-Chapter Twelve-

Their race through the lavish garden and towards the front culminated in finding Luke Skywalker, lightsaber in hand, pointing it at the throat of the governor, Baze and Chirrut nearby. There were dead stormtroopers everywhere.

The man's wife stood beside him, clutching her husband's arm. She cried out when she saw Auren. "They're taking my baby!"

To Cassian's surprise, Auren yelled, "You're not my mama!"

He looked at Jyn, unable to hide his amusement. "She's yours, alright."

Suddenly, a shadow covered the entire front courtyard and its ridiculous lawn. Everyone looked up and then scattered as the Millennium Falcon came in to land. The ramp lowered and Princess Leia Organa descended.

"I thought we were meeting at the safe house," Jyn said.

"I guess not," Cassian said.

Leia marched right up to the governor, though she was a full foot shorter. "Governor Snopps."

"Princess Leia. There's a price on your head. Why are you and these- these ruffians here to kidnap our daughter, again?"

Jyn tried to move forward, but Cassian stopped her.

"She's not your daughter," Leia said. "She was kidnapped and sold to you. I'm simply rescuing a citizen of Alderaan."

Cassian said, "Let's get on the ship."

Snopps looked over at Jyn and Cassian, standing there with Auren. He looked from the girl to them, then back. He said, "Oh. I see."

"Zafiel, you can't let them take her!"

The man turned his wife to look at the same family. "Look at them, Taalah! She's clearly theirs."

He came down the front steps and approached. Cassian raised his blaster and pointed it straight at Snopps's face, the smile falling from his own.

"Touch my daughter and I will kill you where you stand," he said, voice absolutely devoid of emotion.

The Imperial folded his hands behind his back. He turned a cold look on Jyn, clearly recognising her through the disguise now.

"We were informed she was an orphan when we adopted her. My apologies, Ms Hallik, for having you imprisoned when you came for her last time. I thought it was an attempt on my life."

"You knew I was after her!" Jyn spat. "I saw her. She knew me and she called for me and you tried to have me sentenced to death!"

"You have me at a disadvantage, in any case. Take the child. I care enough for her that I'll give you a head start."

"No," Cassian said. "You won't. Jyn, take Auren to the ship."

Eyes wide, Jyn scooped Auren out of his arms and ran for the Falcon. The moment she was up the ramp and out of sight, Cassian pulled the trigger.

The man's wife started screaming as Snopps fell with a thump to the blue-green grass.

With no remorse whatsoever, he stepped over the body and went up the ramp, followed by Leia, Luke, and Chirrut. Chewie with his bowcaster and Baze with his cannon were the last to board.

"You didn't need to kill him," Luke said.

Cassian stopped, turning to look at the boy as the ship lifted off. His voice was ice. "You blew up the Death Star and killed far, far more Imperials than I have in my entire career. You have no right to speak of needful death to me."

Turning on one boot heel, he stalked down the corridor to the lounge, where he found Jyn sitting near the medical station, Auren on her lap, just holding her.

He knelt beside them. For a moment, all he could do was stare. He had a daughter. How did he have a child?!

"You could have told me," he said gently, still unable to take his eyes off of Auren. Now that he had the time, he drank in every detail: the dark curls, the smattering of freckles across her skin that was the same tone as his, the arch of her brows that echoed his. The round chin was Jyn's. But her eyes… Jyn had told him that she had his eyes, hadn't she? He just hadn't listened.

"How?" Jyn asked in a whisper. "How would I have told you?"

Cassian didn't have an answer to that. "She's beautiful."

Her eyes filled with tears as she looked at their daughter. "Yes. She is."

Auren looked spooked by everything that had happened, grip tight on her toy. Her eyes searched his face. "Are you really my papa?"

"I am," he said.

She launched herself off Jyn's lap and into his arms. Muffled against Cassian's neck, she told him, "I missed Mama. I knew they weren't my mama and papa 'cause I 'membered Mama. She came and found me but they took her away."

"I'm here now," Jyn said. "And no one will ever take you from us again."


Baze and Chirrut, on a "prompting from the Force", had cleared the safe house of all their belongings and had also convinced Han and Bodhi to bring the Falcon. It had been splashier than Cassian had wanted, but he'd acknowledged the wisdom of it quickly.

Auren had taken to Cassian immediately, probably because they'd told her he was her father. Everyone else, though, the girl was leery of, so Jyn first disposed of the annoying contact lenses and then had retreated here, to the aft crew cabin, and just held her daughter. After a few minutes, the child had, overwhelmed by everything, begun to cry, and had fallen asleep about the time Jyn had felt the ship make the jump to lightspeed.

She looked up when the door opened and Cassian slipped into the cabin. She lay on her side on the bottom bunk, Auren sound asleep in her arms, a thumb in her mouth and the other small hand fisted in her mother's shirt.

He stood watching them for a long moment, hesitating, expression open and full of uncertainty. Jyn patted the space beside her, though it wasn't wide. He smiled and removed his boots before stretching out beside her, their child between them.

"Are you mad?" she asked in a whisper. "That I didn't tell you?"

He shook his head, eyes fixed on the little girl. "No. I was… I was upset that you'd never mentioned having a child, but then, what reason did you have to trust me with that until Scarif?"

His rough fingers ghosted over Auren's hair. His voice was just as soft as hers, just as reluctant to wake their daughter as she. His face was full of wonder, and it made him all the more beautiful to her.

"I thought you'd be angry."

"I'm not. Not at all. I thought… When you said you had a child, it didn't even occur to me that she could be mine. I thought that I had to compete with some unknown man who'd been in your life."

She huffed a laugh, though the caution she felt still hurt. "I couldn't figure out how to tell you. I didn't know if you'd want her, want us. When I first told you, you seemed so unhappy. And we still barely know each other, Cassian. How could I just drop that on you?"

He nodded. Finally, he looked from Auren to her. "The moment I saw her, I knew. And I understand."

"Do you?"

Cassian's expression turned serious. "I do. There wasn't a time or place for you to tell me, before Scarif. We weren't anything to each other then, really. And when we realised we'd met before, we were about to die."

She snorted. "I debated so much in the lift whether I should tell you before you died, so that you knew about her, or if I should keep it to myself so that you didn't have one more burden. Then Baze found us and you collapsed and… I couldn't tell you right after you came out of the coma, and it just… got harder and harder to say it."

Again, he nodded. "I understand. Really. And now I know why you looked at me that way, when I said knowing you were Tanith didn't change anything for me. It changed everything."

His hand moved from stroking Auren's hair to run through her own. She couldn't suppress a shiver at his touch.

"I never considered fatherhood until you told me you had a child," he said, after several long moments just watching her. "I thought that… you'd only kissed me because we were going to die, and that you wouldn't want me, with the things I've done, as a father figure to your daughter. Why would you want me? I know nothing of children and too much of death."

She bit her lip, thoughts going back to the way he'd looked at her just before leaning in. "Who else could I possibly want?" she asked him. "Yes, I thought we were going to die, but that's not why I kissed you."

Something shifted behind his eyes, and Jyn's pulse leapt in response. "And why did you?" Cassian asked, voice turned husky.

"Same reason I did the first time," she whispered. "Because I wanted to."

His fingertips stroked along her jaw on their way forward, and he cupped her cheek in one large hand, his thumb brushing over her lips. "Jyn, I haven't been a good man-"

She shook her head. "Don't, Cassian. Don't go there. I think you're good. War is hard, and it puts us all in unfavourable circumstances. We do what we have to."

"I killed him," he whispered, "Snopps. And I don't regret it. The others, I do, but not him. He threatened you, and her."

"You saved me the trouble," she muttered harshly.

Auren stirred in her arms. Jyn stilled, breath bated, until the child had sunk back into sleep.

"He took her from us, kept her from us," she told Cassian. "He wanted me dead. And yes, he threatened to come after us. We both know he wouldn't have stopped. You did what was necessary and I don't care."

She didn't. Jyn would have killed everyone in that kriffing compound if it took that to get Auren back.

With Cassian so close, the resemblance between father and daughter was breathtaking. She hadn't begun to catalogue all the changes in Auren, in the two years she'd missed, but oh, she looked so like him. If he left, if he chose not to be part of this, she would never be able to look at her daughter and not miss him desperately.

His gaze moved to her mouth, and her breath caught. His expression was exactly the same as in the turbolift on Scarif, the way he'd looked at her that had made her tremble more than facing a madman unarmed.

He shifted, leaning forward.

The cabin door opened and Bodhi stuck his head in. "Leia wanted to know- Oh, sorry!"

Disturbed by the noise, Auren woke with a startled cry. Jyn mentally sighed and kissed her forehead. "It's alright, baby," she murmured. "It's just Uncle Bodhi."

Bodhi's dark eyes flicked rapidly between the three of them. "I'll, uh… Tell Leia you're busy."

Cassian groaned as Bodhi left, somewhere between amusement and frustration. "We'll finish this conversation later, yeah?"

"Definitely."

Auren heaved a sigh the way children do, burrowing closer to Jyn. Cassian watched her for a moment, then folded his arm under his head.

"I don't know about you, but I haven't slept well in days," he told her.

"Me, either."

In silent mutual agreement, they settled in. Cassian wrapped his arm around Jyn and Auren, his face close to Jyn's on the pillow. After a moment, she moved her hand from Auren's back to his chest.

Later, she'd reflect that it was some of the best sleep she'd had in years.


Something jabbing him in the face woke Cassian with a start and a snort of surprise. He blinked in the dark of the cabin and the poke came again. Incongruously, he realised it was a small finger poking his cheek.

"Papa? I haffa go potty."

It took him a full five seconds for him to remember that she meant him. She wanted him to help her to the 'fresher? Jyn would make more sense. But then, he was in her way.

"Alright, nena."

Cassian rolled off the bunk and lifted Auren in his arms. The refresher (or as Han called it, the head), was right next door, and fortunately unoccupied then. With the number of people aboard, it was actually fairly good odds that someone would be in there at any given time.

He tried not to think about the flight to Scarif, with nearly thirty men, one woman, and a droid crammed into a cargo shuttle with one minuscule 'fresher for nearly two days.

The toilet, he quickly realised, was too high up for her to reach by herself, sized as it was for tall men and a two-plus-metre Wookiee. Cassian had never felt more awkward in his life than he did in helping his five-year-old daughter, who he'd only known a number of hours, up to the toilet so she could pee.

He tactfully looked elsewhere as she did her business, some flimsi in his hand waiting because she couldn't reach that, either.

"You talk funny," Auren said, apropos of nothing.

Cassian supposed that to her, he would sound odd. Her own accent was perfectly Imperial, like Jyn's. "I do, huh? That's because I'm from Fest."

"Where zat?"

"A very long way from here. It's a very cold planet, covered in snow."

She waggled a hand for the flimsi and he passed it over. When she was done, she hopped down and flushed. He had to help her up again to wash her hands.

He made a note to equip their house with step stools. And yes, there would be a house, he decided. Like he'd known he would follow Jyn to Scarif and to certain death, he knew, too, that this was what happened next. It felt right.

"Papa?"

"Yes, pequeña?"

She blinked up at him. "What's that mean?"

"It means 'little one'."

"Oh. Why were you gone?"

Cassian scooped her back up to carry her back to the cabin. "Gone?"

"Before. When it was me and Mama."

Before she was taken, he took that to mean. "My work used to take me away for a long time. Sometimes a very long time."

"What's your work?"

Cassian paused in the corridor, trying to find the words. He couldn't tell her the truth, but lying outright felt wrong. "There are bad people out there. Like the ones who took you from your mamá-"

"An' the people who said they were my mama and papa!" Auren chimed in. "I 'membered Mama always."

"I guess they were bad people, too." He wasn't going to tell her he'd shot Zafiel Snopps in the face and taken most of the man's head off. "But it was my job to stop bad people from hurting other people, to find them and make them stop."

She scrunched up her face. "Like time out?"

He had a vague recollection of the concept. He'd only been a little older than her when he'd lost his own papá, and his mother… "Sort of."

"Oh."

Cassian was relieved that she seemed to accept that and abandoned the line of questioning. Then she asked, "You said usedta. Are you gonna live with me and Mama now?"

"I hope so, nena."

"What's that mean?"

"It means you're my girl." He ran his fingers through her dark curls, heart suddenly aching for everything he'd missed. He had so many questions for Jyn. There were no baby holos, nothing. Just the lock of hair Jyn had managed to keep in that locket.

Auren reached up and touched his face, pushing at his frown with her fingers. "Don't be sad, Papa."

"I'm not. I'm actually very happy. Let's get you back to bed, huh?"

Jyn stirred as Auren dove into the bunk and burrowed up next to her. Cassian was a little more reserved in his approach.

"Refresher," he said, when Jyn gave him a sleepy, quizzical look.

"Ah. Be glad you missed the diaper changes."

He reached over Auren to touch Jyn's arm. "I'm not," he whispered. "I wish I'd been there. And I'll be here for the rest of it. I said I was with you all the way. I still mean that."

She reached up and caught his hand, but didn't speak.

Auren rolled over, wiggling until she faced him, and grabbed the front of his shirt like she had her mother's earlier, eyes closed and thumb firmly in her mouth. It floored him that she had so readily accepted him.

"You're thinking awfully hard, there," Jyn observed in a whisper.

"I don't deserve this, Jyn," he said. "Not you, not her."

"Hey. None of that. Who you were doesn't matter. Who you are from here does."

Cassian nodded. It still overwhelmed him. He'd gone in such a short time from being ready to die, knowing he had nothing and no one save her at his side as certain death approached, to having a child, a flesh and blood extension of himself that mucked around in the dirt wearing expensive dresses and swore in Huttese at nanny droids.

"I never thought-"

And trying to voice it, he understood also why Jyn had struggled to tell him. The reality of Auren was sublime.

Mine, he thought, as he traced the curve of one small ear. I made this, Jyn and I.

"Jyn, I …"

She shook her head. "We'll talk in the morning, Cassian. Go back to sleep."

He sighed. "Yeah. Yeah. Okay."

But he fell asleep with her hand in his, and for once, he didn't have nightmares.