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“You know, this isn’t exactly what I pictured when you laid out the plan.” His companion turned to shout over her shoulder, competing with the heavy wind that sent moisture and pieces of torn vegetation into their faces. The windy, desolate, landscape they passed through hadn’t been ideal for conversation, though Cassian Andor couldn’t say he minded that so much. He and K2SO - his droid partner - lumbered along after the much more driven, petite, woman.
“What did you have in mind?” Cassian couldn’t resist calling back, pulling the scarf down from his mouth to let the sound carry better. “I told you, no one else was interested in doing this.”
It was (and wasn’t) true; trekking across the wetlands and abandoned farms of Lahmu to scavenge decades-old Imperial code out of a crashed consul ship was too involved for some splicers, and too far beneath others. Only Jyn, who’d been pulled from the pit of an Imperial labor camp, had swallowed the bait. No one had been terribly surprised: after all, she was an orphan who had been abandoned by her cell of fighters and could only look forward to more years scraping by dodging Imperial patrols. So she’d agreed to help him, and here they were.
Ahead, Jyn shrugged, still walking half-turned to put Cassian and Kaytoo in her line of sight. “Something more dramatic, I suppose.”
That he could believe. Prior to her time in the labor camps, she’d worked with one of the most militant, extremist, rebel cells in the galaxy. Still, her skills weren’t the only reason he’d requested her particular assistance on this mission. He shrugged in return, relieved when Jyn turned her attention back towards the terrain in front of them. For the rest of their walk, only the sound of the wind accompanied them, for which Cassian was grateful.
The downed consular vessel had crashed on Lahmu some fifteen years before, leading to the capture and arrest of Senator Erso - a devastating blow for the fledgling Rebel Alliance she had helped create. Her husband had allegedly been murdered but the senator had insisted that he had gotten their only child safely jettisoned before the crash. She’d only offer the rich data she held to the Alliance if they found her child and restored them safely to their mother; or at least ensured they weren’t starving or dead.
The Alliance had never been able to meet the senator’s terms, and so they’d all waited on a metaphorical precipice no one could cross.
At least, until now. It had taken entirely too long to locate the exact remains of the ship, but now that he had, Cassian was determined not to blow this chance at discovering what had really happened that day - and, hopefully, get the senator to open up about whatever important information she was holding. Cassian was a good hacker - but the right splicer could retrieve and utilize the ship information in ways he simply couldn’t match.
As they drew closer, it became obvious that the ship had been picked apart over the last decade and a half - what scavengers hadn’t taken, time and the elements had done their best to erode.
“Do you think you’ll be able to find it?” He didn’t have to shout now, the ship’s corpse sheltering them from the wind as they approached. Jyn’s footsteps slowed, then stopped, and she tugged her scarf down from where she’d wrapped it over her head and around her face. Everything about the woman was intense, but in this moment her face had gone eerily blank, and still. She didn’t answer him, instead plunging into the ruined belly of the consular ship.
“She definitely heard you.” Blessedly silent until now, the droid spoke up, gesturing to where Jyn had stood a moment before. “Do you want to know-”
“No,” Cassian said thoughtfully, cutting off whatever dire statistic his partner and best friend was about to offer. “No, I really don’t.”
The Rebel Alliance captain braced his hand against the steel frame for a moment, and then followed the young woman inside.
--
The ship creaked around her, as Jyn ducked free-swinging wires and skirted the jumble of rotted fabric and bone that were the last vestiges of human remains. She hadn’t been here before, but there was something about this ship that reminded her of ...well, honestly, Jyn didn’t know what. The time before Saw Gerrera had taken her in was hazy, and cold, and distant; the following years had pushed whatever memories she’d had of her life before into recesses of her mind she couldn’t follow. Unconsciously, her hand lifted to press against her chest, where a hard lump of crystal was hidden beneath her shirt. It was the only thing she had to indicate who she might have been .
So why did this ship feel so achingly nostalgic?
She bent in half as something caught her attention - a doll, one made to resemble white armor, lay in the debris; its head long gone. Jyn picked it up anyway, feeling the smooth indentations where a child’s fingers had once worn into the beloved toy. What the kriff was a child - and their doll - doing on a consular ship? Her hand tightened around the doll’s torso; she didn’t want to know, she didn’t want to know. So Jyn continued along, her boots grinding dirt and other debris beneath her steps. Behind, she could hear the rebel captain calling her name, but she let his voice fade along with the questions.
Jyn did not want to face either of them yet.
Once, this had been a vessel large enough to carry a senator, and their staff, for short-term trips; although much of what made it what it was had been stripped away, there was a sense of life echoing in the gutted corridors. This half-torn door had opened into a sitting area, she was sure; the means to secure a table were still attached to the floor at the center of the room. If she turned left here , it would be a shortcut to the cockpit. The doorway edged in carbon scoring had once been an armory. She stopped paying attention, the fingers of her free hand brushing low along the cold, damp, walls of the corridors. Jyn faltered only once, lingering at an intersection where turning left felt like the direction she wanted to go in, but heading right would bring her right to the data center of the vessel. She gripped the doll hard in one hand, and her necklace in the other.
“Jyn?” The voice belonged to the rebel captain - to Cassian - but she couldn’t bring herself to respond.
Turning slowly, Jyn took the left corridor, sensing Cassian at her heels. This was the area most heavily affected by the looting, she realized. To their right was the remains of a council room; it had probably been very fine once; to their left, the rotted remains of a once-beautiful sitting area - a box in the corner showed another half-destroyed toy dangling over the edge. The door at the very end was still sealed.
“Jyn!” This time, he lightly touched her elbow, and finally she turned her attention to him. He frowned at her, bringing one long-fingered hand - stripped of glove, she noticed with detachment - to her cheek. “You’re cold.”
“So are you.” She shook his hand off, and took a step back. “We’re on a cold, wet, planet - what did you expect?”
It wasn’t the same question he’d asked of her earlier, but they both fell silent anyway. Cassian gestured to her, though she noticed he didn’t try to touch her again. “You’re shaking, and you look like ice. Are you alright?”
Jyn shoved her hands into the pockets of her jacket, turning on her heel to study the closed door in front of them. She didn’t feel alright, but she couldn't put a finger on why. Which wasn’t exactly something she felt like sharing with a rebel officer - even one like Cassian. Instead, she hunched her shoulders in a shrug.
“Feels like ghosts,” she said finally. “Even after all this time.”
“Mmm.” Cassian’s hum of agreement didn’t ease her discomfort. She couldn’t tell if he felt it, too, or if he was humoring her. “Where does this lead?”
She snorted, turning so he could see her roll her eyes at him. “How should I know? It’s not like you gave me a kriffing map or anything.”
“You didn’t seem to need one,” he pointed out reasonably. “But if it makes you feel better, Kay’s trying to access one from a port back that way.”
“Oh.” Jyn turned back to the sealed door, pressing her hand against the cold metal; at some point, she’d lost her own gloves, though not the headless stormtrooper doll. She could feel it, awkwardly shoved into her coat pocket. “That’s good.”
Where did this door lead? She ran her hand over the panel again, feeling enough of a hum to suspect that despite having been abandoned and scavenged, enough power remained in the old shell to open the door - if they could figure out the passcode. Jyn frowned at the access panel to her right, using the sleeve of her shirt to gently wipe away the dust that had gathered across its keys.
“I think this was the senator’s room,” she said finally. There was a certainty to her tone, though Jyn wasn’t entirely sure where it’d come from. “Why else would it be so secure? I wonder why no one’s blasted it open.”
“If it is her old rooms, it seems likely the senator had the doors blast shielded.” Cassian leaned forward, crowding into the space over Jyn’s shoulder so he could see the panel. “Think you can hack into it?”
With the right tools, maybe Jyn thought, frowning so hard she suspected Cassian could feel it without seeing. She wiped a bit more of the dust off the keypad, and squinted at the numbers. This didn’t appear to be the sort of model that locked someone out for getting the passcode wrong - too many people wealthy enough to afford security but too poor to spring for something that would take a handprint or a retinal scan, in the galaxy. This one was probably just outdated. She shrugged and punched in a few numbers.
The door slid open.
Jyn whistled, covering her discomfort, as she stepped into the senator’s old quarters. It looked as though the place had been ransacked, though the now-hole-y fabric had once been fine enough that she didn’t think scavengers had been after it; that was good news for them, wasn’t it?
“Jyn,” Cassian said suddenly, as he followed her into the room. “Before you look around, there’s something you should know.”
Probably this was when the alliance went back on their deal to set her up in a new life; maybe it was when the captain put a blaster to her back and apologized before he killed her. Rebel agents were good at doing that kind of thing, Jyn knew. A kindness , one agent had told her once, before he tried to kill her. She decided to ignore Cassian, and made her way to what appeared to be a desk.
“Jyn.”
Cassian’s urgency filtered out of Jyn’s mind, as she rifled through the debris on the desk; was that a child’s coat? She reached out to touch one finger to the sleeve, knowing somehow if she turned it over she’d find the echo of an old, stubborn stain; the third button on the front had been replaced. Jyn dropped the sleeve, taking a step back - she bumped into Cassian, who settled his arms on her shoulders.
“Jyn, please-”
Unwilling to hear what he had to say, desperate not to let the ghosts keep whispering to her, she yanked the doll out of her pocket and threw it to the ground, pushing out of the tall man’s grasp. She needed to get outside, needed the fresh air, needed not to be trapped in this tomb anymore -
As she rushed towards the exit, something caught her eye; the head of a stormtrooper doll, tossed haphazardly into the corner, half a ship away from its body. Her lips felt numb, her lungs were frozen in her chest, but she needed that missing piece. Moving as though a single jarring moment might shatter her, Jyn knelt on the cold floor, and picked up the doll’s head; a holochip landed quietly against her knee.
--
“This was my ship.”
It was the first thing Jyn had said since the door to the senator’s chambers had opened; she sounded as small as she must have been on that horrible day. Cassian nodded, before he realized that she was still staring at whatever she’d picked up.
“I think it was your mother’s ship,” he corrected gently, moving across the room so that he could kneel on the floor next to her. “Your name, your age, you- you look a lot like her, the senator. I made a guess.”
“So you knew?” The anger was the only thing strong enough to break through the hollowness in her voice, and Cassian felt it like a slap across his face. He reached over, covering her icy hands with his own.
“I guessed ,” he insisted. “I didn’t know until it was clear you had been on this ship before.”
For a long time, she didn’t say anything; Cassian could feel her shivering against his shoulder, though her hands were growing warmer as he rubbed them between her own. (He had to admit to himself, that the image of their hands framing a stormtrooper’s head was not entirely pleasant.) Still, he didn’t ask her to put it down, and Jyn didn’t seem willing to do it on her own. He wasn’t sure how much time passed before she spoke again.
“This holochip - it’s. It’s my mother, isn’t it? She-” Jyn faltered, and then went on. “She left a message? She's ...alive?”
“Yes.” Cassian squeezed her hands. “I think your father is, too.”
Moving away from him slowly, Jyn carefully laid the doll’s head on the floor, and then picked up the chip. “If I give this to the Alliance...will they help me rescue them?”
He studied her in the dimming light of the vessel, taking in her pale skin, the way she still trembled, but the sudden resolve - the hope - in her eyes. “Jyn, I’ll help you myself.”
They knelt there like that, looking square into one another’s eyes, until the sound of mechanical steps in the hallway drew Jyn’s attention; she smiled.
“That’s a deal - but you have to tell Kay we don’t need that map after all.”