Chapter Text
She’s in the courtyard again, crouching behind one of the pillars. As she does every time, Jyn runs her hand across the smooth cream-coloured stone. Her fingers come away covered in pale dust. She can’t tell whether she’s holding her breath to be quieter or whether she’s too scared to breathe. The presence of stormtroopers wouldn’t usually cause such a reaction, but there are too many of them for any one person to handle.
A sound from further down the colonnade sends her skittering to the next pillar. She’s clutching her blaster tightly in one hand, trying to suppress the nausea that’s bubbling up in her stomach. There’s nothing to be afraid of, she tries to tell herself. The sooner it happens, the sooner it will be over and she’ll be okay.
(She thinks that every time and she never believes it.)
She can’t hide for long. A blaster shot hits the next column along. It’s enough to make her start running, sprinting out into the open. It’s only a small courtyard: square, with orange sand and a small stone fountain in the centre. On the walkway to her left stormtroopers are gathered. They’ve been looking for her, and now they’ve got her.
Raising her blaster as she runs, she takes out two and almost hits a third. She can hear her heart thudding, but she’s almost there, in a second she’ll be off the sand and under cover again.
The shot hits her in the middle of her back. She doesn’t hear the blaster go off, only feeling the impact that sends her falling forward. She’s carrying so much momentum that she hits the ground hard, knocking the remaining air out of her lungs.
She has just long enough to think bollocks before she wakes up.
It’s so cold on her bunk that for a moment she just lies there, not wanting to move and lose the heat she’s stored. But there’s no escaping the chilly draft that sweeps in through the door and cuts through her clothes, so after a minute or two she reluctantly shifts into a sitting position. Still anxious to preserve warmth, she crosses her legs and folds her arms.
That dream, again. Jyn tilts her head back and leans against the wall behind her. Her eyes come to rest on the identical wall opposite. The other bunk has been empty for a couple of weeks now. The inmate she was sharing with was hauled off for questioning and hasn’t been seen since. The wall is hers to stare at for as long as she likes.
Her stomach is still unsteady, even though she’s awake and safe. Well, as safe as you can be in an Imperial prison. Then again, nobody has tried to dismember her for a good few months, so incarceration does have one point over the outside world.
She looks down, to her lap. Her hands have automatically balled into fists, the skin stretched tight over her knuckles. Letting out a slow, shaky breath, she loosens them, wiggling her fingers in an attempt to relieve the tension.
Her visions have been more unstable lately. They’ve certainly been harder to access since she got locked up. Turns out there’s something about being confined in a cinderblock cube that makes your brain shut down. Not that she’s ever had a huge amount of control over them, but this is definitely something new.
Maybe that’s a good thing. It’s hard to fantasize about escaping when your only visions of your future outside involve your death.
Her eyes drift from the blank wall over to the cell door. It’s a lot stronger than it looks. During the first week or so she devoted all her time and energy to busting out. After every attempt failed, she began losing steam. Which brings her to where she is now. Not acting, but anticipating. Sometimes you have to let your opportunities come to you.
And today they do come, in the form of a grumpy, middle-aged woman.
She hasn’t been sitting there for long when a small group of people stop outside her cell. They pause for a minute and then the door creaks open, revealing two guards and another inmate.
Jyn crosses her arms and suppresses a sigh. She’d started to hope that they had forgotten about her and the two-person cell she had to herself. Sharing has never been her strong point.
The other inmate is human. It’s a fairly even mix in this prison; no one species has a monopoly on pissing off the Empire. The woman is probably mid-forties, Jyn would estimate. She’s tall and scrawny, with arms that look like they were muscled once but have since lost their power. She must have come from a hot planet; her skin is reddish-pink and her wispy blonde hair has been cut short.
The woman looks Jyn up and down, grunts, and walks over to sit on the empty bunk. Behind her, the door closes and is locked again. Jyn watches her for a minute more, idly wondering what she’s been arrested for. It can be hard to tell, with the Empire. You don’t have to do anything illegal, only something inconvenient. It’s not as if they have any rules to play by.
One thing is for certain: the new woman is used to prison. The ease with which she carries herself gives that away; she’s unfazed by the bars or the hardness of the bunk. This could be interesting.
Outside the cell, the usual buzz of noise starts to increase. Mechanically, Jyn rises and walks to the door. Everyone always makes a fuss about breakfast; it’s probably the liveliest time of day. Even though it always pans out in exactly the same way, it doesn’t stop half the cells from going nuts. A couple of inmates usually try and grab the guards when they slide the rolls under the door, others content themselves with hurling insults.
She rests her elbows on the crossbar of the door, even though she’ll have to step back when it’s her turn. The guards don’t feed you unless you’re not touching the door when they come around. For the moment, though, she can make use of her vantage point. The prison was based on a panoptic model, but without the centerpiece. So she can see into all the cells opposite, just as they can see into hers. Narrow metal walkways run round each tier, with steps connecting them to the ones above and below. The walkway on the next level up blocks any view of a ceiling she might get if she were to stick her head through the bars of the door.
It’s entirely possible that the building doesn’t have a ceiling. She’d been beaten half to death when they first brought her in, and she can’t remember looking up.
The noise continues to build. Nearly all the prisoners in her eye-line have taken up similar positions by the door. Most of their silhouettes are familiar, they’ve all been here for some time.
A movement behind her catches her attention. The other woman has now stretched out on her bed, her eyes shut. Jyn recognises the power move and the brash confidence it implies.
A guard stops outside their door. Jyn obediently steps back and he pushes a single roll underneath.
‘Hey,’ she says. He pauses. ‘There are two of us now. You need to give us another one.’
The guard looks at her and then at the other bunk. It’s impossible to read his thought process through the helmet. He shrugs. ‘Haven’t updated the ration log.’
He continues, without another word.
She hadn’t really expected to be taken seriously, but it’s still annoying. They’re only small rolls, barely enough sustenance for one person. She picks it up, glances back at the other woman who’s still feigning sleep, and bites into it.
She doesn’t get very far before the sound of chewing alerts her cellmate. The woman practically leaps up, suddenly animated by anger.
‘Hey!’
Jyn keeps eating. If she wolfs it down fast enough, there won’t be any left to fight over.
The woman is not impressed. She makes a grab for Jyn, who sidesteps. A niggling voice in Jyn’s mind is saying that this is more trouble than it’s worth, but she can’t help herself. She’s just so bored.
To her credit, the woman doesn’t do things by halves. Having found other methods unsuccessful, she tackles Jyn and sends them both rolling to the floor.
It’s been a good while since Jyn’s been in a fight, but she’s glad to feel her reflexes coming back to her. She dodges the first blow and gets her own in, her fist slamming into the woman’s shoulder. The woman grunts and lashes out again, catching Jyn in the chest. God, she’d forgotten how much getting punched in the boob can hurt. She rolls, trying to regain control of where they are. The woman tries to pin her down, but Jyn wriggles free of her grip and springs up, ready to meet her blows on even ground.
She takes the offensive now, lunging forward instead of waiting for the woman to come to her. There’s something so calming about a fight, it’s clearing her head and giving her energy. The other woman is good, twisting away from the punches and landing a few of her own, but Jyn is better. Maybe the longer you’re locked up, the more pent-up anger you have.
She lands another blow on the woman’s stomach. The woman retaliates by grabbing a handful of Jyn’s hair and yanking it. Pain explodes on her scalp and she lets out a sound that’s half scream, half yell. Her hands fly to her head, frantically trying to loosen the woman’s grip. After a moment or two she succeeds, but not before the woman punches her in the gut.
The other prisoners have started to notice. They’re not exactly being subtle, crashing around the cell the way they are. Jyn can hear shouts, both from inmates and from guards. They’re going to get interrupted and she has to win before they are. A stalemate will only end in a rematch, and after that it will be a wonder if either of them are ever let out of solitary.
With a last burst of energy, she punches the woman in the neck, effectively cutting off her windpipe. While she’s winded, Jyn shoves her backwards into the metal edge of the bunk. The woman lets out an exclamation of pain as her face collides with the edge and suddenly there are hands on Jyn’s shoulders roughly pulling her away.
She’s cuffed, dragged out of the cell and held outside while the guards examine the other woman. Even with the guards on either side of her and aches that promise future bruises, Jyn can’t quash a sense of satisfaction. The hubbub from the meal has died down and everyone on this tier is staring at her. It’s a strange, magnetic curiosity that she can almost feel, radiating from every side. Fights aren’t rare, but they’re not everyday either and will always draw an audience.
Besides, if you’re going to get a reputation, it’s better to establish that you win fights instead of losing them.
It’s then that she sees him. Leaning against the door of a cell, not quite opposite, a man with untidy black hair and stubble. His clothes are similar to hers: scruffy and non-uniform. She doesn’t recognise him, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s new. His eyes, like everyone else’s are fixed on her, but he’s too far away for her to pinpoint his expression.
Jyn’s not sure why it’s his gaze she meets, and not anyone else’s. Maybe she does know him, but has forgotten when. She moves as if to fold her arms across her chest, momentarily forgetting the cuffs. Unable to separate her wrists, she relaxes her arms instead. Out of the corner of her eyes, she can see guards cuffing the other woman and escorting her from the cell. She’s not too badly injured; they’re probably relocating her to a different cell. The Empire doesn’t offer medical treatment to its prisoners. Inmates are usually left to look after themselves, unless their wounds are so severe that it’s going to cause disturbance. Then it’s a quick shot to the back of the head and the problem is solved.
As she watches the woman’s retreating back, Jyn spots somebody else approaching on the walkway. An officer flanked by two more guards. Her heart sinks. This is one of the side effects of fighting that she really should have considered.
The officer halts and gives her a cursory glance. Which woman is he looking at? The petty criminal they have listed on their records, or has someone taken the time to figure out who she really is? It wouldn’t take much digging to unearth those details and there are at least a dozen things she doesn’t want them to know. Her real name, for one. And her previous occupation, for another. Neither of those would make her popular.
To her relief, the officer doesn’t give any indication that he’s done any research. He stares at her for a moment longer, contempt evident in every line of his face. Then he steps back, gesturing for her to return to her cell.
She looks over her shoulder as she re-enters, but the guards block her view of the cells opposite. Even so, she gets the feeling that everyone’s still watching; including the man with the black hair.
Her actions do not pass entirely without punishment. She has her cell back, but this time she is shackled to the wall. They’re old-fashioned chains, made of a dull rusty metal. She didn’t think any restraints like this still existed but it makes sense that they would here. They’re definitely more uncomfortable than the newer ones; the metal cuts into her wrists if she moves them too fast. The chain is just long enough for her to reach the door, but she can’t rest her elbows on the bars anymore.
Jyn waits for the guards to leave before lying down, alone for the second time. Maybe the other bunk is becoming cursed. It’s just the sort of thing that would happen.
She shuts her eyes, and wills a vision to come to her. Sometimes this works. The ones she calls herself are small things: flashes of the future rather than whole scenes. An image rises in her mind, of cream-coloured stone. She suppresses it quickly and tries to conjure something else, but it’s useless. Her brain is quite insistent; either you can have that or you can have nothing.
Her head is still tender where her hair was pulled. She raises her hands to touch the scalp gently, dragging the heavy chains with her. Most of the rest of her body hurts, too. She’s recovered from much worse, but even so it’s going to be an unpleasant few days.
It’s the same guard who delivers the evening meal. Of course, their uniforms are identical, but there’s something about the deliberate way that he slides two freeze-dried packets under the door that gives him away. It’s too much effort to get up, so she cranes her neck round to watch him as he realizes that she’s alone in the cell.
Clearly irritated, he shakes his head but doesn’t want to risk reaching into the cell to retrieve them.
It gets gradually quieter as the evening fades into night. If it weren’t for the scheduled meals and the drop in temperature it would be impossible to measure time. Jyn curls up as much as she can with the chains. The dual goals of preserving heat and not putting weight on her bruises are difficult to reconcile, and ultimately the desire to be warm wins out.
Still, it’s a fitful night’s sleep. It’s as if every time she starts to doze off a new part of her begins to hurt, dragging her back into consciousness. The only positive is that the courtyard vision doesn’t happen again, though by now she doesn’t need to have it to be able to picture every moment.
Then in the early morning she’s jolted awake. It takes her a moment to gather her bearings and realise that the door of her cell has been opened. The officer from the previous day is back, along with more guards.
So much for forgetting about her.
She sits up slowly. This is what it must feel like to be old, when your joints protest at moving. One of the guards enters, come to swap the heavy-duty manacles for a smaller, more lightweight pair of cuffs. She follows him out of the cell as instructed, idly speculating on what they’re planning to do.
They could make an example of her, of course. It would be a good reminder to other prisoners of what happens if you’re disruptive. Or maybe they did their digging and realised who they were dealing with. She must have some secrets they want.
Most of the other prisoners are still asleep. Jyn finds herself glancing over to the door where she’d seen the man the day before. The doorway is empty, but she isn’t surprised. In a way, it’s a relief that the audience for her victory yesterday aren’t here to see the consequences now.
One of the guards prods her in the back with his gun to get her to walk faster. She stiffens, but otherwise doesn’t react. They’re not going to kill her. It’s rare you can be so certain about that with the Empire, but it’s the upside of having lived through your death a hundred times. She knows exactly how it will happen, and it’s not like this.
Straightening her back, she follows the troopers down the corridor. They’ve barely gone a dozen yards when she sees an explosion, right before her eyes. She cries out, flinching away from the flames, but when she blinks there’s nothing there.
The guard prods her forward again. She can assume they’re giving her a weird look. She wasn’t exactly behaving in a normal way. But it’s been a long time since a vision came so spontaneously, so she wasn’t prepared for it.
Before she’s had too much time to think about the explosion and its implications, there’s a sound – a faint boom - from a little way off. She sees the officer glance around, surprised. He raises his wrist and is about to speak into his cufflink when the bridge blows up, a hundred yards in front of them.
Jyn reacts the fastest. She swings her arms round to knock out the guard behind her. The guard in front sees what she’s doing too late; she kicks him against the railing on the edge of the bridge. The railing digs into his stomach even through the armour, winding him. Meanwhile the officer is ignoring her completely; he’s speaking rapidly into his radio and drawing a blaster, evidently looking for intruders. Grabbing hold of the blaster one of the other guards had dropped, Jyn aims it at the remaining trooper.
‘Undo the cuffs.’
She can’t read his face through a helmet, but she doesn’t need to. He’s smart enough to know that she could shoot him without drawing breath, and that when a violent criminal is pointing a weapon at you it’s best to do what they say.
As soon as he’s pressed the release button, she fires. The blast hits him in the thigh and he staggers backwards, but she’s not hanging around to see the results.
Another explosion happens, bigger this time. This one tears a hole in the metal walkways on the other side, taking half the cell doors with it. Then there’s another, and Jyn’s not the only one out and running anymore. The air fills with smoke, there’s shouting and blasters going off in every direction.
She sprints along the walkway, dodging the other inmates. Cooped up inside a cell, she’s lost a lot of fitness, but adrenaline has taken over now. The bridge above her explodes, raining chunks of metal down onto the lower tiers. She flattens herself against the wall, her arm raised to protect her face.
She gets lucky; most of the pieces land further down. As she starts off again, she takes a second to look up. There’s too much smoke to get a clear view, but from what she can see the building stretches up into the distance. It’s a lot bigger than a prison has any right to be.
Jyn’s almost at the other side of the walkway when there’s a turnoff into a corridor. She hurries down it, still clutching the stolen blaster. The new environment is even more confusing: sirens on the walls are flashing and blaring and people are running in all directions. A line of stormtroopers run past, but they barely notice her. There must be a severe rebel attack underway for nobody to care about escaping prisoners.
Further on, the corridor branches out into several smaller passageways. She picks one at random and continues to run, trying and failing to remember anything about the layout from when they brought her through on the way in. All of the corridors look the same anyway; and right now they seem like equally bad choices.
Yet for the second time, fortune works out in her favour. After a couple of hundred yards, the corridor opens out into a hangar. This Jyn does recognise. Filled with small Imperial aircraft, it’s one of the main loading bays for arriving prisoners. And as with the rest of the base, the attack has thrown it into chaos.
Staying close to the wall, she considers one of the closer ships. Piloting has never been something she can do, but it’s not like she has a choice. If her luck holds out, she’ll be able to get far enough to crash land on the nearest planet and take things from there.
A sudden movement nearby catches her eye. She turns her head in time to see someone sprinting up the loading ramp of an Imperial shuttle. They weren’t wearing any uniform, so they must have been another prisoner.
It’s a decision she can make quickly. She doesn’t trust other inmates any more than she does the Empire, but there’s a chance the other person knows more about flying than she does. They’ll have the common objective of getting away and she can always threaten them with the blaster if negotiations go badly.
Glancing around to make sure no one has noticed her, Jyn sets off sprinting again towards the shuttle. It’s about fifty yards away and in open ground, but her luck holds out and she reaches the boarding ramp unharmed. It’s almost as if the ship was waiting for her because as soon as she’s up the ramp it begins to rise, closing off the exit.
Alone in the dark she stops, for a second, to catch her breath. Tomorrow – if she’s still conscious by tomorrow – she’s going to pay for the sudden exertion. Her lungs are on fire and the muscles in her legs are protesting.
A light turns on behind her. Very slowly, her grip around her blaster tightening, she turns around. What she didn’t know about Imperial shuttles is that the entry ramp comes up just behind the cockpit.
The other inmate clearly knows his stuff. He’s already in the pilot seat, preoccupied with flicking switches and adjusting dials. He’s too absorbed to notice her, but she recognises him.
She really shouldn’t be surprised that it’s the man with the black hair.