Chapter Text
Questionable Provenance
"We do what must be done."
1 BBY
She kisses him goodbye on the hospital gurney because that is what she has seen others do.
Then she turns to what must be done. A twist in the dial to loosen the latches. A lesson taught when she was seven.
She looks to him again for his words. She cannot help it. She sees the darkness staining the fabric of his medical gown. She realizes that these were her tears.
She could not, in the end, do what had to be done.
-
She had nothing for an exfiltration plan. She builds one anyway. A mobile med unit she seals him in. A frosted front panel which obscures him from the world outside. And when an ISB tactical officer spots her, she detonates the last of her slap charges, and the floor collapses behind her.
-
In the chaos, she steals an emergency med speeder. She will only have twenty-four hours before they track it. It will have to be enough.
-
She leaves his mobile med unit in a corner at the safe house. Only the pulse radio mattered now. His words must reach Yavin.
Fifteen-minute broadcast. Every hour, on the hour.
This is the first hour.
-
The fifth hour. Still nothing.
A slow realisation, as she sets the radio receiver down. She had not built an exit on her way in.
-
The eighth hour. A television in the safe house tells the news story in skips and starts. The slap charges in Lina Soh levelled half the floor, killing an ISB tactical unit. She has to smile at that.
Less comforting is the knowledge that five patients (three humans, two Twi’leks) on the floor directly beneath were also killed.
-
The twelfth hour. She huddles in his room as night falls. The main power line has been diverted to the med unit. The lights from the machine are the only source of warmth she has left.
There she rests her palms. And there she wonders.
Had she betrayed her family? By saving the man who helped kill them?
Or was she returning the favour? Of a man who saved her life?
Why couldn’t he be wholly good? Or wholly bad?
Maybe then it would be easier to justify what she had done at Lina Soh Hospital and what she is risking now.
-
The sixteenth hour. His med unit is shutting down. She strips the safe house bare in search of power. Any power. Batteries from the television set, a torch, an old Dejarik board. Anything except the pulse radio. Those batteries, she will not touch.
It is not enough. The monitor flickers. She can no longer track his vitals. The lights will go next. On and on until only the ventilator remains.
In the darkness, all she can hear is his breath, whistling in the wind. It would be easier to pull the plug of a med unit than come face to face with the man inside. Perhaps she will finally find the courage before it is too late.
Then, the steady beeps of her pulse radio. Acknowledgement at last.
-
Cassian Andor. The lost boy from Ferrix.
“Come with us.”
“No. It’ll be faster for Melshi and you to go alone.”
“Kleya, he’s going to die.”
“If you don’t go back to Yavin, he’s going to die for nothing!”
“I’m not leaving you two here! Come to Yavin with us! They’ll help!”
“As prisoners?”
“As heroes.”
And because he is Cassian Andor. The saviour from Ferrix.
“I promise you we can still make it. But we have to go. Now.”
-
When the blaster bolts fly and the flashbang comes rolling in, her eyes do not fly to her blaster on the counter top, but to the glow of the med unit in the corner.
Another flash. And then, nothing.
-
She wakes to a migraine which threatens to crush her head. No. No. Words. His words.
“Superweapon. Ghorman. Jedha. ISB Krennic. Engineer Galen Erso.”
A voice. Gentle. Cassian Andor’s friend. Melshi.
“We know, we know.”
“Rep…Repeat! Repeat what I told you!”
“Superweapon. Ghorman. Jedha. ISB Krennic. Engineer Galen Erso. You should lie down.”
She remembers something else. Her head jerks to the side to look for the box. The sudden motion jolts stars into her line of sight.
“He’s still…He’s…He’s here.”
She knows what Melshi’s pause was meant to say. He’s still alive. Which was a step above death. But very far from anything else.
-
Cardiac perforation, they said. Punctured lung, they said. Medically induced coma, they said.
“And you have a concussion. You should sleep. We’ll wake you if he improves.”
She takes Vel’s jacket and limps out of the room. His words. They have to hear his words.
-
They have heard his words. And Tivik’s. And Saw Gerrera’s. And Galen Erso’s. And Jyn Erso’s. And Cassian Andor’s.
Their next step is to bicker. Endlessly.
She has swapped one political hell scape for another.
-
She is still not fit when Cassian Andor comes knocking. So she can only watch the skies as Rogue One takes off. The Rebel Fleet will be next. And she will still be here. Grounded.
It is someone else’s turn to carry the burden now.
-
They retrieved the Death Star plans from Scarif. They lost the Death Star plans over Tattooine. They are trying to recover the lost Death Star plans now.
Wilmon and her nearly hit the mechanic who relays the news to them, although it was hardly the mechanic’s fault.
-
The names of the dead on Scarif eventually filter through. Cassian Andor is one of them.
She closes her eyes.
-
She is not part of Rebel Command. So she does not know how close they were to the end until the Death Star rises on the horizon of Yavin. Something ridiculous crosses her mind as the people around her flee.
“Devaronian victory necklace.”
Before remembering that he is not with her.
She stands tall and she watches it come closer and closer. The people around her may run. She will not give the Empire that satisfaction.
-
She is one of the few on Yavin to see it explode with their own eyes.
She smiles. Later, she will, for the first and last time, sit by his bedside and, unconscious as he is, tell him what happened.
-
They have to vacate Yavin. Vader is coming.
“Echo Base will have the facilities for him. On Hoth.”
“It’s too far. He won’t survive the trip.”
Absurd to have him dying mid-flight after all that has happened.
“We have a closer one…Shimmer Base, Planet 5578. But the medical facilities there may not be enough.”
She joins the medical evacuation team anyway. General Draven waves them off. It is the last she sees of him. She will later hear tales of his courage and sacrifice at the Battle of Mako-Ta.
-
He almost dies mid-flight anyway.
Blood pressure so low that his heartbeat falls to precipitous levels. Doctors and nurses, kneeling by his stretcher to revive him. They hold his hand. She holds the IV bag above him.
There are no tears. She has already given him all of it.
-
Resources. Time. Materials. Expertise. Every resource used must be proportional to the outcome. Those were his words.
She counts three doctors, five nurses, uncount hours and supplies. For one man.
When they finally lift him onto a bed in Shimmer Base, she knows there is nothing else she can ask for.
So she does it herself. She pushes his bed five centimetres to the right. Closer to that one weak ray of sunshine in this strange planet of six moons and geothermal pools.
-
She is assigned a living pod. Smaller than her room above the gallery in Coruscant. Beds, one on each side, tucked into alcoves in the walls and hidden behind dividers for privacy.
As if they expected him to join her.
Because his bed remains empty, she stacks her belongings on it.
-
Her visits grow less frequent. Once a week. Then once a fortnight. Then once a month. Then, nothing.
She hears the nurses whisper behind her back. The doctor approaches her multiple times, first inside, then outside the hospital wing. But she has done all she can. The rest is up to him.
-
They finally have something akin to a memorial. Something to drink and commemorate Rogue One and the Battle of Yavin.
She is not invited. She comes anyway. They are so joyous, so delighted, that they pull her in and offer her a bottle. Someone roars for a drinking game, and she cannot wait to get away.
Vel rescues her and nudges her to a corner, and there, Vel clinks a bottle against her stationary one.
"They drink to you. They just don't know it."