Reyna's farewell speech was short, simple, to the point, something along the lines of "good luck, don't die", and then they were off, anonymous figures fading into the twilit world, following Leo, whose boisterous attitude had faded somewhat with his last embrace of Calypso, the two parted once more. K-2 had been the last to join them, and Cassian was watching the droid with confusion, for he had spent the entirety of their time with the others speaking to Hebe, off to the side, and the words had been too low for even Cassian's practiced hearing to catch. K's pensive silence did nothing to clear the fog of confusion that brought a frown to Cassian's lips. He kept glancing to Rowan to impart his impressions upon a similarly curious mind, but her attention was elsewhere.

As they entered into the copse of trees just before them, leading out into the hollowed suburbia of what was once a Floridian town, she was glancing back over her shoulder, and he saw the churning in her eyes. She met Romulus's gaze briefly, and something flashed between them, but it was gone, replaced by a solemn nod, and she turned back to the group before her, glanced to Luke, watching her, and her expression shifted, or something in it shifted, and Cassian remained in the clutches of confusion, doing his best to throw himself into the pondering of others, rather than face his own musings, but like quicksand, he was sinking rapidly into them, and they were closing up about him.

Though there had been no rumors of Kronos's movements, he could not trust that the titan was truly out of the picture. Past history pointed the other direction, and his face, rearing up in the images from the siren's mangled corpse, was far too vivid and far too unsettling to be merely a passing threat. Rowan had suspected as much, too. Her face when he'd recounted for her the visions he'd seen had been grave, intent, harrowed by experience and anticipation. And, more than that, he could feel it in his blood. The titan within him seemed to relish in his arrival upon Earth, and Cassian began to doubt the comforts of Morpheus when he'd questioned him as to whether or not the evil of his father- he detested the word- had been passed to him as well as the power. Releasing a pent-up breath, clenching his fists, he swore to himself the doubts would pass, that they would never see the light of reality, and, distracted from her own reverie, Rowan glanced up to him in concern, read there the worry in his features.

He was not as steady as he had been when she'd first met him. The hardness of the captain that had extracted her from the prison cell on Jedha had faded somewhat, and she couldn't blame him. The rug had been ripped from beneath his feet more times in the past few days than it ever had in her whole life. The world had flipped completely inside out for him, and he had been left standing, reeling, questioning the truth of even the things that need not be doubted. Desperate to comfort him, she nudged him, pulling his attention back to the world about them. They hadn't been walking long, now moving in an unorganized clump down empty streets, across cracked pavement.

Battle had touched this area; cars were tossed into the roofs of the homes, gaping holes had been carved into walls. Through some of them, Rowan could glimpse the desolate image of children's rooms, still marked by the effusive personalities of their old inhabitants, but empty. The frantic signs of hurry marred what might have originally been order, and she felt as if they walked through a photograph, the last movements of the families laid out before them, as if they were walking through the preserved ruins of Pompeii. A chill ran down her spine, and she looked about herself to take in the expressions of the others there. They appeared to be suffering beneath the same impression, and a blanket of silence had fallen over them.

Rowan met Cassian's eyes, and he smiled reassuringly upon her. She grinned her gratitude, but was jerked from her focus on him as she stumbled into Bohdi. She let out a small "oh" of surprise, and he apologized as profusely as he could in the whisper that sunk his voice, that sunk all their voices, into near silence. They steadied each other, Cassian reaching out to help them till they had righted themselves, and Rowan saw that Bohdi was looking feverish. Keeping her voice low beneath the scraping footsteps of the group of them on the pavement, she looked him over, spoke.

"You okay, mate?" she asked, her hand still on his shoulder, peering into his features.

Bohdi nodded, swallowing heavily. "Just a little out of it." Cassian and Rowan did not let go their concern, still hovering in their eyes, and he looked somewhat irritated. "I'm fine," he reasserted, and Rowan raised her eyebrows.

"Alright," she told him, and she turned back to Cassian. Her eyes grazed over his for a moment, and he nodded. Together, the three of them jogged to catch up with the others that had continued trudging, too lost in the monotony to notice their momentary absence.

Rowan sucked in a deep breath; this would be a long hike.

- - -

They set up camp twelve hours later, limbs aching even into their bones, but Leo had set a relatively good pace that wasn't too heavy on their joints, and they'd covered a lot of distance in the first stage of their trek. But according to Leo's calculations, five more days of the hike remained, and Rowan lowered herself onto the trunk of the overturned tree with a groan as her legs protested the sudden change in position. Cassian sunk to the trunk beside her, rubbing his eyes, his legs quivering a little at the sudden relief. He looked up from running his hands down his features and met her eyes. The same exhaustion sat there, and she sent him a small, tight-lipped smile of understanding.

The trek had been silent, which Rowan found very uncharacteristic of Leo and quite disappointing, but parting with Calypso had taken something out of him, and his expression was weary. However, the twelve hour walk seemed to have restored a little of his usual temperament, and so it was with a smile that he suggested that they make a fire.

"Yes," Rowan breathed out in relief. "Let's." And she stood, shattering the silence, her muscles screaming with the sudden movement, but her heart refreshed at the idea of light and warmth.

There was plenty of wood scattered about them by the hurricane-force winds of Ouranos's attack, but they tried to put it from their mind as they collected what scraps of wood they felt up to the challenge of lifting till they had gathered together a good-sized pile in the center of the clearing of the forest they'd entered some time ago. Leo set to work on lighting the fire as the others settled about it, lowering themselves to the earth. Even K reposed on the trunk, eyes scanning the faces of the others as the fire burst to life and warmed their paling features.

A laugh erupted from Rowan's lips at the warmth that sprung into existence, and she settled back, crossing her legs beneath her and folding her hands in her lap and taking in the cheer that had suffused the faces of her friends. Leo gazed into the fire, eyes unfocused, but no longer troubled, and so the silence was not as heavy as it had been for the majority of the hike, and they were heartened by the gentleness of it. Finally, and with a laugh in his eyes, he looked up, met Luke's gaze from across the bed of flames.

"So, how was outer space?" he laughed, and Luke looked amused, glancing to Rowan with raised eyebrows.

She let out a shout of laughter, her eyes traveling to Cassian in a split second, then returning to Leo just as quickly. Luke was chuckling as he responded.

"There was a lot," he said, grinning. "Like Star Trek, but real, you know, so there was so much more, and it became more complex because of that."

Leo nodded. "That's what I've heard." He looked to Cassian, Jyn, and Bohdi, but Bohdi had lost himself in contemplation of the fire, and there was a blissful, curious smile on his features. "How'd you guys meet?"

Rowan smirked. "I got arrested," she said, and glanced to Cassian, who grinned widely.

"For some reason, I'm not surprised," Leo chuckled lowly. He looked to Cassian. "Did you do the arresting?"

"No," Cassian looked as if to say he was happy he didn't, letting out the word in a jestingly long breath, and Rowan laughed, rocking back and forth in the happiness that had filled her. "We needed her to help us. We broke her out of prison."

Rowan gasped in mock offense. "As a matter of fact, I was breaking myself out. You just helped."

Cassian shot her a sarcastic look. "Of course. Yes, I forgot," he looked back to Leo, grinning. "We helped break her out of prison."

"In order for me to help them break her out of prison," Rowan added, gesturing to Jyn, whose cheeks were rosy in the firelight and the peace that had settled over them all, a sanctuary of light in the depths of Nyx.

"Wait," Leo laughed, waving his hands to stop them. "Who's 'we'?"

Cassian's face fell somewhat, but he retained his smile with a valiant effort, and Rowan brushed up her elbow against his arm in a soft reassurance. "The Rebellion," he explained.

Leo looked incredulous with amazement, an excited smile spreading across his features as he settled into his position, as if to settle in for a fascinating story. "A rebellion?" he glanced to Rowan. "Why didn't you tell me this?"

Rowan laughed despite the unsettled compassion for her friend in her heart. She glanced to Cassian. "Leo loves anything that has to do with overthrowing governments," she told him, providing context.

Cassian smiled in return, thankful for the empathy in her eyes, before he looked back to Leo. "There's the Empire," he told him. "They're a fallen republic. They voted someone into power that they shouldn't have. The Rebellion's the only hope we-," he paused, "they have."

He glanced to Jyn, and saw the sorrow for her father there, brewing in her expression. The heaviness of the silence seemed to return for a moment, and Leo looked remorseful, digging within his mind for another subject, one not quite so painful, but none came, and so the awkward weight of the quiet settled there, and they begged release as one, with no escape till Rowan shot to her feet, forcing a dancing adrenaline into her eyes.

The others started in surprise, Cassian beginning to rise as well, eyes looking about him in panic for whatever oncoming threat she may have spotted, but she laughed, and met his eyes.

"There's nothing," she told him, then gestured to Luke, meeting his gaze with a jovial challenge. He smirked in understanding and rolled his eyes. "Brother mine," she said with a ringing laugh in her voice. "How abut we exercise those aged limbs of yours."

Luke raised his eyebrows. "Says the person who groans in pain every time she moves."

Rowan's eyes flashed triumphantly. "I bet you haven't used a sword in years," she told him, glancing to Backbiter, strapped to his hip and extending out behind him.

Leo laughed and clapped his hands together. "Winner gets half my portion of beef jerky," he threw in, and Luke looked to him, eyes crinkled in laughter. Rowan faltered, the hand that had been pointing to Luke falling with an anticlimactic weight to her side.

"Beef jerky?" she said, twisting her lips in disgust, looking unimpressed.

Leo grinned, chuckled, and shrugged. "Best we got."

Rowan raised her eyebrows in a grudging acceptance and turned back to Luke. "Alright," she said, and then concentrated on the ring glinting on her hand, the one begging to be used. "Éla!" she commanded, and the sword sprung to life, extending out above Cassian's head, and burning with its brilliant, lively darkness in the night. Awe split Leo's face, and he looked up to her, distracting her from her attention upon Luke.

"Where'd you get that?" Leo asked, thoroughly impressed.

"My father," she told him, glancing at him with a brilliant smile on her lips, a glowing, rejoicing look in her eyes before she turned back to Luke, and the higher light in them faded to the jesting look from before. "I challenge you, Luke Castellan, to a battle over half of Leo's…," here she paused, raised her eyebrows with a grin, "beef jerky. Do you accept?"

With a sigh, not unkind, Luke shrugged and stood, brushing off the dirt from his jeans as he did so, then drawing Backbiter with a practiced hand. "Do I have a choice?"

Rowan laughed. "No- you're my brother, and you're stuck with me."

Luke grinned and nodded. "I suppose that's a good enough reason," he said, and followed her near the edge of the firelight, away from the others that had turned their faces toward the siblings. With one last glance to Cassian, her eyes glinting, hoping to impart to him the same vigor in her own heart, she turned to Luke, settled into her muscles, and watched him closely, remembering the training they'd done in the camp. Though his limbs were a little rusty with disuse, she knew the inherent strength in him, and the muscle memory that guided his movements, the skill of the blade so knit into the fibre of his being that his sword seemed a natural extension of him. And especially with Backbiter.

But Rowan had not been idle in her time chasing him, up in "outer space", though she could not help but feel the term was crass in relation to the spectrum of life that hid upon all those planets of the night sky. She'd lived among a myriad of tribes there, all with their own unique styles of fighting, and the sword gifted her by her father was perfectly weighted to her, made specifically for her by a god who knew her well enough to anticipate nearly all of her movements. Luke, however, did not know her so well, or, she smirked, did not know the desert tribes of Jedha so well, and she leapt forward, surprising him with the suddenness of her offensive attack.

He backpedaled a few steps, working hard to gain his bearings, and then he realized, in the few glimpses of her eyes that he could catch as he parried her furious blows, that this was not an idle challenge to pass the time till sleep reached all their feverish thoughts, but a statement, an explanation of who she had become in their years apart, a begging invitation for them to become reacquainted, not to focus simply on past memories of their childhood, but to greet each other as they were now, and they were, in so many ways, new people. While the foundations of who they had been in youth had remained, there was much that was altered in its manifestations, and Rowan needed Luke to understand the newness of her, and she needed to understand the newness of him. And so, viewing the playfully suggested duel for what it was, a conversation, Luke threw himself into it with renewed vigor, and the battle truly began.

The two parried, swirled, sliced, and charged, moving in a wild dance about the fireplace and their audience with the skill that was natural to them, the skill of the fight. Rowan's new methods were indeed foreign to Luke, and it was all he could to hold what little ground he had beneath the attacks of her blade, attacks that seemed to rely solely on his inexperience, and so he began to anticipate them, to counter them, now forcing her backward a few steps, meeting her twisting advance midway till she realized he had learnt her secret, and she smirked, eyes alight, and threw herself into the next varied pattern.

On and on and on they fought, till sweat poured from their limbs and their muscles quivered, not prepared for this second onslaught of effort after the long hike, but they reveled in the exhaustion, the familiar exhaustion as opposed to the permeating one of the long trek, glad to be back within the whirling, flashing confines of this particular form of combat, and Rowan decided, then and there, that blasters were all well and good, but nothing, nothing, could quite match the feeling of a steady hilt in the hand and the great heave of muscle it took to maneuver it. She was laughing now, fey, bright, daring more and more reckless moves till Luke was all but exhausted with countering them till she made her first mistake and left open her right leg. He lunged for it, and she was only able to jerk it out of the way at the last minute, stumbling to the side before she conquered the momentum and used it to her own advantage, retreating a bit to analyze his charge, then rising to meet it.

They fought till they were heaving for breath, and then Leo's voice rang out, laughing despite the concern that hovered at the edge of it, raising his hands to call for it to end.

"Good fight!" he cried. "Good fight! You can split the beef jerky!"

Rowan and Luke stumbled to a halt, sweat pouring from them, muscles trembling, and half leaning on each other, but beaming in furious denial of the power of Nyx. Rowan laughed, choking on the air that rushed into her lungs, and clasped her brother's hand, pulling him into a conciliatory hug, just as he did her.

"Alright," she gasped out. "Good fight, mate, good fight." Here she let out a burst of laughter and then choking again, coughing, gagging for air before she regained her composure, and grinned mischievously. "I guess you're not so old as I thought you were."

Luke laughed, a ringing one that rippled through them all with brilliant joy, and patted her on the back as they moved once more to the fireplace, settling again in their old positions. With the command, Rowan's sword slipped back to a ring, and she placed it reverently upon her finger, looking up to meet the faces of those about her, the silent smile of remembrance on her face once more. Cassian grinned with her, for her, and then Leo interrupted.

"Alright," he said, still chuckling. "Dinnertime." He turned to the duffel beside him, and began to dig through it for the food; Cassian saw it to consist of slices of bread, a few water-bottles, and thin black packages with hardened meat inside. He glanced to Rowan, saw the disgusted look on her face, and smirked with amusement.

She looked to Luke. "You can have my share of the winnings," she told him, and he laughed.