Chapter Text
Five Points System, 4 BBY
Tanith Ponta had been dead for eleven years, and nobody was left to miss her.
Akshaya Ponta was gone. Hadder Ponta was gone.
And it was her fault.
She could have saved Hadder, at least. If she’d been selfless, if she’d let him go, if she’d let him fly away from Skuhl to be a Rebel flyboy, like he’d always wanted. She could have gone with him, even.
He'd asked her, his dark eyes bright, his warm, russet fingers caressing her cheek so tenderly.
She might have been Jyn Ponta, one day.
But Jyn Erso was selfish. She’d wanted the path of least resistance.
Look where that got her. Orphaned thrice by the age of 17 standard years, with only her mother's kyber crystal, a blaster from Saw, and the Pontas' carbon scored planet-hopper to her name.
No, she didn’t even have a name. She wasn’t Imperial, she wasn’t a Partisan, she wasn’t a Rebel.
And she wasn’t and would never be Jyn Ponta. Not the way she wanted to be.
But she could answer to a dead girl’s name. It was fitting.
Lines of wet salt cut across the grime on her cheeks. Tanith Ponta scrubbed some back with a fist.
Well, get up. Get on with it.
Yavin 4, 0 BBY
A few oversize bacta patches, some painkillers, and an overnight stay for observation, and Jyn was cleared to leave sickbay on a Primeday, almost two standard weeks before Cassian was conscious.
In that time, she did whatever needed to be done to keep an eye on him. She was later informed by a tight-lipped medic on base that she'd caused "quite a fuss." Screaming, threatening, bribing, kicking at the droids or staff or whatever was trying to dismiss her.
By Centaxday, the battered 2-1B droid monitoring Captain Andor’s vital signs and bacta immersions had grudgingly accepted that she would not budge.
(It helped that Mon Mothma had apparently sent a private message to sickbay with some "context.")
Jyn wouldn't leave him, not while he was still in a coma. Not when he was defenseless like that, looking a decade younger at rest than in his waking hours. According to the medical reports she'd sliced into, CAPT. C. J. ANDOR was not yet 27 standard years old. Only five years older than her.
Every once in awhile, Bodhi limped by on his new crutch. It was some time before she realized that every time he visited, he silently left clean clothes, ration bars, or a thermos of something hot on the table between her cot and the one Cassian stayed in between bacta sessions. At first, the pilot brought plates from the mess, but he must have realized that those went bad by the time she realized she needed to eat.
She learned later that he did the same for Baze while he kept vigil at Chirrut’s cot. He must have been pushing himself. The trip from the mess to sickbay wasn't short. She had the presence of mind to thank him once or twice, but he shrugged it off.
The hours were long.
On the second Zhellday, Cassian’s fingers twitched in Jyn’s grasp. It was small, a minuscule motion really. But after hours of stillness, it felt like the base was shaking.
“Cassian,” she whispered. Her voice was hoarse.
His hand moved in hers again and she heard a low groan build in his chest.
"Cassian," she urged. "Can you hear me? Come on."
Slowly, so slowly, his eyes opened.
And the brown of them collapsed time, somehow. It was a moment and a millennium since they'd clung to each other on an enemy beach.
He squeezed her hand, his movements growing surer by the moment.
"Jyn."
His voice was rough and dry.
"Jy–" he coughed, struggling to get up and yanking at the intravenous drip in his arm. The sight turned her stomach.
"Hey, hey, it's okay. Slow down, we're fine. We're okay. Do you want some water?"
Okay was a relative term.
Cassian nodded, and gingerly pushed his elbows against the cot. He managed to sit himself up a bit while Jyn busied herself uncapping the canteen she'd sipped at whenever the med droid stopped minding its own business. It took a moment. The bottle kept shaking, which was irritating.
She got it uncapped eventually, and passed it to Cassian when he reached for it.
After a long pull from the canteen, he wet his lips and asked, "What day is it?"
"Zhellday."
"It’s been...four days since..."
Since the nightmare. Since Scarif.
"No. No, it's…” It started to pour out. “You’ve been in a coma for nine days. The droids induced it. They've been dunking you in bacta on and off. You’re awake early. They said maybe tomorrow or the next day."
Cassian's face went blank and carefully impassive as she caught him up to speed, before he sighed and somehow relaxed into a more tense expression. It struck her that allowing himself to be transparent was probably as relaxed as he could be.
“That would explain the taste,” he muttered.
She shrugged. She’d heard it before. She’d been in a bacta tank only once, and never fully submerged. Saw’s Partisans rarely had the reserve bacta supply to justify a soak. It had to be life or death. And essential. Those two things weren’t always the same. If she’d been anyone but Saw’s ward, she probably would’ve been left behind that time.
Anyway, bacta breath was small talk, and she bet that was a good sign. But it became apparent very quickly that Cassian didn’t have much else to say, beyond confirming that Bodhi, Chirrut, and Baze were still alive. Or if he did, he kept it to himself.
They sat in deep silence for some time. Cassian leaned back but did not rest, while Jyn pretended to pick at loose felt in the oversized synfleece shirt she’d been given.
“You should sleep,” he finally said, looking up at the ceiling.
“I’m not tired.”
“Correction,” said the 2-1B, “Sergeant Jyn Erso has logged an average of 3.264 hours of sleep per 24 hours since her admission and dismissal from this facility two standard weeks ago. By definition, Sergeant Erso has entered a state of chronic sleep deprivation, with multiple pronounced side effects logged such as faulty brain function, anxiety, depression, short term memory loss, in addition to decreased immune s–”
“Thank you,” she bit off, glaring at the droid with as much poison as she could muster.
Cassian nodded tightly, his brows pulling together into a frown. He met her gaze, his own steady.
“You should sleep.”
“I’m fine.”
His eyes narrowed, and even like this, in sickbay, he managed to radiate a degree of authority that probably had lesser men scrambling.
“I’m staying awake until you sleep,” he retorted.
That stubborn, manipulative kriffin’ bastard.
She huffed, and, sensing victory, he let some of the tension in his shoulders go. She got up stiffly, yanked the thin blanket off her cot, and laid down.
“You’re going to hell you know,” she said pleasantly.
“Been there and back,” came the quiet reply.
“I know. Me too.”