"All human wisdom is contained in these two words- wait and hope."
-Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
Rain and sleet was always plaguing the camp. It was sleeting when she arrived there. It was almost always raining whenever she went out to the fields. It was raining the morning of the day they came for her, but for whatever reason, a gentle, elegant snow drifted from the grey sky when the rebels extracted her from the prisoner transport.
Maybe that said something about her. The planet's almost-frigid weather itself was happy to be rid of her presence. Her bunk mate was probably ecstatic to watch her get knocked on her ass by a droid after being released, too.
However incautious it might have seemed to fight her rescuers, Jyn Erso knew the moment one rebel directly approached her that they wanted her, that the escape was only a deception and if she went with them, she would end up in another pair of shackles. She was right, in retrospect.
Then again, would being a captive the rough-and-tumble ragtags be that much worse than Imperial incarceration? No, not unless they knew who she really was, who she was the daughter of- they had to know, or else they would never have come. And that's exactly what made her launch her boots into that rebel's chest the second her shackles clattered to the floor, making a beeline for any point in time and space most opposite this Force-awful mudball called Wobani.
If she could've helped it, she wouldn't have been so reckless trying to flee. But instead of freedom, she only received the metal arm of some brusque droid slammed into her chest and suddenly she was flat on her back, glaring, dazed and furious.
If they had known what she'd faced here, they would have just let her go. They were so much more human than the Empire, and she dared to hope that a few of them might have understood.
"That's enough, prisoner! That shovel is for digging!" snarled a Stormtrooper from the top edge of the ravine.
Jyn let out another involuntary wheeze of pain, clutching at her stomach as the prisoner who'd hit her in the torso with his spade turned back to his side of the trench a few feet away.
"And you, Hallik- get your ass out of the mud and get back to work!" the trooper yelled.
She barely heard the command, keeled over in the cold dirt, glaring at the ground. Her gloved hand reached out numbly and found the aluminum handle of her own shovel, dragging it towards her. Slowly, the blade crunched into the wet mud and gravel and she used it to bring herself up like a crutch. She went back to being invisible again, no one was watching her anymore- even the officer turned his back.
Her glare focused on the back of the prisoner who'd taken her by surprise just for a guffaw. He was laughing with his gang buddies, off completely scott-free, and smug about it, too.
She heard her name thrown about all kinds of foul synonyms for 'woman'- some she recognized, some she didn't, but knew she wouldn't forget.
Jyn glared vehemently and clutched at the handle of her tool. "You wanna say it to my face, Cardin?" she hissed challengingly.
He turned around as she stomped up to him. Cardin was much taller than her, had a far more muscular build, and if he knew what he was doing, he could have beaten her anywhere. But, she couldn't help but notice that he was all talk when confronting a male prisoner. She decided now was a good time to make an example out of him.
"Gotta love me a gal who gets feisty- you know what they say, hot in the streets, quadruple it in the sheets," he chuckled.
"Might want to stop all that chatter before something bad happens to you," Jyn growled.
Cardin's eyes scanned over her with an obscene glint and a lewd grin. She realized almost expectantly that he was mentally undressing her and she seethed with rage.
"Gonna try and fight me, Hallik?" He smirked suggestively, taking a step nearer. "Well, I got a few moves I know you'll like."
The resonant clang of her dirty shovel making contact with his cheekbones was among the most satisfying things Jyn had ever heard. Cardin's head whipped to the side with the blow and he stumbled away, his posse scattering and screaming obscenities in surprise.
She threw the shovel aside and fired a kick into his stomach, sending him to the ground, then dove after and fired off punch after punch into his jaw, her other hand holding him down by the throat.
At some point, he snapped from his stupor back into fight mode and caught one of her punches, sending his own blow directly into her nose.
There was a crack of cartilage. She heard the sound before she even processed his fist coming towards her.
Jyn nearly bit a hole in her tongue as her head snapped back and she caught herself halfway through tumbling backwards, releasing her grip on his throat to clutch her nose. Her vision darkened slightly at the edges, her mind was both numb with shock and alert with the smarting in the center of her face.
She was certain she had blacked out there for a moment, and she had to admit- it was a very good punch. The warmth of visceral blood soothed the perpetual chill in her fingertips for the first time since she had gotten here.
Crying out briefly, the sharp pain blinded her for only a second or two before she lunged forward again with double the ferocity, sending crimson droplets of blood scattering across the wet earth.
All of her training with Saw had made her into more than just a spitfire soldier- it had made her into a hard-fighting battle machine. But she was too blinded by rage and half-starved by the prison Warden's previous attempts to control her to put very much of it to use here. Instead, her hits were fast and uncarefully aimed, even if she was holding back her true strength with each. If she wanted to kill this man, she would be punching a corpse by this point.
However, his words echoed in his head, and her nose throbbed, and the way he stripped her of any meaning with a single glance kindled that dark corner of her mind again. And all because of that, his squawking and struggling was sweet as honey to her.
"Get off him, you crazy bitch!" someone snarled, daring to approach her.
"Don't be a wuss, she's not gonna kill him or anything," someone else, not from the original group, said casually, dragging the other back. "Let Cardin learn his lesson."
"Hey bucketheads, Liana's having a scrap-down with Ricu down here! Gonna intervene or what?" called someone else.
Over the heavy ringing in her ears, she heard footsteps crushing the wet gravel underfoot.
"Hallik! Cardin! Break it up!" came the officer's voice in harsh response.
It went unheeded as she wrestled around with Cardin in the mud, her hands too sore to throw more than one or two more punches into his side. He whipped up a hand and hit her in the eye, but the carelessness of the blow let her shrug it off with ease.
"I said break it up!" the trooper warned again as another Stormtrooper dragged her away from the other prisoner, continuously holding tight to her arms to prevent her resistance. Cardin's gang comrades dragged him to his feet. "Next one to move gets to test out the new taser I got commissioned, understand?"
A light drizzle started up again. Suddenly it was very quiet, and suddenly she could hardly stand, a wave of dizziness almost taking her down.
Jyn's hand went to cradle her broken nose, a steady flow of blood trickling from between her fingers, drying on her face and gluing the edges of her leather glove to her palm. Patches of sandy mud streaked her forehead and cheek. Her sides heaved, but on pure adrenaline alone she waited for a chance to struggle away and finish what she started.
"Now, who started it? Hallik or Cardin?"
The fingers of the onlookers all pointed to her. She didn't care at all- they had blamed her for fights before, and they would continue to do it until they couldn't get away with it anymore.
"You're bantha fodder, Hallik!" hissed Cardin, words slurred with stupor.
The Stormtrooper looked over at her. She could feel that idiotic glare through the visor.
"Why did I expect any different? Wanted another visit with the Warden that badly, did you, Hallik?" he said. "Let's go see him, then."
"Well, Miss Hallik," the Warden said, "we've tried almost everything; putting you on half-rations, extra work, changing your cell mates, more corporal punishment than I knew a young lady like you could tolerate…"
Jyn stood before him, rigid as a block of iron. In addition to shackles, two Stormtroopers grasped her arms, practically holding her up as her legs threatened to give out.
"You've already gotten as much an extension on your sentance as I can deliver. But nothing can convince you to behave yourself. What does it take?" his voice echoed off the metal walls.
"Have you tried kriffing off?" she suggested defiantly.
A third Stormtrooper advanced from behind too quickly for her to process and slammed the end of his blaster hard into the side of her skull. She elicited a whimper of pain as her head rocked forward and her legs buckled, the two guards forcing her to stay upright with ease. Her unkempt hair had come untied from its usual out-of-the-way bun and now covered her face like a curtain, glued together in places by grime and blood.
Her glare fixed on the dusty concrete floor. A shiver racked her body quite suddenly, the telltale warning of a recurring fever she had already contracted twice from this sinkhole in her four standard weeks of prison time.
"As I was saying," the Warden continued, standing up from his desk, "this is the ninth prisoner brawl you've started since you got here. I clearly can't turn my back on you unless-"
"Cardin was asking for it," Jyn sneered, head still bent.
"Excuse me?"
"I didn't start anything! He hit me with his kriffing shovel!"
He walked slowly towards her, raising an eyebrow. "And you, Liana Hallik, the famous troublemaking liar, expect me to believe that he provoked you?"
Jyn brought her head up and rolled her eyes, the urge to insult him boiling over immediately. "Could you- stand back a bit? I can smell the sulfur coming off your cloven hooves from here."
The Warden looked down at her. "You just don't know when to shut up, do you?"
"So I've been told."
She just wanted to go back to her cell. She wanted to curl up into a ball and sleep away the ache of the fever and the pain of her injuries and everything else in her life. She wanted to ignore her stupid cell mate's griping about whatever and close her eyes and not have to think about anything.
Everything hurt and right now, she'd rather just go fold in half on her brick-hard mattress like a dying varactyl and hope that, like a dying varactyl, she'd never wake up.
"And we've already seen time and time again that the IT-O won't compromise your misbehavior…"
She attempted a shrug. "You're always welcome to try. It'll never work, but try."
The Warden let out a sigh that died at the narrow confines of his office and stood there for a moment.
"I have a solution," he said at last. "One that, admittedly, I've been wanting to test out on you for a long time. One of our guard mastiffs was retired last week…" he opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a thin black collar. "And this is her spare shock collar. You will wear this 24/7 from now on until you can resist the urge to speak out against your supervisors. You are not permitted to speak to them or any of your fellow prisoners, and I trust you can clearly see the consequence for doing so."
She opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off.
"You will also be moved to a private cell. You will eat, sleep and spend any time not working there, in silence and solitude. Is that clear?"
Jyn was taken aback with dudgeon, eyes wide with disbelief.
"You can't do thi-" started to protest before one of the Stormtroopers clasped the collar around her neck and locked it. A rattling pain jolted through her throat, buzzing through her jaw and into her ears, causing the words to die harshly in her throat.
The Warden looked at her, leaning in. "What? What can't I do, Hallik? Tell me."
She coughed, blinking away tears as the troopers dragged her to her feet.
"We'll see if silence teaches you a lesson. Get her cleaned up and put her in cell G-23, the corner of the hallway."