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Jyn watched as the Moff curled his hand around a dark-haired girl’s naked bicep and mustered up as much dispassion as she could manage even as she carefully slid her truncheon off her belt and gripped it tightly in her hand.
She’s just a girl, Jyn thought, but so am I.
Jyn had been in her fair share of seedy Coruscant tapcafes, but Kravva had really outdone himself with this one. A brothel in all but name, it was also one that trafficked in underage girls and counted high-ranking Imperials as its clientele. It stunk of a trap, but Kravva was just a hair too smart to be this obvious and at the same time too stupid to pull off a snare. She knew that she should have left as soon as she walked through the doors, but something had made her stay.
The bartender came to her table and pushed her drink toward her, and she stewed some more without touching it. She was here to finish the sale. That was all. A stockpile of munitions in exchange for enough credits to get off planet and pay off enough debt to keep her name from growing from a whisper into a bounty on her head. But she looked again at the Moff and the girl and had to push her anger down further into herself, wondering faintly how deep the well was now, how it held so much; if it would ever be full.
Jyn promised herself that once she got the credits and the deal was done, it was straight to the Outer Rim for her for a while to cool her heels. Coruscant was too close to everything–to the Empire, to the fledgling Rebels, to her time with Saw Gerrera’s Partisans–and she had no plans to get sucked back into the fight. But she twitched with the muscle memory, felt the need to tear a hole into the section of the tapcafe with the thermal detonator in her packet where the Moff was now leaning into the child and kissing her neck. The girl was shaking with fear and horror, her face twisted into the silent cry. Jyn felt her eyes narrow and her jaw tighten.
Keep your head down, she reminded herself, but her hands itched now for the blaster tucked into her boot, and instinctively, her eyes marked the distance between the end of her hands and the spot right between the Moff’s eyes. The girl couldn’t have been more than 12. She could get off one quick shot and be out within 3 seconds.
This isn’t your fight, Erso, her brain reprimanded, but for good measure, she threw back the shot of Wheyren’s Reserve she’d bought to calm her nerves.
A redheaded waitress–another child; she could have be no older than 15–swung by so quickly to grab her glass that Jyn startled and briefly lost the grip on the truncheon below the table.
“Sorry,” the girl muttered, but she didn’t sound sorry, and it made Jyn look up. A sharp contrast from the other girls in the cafe, the waitress was neither terrified or numb. Her eyes were sharp and green, and they burned in a way that set off warning signals. Had Kraava set her up?
Ready to just leave–credits be damned–Jyn rose to her feet and made for the door, but as she took one last look to watch if she was being followed, the girl with the Moff began to scream, a sound that pierced the air and cut through the din of the tapcafe.
Acting before thinking, in what she knew to be another one of her more foolish decisions, Jyn snapped out both her truncheons and barrelled toward the Moff, teeth bared, the well of her anger overflowing and spilling onto the floor of the tapcafe. It was too much. Everything was too much and always too much and she was sick of it and she wanted to burn the planet down into ash. She struck the Moff across the mouth and he toppled over, bellowing in rage, cursing at her from the ground, and it made Jyn smile.
A table was flipped behind her, crashing over her shoulder and splintering wood and glass confetti as she flinched away from its spray. Shouts swelled, wave after of wave of voices rising and falling as chaos overtook the cafe.
The brown-haired girl skittered away out of his grasp as Jyn rose over the Moff to strike again, but as she lifted her arm to strike, arms wrapped around her torso and pulled her off her ground. She’d miscalculated and had forgotten to look for the Moff’s bodyguards. Thrashing against the bodyguard’s hold, she aimed an elbow at the Imperial’s gut but missed as he twisted and slammed her against the wall. Pain radiated through her arms and head, which had taken the brunt of the blow, and she vaguely recognized the sound of a blade coming out of its sheath, and thought, this isn’t how it was supposed to end.
But the stab never came. Instead, another sound sliced through the air, followed by the wet, sickening sound of a vibroblade slicing hot and fast into flesh.
The arms around her loosened and she was dropped to the ground as the Imperial, who had been seconds away from killing her, swayed, eyes blank. Then the vibroblade seemed then to shiver, and with disbelief, Jyn watched it slide out of his skull and clatter to the ground. When she broke free from the shock, she turned to see the redhead waitress, whose right arm was outstretched, her eyes locked in focus on the blade.
Then, the girl rushed up and swiped the blade before saying in a practiced, posh voice that seemed to belong to another person and not the girl who had taken her glass just minutes before, “You better get the kriff out of here!”
Remembering the Moff, she spun around ready to strike him if he rose again, but he lay dead on the floor. It was not from Jyn’s blows, however, or from his fall. His lips were pink and puckered, and foam stained with blood dripped from his dead mouth. The waitress again? Poison? Jyn thought it unwise to wait to find out.
She wouldn’t wait for Kraava, either. If his people went after her, fine, but she was leaving without her money, too. She’d do without a bed again, without hot food. She’d done it so many times before.
Jyn flooded out with the rest of the crowd, tucking her head down and rushing into the first dark alleyway. But rather then being alone, she found herself facing the waitress, who was quickly changing into a dark cloak. They gaped at one another a moment, until Jyn finally said, “Thanks.”
The girl gave her a hard, cold smile, the nodded in acknowledgment.
“Who are you?” Jyn asked out of curiosity more than a need for knowledge.
“No one,” the girl replied.
And something in her made Jyn press on. “I’m Tanith,” Jyn said. The girl tilted her head and raised an eyebrow, as though she knew the lie. In a fit of truth, she corrected herself. “Jyn. I’m Jyn.”
The girl looked away, suddenly more a girl than her outward presence seemed to indicate, unsteady and unsure in the way of children still learning the world. She considered Jyn, then said, “I’m Mara.” Then, without another word, she disappeared up a ladder and over a wall.
Jyn watched her go, for a moment thinking, in another life, maybe we could have been friends. But then she laughed aloud, tucking away her weapons and shaking her head at her own absurdity. This was what happened when you spent too many years alone and when, in all those years before, all of your friends were murderers or terrorists.
And so the girl was forgotten, and alone, Jyn went, as always, tearing down the crowded Coruscant streets to the spaceport that would take her to the next planet until she had to run from there too, or until she ran out of places to go or simply just ran out of time.