A/N: I've seen Rogue One twice and oohhh boy did it wreck me! I told myself I wouldn't ship anyone, and yet. AND YET.
I thought Jyn was such a fantastic character, and I was surprised how much this film made me feel in the space of two hours, especially considering it was a standalone movie.
This piece isn't particularly shippy, but I do hope to write more with these two in the future! As always your comments and feedback are much appreciated :)
can't feel nothing small
Jyn can count on one hand the number of times she has cried in her short life. The first time, she was eight years old and holding onto Saw Gerrera's hand on their way to safety.
(Incidentally, it was the first and last time that he would ever let her do that.)
She had cried for the death of her mother and the loss of her father. She had cried for the loss of her old life, for all the happy memories of her parents she would soon forget. Most of all, she had cried for the injustice of it all. It just wasn't fair.
Saw had let her cry, for the most part. They had reached his ship, engine still running. Once they were safely out of orbit, out of danger for the time being, he had knelt in front of her and told her that, from now on, crying is weakness.
Don't let others see how they got to you, he'd muttered, gruffly. It only provides ammunition for the blaster aimed at your face.
Eight-year-old Jyn had taken that to heart.
The second time she had cried, she was eleven years old and already an established member of Saw's rebel group. She had been running through the streets of some rundown city on a rundown planet, delivering a message (with a gun – too big, still, for her childish hands – strapped to her belt) from one rebel group to another. An easy job, or so it should have been; it turned out the recipients of the message were less than pleased with its contents.
Her returning message consisted of a blaster shot to her shoulder and a hard kick in the shins.
Tell Gerrera to shove his ideals up his ass, they'd said, laughing as unbidden tears ran tracks through the grime on her face.
Limping back to Saw Gerrera's base, she was met with disapproval instead of sympathy, her injuries cleaned with disgust. Another lesson: don't expect sympathy. Don't expect anyone to care.
After that incident, she'd learned how to use the overlarge gun on her hip, how to stop her hands from shaking as she aimed. She learned how to kick back, hard enough to break bones. She learned never to take danger for granted, and that survival was the only thing worth fighting for, really.
She was sixteen years old, a whirlwind force of nature. She might have been small, but she had become a deadly fighting machine. Forged by years of fighting, scrambling, scraping an existence alongside Saw and his band of rebels.
And then she was waiting, waiting for them to return from their mission. She had allowed herself to cry once it had dawned on her that they weren't coming back for her. Just like her mother, and a lesser extent her father; everyone leaves. Always.
That lesson was the hardest to bear. Don't rely on anyone. Trust only yourself. Everyone leaves. Always.
Jyn is twenty-two years old, and she hadn't cried in five years, not once. She has hardened like stone; remembered all her lessons. When she is hauled up in front of the Rebel Alliance, she has the courage to smirk in her shackles and scoff at the ideals that will surely get everyone killed.
She is thrown together with Cassian, and part of her wants to hate him. Perhaps it's because she can sense their similarities; they fall on different sides of a coin, but it's a coin that is no friend of the Empire.
She wants to dislike him, because she doesn't want to think of the alternative. Her lessons were hard-learnt, and she won't give them up easily.
Jyn is surprised when he treats her like an equal, as opposed to a prisoner, an asset. Rebellions are built on hope, he smiles, and she frowns because someone with so much anger in their heart shouldn't sound like he does.
Hope wasn't something she had ever considered before. She used to have it filed away alongside friends and sympathy, words that had little meaning for her nowadays.
She hadn't cried for five years when they reach Eadu. She knows looking for her father, calling for him, is reckless and stupid – Saw's teachings grate at her – but another part of her mind knows that she is right.
She sees Galen, torn by the blast; a dying man. She cries, then, tears mixing with the pounding rain. Cassian is there, too, pulling at her arm. Jyn, we need to go. Hurry! She wants to lie down and forget that the last fifteen years ever happened. She'll wake up and she'll be back on Lah'mu with her mother and father, alive.
Cassian is there, again. He could have killed her father, but he didn't. But he could have. But he didn't. And behind that, she sees his pain. Pain not so removed from her own. She understands, in a way. We all do bad things because we believe in something, whether it's survival or the distant hope that we're making a difference.
The last time that Jyn Erso cries, she's not really crying at all. She should be, or at least thinks that her impending death would give her a free pass to cry. Maybe it's because she's exhausted; her lungs are raw from running and screaming and fighting.
Your father would be proud. Yes, he would. That, at least, is some comfort.
In the space of several short days, she has found that all her life lessons have unravelled before her eyes, and she also finds that she doesn't care.
Cassian sits next to her, and for a moment she is sad that she didn't get to know him better. The universe is a cruel place, she decides, for throwing them together and then ripping it all away. She grips his hand in hers, and he squeezes back. She doesn't cry. She wants to, but she doesn't.
He roughly pulls her into an embrace, and she distantly wonders when the last time she felt physical contact like this was. The horizon is burning, and soon they'll be nothing but dust. Stardust. It doesn't feel like such a bad way to go, in the end. Cassian is soft, and she fits against him. She is all sharp angles to his warmth, two ships that passed in the night and met somewhere in the morning.
The horizon burns, and Jyn doesn't cry. She is stardust, and she doesn't cry.
A/N: According to the wiki, Jyn is 22, but I've also read elsewhere that she was 21, and 23, so I could be wrong ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
(either way, she's so young and I might start crying again)