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Their son is four months old when Cassian leaves for Jakku and in total, he’s spent all of fifteen days with Galen since his birth. Jyn can’t blame him, it’s not by choice. Still, as she watches him whisper softly to Galen in these last few minutes, Jyn hates this war for taking yet another thing from Cassian. A voice crackles from a nearby speaker, calling for Captain Andor to board shuttle Aurora stat and there is never enough time.
He turns towards her, and passes Galen into her arms with resigned slant to his mouth. “I have to go.” His voice is gentle, and full of all the things they’ve never needed to say to one another.
“We’ll be here when you get back.” He smiles just for her, warm and loving, and kisses Jyn quickly.
“I’ll see you then.” Cassian whispers against her lips and Jyn wants to hold him here, keep him from leaving them yet again. Instead, she holds Galen closer as he squirms. After brushing his hand over Galen’s curls one last time, Cassian turns and goes. As she watches him go, Jyn touches the kyber at her neck and sends out a silent prayer to the Force.
The Empire falls at Jakku, but Cassian doesn’t come back. Jyn reads the lists of the dead over and over, and his name never appears. Instead, all she has is hollow silence and a pit in her stomach.
It’s four days after Jakku, a week since Cassian left, and Jyn helps Ben Solo into the world. It almost hurts to look at how happy Leia is with her son in her arms. Solo isn’t here but at least the Senator knows he is alive and relatively safe as he scours the surface of Jakku for survivors. A droid tells her that the odds of any survivors still being alive on the surface at only 8.4% and Jyn aches. The thought they’ve made it this kriffing far, through Scarif and five years of fighting to be torn apart by a damn sandhole like Jakku hurts .
The search is called off a week after the battle, between the desert and the native lifeforms on Jakku there isn't a chance anyone is left alive. Jyn’s hearing goes fuzzy at the announcement and she barely makes it from the control room before she vomits. Distantly she could hear the grainy voice of Solo arguing over the comms with the Council, but Jyn feels parsecs away from it all. A hand on her arms brings her back and Jyn turns to see the Princess-turned-Senator, looking at her with such sympathy.
“I'm sorry for your loss.” Leia says softly, so genuine and kind, but all Jyn feels is rage. “I hope it was worth it.” She spits out, because for all the blood they had ordered him to stain his hands with, Cassian was a good man. He deserved more than fifteen days with his boy, more than the life they’d carved out together between deployments and missions. She can feel tears start to force themselves forward and Jyn wrenches away from Leia and down the hallway.
She finds herself deep within the base at the childcare center, a room full of war orphans and makes her way to the nursery. Galen looks up as she enters and all she sees is Cassian; his eyes, his smile, his warmth radiates from their boy. Jyn scoops him up, ignoring the questions of the attendants. She carries him through the base, feeling a few tears slip loose despite everything. In her arms, Galen coos softly, unaware that the father he barely knows is gone and Jyn breaks down as they exit the base into the cool night air.
Falling to her knees in a field just beyond the tarmac, Jyn cradles her baby in her arms and weeps. She hasn’t cried since Scarif, as she held Cassian on that damned beach and cried for the future she’d thought they never have. Now Jyn cried silently for the future they’d planned, holding each other close in their too small bunk during the few hours Galen was asleep. It wasn’t much, a small house on Yavin, a sibling for Galen and Cassian’s attempts at farming. Not much at all but they would have finally been happy, they would have been together.
She stays there for what feels like hours, and no one comes to find her. All their friends are dead or retired, and Jyn would have been alone if not for Galen. At some point, he fell asleep, his tiny fist wrapped around her kyber crystal. Carefully brushing her fingers over his cheeks, Jyn’s breath hitches in her chest. Cassian was gone, but he’d left her their boy and a reason to keep fighting on. Jyn wipes away her tears, and with a parting glance at the sky, rises again. There’s still work to be done.
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Fifteen days after the Battle of Jakku, the Millennium Falcon arrives on base.
Jyn notes it’s arrival on the flight board with a small smile, knowing Han Solo was finally going to meet his son - if a bit belatedly. This base is closing down as the New Republic reorganizes itself into a true government, and Jyn has been assigned to one of the numerous inventory details. It’s dull work, but it keeps her mind off her grief and allows her to keep Galen with her, strapped to her back as she counts and packs way blasters and ammunition for shipment out. She’s halfway through discharging a crate of DH-17 blasters for transport when a voice breaks through her focus.
“So fifteen days is how long it takes you all to give up on me?”
She knows the voice, knows the soft Festian accent, but Jyn can’t trust her ears. Turning her head sharply, Jyn raises the blaster in her hand out of instinct. Cassian Andor is presumed dead on Jakku, there was supposedly no way for him to be standing in the doorway with that kriffing smirk on his face. A small part of her considers pulling the trigger, the blaster is mostly discharged, perhaps in the knee. But as his smirk falters and his exhaustion starts to show, Jyn lowers the blaster.
“You’re late.” Her voice cracks a bit. “You’re fifteen kriffing days late, Cassian Andor.”
He’s by her side in an instant, before Jyn could even rise to her feet. “It’s a long story. But I’m here now.”
Jyn strokes her hand over his face gently, cataloging everything that’s wrong with him. Cassian’s skin is burnt and peeling, there’s a blaster burn peaking out from his collar and he was favoring his left leg - but he’s alive. “I thought you were dead.” She whispered softly. “That you’d left me.”
“Never.” Cassian pulls her into his arms as best he can with Galen’s cradleboard in the way, his chapped lips pressing against her forehead. “I’m with you, Jyn. All the way.”
As she buried her face in his chest, Jyn can see the future before them now, free from the Empire, and smiles. Pulling back to kiss him, Jyn beamed. “Welcome home, Cass.”