#captainandors

Chapter 1: 15 BBY - Jyn

Jyn doesn’t sleep on the ship taking her away from her home. Instead, she sits silently in the co-pilot’s seat next to Saw. Earlier in the flight he had tried to come up with comforting words that could stand up against the horror of what had just happened to her but he had quickly given up and left Jyn to watch the streaks of stars and planets rushing past. She has no idea how long it takes them to get to whichever planet Saw’s taking them, no idea what she’ll do once they get there. All she knows is that Mama trusted Saw like a brother and that he is the only thing she has left.

They land on a beach with stark white sand and crystal clear water, a world away from Lah’mu. Saw leads her into a squat, metal building that looks at least as old as she is and from the numerous scorch marks covering the outside, has witnessed pain and death of its own.

Sentients of all different species nod respectfully to Saw as they pass and she notices that his face has become hard and fierce, his shoulders more rigid. This is not her Uncle Saw who sometimes came to play with her, here he is someone respected and feared. Jyn thinks the man in white wouldn’t have dared to show his ugly little smile if he’d been standing in front of this Saw.

They arrive in front of a door and she can tell Saw wants to have another try at comforting her. He opens his mouth to speak before closing it again and sighing. Instead, he just places a hand on her shoulder and shakes his head. Then he turns back into a solider, his voice brisk. ‘This is where you’ll sleep, Jyn. You’ll be sharing with a few other kids - hope that’s alright.’

Jyn nods, just as she’s nodded to everything Saw has said since she climbed out of the bunker.

In fact, she has no idea whether or not it will be alright because she can’t remember ever meeting another child before. The only person she saw on Lah’mu other than her parents was the old man who ran the next farm over.

Saw opens the door to reveal a large room with six bunks lining the walls. He clears his throat and the five young sentients in the room stop talking and snap to attention. ‘Everybody, this is Jyn. She’s one of us now.’ He opens his mouth to continue then pauses, looking down at Jyn with the same sad expression he had on the ship. ‘Be careful with her.’ He squeezes her shoulder again, nods and then leaves the room.

Jyn wants to run after him, tell him that she just wants to stay with him but he disappears around the corner before she can. He must have somewhere important to be. Everyone in her life seems to have important places to be these days and none of them are ever with her.

She takes in the group in front of her. All of them seem older than her and she tries to straighten up so she won’t seem like such a baby in comparison.

One of them, a Togruta girl, says, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard Saw Gerrera say ‘be careful’ before. Who are you to him?’

Jyn swallows and tries not to sound nervous. ‘My ma- my mother was Saw’s friend.’ She focuses hard on a crack in the opposite wall to stop herself picturing mama’s body falling to the ground.

The other girl nods and looks at the others with a raised eyebrow. ‘That explains that.’ She sprawls back across the bed. ‘You’re an orphan too then, I guess. Welcome to the club.’

Jyn’s lip wobbles and she has to grit her teeth hard to stop from crying.

She must not manage it because another girl speaks up, ‘Cera, stop being such a dick.’ She gestures to the spare bunk in the corner. ‘Here, Jyn. That one’s yours. I’m Maia, this is Tula, Codo, and Cassian.’

The others nod as they’re introduced and Jyn mutters hello to each. Tula, who looks so identical to Cera that they must be sisters, murmurs, ‘Welcome’, and Codo makes a joking complaint about being even more outnumbered by girls. The last one, Cassian, stays silent. He looks the nearest to Jyn’s age but he seems much older. His eyes are full of a sad understanding that makes Jyn want to cry again.

Instead, she goes over to her new bed and sits on it with her back facing the others. She wishes desperately that she were alone and even more desperately that she would just wake up to find herself back in her own bed with her parents laughing and talking in the next room. To distract herself, she opens her backpack and starts to unpack her things onto the shelf built into the wall next to her bed.

After her clothes, shoes and datapad, her fingers brush the soft, familiar fabric of her toys. Eager to have a piece of home in this strange place, she rushes to unpack Koodie and Starrie and Sniksnak, lining them up next to each other. She didn’t have time to pack all her toys and as she looks into her now empty bag, she realises that she must have lost Stormie when she was running. Maybe that’s for the best though, because Stormie looked too much like the tall men in black who spoke like machines and shot her mama.

She strokes the different coloured stitches on Koodie’s back from when she had a hole in her and Papa had to fix it. Jyn had watched the ‘surgery’ very closely to make sure her tooka-cat was alright and Papa had kissed the top of her head and told her she was a good friend and that he was proud of her.

Someone snickers and she turns to find Cera and Codo watching her. As she looks around the room, she sees that none of the others have any toys on their shelves - Cera even has a blaster on hers.

Of course they don’t have toys, because they’re not babies.

She looks back at her toys, her friends, with an aching heart. As she starts to put Koodie back in her bag, a voice comes from just behind her. ‘What’s its name?’ It’s the only voice she hasn’t heard yet, which means it must belong to the last boy, Cassian.

She mumbles, ‘Koodie’, and hunches her shoulders, ready for him to tease her about the name she chose when she was four. ‘I know it’s silly.’

‘No, that’s a good name. I used to have one that was just called “Cat”.’

She gives him a tremulous smile as she turns to face him. ‘That is a pretty dumb name.’

He returns her smile and he suddenly looks just as much like a child as her. ‘I know.’

‘Did you lose your one?’

His smile fades and he nods. As he meets her eyes, she sees her sorrow and pain reflected back.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Me too.’

They sit in silence for a moment before Jyn takes her second stuffed tooka-cat off the shelf and offers it to him. ‘You can have Starrie if you want. You can even rename him.’

Cassian solemnly accepts the doll, handling it like it’s precious. ‘Thank you.’ He takes it over to his bunk by the door and pointedly places it so it has pride of place on his shelf.

Cera rolls her eyes again but she does mutter an apology to Jyn.

Clutching Koodie to her chest, Jyn lies down and imagines herself back into the world she lived in 48 hours ago.

She wakes up to the silent dark, heart racing and mind full of nightmarish memories of a red flash, the smell of burning and the awful thud of her mother’s lifeless body. Suddenly she’s back in the cave again, unsure whether Saw really came for her or if she only dreamed he did. Are the men in black still looking for her? She reaches around her lantern but it’s not where she remembers leaving it. Instead she finds Koodie and reality slowly settles back in. She remembers to breathe like Mama taught her, focusing on the physical action of it until she can think again.

Her parents are still gone and she feels a growing certainty that her time to be a child has gone with them. But for now, she tells herself, she is safe.

Still, the impenetrable shadows of the room invite every manner of monsters into her head and though she tries as hard as she can, she can neither fall back asleep nor stop the flood of panic she feels at every small sound.

As quietly as she can, she feels her way out of the room, wincing at the swoosh of the door opening that seems decibels louder amid the silence of the night. She gratefully drinks in the light in the corridor outside, its floor to ceiling metal and stark man-made lines so reassuringly different from the jagged stone of the cave.

Sitting down on the cool floor, she tries to close her eyes and rest, taking comfort in how the light filters through her eyelids in a burst of orange. She’s only slept outside of a bed once before, on one of the ships on the journey from Coruscant to Lah’mu, and then she was lying on Papa’s coat and resting her head in Mama’s lap. She frowns, stretching her now sore neck, and wonders whether everything will remind her of her parents for the rest of her life and whether it will always ache as much as it does now.

The door next to her swooshes open again and Jyn flinches. She relaxes a bit though when Cassian comes through.

He takes her in on the floor and then gestures with his head for her to follow him down the corridor. ‘Do you like hot chocolate?’

She nods and follows and thinks that she probably would have followed him even if he’d been offering her nutrient paste.

They arrive at a small kitchen area and Cassian immediately gathers his ingredients and puts them in a pot, looking like he’s well used to cooking for himself. It’s only when he has to grab a stool to stand on so that he can stir that she realizes how young he must really be.

Jyn finds a big, padded seat and watches him as he finds cups and carefully fills them. The hum of the refrigerator keeps silence at bay and the little room feels like an island in a deep and dangerous ocean.

The hot chocolate is not as sweet as her Papa used to make, but it’s still good and it warms her heart a little more with each sip. As she sinks further into the padding of her chair, she wishes that they could spend the whole night here and never have to go back to the awful dark. She watches Cassian for signs that he wants to leave but he never gives any. He just sits with her in a kind and gentle quiet, even after he’s finished his drink. Jyn is halfway to crying with gratitude at not being forced to find words she doesn’t have.

She doesn’t realise she was drifting off before she’s woken up by someone banging the refrigerator door shut.

‘Liora!’ Cassian whispers, putting his finger to his lips.

The woman jumps and curses before coming over to ruffle Cassian’s hair. ‘Sorry, bud.’ The resemblance between the two of them is striking and Jyn wonders whether they’re related somehow. Liora tilts her head at Jyn. ‘Who’s this?’

‘This is Jyn. She just arrived today and she’s having trouble sleeping in the dark.’

Jyn startles a little because she never told him that.

Cassian must catch her reaction. ‘I just figured the only reason you’d be trying to sleep in a corridor instead of your bed was the light.’

Liora rests an approving hand on his shoulder. ‘He’s very observant, this one.’ She and Cassian share an impenetrable look. ‘Well, she shouldn’t sleep here. Some people would like their kitchens to stay kitchens so they can slam the fridge door when they like.’ Her gaze falls back to Jyn. ‘I’m on night shifts for the rest of the week so if you make sure you’re out of my bunk before 0830 then you can use my room until then.’

Relief floods through Jyn and she smiles and whispers, ‘Thank you.’

Liora nods and goes back to making herself a cup of caf. ‘Just for this week, mind. At some point you’ve gotta toughen up if you’re ever going to make it here.’

Thinking of the hot rage that’s been simmering all this time beneath the heavy cloud of her grief, Jyn says, ‘I will. I want to learn to fight them.’

‘Good girl. Hold on to that anger, Jyn. Sometimes it’ll be the only thing that keeps you warm.’ With that she heads for the door. ‘Cassian, you remember the code for my door, yeah?’

‘If I didn’t, I’d just break in.’

Liora’s smile is deeply fond. ‘Atta boy. Good night, you two. Hope you can get some sleep, Jyn.’

Once she’s left, Cassian collects and washes their cups. ‘Do you want to go now?’

Jyn lets a huge, involuntary yawn answer for her.

As they walk, Jyn thinks about Liora and Cassian’s similar faces. She asks, ‘Was that your mother?’

He gravely shakes his head and Jyn knows for certain that his mama is just as lost as hers. ‘No, but when we’re on missions we always pretend she is because we look alike. We both came from the Festian Resistance together.’

She wonders what he means by ‘missions’ and the ‘resistance’. Is he already a soldier, even when he’s still a kid like her? She asks, ‘When did you start fighting?’, and thinks her heart might break (even more than it’s already broken) when she hears the answer.

‘I was six.’ His voice is low and sad.

Jyn can’t help but picture him, even smaller than she is now, his toy tooka named ‘Cat’ replaced with a weapon. ‘I’m sorry’, she says but it doesn’t feel like enough. She lets her hand brush up against his.

He takes the invitation and her hand and they stay like that until he has to enter the code for the door to Liora’s room.

Jyn steps in first, heading straight for the bunk that takes up a majority of the space. Cassian fiddles with the light settings until they’re dim enough for sleep but she can still see the outlines of everything in the room.

He hangs back near the door, watching her. ‘Will you be okay here?’

She should say yes and let him go back to his own bed and the sleep that she rudely interrupted. But he’s the closest thing Jyn has in the galaxy to a friend and the past few days have made her sick and tired of watching people leave. She meets his eyes. ‘Could you stay?’

He doesn’t hesitate, just climbs onto the opposite end of the bunk and stretches out.

Jyn lies down, making sure not to curl her legs up like she normally does so that Cassian has enough room. After everything, the mattress feels like the most comfortable thing in the world and Cassian’s quiet breathing makes her feel safe enough to close her eyes.

The last thing she hears is Cassian whispering, ‘It’ll get easier, Jyn. I promise.’

The U-wing lurched, and he sat down hard on the bench, grabbing the bar over his head so he wouldn't just fall into Jyn and hurt her more. He didn't know if that was possible, because he didn't know how badly she was hurt, because she wouldn't kriffing well tell him.

As their ride bumped and rattled its way out of atmo, he stared at the hunch of her shoulders and the set of her neck, trying to read in them the things he wanted to know.

She was a whole new language for him, with no translation bot.

With a jolt, they jumped to hyperspace, and he got up, making his way to the cockpit.

"What happened?" Bodhi asked him, hands busy over the control panels.

"She got hit," Cassian said. It played out in front of his eyes again, Jyn running alongside him, then her body jolting from the blaster bolt, collapsing, going down -

He'd been running so hard he was ten feet away before he could turn and go back for her.

"I could tell that much," Bodhi said. Cassian could tell he was trying to sound light and buoyant, but his voice was weighed down with unspoken worry. "How bad?"

"She won't let me look at it."

Bodhi peered over his shoulder. "I'm sure it's not that bad, if she wants to take care of it herself." A question trailed off the end of his sentence.

Cassian shook his head, trying to figure out a way to say That's not the point, without being an ass about it.

"We got everything?" he said instead.

"In and out.”

"Good." He turned and went back, plotting how to get Jyn to let him look at her injury.

Baze was kneeling down next to her, squinting at her side. "Bacta," he rumbled, and rooted around in the medkit on the floor next to him.

Cassian stood in the doorway, battling the stupidest feeling of hurt. She would let Baze look at it but not him?

It was fine, he told himself as she pulled her shirt down over the new bacta dressing. As long as someone looked at it, someone who wasn't her and wouldn't pretend it was less serious than it was. Baze was stoic but blunt. If he thought it only needed a bacta dressing, it was no more than a surface injury. No organs nicked or arteries cauterized.

Baze looked at Jyn narrowly. "Anything else?"

"No."

"You were limping," Cassian said.

She shot him a look. "I just bashed my knee when I went down."

"Which knee?" Baze asked.

"It's nothing."

"The right," Cassian said.

Baze tapped one large, square-tipped finger on her right knee, and she clamped her lips shut around a grunt that they all still heard.

"Doesn't sound like nothing," he said, and commenced prodding and poking.

He made her pull up her pants so he could see the knee. The skin was dark red, already deepening into what would surely be a lurid bruise, but still unbroken. He prodded some more, got her to extend her leg, walk a few steps.

"Ice," he said finally. "And compression." He wrapped her knee and handed her a cool pack.

Through all of it, Jyn steadfastly ignored Cassian's presence. But when Baze finally let her tug her pants down over the lump of the compression bandage, she finally looked up at him. "See? I'm fine."

"Good," he said.

"You didn't need to come back. I could have got up and made it back on my own."

He shrugged. "I did anyway."

"You didn't need to."

Exasperated, he turned around and strode into the galley where Chirrut was filling up the hot-water kettle for tea.

She came after him, limping a little. "You were almost safe. Why did you turn back?"

"What else was I supposed to do?"

"I told you, I could have managed!" She whipped around, wincing as she wobbled in place. "Baze, tell him, I would have been fine."

"No," Baze said. "I'm not getting in the middle of your squabble."

"Squabble," Jyn seethed.

Cassian snapped, "I didn't know that at the time."

She swiveled to glare at him again.

"For all I knew," he added, "you'd broken your knee and gotten shot in the spine."

"Then you should have left me."

"I'm not going to do that!"

"No, you never do, do you?"

He gritted his teeth. "Why is that a problem?"

"It's a problem because I don't need to you come back for me!"

Forget language. She was an entire new terrain, unmapped, with death traps lurking for the unwary. He kept his voice even. "All I'm doing is making sure the whole team gets back safe. Again, why is that a problem?"

"Because you're always looking after me," she shouted. "Not anyone else, just me!"

"That's not true."

"No? You don't think I've noticed that when we go out in the field, we're always partnered together so you can pick up my slack?"

"It's not about slack, it's - " He wanted to be with her. Somehow that didn't feel like the right thing to say. "We work well together. We make a good team." Yes, exactly. That was it. That was what he meant.

She snorted loudly. "And this way you can look after me."

Arrrrrrrrggghhhh.

She went on. "If you don't think I can keep up, than just tell me so."

"It's not that I don't think you can keep up - "

"Then why else would you be always swooping in to rescue me?"

Somehow it all came out of his mouth at once. "Because I'm in love you with, is why!"

She went white.

He suspected he did too, because he felt the sick feeling of utter disaster draining from his face all the way down to the pit of his stomach.

A very small voice murmured, "Oh, boy."

It wasn't Jyn's.

He felt his neck creak as he turned his head to see the entire rest of the team in the tiny galley. Chirrut, placidly drinking tea. Baze with his arms folded, leaning in the doorway. Bodhi looking from Cassian to Jyn and back again. Kay stationed next to the table.

Somehow, he hadn't even noticed the rest of them come in, which was unlike him. To say the least.

Kay said loudly into the silence, "As I understand these things, that is a common if illogical human impetus."

Uneven footsteps made him look back toward Jyn, just in time to see her limp out of the galley as fast as she could toward the berths along the back of the ship.

With a heartfelt groan, he turned on his heel, pushed past Baze, and strode in the other direction.

One door slammed. Then another.

Kay said, "That was unprecedented."

Chirrut held out his hand. Baze looked at it. "What?"

"Pay up," Chirrut said. "I won. The captain said it first."

Baze gave a small humph. "Didn't say it. Yelled it. And I don't think he meant to." He frowned even more than usual. "I don't think he even knew."

"Bodhi, will you tell my husband to stop weaseling out of his debts."

"I don't know," Bodhi said. "I'm with Baze. I don't think he knew he was going to say that. Doesn't it invalidate the bet?"

"The terms of the wager would seem to be predicated on their knowledge of their own feelings, and a reluctance to speak those feelings aloud to the other," Kay put in. "Although how you could feel something and not know you're feeling it - "

Chirrut waved a hand. "Whether he meant to or not, he did say it, and he said it first."

"Jyn didn't say it at all," Kay noted. "So it's inaccurate to say first."

"She didn't say it yet!" Chirrut said. "Anyway, now Baze owes me ten credits."

"Put it on my tab," Baze said, meandering toward the tea kettle.

Chirrut snorted. "Tab," he muttered, picking up his teacup. "Your tab would reach from here back to Jedha."

It was a long way back to base - fifty-two hours in hyperspace. Most of the way back, they avoided each other, with astonishing success considering the size of the U-wing.

Cassian spent the bulk of those hours mired in his own thoughts, hearing his own blurted confession over and and over again, seeing Jyn's frozen expression before she almost ran away from him.

Because I'm in love with you.

He didn't waste a lot of time trying to deny it to himself. While he didn't have much experience with love, he'd known the truth the moment he'd heard the words.

The real question was what he wanted to do about it.

Up until now, he had been satisfied with fleeting connections, brief and intense relationships in between missions, where both parties understood that it had a time limit and a low priority.

Being with Jyn would be intense. But it wouldn't be fleeting, or limited, or low priority. He should be worried about that, perhaps, but he wasn't.

Mostly, he worried about what Jyn might want to do.

Hopefully not leave the team.

The notion sent his stomach lurching with panic. She already thought he was - what? Coddling her?

As if he would ever dare.

He said, "Kay, will you tell me something?"

Kay, quietly charging a few feet away, turned his head. "I can tell you any number of things, Cassian. You will need to specify."

"About Jyn."

Kay paused. "I can tell you rather fewer things about Jyn Erso."

"Do I treat her as if I don't think she can keep up?"

"That is not a question about Jyn, that is a question about you."

He sighed. "Will you please answer it, anyway."

Kay's servos hummed softly, usually an indication that he was considering his answer carefully. A rare occurrence.

Finally, he said, "You are thorough and conscientious, regarding both the success of your missions and the safety of your team. You would not include anyone who you didn't think could keep up. Jyn has a number of skill sets and areas of knowledge that have been crucial to the success of all your missions since our team's recent expansion." He paused, and a peevish note entered his voice. "And she has many weapons, which she is most proficient at using."

Cassian pinched the bridge of his nose. "Then why would she think that I don't trust in her abilities?"

"There is a 97.6% chance that Jyn has significant abandonment issues."

"What makes you say that?"

"The large number of files I have downloaded over the years regarding human psychology, with a particular focus on the experience of childhood trauma."

"No, I mean what made you say that right now?"

"The psychological research files tell me that humans can react to a deep and terrible fear by doing their utmost to make it come true." He sounded annoyed. "Organics are very puzzling."

So . . . Jyn feared being abandoned, left behind, and that was why she'd shouted at him that he should have done it?

Cassian rubbed his hand over his mouth and stared unseeingly at the surface of the table.

A few hours before they were due to exit hyperspace, he had retreated to the cockpit. Not retreated, he told himself. It sounded as if he was hiding. He was just .. .  being discreet. Circumspect, possibly.

Anyway, it was a good place to write his mission report. Which had already been written, but could be gone over again, for the third or fourth time.

In regards to the whole issue of leaving her behind, he would speak to her on base. Part of the mission debrief. Making it clear that leaving her behind wasn't an option, no matter what happened. Stating unequivocally that she was useful and valued and necessary. That ought to take care of the matter.

In regards to . . . the other thing.

He'd decided to wait for her to broach the subject. He'd blurted it out, so the next move was properly hers. If she wanted to hear more about that, then she would come to him.

If she didn't . . .

Well, she didn't, that was all.

He sighed and scrolled through his report. Maybe he was hiding.

"Cassian," Bodhi said, and he jolted.

"Sorry, yes. What?"

For a moment, his friend could have been smiling, but then he said briskly, "I'm going to check something in the back. Will you be up here for awhile?"

Cassian waved his hand, turning back to his datapad and adding an unnecessary note. "Go on."

Bodhi nodded and climbed out of the seat. it was only after he was gone that it occurred to Cassian to wonder what he could possibly have to check in the back.

A few minutes later, footsteps alerted him to someone coming up into the cockpit, and he glanced over his shoulder, expecting to see Bodhi returning. But it wasn't Bodhi.

Jyn gave him a little nod and settled into the pilot's seat.

He stared out at the mottled expanse of hyperspace. His neck felt hot and something buzzed in his ears. Say something, idiot.  "How's your injury?"

"Fine," she said. "Still bandaged." She scratched her side. "It's at that itchy stage," she added.

"And your knee?" He sounded like he was checking off a list or something.

She flexed her leg. "Still stiff. But better." She propped her foot on the dash. "I'm supposed to keep it elevated," she added.

"Right," he said. "Yes."

They both stared at hyperspace for awhile.

He thought, I should probably talk to her now. It's as good a time as any. Words circled around his head, but for the first time in a long time, he couldn't pull them together into any kind of coherent statement.

She spoke first, her voice abrupt and a little too loud. "Chirrut talked to me."

He looked over at her. "Oh?"

"I mean, the way Chirrut talks."

"All nonsense until you realize he's just skewered you like a womp rat?"

"Mmmm." She rubbed her hands against her knees again. "Anyway, I - I don't really think you should leave me behind."

"Neither do I," he said, dry as dust.

Her mouth quirked for the briefest of moments, then she looked away again. "I, um," she said. "That bolt hit me, and I went down. I - " Her fingers worked on the material of her pants, crumpling them up, smoothing them. "I caught myself on my knee, so I was still sort of half-up, and I could see you. Ahead of me. I thought maybe you haven't seen."

"I did," he said.

"I know," she said. "You turned around and came back for me. It's just that moment, when all I could see was your back, running away from me."

"Did you think I was leaving you?"

"I - " She tapped her fingers on her good knee. "I had a bad moment. And even when you came back, it was still - " She pushed her fingers into her breastbone. "Just sort of sitting right here. I didn't know what to do with it, so I shouted at you and said stupid things. I'm sorry."

"And the - coddling?"

She shook her head, her mouth wry. "I know you're not. I know my value. I - " She huffed out a breath. "You are always looking after me, though. It feels like."

He shifted uneasily. "Do you - do you want to be paired with someone else on missions?"

"No," she said quickly. "You were right. We do work well together. And I - " She swallowed. "It's good you look out for me, actually. For all of us. Good for the team. I'm just not used to it. Not the way things always worked for me."

He studied her profile. "Did the Partisans leave people behind?"

A second passed.

She nodded.

Another second passed.

"We would help them get up, though, if they could get up," she said. "If they could keep up, even injured, then they kept up. If they couldn't, we left them, because they would slow all of us down and then we'd all get captured or killed. The cause was more important, we had to be efficient and ruthless and - " She looked at her fingers. "I didn't always, though."

She looked ashamed. Whether it was of going back for people, or not going back for people, he wasn't really sure.

"I've left people behind before," he said. "I had to."

"Yeah," she said. "I understand. Sometimes you have to."

He set the ‘pad aside and leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. "I won't leave you behind," he said.

"If you ever have to - "

"I won't," he said again, firmly.

"Even if we'd both be killed?"

"No."

"Even if we'd both be captured?"

"No."

She stared at him a moment, some unfathomable emotion filling her eyes, before she looked away and started picking at her pants again. "I guess I knew that," she mumbled. "I just - don't always remember it."

The muffled confession made something strange happen in his chest. "I'll remind you sometimes," he said. "If you need me to."

She shrugged a little. "All right, yeah." She looked over at him with the smallest of smiles. He smiled tentatively back.

At least she hadn’t announced she was leaving.

Her gaze drifted past him, and her mouth tightened for a moment. She got up and went over to the door that separated the cockpit from the rest of the ship.

He thought she was about to walk away and thought, Let her go, don't push, when she smacked the button and the door swished closed.

From behind it came cries of indignation.

"Kriff off!" she yelled back.

"That is not possible, Jyn Erso," Kay said loudly.

She made a rude sound with her tongue and came back to plop herself in the pilot's chair,  bracing her foot on the dash again. He was starting to think she just liked doing that.

"About the other thing you said,” she said, slouching into the back of the chair. “That you, um. That you're in love with me."

He cleared his throat. "Yes. That."

"Did you mean it?"

His stomach clenched with nerves, but he kept his voice level. "I don't say that kind of thing for no reason."

Her jaw worked briefly. "Is that why I'm here?"

"No," he said. "You're here because you belong here. With us. Your skills and your knowledge and your - " He smiled briefly. "Your weaponry. Rogue One needs that. The way that I - uh. That I feel about you is separate."

She took that in, her face unreadable. "What if I preferred never to talk about it again?”

He swallowed. "Then we wouldn't talk about it."

"Would I still belong here?"

"Yes," he said without hesitation. It would hurt, to be this near her and not with her. But he had hurt before.

She took in a breath through her nose, then let it out. "Good," she said. "That's what I wanted to know."

He felt stiff and cold. Right. All right then. Now he knew. Now he could -

She got to her feet, reached out and pulled his chair around ninety degrees, and leaned over, bracing her hands on the armrests. He looked up into her eyes, and realized what she was doing a split second before her mouth covered his.

But he knew well how to adjust to split-second changes, and he tilted his chin up, kissing her back with elation bubbling under his skin. She leaned into him, her mouth moving on his, and he put his hands to her waist, trying not to put any pressure on the slight thickness of the bacta patch on her left side. That small encouragement was all she needed to twist her hips and slide into his lap.

He wrapped his arms around all the way around her, deepening the kiss, and she returned it, hands twisting in his shirt. She kissed as fiercely as she fought, storming his battlements, taking new territory with every movement of lips and hands.

He surrendered with barely a peep of resistance.

Some eons later, she lifted her head, her breath soft and fast against his lips. "That was good," she said.

It had been more than good, but he couldn't think of any other adjectives either. He traced the line of her spine and enjoyed the slight pleased squirm she gave. "Does this mean you love me, too?" he asked softly.

"I might," she said, sliding her fingers through the ends of his hair.

It made him smile. She might be a whole new language to him, but he was starting to learn the basic grammar. "Kiss me again and make sure," he suggested.

She did.

He blinks at the man, parsing through the knowledge in his brain, remembering what exactly it had entailed. He remembered that the data had been used to interrupt shipment lines, stopping the arrival of heavy weaponry to that sector. “That was almost a year ago, Colonel.”

Draven nods slightly, and then steps further into the room, a small storage room that Cassian nearly considered to be his office. It was primarily for studying and working on his training with newer Imperial tech, or just passing time until the next mission. Nothing really important, and certainly below the man in front of him.

“Recent… intelligence was passed through, and I intended on sending you back in, to use your former contact.”

Contact. He meant the Imperial tech that he had slept with to get the data. A pretty girl, enlisted in the Galatic Empire because she had nothing better to do, and didn’t really believe in the cause. Sleeping with her had been easy - getting the data was even easier. She had been trusting, too trusting, but she hadn’t truly believed in the cause… he could have turned her, with time.

“I could turn her, sir. I believe my debrief included that. What am I searching for this time?”

“You’re not going anywhere.”

And now, there was a choking silence. Something had happened, but clearly the Colonel didn’t want to continue with his thoughts. Cassian rose from where he had been sitting, as he hadn’t risen before, but now…

“Was my cover blown?”

It was one of the most precious ones they had, Joreth Sward, who had access to… every reach of Empirical control. He could go anywhere, see anything, do anything… Losing this would mean a price on his head, greater than anything before.

“The girl is dead.”

Cassian blinked, the only response he had to the statement… she was a pretty girl, yes, but not one of any note. He didn’t even remember her first name, so why was Draven looking at him as though someone important had died?

“Because of me, or?”

The silence is crushing, and finally, Draven runs a hand over his face as he lets out a sigh, as though the truth will come otu eventually, and he can’t hold it in any longer. “There’s a child. Two months old. The mother died from complications. It only just crossed our radar when we considered sending you back in.”

There’s a child.

There’s a child.

There’s a child.

Cassian can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t even process this information, the words repeating in his mind. He’s frozen, unresponsive, just like a good spy, one that has been trained to take anything, any sort of torture, to not respond, to process and analyze before moving forward, and he’s… he can’t process it, can’t think it through, because whatever words he had ever thought would be thrown at him, whatever future he saw for himself-

There’s a child.

“Where is the child now?” His voice is calm, calm and ice, not betraying the raging storm within him now. There’s a child, his child, if Draven is to be believed… or perhaps not, but they had been together for some time, and two months old, plus the duration of the pregnancy… unless she had been sleeping with another during his time undercover, the child was his.

“The child is in the care of an orphanage on the planet. As it is under Empirical rule, the child will likely become a Stormtrooper.”

Every part of him was screaming, that his child could not be taken by them, that he would not let his child become a soldier, and not for the enemy - but he couldn’t respond, frozen.

“Of course, that is unacceptable. Should the child’s origins be discovered, and your cover blown, it could be used against you.” Draven was hard as he spoke, and then softened slightly. “With your permission… we intend on having the child adopted by a family that is loyal to the Rebellion. They were active in the Clone Wars, older, and can give the child a quiet and peaceful life.”

“Do it.” He couldn’t say anything more, still frozen where he stood, still processing the information. His child could have a life, a happy life, perhaps. It would be safe from the reach of the Empire, safe with a family that could protect him.

There’s a child.

“... That’s it? No other questions?”

Cassian blinked, and sucked in a breath as he finally looked to the Colonel. The man was studying him, but Cassian… he couldn’t even respond further. He couldn’t ask any questions, couldn’t…

There’s a child.

“No sir.”

Draven nodded once, then stepped to go out the door, but waited a moment longer to watch Cassian. Cassian was still frozen in place, not moving, breath held again….

“I’ll make the file of the family accessible to you, along with their location. No one else will know, save for you and I. Should you require an extra day of travel when returning from assignments… it would be understandable.”

He jerked his head in a nod, still frozen, because Cassian… he would have wanted that, if he could process anything going on around him. Frozen still, he waited until the door was shut, and then sat down hard into his seat.

There’s a child.