#jyn week

JYN APPRECIATION WEEK Day 7: Free Day

Cold. Darkness. Destruction. Jyn looked out into the clouded sky, her eyes dark and frightened and very young. Not for the first time, she was reminded of Lah’mu, of her parents, of the damp and the isolation and the fear she faced. Her heart pounded, and she reached around her neck, taking her mother’s kyber crystal in her hand and holding it tightly to her breast.

Hope was contained in that crystal, no matter what Rigael or his other rebels might wish to tell her. 

She inhaled deeply, listening to the sounds of the fire crackling around her and the clatter of distant Imperial footsteps. Her heart pounded in her chest, and her emerald eyes looked deep into the facets of the crystal, searching in vain for some trace of the hope which had carried her this far. She found nothing, however, and she contented herself with curling into a ball, holding the crystal clenched tightly in her hands, and weeping bitterly in the darkness. She wept for her parents, who had died so that she might live and the Empire might fall. She wept for Saw Gerrera, whose battle against the enemy had resulted in his death She wept for the destruction of Jedha, for the millions of lives who lived and worked and played in the city’s streets. She wept for Rogue One and the thousands of Rebels who had sacrificed their lives based on nothing but hope a hope she had fought so strongly for. She wept for Rigael and Cassian and all of Fest, yet another world which had fallen to the shadows of the Empire. Where was it now, she asked herself? Where was the hope which had carried her this far? Where was the light in the darkness, the fire of rebellion which had burned so brightly within her? Jyn couldn’t answer those questions, and as she stared out of the ruins into the pouring rain, listening to the com-links of the passing Stormtroopers and the sound of boots splashing through the muddy streets, she couldn’t help but feel the last vestiges of her willpower slowly drain away. There was no hope to be found on this world, she told herself. Cassian’s contacts had failed them. The Rebel assault would surely falter, and the very mission she and the others had been ordered to undertake would surely fail. The Rebellion was finished. The Death Star had fallen, but if Katarn was correct, these “Dark Troopers” were surely just as great a threat. And this time, there was no archive on Scarif. This time, there was no heroic Rogue One to call upon, no desperate band of volunteers to reinforce her.

There was only Cassian.

Cassian, the man who had never given up on her. Cassian, who had saved her on Scarif, who had willingly volunteered his life to fight by her side. Cassian, who had chosen a life by her side over his life in the Alliance. Cassian, whose intelligence had led them to Fest and the Dark Trooper facility.

Cassian, whose faith in her had carried them both through endless trials.

“I thought I would find you here,” a voice said quietly.

She looked up from the Kyber crystal, her eyes cold and distant. They changed, however when her gaze met the eyes of Cassian Andor. They looked down at her, cool and sympathetic, and she felt her doubts slowly begin to subside.

A moment later, she found himself in his arms. “I didn’t expect you, though,” she told him. “You should have,” he replied. “Ayli and the others told me everything. About Rigael, about what you learned in the memorial chamber. I…” he hesitated, turning his head toward the distant fired. “I should have told you more about our past. It’s my fault this misunderstanding happened, and… and I’m sorry.” “I… I haven’t been the most helpful on this mission, have I?”

Jyn started to reply, then paused, gazing at the crown of Cassian’s lowered head. This man had just put himself far, far out on a limb for her. He'd stood up to his oldest friend, defended her even in the face of the man who had been like his brother, and she shuddered to think where her encounter with Rigael and the Partisans might have ended without Cassian’s sudden intervention. The use of the presence of the Death Troopers to turn the Partisan leader’s accusations against him hadn’t even occurred to her. She hadn't been thinking clearly enough for that. All she'd felt was the instinct of the fight—the desire for confrontation, the desperate need to take a stand against those who seemingly opposed her. Jyn knew herself—knew she'd nearly considered drawing her blaster against the Partisan commander in her fury, and that such an action would have ruined the negotiations between the Rebels and the Festians, whatever the provocation might have been.

Cassian had stopped her before she resorted to such measures. He'd seen the opening and taken it, forced his old comrade back onto the defensive, won her time to regain at least some control of herself. She owed him for what he had just done for her— owed him just as she owed him for the briefing with the Alliance Council and for her very survival back on Scarif. And because she did, she wanted to tell him not to worry, to brush over his shortcomings and distance in the past few weeks.

But she was an Alliance officer now. Personal feelings and gratitude, however deep or deserved, took second place to that. That was a soldier’s way, the way of life she had chosen the moment she first took command of Stardust Cell. And so, she cleared her throat and spoke in a soft, impersonal tone.

"No, Captain Andor," she said. "You haven't." She watched him flinch, saw his shoulders tighten, and wanted to reach out to him. But she didn't. She simply sat there, waiting.

The silence stretched out, tight and painful, and Cassian’s hands washed themselves in his lap. She heard his breathing, listened to the throb of her own pulse, and still she waited, forcing her eyes away from him towards the Kyber crystal still clutched tightly in her fist. She could feel his need to say something more and knew he needed time to say it in, and that at least she could give him, however long it took.

"I know I haven't, Jyn," he said finally. "And . . . I'm sorry." He twitched a shrug and looked up at her face. "It's not much, but it's all I can say."

"What do you mean, Captain?" she asked softly. Cassian winced at the compassion in her voice, but he understood her question. For a moment she thought he might wrench himself away from her embrace and flee, but he didn't.

"Because—" He swallowed and looked around the briefing room without really seeing it. "Because I let my personal feelings get in the way of my duty, Jyn." He forced himself to face her as he confessed his transgression, and in that moment their ages seemed reversed. The tall, powerful Intelligence officer seemed suddenly young and vulnerable, for all his years of experience, while he gazed down into her eyes almost desperately, as if begging her to understand.

“I never wanted to come to Fest,” he admitted. “There was a reason I wanted to let Captain Katarn handle this part of the mission, a personal reason I never wished to impart upon you. To me, there was too much pain in this place, too many memories of betrayal and pain and hopelessness. When you asked me to come here, you asked me to face something I never wished to face again. There were times I questioned the very reason we were here, Jyn, times I felt so hopeless and alone that I wanted to use this. “He reached into a pouch of his vest, holding up a small cylindrical object against her palm.

“A suicide pill?” Jyn questioned, and her eyes darkened. She reached for his hand but he recoiled, forcing his eyes away from her. “Cassian… why didn’t you tell me?”

The Captain’s hand fisted back over the capsule, and he finally wormed his way free of her embrace. He paced up and down amidst the ruins like a caged animal, and Jyn felt his anguish and self-condemnation. She could almost see the fog of his misery, wrapped around him like the very poison he clutched tightly in his hand, but she suppressed her sudden desire to break his unending hail of self-accusation, to stop him or defend him from himself. She couldn't. He needed to say it—and a part of Jyn needed him to say it, if there was any hope the barriers this world had created between them would truly come down.

"Secretly, I hated you for what you asked of me, Jyn." His voice sounded muffled in the howling wind, bouncing back from the twisted ruins of the building as he looked away from her. "I told myself I didn't, but I did. And it didn't get better. It got worse the longer we spent on the surface of this kriffing planet. It got worse every time I saw you do something right and realized I'd wanted you to do it wrong so I could justify the way I felt, so I could somehow convince you to abandon this reckless hope you held so tightly.”

"And then there was the ambush." He wheeled to face her once more, his expression twisted. "Damn it, I knew you and I had been handed an impossible mission after Katarn insisted he retain control of most of the cell’s assets! I knew it was impossible—and instead of digging in and helping you do it anyway, I let you carry the whole load because deep down inside I wanted you to fail so we could leave this miserable planet behind. Jyn, I'm an Intelligence officer by training. Every single time something went wrong, every time the Empire forced us to expend another of our chances, something inside me kept saying I could have done better. I knew I couldn't have, but it didn’t matter in the moment. In my hatred of this world and everything it represented, I blinded myself to the mission… and to your trust."

He came closer to a munitions crate, leaning forward to brace himself on its top and bend towards her across it.

"And then this." He raised one hand to gesture at the distant glow of the fires dotting the horizon. "Rigael, the Resistance." He returned his hand to the top of the munitions crate beside its companion and stared down at them both. "I told myself it was your fault, that you were the one who'd brought them to us, and that was another lie. But I was in it too deep, Jyn.”

He looked up at her again.

"You didn’t relent, though. You kicked us in the ass, Jyn, over and over until we got up off our self-pitying backsides and started seeing to the assignment we were ordered to complete. And I knew what you were doing, and why you were doing it, the whole time, and I hated it. Hated it. Because every time you did something right, it was one more proof that you were right about the mission, about Fest, about... everything"

He moved closer to her, raising one hand almost pleadingly.

"Jyn, you were right, and I was wrong. What's happening right now proves you were, and if you want me off this assignment, I wouldn't blame you at all."

He fell silent at last, hunched in despair, and Jyn wrapped an arm around him once more.

Hello Jyn Erso fans,

A reminder that today is the seventh and last day of Jyn Appreciation Week!

The prompts for today are Free Day and Crystal.

Jyn Erso Appreciation Week - Day One: Favorite Scene

Jyn Erso Week: Day Seven- Free Day- Jyn’s endless determination to get those damn plans to the Alliance

General Davits Draven, of Rebel Alliance Intelligence. wasn’t expecting anyone to return from Scarif. 

The Death Star had scoured the surface of the planet, leaving only ruin in its wake. The Rebel Fleet, or what was left of it, had returned in scattered, broken fragments, but it was merely the ships, the pilots, and the fighters which had escaped the firestorm. As far as Draven was concerned, no one on the surface of the planet had made it out alive.

The contrail in the sky over Yavin Four quickly informed him he was very, very wrong. 

The shuttle crash-landed into the pad, broken and ablaze. Fire crews raced to the shattered vessel, medics approached with stretchers on-hand, and Draven approached the burning craft, cautious of treachery.

After a few moments, the hatch slid open, and a bloodied, battle-scarred woman staggered down the ramp, her body lacerated and bruised in a half-dozen places and her hair tousled about in a disorderly fashion. One side of her face was badly burned, much of her vest and shirt had been burned away, and the look in her emerald eyes spoke of unspoken terrors and unnatural fears.  “Sergeant Erso, reporting for duty,” she stammered, as she guided a badly injured Cassian Andor down the ramp beside her. He was in equally dismal shape, his ribs broken, his heart racing, and his vision emotionless and battle-shocked. The two of them did not speak. They did not acknowledge the gathering commotion which now filled the hangar, nor the expression of General Draven as he stared back at them with disbelieving eyes. They simply stood together, half conscious and even less alive, as the ruined shuttle smoldered in obliterated ruins behind them  “Get Sergeant Erso and Captain Andor to a medical facility at once,” Draven said very, very softly, turning to one of his adjutants.  “See to any other survivors, if they’re aboard that shuttle. And get me Senator Mothma, immediately.” “For what reason, General?” 

Read on the Archive of Our Own here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24275293                               

                                      “Fire and Ice”

Context: Inspired by a discussion first raised by Alice (@literally2literary) and Buddy of the @roguefunpodcast regarding Jyn and Cassian’s post-Eadu discussion.

“Fire!” The piercing staccato of Imperial blasters rang out in the distance, and Jyn watched her father’s scientists die. Then more flames, smoke, an inferno of endless destruction, as the flight of X-Wings deployed their payload over the platform, and Krennic, and her father. The world became engulfed in a searing flame, a blaze of light that could not be ended. The inferno consumed everything, leaving only ash and ruin in its wake. She screamed aloud as she tried to escape the pyroclasm...  There was no escaping it. *** ”Jyn!” someone -- she couldn’t identify who -- shouted.

 The voice shook her thoughts back to the present. The memory of the searing blaze faded away into the background, and she sat up in the Imperial shuttle’s cargo bay, her mind still surrounded by the glow of the orange flames. Even as the Guardians whispered words of comfort and prayer to one another as they staggered aboard the cargo vessel that Bodhi had just purloined, Jyn could only watch in horror as she relived the scene she had just witnessed over and over in her mind: the world consumed by the glow of the explosion, the flickering of the flames amidst the pounding of the rain and the howling of the wind, the sound of Papa’s voice as he faded in her arms...

A part of her knew the time had come to make her choice. The fires of the Empire’s war machine had just taken the last hope she had left to believe in, consumed Galen Erso just as they had consumed Mama and Saw and anyone else who had tried to grow too close to her. Even as the flames of Eadu seared into her resolve, she felt another fire blazing in her soul, a flame she had never before been able to channel or control. She had used it, felt it, known it, but never before had she been able to unite with it, to give herself to it and let it consume her willingly.  

That fire was called rebellion. As Cassian staggered aboard, rifle clutched tightly in his hand, she felt the familiar sting of betrayal burn against her cheeks. It ate away at her, consumed her, burned her like the Alliance’s proton-bombs had burned away the Imperial defenses. The rage she had suppressed this long began to spark within her.  “You lied to me.” she said to Cassian, her words stoking the blaze. “You’re in shock,” he replied, frowning at her. He met her gaze, his own aura of intensity blazing before her, landing in her path and daring her to approach. His brown eyes, usually soft and sympathetic, had hardened into a wall of iron resolve, a shield of professionalism and military professionalism that wouldn’t be so easily broken. But even an iron will could melt. Even a resolve of steel could be reshaped, reforged into something more malleable and more useful to her cause.

Assuming, of course, it was properly tempered. “You went up there to kill my father,” she told Cassian with a glare of defiance. The flame of rebellion burned deeper into her soul. For just a moment, Jyn wanted to unleash it, to let it consume her and Cassian and the entire Rebellion in a single burst of rage, but she concealed her anger. The time had not yet come to ignite her spark just yet.

His reply came silently, a cold and piercing gaze that bored straight into her soul. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” “Deny it.” Her voice flared slightly, igniting a spark of resolve within her soul. The time was now, she told herself. Papa’s attempted murderer wasn’t about to escape her wrath unscathed.   “You’re in shock, and looking for someplace to put it. I’ve seen it before.”

 Cassian’s gaze did not move. He stared at her with a coldness as frigid as the rain outside, and she felt the flames of defiance within slowly begin to flicker. This was a dangerous game to play, she told herself. If she did not keep the blaze aglow, she was more than certain that Cassian would stifle it quickly.

“I bet you have,” she snapped.

 It was an impulsive thing to say, and she knew it, but she did not have time to take it back. Willingly or not she had ignited this confrontation. If she lingered too long, she was guaranteed to burn in the midst of her own flames.

Without thinking, she turned back towards the others. “They know,” she said, and her voice was red-hot with searing rage. None of the others stirred. A wise thing, she noted mentally. Better to avoid a firestorm than to be dragged into the center of it. Cassian gave her a concerned look. “Know what?” he mumbled, but Jyn refused to acknowledge him. 

“You lied about why we came here and you lied about why you went up there alone.”

Cassian shook his head, looking directly at Jyn with the coldness of a glacier. “I had every chance to pull the trigger, but did I?”  The fire in Jyn’s heart roared to life once more. She started to speak, but stopped herself abruptly. Cassian had attempted to murder her father. He didn’t deserve to be spoken to. “Did I?” Cassian repeated, louder this time, with the force of a man who had seen all too much of the reality of war. There was a moment’s hesitation in his dark and weary eyes, but Jyn didn’t care to notice. The firestorm had engulfed her entirely now; any chance of calming the pyroclasm had vanished the moment the Rebel agent had first opened his mouth.

The others refused to speak. Caught between a blizzard of cold resolve and an inferno of unrestrained fury, they wisely chose to take shelter rather than join in confrontation. The pilot in particular seemed the most concerned, his gaze focused intently on his hands, trying to avoid either Jyn or Cassian’s ire. “You might as well have,” Jyn said, her emerald eyes ablaze with the fury of a solar flare. “My father was living proof and you put him at risk. Those were Alliance bombs that killed him.” At these last words, she turned away, forcing away the thoughts of fire and destruction that still lingered around her. They came at her suddenly, overwhelming her control, and she staggered back, trying not to show Captain Andor any trace of weakness. 

This was her rebellion now, she told herself. Now was the time to prove she could stand the reality of it.

All at once, the glacier surrounding Cassian Andor’s resolve melted away into the darkness. A second firestorm replaced it, melting through the silence, burning its way towards her without mercy or hesitation. 

“I had orders! Orders that I disobeyed!” he shouted, and his words stung against her mental shields like the fallout of an eruption. His mask of espionage and secrecy had melted away in the aftermath of her flaring anger, leaving another flame-storm lingering before her.

 “But you wouldn’t understand that,” he added.

Even as the ground before her seemed to erupt and fall away, Jyn stoically refused to give ground. She had him now: in her mind’s eye she could picture his defenses crumbling away to ashes before her. 

“Orders? When you know they’re wrong?” Her memory collapsed away into the painful visions of her past which still burned away  visions of Saw and the Partisans, of Mama and Papa and the ruination of Jedha. Smoke clouded her vision, and for a moment she wanted to surrender, to allow Cassian’s firestorm to snuff out her own and end her pain.

 No, she told herself. She would not burn away here, consumed by the ruination of her broken past. If any flame was going to be snuffed out tonight, it was going to be Cassian’s.

“You might as well be a stormtrooper,” she told him, a light filling her emerald eyes. “You might as well have commanded the Death Star.” Jyn did not speak these last words aloud, but she thought them, relished them, used them as fuel to feed her blazing rage.  The memory of the Empire’s superweapon over Jedha spurred her anger on; for just a moment she allowed herself to embrace the Imperial weapon’s destructive potential. Andor deserved that much, she scoffed to herself. His was a crime she could not simply ignore.

“What do you know?” Cassian’s own anger flared, and he paused to tower over her, his dark eyes glowing like a pair of embers. “We don’t all have the luxury of deciding when and where we want to care about something.” 

He paused, contorting his expression to match her earlier sneer. “Suddenly the Rebellion is real for you? Some of us live it. I’ve been in this fight since I was six years old! You’re not the only one who lost everything. Some of us just decided to do something about it.” 

The fire in Cassian Andor flickered and faded once more, replaced with the same cold distance she had first witnessed. But the fire in Jyn Erso did not die. She stood alone, staring into Cassian’s eyes, and resolved to keep it burning. She would keep it ablaze, keep it blazing even as the darkness of the Empire attempted to consume her, and use it to spark the feelings of rebellion in the Council on Yavin.