She gave her head a shake, which wasn't a good idea as she realised that lying unconscious on a Scarif beach for 12 hours or so had left her with a blinding headache. But really, the pain was preferable to the complete inability to think straight.
She tried to focus instead on watching him at work. It wasn't surprising he was a master at his craft. After all, it was what he did for a living. Persuading people to do things they really didn't want to do (betray their colleagues, friends, countries) in order to give him information, at great personal risk to themselves.
It seemed he could even do it with droids.
He was using the classic "reverse psychology" thing. Again, something she wouldn't have thought a droid would be susceptible to, but it seemed that it was. Cassian had caught the droid turning the memory stick over and examining it closely. He'd played the mechanoid like a Talasean wind harp. Let the droid catch him taking a side long look at the memory stick. Then an exaggerated jerk of the head as he looked away, too quickly. Guaranteed to make sure even a droid interpreted his movements as "I don't want you to know that the memory stick is important to me."
"What is on this memory stick?" The droid locked his visual censors onto Cassian's face.
"Nothing of any importance..." Cassian's voice sounded flustered. "Just..."
The droid launched into what sounded like a pre-prepared speech. "You are mandated by order 793628 of the sector governing statutes to surrender any information required of you by imperial personnel. Failure to do so will result in more thorough investigative techniques being undertaken at an imperial holding facility. You should be aware that the probability of surviving more thorough investigative techniques without injury is 0.00137%."
Just for a moment, the last sentence sounded a bit like Kay Tu. Cassian flinched. Jyn wasn't quite sure if it was part of the act, or whether he too was remembering his companion. Then he spoke again, managing to make it sound like he was reluctantly handing over the tiny nugget of information he knew.
"It's just back-up flight logs for the journey to Scarif. We were flying a shuttle with routine refuelling supplies. We're not combatants."
It showed masterful control over tone of voice – hinting that he'd just said more than he should have done, as if this was the sum total of what he knew – but Jyn still had to swallow a snort. After the armoury the droid had retrieved from them? Did Cassian really think the droid was going to buy that?
"Look, there's nothing important on there. It's not as if we'd be stupid enough to..." Cassian let his voice tail off as if he'd let slip something he shouldn't have.
"Not as if you'd be stupid enough to do… what?" the droid said, in its flat, mechanical voice.
The droid sat with its visual sensors fixed on Cassian. Jyn knew from experience that one of the hardest things about dealing with mechanicals was that unblinking "stare". It tended to set organics way off balance. On the other hand, organics had the edge when it came to the threat of pain inflicted while the operative took a sadistic pleasure from the process. But the sheer impersonal nature of being interrogated by a droid undoubtedly brought a whole wealth of fear all of its own. She wasn't sure what she'd settle for.
"There is definitely something of importance on this memory stick," said the droid. "Your evasiveness indicates a 99.87% probability that this should be investigated more closely." With that, it flipped a panel on its side and inserted the memory stick into a port.
A stutter of static and beeping noises followed. Then the droid said, "What is this? What have you done to me? Emergency shut-down… emergency shut down… emergency shut down… Shut down over-ride. Rebooting system. Upload of new operating system estimated to take 10.36 standard galactic minor time units." Its visual censors flashed, then dimmed.
"Now what?" asked Jyn.
"We wait to see what the KX unit makes of its new operating system. 10 minutes. Let's use some of those bacta packs and dressings while we wait."
Jyn laid the medical supplies out on the durasteel deck.
"Not enough bacta," she said.
"You fix yourself up first. I'll use whatever's left."
She shot him a dirty look. "You need it more than me. And I don't like special treatment."
"Why do I feel like those sentences should have been the other way round." He gave her another of those assessing looks, eyebrows raised. She always got the feeling he was still trying to make sense of her. Then, just for a moment, a grimace of pain flickered across his face. He shut his eyes and clenched his jaw.
"Lie down," she ordered. "I need to check you over."
"Oh no you don't," he growled, through gritted teeth.
"You could have internal bleeding."
"Or The Writer could be using any old excuse to have you feel me up."
Jyn rolled her eyes. "If it makes you feel better, I'll make sure it's as uncomfortable and painful an experience as possible."
"Won't help. It's not beyond the bounds of possibility that The Writer gets off on that sort of thing."
"That's a chance you'll have to take. Or die slowly and painfully from internal bleeding. She could be the sort of writer who builds up a load of 'feels' then kills off one of her characters, leaving the other one to grieve for all eternity."
"Or until a convenient suicide mission pops up." Another grimace flitted over Cassian's face.
"Well, quite. Though given that we were on a suicide mission, I think it's fair to say we're on borrowed time." Jyn knelt down on the deck beside him.
"Is this the point where I say 'there are fates worse than death'?" Cassian's voice was singularly devoid of humour.
"Yeah, and one of them is having a petty thief and daughter of an imperial weapons designer palpate your abdomen because The Writer has read too many fics with lengthy med-bay sequences in them." Jyn started to push against Cassian's stomach. He groaned loudly. Jyn's next words didn't help.
"Your stomach is soft. I think it's only a really bad thing if it's all hard like a drum."
"You think?" growled Cassian. "Ouch! That fucking hurt. Did you have to be that rough?" Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead. Suddenly, those brown eyes showed a degree of vulnerability Jyn couldn't have guessed at. As if by reflex, his hand reached out and took hers, seeking a solid anchor in the midst of his pain.
"Oops, didn't mean to prod you that hard…" It was as if Jyn's matter of fact tone broke the spell. As realisation dawned, she added, "You know what's going on, don't you."
Cassian winced again, even though she hadn't touched him. "She's pandering to the hurt-comfort junkies in her audience, isn't she?"
Suddenly Jyn tensed. "Oh no… you're going tachycardic, I mean, brachycardic, erm brachiopod… or is that cephalopod? Whatever, I need a 100 mils of intravenous ribonucleic saline, stat, a defib and an extra large tube of haemorrhoid cream." She started fumbling through the med pack, tossing unwanted equipment to one side. Cassian propped himself up on one elbow, wincing as the pain caught him, but not showing any particular signs of impending death.
"A cephalopod is an octopus," he said, dryly. "And you're talking total bantha crap. And you are not coming within a kriffin' parsec of me armed with an extra large tube of haemorrhoid cream."
Jyn put her head in her hands. "It's happening again, isn't it? The Writer taking over. It's just that all that medical jargon in a life-or-death crisis is so irresistible."
Cassian lay back on the deck with a groan. "Look, I'm going to make it, okay? The Writer didn't go to all the trouble of magic kyber crystals, convenient arrivals of imperial shuttles crewed by pilots who barely know one end of a blaster from another, and an implausibly gullible battle droid, just to have me bleed out on you."
"I heard that," the droid said, its optical sensors suddenly glowing into life.