"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." Teddy Roosevelt
Saw Gerrera knows very little about children. If all had gone according to plan, this would not have been a problem.
But all had not gone according to plan, as evidenced by the small child sitting—very much alone—at the bottom of the shelter.
He takes a few seconds to register the sole occupant of the small space before motioning for the child to join him at the surface. She has a serious expression on her face, but doesn't look to have been crying. Saw does find this odd. She would have been sitting down there alone for the two days it took for him to get here, and Saw doesn't have to ask to know what happened to her mother. (There could be only one explanation for Lyra's absence.) Shock, he tells himself. I hope she didn't watch it happen. The girl hesitates for only a moment before shoving the little lamp into her pack and climbing the ladder. She doesn't acknowledge him, doesn't reach for his hand or meet his eyes, doesn't speak a word as he gently ushers her out of the cave.
She is silent and glassy-eyed the entire way to his ship. They pass the homestead, smoldering now from where the Death Troopers burned it. The pair of nerfs are still in their pen; one is already dead while its mate is not long for this world. Several nunas are loose in the yard, panicked from the smoke and stench of death. Saw watches the girl from the corner of his eye for any reaction to the destruction of what was supposed to be her family's sanctuary. There is none.
They pass through the fields, which have remained relatively unscathed considering the state of the homestead. It is when she places one foot onto the ramp of the waiting ship that she shows the first hint of a reaction. She stops right there at the entrance, blinks twice, and looks around as if wondering how she got here. She freezes as her gaze turns to the field behind them.
That is when she loses all semblance of control.
The tears that had been strangely absent before now burst forth in a tidal wave, and all at once the composed child of a moment before is sobbing and turning back toward the homestead. Saw reflexively grabs her arm—not firmly enough to bruise but definitely enough to give her pause—and she begins to fight. She's beating at his ribs, thrashing to free herself, and screaming incoherently. After a moment the incoherent sobs turn to shrieks of "we can't leave her" over and over and over again, growing steadily more frantic. Saw has a sinking feeling in his gut.
He turns to look at the place that seems to have triggered her meltdown. The greenery is more trampled there, and his suspicions are confirmed. So she saw it happen after all. He looks back to the girl and in a rare moment of tenderness gets to his knees so he is eye-level with her. She's still fighting him with a righteous fury that only children can seem to muster, but something in his motion has her meeting his gaze for the first time since crawling out of that hole.
"We won't leave her," he says quietly, and she stills.
Saw motions to a pair of his men who have come out to witness the commotion. He's about to say "retrieve the body" but catches himself in time to realize how upsetting that is likely to be for this child having the worst day of her life. Instead he says "bring her mother" and nods meaningfully to the trampled field. The men take his meaning and go off to their unpleasant task.
The girl is quiet now, sporadic, silent hiccups wracking her small frame. She allows Saw to lead her onboard without further resistance, and he brings her straight to the sleeping quarters. He does not deign to tuck her in, but she does accept the proffered blanket. He waits while she settles herself, back facing toward him as he stands in the doorway, before leaving.
As he heads toward the bridge, Saw begins preparing a mental list of things he knows about this child and comes up almost empty-handed. She's eight, he's fairly certain, and even though he knows very little about children in general, she seems small for her age. For all intents and purposes, she is an orphan now. Three things: her age, her size, her familial status.
It's not much of a start.
Over the next weeks and months, Saw comes to know much about his new ward.
Because he hadn't really known what to do with her when she first arrived, Saw had assigned her to the kitchens to help Naya. He tries to see her at least once a day, but he's not sure how to talk with her, so most of their time is spent in not-quite-companionable silence. Even as he comes to know her better, she tends to keep to herself and only speak when courtesy or necessity demands it. Saw thinks this is simply her nature. Quiet.
He is forced to reconsider her quiet nature the first time he sees her get into an argument. It is with another child, a few years older than herself. Saw does not allow children to reside on base—the girl's presence had raised some eyebrows, but of course no one questioned it—but occasionally some of his contacts and suppliers bring their children with them. Saw isn't exactly sure what the fight is about, or who started it. But the girl finishes it. Decisively. Passionate when provoked.
One of the few things the girl had in the backpack she brought from Lah'mu was a datapad loaded with the standard school curriculum taught within the Empire. There are also a few courses in subjects the Imperials would find far less benign, probably courtesy of Lyra. Saw is somewhat surprised to find that the girl continues to work her way through the material without any urging on his part. He is even more surprised when he notices the level of mathematics she is capable of. He supposes he shouldn't be surprised, given whose daughter she is, but at eight years old, she is just shy of being able to calculate a hyperspace jump. Diligent. Intelligent.
When she isn't studying or helping Naya, the girl spends a lot of time watching his rebels go about their business. Once he catches her in the armory watching his second-in-command disassembling a blaster. Two Tubes doesn't seem to mind her, which almost certainly means this is a usual occurrence. Saw gets the distinct impression that she would be able to disassemble and reassemble the weapon herself if offered the chance. Observant.
It is a better start.
He can hear the shouts well before he can see what has caused them. He enters the mess, and several things vie for his attention.
The first is a shrieking woman who stands over a boy clutching his hand.
The second is the boy himself, who has a paring knife pinning his clutched hand to one of the wooden tables.
The third is the pool of blood spilling in a slow but steady drip, drip, drip to the stone floor from said hand.
The fourth is Naya, standing over Jyn, scolding. Jyn isn't looking at her, face impassive but fists tightly balled.
It is some moments before the frazzled woman notices Saw, but she is on him the instant she does. She's gesticulating wildly, first toward the boy whom Saw recognizes as her son and then toward Jyn. She's very angry and can't seem to decide between whether she'd like to continue berating Saw or return to fretting over her son. The boy is whimpering a bit, but is handling having a knife shoved through his hand surprisingly well, considering he can't be more than thirteen and this is almost certainly a new experience for him. Saw breaks free of his mother mid-rant and in one swift motion yanks the knife from his hand. He spots a rag lying on the table nearby—Jyn and Naya had been peeling and chopping vegetables for the evening meal—and deftly wraps the boy's hand to slow the bleeding.
"Rell is in the hangar. Have him check you out."
Now Saw turns his full attention to the woman in his face.
"...reckless, aggressive, and completely undisciplined!" she's saying. "A complete overreaction! My boy may never use his hand again, and all because that little schutta couldn't handle a compliment!"
Jyn's eyes flicker toward them at the insult, and the sides of her lips turn down into a small frown that hadn't been there before despite the fact that Naya was currently laying in to her.
"Compliment?" he queries.
"All he did was smile at her and touch her shoulder. He was just flirting."
Now Naya launches unexpectedly to Jyn's defense, "He did a little more than touch her shoulder—" and Naya stresses the word to imply it was most certainly not Jyn's shoulder he had been touching "—and flirt, Jessa."
Saw frowns. He has a suspicion of where this conversation is headed, and he does not like it.
"Boys will be boys. She ought to be used to it, living here," Jessa sneers.
Naya is about to redirect her tongue-lashing to Jessa, but Saw intervenes. He realizes now that Naya's scolding of Jyn was actually rather half-hearted in comparison to the tirades she is capable of delivering when they are actually deserved. That likely means the girl had been severely provoked and was at least semi-justified in her violent reaction.
His voice is steady but deadly as he replies, "My men may be a lot of things, but none of them has ever touched a woman who didn't want it. Much less a child. You have ten minutes to collect your son and leave this base. I do not expect to see either of you again."
Jessa is aghast, but she does not argue. (The barely-concealed rage clouding Saw's face clearly conveys it would be pointless.) She gathers the box of ration packs she had been here to deliver and storms off in the direction of the hangar. Saw does not watch her go, focusing instead on Jyn. He knows her body language well enough by now to realize how tight-wound she is, though to the casual passerby she would probably appear only mildly perturbed by the whole incident. Saw tosses the bloody paring knife onto the table amidst the pile of vegetable peels, and she lifts her eyes to meet his. They're on fire, challenging him to tell her she's overreacted. Saw thinks perhaps he should start taking a more active role in her up-bringing.
She is eleven years old, and fierce.
"I need a blaster."
Jyn stands before him with a determined look on her bruised face. She had been scouting a potential target when she had been caught in a place where twelve-year-olds shouldn't be. Saw wants to argue that she is still a child with no business carrying such a deadly weapon, but her busted lip and rapidly swelling eye quite eloquently make the argument that Stormtroopers certainly don't see her as such.
Saw has come to see the usefulness of children since he began training Jyn last year in the arts of sabotage and hand-to-hand combat. (People underestimate children.) But he has resisted weapons training thus far. Yes, he knows the value of child soldiers, but something makes him reluctant to turn Jyn into one. You've got a soft spot for her, he realizes. Saw is surprised he is even capable of having a soft spot by this point.
He nods his consent. "Tomorrow. Target practice."
It is not until she has left the room that he fully appreciates what has just happened. Jyn had not whined, had not complained, had not requested to be returned to menial duties. She had asked to better defend herself. Dauntless.
"I like that one," says Arhul Nemo, and Saw turns back to the intelligence report they had been discussing.
There is an awful lot of blood, but Rell assures them the wound actually isn't that bad.
"You'll just need to stay off that leg for the next few days, Jyn," he says.
"No."
Rell turns to Saw, as if he can talk sense into a newly-turned teenager whose blood—and ire—is up.
"Jyn—"
"I'm going back out there to repay that kriffing skug."
Despite the severity of the curse, she hasn't yelled it; rather, it was stated in a deceptively calm and collected manner. It is the tone Jyn uses that translates to you-will-have-to-sedate-me-to-keep-me-from-doing-what-I-want. Saw briefly considers doing just that, but they're short on fighters, and she is an exceedingly good shot.
"You can man the bunker. Sitting."
She's a stubborn one, his Jyn.
Saw's brand of rebellion doesn't have much use for aerial support, but when Jyn asks if she can learn to fly, he doesn't deny her the opportunity. They had recently acquired some fresh blood from the Commenor Underground cell, amongst them a few pilots, and Jyn has become friendly with some of the younger ones. He can tell she's itching to learn a new skill.
Her teacher is an enthusiastic young man by the name of Tylan Nord. He's twenty years old, lean, swarthy, and—if the sidelong glances of the few women around base are any indication—rather good-looking. Saw isn't worried on this account. At fifteen, Jyn is starting to look more like the woman she will become, but she's still awkward from her [small] growth spurt and is absolutely abysmal at flirting. And everyone—everyone—knows the boss' adoptive daughter is off-limits.
Except, apparently, for Tylan Nord.
The first few times Saw sees them interact, Tylan is the picture of professionalism. The same cannot be said for the last time, when he walks in on them in a storage closet, Tylan's hands wandering to places that would have roused a younger Jyn to action with a paring knife.
He sees red.
Jyn doesn't understand why he's so upset, and insists "it was just a kiss." There's a pretty pout on her lips that makes Saw immediately reassess her flirting capabilities. But Tylan at least has the sense to look ashamed for robbing the cradle. The next day Saw assigns him to a detail setting charges to an Imperial weapons cache a day's journey in hyperspace away. It should have been an easy mission, and Saw's only intent is to get him the hell away from Jyn for a few days. But the mission is compromised. They take heavy casualties.
Tylan is one of them.
Jyn stalks around the base for days, her gaze and posture projecting a fury so palpable it can be felt from several meters away. It flares when she looks at him, and something deep inside him—the part that still yearns for more than all this senseless death but is buried so deep he isn't sure it's actually even there—breaks. Unforgiving, he thinks, and hopes that he is wrong. But that deep part of him knows he is not.
She does not ask to fly again.
He often hears whispers these days. The Partisans have had a string of setbacks in recent months that has left everyone on edge. Saw is not immune and finds himself growing more and more annoyed with the lack of forthrightness in his men. He especially does not like the lingering, suspicious looks that follow Jyn when no one thinks he's watching.
It is Two Tubes who finally voices the issue.
"Her ransom would be considerable. Perhaps even enough to cover the shortfall."
Saw will hear none of it. Handing Jyn over to the Imperials is absolutely out of the question, and he tells Two Tubes as much. His second stares at him for a long moment, then walks off.
The whispers intensify after their confrontation. Saw's paranoia grows, and he finds himself wishing he had a Bor Gullet. He begins to send some of the more vocal conspirers on the suicide missions.
But it is not enough. Jyn is no longer safe among these comrades-in-arms.
When the Empire finds their current base, he knows what he has to do. Under the premise of scouting the new base's location for any signs it has been compromised, he sends Jyn to Belsavis. He goes with her, knowing that the rest of the Partisans are evacuating to the real location on Taris.
He checks that her blaster is fully charged, hands her a vibroblade, and requests that she wait while he checks the nearby settlement. Then he turns his back on the woman who is his daughter in all but blood and thinks of all the things he knows about her as he walks back to the ship.
Unforgiving.
Stubborn.
Dauntless.
Fierce.
Observant.
Intelligent.
Diligent.
Passionate.
Quiet.
Orphaned.
Small.
Young.
As he walks away from the bunker, Saw prays to the Force and whatever gods that may be listening that he is correct in knowing one more thing about Jyn Erso:
Resilient.