first birthday without her parents had been like, or the smell of the oil on the floor in her small bedroom in Saw’s base, or the sound of voices from the kitchen falling silent when she came in for a drink.
Jyn knew still less of Cassian’s. She wished she knew more.
Since the Death Star was destroyed, he’d seemed to slip away from her. It was easy enough, for her. It marked an end. The gigantic shadow that had cursed her life, had obliterated sunlight from almost every corner of it, had hung over her even before she really knew why, was gone. The end. It was jarring, a shock, crippling for a while. Who would she be, now it was gone? Who would she have been, if it had gone long ago?
But for Cassian…
Maybe he’d been obsessed with it. There had been something disconcertingly hungry about him when he’d first interrogated her, and all the time when they’d been flying to Jedha. The planet-killer, the mythical super-weapon. Tracking it down - tracking her down - had been his life for a few years. Perhaps he’d imagined something more cataclysmic, some great turning of the tide. But the Empire had been winning the war before the Death Star, and now it was gone, they were still winning - oh, not as fast as they would have been, but they were still winning, and it was just a side project gone wrong. Meanwhile, the Alliance was running scared, in tatters across the galaxy, desperate for a new base, and things were right where they were - how long ago? Five, six years? How long had he been on the trail of this thing? And Cassian - who did he have to be next, now it was gone?
- - -
It wasn’t much of a base, by Imperial standards. It might have been sleek and silvery like the rest of the Empire, once, but the red sand and brittle whirlwinds of this planet had done their work. Scratched and bruised, the rust-orange buildings squatted sullenly in the dirt; between them, at intervals, dented and creaking condenser rods and communications posts spidered into the sky.
It was curiously quiet, unnervingly so. They’d camped out, observed it for two days: no patrols skirted the perimeter of the compound. It didn’t seem like a high-security operation, whatever was going on down there. But a target was a target, and they were there to take it out.
They’d slipped unseen down the hillside, slipped unseen through the fence, slipped unseen along the route marked on their blueprints towards the communications controls. By the time they’d realised the place was deserted, abandoned, they were already in the central building, and so Jyn, the habits of a thief dying hard, had looked in the cupboard.
They were uniforms, neatly folded and stacked from floor to ceiling, dark grey and coarse and sour-smelling.
They were small.
- - -
“Do you think there are other camps?” Jyn said on the flight back. “Elsewhere in the galaxy?”
Cassian shrugged. “Probably.”
They had barely exchanged a word for hours; only the hum of the ship’s hyperdrive guiding them back to the Alliance filled the space between them with anything audible.
“We didn’t have uniforms,” Jyn said at last. “In the Partisans.”
“No,” Cassian said flatly.
“Did you?” she pressed on.
He snorted. “I was a kid in a gang, Jyn. I wore a sash round my head because I thought it was tough.”
“Ah, but did you want everyone to have matching sashes …”
For Jyn, it felt forced – it went against the grain to joke when all she could think was child soldiers, child soldiers . But then, just to see him laugh for a moment –
“For about a year,” he admitted sheepishly. “Different colours for ranks, you know.”
“At least you were in charge,” she teased. “Giving your own orders, throwing rocks as you pleased…”
His smile faded. “Yeah.”
Shit. “Hey,” she tried again. “Maybe no coloured sashes but you’ve got pips.” She gestured at his three-spot badge.
“You’ve got your own, now,” he countered.
“One spot, Cassian.” She was aiming for a lighter tone than she felt. “It’s worse than none. It’s like a blaster wound on a badge.”
“Nice.”
The silence fell again. It was like this, sometimes. Hard work just to keep him with her.
“You know,” he said at length, and Jyn looked at him - “if one of those kids had been there -”
“They weren’t.”
“If they’d cornered us -”
“They didn’t .”
“I would have shot.”
She winced and turned back to the viewport. “I don’t know that’s that’s true.”
“But I do.”
“Maybe.” She could feel his eyes on her now. “Just kids, Cassian. In the wrong uniform.”
“That’s all there is,” he muttered, the words dragging from him like shingle. “There’s only what side you’re on, that’s it. It’s not are you good, are you not good, it’s - what,” - he gave a bitter laugh - “you think I’m a good man?”
She met his eyes. “You know I do.”
He watched her doubtfully, hopefully, somewhere between the two, then sighed and looked at the controls instead. “Jyn… you don’t know what I’ve done.”
“I do, though,” she said. “When it mattered. I was there too.”
“Before.”
“So tell me.”
Cassian stared at the controls in silence for so long that she thought he wasn’t going to speak again - then suddenly, he began.
- - -
“Thanks for telling me,” she said softly. Somehow, they were kneeling on the floor. Somehow, her arms were around him. His hand clutched her back. It was familiar.
“Still think I’m a good man?” His voice was muffled in her shoulder.
“Whoever I should be to decide that...”
He held her more tightly.
“It matters,” he said.
“Then yes.”
There was work to do, so much work, and they were still losing but… Jyn pressed her cheek against Cassian’s ear… this felt like winning something back, at last.
His free hand found one of hers, and they stayed there until the ship was ready to land.