Chapter Text
On July 3rd, 1901, at around 10:17 p.m., Jyn was very much ready to go to bed. Her back ached, with that lower-spine-and-shoulder ache you get when you have a desk job and very bad posture. Her feet ached, from those damn shoes she had to wear all day, and from walking the second half of the way home without those shoes. Her brain ached, too, because Professor Guerrara had given her more calculations to do than usual that day. He hadn’t exactly said that it was because he was going to come into the lab the next day even though the university was closed for the Fourth, but he hadn’t needed to.
Jyn didn’t like being a computer, but she didn’t hate it either, and that was, she supposed, the best she could hope for. At least she wasn’t one of the girls at the telephone operating station, who had to listen to idiot strangers—who had forgotten the number, but I can tell you their first name and the color of their house, would that help?—all day and somehow not bust a major artery. At least she was using her brain, doing important work. Well, Professor Guerrara was doing important work. But he couldn’t do it without her, and that, Jyn supposed, was almost the same thing.
It was still exhausting, though, and as Jyn changed into her pajamas (a flannel men’s set, which she had told the cashier were “for her husband” as if they didn’t both know the truth) she said a little thank-you to the universe that the next day was a holiday. She would be able to sleep as long as she wanted, make flapjacks in the morning, and then have the day to herself. Maybe she would go to the library, she thought as she lay down and drew the covers around her. Maybe in the evening she would get a not-quite-stale cookie from the baker just before it closed, and eat it on the roof of her tenement and watch the fireworks fade into stardust...
Jyn might have been just-barely asleep when a rattling tap on her window jerked her awake. She barely had time to register shock before the extreme irritation set in. What in the damn hell was someone doing at her window, waking her up?
She considered simply not getting up, and had nearly decided on it when another something dinged on the glass. Jyn sighed as loudly and aggressively as she could (even though no one was there to hear it) and tossed back her quilt. She stomped to the window, threw it open, and yelled “Who do you think you -- Rook?”
For two stories below her was Bodhi Rook from night school, surrounded by a small gaggle of strangers and smiling up at her through the darkness in that gentle way he had that didn’t match their circumstances at all. “Wotcher, Erso,” he called, his accent just as undiminished as hers was, even after years in the States. “How long has it been?”
“Lay off with that, how long’s it been, what are you doing here?”
Bodhi spread his arms to indicate the other men he was with. “We’re on a mission and we need your particular expertise!”
“I’m not an expert in anything, Rook.”
“We need someone to run some numbers for us, alright, and you’re the best number-runner I know.”
“We took all the same math classes, Rook.”
“I would have failed Calculus without you and you know it.”
Jyn couldn’t believe she was having this conversation. She also couldn’t believe that any of her neighbors hadn’t stuck their heads out a window to tell them to shut their traps. It was only a matter of time. “What the blazes do you need Calculus for,” she called, “in the middle of the night before my day off?”
Bodhi hesitated, but one of his friends answered for him. He was tall, dark-haired, and Jyn thought he might have had really big brown eyes, and he looked up at her and whispered in a whisper that still echoed all across the empty street:
“We’re going to set fire to the top of the mountain.”
It was then that Jyn gave up on getting any sleep that night.
---
As they all strode down the lamp-lit streets toward the edge of the city, Jyn feeling a bit silly in her jacket and pajamas but still better than if she’d had to put on a dress, Bodhi introduced her to his group (crew? guild? squadron?):
There were Chirrut and Baze, two Chinese men who seemed joined at the hip. They had worked “on the railroads,” Baze said vaguely. Chirrut was blind, he told her, from some long-ago explosion. He didn’t seem to need any help getting around. Baze helped him anyway. Jyn liked the both of them.
There was Kay, a man who Jyn thought might have had pale skin and straw-blond hair, but she couldn’t tell because he was covered head-to-toe in darkly metallic coal dust. He wore a miner’s hat and rarely said anything that wasn’t rude. Jyn didn’t quite like him.
And finally there was the dark-haired man, who did indeed have really big brown eyes, and was called Cassian. He didn’t say much, but when he did, everyone listened, which made Jyn think he was somehow the leader. He had a Mexican accent and a grim expression. Jyn wasn’t sure what to think about him.
It wasn’t clear to her how Bodhi had met two unemployed railroad workers, a miner, and a… Cassian, but before she could ask him, Bodhi began explaining their schedule, such as it was:
Step 1: Drive a load of fuel and combustibles to the top of Pikes Peak. Kay had friends who could provide both the trucks and the many containers of oil and coal.
Step 2: Set them off. Chirrut and Maze apparently had experience with the mechanics of such a thing.
There did not appear to be a step 3.
“So what,” Jyn puffed, a bit out of breath from the pace Cassian was setting for the the group, “is your job?”
“Since I work at the Sheriff’s office,” Bodhi replied, “and all of the police know me, I’m going to present a very convincing excuse if we run into an officer of the law.” He puffed out his chest, but Jyn knew him well enough to see that there was reservation, anxiety even, in his eyes.
“So what do you need me for?” she asked.
“You,” Bodhi said, “are going to work your math magic and tell us how much oil and wood we can set off without killing ourselves, as well as what shape we should pile it all in to get the tallest, brightest flame possible. Also, we want it to burn all day tomorrow, so we need to figure out the numbers for that, as well.”
Jyn sputtered. “And why haven’t any of you thought of all this before now?”
Bodhi shrugged sheepishly. “Didn’t occur to us until we started piling the lumber at the summit this afternoon.”
Men, Jyn thought to herself. Out loud, she said, “So you want me to draw up some sort of schematic for how to arrange the fuel? And a schedule for keeping it burning all day?”
“That’s right,” came Cassian’s voice from up ahead, “a plan.” He turned a bit to look at them and made eye contact with Jyn. Did he smile at her, very slightly? She couldn’t quite tell in the darkness.
“Because we may be committing arson and vandalism on government land,” Kay said, “but we wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt.”
---
As they entered the national park surrounding Pikes Peak, Bodhi revealed that he had brought a nice, thick notepad and several pencils for Jyn to work with. He and Kay told her how much lumber was already at the peak, how many barrels of oil, pounds of coal, and cases of red fire they had access to, and how much more wood and fuel they could conceivably “acquire” before the morning.
Sitting down didn’t seem to be an option, so Jyn did her best to walk and write at the same time. It wasn’t easy. The trail was covered in stones and roots, and she could barely see anything this far from the city lights.
It wasn’t long before she hit a wall in her calculations. “Um,” she called to no one in particular, “I don’t think I’ll be able to actually figure anything unless I see the peak in person.”
“That’s why we’re going there now,” Cassian called back to her.
Jyn’s stomach turned over, and she looked up at the black mountain, which loomed 14,000 feet above them in the darkness. “We’re not,” she said, her mouth suddenly dry, “we’re not hiking up on foot, are we?”
“Of course not,” Cassian snapped. “We’re taking the cog train.”
Jyn almost asked whether the cog train even ran at this hour. But she knew it didn’t, and she knew that one of these men would have some way to make it run.
---
It turned out to be Kay. He opened up some panel, did something to some wire, and they were off, the red trolley chugging along the track and winding slowly through the forest, up the mountain.
Jyn and her feet were ecstatic at finally having somewhere to sit. Tearing her eyes away from the view of the stars weaving in and out of the silhouetted trees, she balanced the notepad on her be-flannelled knee and started a new sketch. She had been to the summit once, years ago, and knew that there was a sizeable flat area. The wood and coal would probably best be stacked in a simple pyramid -- the real problem was how they would light the oil, and later add more fuel, without anyone burning themselves to a crisp -- maybe a long-armed claw -- maybe --
Her thoughts were interrupted by Cassian suddenly sitting on the bench next to her. She deliberately didn’t look up from her notepad, waiting for him to say something the way people who have just sat down next to you usually do.
He didn’t say anything.
They sat in silence, Jyn’s mind racing until she finally came up with something to say. It was a question that she couldn’t quite believe she hadn’t asked yet, and it seemed both trivial and of the utmost importance.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked him.
He finally looked at her, his dark eyes squinting a bit with -- suspicion? amusement? “Why are we doing this, you mean.”
“Well -- I suppose -- yes,” Jyn stammered, “but that doesn’t answer my question.”
Cassian looked at her for a long moment. Finally, he asked, “How do you feel about the Fourth of July?”
“You still haven’t answered--”
Cassian cut her off, raising one eyebrow in just such a way that Jyn stopped and resigned herself to playing along. “It’s okay. A bit performative, a bit disingenuous. But I like the fireworks.”
“A bit disingenuous.” Cassian let out a puff of air that could almost pass for a laugh. “Never in my life have I felt independent on this Independence Day. Neither has Kay, who breathes in that black dust every day so others can warm their homes. Neither have Chirrut or Baze, who built railways so the trains could cross the continent but now cannot get jobs because of where they are from. Neither has Bodhi, who must compensate for the color of his skin by bowing to the most powerful white man in Colorado Springs.” He looked at her, smirking at the shock frozen on her face. “Tell me, do you feel independent?”
Jyn swallowed hard, trying not to melt under his burning gaze. She could suddenly think of nothing but those awful shoes she had to wear to work. They made her want to cut her feet off. “No,” she whispered.
Cassian finally broke eye contact, turning his head to look out the window, maybe at the stars through the trees. “That is why we are all here. We will beat them at their own game, this game where they burn things to celebrate their freedom, and we will light the very mountain on fire. It will be the biggest, most beautiful thing anyone has ever seen.” He looked back at her. “And we will be free, if only for a day.”
He smiled at her, for real. Jyn couldn’t help but smile back.