Chapter 36: Her Unforgotten Memory

Punch after punch.

Blow after blow.

Fist after fist.

Groan after groan.

Scream after scream.

Pain after pain.

Suffering after suffering.

That was how it was for Jyn and Cassian in the brig of the Empire's Death Star II for the past couple of hours. Jyn and Cassian were helpless, since they were the only Rebels onboard the Imperial station with their wrists & ankles in tight restraints. A couple of Stormtroopers were standing in front of Jyn and Cassian inflicting as much pain and damage to them as they could. They used a wide range of torture weapons, such as melee batons, stun rods, using the stock butt of their blasters, their fists, slaps to the cheeks, droids, and other things. Jyn and Cassian were basically sitting ducks that had the life being drained from them. They were being held in the space station against their will.

Jyn spat her blood from her mouth, for blood was bleeding from her lips, and they stained her teeth. Her head hung down as the Stormtrooper took a moment to recover from delivering a long series of punches and kicks to her. Jyn breathes rapidly to gasp for air, and Cassian, on the other hand, felt angrier the more he watched Jyn suffer physically. He ignored every bit of physical pain that he endured from the Stormtrooper that was beating him. He could feel his lips pressing against each other, because his anger started to conquer him, though he knew he was not able to move & retaliate because of the restraints.

The Stormtrooper in front of Jyn finally speaks. "We could go on all day if you'd like."

After gasping in enough air, Jyn raises her head to look at her Stormtrooper with groggy-looking eyes and speaks back at him. "Y-Y-You…..you're all…." Jyn gulps to swallow, then she coughs. Then she continues to finish. "…..You're all monsters." She mutters miserably, but a hint of her true angered self could be sensed in her words by Cassian, since he knew her too well already.

The Stormtrooper punches Jyn in the face again. "Think what you want. You are the scums that this galaxy doesn't need." The Stormtrooper says harshly.

Cassian glares at Jyn's Stormtrooper angrily and shakes his head slowly. "I hope you die with your words, psychopathic jerk."

The Stormtroopers both proceed to beat Cassian, and Cassian groans in pain with each punch as Jyn watches helplessly, with anger flowing in each vein in her body. With each punch Cassian sustained, Jyn's teeth pressed against each other harder in anger. She felt so weak, so miserable, so humiliated, and so helpless. She wondered how much longer she and Cassian could take all this pain, and how much longer until something happens.

Suddenly, Jyn realizes something. This imprisonment, this torture, it all brought back terrible memories: terrible memories of being a prisoner in her late teens and up to the point until she was recruited into the Rebellion by K-2SO and Cassian. She felt this misery in the labor prison camp on Wobani 2 years ago, and after believing she was going to live torture-free & as a freed woman, she realized she is wrong. Though she hoped this was temporary. She faced the pains and terrors of being a prisoner before, and she was used to it because she knew her way around prisons. Prison is what created Jyn's reckless, aggressive, undisciplined behavior, aside from inheriting the trait from her mother, Lyra.

When the door of the cell opens, another Stormtrooper enters holding Jyn's lightsaber, which causes her to eye it immediately. Then, the two Stormtroopers beating Cassian stop the assault on him. The Stormtrooper with Jyn's lightsaber speaks. "Take a load at this thing! She can't have it back anymore! Let's see how she likes it on the other end of the blade!" He says as the other two Stormtroopers start laughing.

Jyn and Cassian glare at the three Stormtroopers laughing at them. They felt so angered and they wanted to fight back at them for what all the torture and the pain. Jyn wished something happened right now that disrupted these Stormtroopers.

And she wished right.

The Death Star II suddenly shakes violently like an earthquake. There are loud explosions and rumbling noises coming from the surface of the space station. To Jyn, it sounds like the droppings of ground bombs and laser cannons from starfighters. And because of the powerful quakes, this causes the Stormtroopers to stumble onto the floor and look around on confusion, and this also causes one of the Stormtroopers holding Jyn's lightsaber to drop it, and it rolls along the floor until it stops at Jyn's feet. Cassian's eyes widen as he sees the lightsaber at Jyn's feet and he looks at her to try to signal her to grab it.

And Jyn is already working on it: she closes her eyes to focus on the power of the Force that is housed inside her soul. Though it was hard at first, she is in a battle with the Force. In a quick second, she feels the restraints on her wrists and ankles unlock, much to her relief. Upon freeing herself from captivity, Jyn Force-grabs her lightsaber by reaching out to it, and it pulls instantly to her grasp. She activates the purple plasma blade, and she proceeds to strike down the three torturers dressed in white armor. Jyn then proceeds to unlock the restraints on Cassian, much to his astonishment and relief.

As she frees him, Cassian places a hand on her bloody bruised cheek, and they look at each other in the eyes for a long moment.

"We need to get out of here." Cassian tells Jyn. She nods in agreement as she deactivates her lightsaber and keeps it held in her hand. Cassian grabs her by the wrist and pulls her along with him out of their cell and into the hallway of the brig. In there was a window that had Endor in view, and they see that TIE fighters, X-Wings, and Y-Wings were occupying the airspace above the surface of the Death Star II. Green and red laser bolts fly everywhere as Imperial anti-aircraft blaster turrets go off.

"The Rebellion is here!" Jyn says, surprised. "They have probably shut down the station's shield by now." She says to Cassian, turning to face him to do so.

Cassian nods down at her. "Then it won't be long until this place blows to smithereens and we die along with it. We need to hurry!" He warns as he pulls Jyn along with him, exiting the brig and finally coming to a hallway. Upon appearing in the main corridors of the Death Star II, the first thing Jyn and Cassian see in front of them were Stormtroopers rushing up & down the halls, for they were getting into their defense stations against the attacking Rebel X-Wings and Y-Wings. Loud distressed chatters and yells emitted everywhere: it is so chaotic that most of the Imperials are too busy to even notice that Jyn and Cassian had escaped from their prison cell. After looking around swiftly and under pressure, Cassian finally spots a sign o the wall that pointed in the direction that he was looking for.

"Look! The escape pods are in the lower floors!" Cassian yells over the loud chatter of Imperials as he points at the sign that had an arrow pointing in the direction where an elevator was. "Come on!" Cassian says as he pulls Jyn along, and so she just follows him from behind.

Upon reaching the elevator, the door opens immediately much to Jyn & Cassian's convenience, but their luck is now on the low, because a group of Stormtroopers led by an officer were present in the elevator, and they were face-to-face with the Rebel escapees: Jyn and Cassian. The two Rogue One members felt their hearts sink the moment their eyes came in direct contact with the Imperial faces.

"Hey! It's the prisoners!" One of the Stormtroopers says.

Suddenly, using her quick, aggressive reflexes, Jyn turns on her purple lightsaber and immediately takes down all the Imperials in the elevator in the blink of an eye: plasma energy sliced through armor & flesh like a silver knife through butter. Then, Jyn deactivates her lightsaber.

However, this killing causes some Imperial heads to turn toward the elevator, causing Jyn and Cassian to finally be sighted in the midst of the confusion & loud commotions throughout every hallway in the Death Star II. Cassian grunts in frustration as he grabs Jyn by the shoulders and pulls her along into the elevator with him. "Damn!" Cassian curses.

A Stormtrooper points his blaster at the elevator. "The prisoners are escaping! Get them!" He warns to his comrades as a group of Stormtroopers come to his assistance, and they start firing blasters at Jyn & Cassian.

But Cassian quickly closes the elevator before the blaster bolts could reach the interior of it, and instead hitting the metal door. Jyn & Cassian both sigh in relief as they both lean against the wall, waiting for the elevator to reach the lower floor where the escape pods were anchored. After catching their breaths for a while, Jyn eventually faces Cassian, looking up at him.

"B-But Cassian….what about Luke?" She asks.

Cassian looks down at the green pair of stardust-filled eyes in front of him. Though, he wanted to answer her with what she wanted, he knew they had to go with his decision. "Luke can take care of himself. He's a self-trained Jedi." He assures her.

Jyn frowns at him. "But…"

"Jyn!" Cassian raises his voice at her, causing Jyn to stop talking and look up at him with puppy eyes. "Let's worry about us." The Captain orders his Sergeant. Feeling defeated, and feeling that he is right after all, Jyn nods slowly as she turns away from Cassian. They both wait until the elevator comes to a stop and brings them to the chamber where the escape pods were.

When the elevator door opens, a single technician is already in the pod chamber apparently doing some maintenance checks on the pods, though he immediately spots Jyn & Cassian coming out of the elevator. He points at them. "Hey! What are you doing here!?" The Imperial technician exclaims. But in the blink of an eye, Jyn activates her purple lightsaber and strikes him down before deactivating it once again.

Cassian looks around at the several escape pods in the chamber. "All of them are down, but that one still works!" He says to Jyn when he points at an open escape pod that is completely maintained and in functional condition. The two of them enter the pod before Cassian pushes a button near the hatch to close it. And, without hesitating, Cassian immediately dashes towards the controls and activates the pod, and then he begins to release the lock that is anchoring the escape pod in the dock.

However, just as the pod's locks are being released, Jyn & Cassian both gasp and turn their attentions to the pod's hatch window when a loud banging sound occurs in front of it. They both see that Orson Krennic appears, banging on the hatch's window with anger. They can sense the anger and the fury in Krennic's blood, because they can see the evil of the dark side in his cold eyes as he hits the window with his tight gloved fists. Jyn & Cassian stand there, in the pod, staring at the angered Krennic, until the pod eventually pulls away from the dock and Krennic's fists were out of reach.

Krennic yells angrily at the top of his lungs while pointing at the departing escape pod. "THIS ISN'T OVER!"

Cassian, while staring back at Krennic's eyes coldly, mutters. "…..You will be."

((()))

Cassian is frustrated when the escape pod begins to pilot itself in autopilot. He keeps pressing the various buttons on the control panel, but it is useless because the pod refused to respond. He bangs on the controls with a hardened fist in frustration. "This ship isn't responding! They must've set a fail-safe protocol in this ship's programming system! Damn!" Cassian exclaims, for he is dismayed that the pod isn't able to steer itself anywhere, let alone back to Endor nor the Rebel fleet.

"How do we get back to the Rebels!?" Cassian asks. But there is silence. He speaks again. "Jyn?" He says his Sergeant's name as he turns around to look at Jyn. Jyn sat there in one of the seats, where she was looking out of one of the windows of the pod, watching the space battle between the Rebellion's X-Wings and the Imperial's TIEs taking place. One of the Rebel ships Jyn noticed in the dogfight is the Millennium Falcon, which seemed to be doing a great job at defending the X-Wings over the airspace.

She wondered who was piloting the Falcon if Han & Chewbacca were on Endor.

Cassian watches too, silently, as he stands next to Jyn. They watch as their pod slowly drifts away in the distance from the battle, away from the Death Star II, away from Endor, away from their Rebel friends. After a few minutes, Cassian sighs in dismay, and he closes his eyes to massage the bridge of his nose. He didn't know what to do now. He and Jyn were helpless sitting ducks in an Imperial escape pod that was basically an unmanned aircraft, and he wondered where the pod would take them.

Cassian then opens his eyes and stands next to Jyn so that he is facing her from her left. He stares down at her with a serious face. He notices that Jyn did not say a single word since boarding the pod in the Death Star II. He noticed the shock state that she is in because of her eyes: they couldn't stop staring off into the distance of endless space. She is speechless, she is frozen: frozen in time, it looks like. Deciding to get Jyn's attention, Cassian places a hand on her shoulder. "Jyn?"

Suddenly, Cassian jerks back slightly and removes his hand off Jyn's shoulder when she swiftly stands up from the seat, looks up at him, and backs away from him. Cassian frowns at her, and he keeps his gaze into her green eyes. Cassian knew something.

The familiar beautiful green eyes he always loved staring into were different eyes this time.

Cassian could see that Jyn's eyes were full of fear. Her eyes were full of shock. Her eyes were full of pain. Her eyes were full of hurt. And he had a very good clue of why she appeared like that before him.

Jyn is afraid and hurt.

Cassian realizes that the torture, the drifting away from the Rebellion, and the abandoning of the mission sent Jyn into a state of post-traumatic stress.

Cassian attempts to touch Jyn's shoulder again, but, again, she backs away from him by pushing his hand away with her shoulder. Cassian could see the sad, pained, & shocked eyes on her face are already enough to tell him that Jyn has become greatly affected by the torture, mostly. It was the most physical pain she ever endured in her life so far: worse than her rough past experiences as a lone teenager & a former criminal in many prisons. Cassian decides to take a much more calmer approach to her. "Jyn…? Jyn, it's me. Cassian." He says softly in a gentle tone.

Jyn stares directly into his eyes for a very long moment. Her brain registers his face into her memory, and she recognizes him. Then, Jyn proceeds to turn around and cross her arms so that her back faces Cassian. And Cassian figures that she didn't want to say a word at the moment, and he completely understood.

Suddenly, Cassian didn't know why, but he finds his hands automatically undressing Jyn's injured body.

He slowly, and gently, strips off every one of Jyn's clothing one by one, so that all her clothes fall to the floor except for her kyber crystal necklace that she always wore around her neck. Jyn stands still as he did so, and Cassian winces like as if a knife stabbed him in the neck when he sees how badly injured Jyn's body looked.

"Oh, damn….!" Cassian mutters loudly with wide eyes and a dropped jaw.

Cassian sees that there were dark purple bruises and red deep cuts all over her body. They covered just about every region of Jyn's short, slim body: her back, her butt, her limbs, her shoulders. Seeing the sight of his girlfriend's abused flesh instantly enrages Cassian: both of his hands close tightly into fists. He felt like killing someone right now, and that someone was Orson Krennic, his & Jyn's archenemy, the man that they truly hated. "….I…..I'll kill those fuckers….." Cassian mutters angrily under his own breath, but Jyn hears him since he is standing right behind her, letting him examine her naked, damaged body. At this point, after hearing him say those words, Jyn could feel tears in her eyes and her lips tremble.

Jyn becomes terrified at what she sees right in front of her: in the window in front of her, she could see the reflection of herself. The many cuts & bruises on the front side of her body and her face already sends Jyn into a break down. She finally saw what the Imperial scumbags had done to her body, her beautiful short young body that her lover, Cassian Andor, cherished so much. Jyn covers her face as the river of tears pour down her cheeks, and she sobs loudly. Jyn cries her saddest feeling yet.

And Cassian felt like crying too. He felt sad and angered at the same time. But he and the love of his life were trapped in a pod in autopilot, and there was no point in getting angry at the moment. Cassian places his hands on his hips to look around. And when he looks at the wall to his left, he sees a bag with a couple of capsules of blue fluids in them. Cassian feels his heart rise, and he breathes a sigh of relief as he grabs the capsules and holds them in front of the crying Jyn.

"Jyn, look. Bacta capsules." Cassian tries to get Jyn's attention, but it is no use. The pain was already too much on her shoulders. Luckily, Cassian found these bacta capsules that contained a blue liquid, which healed wounds efficiently, and this was the perfect time to use them on their extreme injuries. The 29-year-old Captain proceeds to inject Jyn with the bacta fluid. "This should do. It'll be a while, but you'll be fine, baby. I promise." Cassian assures Jyn while she is still crying excessively. He then proceeds to inject himself with the other capsule of bacta medication before discarding the capsules and standing in front of Jyn.

Cassian places his hands on Jyn's shoulders, which cause her to stop her cries, and she looks up at his brown eyes. Cassian couldn't help but cherish the reddened, teary, sad green eyes gazing up at him. Her breaths hyperventilate, which Cassian finds even more attractive. Wanting to comfort Jyn, Cassian gently strokes Jyn's hair with one hand. "We'll be alright. I'm here, Jyn. I'm here, with you. It's only us now. We're...safe." He calmly whispers to Jyn. Jyn blinks away a few tears while keeping her stare into his eyes.

Then, Cassian gently wraps his arms around Jyn, his lover. Though, she doesn't return the embrace, she presses herself firmly into Cassian's chest. Her bare, naked breasts press against the warmth of his blood-stained long-sleeved shirt. She feels slightly better in this position, and she wanted both of them to stay like that for a long while.

"I won't let anyone hurt you anymore…" Cassian whispers into Jyn's ear while staring out one of the windows of the escape pod. And Jyn receives the clear message completely, and so she closes her eyes gently as she lets Cassian embrace her naked, injured but healing body.

It wasn't until a couple of hours later that the escape pod is completely away & distant from the proximities of Endor, the Death Star II, and the Rebel fleet. The pod is travelling through an infinite void of the universe, where it seems as though there will be no end. Cassian figured that the pod had some sort of signal built into its system that he is certain it will land them on a random planet eventually, which is the least that he could hope for him & Jyn. Cassian sighs in boredom as he rests his hands on the controls in front of him, and he stares out the front window, watching the vast number of stars & asteroids pass by in the distance. He was getting hungry. He was getting thirsty. He was getting impatient.

But suddenly, Cassian is surprised when he feels a pair of arms drape over his shoulders. He looks behind him to see Jyn standing right behind him, and he sees that her body is still bare naked.

"Hey." Cassian says.

But Jyn ignores him. Instead, she decides to reach for his hands that rested on the controls in front of them. Feeling the smooth, exciting touch of her hands on top of his, Cassian feels his heart rise as Jyn leans in closer to him so that she rests her head against his. After a brief moment of that, their hands clasp together firmly, feeling the touch of love flowing into each other. Jyn doesn't look at Cassian; she looks out the window in front of them. And Cassian stares out the window too, watching the distant stars in the galaxy.

Jyn then whispers in Cassian's ear. "….Live each day….like as if it's our last…." Her words lase into Cassian's ear. "I choose all of this. I choose the stars…the peace…..and you." She finishes. Cassian absorbs those words, and he felt so relieved that he reaches one of his hands up to rest on Jyn's arm in comfort.

And Jyn knew this seemed so familiar to her, because she is doing the same thing she did 7 years ago…

((()))

"It just….feels like I'm always on a leash, you know?" Hadder Ponta tells the 16-year-old Jyn Erso as he sits next to her at the ship's cockpit.

He turns his head to look at her, and Jyn looks back at him with curiosity growing on her face. "It's like I can't ever have what I want. I can't do what I want to do. Do you ever feel that way, Jyn?" Hadder asks her, because apparently his mother, Akshaya Ponta, restricted him from ever flying in the skies, let alone in space, after Hadder's father and sister died.

But, suddenly, Jyn stands up from her seat, and she stands behind Hadder's seat so that her arms rested over his shoulders. Hadder falls silent as he watches Jyn's hands rest over his hands. She grips the ship's flight control stick through his hands, and she presses her head gently against his head as she flies the ship higher by ascending it gradually higher towards the top of planet Skuhl's atmosphere.

"If you want something…take it." Jyn whispers into Hadder's ear. "If there's one thing I've learned, it's that you have to live each day as if it's your last."

The words are sent into Hadder's ears, and he kept them locked into his head, along with the image of Jyn's beautiful, young, short, slim figure.

Though, Jyn didn't say these words out loud to Hadder, she finds herself saying them in her head….

"And I choose this. I choose the stars and peace…..and you."

((()))

Cassian slowly turns to face Jyn. He looks up at her beautiful forest-green eyes filled with stardust. He replays the words she just said to him, and the image of Jyn's beautiful face stuck into his head like a dream, except it's real. And as Jyn admires every inch of her lover's face, she could also see another face on Cassian's face as well.

Jyn could see Hadder Ponta's face. Her very first boyfriend, who died years earlier. She viewed Cassian as Hadder's reincarnation of some sort, at least that was how she liked to see it.

Cassian reaches his hand up to Jyn's cheek to pull her head down slightly. "I love you, Jyn…" He says softly, staring directly into her cute green eyes.

Jyn doesn't nod; she only stares back into Cassian's brown eyes, and then they both kiss passionately.