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Jyn is no stranger to cells. This one’s a good bit cleaner than most – benefit of being the first occupant - but there’s a long bank of empty ones stretching out on either side of hers, and she doesn’t like it. Prisons are meant to have scratches on the walls and rust on the bars that flakes off on your fingers, smells and screams coming from sources you’d rather not think about. This one’s just quiet.
Her nails are already short and ragged, but she bites them some more. Anything to keep herself out of her head.
It’s not long before Jyn gets a neighbour. She hears them bringing the poor sod in - the clanking of feet on the metal grating, and then a voice, a woman’s voice, demanding they get their hands off her.
“I am perfectly capable of walking by myself,” she snaps.
Jyn’s heart sinks – she’d been selfishly hoping for someone she knew, and the stranger’s tone suggests she’s far above Jyn’s station. But if she’s in imperial captivity…
Jyn climbs up on the block that serves as a bed and waits for the footsteps to fade away. She has to duck her head to avoid hitting it on the grid of a ceiling. It’s not a comfortable position.
“Hello?” she calls. Her voice is rough and it’s only on the second go she gets any sound out.
“Who’s there?” the stranger calls back, wary.
“I’m with the Rebellion,” Jyn says. She’s breaking her own rules of self-preservation, but she figures she’s done for anyway. “Do you know what happened after the battle? The one on Scarif?”
“The planet was destroyed,” the stranger says. “The Death Star - ”
“I know, I know, but what happened after? To the plans?” Jyn’s desperate and she sounds it, but she doesn’t care.
“Who are you?” the stranger says, her voice turning sharp.
Jyn bites her lip and calculates how much to give away. Her name isn’t one to inspire trust on either side, but surely after Scarif…
“Oh, you’re going silent on me? Very reassuring. If you really -”
“I’m Jyn Erso.”
Now it’s the other woman’s turn to go silent, and Jyn kicks herself. She could’ve made up a name, she’s done it plenty of times before, and she hates not being able to see the stranger react. There’s a thing people tend to do when they make the link – a tightening in the face, a distancing that has nothing to do with physical proximity. She likes to stare them down while they do it, make sure they know that she knows exactly what they’re thinking.
“So you’re responsible for the Rogue mission.”
“Yes,” Jyn says. It’s certainly one of her nobler moments, a much better association than people usually draw from her name, but the stranger’s tone is bordering on disapproval. Or maybe it’s just the lofty accent.
“I’m Leia Organa,” the stranger says, and Jyn bumps her head on the ceiling. Of all the unlikely cellmates…
“I wish it were under better circumstances, but I’m glad to meet you, Jyn. You may have saved all our skins.”
“So the plans were picked up?”
“Yes, they were transmitted to my ship,” Leia says. “I got them away before I was boarded. It’s out of our hands now.”
Jyn sighs. She should take heart – the plans haven’t been recaptured, not yet - but she’s itching at how useless she feels, her little bit done but the play not over.
“Did you hear of any other survivors?” she says, quieter. It’s not a question she wants the answer to, and she’s not sure Leia can tell her, but she has to ask.
“I thought there were none,” Leia says. “But I was more focussed on outrunning the imperial fleet, and you’re here.”
Jyn appreciates the optimism, however perfunctory. Her own, pinned on the possibility the plans were safely at the rebel base, is draining away.
They lapse into quiet again.
Jyn isn’t much of a talker. She jiggles her leg and taps her fingers and picks at scabs but she doesn’t know what to say to a princess. Then the interrogations begin and she needs to hear a voice that doesn’t make her skin crawl. It’s the kind of talk she’s heard between soldiers; the words sparse, but they declare you are both alive and here, whatever hellhole here might be.
“I don’t know why they’re keeping me around,” Jyn says, returned to her cell after a lengthy questioning. “They’re asking me all these things about the Rebellion and my father I don’t know, the same ones over and over. Like that’s going to change my mind.”
“They want you to know you’ve failed,” Leia says, almost too softly to hear.
“What?”
“Alderaan is gone. They made me watch.”
Jyn’s speechless, but she knows Leia doesn’t like to be left dangling. “I’m sorry,” she says, offering the only words she can think of. “I’ll leave you alone.”
“Oh no, don’t go dark on me now, Erso. We are getting out of here if I have to kick this wall down myself.”
“How?” Jyn asks, unconvinced. Leia doesn’t answer; Jyn imagines the gears turning in her brain.
“Got a plan, princess?” she prompts.
“I’m working on it,” Leia says. “How much do you know about the layout of this station?”
Jyn’s not sure if she’s serious – it’s Leia, so she’s inclined to think yes – but she does her best to humour her, supplying what little she knows about the Death Star and her considerably greater experience at weaselling out of tight spots.
Escape seems almost doable when the Skywalker boy bursts into Leia’s cell. Jyn’s on her feet immediately, listening to his earnest proclamation, and when Leia opens her door a few moments later, she’s raring to go. The princess is shorter than she expected, but the steely glint in her eye is just right.
She looks in the mood to stir up a little trouble, and Jyn is ready to follow right behind her.