Chapter Text
He wakes slowly, pulling himself from sleep like being drugged, and his arms are empty. Memory fails him but he knows with certainty there should be someone there. Someone had been there, warm against him, a feeling of peace like he’d not felt in years. If ever.
The memory leaves him drowsy, sun shining on his face, and it is a good way to die.
Wait—what?
The fog starts to clear. Trying to maintain the illusion of sleep, he falls back on his training, reciting the things he knows to be true: He’s Cassian Andor. Fulcrum. Captain, Rebel Intelligence. What is the last thing he recalls? Where is he supposed to be?
Not here, his mind and body tell him. Somewhere important. Planet killer. Galen Erso—Jyn, Scarif.
Jyn!
His eyes shoot open.
He remembers who he is, where he is.
Or where he’s supposed to be. As he jerks upright, seeing his surroundings, he realizes that something is very wrong. He’d been on the beach. Injured, dying. His body broken, but strong enough to reach for the woman beside him.
Jyn, where is Jyn?
Rubbing his wrists as if there might be shackles on them (there aren’t but he can feel them nevertheless), he looks around.
The apartment he’s in is drab, browns and grays illuminated by sunlight streaming in from windows along the ceiling of the room. It’s not unfamiliar but he can’t place it, brain scrambling to run through the hideouts he’s used, the safe houses he knows of. Maybe someone found them, maybe someone got them away in time—
“Keef?”
The name freezes him in place as a woman steps out from behind a wall on the other side of the bed.
He can’t place her anymore than he can the room. But she’s familiar and he knows this place, he’s been here before—
Niamos.
The world goes quiet but for the ringing in his ears. For a moment, he can’t breathe, waiting for the punchline of a joke he doesn’t understand.
It’s not possible. He hasn’t been here in years.
Winda? Wandi? Windi? He can’t remember her name, the details lost to time, overshadowed by what comes next.
Came next? It hasn’t happened yet.
Is this even real? Some sort of afterlife showing him the moments he’s ashamed of? If so, why start here? His life fell apart far, far earlier.
He presses his hands to the bed beneath him, fingers curling in the sheets. Feeling the rough texture of the cloth, sucking in a deep breath to feel the air in his lungs.
“Keef? You alright?”
It feels real. It sounds real.
If he’s here, back in time, to another life—what does it mean?
“I uh, I’m good. I just—” He can’t get his head on straight enough to talk. But he needs her gone, needs to—what? What next?
“I have some things I need to do today,” he tells her. Swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, he yanks his pants on and moves, keeping his feet busy, his hands occupied as he searches for a shirt. There are credits hidden away, he remembers, and a blaster. But he has no ship and he can’t risk being arrested again.
What day is it? Is that today?
She snorts. “Ok. What does that mean? You asking me to leave?”
“Yeah.” It’s callous but he’s done worse for less. The memory of Scarif hangs over his head, the wave of destruction that bore down on them leaving a heat clinging to his bones.
Jyn. The Death Star.
He is no longer the Cassian who could be Keef, squandering his days while the Empire tears through system after system. He knows now the threat they face and no amount of alcohol in the galaxy can make him forget.
He tosses out a “Sorry” as he opens the door to usher her out. Her huff and eye roll tell him that bridge is burned.
When the door is closed, he rushes to the shower where he knows his belongings are hidden. He was right—credits, a blaster and Nemik’s manifesto. There’s no need to keep it—he knows every word—but he slips it into his bag nevertheless. He carried it with him as a reminder for years, a penance for the boy he failed and the fight he turned his back on.
He can carry it some more.
Then he grabs the blaster, testing its weight. Bulkier than the ones he’s used to carrying now but it will suffice until he can get his ahold of something better.
Once the blaster is in his hand, his racing pulse calms.
The question becomes: what does he do now?
His initial, gut response is find Jyn. It’s been the refrain in his head for days now. He wonders if maybe finding her is the key to soothing his skin which still burns with remembered heat and radiation that’s no longer there.
Getting thrown back into Narkina 5 is not an option.
(What will happen to Melshi? Kino? Whoever else may have made it to shore and survived?—He can’t worry about that now. Later. When he has a plan.)
There’s Ferrix, too. Maarva, who’ll die soon, and Bix, who’ll suffer at the hands of the Empire because of him. It hasn’t happened yet and he has the power to stop it.
With the way he left things, will they even come with him? Will the Empire retaliate against the people of Ferrix if he helps them escape? Or would it be better, he wonders, to fake his death for the ISB and hope they leave his family alone with no more need to hunt him down?
No. Salman and Bix’s connection to Luthen are more than enough reason for the ISB to pursue them. He’ll have to find a way to convince them of the danger—that’s if they haven’t been captured already.
Now that he’s allowed himself to think on them, his memories of this time flood in. He tucked them away long ago, needing to forget to survive.
He failed so many people. Is that why he’s here? Given a second chance to fix his mistakes? (There are too many to count and he’d have to go back a lot farther than this.)
If this is real—and so far, he has no reason to think it isn’t—there’s so much to do. Get his family to safety, save Melshi and the rest of the Narkina inmates—if he can—, contact Luthen to gain access to Alliance resources, make himself trustworthy in their eyes.
Stop the Death Star before Jedha. Before it’s too late.
Alone?
He’s learned to trust his instincts but he wars with himself.
Find Jyn.
But there are people who need his help.
What if she doesn’t remember? What if she does but refuses to help, taking the opportunity to run far and fast? (She won’t run. He watched the change come over her; he understands what destroying the Death Star means to her. Still he doubt remains. To be granted the time he wished for at the end—he can’t be that lucky.)
The problem is that her file provided plenty of details about her various arrests and her travel but it’s a vague timeline at best. He has no idea where she’ll be at this point in time. Four years and—eight months before they meet.
If she does remember, what would she do now? Where would she go?
Jedha. It’s the only thing he can think of. A place they both know, where the Guardians might be found, where Saw Gerrera will soon set up his next base of operations.
There’s time. Not long before he has to be on Ferrix, but enough for a stop off on Jedha. Just in case.
He needs to know. And saving his family will be a lot easier with backup. (Family—thinking the word takes effort. It’s a concept he’s shoved aside because it has no place in his life. The idea that they’re alive, somewhere out there, that Bix and Brasso haven’t yet given up on him, looms like a gathering storm. Pressure expands in his chest, threatening to burst.
Can he survive failing them again?)
Perhaps it’s an excuse but he takes it and runs.
He steals a ship. Better to save the credits just in case.
Niamos isn’t the kind of high class destination like Canto Bight but it attracts plenty of well-connected people with money to burn. (Well-connected in this day and age means Imperial and he’s got no qualms about it.) The ship he chooses is small, fast, and common enough to go unnoticed, more of a private transport vessel than anything else. Suitable for a tourist.
It gets him where he’s going.
——————
She wakes alone, frozen from her ears to the tips of her toes. A striking contrast to a sensation that’s already fading, a memory just out of reach as her mind struggles to center itself.
Where the fuck is she?
Adrenaline powers her out of bed because she doesn’t recognize her surroundings at all. It’s not Wobani, it’s not a rebel base or transport ship, it’s not the beach with a blinding sun and the weight of holding up another person—
Cassian. Scarif.
They were dead. So how the fuck did she get here?
It’s a rundown room with a narrow bed, chair and a battered, familiar bag on the floor beside the door. Her boots are tucked by the bed and there’s a blaster by the pillow but she’s not wearing her vest from Wobani. It’s vaguely familiar in the way that most shitholes are—home sweet home—but she can’t place anything particular. Other than her bag, which accompanied her for years before—
Before Wobani.
If this is death, it’s kind of a let down.
She grips the blaster with one hand as she rifles through the bag with the other. It’s hers—her code replicator, dented datapad, spare blaster pack, and a second set of underwear because she’s not a complete Hutt-spawn.
Everything she had before. Even the familiar hunger pains are back, an old friend that leaves her nauseous.
Rising, she goes to the window and examines her surroundings.
Ord Mantell. She recognizes the mountains in the distance and the faint impressions of moons in the sky. The tightly packed buildings hiding expansive markets both above board and below. A perfect place to find work for a down-on-her-luck ex-soldier.
She hasn’t been here in years. Not since fleeing the Atrivis sector after busting out of prison when her team left her behind. She dredges up more memories of that time. What comes to mind is the aching loneliness, uncertainty over where to go, what to do next, and the battle against an ever-present hunger as she struggled to find her feet.
Not a time she’s keen to relive.
Some instinct pulls her to the mirror across the room where she stares into the face of a girl long dead. Hunger has whittled away the youthful roundness of her cheeks and her skin is sallow from stress, too little sleep, and a recent stint in the Imperial’s hospitable custody. Short, wavy hair frames her face with more bangs than she’s had in awhile. She’s scrawny, young—twenty, maybe twenty-one—and it aches to see the reminder of how she used to be.
How she is? Was?
What the hell is this? Some kind of cosmic joke?
She presses her fingers to her face and it’s as real as it’s always been. Solid, warm. Blood rushes to the surface at the pressure she exerts.
If this is a trick, it’s a thorough one.
Pulling out her datapad is next; she checks the date on the local network. It doesn’t surprise her half as much as it should to see that it’s five years before Wobani. Before Scarif.
Then she delves deeper into the holonet, trying to locate the accounts she set up in the years to come where she stashed emergency funds. But there’s no trace of them.
Because it hasn’t happened yet, she concludes. If she’s real, and this is real, then she’s gone back in time. Somehow.
It means she has more time. A second chance?
To do what? Repeat the same struggles? Fight the same fights?
Stop the Death Star. Find my father.
Find Cassian.
The idea grabs hold of her once it’s formed. There’s logic to it—Saw won’t be on Jedha yet and getting to Eadu will be more difficult on her own—but that’s not what drives her.
Her last clear memory is the smell of him: sweat, blaster discharge, metal, and blood. The scrape of his beard along her throat, the squeeze of his arms around her.
(He went out to kill her father but put down his blaster and saved her instead. He believed her based on nothing more than her word.
He came back, kept coming back. It’s more than she’s ever had.)
But Cassian is a spy. He could be anywhere in the galaxy, and he may not even remember. The odds of finding him are desperate at best.
Kay would know the exact numbers.
(Goodbye. The grief in a droid’s vocoder sticks with her, matched only by Cassian’s own desperate cry, Kay!)
She can’t just show up on Yavin demanding to speak with him. Not if he’s not the Cassian she knows.
If he does remember, if her Cassian is out there, what would he do? Where would he go?
If their paths are going to cross anywhere, it’s Jedha, she realizes. Jedha where everything began, where for the first time, she caught a glimpse of what it might be like to have a partner. Someone to watch her back.
Chirrut and Baze are there. Hell, maybe Bodhi too.
It’s as good a place to start as any.
—————
She arrives in Jedha City two days later. If there is any doubt whether she’s been here before, it evaporates when she lays eyes on the city, begins her trek through the streets by tracing the footsteps of another self, in another time, with a man’s hand at her back, urging her on and pulling her close.
Unlike before, there is no Star Destroyer in the sky. The sun shines down at a stark angle, casting strips of shadow across the narrow streets. Whatever warmth it might’ve provided doesn’t penetrate to the surface and Jyn shivers, wishing for the scarf she’d scavenged off Yavin. All she has is a battered leather jacket, its lining worn thin. She thinks yearningly of Cassian’s coat, wondering if he has it already or if it’s something he’ll acquire in the years to come.
The smell of spices and cooked meats dominates the marketplace that winds its way through the streets. It tempts her, calling to the emptiness in her stomach she hesitates to fill, if only because the uncertainty of the future makes her frugal. She ate a ration bar on the transport ship—tasteless but providing enough nutrients to get her through the day. Spare credits for proper food is a luxury she can’t afford.
She swipes some sort of unfamiliar fruit to tuck in her bag for later.
Her first time on Jedha, vendors numbered half as many and their wares, limited by blockades. Now stalls are crammed together on both sides of the streets. Some shops spill out from the buildings. Everyone mills about, in no hurry to escape the Imperial eye as they chat and barter and sightsee.
It’s a travelers town, the site of pilgrimage, and the convergence of three distinct native cultures, each leaving its mark. In the language scribbled under signs in Aurebesh, in the colored patterns painted on the walls and the pubs whose denizens gather around long tables, shouting their gossip.
She never got to see this city first time around. Caught between the Empire’s greed and Saw’s retribution, they’d been subdued and gutted by years of occupation. The city was already half dead when it was destroyed.
That won’t happen this time. She’ll stop it before it becomes operational.
That isn’t to say there’s no sign of Imperial presence. The occasional patrol passes and there’s an outpost most locals avoid—easily identified by the young officers milling about, bored rather than alert.
Saw obviously isn’t here yet.
The credits she has weigh in her pocket—not enough for long if this finding Cassian plan doesn’t pan out. With her blaster and blade, a night on the streets doesn’t frighten her and she looks the part, anyway. Skin and bones and a pallor that borders on gray, Jyn is just one more runaway, one more abandoned kid in the galaxy and it is all too easy to blend in. (Wobani left her in rough shape so she’s not significantly worse off physically than she was before. She’ll make it work.)
As the sun sinks down and the desert chill sets in, she curls up against the wall of the temple, draping her jacket over herself for a bit of warmth. It’s not the worst place she’s ever slept. But she wants to be by the temple. If there is a place Cassian might go, it’s here.
The next morning finds her loitering about, studying the comings and goings of pilgrims as they admire the edifice and venture inside.
The temple isn’t abandoned yet. From her vantage point, she watches the Guardians of the Whills as they greet newcomers and when the doors open, she can see other figures of monks, moving about inside.
The Empire destroyed all of this. These people, this way of life—gone. She has less than five years to stop it. But there’s nothing she alone can do the prevent the damage their occupation wreaks.
“A glimpse of your future for that necklace you’re wearing,” she hears from the side.
When she whirls, Chirrut stands in the shadow of the temple, hand on his staff and his other braced on the wall. His grin spreads as she gapes at him.
Baze is nowhere to be seen but she knows he’s there. Like before.
Did they do this on purpose? Set it up to see if she remembers her part?
“How did you know I was wearing a necklace?” she asks. Hoping, she takes a step in his direction.
But he doesn’t continue the game. “It led you here. I can feel it’s pull.”
She waits for a laugh, a wink, anything that indicates he knows her. It doesn’t come; instead he waits, hands resting on his staff, as if expecting something from her.
“Why did it lead me here?” she asks.
“Hmmm. That is something only you can figure out. The Force will lead you to it, if you are patient.”
“That’s the problem,” she says, voice dry as the dusty ground beneath their feet. “I’m not.”
He raises his chin and if he weren’t blind, she’d say he is studying her.
If she doubted it before, she knows it now: he doesn’t recognize her. She’s a pilgrim like any other and Baze doesn’t come forward to either greet or threaten her.
The Chirrut before her is younger, his grin coming easy as he stands tall, confident in his surroundings without the burden of grief he carried before.
It aches, missing the man she knew. But he is better off and she hopes to keep it that way.
She waits. He has more to say and she wants to hold on to this moment, this familiarity, just a little longer.
“I often find,” he says at last, “that if I take a moment to look around, what I need is usually right in front of me.” Then he cocks his head, looking upwards at the temple. “And should you require, travelers are always welcomed at the temple. The nights can be cold.”
He saw her sleeping outside. Saw being relative, of course. However it is he observes the world, seeing more clearly than most despite his lack of sight. Perhaps the Force told him of her disheveled appearance—the last time she saw a mirror was Ord Mantell—or someone alerted the Guardians of a young vagabond squatting on their stoop.
Either way, she isn’t sure how long she’ll have to say on Jedha, how long until she’ll give up waiting for someone who likely won’t come.
(Cassian has always come back. If he doesn’t this time, she knows, it’s because he can’t.)
The temple might be a good option if she has to stay another night. Maybe she can find out more about the kyber temple, about the men she never got to know in another life.
But then something draws Chirrut’s attention to the crowd, his ear cocking to a hear something she couldn’t decipher.
“Hmm,” he says. “Quite the arrival of pilgrims today, wouldn’t you say? It isn’t always this crowded.”
She follows his gaze. The square in front of the temple’s main entrance is bustling in the morning light, a diversity of species she finds comforting if only because it indicates a city under Imperial occupation, not one of collaborators. There is something to be said for being amongst others in the same ship.
That’s when she spots a familiar face. One far more familiar than either Chirrut or Baze and sends a spike adrenaline through her system.
Cassian. There’s no mistaking him, not when she has his face etched in her memory. The look in his eyes as they stood in the elevator, the skin of his neck soft against her fingers and the drape of his arm around her waist as she helped hold him up.
He’s there in the crowd, eyes scanning the faces around him. Younger, scruffier, a deep frown on his face that should be off-putting but instead stirs a pang of nostalgia—of longing—within her.
Is it a coincidence he’s here on Jedha, now of all times?
Force, she hopes not.
“Thank you,” she tells Chirrut as she turns away, eyes fixed on Cassian so she doesn’t lose him again. She hopes another Chirrut, somewhere, knows how grateful she is for the time she knew him.
Her feet draw her closer. Cassian takes his time moving through the throngs of visitors—it’s doubtful he can see her over the heads of so many, especially those sentients who stand taller than a scrawny, malnourished twenty-one-year-old.
The glimpses she captures of him through the shifting bodies between them is of a man less contained than the one she knew, his movements rough and agitated. But still restless, intentional, and it’s an odd combination as if he’s trying to fit into a body that no longer moves the way he’s used to. He’s dressed well enough, a long jacket over a clean gray shirt and from the way he stands, there’s a blaster at his side, though she can’t see it. (Is he cold without the parka? He looks underdressed compared to the last time they walked this world.)
The beard and the longer, unkempt hair bring a smile. It’s not the captain she knows but his face, for all that she barely knew him even then, is comforting. This is the man who held her as they died.
At that moment, he turns his head her way and their eyes catch. He freezes, gazed fixed on her face. He waits as she approaches, watching her every step.
“Cassian.”
“Jyn.”
“You remember.”
The answer goes without saying. Instead he steps forward and raises a hand to rest it on her shoulder. She has to crane her neck to look up at him with how close he stands. He looks tired and wane but nowhere near the way he’ll be in five years. He’s healthier, more filled out.
His eyes trace the lines of her face then, hesitantly, the hand on her shoulder moves up to follow his gaze, lightly trailing along her prominent cheekbones, down her throat to the opening of her shirt where she knows her collar bone sticks out.
Sighing, she leans forward and drops her head to his chest. His hand falls away from her collar, coming to rest above her elbow, a hold she could easily break from if she wished.
People scurry around them, children shout, the day moves on. But he’s a buffer, the two of them standing in an island of quiet amidst the busy city.
“Any clue what’s happening?” she asks.
He hears her over the din. “No. The last thing I remember—” He trails off.
She lifts her head and meets his eyes again. “The beach.”
“Yes.”
The memory of it floods her and Jedha falls away. They’re back on the beach, her body aching but she’s ready, they’ve done what they set out to do, she’s kept her promise. She believes in something outside herself and that alone feels like a miracle. There’s the heat of the blast, the warmth of his body against her, two very different things. His hands tighten their grip, his face tucks into her shoulder and it’s okay—
Then she’s back in the square on Jedha, Cassian in front of her with his eyes wide and hands clutching her arms.
Relief washes over her out of nowhere. She hadn’t truly believed she’d find him, or that if she did, he might be in the same shape he was in on Scarif—broken, unable to stand, likely dying.
But he’s here, and whole, and he remembers.
She sees a matching relief in his eyes. His hand on her arm tightens its grip.
They’re not alone in this. Or if they are, they’re alone together.
They both understand what’s at stake.
And if she thinks about it, there’s no one else she wants at her side for what’s to come. Despite knowing him less than a week.
“Should we look for—”
She shakes her head. “I spoke with Chirrut a few minutes ago. He didn’t recognize me.”
“So it’s just us.”
“It’s just us.” The words should weigh more heavily than they do. But somehow ‘just us’ feels like enough.
—————
Chirrut and Baze don’t recognize them. It’s a disappointment but probably a blessing for the Guardians. If they can stop the destruction of Jedha, prevent the Death Star from ever becoming operational, the Guardians will never have to live with the memories of their home’s loss.
It’s just the two of them.
She’s nothing and everything like he expected. Younger, obviously, but in a way that’s heartbreaking to see. The too-big jacket, the lack of vest, the sunken hollows of her cheeks make her look far more frail than he knows she is. Not that she was in great shape after Wobani, but there’s a youth to her face that will fade in the next few years.
He wonders how different he looks but it’s hard to imagine it’s much different—he feels the same, worn and aged and stained by sins even time can’t undo.
Even reunited with Jyn, armed with the knowledge of what’s to come, he can’t forget the events that will happen soon. By this point in the other timeline, he was in prison. The people of Ferrix facing Imperial occupation because of him. His family, hurt and killed.
Maarva’s still alive.
The Death Star has to be stopped. That’s undeniable. They only have a short time and, without finding and signing on with the Alliance, they’re short on resources.
But he can’t leave his family to their fate. Not if he can—if he is supposed to—do something about it.
They haven’t talked about the specifics of where they go next, where to start. But it’s time to have that discussion, as they leave Jedha’s atmosphere in his stolen ship. They sit side-by-side in the cockpit and the sight of her is comforting, solidifying—he isn’t alone in this. Nor is he going mad. She remembers what happened before too.
(In the cockpit, he feels the ache of Kay’s loss, though the droid is technically still alive. But even if Cassian is able to reprogram him, his Kay is gone.)
He licks his lips and looks away from her, out the viewport where a future looms, both certain and not. “There are people who’ll be hurt because of me. They’re in danger now.”
Whatever he expects, it isn’t Jyn’s quiet “What do we need to do?”
Needing to know what she’s thinking, to see on her face that it’s real, he turns back to her. An unflinching willingness to help seems too easy but it’s there, the same quiet determination he’s grown used to in the past—days? Weeks? Time is an absurd notion when they’re five years younger than when they met, when the past is jumbled in his head with a future they’ve already begun to irrevocably change.
“The ISB is after me. They know my face and name. They’re going to go after my family,” he explains in a soft voice. He isn’t used to having family anymore. Even the words sound clunky in his mouth. It feels like a lifetime has passed since then but here he is.
For a moment, something flickers in her eyes, the muscles tensing before she forces a neutral expression.
“Alright. What do you want to tackle first?”
“My friend was tortured. My mother died. I—don’t know how much time we have. I don’t know exactly when things happened, but in the next few weeks at most.” He runs a hand through his hair and won’t look at her, hands busy setting their course.
“Where were you now? Or where were you, in the original timeline?”
He pauses, holding himself still. Then he turns his head, waiting until she holds his gaze before speaking. “I was in an Imperial labor camp on Narkina 5. I escaped a few weeks later and went back to help them but by then, it was too late.”
Her expression turns pensive. He’d pay all the credits in his bag to know what’s going through her mind but the woman is as much of a unsolved puzzle as she’s always been. “Where is your family?”
“Ferrix. Free Trade Sector.”
“Imperial presence?”
“Yes. It’s—a recent occupation. But I’ve gotten in and out unseen before.”
“And once we get them, what then?” And for the first time since they found each other again, he can’t read her. Whether or not she’s onboard, whether she thinks it’s a waste of time in the face of the Death Star’s threat.
After all, what reason does she have to help him? She owes him nothing. (But she could have left him. In the end, on Scarif, she’d been in good enough shape to seek out a ship if she’d chosen. To get herself away in time. She stayed.)
Why did he assume so quickly that this—this partnership would work out? They came together for Scarif but so much still stands between them. She doesn’t know him and though he has some idea of her background, the broad strokes of it, he doesn’t know her either.
His reason protests but his gut trusts her regardless. His years in the Alliance tempered his reliance on instinct in favor of orders based on information he might not be privy to. But it is impossible, now, to forget that it was instinct which drove him to set aside his rifle on Eadu, instinct that had him running toward the platform targeted by Alliance bombers for a woman he was logically better off leaving behind.
Instinct that told him to trust her and propelled him—all of them—to Scarif.
I’m not used to people sticking around when things go bad.
Trust goes both ways.
“And then,” he says, letting himself believe in her again, remembering the look in her eyes in the hangar on Yavin. “There’s a moon nearby where they can get away. Find some anonymity and be safe. Ideally, we find a way to make the ISB think I’m dead. Then we go find your father and stop the Death Star before it’s too late.”
For this to work, they have to trust each other. They have to learn each other and that means allowing her this part of himself he thought long buried.
If there is anyone who can understand the man he used to be, he thinks it might be Jyn.
—————
“Alright,” she tells him. Helping his family and friends is not something she can ask him to forgo, not when she remembers the man he becomes—is? Will be?
Regardless of tense, she knows what it’s like to lose and here they are, with another chance.
They have time. And they know where her father is, what his message contains, where the plans are—that’s three steps ahead of where they started the last time.
Ferrix, Free Trade Sector. Mother alive, friends. Imperial prison camp. She catalogues the details he’s offered without prompting.
None of it is what she expected but then, what had she thought? That he’d been with the Alliance since he was six? She hadn’t truly given much consideration to who he’d been. No personal ties as far as a cursory study of his ship and bag found—though perhaps that was a spy’s caution rather than evidence of absence.
She doesn’t know this man. They didn’t have time, before.
A voice inside screams to run. Handle this herself because Cassian is an unknown and unknowns are liabilities.
Learning more about him poses its own risks. He’s the only anchor she has—what if knowing him changes that? (What if him getting to know her changes it?)
I believe you.
Welcome home.
The things she knows about him are this: he’s a spy and a liar and an assassin. He loves a droid and put down the blaster when new information altered the parameters of his mission. He came back for her at the risk of his own life, potentially compromising his intel, and when faced with the impossible—death and a second chance—he chose to seek her out first.
Maybe that’s enough.
He stares at her, probably trying to see whether she’s sincere. After their initial relief at finding each other, caution has set in for them both.
Everything happened so fast, before. They went from assessing each other in the darkness of the command center on Yavin to dodging blaster bolts and grenades side by side. The terrible weight of the Death Star’s destruction of Jedha, of her father’s message and the choice that was no choice at all, bound them together.
They’re doing this backwards. Dying together, trust, and now the delicate task of putting the pieces together to discover who the other is.
“We should compare notes sometime,” she tells him, leaning her head back against the seat. From the corner of her eyes, she watches the light of hyperspace sharpen the angles of his face. “Not many people survive an Imperial labor camp.”
That catches him off guard and a short, sharp laugh escapes. Not a happy one, exactly, but amused nevertheless.
“When this is done,” he says, rising from his seat after setting the autopilot, “you and I are getting a drink. Several. And we can talk about it.”
“You’re buying.”
He smiled. “Of course.”
——————
Before leaving Jedha, they stocked the ship with enough food for two weeks. Jyn hadn’t seen the need for more than basic ration packs but he insisted on proper food, ingredients that had to be cooked and pulled together for meals.
Extravagant, perhaps, but the sight of Jyn’s skin-and-bone frame makes him dig his heels in.
“Anything edible,” she tells him when he asks her preferences. Her corresponding shrug is too casual to be genuine, marking it as one of those topics to treat with care.
Their first night on the ship, he sets about making the most filling meal he can think of—rich in calories and proteins but tasty too. Clem taught him; it’s one of the traditional meals from Fest where he’d grown up, made hearty with meats and spices for warmth.
The smell draws Jyn to the galley, her eyes wide and fixed on the small stove as he sautés some of the vegetables.
“I kind of thought you were joking about the cooking,” she says.
“I don’t joke about cooking. Been a long time since I’ve been able to do it, though.”
“You any good?”
He smiled at her over his shoulder. “I guess we’ll find out.”
When he finally places a bowl in front of her, her eyes go wide. Then they narrow, studying the chunks of meat and vegetables piled on top of small, round grains. It isn’t quite the ingredients he needed but close enough.
She pokes and prods at the food with her fork, bringing some of it up to her face to sniff. With a glance his way and a shrug, she digs in.
He takes his time with his own food, eating absentmindedly as he focuses on watching her. Given her scrawniness and the way her stomach had grumbled while they shopped, he expects her to scarf it down but she doesn’t. She eats at a steady rhythm, a forced slowness that speaks of experience with going hungry—she knows better than to consume too much, too fast.
By the time he finishes his own, she’s already set her bowl aside and is watching him in turn.
“Thank you,” she says once he’s done.
“So am I any good?” It isn’t intentional, the way his voice drops low and quiet, but something about the way she looks at him steals his breath. He means the cooking but he’s not unaware of other possible subtexts, of other ways he can prove himself good.
It’s far from the first time he’s thought about it.
“Best thing I’ve eaten in a long time,” she says, her voice matching his. “Though that’s not saying much. And it could always be a fluke. I guess we’ll have to see how far your repertoire extends.”
That’s a challenge if he’s ever heard one.
He fails to hide his smirk. “I guess we will.”
Her answering grin is sharp and feral. For a moment, he feels like a much younger man, one who knew how to do this. Physically he’s gone back but mentally, he’s still lightyears from who he used to be.
He wonders what she’d do if he leaned over and kissed her. Would she let him? Would her lips be as soft as they looked? Would they fit together as well as he thinks they might?
And what if they don’t? As much as he wants this, as tempted as he is to explore what they could be, if he acts now and things go poorly, could he and Jyn still work together in the way they need? Would he drive her away, break her tentative trust in him?
His track record doesn’t inspire confidence.
The threat of the Empire, the Death Star, is too great. They can’t risk it.
Jyn cocks her head at him and leans back in her chair, effectively removing the possibility of him reaching for her as if she read his mind. The lighthearted atmosphere fades to something more sombre.
“What’s your family like?” she asks.
It takes him awhile to answer. He spent so long shoving those memories aside, refusing to let them drag him down or keep him from doing what needs to be done.
But Jyn is surprisingly patient. She stares at him, a curious tilt to her head, and he finds that he wants to tell her, memories of faces and names and moments rising up, begging to escape.
He has a chance to see them again. To save them. The reality of it punches him in the gut, stealing his breath. He has to clear his throat against the threat of tears—fuck, he can’t even remember the last time he cried. The rush of reliefgriefjoy is overwhelming.
(And the fear that he’ll fail them again.)
“You don’t have to answer,” she offers, reading him far too easily.
“No, I—I don’t mind. It’s just odd to think everything has simply— been undone.” Not all, of course. Ferrix is under occupation now thanks to him and they might not be glad to see him, much less willing to leave. Maarva refused, last time.
He’ll cross that bridge when he comes to it.
But enough has been undone to change course.
He starts at the beginning because he knows the broad strokes of her life and fair is fair. “My parents were killed by Republic soldiers when I was young.”
“Six?”
He nods. He shouldn’t be surprised she remembers but he is—in the midst of her grief, the chaos of the moment, it’s a small detail to retain.
It makes it easier to continue.
“Yes. There was a group of us, kids, who were able to hide. We survived, got by on our own but a few years later, troops came again and—I don’t know what happened to the others, really. But I was taken by a couple of scavengers. They brought me to Ferrix, gave me a home. Maarva and Clem Andor. Clem taught me—a lot. How to fix things, what scraps can be used, what they’re worth. How to shoot a blaster and fly a ship. But he was killed.
“Maarva was—is a formidable woman. Stubborn and set in her ways.” He searches for words but his feelings for Maarva are a complex tangle, dulled by grief at her loss but dredged up at the thought of facing her again. “When they took me away from my world, I wasn’t willing. I didn’t want to leave, I had—I had a sister. She was left behind.”
Jyn sucks in a breath but says nothing, allowing him time to continue.
“The Andors raised me and taught me to survive. I don’t know what would’ve happened if they hadn’t found me that day. I resented them for it. For a long time. And I—wasn’t easy. For Maarva especially. After Clem died, I—kept getting into trouble, causing trouble. I disappointed her and in the end, she died because I failed her. It’s complicated, but—”
It’s not the time or the place to describe his terror at their appearance, at waking up in the unknown, isolated by language and ignorance. Or the years he spent lost and uncertain and out of place on a world he didn’t belong with everything he’d ever known ripped away. Replaced.
The way that life chafed, the lack of answers about Kerri driving him to reckless lows, always on edge, always unsettled, always on his own even when he tried—
Still, Maarva and Clem were all he had. The only stability amidst upheaval. They tied him to himself, to who he had to be: Cassian Andor, Maarva’s boy, Clem’s shadow, born on Fest, Ferrixian by adoption, then that Andor boy, you know the one and Maarva’s lazy, ungrateful son what a disappointment he turned out to be.
“But they were your parents,” Jyn finishes for him.
He tilts his head, acknowledging the truth of it. “But they were my parents.”
She leans forward, resting her arms on the table between them. “He might have been hard and paranoid and—difficult, but Saw was as much a father to me as Galen Erso. Maybe more. Can’t say I turned out alright,” she snorts with a shake of her head, “but I don’t where I’d have been without him. Dead, probably.”
“I’m glad you’re not dead,” he tells her. And he means more than some alternate past where Saw doesn’t find her, where she’s left alone in the galaxy.
He doesn’t know what he would do now, if it was just him. If Jyn died on Scarif. After years of putting one foot in front of the other, structuring his life with missions and orders, emptying himself out to become whoever he needed to be—habit might’ve pushed him forward for a time. But he’s not sure he’d have the strength to start over. To live it again, to face the challenges ahead alone.
“I’m glad you’re not dead too.”
Neither smiles but he finds himself content to gaze at her, marveling at how things can change in so short a time. He’s known her a handful of days and this is the first time they’ve had to really talk. For awhile, she loomed larger than life in his mind: first as the key to Saw Gerrera, to Galen Erso; then as threat, a woman of barely contained violence waiting to be unleashed; and finally, a driving force, burning with need and faith, lighting a spark within a stagnating rebellion.
At the end, just an ordinary woman, battered and bruised and full of hope. Strong enough to carry him as he faltered, to face death at his side, and yet frail in his arms, flesh and blood and bone, with a tremble in her small frame that had him clutching her tighter as if he could shelter her from fear.
She’s younger now but her eyes are the same.
“Where were you?” he asks after awhile. “In the original timeline?”
She snorts. “I can’t believe you can say that and have it be a reasonable question. But at this point, I was—transient. Never stayed in one place for long, looking for something to do with myself, find some work. A couple years after Saw dumped me.”
That’s new information. They never figured out precisely when or why she split with Saw.
He raised me, she said on Yavin. What did it mean to be raised by Saw Gerrera? She inherited his intensity, his tightly leashed but destructive fury, and his defiance in the face of an unjust galaxy. How much of who she is comes from Galen and Lyra?
(Has Maarva and Clem’s influence left as clear a mark on him as well?)
“He left you?”
Her eyes slide from his, flicking over to trace the contours of the galley kitchen across from them. “Gave me a knife and loaded blaster, told me to wait in a bunker until daylight. By the time I came out, all traces of them were gone.”
“How old?”
Now she looks at him, a challenge in her gaze. “Sixteen.”
At the same age, he’d been on Mimban. Fresh out of prison, angry and lost and afraid, stuck under the Empire’s thumb. Getting his first taste of the battlefield, learning the alternating cycles of terror and boredom, certain he’d die in that mud.
They walked different paths to get here but the shape of the scars left behind are familiar.
“I was on Mimban. At sixteen. Fresh out of a youth detention center on Sipo.”
“Another prison.” She smirks, a bitter, humorless quirk of her lips with her eyes like jagged shards of glass—dangerous but beautiful when they caught the light. “We’re quite the pair.”
“Maybe that’s why we make a good team.”
She hums. He tries to decipher what might be going through her mind but she’s still, in many ways, a mystery.
One he wants to unravel. Even if it takes time. If there’s one thing he’s learned as a spy, it’s patience.
They have time. Impossible to know how much—the galaxy has never been safe—but more than they should have had.
That night, he falls asleep watching her face on the bunk across from his. In the stillness of the ship, alone and isolated in hyperspace, her soft breathing is a steady reminder of her presence—so different from the clanking and whirring of Kay but no less comforting. For a moment, the rest of the galaxy may well not exist at all.