Work Text:
Jyn woke when Cassian stirred. “Wuz,” she mumbled thickly.
“A message,” he said, kissing her forehead before kicking his blankets back.
They were both speaking softly, trying not to wake the other Rebellion soldiers scattered on the hard floor around them, wrapped in bunkrolls. The Emperor’s grand reception hall wasn’t the worst place they’d camped. For instance, it was indoors.
But it sure as hell wasn’t the best, either.
She yawned. “Another Imperial commander swearing he’d always been working for the rebellion, no, really?”
“In this case, that’s actually possible,” he said, rolling his blankets up.. “It was coded direct to me.”
They were still setting up the computers and the security protocols. At the moment, he couldn’t take coded messages anywhere but HQ, once the Emperor’s private throne room. He’d have to go down there himself.
She grunted. “What time is it?”
“Oh-five-hundred,” he said.
Kriff. She had to report at oh-six-hundred. Not enough time to go back to sleep, not if she wanted a shower and a bite. She sighed and scrunched her fingers in her sleep tousled hair a moment, then reached for a hair tie and slid it around her wrist. “See you at breakfast?”
“Yeah,” he said, and kissed her again, gentle. They were very careful with each other these days, as if both of them were shielding the other from breaking.
She rubbed his shoulder and let him go.
Getting woken up early did have the upside of a shorter line for the sonics. They were set up in an anteroom, all gold details and plush carpet. Doubtless the Emperor or his minions had met toadies currying favor here, or had secret meetings on how better to squeeze the galaxy bloodless and stomp it beneath their booted feet.
Now it was filled with boxy portable sonic booths, and tired-faced Rebel scum, stripping down to their underwear.
They’d been shipped out from Endor to the Coruscant system just a few days ago, with most of Intelligence’s data analysts and slicers, scrambling to get into the Imperial records before they and their backups got wiped clean.
Jyn had been up until midnight, cleaning up data bombs, bits of code set up to explode in the computer banks and wipe out years of records. It was taxing, fiddly work, but satisfying in its own way as she defanged the programs and saw yet more damning information downloaded to Rebellion databases on Imperial corruption.
It felt surreal to be here, in the middle of the Imperial stronghold, and have governors and admirals begging for mercy. She had to remind herself a lot: the war was over.
Well, not truly over. There was a lot of clean-up to be done. A lot of jockeying for power, a lot of sorting out the mess.
But the second Death Star was destroyed. The Emperor gone, Darth Vader dead, the Empire imploding from within. They’d turned a corner. The Rebellion had been fighting for the past twenty-odd years, clawing their way up out of the darkness, but now they were reaching the edge of the light, and just needed to keep fighting a little while longer.
The world was saved.
The world was saved and Bodhi Rook’s X-Wing had gone down over Endor.
She shut her eyes as the pain hit her in the throat again. Bodhi, Bodhi.
He’d known the risk. They all had. They’d all accepted it. It was a miracle they’d all survived the war. Never mind the war, it was a miracle they’d all survived Scarif.
So many others had lost so much. Perhaps she’d been arrogant to think that the fickle hand of death wouldn’t snatch someone she loved. Or perhaps she should be handling this better, having lost so many people already in her life.
But she thought perhaps she and Cassian had lost too many to lose one more.
And yet they had.
They’d spent a good part of the trip from Endor on the comms with Chirrut and Baze, who’d set up a facility for war orphans on a Rebel planet.
“Organics die,” Kay said. “It is what they do.”
“Kay,” Cassian had said sharply.
But Jyn found Kay’s chilly logic, and the confused sorrow beneath it, more palatable than Chirrut’s oft-repeated assurances that Bodhi was at one with the Force.
Baze had rumbled, “It’s not the end of the world.”
Even Chirrut had looked a little surprised by that, until he went on, “It just feels like it.”
Ironic how the whole galaxy was celebrating, and the remaining members of her broken family could only mourn.
Or was that more arrogance? Thinking she was important enough for the universe to thwart? When the truth was, people left and people suffered and people died and nothing you could do could change that.
The sonics were programmed to vibrate away bodily fluids, and her tears shivered into nothing before they’d slipped halfway down her cheeks.
The sonic shut off, and she rubbed her face. That was all the time she had to grieve for now. There was too much to do.
She pulled her outer clothes back on, sonically cleaned like her body and her underwear, and walked out of the anteroom with her boot laces undone.
“Jyn!”
Her head jerked up and she saw Cassian running through the maze of bunkrolls, eyes wild. “Jyn!” he shouted again, head swiveling.
Her stomach cramped. Cassian never ran, never shouted, not unless he had to.
She stood and waved, taking off to intercept him.
He grabbed her by the arms, almost tight enough to hurt. “Why weren’t you answering your comm?”
“I was in the kriffing shower, what is it? What’s happened?” Not Chirrut or Baze. Or Kay. What if he’d plugged into the wrong port? Fallen victim to a data bomb she’d missed?
Not another loss.
“The message,” he panted. “It was Bodhi.”
She felt herself freeze up. “He - he managed to send a message - before - ” Could she handle seeing that?
But Cassian shook his head. “No, he survived. The crash, he survived the crash.” He kissed her hard enough that her teeth cut into the inside of her lips.
She gaped at him, unable to take it in. “Bodhi - he - ?”
“He lived, he’s alive, he survived.”
“His squadron leader said - ”
“The crash took out his onboard computer, bad enough it registered as a kill. But he ejected and crashed into the tree canopy. He camped in the jungle and retrieved enough of it to rig a comm system. He didn’t want to send out a general distress beacon in case the Imperials found him first. But he knew my direct code.”
Yes, of course he had. Cassian had made them all memorize it so they could get hold of him immediately and secretly. Bodhi had struggled the most, his memory still slightly damaged from Bor Gullet. But he’d been able to recite it finally.
If Cassian hadn’t been holding onto her, Jyn might have dropped at his feet like a puppet with its strings cut. “He’s - he’s all right?”
“A little battered. Some broken bones, a few superficial burns. But he’ll be all right. I sent his position to the Endor fleet, and they’re retrieving him. He’s coming home, Jyn.”
Then it felt real. Jyn grabbed Cassian and kissed him back, as hard as he’d kissed her before, and he hauled her close. They stood clinging to each other in the middle of the Imperial reception hall, rocking slightly, joyful tears soaking each others’ hair.
Thank you, she thought to the Force, the universe, whatever might be listening. Thank you for giving Bodhi back.
And if that was arrogance, then fine. She’d be a little arrogant today.
FINIS