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Sharp reds and purples mottled the sky, and the moon’s planet descended, carving a path that taunted the sun. The high, warbling drone of twilight filled the air. The closer it drew to autumn, the sooner the local fauna struck up the band.
Jyn sat back on her haunches, laid her wrists on her knees, and gazed up at a pair of clouds. Her neck and lower back ached. There was nothing to be done for it. The culprit was age, and no one had a cure for that. No one she’d trust, anyway. They had a water bath, and she’d soak in it later – a luxury she swore she’d never take for granted. For now, a stretch and a pair of deep breaths would do. She raised her arms, dropped them behind her head, grabbed her wrist with the opposite hand. Tugged. Sighed. Loosed her fingers, bent her shoulders back, felt the tension cascade down to her ribcage. A bird of prey let out a cry. The planet stooped lower.
A landspeeder rumbled, somewhere behind her. She inclined her head. It was about that time, wasn’t it? Unintelligible conversation, a chuckle, a loud “good bye.” Footsteps on the gravel path. She bent toward the soil and yanked up a weed.
“Hey.”
Twelve paces away, on the edge of the chaotic patch that Jyn saw fit to call a “garden,” stood a girl of 14, a bag slung across her chest. A breeze kicked up from the west and tugged at her dark hair.
“Hey.” Jyn wiped her hands on her trousers. “How was school?”
“‘S all right.”
“Good.” There were times it still felt foreign to smile. She’d spent many years tucking her emotions away, presenting to the universe a carefully crafted mask. For her daughter, the mask would always slip. “Want to help me weed?”
“Uh…” Althea’s hands tightened around the strap of her bag. “Not really.”
Of course not. The cant of Jyn’s smile changed. “Right.” She dug at a clump of brownish green whorls, dragging its half-meter-long roots out of the soil and holding them aloft, slightly above her head, before tossing the whole mess to the side. “So, what’s up, then?”
A shrug, and silence. Hells. Adolescents were so typical, and her daughter was no exception. “Thea, you’re not a toddler. Speak to me.”
The sun's final rays sliced through the bulging line of flora that abutted their neighbor's land, splaying outward in long, delicate fingers. Althea was half cast in shadow. The particulars of her frown, of the lines that formed in the center of her brow, were reminiscent of her father. The eyeroll, however, was all Jyn. “Don’t make this weird, Mom.”
“Make what weird?”
Althea shrugged again. “I dunno. We were talking today, and…everybody has these stories of their parents.” She shifted from one foot to the other. “And, uh. I don’t.”
Jyn folded her knees beneath her and sat back on her heels. This was unexpected. She’d never said much about their past, partly out of pragmatism, but mostly out of habit. Much of what they’d done was now declassified, although not widely disseminated. There was no reason not to go into more detail about the bits Althea couldn’t help but know; it just never would have occurred to her to do so. “Oh.” She pursed her lips. “Okay.” It probably shouldn’t be here, out in the garden. But it was what it was, and what the hells? “What do you wanna know?”
Another stretch of silence, in which Jyn dug at her thighs instead of at the dirt, and the planet took full possession of the sky. She steeled herself for the hard questions to come. Finally, Althea spoke.
“What was yours and Dad’s first date?”
Jyn blinked. “What?”
“Like…where’d you go out the first time?”
Jyn’s jaw went slack under the barrage of thoughts. That was it? That was the story she wanted? Something so banal, so unimportant… What was unimportant? She looked up at her daughter. Took a breath. The song of twilight filled her ears. They’d wanted this for her, hadn’t they? They’d wanted her not to be consumed with war; they’d wanted her to know peace, and therefore frivolity, in a way they never had. In that sense, Jyn owed her “unimportant” stories, including those that had led to her parentage.
The troublesome bit was that they hadn’t “gone out.” They hadn’t done anything. It had just happened, one thing after another. "Um.” What should she say? She raised her hands, gesturing in the descending dark, then dropped them back to her thighs. The word came only half-consciously. But once it had, she was committed. “Scarif.”
“...what?”
“That was what we did.” He’d said things to her, and she’d felt something, and when he’d shown up at the top of the tower, and she’d carried him, she’d known, and he’d known. Everything that had come after had felt inevitable. Blood in her veins, air in his lungs. Them, together, always. “We went to Scarif and stole the plans for the first Death Star.”
Althea stared at her. Pinpricks of light bounced at the far edge of the property.
“If you didn’t wanna tell me, you coulda just said that.”
For the second time that evening, Jyn’s jaw hung open.
Althea stomped her way toward the house. Jyn rose and took a few hurried steps, flakes of dirt peeling off her trousers and falling to the ground. “Thea!”
Once inside, Althea all but punched the door panel. It hissed shut behind her. Jyn sighed. Adolescents. She’d have to go after her. There was a lecture about rudeness in her future. But for the moment, it was nice to stand there, alone once more, and let the falling night curl around her.
She looked upward, taking in the first handful of stars, then back down at her unruly plot. Years ago, he'd been the one to suggest she take up gardening, as a way to soothe her hypervigilant mind. A persistent, undying grief clawed at her heart. It would be eight years next week. Come to think of it, that was probably what this had all been about. Cassian had doted on Althea, in a way that seemed, sometimes, as if he were trying to make up for something. He might've been. Jyn certainly was.
“I miss you,” she whispered to the air. It was getting easier, maybe, in the barest of increments, as the years marched on. Then again, maybe it wasn't. Maybe she was just getting better at looking away from it, in the same way she'd learned to do with her parents' deaths.
With a final brush of dirt from her hands and knees, she headed inside. The lecture could wait, she supposed. There were other things to say.