-Chapter Seven-
Jyn found his clothes in a cupboard and let him dress with her back turned. Cassian thought the false modesty was a little unnecessary. Yes, it had been six years, but she'd already seen, touched, and used her mouth on nearly every inch of his anatomy.
Kriff. Just the knowledge that Jyn was the same woman nearly made pulling his pants on really difficult.
"Your shirt was toast," she told him over her shoulder. "And the Imp uniform pants got tossed. Mon Mothma had me and Bodhi evacuate your quarters. And don't worry, I got the data sticks from under your desk and the packet out of the toilet tank."
He flushed a little at the memory of what was in there. Silly, sentimental junk. Had she even looked at it? Cassian covered his embarrassment by asking, "Did you get the data stick out of the bedframe?"
"No, I didn't-" She turned, looking alarmed, then saw him smirking. "You're messing with me."
The smirk blossomed into a full grin at her scowl. "A little. I'm sure you got everything."
"What's in the data sticks? Top secret spy stuff?"
He finished tucking his shirt into his pants. "No. One is a backup of Kay's programming when I first reprogrammed him. The other is a backup of his data banks before we left for Scarif. But they'll only work on another security droid and I can't guarantee the personality will be the same."
"Oh. I'm really sorry about Kaytoo. I know he was your friend."
Cassian sighed, letting himself feel the grief for a long moment. "He was my best friend. It might seem silly, having a droid as a best friend."
"No. It doesn't. Kaytoo was… I'd even go so far as to say he was sentient. He was an artificial intelligence but he thought for himself and he really cared about you."
She shifted to look at him, now that he was mostly dressed. "Did you have him when we met?"
"No. I had him about three years."
He eyed the boots he'd been supplied with. They weren't the ones he'd left on Rogue One, after changing into the uniform, with their hidden pocket for his picks. He'd loved those boots. And the jacket he'd left behind.
"Bodhi found the boots," she told him. "He needed clothes, and some people donated things. There's also a big bin of stuff patients leave behind. I grabbed a few things. I'm not down to one measly set of clothes anymore. Oh, I made sure to bring you your leather jacket. The blue coat is with the rest of your belongings, wherever those got stored."
"Thank you."
Cassian left off his belt and holster, picked up the cane Jyn held out. "A cane?"
"Keep the weight off your leg until you've got your strength back. I needed it for a couple days because of my hip injury." She gestured to his leg. "Since your right leg was hurt, use it in your left hand. Which is convenient. You can limp along and still shoot people."
He snorted and Jyn flashed a grin. As before, he noticed that it didn't quite reach her eyes. "What's wrong, Jyn?"
Her back stiffened a little, eyes going wary, all the little tells of her shields going up. He knew her well now.
"What makes you think there's something wrong?"
"For one, you're across the room. For another, you've been babbling, and I've never known you to."
"You've only known me a grand total of three weeks, Cassian."
He gave her the look it deserved.
She dropped her gaze to her hands. "There's something I should tell you. It didn't matter before, because I was just going to help you get to Saw. And everything else happened so fast… Then on Scarif, it…"
Using the cane, Cassian crossed over to sit beside her. "But it matters now?"
"Oh, yes," she sighed. "It matters a lot now."
"What is it?"
She clenched her hands in her lap. He noticed she wasn't wearing her half-finger gloves. "I… I have a child, Cassian."
If he hadn't been sitting, he'd have toppled over. Debt to a Hutt or something wouldn't have surprised him. But this-
"What?" he asked, but it came out strangled. "A- What?"
Jyn huffed and leaned forward, elbows on her knees, and ran her hands over her face. "I have a daughter. She's five. She was kidnapped a little over two years ago and sold to the governor of Corulag as an adopted child. That's what I was doing when I was arrested. I'm not perfect. I've done things, illegal things. But yes, I resisted arrest, of course I resisted. I was trying to get my daughter."
Cassian's head was full of a strange buzzing. None of his digging had found any hint of a child.
She held something in front of his face. He blinked and focused on the object. It was a cheap locket, the gold coloured plating worn away to the dull grey metal underneath. It was open, a thin braid of dark hair coiled inside.
"This is all I have of her," she whispered. "I lost all the holos, everything, when they arrested me. It took all my skill to smuggle my necklace and this into prison. I had a holochip in it, but I knew they'd scan for that, so I… had to let it go."
For some reason, she set it in his hand. He realised she was trusting him with her most precious belonging, and he held it for a moment before carefully closing it and handing it back.
"A daughter," he said.
She nodded.
"Does this mean you're leaving?" Unspoken was the thought, Leaving me.
Jyn shrugged, wouldn't meet his eyes. "I don't know. I… I don't have anywhere else, but I don't even have her. I told Leia, it just sort of came out. She says she'll help. But the Rebellion isn't a place to raise a child."
"Of course we'll get her," Cassian said. "We got into Scarif to get the Death Star plans. One child from a house on Corulag isn't a problem."
She made a skeptical sound but didn't speak.
Part of Cassian was still reeling from this revelation. He hadn't allowed himself to see any future with her except for a few moments before he passed out on the shuttle. And now that was all shot to hell. Of course she couldn't stay and raise a child in the Rebellion. She could, but wouldn't, rather. Not after what she'd been through as a child soldier. And he couldn't ask it of her, even if his heart ached at the thought of letting her go just as he'd-
He cut that thought off viciously, tamped it down. Later. He'd think about it later.
"Tell me about her."
Jyn sighed, and her shoulders slumped a little. He wanted to reach for her, but that ease they'd had on Scarif was gone, and he felt they were suddenly back to the beginning, when she'd been dragged in cuffs into the war room on Yavin.
"Her name is Auren. They're calling her Lainey Snopps now. Such an ugly name. I was Nari McVee when I had her, so her birth name is Auren McVee. I had her on Alderaan. Not intentionally, that's just where I'd ended up. She was born nearly a month early. When she was a few months old, we moved to Kattada. I got work there, for a childless Togruta couple who let me take her to work with me. When Auren was three, I…"
Haltingly, slower than she had with Leia, she told him about the day she'd lost Auren. "I think they thought they'd killed me. It wasn't a stun shot, but he only grazed me. I fell and hit my head. When I woke up, she was gone. The authorities didn't care at all. Said it was what happens when you work for people who run a chop shop. They didn't run one, they just owed money to the wrong people, but…"
"It was Kattada," he murmured. "I've been. Leia was there a year ago, actually. She knew the woman who ruled the planet."
"She didn't say anything when I mentioned it."
He shrugged. "We'll get her, Jyn. As soon as I have my strength back, we'll go get your daughter."
"Thank you," she whispered. "Cassian, I…"
Then she shook her head. "Thank you."
She'd intended to tell him the truth about Auren, but seeing his face when she'd told him she had a child had made her hesitate. Cassian had looked both stunned and dismayed.
He was a spy, an assassin, Force knew what else for the Rebellion. His lifestyle wasn't geared towards family and children. She'd known that before she'd told him, but she'd hoped…
Leaning her head against the wall in the shower stall, she made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. It was just her luck. She'd finally found someone who wanted her, or at least seemed to, someone she actually trusted and cared for, and it was a man who wasn't suited to fatherhood. And she hadn't even told him the most important part, either.
Jyn closed her eyes, remembering those moments on the turbolift, back on Scarif. She'd known they were about to die, with no way off the planet. He had, too. So they'd given in, even just briefly.
Everything they'd been through had created an intense connection, an artificially accelerated relationship. Jyn knew that part of her feelings for him were just that, but then she'd remember that he'd come back for her, again and again, and he'd looked at her like she was the only thing in his universe.
That it was Cassian she'd fallen for, that it was he who had fathered her child, and that she couldn't have, seemed more cruel than the possibility of dying on Scarif. Finding the possibility of love, tying it to her child, and then taking it away? If all was, as Chirrut insisted, as the Force willed it, then the Force could kriff itself with Skywalker's lightsaber.
Chirrut woke the next day. He'd been in bacta long enough that all he suffered now was muscle weakness from days of being suspended in the bacteria-laden fluids, getting nutrients through a tube. But he was surprisingly chipper for his ordeal.
Jyn was happy that he'd pulled through. He'd been kind to her and she genuinely liked the older man. She couldn't imagine Baze without him, either.
"Baze tells me that the Death Star is destroyed," Chirrut said, as she sat by his bed.
"It is. I'm told it was a very big explosion. A farmboy from Tatooine got the shot in. His name is Luke Skywalker. I've only met him once, but he looks like he's about fifteen and he's just… so shiny."
"In the Force?" Chirrut asked.
"He was apparently training to be a Jedi, so maybe. I meant in that he's new, and really damned naïve." Jyn sighed. "He's nineteen, never been off his home planet, gets in the cockpit of an X-Wing for the first time and blows up the kriffing Death Star with his stanged targeting computer off."
Chirrut grinned at that. "A Jedi? Tell me more."
"I don't know any more than that, but I can ask the princess to introduce you."
The older man's brows lifted. "Princess?"
"Princess Leia Organa. She's- She was Senator Organa's daughter. Did anyone tell you about Alderaan?"
Chirrut's face turned grim. "Yes. Baze told me."
"Bail Organa was married to the queen of Alderaan. Leia is their daughter." Leia had come back twice to talk to Jyn, though she wasn't sure why. Maybe it was because they'd both lost their fathers to the Empire, to the abomination of the Death Star. Maybe it was that Jyn was the only female near Leia's age. She didn't know, but oddly didn't mind it. "They made Leia watch as they blew it up. She's taken his place on the council. She isn't as much of a pacifist as he was. Actually, she asked if I'd like to join her for a girls' night and go to the shooting range aboard Home One when we meet up with it."
He chuckled. "You would do well to befriend her, I think."
"Maybe."
"You hesitate. Why?"
The door opened and Baze entered, with Bodhi. Bodhi had been spending more time with Baze, connecting over the loss of Jedha, she supposed.
She sighed. Actually, this was a good time to tell them. "I don't think I'm going to stay with the Rebellion."
Baze's brows nearly met his hairline. "Did something happen between you and the captain?"
She started to shake her head, then stopped. "Not in the way you think. I… I have a daughter."
Bodhi's mouth dropped open. "What?"
Jyn rolled her eyes. "Why does everyone keep doing that? Yes. I have a daughter. Had. She was taken from me. I was trying to get her back when I was sent to Wobani."
"Where is she?" Chirrut asked.
"Corulag. She was illegally adopted by the Imperial governor there."
Baze folded his arms across his wide chest. "Then we're going to Corulag as soon as Chirrut can walk."
Jyn's eyes widened. "I can't ask that of you."
"You are not," Chirrut told her firmly. "You are family, Jyn. That makes your child family. We will help you get her back."
"Yeah," Bodhi said, and there was no hesitation in his voice, no stutter.
She looked from face to face, and felt tears well up in her eyes. She'd been alone so long, and done bad things. How did she end up with such friends?
It almost-almost-made up for the expression on Cassian's face that had crushed her hopes.
