She wakes with a pounding in her head echoed by the throbbing of her ankle. For a few moments, she tries to remember what happened—did she twist her ankle during work at the prison camp?—until everything snaps back into place.
Her eyes fly open and she whips up in bed, taking in her surroundings in an instant: large room, many beds filled with people (medical, her brain supplies), calmer atmosphere than the last time she was conscious, a few people moving around, and someone sitting in a chair at the foot of her cot.
"Ah, you're awake at last, Jyn Erso," the monk greets her.
"Chirrut," she wheezes, voice hoarse from disuse, "how are you?"
"I am well indeed, little sister. The Force has looked after me."
He's dressed in a loose fitting cotton shirt and pants that hide his injury, but she knows it's there. "You mean the Force let you get shot in the side? That hardly seems like it looked after you."
He smiles. "Better the side than the head or the heart, no?"
She has no answer for that, so he continues.
"Baze would agree with you, though," he concedes. "In fact, I'm supposed to still be in bed because he made me promise, but he wasn't terribly specific, he just said 'Promise to stay here.' So I interpret 'here' as in the medical wing. He should be grateful I am so restrained; here could mean anywhere from this base to this moon."
She snorts at that, amused—which she's sure is what Chirrut is going for. "He won't be grateful, he'll be livid."
The monk leans forward conspiratorially and drops his voice to a whisper. "He'll only be mad if he catches me."
Jyn can't stop herself from grinning and immediately looks away in an attempt to squash it before anyone sees. It's pointless to look away, she knows, because a blind man can't see her smile and this particular man can probably sense it regardless of whether she's facing him. He still maintains he's not a Jedi, and if that's really true, then he's the most Force-sensitive non-Jedi she's ever heard of.
"You're certain you're all right?" she asks again.
"Yes," he nods confidently, "the wound is already healing."
"Baze is all right?"
"As grumbly as ever."
"And Bodhi?"
"Our pilot friend left a few hours ago, to go where I am not sure, but he seemed more settled than he has been in a long time, probably due to a certain someone." He gives her a knowing look that his blind eyes should not be able to make, but do.
She blushes. "I'm sure he's just had a lot to process and hasn't had the time to do that until now."
"Of course," the man agrees placatingly. "I do not know why I thought differently."
A silence stretches between them and Jyn tries to pick up the courage to ask about the one member of their crew she hasn't yet inquired about… she can't. She's too afraid of the answer.
It doesn't matter; Chirrut understands the cause of her sudden quiet. "No one will tell me the exact condition of the Captain, all they say is that he is still alive."
She lets out the breath she's been holding. "Why won't they tell you?"
"I think it has to do with my unknown status outside the chain of command and initial appearance of a vagrant monk. Though I just helped give the Alliance a chance," he winks at her, "no one quite knows what to do with me. Or Baze, for the same reasons. Or Rook, because it's hard for people to overcome twenty years of hate towards all things Empire and trust and embrace a former Imperial pilot as a fellow comrade in only a few hours. We all know people change, some people just take a little longer to recognize it."
Before she can speak to voice her concerns about Bodhi's safety, Chirrut preempts her. "Baze is staying by his side, just in case."
"Right, well. If no one will talk to you then they'd better bloody well talk to me," she declares vehemently, already moving to put her feet on the floor. She sees her bad ankle is wrapped and, while it feels better, she doesn't look forward to the pain it's promising to cause her the moment she puts weight on it. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Chirrut lean forward. She thinks he's probably about to attempt to stop her—because she can tell she really shouldn't be walking—so she holds out her hand towards him in a "stop" motion and closes her eyes. "You can't keep me from doing this, so there's no point in trying," she announces.
She's met with only silence.
When she opens her eyes, a long metal object hangs just front of her face. Turning to look down the length of said object, she follows it back to Chirrut, who holds it out to her, expression purposefully bland. It's a crutch. "I took the liberty of procuring a safer mode of transportation for you," he tells her mildly.
Smug bastard, she thinks fondly, grateful that he's not attempting to keep her here and instead is enabling her escape. She takes the crutch from him and he leans down to pick up the other from the foot of the bed and hand it to her as well. "Thank you," she murmurs once she's on her feet—or rather, on her foot—reaching out to clasp his shoulder.
He dismisses it. "You would have found a way."
"Yes, but it's nice to know I have a friend who made sure I didn't have to," she confesses warmly.
He smiles, squeezing her hand on his shoulder. "The Force is with you; do not let anyone block your path, for your path is clear."
She has no reply for that, so she thanks him once again before slowly moving away.
"The Force is with him, too!" the blind man calls out to her. "He still fights. He still keeps his promise."
Tears sting her eyes but she doesn't turn around and instead moves determinedly forward.
xxXxx
Finding someone with any knowledge of Cassian's location and status turns out to be more of a challenge than she'd anticipated. She keeps asking medical personnel—droids and humans alike—and keeps getting the same answer: "I don't know, talk to (insert name here)." So she goes to the next person and the next, maintaining politeness, until one person refers her back to a person Jyn's already spoken with, and her temper snaps.
"Listen here!" she interrupts the man as he gives her directions she doesn't want or need. "I have spent the better part of an hour stumping along on these damn difficult crutches in order to go from one corner of this medical facility to another to politely inquire where Captain Cassian Andor is and no one seems to know!" she growls. "Which seems pretty much impossible since you all are medics and he was wounded! So either you're all incompetent and truly don't know where a critically injured hero of the Alliance is, or you people are purposefully sending me on a wild chase with no intention of ever disclosing the information and I'm telling you now that I've had enough!"
When her tirade ends, the man in front of her gapes and begins babbling incoherently. They're currently in a hallway and she notices the traffic has totally stopped. All eyes stare at her with mixed expressions of fear, awe and surprise.
"Enough!" she yells, grabbing onto the man's shirt collar and pulling him close, disregarding her crutches which clatter to the floor. "If you don't take me to Cassian Andor right this minute I will set a rancor on you and once it's caught you, feed both of you to a sarlacc!"
The man's mouth snaps shut and a look of pure panic crosses his face, but he says nothing. Hm, she thinks. Maybe he really doesn't know…
Just then, a voice catches her attention. "You were on the shuttle with him, weren't you? You made it back from Scarif on Rogue One?"
She whips around to identify the voice—almost tripping over her crutches in the process—and immediately lays eyes on a tall man with short blond hair and blue eyes, dressed in clothes identifying him as a head medic. It takes her a moment to recognize him, but when she does she realizes he's the medic from yesterday. The one who first took Cassian out of the transport and made it clear he knows him.
"Yes, I was," she replies snippily, letting go of the shirt of the man she'd been berating and doing her best to curb her anger now that someone is finally talking to her beyond referring her to someone else.
He nods before looking at everyone else still frozen in the hallway. "Move along people, the show's over." Once the hall is mostly clear, he turns back to her. "Who are you?"
"Jyn Erso." Her patience is quickly thinning.
"Never heard of you," he tells her gruffly.
She huffs in frustration; this is getting her nowhere. "Daughter of Galen Erso, the man who made the Death Star and created a weakness in it for the Alliance to exploit," she retorts.
The man crosses his arms at her hostile tone. "I don't mean 'who are you' in a general sense," he clarifies. "I mean who are you to Andor?"
The question quells her rising fury and stuns her. She knows perfectly well who he is to her —he's become her anchor in this galaxy of chaos, he's her steadying presence, her light amidst darkness, he's her guardian and his arms have become her home—but who is she to Cassian?
Who is she to Cassian? A pest? A mission? A reluctant rebel? Nothing more than a comrade in arms useful for fighting against the Empire? She truly doesn't know, but she has to believe she's more than that to him… and if she's not, well then she will do everything in her power to remedy it. She finally settles on something she's pretty sure is true: "a friend."
The man raises his eyebrows, looking her up and down as if trying to place her. "Well if you are, you've not been his friend for very long. Andor doesn't allow himself the luxury of many friends and, as a result, I know all of them."
She falters for a moment. "Well, no, I haven't been his friend for very long, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong."
He stares at her for what feels like minutes, then turns and starts walking away. Jyn wants to scream in outrage and desperation and is about to tear into him when he calls over his shoulder, "well come on then."
She snatches up her crutches and scrambles after him as quickly as they allow, relief coursing through her. She draws level with him in the hallway, fighting to keep pace with his long legged stride. She doesn't think he's walking fast on purpose—intending to punish her or make it difficult for her with her ankle the way it is—it appears just to be his natural speed. She reckons it comes from his occupation as head medic; if he's not racing to a crisis, he's always needed somewhere and therefore moving as quickly as possible from point A to point B is a necessity.
"Thank you," she sighs breathlessly, grateful she's finally making progress.
He shrugs. "If you've only known him a few days and you're willing to spend so much time and energy ascertaining his condition and location and aren't above resorting to threats or physical violence, well, I figure he could use someone like you in his corner."
She gives him a moment to elaborate on that remark, but when he doesn't, she prompts, "Someone like me?"
"Yeah, someone who's passionate, won't take shit from anyone and—most importantly—who'll stick up for Andor." He glances at her, briefly making eye contact. "Like I said earlier, he doesn't have many friends—not because people don't like him, quite the opposite in fact—and while I don't know you yet, I'm getting the sense that you'll be a good one."
Jyn finds her face flushing at that, completely at a loss for words. Choosing to change the subject in order to avoid replying, she comments, "I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage."
"Oh? How's that?" he queries, intrigued.
"You know my name, but I don't know yours."
"Vorin Yevez. I'd shake your hand but it looks like they're full at the moment," he smiles and nods to her crutches.
"And you are a friend of Cassian's?" she asks curiously.
"I've known him a long time and wouldn't be here bossing people around and talking to your charming self if it weren't for him. I'd be nothing more than a handful of fading memories in my friends' minds and a red stain on the sand. So yeah, I'd say he's earned my friendship a hundred times over."
"That doesn't answer my question. I didn't ask if Cassian's a friend of yours, I asked if you're a friend of Cassian's," she states, mimicking his clarification from moments before. "Earlier," she puffs, breath getting increasingly shorter due to the prolonged use of the crutches at high speed, "you seemed to imply that it isn't that he has difficulty earning peoples' friendships, but that either people have difficulty earning his or that he doesn't allow people to become his friends… for some reason." She looks at him out of the corner of her eye, sees his mouth set in a thin line and knows she's onto something. "So, either you're a hypocrite for demanding to know how I'm a friend of Cassian's when you, yourself, are not, a liar for saying you're his friend when you're not, or you're deliberately being misleading and I've had more than my fill of people being misleading today so for Kriff's sake just give me a straight answer!"
He stops suddenly and turns to face her. His eyes are hard as he looks her up and down as if examining the strength of her resolve. She doesn't flinch under his scrutiny. She thinks he's about to ream her out for talking so boldly and crudely to him, but he breaks into a broad smile instead, immediately confusing her. "You're a sharp one all right," he compliments, "and you listen. Against my better judgement, I'm already starting to like you."
She rolls her eyes at his theatrics. "Well that's wonderful, so glad I have your approval. Now can we please stop dilly-dallying? My arms are aching and I'm honestly terrified that my friend is dying as I stand here trading pointless verbal jabs with you!"
"Of course," he acquiesces. "But we're not 'dilly-dallying,' as you so artfully put it, we're here." He gestures to a door behind her.
"What?" she demands, blood draining from her face.
"Andor," he replies patiently, "is in that private medical room. And he's not dying," he adds sympathetically, seeing her go white, "not at the moment anyway. He's far from out of the woods, but we have him pretty well stabilized for now. He's had one bacta tank treatment already, but due to the severity and extent of his injuries, he'll need several more. His blaster wound's responded well to the treatment—though it's not fully healed yet, either—but it's his massive amount of internal injuries that have us the most concerned and I've no idea how he obtained them. Theories abound from hand-to-hand death match, to struck multiple times by an AT-ST, AT-ACT or other heavily armored behemoth. Care to shed some light on the matter? I asked the rest of your shipmates and no one seemed to know."
She closes her eyes, her mind immediately flashing to the horrific moment when he'd been shot and had fallen. She'd thought he was dead. "He fell," she murmurs quietly, "three stories down a tower—"
"—But that doesn't really explain the intensity of the damage and various angles at which—"
"—striking metal beam after metal beam on his way down," she finishes coolly.
"Oh," Yevez exhales. "Well, that would do it," he acknowledges, voice uncharacteristically subdued. He clears his throat. "I won't keep you any longer, you're free to go in. You have unrestricted access, but don't let just anyone in there, the fewer people the better."
"There's restricted access?"
"Yes," he replies briskly before changing the subject. "Just a head's up, he's unconscious for the moment and we don't anticipate him waking anytime soon. Not for days, really." He pauses awkwardly for a moment, before clapping his hands. "Right, I'm off." And he turns tail and begins walking away.
Two of his comments stick out in her mind and they don't quite feel right… He said he'd already asked my shipmates, meaning he already knew their connection to me, and if there's restricted access then how am I already on the unrestricted list unless… "Wait!" she shouts after him. "You knew who I was all along?"
His laugh echoes down the hallway as he turns to face her, now walking backwards. "Of course! Everyone knows who you are now. You and all of Rogue One are heroes!"
"Then what was with all the cloak and dagger?!" she seethes, furious that he—and all of the medical personnel presumably following his orders—had wasted an hour of her time, an hour that could have been spent at Cassian's side.
"Honestly? I wanted to make sure you wouldn't just give up! I needed to see how far your determination and loyalty to him would take you! It was a test and you passed!" And then he's gone, disappeared around a corner.
She yells curses after him, until she knows he's long been out of ear shot. Then, not wasting anymore time, she turns and places her hand on the keypad. With a quiet hiss, the door slides open.
.
.
.
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A.N. That was probably a little cruel of Yevez, but hey, Cassian deserves someone who will look out for him.
Hope you enjoyed the chapter!