Chapter Text
The past refuses to be buried. It is alive, in Jyn Erso’s dreams, always true if not always in order. She breathes in the smoke and ashes seeping through the hatch in the cave, refusing to cough and make a sound as she waits. She breathes in the moisture-heavy air of Lah’mu, as she hides in the grass. She breathes in so sharply it hurts as her mother fires first, as the air crackles with the sound of blaster fire once, then again as the stormtroopers in black fire. A second late, since there was never time for the order to come. And stormtroopers, however specialized, wait on orders.
The air is still crackling as both the man in white and her mother fall down. Neither of them gets up, and Jyn doesn’t see what happens next- she is the first to move, to run so hard it hurts to breathe. Keeps hurting, right until Saw Gererra holds out his hand.
She breathes and- inhales a drop of water, and wakes up sputtering.
Wakes up alone, in her own quarters, catches her breath before she stands up and checks the ceiling for any sign of a drip.
The converted water frigate doesn’t store water anymore, hasn’t in years, but the General warned Jyn - warned Kestrel Dawn- when she came on board that water still clung to the ship’s metal bones. It seeps, sometimes, from the walls, especially the nearer they come to the orbit of a sun.
She doesn’t find a drip. But it was there, and she cannot, does not try, to go back to sleep.
Kestrel Dawn has, of late, been burning her days with Reekeene’s Roughnecks, Irregular unit of the Rebel Alliance.
They are a crew of sixty-some on a freighter that could hold four times that number, and sometimes does, depending on who needs pickups. The freighter acts as a mobile base, reporting back to Alliance Command only by communications bounced through five satellites.
Kestrel has only been here two-odd months, let herself be recruited only because she was out of places to go and had to regroup. She’s stayed this long because-
Because her fellow recruits started calling her “Kes” and just assuming she would watch their backs.
Because on the night they raided an Imperial prison, General Reekeene in the thick among her soldiers, Kestrel said, taut and for once unable to stop herself, “I was born in prison,” and the General did not so much as raise her eyebrow before saying, “I was married in one.”
Because the General’s husband is a tinkering engineer and strategizer, no soldier, with a quiet voice everyone listens to, whose absentminded smiles leave Kestrel feeling cut, whenever she catches one.
Because the leaking freighter’s name is Home.
So Kestrel goes and burns the rest of her night on the range for target practice, her breathing as steady as her shot, and tries not to think beyond the next minute.
She’s not surprised when she’s called into the General’s office, not long after they make a long-ship pickup.
Still not thinking past the next minute, even as she registers the man leaning in the office corner like an insouciant shadow. The General herself is in full light- the deep tone of her skin even darker at the circles under her eyes. She gives Kestrel a measuring look- not at all the same kind of measuring look of a week before, when she’d told Kestrel she was on the fast track to sergeant - and stands to her full impressive height.
“Sit down, Dawn,” General Reekeene says.
Kestrel almost protests. She bites her cheeks, feels her chin jut up- and sits down. She actively doesn’t look at the man in the corner.
“Jyn Erso,” the General says. It’s not a question, but it still feels like there’s a question lurking in it.
It’s the first time anyone has said her true name aloud since Saw. She allows herself one sharp but silent breath and tilts her chin a shade higher.
“This is Captain Cassian Andor,” Reekeene says, and he steps forward, so Kestrel’s forced to slide her eyes in his direction. “One of our friends from Intelligence.”
He pauses, long enough for her to study him and be weighed in his eyes in turn. He’s young but older than her, dark-eyed, dark-haired. His posture, his expression are professionally at ease. It does not conceal the tightness lurking in every line of him, from the crease between his eyebrows on down.
“When was the last time you were in contact with your father?” he says.
Which one? she almost says. But father has always meant Galen to her, and she knows that’s who Captain Andor means, too.
“Fifteen years ago,” she says flatly. Her mother down, the man in white down, Galen - gone, taken by the troopers in black. She can still hear Saw’s hoarse voice say, he let the wrong death take him.
It’s an expected progression, when, moments later, Andor’s asking her how long it’s been since she was in contact with Saw Gererra. If Saw would meet with her if she came as a friend.
“You take me to Saw to say ‘we’re all friends here, we’re all rebels, aren’t we?’ Then - what?” she asks, folding her arms. She’s dropped the posture of Kestrel Dawn, Alliance Irregular in her General’s office, and is slouching back in her seat like the criminal they recruited. She angles her head for a better glare. “If you’re looking for his return to the fold, well. The words ‘lost cause’ might not mean much in this company, but in Saw’s case-”
“There’s a pilot,” Captain Andor interrupts, the lines around his eyes tighter still, and explains about the Imperial defector on Jedha, being held by Saw. About the pilot’s claims about a superweapon.
The pilot who says her father sent him.
It’s the General who tells her the rest of Andor’s mission is then to find Galen Erso, if possible. Stop the superweapon, if possible.
“If the story’s authenticated,” General Reekeene finishes, and Andor, his eyes on Reekeene, shakes his head minutely.
It’s a small motion - but it tells Jyn three things. Intelligence considers the superweapon’s existence as good as authenticated already. Reekeene was briefed on this before they called for Kestrel. And it’s bad enough that the General is refusing to fully accept its truth.
Jyn nods, feeling as if she’s made of tensile wire. Captain Andor’s glance skirts across her jaw, analyzing her facial movements.
“What if I say no?” she says. “I forfeit my berth here, and you take me anyway, at blasterpoint, or drop me off back on Ord Mantell without resources. Am I close?”
Andor recrosses his arms and says, voice harsh, “You’ve been with the Alliance - what, two months? Taking safe harbor here from the bounty on your head-”
“Thank you, Captain,” Reekeene interrupts. “We did know about the bounty, at least. Kestrel - Jyn - do you have a preference?”
“Jyn’ll do,” she says.
“I understand Captain Andor is authorized to provide you with an offer of compensation,” Reekeene says. Reekeene, who used to be a mercenary, head of a private corporation’s mercenary crew, who hasn’t worked for pay for longer than Jyn has been alive. “Should you decline your orders. I told him I did not expect that to be necessary. Is that something we should discuss?”
Jyn is silent for a long, long time. She stayed too long, she thinks, but she’s also thinking about the next minute now, and the next, and the next…
“No, marm,” she says to General Reekeene. “It won’t be necessary.” She shifts her gaze to Andor and adds dryly, “I’m owed two months of backpay, anyway. How much does the Alliance owe you?”
His lip doesn’t twitch, but something changes about the way he’s studying her.
“More,” he says simply.
A lot more, she suspects. She sits up straighter in her chair, smirks.
“However, General, I’d like to discuss my promotion to Sergeant...”
Less than an hour later, her meager kit bundled up and her quarters fully emptied, a reprogrammed Imperial droid is introducing himself to her on a U-wing. Even the droid knows her real name, which is - unsettling.
“No goodbyes?” Captain Andor asks her, as he boards.
“I’ll be back or I won’t, there’s no point in fussing,” Jyn says, more sharply than necessary.
Her three fellow recruits were brought in as a team, former petty scammers who’d been keeping each other alive for a few years - two humans and one meter-tall Squib, all male, all more than happy to adjust to having a woman among their crew and to follow her orders every time she ended up taking lead. Which has been every time, so far, from the disastrous recruitment rendezvous to the six strikes and one intel mission they’ve been sent on together...
They’re going to be upset Kestrel Dawn didn’t say goodbye. Would want to come along.
“Ship’s name aside, this isn’t home,” she adds. “I just haven’t got anywhere better to be.”
She reckons she’s given Andor the answer he’s been expecting.
“Jyn Erso,” calls a voice that has never used that name before, and Andor gives her a nod that as good as says So, one goodbye, then.
She raises a hand to the top of the ship’s exit, pushing off the metal a little as she hops down.
General Reekeene’s white-bearded husband, Mikka Reekeene, is at sixty a few years older than his wife and much less fit in appearance, though Jyn’s seen him move his bulkier former down Home's hallways in a hurry. He’s standing a little ways from the ship.
She’s relieved it’s Mikka and not any of her erstwhile teammates- particularly not the one who’s been making moon eyes at her since they met.
Still, she’s surprised. She’s had little enough to say to the General’s husband in her time here. Conversations with Mikka always come around to the ship’s latest customizations or his never-ending work developing a hyperspace alternator sequencing module, and Jyn, daughter of Galen notwithstanding, has nothing to contribute to engineering discussions.
“I know of your father,” Mikka says once she’s approached. It’s with an effort that she keeps from stepping back. “Never met him, of course. But the name. An eminent man, once- many in my field wondered what happened to him.”
“They’re not the only ones,” Jyn says.
Mikka nods. “He wasn’t the only good one gone, either.”
He doesn’t specify good what, so Jyn doesn’t contradict him.
“Was there something else you wanted?” she asks, adding a ‘sir’ only because call-me-Mikka doesn’t like it.
“I don’t know Captain Andor, but I know the man who sent him,” Mikka said. He pauses. “Andor likely has orders to eliminate your father. Strategically, for the Captain’s health and your own, I gauge it wiser for you to be prepared for that in advance. And so, while you are still on our ship, I am making that decision.”
She doesn’t breathe.
Mikka has to reach and take her limp hand to shake it goodbye.
“Farewell, Kestrel Dawn,” he says. “Good luck, Jyn Erso. I hope to one day see you on Home again.”
Captain Andor has his headset on and is in the cockpit when she climbs back on board. Her hand drifts over her blaster, just checking, and catches the droid’s attention.
“Why does she get to be armed while I don’t?” K-2SO complains.
Andor glances over his shoulder at her.
With more mirth than grimness, he tells the droid, “The sergeant outranks you.”
She sits down behind them as K-2 says, with quite a lot of tone for a mechanical voice, “It’s been over seven years. Am I not due for recognition over a delinquent?”
Jyn starts to mutter Apparently not, but Captain Andor says it first. He catches the start of her words, catches her scowl at his own, and doesn’t bother hiding his frown as he turns back to navigating the U-wing out of Home’s hangar.
Jyn Erso puts her hand to the string that keeps her kyber crystal snug at her neck. A dampness clings to the U-wing, from sitting with its doors open in the former water freighter. No drip, but a taste of dewiness still in the air.
The air circulates, before they even enter hyperspace, and, like Dawn, that trace of dew is instantly gone.