But Jyn Erso, aged five and a half years, had her loving parents, an armload of toys that her Papa carefully crafted for her, and a vivid imagination. Who needed big cities, anyway?
She could have just as much fun exploring the black sand beaches, gently rolling hills and rocky outcroppings while her parents did their very important work. Sometimes, she even got to help! What was boring about that?
As far as she was concerned, everything was fine. What more could she possibly need?
On a night like any other, after dinner and chores and usual bedtime routines, Papa had finished reading Jyn her very favorite bedtime story and given her her customary goodnight kiss, his brow furrowed slightly as he noticed a very special little item was missing from it's place of honor right on her bedside table.
"Stardust, what happened to your pebble?"
Jyn's little face crumpled and she shook her head sadly, glancing over to where the iridescent rock had been sitting since the day she had found it on the beach. "I don't know, Papa. I think I lost it."
"That's alright", he soothed, patting her hand gently. "Plenty more where that came from. We'll find another, don't you worry."
By the time Cassian Andor was ten and a half, some things had happened in his life.
He'd been pulled off his birth planet and away from his mother, so young he couldn't remember either of them. He'd been housed and indoctrinated by the Republic Military Academy on Carida, where his father was enrolled. His father was killed by a riot at Carida, which Cassian was saved from by a Separatist who took him away with her. He became a child soldier for the Confederacy of Independent Systems. He indirectly killed many times by getting good at sneaking into and sabotaging Republic war machines. He'd had to bite down on strips of hide while having injuries set and shrapnel removed without anaesthesia. He graduated from being considered a child to being considered an adult by committing his first direct killing by hand.
Quick overturn was common for Separatist soldiers, but it would be a few more years before the one who'd saved him would simply stop coming back.
He didn't have possessions to speak of. The last one he could remember was the toy blaster at Carida, which had proved worse than useless when he took it out into the riot and tried to defend Jeron's body with it. He hadn't lost it: he'd destroyed it.
Yet when Cassian woke that particular morning, sore (as usual) from the previous days' work, inhaling the ash-dust of Sullust and lying still to check his surroundings and adjust to consciousness, he noticed something that hadn't been there when he'd gone to sleep: a small iridescent rock, gleaming in the light of daybreak. It didn't match Sullust's obsidian. It caught the morning's first sunlight in ways that cast color on the ceiling. He didn't know how he knew, but somehow he did know: it was his.
He picked it up, turned it and stared at it in his hands, running his fingers all over and memorizing its angles and imperfections. It was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.
One of his comrades made a sound and stirred. Cassian instantly stuck the pebble into his utility belt. Though there were layers of thick material between it and him, for the rest of the day, he could swear he felt it against his skin.
A few years later, five days after Khryw, the Separatist who'd saved him, disappeared, Cassian went to a deep fissure. He threw down into it the few things he'd saved that reminded him of her and/or of himself before arriving here. The shirt he'd been wearing when he was even smaller, on Carida (that still sported spots of Jeron's blood); his first functional training blaster that Khryw'd taught him to assemble himself; Khryw's jacket that she'd given him and he'd grown into; and, because talismans were clearly worthless, the rainbow pebble.
Three short years later, Jyn's idyllic life on Lah'mu came to a sudden, violent end. Her parents had once made a game out of evacuating the bunker they called home, packing light and staying low as they traversed familiar paths through tall grasses to a hidden, cramped hideaway that always scared her to death to wait in, the darkness so suffocating.
Jyn Erso was eight years old the day that her life as she knew it ceased to exist. The man in white was a terrifying sight, the 'troopers flanking him even more so. And her Papa walked out to meet him where the grass met the beach unarmed.
Her heart pounded fearfully as her mother stopped their progress, placed her kyber crystal necklace over her head and reassured her that the Force would always be with her. Jyn wanted to scream for her Mama not to leave her alone, but no words would come.
And even though she had been instructed to continue to the maze of rocky structures, the dark little hiding place to wait for help to arrive, Jyn crouched even lower in the grasses and watched as her Mama confronted the man in white, threatened him with a blaster she'd had hidden in her robes, and was promptly shot by a 'trooper, letting off one shot from her blaster, which hit the man in white in the shoulder before she crumpled into a heap, never to move again.
Tears streaming down her cheeks, Jyn ran and hid herself away in the dark, terrified and sad until help arrived. She didn't notice until much later that she had left behind - a small toy tooka cat that her father had made for her, dirty and tear-stained.
Some years later, a fighter, no longer a child, Jyn was searching through her meager belongings when she came across a jacket that was not her, a little large for her tiny frame, worn with use. Her own clothes were third-hand by now, if not more, almost threadbare. Who was she to deny it? Searching through the pockets, she found a stone, and when she pulled it out to study it, her heart almost skipped a beat.
I know this, she thought, and then, more painfully, Papa always said that the things we lost came back to us in the end. She stuck it into her pocket and patted it down to ensure that it was safe. Where have you been for all this time?
*
Jyn was sixteen when she was left behind on Tamsye Prime with what little she owned shoved into the pack she carried with her - two truncheons, change of clothes, code replicator, pebble in her pocket.
As she ran and tried to find a way off-planet, panicked and wondering what she'd done to be abandoned so unceremoniously, a small hidden vibroblade slipped from her boot and fell unnoticed to the ground below. Even if Jyn had noticed, she couldn't have gone back for it. All she could do was focus on here and now and making an escape.
When the tooka cat showed up, at first he ignored it. That couldn't be for him. Even by non-soldier standards, at thirteen, he'd outgrown that sort of toy. As a soldier, he had still less use for it. However, the same sense as he'd had with the pebble—that it was meant for him—made him belatedly take it before someone else could dispose of it, and stuff it under his cot. He proceeded to forget it was there.
Until the little girl they rescued from the fire. She was young, even by the standards of those who conscripted children; she was badly burned, and she was so frightened. Others were giving her actual treatment. Cassian didn't know what he could do for her. Until he suddenly remembered, and took off at a run for the barracks. He grabbed the squashed tooka doll and ran back. He presented it to the little girl. She instantly grabbed it and hugged it tight. Her tears eased and heartrate slowed. Cassian felt something soften a bit in his chest.
The girl didn't make it. The cost had been her life, but for that child, at least, they'd managed to let her be a child that little bit longer. When they cremated her body, Cassian left the tooka in her arms, to burn with her.
* * *
More things changed in Cassian's life. The Secessionist Movement and Clone Wars fizzled to a stop, but not before some clever field commanding on his part in the Battle of Sullust brought Cassian to the attention of others. At sixteen, he was recruited by Davits Draven to the Alliance to Restore the Republic. (Which, at first, struck him as the worst cosmic joke. Are you kidding me? Do you know why we were fighting? To which Draven had answered, What the Republic was becoming. Now we have to fight what it's become.)
As part of his Alliance (re-)education (was it "re-" to give what he'd never had?), he'd learned that what some of them had started to suspect was now universally agreed: the movement had backfired, speeding if not directly facilitating the rise of the Empire. With that, he lost all faith.
It started to return to him—or rather, a new one started to replace it, as he continued to be trained as an Alliance operative. He was fully committed by age twenty-one. He needed to be, to survive situations as the one he found himself in now: hand-to-hand fighting for his life.
His captors had stripped all his weapons, and though he'd managed to escape them, one of the nastiest had caught up with him. His adversary had him pinned and was choking him, imminently, to death. Cassian's hand groped blindly on the ground beside them, hoping for a rock, some dust, anything he could throw in the other's face.
His hand met metal. The vibroknife slipped into his hand like he'd been using it for years, hilt fitting and blade flipping out before his brain had even caught up to what it was. And he instantly swung up and struck it deep into his assailant's throat.
The bigger man fell away from him, making terrible, terrible noises. Cassian pushed himself away from him and ran.
He'd run so far, outstripping all pursuit, before he finally stopped, stooping over and struggling to breathe. He braced his hands on his knees—or meant to, but the vibroknife was still in one hand. He brought it up to examine it, at a complete loss. This wasn't the kind of thing you just… found, in the middle of nowhere, exactly when you needed it. It was old and used but well-maintained. And—for the third time in his life—Cassian felt it: it was for him.
Maybe he was too tired and shellshocked. Maybe he was being pragmatic. Maybe he was being superstitious. Whatever the case, he couldn't get himself to give it further thought. He just snapped it back into traveling position and slipped it in his belt. Then continued on foot to where he could comm for pickup.
* * *
He lay in his bunk, turning the blade over in his hands, letting it catch the light. He hadn't brought himself to think about it for days, edging into weeks. But he also couldn't forget it. He had the strangest, nagging sensation about it. And this one, he really couldn't brush off or imagine away.
Finally, feeling lightheadedly delirious or even delusional, Cassian sat up and found a slip of paper. He traced the shape of the vibroblade onto the paper, sketched in its distinguishing features. Then wrote under it: This saved my life. Thank you.
Not knowing what the hell he was doing, but compelled nonetheless, Cassian went outside. He stared at the sky for a good long while. Then he balled up the piece of paper and threw it as far as he could. It caught a breeze and disappeared into the darkness.
Jyn escaped Tamsye Prime by the skin of her teeth, and the assistance of a stranger who tagged along, also needing an escape from the planet. She wasn't entirely sure of where it was that she landed, but at least she could be assured that the junkers he'd directed her to would disassemble the ship and remove any trace of her ever having used it.
Perhaps predictably, they split their money fifty-fifty and went their separate ways. Maybe it was better to be alone. Maybe there really was no one in the entire universe that she could trust.
She searched the spaceport, looking for a ship that was soon to depart, and - lying about her proficiency with droid repair, found just that. She hadn't been anticipating having to use other skills on the trip, but when Akshaya Ponta was threatened by Imperials, her forging skills ended up saving the day ...
And getting her an invitation to say with the woman's family for a bit on Skhul in order to get back on her feet. So she took the invitation, and for a time, things felt ... better than perhaps they ever had before. She forged useful documents for Akshaya's shipping business ... and spent her free time (a concept she was no longer very familiar with) becoming friendly with her son, Hadder, who ws near her age. As time passed ... feelings grew. That was new, too, and probably helped along with all the forbidden trips on his mother's planet hopper they took when she was away on business.
Jyn didn't have much of her own - certainly not anything that she could lose, but she was happy.
Even when Hadder admitted to wanting to join a resistance group and asked her to come with. She denied the invitation, content enough with the way life was turning out, and ... he agreed to stay with her. And things ... continued being good ... until they weren't anymore.
The Empire began tightening it's hold on Skuhl and for as much as the trio didn't want to leave their home, natural and adopted, there didn't seem to be any other choice to make. Plans were made to relocate to the Five Points System to start all over again -
But before they could, 'troopers arrived looking for Jyn, certain that she was part of the responsible party of rebels for the factory incident on Tamsye Prime. The trio ran, but got separated, and in the chaos of battle between Empire and Rebels, Hadder and his mother lost their lives. Jyn didn't know. Not until she reached Five Points station and they did not. And her heart broke all the more, and her guilt burrowed just a little deeper into her soul. If not for her ...
***
In the years following the loss of her adopted family, Jyn did what Saw had taught her to do - she toughened up. She honed her skills and gained new ones all in the course of surviving as she hopped from planet to planet, never staying anyplace long. She (and her various aliases) was a petty criminal, a street fighter, a smuggler in her own right. Sure, she got arrested from time to time, but always managed to find a way out, whether that was due to her quick thinking, or with help from friends or acquaintances on the outside. Bribing, or lying about bribing really did go a long way.
The more she got arrested, the longer her rap sheet grew - charges of forging Imperial documents, aggravated assault against Imperial personnel, escape from custody, escape from custody, resisting arrest, shipjacking, possession of unsanctioned weapons, unlawful conduct with undesirables, petty theft, creating a public nuisance, and disorderly conduct ... all of which suggested that the life she had led had not been an easy one.
She worked on a gas tanker in the Anoat system, traveled between Cerea and Coyerti, even spent an entire year on Takodana before spending time on a freighter forging codes, what she was seemingly best at. In Garel City, she rescued a tooka cat for a little girl when 'troopers decided to try to take it first.
So she got caught when she tried to stealing guns from and blowing up the ship of a petty dictator. So he had her dragged through the streets and had his goons point their rifles at her, so they stunned her with stun prods. It only made her all the angrier.
For all her hurt, she still tried not to hurt anyone else unless it was absolutely necessary. She had known the pain of loss, over and over and over again, and didn't wish it upon anyone else.
Sitting in a cheap, dingy room in some out of the way inn, a crumpled piece of paper suddenly fell into her lap, eliciting a yelp of surprise. Unfolding it gingerly, she found a sketch of a blade - her blade - and the message that it had turned up in the hands of someone who probably could've used it more than her.
She almost threw it away, but something told her not to discount it so quickly. However it had happened, the message had found her, and ... even if she didn't believe a reply would find it's way back, still scribbled a little note on the other side of the scrap of paper.
I hope your life is worth the hassle of my losing it.
You're welcome.
Please take care of it. I'm sure it will continue to do you well.
Again, she sat and contemplated just tossing the paper away, but ultimately found her way outside, and in the hot glare of the mid-afternoon sun, carefully folded it and threw it as far as she could, a small hope growing in her belly that it would find it's way where it needed to go.
She couldn't stay here, though. Staying heightened the danger of getting caught. Another day, another planet, that was her life. Someday, her luck would run out, but for the moment, it was still holding steady.
Her response found him in a similar dingy room, in a similar dingy inn, on a similar dingy planet. (Surely not the same one because that would be Forcingly ridiculous.)
He wrote back:
I will.
I hope so, too.
Because the thing was, he hurt people when it wasn't absolutely necessary. Technically, it depended on your definition of "necessary". He always had a reason, but it usually wasn't that his own life depended on it. Nor was the reason ever his own.
He also hurt himself, in less obvious ways. His superiors hadn't suggested it, his contacts did.("I'll give you what you want, if…") Still, it became unignorable: this was a method he needed, a way to open doors faster and cheaper and less traceably. He received raven training and sex became just another tool of the trade. He wondered, occasionally, what it might be like to do it because he actually wanted to, with someone he liked. But he couldn't afford to wonder often.
He also, for someone with so few possessions to begin with, began losing things a lot more regularly. Usually because his (partner? contact? target?) would keep a souvenir, only to lose track of it later. Mostly socks and undergarments, occasionally a shirt. He stopped wondering about it and just bought a new one once he hit the street.
Between the parade in his mind (people with blasterholes where an eye should be, where a heart had been, bashed in skulls, slit throats) and the parade in person (people who were openly violating him and people who were enthusiastically willing but didn't know he was, by lying, violating them), he went from mission to mission without reprieve, without downtime, not wanting to be left alone with himself. He slept in the pilot seat of whatever ship he was manning, with the comm blasting chatter or static and the starlines of hyperspace going past.
The one place he could sit and just be, was at the top of a Massassi ziggurat on Yavin 4. He watched the wind and light patterns over the endless tree canopy—the sea above the forest—and let himself feel the vastness of the Empire far, far above and the Rebellion buried, deep, below.
Sometimes, he turned the vibroblade, now an old familiar presence, over in his hands.
And this time, he dared to do something he hadn't for a very, very long time. Imagine. And hope.
He had a pad and writing implement with him. He took them out. He couldn't write or draw anything that might lead anyone to the base, so nothing specific to Yavin 4. Not the forestscape, not the particular perspective of constellations.
But, searching back in his mind, he thought of something else.
It was only from memory, but he'd been taught memory enhancement techniques, so the likeness was a good one.
As he hadn't thought about in years, he drew the old stuffed tooka cat. The one he'd laid to rest with the little girl.
Under it, he wrote:
Long ago, now. But: Was this yours?
He didn't crush it this time. Just held the paper out to the wind and let it go.
Who knew what other beings inhabited similar sparse rooms in the types of dingy non-descript inns that Jyn frequented? Wouldn't it be funny if the note popped out of one room and appeared in the next? Wouldn't it be funny if those inhabitants had passed each other like strangers in the night, unaware of each other's identity?
Jyn didn't write back. Not that there wasn't a pull to, but because it felt dangerous. Making connections - real, true ones - only led to heartbreak in the end. And Jyn didn't know if she could stand losing one more lifeline ... even if that lifeline was a stranger. She wanted to, sometimes, to stave off the loneliness licking at her heels, but subdued the urge and kept jumping from planet to planet, never settling down long enough to start putting down roots.
She learned that sometimes, all it really took to reel a mark in was a well-timed smile and a wink. She learned how to distract just long enough to drug a drink just enough to ensure that she would never have to submit to sleeping with them - a thought that sometimes made her physically ill if she dwelled on it too long. By the time they awoke, she was long gone, with whatever credits or other items or information she had lifted from them.
Occasionally, she lost those tools of the trade, too, but usually nothing more than a garish lipstick, or cheap hairpins that only looked expensive if one didn't look closely enough. A shoe, once or twice, but Jyn thought nothing of leaving them behind. She had no real use for them, after all.
Once, she returned to her hostel to find a shirt tossed across the rickety bunk she called hers. Far from wondering if she'd been compromised, she somehow just knew where it had come from, and she ran her fingertips along a sleeve before lifting it to her nose for a careful sniff. "Smells like you", she thought, folding it up so she could store it with the few belongings she carried with her, "Whoever you are."
Jyn didn't have a home base. But occasionally, she hid out on crowded Coruscant, where it was easy to slip unnoticed through the crowds, where she could do a little research, decide what her next step was going to be, where her next destination was.
Coruscant didn't feel like home, even though Jyn and her parents had lived there for some years before the relocation to Lah'mu. It was just a place that made it easier to hide than others, just a place where she could be nothing more than another face in the crowd. Helpful for a woman that the authorities deemed nothing more than a common criminal.
She was sitting in some out of the way greasy spoon with her datapad doing just that when another note appeared next to her half-eaten plate and her breath caught in her throat as she observed the drawing, immediately calling to mind the image of the stuffed tooka toy that she had left behind what seemed like lifetimes ago.
Jyn traced the lines of the remarkably detailed drawing, her breath and heartbeat a little irregular. Finally, she found enough composure to dig through her rucksack for anything in which to write back. It wasn't a pencil or a pen, but the kohl she used to line her eyes would do.
She had no scraps of paper herself, but she wrote back on the same paper -
Long lost friend.
Did he go to a good home?
Jyn folded the paper carefully, and let it drop underneath her table. Closing her eyes, she counted to 100, and when she opened them again, it had disappeared. Such a strange manner of communication, but Jyn didn't really question it as much as she perhaps should have.
One unexpected perk of having been given his own ship—one to use regularly and wouldn't be used by others in between—was its storage capacity. A small compartment, a sliding panel just above eye level, too small for significant cargo and too inconvenient for nav aids, became the dwelling of these relics of an unknown life.
A few things, he kept because he suspected they had nothing to do with her real character. (Like the lipstick.) For that reason, they amused him. The shoes were more precious, and never left that compartment. The hairpins… he'd taken one to fasten invisibly on his clothes, several times, for certain missions. The man who claimed not to be superstitious.
He was sitting alone in the cockpit, leaning back, watching the starlines, when he felt a molecule shift. He looked down, and there was the piece of paper that hadn't been there before.
He. The tooka had been a 'he'. That felt important, somehow, even though Cassian had never thought to assign it any of the five genders.
He couldn't quite bring himself to tell the whole truth. There was a higher truth, anyway.
(Written also on the same paper, neatly beneath the kohl contribution: )
I gave him to a little girl. He gave her comfort when she needed it badly. She kept him close the rest of the time I knew her.
This nebulous new friend of Jyn's hadn't lost much - or so it seemed, but Jyn kept everything that she had found. She still wore the jacket from time to time, and carefully mended it to keep it from falling apart. The blaster, she kept with her other weapons. One never knew when one would come in handy ... and the beings that inhabited the places she tended to frequent were not the most trustworthy. It had seen it's fair share of use in the years since it had fallen into her hands.
And the shirt - she wore it sometimes, despite how big it was on her, how she had to roll the sleeves up to her elbows, how it still billowed out even when she tucked it into her trousers. For whatever reason - she certainly didn't allow herself to think about it much - it gave her comfort.
For a time, there was nothing. No little note sent in return. Nothing lost. Just complete radio silence, almost as though she had simply disappeared. And then, just like that, a wristband from a med-center located on Adarlon's capitol city, which looked to be singed off in quite a hurry. Most of the name had been obliterated, but there was still a faint '..AWN' visible.
Still later after that, a note would appear, the paper wrinkled and creased, like it had been stuffed into a bag or pocket, the writing hurried.
Jyn was smart enough to read between the lines. She didn't ask for clarification because none was needed. She felt ... sad ... for the unnamed little girl, but grateful that somehow, some way, she (and her tooka) had been able to help.
I'm glad. Could use a little of that myself from time to time. But then, can't we all?
…It was hard for him not to wrap everything and fly to Adarlon.
He'd almost forgotten what it was like to have an impulse. Much less to actually consider it.
When the note appeared, he'd been in the middle of a semi-clandestine meeting with a source. He simply snapped it up and stuffed it in his pocket without looking at it.
From that moment, though, he found—to his… some emotion—his objective wasn't really success of the mission anymore. It was getting enough closure to be able to go off on his own and read the note.
Can't we all. Yes. And he didn't know her, had no mental image of her, was only assuming it was a her (Cassian had had occasions to wear lipstick and hairpins himself), yet somehow got a mental image of them comforting each other. Sitting on the ledge of something leaning against each other's shoulders.
As usual, couldn't respond with anything of substance. Just wanted to keep the lines open.
He have a name?
Friend of mine had a great-aunt with four tookas. My friend got to name one of them. Their names wound up 'Taffy', 'Fluffy', 'Muffy', and 'AT-AV'.
[OOC: AT-AV = "All-Terrain Attack Vehicle". An EU detail of Princess Leia's childhood written by Barbara Hambly.]
By the time he arrived, Jyn would have found transport off-planet and made her way someplace new, someplace where she could rest and recuperate in relative peace and privacy before moving on all over again. It wasn't the most stable nor safe ways of life, but it was all that she had.
She rested uneasily in her bunk of the freighter, only stirring when she heard paper crumpling from underneath the thin, worn pillow. Carefully, she pulled it out and just as carefully, she smoothed out the wrinkles, huffing out an amused breath as she read the short note. It pulled at the staples holding together a ragged cut across her shoulder blade, and she groaned accordingly.
Jyn didn't know who her pen pal was, but when she thought about him - if he even was a he, she could hardly be sure other than the feeling that she got every time a new item or note appeared, she got the sense that this was a friend. And even if they inhabited opposite ends of the galaxy, she didn't feel quite so alone.
It was comforting, in a weird way.
The next time she was able to reply was weeks later as that same freighter was docked at Ord Mantell and she had just returned from a supply run, mostly healed and having decided to stick with the crew for just a bit longer, just until she found someplace suitable to disappear.
Koodie. Don't tell me, your friend picked Fluffy, right?
She resisted the urge - barely - to ask anything more substantial like where are you or more importantly, who are you. She had to be grateful for this, keeping some sort of lifeline in a vast and lonely universe.
However, in a moment of weakness, her hesitation clear in the start and stop of the next set of writing, she asked -
Longer amounts of time had passed between messages or items before. There was no reason to assume it meant none would ever come again—that something terrible had happened.
So of course that was exactly what he assumed.
(Because that's how life in the universe goes. Right?)
When a note finally appeared, thank goodness he waited to read it until he was completely isolated, because he actually laughed aloud at her dryness. As much relief as amusement.
Would you believe 'Taffy'? But Avie really was appropriate.
Some hesitation as well. …Then his first real detail.
I was on Lothal during the Blockade. I got stalked by a probe droid. So it wouldn't shoot me, I had to sit so still, for so long, that wild loth-cats came out of the grass, climbed onto me, and went to sleep.
There wasn't much anyone could learn from that. Maybe the vaguest little about his age, but hopefully nothing his handwriting and vocabulary would make surprising. Not really his present location, if one assumed that he'd been on more than one planet—though that itself was information. It's not like his assignment had been documented in any way that could be searched for on the 'net, so it didn't point to the Rebellion. Nor did being antagonistic with a probe droid necessarily dictate loyalties… it just suggested.
He kept it in anyway.
…because, wise or not, his craving for contact, for recognition, was only getting sharper.
It wasn't Cassian's first time on Jelucan. Not by a long shot.
Recruiting what Command only knew as "The Jelucan Source" had been Cassian's first major accomplishment as Fulcrum, vindicating Draven's appointment of him to the post. That source being a Human Cassian only knew as "Farir", and who only knew Cassian as "Willix"; Farir being a high-profile escort whose agency tended to cater to grounded Imperials who (naturally) couldn't get enough, while on leave, of the things they decried and punished others for. Bringing Farir to the cause meant having a direct line to extremely… well… sensitive intel.
It also meant that when Command reluctantly concluded that Cassian needed raven training, as another weapon in his belt, they knew who to ask for it.
Yes, Cassian had been on Jelucan many times.
…Even before, though—when it had been his first time—it had never felt it. He knew Jelucan's past in the CIS. He knew the Separatist who'd saved him from the Caridan riots and brought him to the CIS had come here regularly. Though he'd never accompanied her (he'd been a child), he felt himself, while there, to be walking in her footsteps. Following her ghost.
Jelucan had changed since the Separatist Crisis, and didn't seem poised to stop changing. It was getting more industrial and polluted all the time—more, indeed, like child Separatist soldier Cassian's home, at the time, of Sullust.
In Jelucan's capital, Valentia, at least, the vitals remained the same. First- and Second-Wavers side-eyed each other and never mixed except on the street and in certain bars, to which they may have gone as much to pick fights with each other as to drink.
Cassian wouldn't have picked one of them to meet in, but it was where the contact had insisted when Farir set up the meeting for them.
So here he was, nursing a drink, using the tricks he'd developed over the years to seem to be partaking more than he actually was. Cassian hated intoxicants. Not just because he tended to know or guessed the exploitation and violence behind almost all of them, but because he'd never, not on any drug, experienced anything but a really bad trip. Relaxants just lowered the shields, the partitions, on his mind, letting everything cascade in ever-mixing torrents, leaving him so cognitively overloaded it rendered him nonverbal and almost paralyzed. (Plus sobering up feeling like the flu.) Stimulants heightened his already amplified situational awareness, over-sensitivity to detail, and raised his wariness to paranoia, so the merest movements of anything anywhere within his full range of senses had him jumping and crawling out of his own skin. Hallucinogens… he didn't even want to imagine. The slightest bit he hadn't managed to get out of once, for a cover identity, had him seeing all the living beings around him as animate rotting corpses, sporting the kinds of injuries he'd inflicted on assassination targets over the years. Some, made into people he knew and cared about.
Those few experiences were more than enough to never seek any further high.
The problem was, when he was undercover, and his cover identity would not shy away. And/or when he was with the kind of company who would never deal with or remotely trust him if he didn't indulge exactly as much as they did. Again, he had tricks, but how much they worked depended more on the other party than on his own techniques.
This group (—which, also, hadn't been supposed to be a group, but no helping that now) were really plying him. In fact, he suspected that even the drugs he was taking on purpose had been additionally drugged. Between who he was supposed to be and needing to particularly ingratiate himself, it was impressive enough he'd held back as much as he already had. Which was already far more influenced than he usually allowed.
He didn't realize quite how high (compromised) he actually was, though… until they suggested the group relocate to a back room. And he got up a little unsteady on his feet…
…which, barely through the curtained doorway, were suddenly kicked out from under him. His wrists were grabbed, his head pulled back by the hair, his body slammed and pinned against a bar, face shoved down onto it, his feet kicked apart… and one of them pulled his blaster from his belt, but then grabbed the belt itself…
…go figure… he had, after all, had every other sort of sexual experience on this forsaken planet…
He knew the more he struggled, the harder they'd… deal with him… He'd been submitted to a lot before… But right now, he wanted to beg for help. Call someone to save him from what was about to happen.
Jyn wasn't as intimately acquainted - but on this, her first ever visit, she was quickly becoming disillusioned with all that was going on around her. Not the drinks or the drugs, as such, she knew that with all the uncertainty simmering throughout the galaxy, some places more palpable than others, people needed an outlet, a way to forget.
She was no stranger to under-the-table dealings, either. But it was different when it involved people's lives. Sure, she appeared innocuous enough, taking up as little space as possible in her little corner, bristling and snarling if anyone tried to show her interest, but she was keenly aware of what was going on around her ... which was more than she could say for some of the others visiting the bar that night.
One group in particular caught her eye, if only for how shadily some of the members were behaving, whispering amongst themselves, looking around as though they were scanning for anyone interested in their doings, and the one of them that was clearly weaving back and forth in his seat. Whatever motives the majority of the men at that table had, it wasn't good.
It wasn't any of her business, but when they stood up to move on, and she saw how markedly different the one was moving, she knew she couldn't sit back and do nothing. It wasn't her business, but she wasn't going to allow someone, even a stranger to get hurt in the ways that she knew he would without someone stepping in to assist.
She could be called a criminal, but she had never been heartless. So, as surreptitiously she could manage, she stood up, too, and followed. Luckily, the other patrons were busy with their own deals or dates or ... whatever else they were doing, so nobody paid her much attention.
It only took a moment of her peeking through the curtain and watching the assault for her to feel deep in her bones that she was doing the right thing. She said nothing as she stepped through the curtains, too, silent and full of rage as she tried to take them out as quickly as possible with punishing blows from her truncheons. She had a blade and a blaster, too, if need be, but as one after another fell before her, she didn't think they would be necessary.
All she heard as she dispatched one after the other until they all fell or ran was her heart pounding in her ears.
It made no sense. He was at their mercy. Any pretense at negotiation was unsalvageable. Why on Hoth would they…?
As the hands on his wrists and arms, waist and hair and neck, all withdrew, Cassian's legs buckled and he grabbed onto the bar for dear life; keeping himself from crumpling to the ground. He closed his eyes, pressed them to the cooler surface than the room, and willed the planet to stop trying to spin him off it.
Then he had the wherewithal, keeping one arm tightly over the bar, to turn and look over one shoulder.
Between being drugged and his brand spanking new head injury from being slammed onto the bar (and possibly a broken rib, ditto, but that was less influential on his visual perception), lights were sparking like a migraine and movement ribboned out in time-lapse continuity.
But he thought he saw a small figure—shockingly small—dashing and whirling in the midst of the group who shedded off, fell, one by one around it.
He may not be able to do much, but there must be something he could do.
His hand went to the belt (they'd managed to undo but not remove it) and its now-empty holster. He squinted again at the… combat? must be… and decided. He let go of the bar and let himself fall, sinking unceremoniously onto the floor. But the floor was more to hang onto than the bar had been. So, on hands and knees, he crawled forward, until his hands hit the prone body of one of the now-unconscious gang. Going by feel more than sight, he located the Human's blaster, to replace the one they'd taken.
And, staring intensely until he'd absolutely confirmed who was who, and where he was aiming, he fired.
The last gang member standing let out a howl and clutched his leg where the shot had hit—so doing, dropping the knife he'd been about to throw at Cassian's unknown, small savior.
They had not relinquished their almost-conquest voluntarily. But Jyn hadn't intended upon taking no for an answer. She was small and fast, and although she was outnumbered, the skills she had gained as a fighter (this was no time for a fair fight, and she felt no remorse in fighting dirty) she soon had the upper hand.
Still, for as righteously angry she felt, Jyn did not aim to kill. She didn't go easy on them, that was for certain, but once they were incapacitated, once they were unconscious or crawling away from the action, she set upon the next.
Not that she didn't take her fair share of shots - it was inevitable, being one person taking on an entire group, but she would deal with her own injuries later. The adrenaline coursing through her veins kept her up and moving, only ever catching occasional glimpses at the man she was trying to help; clutching at the bar as though his life depended on it, almost crumpled on the ground, crawling toward one of others lying prone on the ground ...
And not again until the shot went off and the last man standing yelled in pain ... until she bashed him in the head with her truncheon until he fell onto the ground silently, too. She hadn't killed anyone - she didn't think, but anyone who was of a mind to hurt another person like these men had been might have deserved it.
Quickly, she was at his side, extending a hand for him to take, her eyes steely, but not unkind. "Come on. We've got to get out of here before the authorities arrive."
…Had it all been a set-up? Never about making a deal, but about putting him in a position to be rescued. To trust or consider himself in debt. Was he known or important enough for anyone to have bothered? What was there to be gained? Why would that work better than its premise would? Did he really think this batch ready to be so subtle or complicated?
Real or not real, he was in better shape (—no matter being in such bad shape) to salvage something from this by going with her now; rather than, as she pointed out, waiting for the authorities to get involved.
He reached back to her offered hand. He clapped his hand into hers. And accepted her help pulling himself to his feet.
You can trust me.
Right.
Still, wouldn't hurt to seem to. Go for it. Take the bait.
…And if by some chance it wasn't… accept the miracle.
His forward momentum didn't stop where he wanted it to; he got off the ground, all right, but then overbalanced forward and had to be caught. Then supported by her getting out.
Jyn might've been the only one on this Force-forsaken planet who didn't have any ulterior motives whatsoever. She was simply waiting for the rest of her crew to sew their wild oats so they could return to the job they were supposed to be doing.
She couldn't begin to say whether or not she had been meant to be here at this particular time in this particular place, and she knew that she couldn't save everybody, but once she parsed what was going to happen, she knew she couldn't just ignore it.
So. Here she was, panting, adrenaline high, extending her hand to a complete stranger, trusting that he had no ulterior motives for her. But in the state he was in, Jyn felt no danger whatsoever, not even pity, not really. Just worry.
What had they dosed him with? And how long would it take to work it's way out of his system? And could she really help without looking for medical intervention?
Too much to concentrate on when the most important thing was getting out of there, not to the freighter, but to the dirty little room she had paid for for the night, where she'd just ... watch over him, make sure he didn't die on her watch. And when the morning came, she'd be gone. She couldn't offer anything else.
He took her hand, and she grimaced at how clammy his were. And she had to curl an arm tightly around him when he stood and promptly almost fell forward. "Come on", she urged, her voice tight, urgency coloring every word. "Work with me here."
"Sorry," he said, and was… (upset? enraged? embarrassed?) …aggravated at how slurred he sounded in two syllables. Ugh… he'd known but not managed to avoid…
He threw more power from shields to navigation; focusing intently on staying on his own two feet and leaning a little less on her, and following whatever direction she set.
"You know who they were?" he said softly. Knowing it was a stupid question, he was unlikely to get a real answer… but staying talking might help with focus, and her answer, truthful or not, might be informative anyway.
Jyn made a dismissive little noise in the back of her throat as her arm tightened around his middle - just to help keep him steady and nothing more. She would release her grip if he wriggled out of it. It wasn't his fault that he'd been drugged, and it wasn't him that she had any ire for. "You don't need to apologize."
Once he was a little bit steadier on his feet, she led him toward where she hoped a back door was. It'd be easier to make an escape with any eyes on them as they did so. Jyn felt a small sense of relief when that door came into sight, and she urged him toward it.
She scoffed and shook her head, glancing at him momentarily. It was a positive sign that he was able to speak coherently. "Not a clue."
There was a darkness in her voice, but it wasn't directed toward him more than it was the group of men she'd left lying battered on the floor. "I was watching. They were going to hurt you. What kind of person would I be if I let that happen?"
"Self-preserving?" he said softly. Without malice, bitterness, or judgment for the kind of person who would be. "Not anyone's fault that… not everyone should have to…" The thoughts circled in on themselves and left him dizzy. He shook his head, closed his eyes, and focused on staying on his feet.
"Where are we going?" he said at last, instead. Stick with the immediate and concrete.
"Complacent", she replied, not a chastisement, but a reminder to herself that today was not going to be the day where she just sat back and did nothing. For as battered as her heart was, she still had the capacity to care, even about strangers that she had never seen before and would never see again.
She didn't blame anyone who couldn't step in, but she held herself to a higher standard. She wasn't yet so disillusioned with everything that she could ignore something so heinous happening right in front of her. Hopefully she never would be.
"Got a room nearby - ", she replied, grimly aware that it might've sounded like he'd been rescued from a bad situation and being led into another. "You can shower and rest, let whatever they gave you make its way out of your system.
"I know." And he did, somehow. …Or at least, the part of his brain that had to rationalize went ahead with, he'd behave as if he did.
But…
"Why are you helping me?" he asked, still softly, still damnably slurred; with an acuity, a tension, nevertheless.
Even though, in the same way he knew the other, he knew this too; he didn't need to ask. That single word—complacent—had given him everything he needed. They were alike, at least in this: not everyone should have to give themselves up, for the sake of others. Which was why they did.
That, too, was promising. It suggested that she wouldn't have to worry about having another fight on her hands if he suddenly freaked and thought that she was going to try to take advantage, too.
That was the furthest thought in her mind. Jyn just wanted to get someplace safe - she had injuries to attend to, as well, what felt like a strained shoulder and maybe a bruised rib.
Worth it, though.
She didn't know what he'd go back to once the drugs left his system, whether he'd be safe or not, but tonight, he had no worries that anyone else might have malice in mind for him.
His exhalation might read as a laugh. But it wasn't one. "Okay."
The right thing to do. Versus the easy thing. Versus the complacent or self-preserving thing. Versus even the right move. Versus…
"Okay," again, more softly, then he had to stop talking and focus on staying conscious. He couldn't stop it. He could only delay it. Until they got to somewhere where he could properly collapse.
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no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 04:51 pm (UTC)But Jyn Erso, aged five and a half years, had her loving parents, an armload of toys that her Papa carefully crafted for her, and a vivid imagination. Who needed big cities, anyway?
She could have just as much fun exploring the black sand beaches, gently rolling hills and rocky outcroppings while her parents did their very important work. Sometimes, she even got to help! What was boring about that?
As far as she was concerned, everything was fine. What more could she possibly need?
On a night like any other, after dinner and chores and usual bedtime routines, Papa had finished reading Jyn her very favorite bedtime story and given her her customary goodnight kiss, his brow furrowed slightly as he noticed a very special little item was missing from it's place of honor right on her bedside table.
"Stardust, what happened to your pebble?"
Jyn's little face crumpled and she shook her head sadly, glancing over to where the iridescent rock had been sitting since the day she had found it on the beach. "I don't know, Papa. I think I lost it."
"That's alright", he soothed, patting her hand gently. "Plenty more where that came from. We'll find another, don't you worry."
no subject
Date: 2019-08-06 02:12 am (UTC)He'd been pulled off his birth planet and away from his mother, so young he couldn't remember either of them.
He'd been housed and indoctrinated by the Republic Military Academy on Carida, where his father was enrolled.
His father was killed by a riot at Carida, which Cassian was saved from by a Separatist who took him away with her.
He became a child soldier for the Confederacy of Independent Systems.
He indirectly killed many times by getting good at sneaking into and sabotaging Republic war machines.
He'd had to bite down on strips of hide while having injuries set and shrapnel removed without anaesthesia.
He graduated from being considered a child to being considered an adult by committing his first direct killing by hand.
Quick overturn was common for Separatist soldiers, but it would be a few more years before the one who'd saved him would simply stop coming back.
He didn't have possessions to speak of. The last one he could remember was the toy blaster at Carida, which had proved worse than useless when he took it out into the riot and tried to defend Jeron's body with it. He hadn't lost it: he'd destroyed it.
Yet when Cassian woke that particular morning, sore (as usual) from the previous days' work, inhaling the ash-dust of Sullust and lying still to check his surroundings and adjust to consciousness, he noticed something that hadn't been there when he'd gone to sleep: a small iridescent rock, gleaming in the light of daybreak. It didn't match Sullust's obsidian. It caught the morning's first sunlight in ways that cast color on the ceiling. He didn't know how he knew, but somehow he did know: it was his.
He picked it up, turned it and stared at it in his hands, running his fingers all over and memorizing its angles and imperfections. It was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.
One of his comrades made a sound and stirred. Cassian instantly stuck the pebble into his utility belt. Though there were layers of thick material between it and him, for the rest of the day, he could swear he felt it against his skin.
A few years later, five days after Khryw, the Separatist who'd saved him, disappeared, Cassian went to a deep fissure. He threw down into it the few things he'd saved that reminded him of her and/or of himself before arriving here. The shirt he'd been wearing when he was even smaller, on Carida (that still sported spots of Jeron's blood); his first functional training blaster that Khryw'd taught him to assemble himself; Khryw's jacket that she'd given him and he'd grown into; and, because talismans were clearly worthless, the rainbow pebble.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-08 05:04 pm (UTC)Jyn Erso was eight years old the day that her life as she knew it ceased to exist. The man in white was a terrifying sight, the 'troopers flanking him even more so. And her Papa walked out to meet him where the grass met the beach unarmed.
Her heart pounded fearfully as her mother stopped their progress, placed her kyber crystal necklace over her head and reassured her that the Force would always be with her. Jyn wanted to scream for her Mama not to leave her alone, but no words would come.
And even though she had been instructed to continue to the maze of rocky structures, the dark little hiding place to wait for help to arrive, Jyn crouched even lower in the grasses and watched as her Mama confronted the man in white, threatened him with a blaster she'd had hidden in her robes, and was promptly shot by a 'trooper, letting off one shot from her blaster, which hit the man in white in the shoulder before she crumpled into a heap, never to move again.
Tears streaming down her cheeks, Jyn ran and hid herself away in the dark, terrified and sad until help arrived. She didn't notice until much later that she had left behind - a small toy tooka cat that her father had made for her, dirty and tear-stained.
Some years later, a fighter, no longer a child, Jyn was searching through her meager belongings when she came across a jacket that was not her, a little large for her tiny frame, worn with use. Her own clothes were third-hand by now, if not more, almost threadbare. Who was she to deny it? Searching through the pockets, she found a stone, and when she pulled it out to study it, her heart almost skipped a beat.
I know this, she thought, and then, more painfully, Papa always said that the things we lost came back to us in the end. She stuck it into her pocket and patted it down to ensure that it was safe. Where have you been for all this time?
*
Jyn was sixteen when she was left behind on Tamsye Prime with what little she owned shoved into the pack she carried with her - two truncheons, change of clothes, code replicator, pebble in her pocket.
As she ran and tried to find a way off-planet, panicked and wondering what she'd done to be abandoned so unceremoniously, a small hidden vibroblade slipped from her boot and fell unnoticed to the ground below. Even if Jyn had noticed, she couldn't have gone back for it. All she could do was focus on here and now and making an escape.
c/w: my horrible, horrible brain; violence & tragic stuff with kids
Date: 2019-08-09 12:53 am (UTC)Until the little girl they rescued from the fire. She was young, even by the standards of those who conscripted children; she was badly burned, and she was so frightened. Others were giving her actual treatment. Cassian didn't know what he could do for her. Until he suddenly remembered, and took off at a run for the barracks. He grabbed the squashed tooka doll and ran back. He presented it to the little girl. She instantly grabbed it and hugged it tight. Her tears eased and heartrate slowed. Cassian felt something soften a bit in his chest.
The girl didn't make it. The cost had been her life, but for that child, at least, they'd managed to let her be a child that little bit longer. When they cremated her body, Cassian left the tooka in her arms, to burn with her.
More things changed in Cassian's life. The Secessionist Movement and Clone Wars fizzled to a stop, but not before some clever field commanding on his part in the Battle of Sullust brought Cassian to the attention of others. At sixteen, he was recruited by Davits Draven to the Alliance to Restore the Republic. (Which, at first, struck him as the worst cosmic joke. Are you kidding me? Do you know why we were fighting? To which Draven had answered, What the Republic was becoming. Now we have to fight what it's become.)
As part of his Alliance (re-)education (was it "re-" to give what he'd never had?), he'd learned that what some of them had started to suspect was now universally agreed: the movement had backfired, speeding if not directly facilitating the rise of the Empire. With that, he lost all faith.
It started to return to him—or rather, a new one started to replace it, as he continued to be trained as an Alliance operative. He was fully committed by age twenty-one. He needed to be, to survive situations as the one he found himself in now: hand-to-hand fighting for his life.
His captors had stripped all his weapons, and though he'd managed to escape them, one of the nastiest had caught up with him. His adversary had him pinned and was choking him, imminently, to death. Cassian's hand groped blindly on the ground beside them, hoping for a rock, some dust, anything he could throw in the other's face.
His hand met metal. The vibroknife slipped into his hand like he'd been using it for years, hilt fitting and blade flipping out before his brain had even caught up to what it was. And he instantly swung up and struck it deep into his assailant's throat.
The bigger man fell away from him, making terrible, terrible noises. Cassian pushed himself away from him and ran.
He'd run so far, outstripping all pursuit, before he finally stopped, stooping over and struggling to breathe. He braced his hands on his knees—or meant to, but the vibroknife was still in one hand. He brought it up to examine it, at a complete loss. This wasn't the kind of thing you just… found, in the middle of nowhere, exactly when you needed it. It was old and used but well-maintained. And—for the third time in his life—Cassian felt it: it was for him.
Maybe he was too tired and shellshocked. Maybe he was being pragmatic. Maybe he was being superstitious. Whatever the case, he couldn't get himself to give it further thought. He just snapped it back into traveling position and slipped it in his belt. Then continued on foot to where he could comm for pickup.
He lay in his bunk, turning the blade over in his hands, letting it catch the light. He hadn't brought himself to think about it for days, edging into weeks. But he also couldn't forget it. He had the strangest, nagging sensation about it. And this one, he really couldn't brush off or imagine away.
Finally, feeling lightheadedly delirious or even delusional, Cassian sat up and found a slip of paper. He traced the shape of the vibroblade onto the paper, sketched in its distinguishing features. Then wrote under it: This saved my life. Thank you.
Not knowing what the hell he was doing, but compelled nonetheless, Cassian went outside. He stared at the sky for a good long while. Then he balled up the piece of paper and threw it as far as he could. It caught a breeze and disappeared into the darkness.
ouch my heart! (thanks wookieepedia & the events of rebel rising, which i have not read yet)
Date: 2019-08-12 05:21 pm (UTC)Perhaps predictably, they split their money fifty-fifty and went their separate ways. Maybe it was better to be alone. Maybe there really was no one in the entire universe that she could trust.
She searched the spaceport, looking for a ship that was soon to depart, and - lying about her proficiency with droid repair, found just that. She hadn't been anticipating having to use other skills on the trip, but when Akshaya Ponta was threatened by Imperials, her forging skills ended up saving the day ...
And getting her an invitation to say with the woman's family for a bit on Skhul in order to get back on her feet. So she took the invitation, and for a time, things felt ... better than perhaps they ever had before. She forged useful documents for Akshaya's shipping business ... and spent her free time (a concept she was no longer very familiar with) becoming friendly with her son, Hadder, who ws near her age. As time passed ... feelings grew. That was new, too, and probably helped along with all the forbidden trips on his mother's planet hopper they took when she was away on business.
Jyn didn't have much of her own - certainly not anything that she could lose, but she was happy.
Even when Hadder admitted to wanting to join a resistance group and asked her to come with. She denied the invitation, content enough with the way life was turning out, and ... he agreed to stay with her. And things ... continued being good ... until they weren't anymore.
The Empire began tightening it's hold on Skuhl and for as much as the trio didn't want to leave their home, natural and adopted, there didn't seem to be any other choice to make. Plans were made to relocate to the Five Points System to start all over again -
But before they could, 'troopers arrived looking for Jyn, certain that she was part of the responsible party of rebels for the factory incident on Tamsye Prime. The trio ran, but got separated, and in the chaos of battle between Empire and Rebels, Hadder and his mother lost their lives. Jyn didn't know. Not until she reached Five Points station and they did not. And her heart broke all the more, and her guilt burrowed just a little deeper into her soul. If not for her ...
In the years following the loss of her adopted family, Jyn did what Saw had taught her to do - she toughened up. She honed her skills and gained new ones all in the course of surviving as she hopped from planet to planet, never staying anyplace long. She (and her various aliases) was a petty criminal, a street fighter, a smuggler in her own right. Sure, she got arrested from time to time, but always managed to find a way out, whether that was due to her quick thinking, or with help from friends or acquaintances on the outside. Bribing, or lying about bribing really did go a long way.
The more she got arrested, the longer her rap sheet grew - charges of forging Imperial documents, aggravated assault against Imperial personnel, escape from custody, escape from custody, resisting arrest, shipjacking, possession of unsanctioned weapons, unlawful conduct with undesirables, petty theft, creating a public nuisance, and disorderly conduct ... all of which suggested that the life she had led had not been an easy one.
She worked on a gas tanker in the Anoat system, traveled between Cerea and Coyerti, even spent an entire year on Takodana before spending time on a freighter forging codes, what she was seemingly best at. In Garel City, she rescued a tooka cat for a little girl when 'troopers decided to try to take it first.
So she got caught when she tried to stealing guns from and blowing up the ship of a petty dictator. So he had her dragged through the streets and had his goons point their rifles at her, so they stunned her with stun prods. It only made her all the angrier.
For all her hurt, she still tried not to hurt anyone else unless it was absolutely necessary. She had known the pain of loss, over and over and over again, and didn't wish it upon anyone else.
Sitting in a cheap, dingy room in some out of the way inn, a crumpled piece of paper suddenly fell into her lap, eliciting a yelp of surprise. Unfolding it gingerly, she found a sketch of a blade - her blade - and the message that it had turned up in the hands of someone who probably could've used it more than her.
She almost threw it away, but something told her not to discount it so quickly. However it had happened, the message had found her, and ... even if she didn't believe a reply would find it's way back, still scribbled a little note on the other side of the scrap of paper.
I hope your life is worth the hassle of my losing it.
You're welcome.
Please take care of it. I'm sure it will continue to do you well.
Again, she sat and contemplated just tossing the paper away, but ultimately found her way outside, and in the hot glare of the mid-afternoon sun, carefully folded it and threw it as far as she could, a small hope growing in her belly that it would find it's way where it needed to go.
She couldn't stay here, though. Staying heightened the danger of getting caught. Another day, another planet, that was her life. Someday, her luck would run out, but for the moment, it was still holding steady.
mine too! (and hear hear, I always tag with wookieepedia open!) // c/w again: dubcon and violence
Date: 2019-08-14 03:36 am (UTC)He wrote back:
Because the thing was, he hurt people when it wasn't absolutely necessary. Technically, it depended on your definition of "necessary". He always had a reason, but it usually wasn't that his own life depended on it. Nor was the reason ever his own.
He also hurt himself, in less obvious ways. His superiors hadn't suggested it, his contacts did.("I'll give you what you want, if…") Still, it became unignorable: this was a method he needed, a way to open doors faster and cheaper and less traceably. He received raven training and sex became just another tool of the trade. He wondered, occasionally, what it might be like to do it because he actually wanted to, with someone he liked. But he couldn't afford to wonder often.
He also, for someone with so few possessions to begin with, began losing things a lot more regularly. Usually because his (partner? contact? target?) would keep a souvenir, only to lose track of it later. Mostly socks and undergarments, occasionally a shirt. He stopped wondering about it and just bought a new one once he hit the street.
Between the parade in his mind (people with blasterholes where an eye should be, where a heart had been, bashed in skulls, slit throats) and the parade in person (people who were openly violating him and people who were enthusiastically willing but didn't know he was, by lying, violating them), he went from mission to mission without reprieve, without downtime, not wanting to be left alone with himself. He slept in the pilot seat of whatever ship he was manning, with the comm blasting chatter or static and the starlines of hyperspace going past.
The one place he could sit and just be, was at the top of a Massassi ziggurat on Yavin 4. He watched the wind and light patterns over the endless tree canopy—the sea above the forest—and let himself feel the vastness of the Empire far, far above and the Rebellion buried, deep, below.
Sometimes, he turned the vibroblade, now an old familiar presence, over in his hands.
And this time, he dared to do something he hadn't for a very, very long time. Imagine. And hope.
He had a pad and writing implement with him. He took them out. He couldn't write or draw anything that might lead anyone to the base, so nothing specific to Yavin 4. Not the forestscape, not the particular perspective of constellations.
But, searching back in his mind, he thought of something else.
It was only from memory, but he'd been taught memory enhancement techniques, so the likeness was a good one.
As he hadn't thought about in years, he drew the old stuffed tooka cat. The one he'd laid to rest with the little girl.
Under it, he wrote:
He didn't crush it this time. Just held the paper out to the wind and let it go.
I do sometimes, but mostly I just kind of do whatever. I'm not great with canon knowledge, haha
Date: 2019-08-29 07:49 pm (UTC)Jyn didn't write back. Not that there wasn't a pull to, but because it felt dangerous. Making connections - real, true ones - only led to heartbreak in the end. And Jyn didn't know if she could stand losing one more lifeline ... even if that lifeline was a stranger. She wanted to, sometimes, to stave off the loneliness licking at her heels, but subdued the urge and kept jumping from planet to planet, never settling down long enough to start putting down roots.
She learned that sometimes, all it really took to reel a mark in was a well-timed smile and a wink. She learned how to distract just long enough to drug a drink just enough to ensure that she would never have to submit to sleeping with them - a thought that sometimes made her physically ill if she dwelled on it too long. By the time they awoke, she was long gone, with whatever credits or other items or information she had lifted from them.
Occasionally, she lost those tools of the trade, too, but usually nothing more than a garish lipstick, or cheap hairpins that only looked expensive if one didn't look closely enough. A shoe, once or twice, but Jyn thought nothing of leaving them behind. She had no real use for them, after all.
Once, she returned to her hostel to find a shirt tossed across the rickety bunk she called hers. Far from wondering if she'd been compromised, she somehow just knew where it had come from, and she ran her fingertips along a sleeve before lifting it to her nose for a careful sniff. "Smells like you", she thought, folding it up so she could store it with the few belongings she carried with her, "Whoever you are."
Jyn didn't have a home base. But occasionally, she hid out on crowded Coruscant, where it was easy to slip unnoticed through the crowds, where she could do a little research, decide what her next step was going to be, where her next destination was.
Coruscant didn't feel like home, even though Jyn and her parents had lived there for some years before the relocation to Lah'mu. It was just a place that made it easier to hide than others, just a place where she could be nothing more than another face in the crowd. Helpful for a woman that the authorities deemed nothing more than a common criminal.
She was sitting in some out of the way greasy spoon with her datapad doing just that when another note appeared next to her half-eaten plate and her breath caught in her throat as she observed the drawing, immediately calling to mind the image of the stuffed tooka toy that she had left behind what seemed like lifetimes ago.
Jyn traced the lines of the remarkably detailed drawing, her breath and heartbeat a little irregular. Finally, she found enough composure to dig through her rucksack for anything in which to write back. It wasn't a pencil or a pen, but the kohl she used to line her eyes would do.
She had no scraps of paper herself, but she wrote back on the same paper -
Long lost friend.
Did he go to a good home?
Jyn folded the paper carefully, and let it drop underneath her table. Closing her eyes, she counted to 100, and when she opened them again, it had disappeared. Such a strange manner of communication, but Jyn didn't really question it as much as she perhaps should have.
It wasn't right or wrong.
It just was.
I do it solely 'cause I get a kick out of it; never judging anyone else for it :-)
Date: 2019-08-30 04:58 am (UTC)A few things, he kept because he suspected they had nothing to do with her real character. (Like the lipstick.) For that reason, they amused him. The shoes were more precious, and never left that compartment. The hairpins… he'd taken one to fasten invisibly on his clothes, several times, for certain missions. The man who claimed not to be superstitious.
He was sitting alone in the cockpit, leaning back, watching the starlines, when he felt a molecule shift. He looked down, and there was the piece of paper that hadn't been there before.
He. The tooka had been a 'he'. That felt important, somehow, even though Cassian had never thought to assign it any of the five genders.
He couldn't quite bring himself to tell the whole truth. There was a higher truth, anyway.
(Written also on the same paper, neatly beneath the kohl contribution: )
Thank you, 'cause I'm trying really hard not to suck at this
Date: 2019-09-02 06:45 pm (UTC)And the shirt - she wore it sometimes, despite how big it was on her, how she had to roll the sleeves up to her elbows, how it still billowed out even when she tucked it into her trousers. For whatever reason - she certainly didn't allow herself to think about it much - it gave her comfort.
For a time, there was nothing. No little note sent in return. Nothing lost. Just complete radio silence, almost as though she had simply disappeared. And then, just like that, a wristband from a med-center located on Adarlon's capitol city, which looked to be singed off in quite a hurry. Most of the name had been obliterated, but there was still a faint '..AWN' visible.
Still later after that, a note would appear, the paper wrinkled and creased, like it had been stuffed into a bag or pocket, the writing hurried.
Jyn was smart enough to read between the lines. She didn't ask for clarification because none was needed. She felt ... sad ... for the unnamed little girl, but grateful that somehow, some way, she (and her tooka) had been able to help.
I'm glad. Could use a little of that myself from time to time. But then, can't we all?
You succeed!! <3
Date: 2019-09-03 02:27 am (UTC)He'd almost forgotten what it was like to have an impulse. Much less to actually consider it.
When the note appeared, he'd been in the middle of a semi-clandestine meeting with a source. He simply snapped it up and stuffed it in his pocket without looking at it.
From that moment, though, he found—to his… some emotion—his objective wasn't really success of the mission anymore. It was getting enough closure to be able to go off on his own and read the note.
Can't we all. Yes. And he didn't know her, had no mental image of her, was only assuming it was a her (Cassian had had occasions to wear lipstick and hairpins himself), yet somehow got a mental image of them comforting each other. Sitting on the ledge of something leaning against each other's shoulders.
As usual, couldn't respond with anything of substance. Just wanted to keep the lines open.
[OOC: AT-AV = "All-Terrain Attack Vehicle". An EU detail of Princess Leia's childhood written by Barbara Hambly.]
Ahhh thank you. Means a lot coming from you. :)
Date: 2019-09-05 01:44 am (UTC)She rested uneasily in her bunk of the freighter, only stirring when she heard paper crumpling from underneath the thin, worn pillow. Carefully, she pulled it out and just as carefully, she smoothed out the wrinkles, huffing out an amused breath as she read the short note. It pulled at the staples holding together a ragged cut across her shoulder blade, and she groaned accordingly.
Jyn didn't know who her pen pal was, but when she thought about him - if he even was a he, she could hardly be sure other than the feeling that she got every time a new item or note appeared, she got the sense that this was a friend. And even if they inhabited opposite ends of the galaxy, she didn't feel quite so alone.
It was comforting, in a weird way.
The next time she was able to reply was weeks later as that same freighter was docked at Ord Mantell and she had just returned from a supply run, mostly healed and having decided to stick with the crew for just a bit longer, just until she found someplace suitable to disappear.
Koodie. Don't tell me, your friend picked Fluffy, right?
She resisted the urge - barely - to ask anything more substantial like where are you or more importantly, who are you. She had to be grateful for this, keeping some sort of lifeline in a vast and lonely universe.
However, in a moment of weakness, her hesitation clear in the start and stop of the next set of writing, she asked -
Do you ever feel lonely?
<3 <3 <3!!
Date: 2019-09-05 01:58 am (UTC)So of course that was exactly what he assumed.
(Because that's how life in the universe goes. Right?)
When a note finally appeared, thank goodness he waited to read it until he was completely isolated, because he actually laughed aloud at her dryness. As much relief as amusement.
Some hesitation as well. …Then his first real detail.
There wasn't much anyone could learn from that. Maybe the vaguest little about his age, but hopefully nothing his handwriting and vocabulary would make surprising. Not really his present location, if one assumed that he'd been on more than one planet—though that itself was information. It's not like his assignment had been documented in any way that could be searched for on the 'net, so it didn't point to the Rebellion. Nor did being antagonistic with a probe droid necessarily dictate loyalties… it just suggested.
He kept it in anyway.
…because, wise or not, his craving for contact, for recognition, was only getting sharper.
Because the answer to her last question was—
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Date: 2019-09-05 04:22 am (UTC)It wasn't Cassian's first time on Jelucan. Not by a long shot.
Recruiting what Command only knew as "The Jelucan Source" had been Cassian's first major accomplishment as Fulcrum, vindicating Draven's appointment of him to the post. That source being a Human Cassian only knew as "Farir", and who only knew Cassian as "Willix"; Farir being a high-profile escort whose agency tended to cater to grounded Imperials who (naturally) couldn't get enough, while on leave, of the things they decried and punished others for. Bringing Farir to the cause meant having a direct line to extremely… well… sensitive intel.
It also meant that when Command reluctantly concluded that Cassian needed raven training, as another weapon in his belt, they knew who to ask for it.
Yes, Cassian had been on Jelucan many times.
…Even before, though—when it had been his first time—it had never felt it. He knew Jelucan's past in the CIS. He knew the Separatist who'd saved him from the Caridan riots and brought him to the CIS had come here regularly. Though he'd never accompanied her (he'd been a child), he felt himself, while there, to be walking in her footsteps. Following her ghost.
Jelucan had changed since the Separatist Crisis, and didn't seem poised to stop changing. It was getting more industrial and polluted all the time—more, indeed, like child Separatist soldier Cassian's home, at the time, of Sullust.
In Jelucan's capital, Valentia, at least, the vitals remained the same. First- and Second-Wavers side-eyed each other and never mixed except on the street and in certain bars, to which they may have gone as much to pick fights with each other as to drink.
Cassian wouldn't have picked one of them to meet in, but it was where the contact had insisted when Farir set up the meeting for them.
So here he was, nursing a drink, using the tricks he'd developed over the years to seem to be partaking more than he actually was. Cassian hated intoxicants. Not just because he tended to know or guessed the exploitation and violence behind almost all of them, but because he'd never, not on any drug, experienced anything but a really bad trip. Relaxants just lowered the shields, the partitions, on his mind, letting everything cascade in ever-mixing torrents, leaving him so cognitively overloaded it rendered him nonverbal and almost paralyzed. (Plus sobering up feeling like the flu.) Stimulants heightened his already amplified situational awareness, over-sensitivity to detail, and raised his wariness to paranoia, so the merest movements of anything anywhere within his full range of senses had him jumping and crawling out of his own skin. Hallucinogens… he didn't even want to imagine. The slightest bit he hadn't managed to get out of once, for a cover identity, had him seeing all the living beings around him as animate rotting corpses, sporting the kinds of injuries he'd inflicted on assassination targets over the years. Some, made into people he knew and cared about.
Those few experiences were more than enough to never seek any further high.
The problem was, when he was undercover, and his cover identity would not shy away. And/or when he was with the kind of company who would never deal with or remotely trust him if he didn't indulge exactly as much as they did. Again, he had tricks, but how much they worked depended more on the other party than on his own techniques.
This group (—which, also, hadn't been supposed to be a group, but no helping that now) were really plying him. In fact, he suspected that even the drugs he was taking on purpose had been additionally drugged. Between who he was supposed to be and needing to particularly ingratiate himself, it was impressive enough he'd held back as much as he already had. Which was already far more influenced than he usually allowed.
He didn't realize quite how high (compromised) he actually was, though… until they suggested the group relocate to a back room. And he got up a little unsteady on his feet…
…which, barely through the curtained doorway, were suddenly kicked out from under him. His wrists were grabbed, his head pulled back by the hair, his body slammed and pinned against a bar, face shoved down onto it, his feet kicked apart… and one of them pulled his blaster from his belt, but then grabbed the belt itself…
…go figure… he had, after all, had every other sort of sexual experience on this forsaken planet…
He knew the more he struggled, the harder they'd… deal with him… He'd been submitted to a lot before… But right now, he wanted to beg for help. Call someone to save him from what was about to happen.
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Date: 2019-09-05 04:56 am (UTC)She was no stranger to under-the-table dealings, either. But it was different when it involved people's lives. Sure, she appeared innocuous enough, taking up as little space as possible in her little corner, bristling and snarling if anyone tried to show her interest, but she was keenly aware of what was going on around her ... which was more than she could say for some of the others visiting the bar that night.
One group in particular caught her eye, if only for how shadily some of the members were behaving, whispering amongst themselves, looking around as though they were scanning for anyone interested in their doings, and the one of them that was clearly weaving back and forth in his seat. Whatever motives the majority of the men at that table had, it wasn't good.
It wasn't any of her business, but when they stood up to move on, and she saw how markedly different the one was moving, she knew she couldn't sit back and do nothing. It wasn't her business, but she wasn't going to allow someone, even a stranger to get hurt in the ways that she knew he would without someone stepping in to assist.
She could be called a criminal, but she had never been heartless. So, as surreptitiously she could manage, she stood up, too, and followed. Luckily, the other patrons were busy with their own deals or dates or ... whatever else they were doing, so nobody paid her much attention.
It only took a moment of her peeking through the curtain and watching the assault for her to feel deep in her bones that she was doing the right thing. She said nothing as she stepped through the curtains, too, silent and full of rage as she tried to take them out as quickly as possible with punishing blows from her truncheons. She had a blade and a blaster, too, if need be, but as one after another fell before her, she didn't think they would be necessary.
All she heard as she dispatched one after the other until they all fell or ran was her heart pounding in her ears.
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Date: 2019-09-05 05:24 am (UTC)It made no sense. He was at their mercy. Any pretense at negotiation was unsalvageable. Why on Hoth would they…?
As the hands on his wrists and arms, waist and hair and neck, all withdrew, Cassian's legs buckled and he grabbed onto the bar for dear life; keeping himself from crumpling to the ground. He closed his eyes, pressed them to the cooler surface than the room, and willed the planet to stop trying to spin him off it.
Then he had the wherewithal, keeping one arm tightly over the bar, to turn and look over one shoulder.
Between being drugged and his brand spanking new head injury from being slammed onto the bar (and possibly a broken rib, ditto, but that was less influential on his visual perception), lights were sparking like a migraine and movement ribboned out in time-lapse continuity.
But he thought he saw a small figure—shockingly small—dashing and whirling in the midst of the group who shedded off, fell, one by one around it.
He may not be able to do much, but there must be something he could do.
His hand went to the belt (they'd managed to undo but not remove it) and its now-empty holster. He squinted again at the… combat? must be… and decided. He let go of the bar and let himself fall, sinking unceremoniously onto the floor. But the floor was more to hang onto than the bar had been. So, on hands and knees, he crawled forward, until his hands hit the prone body of one of the now-unconscious gang. Going by feel more than sight, he located the Human's blaster, to replace the one they'd taken.
And, staring intensely until he'd absolutely confirmed who was who, and where he was aiming, he fired.
The last gang member standing let out a howl and clutched his leg where the shot had hit—so doing, dropping the knife he'd been about to throw at Cassian's unknown, small savior.
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Date: 2019-09-05 06:05 am (UTC)Still, for as righteously angry she felt, Jyn did not aim to kill. She didn't go easy on them, that was for certain, but once they were incapacitated, once they were unconscious or crawling away from the action, she set upon the next.
Not that she didn't take her fair share of shots - it was inevitable, being one person taking on an entire group, but she would deal with her own injuries later. The adrenaline coursing through her veins kept her up and moving, only ever catching occasional glimpses at the man she was trying to help; clutching at the bar as though his life depended on it, almost crumpled on the ground, crawling toward one of others lying prone on the ground ...
And not again until the shot went off and the last man standing yelled in pain ... until she bashed him in the head with her truncheon until he fell onto the ground silently, too. She hadn't killed anyone - she didn't think, but anyone who was of a mind to hurt another person like these men had been might have deserved it.
Quickly, she was at his side, extending a hand for him to take, her eyes steely, but not unkind. "Come on. We've got to get out of here before the authorities arrive."
Or reinforcements.
"You can trust me."
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Date: 2019-09-05 09:31 am (UTC)…Had it all been a set-up? Never about making a deal, but about putting him in a position to be rescued. To trust or consider himself in debt. Was he known or important enough for anyone to have bothered? What was there to be gained? Why would that work better than its premise would? Did he really think this batch ready to be so subtle or complicated?
Real or not real, he was in better shape (—no matter being in such bad shape) to salvage something from this by going with her now; rather than, as she pointed out, waiting for the authorities to get involved.
He reached back to her offered hand. He clapped his hand into hers. And accepted her help pulling himself to his feet.
You can trust me.
Right.
Still, wouldn't hurt to seem to. Go for it. Take the bait.
…And if by some chance it wasn't… accept the miracle.
His forward momentum didn't stop where he wanted it to; he got off the ground, all right, but then overbalanced forward and had to be caught. Then supported by her getting out.
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Date: 2019-09-06 01:20 am (UTC)She couldn't begin to say whether or not she had been meant to be here at this particular time in this particular place, and she knew that she couldn't save everybody, but once she parsed what was going to happen, she knew she couldn't just ignore it.
So. Here she was, panting, adrenaline high, extending her hand to a complete stranger, trusting that he had no ulterior motives for her. But in the state he was in, Jyn felt no danger whatsoever, not even pity, not really. Just worry.
What had they dosed him with? And how long would it take to work it's way out of his system? And could she really help without looking for medical intervention?
Too much to concentrate on when the most important thing was getting out of there, not to the freighter, but to the dirty little room she had paid for for the night, where she'd just ... watch over him, make sure he didn't die on her watch. And when the morning came, she'd be gone. She couldn't offer anything else.
He took her hand, and she grimaced at how clammy his were. And she had to curl an arm tightly around him when he stood and promptly almost fell forward. "Come on", she urged, her voice tight, urgency coloring every word. "Work with me here."
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Date: 2019-09-08 04:23 am (UTC)He threw more power from shields to navigation; focusing intently on staying on his own two feet and leaning a little less on her, and following whatever direction she set.
"You know who they were?" he said softly. Knowing it was a stupid question, he was unlikely to get a real answer… but staying talking might help with focus, and her answer, truthful or not, might be informative anyway.
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Date: 2019-09-08 05:05 am (UTC)Once he was a little bit steadier on his feet, she led him toward where she hoped a back door was. It'd be easier to make an escape with any eyes on them as they did so. Jyn felt a small sense of relief when that door came into sight, and she urged him toward it.
She scoffed and shook her head, glancing at him momentarily. It was a positive sign that he was able to speak coherently. "Not a clue."
There was a darkness in her voice, but it wasn't directed toward him more than it was the group of men she'd left lying battered on the floor. "I was watching. They were going to hurt you. What kind of person would I be if I let that happen?"
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Date: 2019-09-08 05:21 am (UTC)"Where are we going?" he said at last, instead. Stick with the immediate and concrete.
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Date: 2019-09-08 05:30 am (UTC)She didn't blame anyone who couldn't step in, but she held herself to a higher standard. She wasn't yet so disillusioned with everything that she could ignore something so heinous happening right in front of her. Hopefully she never would be.
"Got a room nearby - ", she replied, grimly aware that it might've sounded like he'd been rescued from a bad situation and being led into another. "You can shower and rest, let whatever they gave you make its way out of your system.
... I'm not gonna hurt you."
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Date: 2019-09-08 05:36 am (UTC)But…
"Why are you helping me?" he asked, still softly, still damnably slurred; with an acuity, a tension, nevertheless.
Even though, in the same way he knew the other, he knew this too; he didn't need to ask. That single word—complacent—had given him everything he needed. They were alike, at least in this: not everyone should have to give themselves up, for the sake of others. Which was why they did.
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Date: 2019-09-08 05:43 am (UTC)That was the furthest thought in her mind. Jyn just wanted to get someplace safe - she had injuries to attend to, as well, what felt like a strained shoulder and maybe a bruised rib.
Worth it, though.
She didn't know what he'd go back to once the drugs left his system, whether he'd be safe or not, but tonight, he had no worries that anyone else might have malice in mind for him.
Worth it.
"It's the right thing to do."
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Date: 2019-09-08 05:52 am (UTC)The right thing to do. Versus the easy thing. Versus the complacent or self-preserving thing. Versus even the right move. Versus…
"Okay," again, more softly, then he had to stop talking and focus on staying conscious. He couldn't stop it. He could only delay it. Until they got to somewhere where he could properly collapse.
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From:oh nooooo my icons
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From:A ZILLION YEARS LATER…
From:right here waiting.mp3
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From:How did I lose this?? Ack! Sorry!! But I did just massively enjoy rereading all of it ^_^ ^_^ <3
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