Chapter Text
1) Kestrel and the kyber: If they adorn themselves with crystals / to make them look sharp
“Hey, what’s that at your neck, pretty lady?”
Kestrel Dawn’s first day in the world was evidently going to be as difficult as Jyn Erso’s last day in the world had been.
“I know someone who’ll pay a pretty price for that.”
She’d wanted to catch eyes, but not like this. With nothing but a knife and a loaded blaster concealed at her side, she’d stalked the streets of this dusty hellhole for half a week, slowly, carefully accruing enough credits from the willing pockets and pouches of oblivious locals to buy a new identity. Well, the beginnings of one.
Kestrel wasn’t like Jyn Erso; Kestrel wore clothes that weren’t the hand-me-downs of short-lived generations of insurrectionists. Kestrel’s clothes had never been worn by the dead (only by those who suddenly couldn’t place that one garment they swore was in that chest…). Kestrel wore black, and it stayed black because she never had to hide in a cave, or duck behind a rock, or throw herself to the tundra to avoid blaster fire. Kestrel Dawn went to the cantina and chose what to drink for herself, but she was going to make someone else damn well pay for it — whether they knew it at the time or not.
She did not go to the cantina to sell the one possession that she had plucked from a corpse: the kyber crystal necklace that Lyra Erso had given to her daughter a lifetime ago on Lah’mu.
“It’s not for sale.”
“Oh now, in this city — everything is for sale.”
Kestrel wasn’t sure she was as good at hiding her fear as Jyn Erso had been; Jyn had always had a clutch of bigger, taller, better armed rebels at her back. Jyn had known that, as a soldier in Saw Gerrera’s unit, she didn’t need to be scared of anything at all.
(Except failing Saw).
Kestrel had no unit of rebels; no comm in her pocket or backup to nod at. Kestrel had a knife and a loaded blaster, and if she could rely on the shaking in her hand to stop, she’d have no problem using them. She downed the last of her drink — Corellian brandy had seemed like a sophisticated choice, but it was vile and it felt like it burned its way from her mouth up to the back of her nose. But if she didn’t show how much she hated the drink, then she knew she could stop herself from giving away how much this creep’s attention was unnerving her.
When one of his hands reached for the gem at her neck, and the other went for her knee, Kestrel did not hesitate in revealing the knife she’d been hiding.
The would-be merchant’s eyes widened, but no one else in the cantina spared them a glance.
She leaned the point of the blade into the v of skin that wobbled at the bottom of his scraggly neck and used her spare hand to delve into a pocket — revulsion was another thing that Kestrel now knew she could be capable of hiding. She withdrew a coin and flicked it at the bartender as she retreated from the bar, eyes and knife fixed on what she was sure had been a lone opportunist.
Kestrel Dawn fled back into the shadows of the city to spend a little more time working out who she was. She never revealed the crystal at her neck again.