Chapter Text
She’s sixteen when she meets him for the first time. Saw abandoned her in the bunker three weeks ago and she’s still reeling, scrambling to survive, to stay on the move so that Imperial troops won’t find her. They shouldn’t—Jyn Erso is a name long-buried, and as far as the Empire is concerned, she’s probably dead—but one of the many things she learned from Saw is that you can never be too careful.
The shuttle she’s been hiding in for the last three days finally docks on Mandalore. She stumbles out into a teeming spaceport, squinting in the sunlight that burns her retinas after so many days in darkness, and, for the hundredth time, curses Saw Gerrara for leaving her in that damned bunker. She’s only sixteen and, yes, maybe her skill-set is way beyond that of a typical teenager, but she’s too young to be dealing with this shit. Saw is the closest thing she had to a father, and even though she never saw him as a parental figure, even though she never forgot her father (couldn’t, no matter how hard she might have tried in the last five years), she’s relied on him. For protection, for company, for guidance, whatever; the point is she thought they were a team and he left her to rot in one of his hideaways in the Mid Rim.
She follows the crowds to the main square. It’s filled with market stalls selling wares from all corners of the galaxy, which half the city seems to be trying to buy, so she figures this is as good a place as any to try and get some food. She doesn’t have any credits—Saw, for all his genius, didn’t seem to realise that a blaster will do kriff-all to get her food—but it won’t be the first time she’s stolen something and security seems pretty lax around here, so the chances of her getting caught are one in a million.
If she does, she’ll get out of it. She always does.
(Plus, it would be awfully inconvenient to get arrested. Saw probably figured she was getting to be too much of a liability, what with her father being the Emperor’s right-hand weapons technician, and she’ll be damned if she proves him right.)
She’s reaching for a loaf a bread when she spots him on the other side of the fountain, staring at her. She’s not sure if it’s because he recognises her or because she’s in the middle of committing a felony, but either way, she needs to make herself scarce, now. She’s spent her whole life being unremarkable and the fact that someone is remarking on it is nothing but trouble.
(There isn’t technically a price on her head, but Krennic would love to find her alive after all these years. The stress of not knowing what happened to her, of not having her under his precious control probably keeps him up at night.)
He follows her across the square. She tries to lose him in the crowds, weaving in and out of market stalls, but he keeps up, like a persistent shadow she can’t shake. Someone has trained him. Maybe he’s part of the resistance. Maybe he’s trying to rob her. Maybe he’s undercover police—he seems like the worst person to pick as a police officer, but she has no idea how things work here.
She’s going to have to fight him. It’s not ideal—she was hoping to keep a low profile here and brawling in the middle of the street is not conducive to that—but she’s also been spoiling for a fight since Saw left her to rot in that bunker, so she supposes it’s better to get it over with now on some boy several years older and half a foot taller than later on someone who might really do some damage, like Stormtroopers.
She turns into an alley off the main square, putting enough space between her and her stalker that she can slip into a doorway without him seeing. She knows he’ll take the bait—he won’t let her slip away, not after he’s followed her this far.
All she has to do is wait.
Footsteps sound on the permacrete. She steps out from her hiding place; her pursuer barely has a second to blink before she rams her fist into his solar plexus. He drops the ground, clutching at his chest and making an awful wheezing noise and Jyn figures she can probably just leave him here, but she wants to know why he’s following her, so she waits a safe distance away, glaring at him.
If he’s got any sense, he won’t try to hit her back.
“Who the hell are you?” she demands. He’s still on the ground, gasping. Jyn’s been hit in the solar plexus before: once by a rock on Jakku, the other by Saw when she snuck up behind him. Both hurt like hell. “Why are you following me?”
“Why were you stealing?” he shoots back. It’s not great as far as comebacks go, but she’s willing to cut him some slack since he’s still lying on the ground trying not to show any weakness.
“What do you care if I’m stealing? Going to report me?”
He glares at her but doesn’t answer.
Fine. Two can play this game.
She’s not sure why she’s stuck around. Saw taught her that the best way to lose an enemy was to knock them out and get out as fast as possible. “Stay two steps ahead of them,” is what he used to say—which as far as Jyn is concerned, means knocking them down and getting the hell out of there. The last thing she should be doing is interrogating him, unless she’s got him tied down.
He’s just so young. Maybe she sees too much of herself in him, or maybe it’s the way his eyes—so dark, fathomless—soften the pit of her stomach. (She’s trying not to think about that too much.)
Whatever it is, he intrigues her enough that she stays there, glaring at him. She’s not going to let him know that of course, but it’s true. He talks differently, like Basic isn’t his first language. His hair is wild, flopping in his face like he doesn’t really know what to do with it.
He’s almost as stubborn as she is.
“You owe me a loaf of bread,” she mutters finally. She’s stolen before, so many times it’s almost second nature, but there was something about his gaze, like silent, crushing judgement, that made her put it back.
“I don’t owe you anything,” he retorts. "You were stealing.”
“Like you've never stolen before,” she scoffs.
His cheeks flush, but he doesn't look away. “I could take you somewhere where you can get more than food.’
She arches a skeptical eyebrow. “I don’t go places with strangers.”
“No, I mean—” He's blushing furiously now. The red stands out against the olive-bronze tint of his cheeks. “I could get you a job.”
“The Rebel Alliance, you mean?”
He blinks, clearly thrown off. Jyn doesn’t know what came over her either; she figured as soon as she saw him that he was with the Alliance, but she wasn’t planning on telling him so. Information is valuable so long as the other side doesn’t know about it; that was another thing Saw used to say.
(Still, she gets a tiny bit of satisfaction in seeing the disbelief on his face, a thrill that she was able to destabilise him so easily.)
To his credit, he recovers quickly, tilting his chin up and glaring back at her defiantly. His eyes burn brighter than stars. “What if it is?”
Jyn snorts, folding her arms across her chest. She tries to muster as much derision as possible to mask the tiny part of herself that is tempted, that wants to be somewhere safe, that wants to belong again. The Alliance won’t protect her, not unless it serves their purpose. They’ll drop her when she’s no longer useful, once they find out who she is, just like Saw did and then she’ll be on her own again.
She made the mistake of trusting someone else to take care of her once. She isn’t about to do it again.
“I don’t need your rebellion. I can take care of myself.”
He scoffs. “You’re doing an excellent job so far.”
She glares at him. “What, like you’re doing at spying?”
It isn't fair, not really; he's only trying to help. It's not his fault she's broken beyond repair; it's not his fault she's jagged and angry, that the softness of her youth has been replaced with the hard edges of cynicism and betrayal. Still, the chip on her shoulder is big and the last thing she wants to do is put her trust in people who will let her down, so she pushes him away. It's easier that way.
“Fine.” He struggles to his feet, still short of breath. She watches him turn away, thinking she's seen the last of him, until he turns back at the last minute. His expression has softened somewhat; it makes him look younger. Open.
It makes her want to trust him.
“If you ever change your mind,” he says, “my name is Cassian. Cassian Andor.”
“How's your name going to help me?”
He grimaces, like he can't even believe he bothered to extend the olive branch. “If you tell the rebels you know me, they won't think you're a spy.”
“That's stupid reasoning,” she says, but she’s touched that he would risk his identity to help her. She hasn't done anything to deserve his kindness. There's a part of her that hates him for it.
He sighs heavily and reaches into his jacket. She half expects him to draw a blaster, or perhaps a holocard; her eyebrows lift in surprise when he tosses her the loaf of bread. It nearly slips through her fingers.
She lets him take three steps before she calls him back.
“Jyn!”
Cassian turns, brows furrowed in confusion.
“My name,” she clarifies, clutching the bread to her chest like a token. “It's Jyn.”
She doesn't give him a last name. He doesn't ask.
She swears she sees a smile on his face as he walks away.
Cassian will never admit it, never in a million years, but there is a tiny part of him that falls in love with Jyn Erso the minute she punches him in the solar plexus.
He doesn’t want to like her. He tries very hard not to. (It’s harder than it seems, given that she attacked him.)
There’s something about her. Something that gets under his skin, like a persistent itch. Maybe it’s the way she moves so deftly through the streets, like this isn’t her first time out foraging for food, like she knows all too well how to disappear. Maybe it’s the anger in her eyes, raw and burning, that tells him she’s lost people too.
Maybe it’s because looking at her is a little bit too much like looking in the mirror.
It’s two years before he sees her again, but he’d be a liar if he said he didn’t think about her in the meantime. He hones his skills for the rebellion, climbs higher in the ranks, and perfects his Sabacc face. There are whispers among the new recruits about whether he has any emotions at all. Kaytoo seems perplexed by his redoubled efforts—“It will improve your odds of success by fifteen percent, but you’ve never seemed very interested in it before”; Cassian makes up some lie about how he’s a captain now, how intelligence officers can’t show weakness, because he’s not about to confess that he was thrown by a sixteen year-old with fiery eyes and a mean right hook who could read him like a book.
He doesn’t know why he offered her his name. He shouldn’t have; he knows better than to give out personal information to anyone, least of all hostile strangers he’s never met. There are too many children like he once was scattered across the galaxy, orphans of the war; caring about each and every one of them is a distraction, a weakness that can be exploited, so he cares about none of them. Their situation is tragic, but war always breeds casualties. The cause, the Rebellion, that’s what is important. Succeeding, defeating the Empire, that’s what he can do to help them.
He finds her in the Outer Rim; he and Kaytoo are tracing a lead about an Imperial weapons shipment. The planet, another in an endless list of places Cassian has been and will not remember, is hot, a dry heat the sucks the life out of everything. They’ve been here three days, waiting for the meeting with their contact and it’s miserable.
“At this rate, I’ll have no grease left in my joints,” Kaytoo mutters, glaring darkly out into the horizon. This spaceport is neutral, far beyond the reaches—or perhaps interest—of the Empire, so Cassian leaves him to mind the ship while he goes out for supplies. It’s the smart thing to do, and they both know it, makes it easier to blend in, but that hasn’t stopped the droid from sulking.
(Melshi has always said he’s too dramatic.)
“I don’t think grease can evaporate,” Cassian replies dryly. “I’ll be back in a few hours. Don’t move.”
“Move?” Kaytoo doesn’t have eyebrows, but if he did they’d be sky-high. The sarcasm is evident in his tone. “Of course. As if there is anywhere I can go on this godforsaken place.”
Cassian rolls his eyes but doesn’t respond.
The meeting is scheduled to take place at one of the many cantinas in the spaceport, which is an hour’s hike from the ship; by the time Cassian shoulders open the door to the cantina, he is dripping with sweat and cursing the idiot who thought this was an excellent location for a meet. (The fact that it is an excellent location for a meet only further grates on his nerves.)
Inside it’s chaos, a full-on brawl, the likes of which he hasn’t seen since Kaytoo insulted the Dug smuggler on Dantooine. Tables have been overturned, and the floor is littered with shattered glass and puddles of brightly coloured liquid. The bartender, a hulking Devaronian, is scowling from behind the counter but doesn’t interfere; obviously, this sort of thing isn’t new to him.
He doesn’t know how he sees her in the crowds: one minute he’s dodging a piece durasteel that might have once been part of a table and almost takes his head off, and the next, he’s staring into familiar grey eyes.
Jyn.
She’s equally surprised to see him: her face goes slack for a moment before she scowls, as fierce and fiery as he remembers her being. He’s struck by how young she looks still, it’s been two years and yet she hardly seems a day older than when they last saw one another. She can’t be older than eighteen.
(He remembers how he was at eighteen, full of fire and passion and a need to fight. He wonders sometimes when that passion was lost to the grim weariness of war, wonders when he stopped seeing the world as a place of opportunity and started seeing it for how it was: a wasteland where only the unlucky survive.)
Someone—a large, nasty-looking Trandoshan—grabs her from behind. Jyn doesn’t seem at all concerned, twisting and dodging and throwing her body parts in all directions but Cassian is moving before he can stop himself. He shouldn’t feel the need to protect her—she obviously knows how to fight—but she’s so small, so young; it seems impossible that she could take on someone as big as the Trandoshan and survive.
(She would of course, even without his help, but he hasn’t learned yet how much of a warrior Jyn Erso is.)
He grabs her arm as the Trandoshan raises his fist, tugging her away from the fighting. “What are you doing here?" he hisses.
“I could ask you the same question.” Her eyes are blazing, like she wants to shout at him for pulling her from the fight, like she wants to tell him she had it handled, but thinks better of it.
He clenches his jaw. Rage simmers in his veins unexpectedly. He doesn’t know why he’s angry at her for throwing her life away so carelessly—he doesn’t care about her, he doesn’t know her—he shouldn’t be angry with her, and the knowledge that he is, the rage curling in the pit of his stomach, only makes him angrier. She doesn’t get to come in here and make him care and then start asking questions about what he’s doing. He’s risking his life, risking the rebellion, to save her from some stupid skirmish she probably could have handled. “None of your business.”
“And what I do is none of yours, either. I don’t need your help. I can take care of myself.” Blood trickles from the corner of her lip; she swipes at it hastily with the back of her hand. One eye is swollen and tender; it will be black by morning.
“Because you are doing such a good job on your own.”
She rolls her eyes. Cassian probably would have done the same at eighteen; he remembers brimming with attitude and taking any possible excuse to vent some of it. Everything seemed like a roadblock, everyone too slow. “You think I got caught here by accident? That either of us are here by accident?”
He hasn’t no idea what she’s talking about until he sees the way she stands, arms folded across her chest, smug smile curling at the corner of her lips. She looks almost…pleased with herself.
“You started this?”
Jyn shrugs. “I needed a diversion. You should be thanking me.”
“Thanking you?”
“I couldn’t risk us being overheard. The last thing I want is the Empire on my tale for selling their secrets.”
Cassian swallows the startled reply on the tip of his tongue. Jyn is the informant. Of course she is. He’s never believed much in fate, of the Force, but it figures with his luck in life, with the way that she affects him, that she would be the one he was meeting.
Still, it strikes him as good. Imperial officials wouldn’t look twice at a girl her size and she seems to love sticking her nose in situations that are almost guaranteed to get herself killed, but there are far easier ways to get credits than selling Imperial secrets to the rebels. Smuggling, for example, or code splicing. Jyn seems like a bright girl; her skills could be put to use doing all kinds of jobs, most of which are easier than tracking Imperial weapons shipments.
If you tell the rebels you know me, they won’t think you’re a spy.
Perhaps she has come to him, to take him up on a half-hearted offer made years ago, but he won’t get his hopes up. She wanted nothing to do with the rebellion last time he asked; why should this time be any different? He’s here to retrieve her information and pay her for her services, not recruit her.
“You couldn’t have though of something a little more—discrete?” he says finally, in part because he knows it will get a rise out of her but mostly from disbelief that of all the possible distractions she could have come up with this is the one. It’s effective, no doubt, but so ostentatious. Stealth has always been more his style.
Jyn scowls. “Do you want the information about the shipment or not?”
“Fine. But not here. Someplace else.”
He leads her out into the alleyway off the cantina (why are they always meeting in alleys?). She stands across from him, arms still holed across her chest, defensive and hostile. He leans against the wall across from her, one hand resting lazily on his blaster. He doesn’t expect to use it, not with the chaos inside the cantina, but it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.
Jyn’s eyes flit to either end of the alley once, twice. Even when she looks back at his face, her expression is cagey, stance wary, like she’s ready to run at a moment’s notice. He wonders how many people have left her behind to make this shadow of a woman, fierce as durasteel on the outside, but fragile as glass on the inside.
She could benefit from a home. A cause.
“Don’t look at me like that.” Years of training keep him from starting, but it unsettles him, again, that she can read him so easily. It’s like she’s inside his mind. “I’m not joining your rebellion. I needed the credits. Figured if I was going to sell information about the Empire to anyone it might as well be someone who can use it.”
“Who says I want you to join the rebellion? You’d make a terrible spy.”
It’s a terrible response, a lie, and they both know it, but neither of them acknowledge it. This is a business transaction, nothing more.
(If Kaytoo were a person—as Cassian often imagines—he would be frowning when Cassian returns with Jyn in tow.)
Business transaction indeed.