Cassian joined the Rebellion because he had nowhere else to go. Everyone thinks I joined because he did. They're wrong. They have no idea of how I work.

Our father used to say that there is always a choice. I suppose I took it too much to heart as a child. I grew up in a world of greys and blurred lines. I am a stranger to habit. Each path I travel I forget. I make no shortcuts for myself, and so my choices come as effortlessly and painlessly as pulling teeth.

I'm not even talking about the huge, life-changing dilemmas yet. I'm talking about what kind of milk to put in my caf each morning. I'll deliberate for hours if I let myself, in which case it goes cold and is hardly worth drinking anymore.

So you can imagine, on matters of morality and conflict, I am just plain stuck. I hang forever in the middle. It makes me feel old. It makes me think I've been there longer than this lifetime, longer than the Rebellion and the beginning of this whole mess. Longer even than the Galaxy. I hang there, alone and watching.

The ultimate, cosmic by-stander.

History repeats itself to me, over and over, like a question. "When will you choose?" it asks me. Through ages and light years, risings and fallings, I watch and do nothing. Because the choice is always far too hard to make. Because the world of greys is much safer, and the blurred lines are so much easier for me to see.

For nine years, I remained silent behind Imperial lines. I saw the dark underbelly of the beast, what hides beneath the facade of shiny armor and crisp uniforms.

It all came to a head that day on Carida when they made me watch Cassian's torture. For nine years, I had imagined what his face might look like as it grew older. For nine years, he had been both dead and alive to me, as I constantly pondered his fate and could not decide which outcome would be worse. The work of nine years lay before me, gasping and bleeding on the metal table. What had the war made of him? Was he here because of me? They told me if I said or did anything, they would kill him. I still don't know what Krennic did to him in that room after I left, but as I walked out, I knew he wasn't good for anything else. The only thing they could do was kill him. As I walked out, I decided I'd had enough. I knew where they kept the bombs, and I knew how to set them off. I knew also that I would be caught and punished.

That was the day I joined the Rebellion. Seeing and suffering such things would have made that an easy choice for anyone. But when I joined, it wasn't because of what the Empire did to Cassian and his father, or to me after I rebelled, or even what they did to our home and to that boy in the field with the hole in his back. And after all that, it wasn't even about what I had seen or what I had suffered.

It was about everything more, everything I hadn't seen. It was about the Empire and what it had done and would do, and all the pain of a thousand worlds, and the cries of countless children.

After that, after hanging there and watching for so incredibly long, I didn't even have to think about setting those bombs off.

Joining the Rebellion was the easiest choice I have ever made.

0 BBY

YAVIN 4

A tawny head poked out from the edge of the hangar as the Imperial shuttle dropped down on the pad. Even from afar, Jyn could see the expressionless mask on her face, so carefully constructed. So often worn. She had known that same look, seen it in the mirror countless times since that day on the black sands of Lah'mu. The day the Empire killed her mother and took her father away.

Her father. Jyn was so used to feeling nothing but anger at the thought of him.

All the time since they had left Yavin 4 was a blur now. It could have been hours or millennia for all she knew, but so much had changed.

To have learned that her father was not only alive but working to topple the Empire from the inside had brought her to her knees. All the suppressed emotions of thirteen years had punched her straight in the gut.

To have seen her father again for the first time in those thirteen years, and then watch him die in her arms moments later had just made her go numb. Cassian had said it was shock, but the truth was, Jyn had already spent thirteen years mourning her father, expressing it in acts of insurrection against the Empire. She had no more tears for him.

More difficulty was before her, she knew. If the Alliance was already full of stubborn, unbending minds, their leaders would be all but impossible to sway. Confirmation of the Death Star and Jedha's demise would have reached the rebel base instantaneously. They would already be in council, deciding what to do next. Without her father though, Jyn knew the Council would be hard-pressed to believe her and accept the plan brewing in her mind. Without her father, she and the defector pilot would have to do for confirmation of this looming new threat and its purported weakness, if the Alliance was going to survive it.

Without her father…

Jyn took a breath and set her own mask carefully in place. Whether hours or millennia, she had returned to Yavin 4 different. Invested, for once. Whatever the costs of this plan, she knew it was their best chance at living to see the next few days.

That tawny-headed girl had been right. The time had to be now. The rebellion had nothing left to lose. She smiled as she set of across the landing pad, Bodhi at her side. They were ready to do the impossible.

Cassian stepped off the Imperial shuttle after Jyn. He watched her go, striding determinedly into base where the Council would be waiting. After a few moments, he turned to see Ben waiting for him at the bottom of the shuttle ramp, eyes filled with questions. Cassian suddenly felt all the exhaustion of the last few hours take him.

Baze shouldered past him, guiding Chirrut down to solid ground. As they passed Ben, the monk's unseeing eyes latched onto her like magnets.

"The last day of the week is always the hardest, is it not?" he said. She glared warily at his smiling face.

"Chirrut." The way Baze said his name made Cassian think the monk did this more than occasionally. The assassin looked unsettled as he eyed Ben up and down. Chirrut did not seem fazed at all.

"Forget about Prime and Centax and Taungs and Zhell," he continued, as easily as if discussing the weather with an old friend. A chill ran up Cassian's spine. When Ben said nothing, Baze managed to peel Chirrut away. The monk turned and walked on toward the hangar opening with disturbing purpose, as if he had been to Yavin 4 already.

Cassian noticed then that Ben was still waiting for him, looking a bit ruffled by Chirrut's words. At the bottom of the ramp, he greeted her with a tired smile and a hand on the shoulder. She stiffened under his touch. This was not their way, he knew. This was breaking custom.

"Benduday Andor," came K-2's tinny voice. A set of heavy metal footsteps bounced the ramp behind Cassian. "Well, here he is, safe and sound, just as you asked." Ben didn't acknowledge the droid with so much as a look. Her eyes were on Cassian, filled with a terror only he could understand. Something had changed. He knew she could see him, wobbling as he was on the precipice. They were about to cross into uncharted space.

Cassian glanced once last time in the direction Jyn had gone, then set off towards the officers' barracks, knowing he had a tawny-haired shadow following closely behind.

"I guess I'll just unload the ship myself, then," K-2 called after them. When no one responded, he turned and ducked back into the shuttle's hull. "Your gratitude is overwhelming."

Ben rounded on Cassian as soon as the door to his quarters had slid shut behind them.

"What the hell happened on Eadu?"

Cassian bit the inside of his cheek to hold his frayed nerves in place. He had endured the fury of one touchy blaster already today, and his "Keep-My-Sanity" card was fast running out of credits. But the fire in Ben's eyes was fueled by concern, not anger. He guessed she had been dismissed from the control room before they had re-established contact with the Rebel base.

He turned his back to her and moved haltingly to the footlocker under his bed, retrieving an old bottle of Bakuran bitters from it, along with two glasses. He placed them on his table and sat heavily in one of the chairs, nudging the other out as an invitation. Her silence pressed in hard on him, but he knew she wouldn't push him further. Not this close to the edge.

Instead, she dropped into the proffered chair and he began pouring with a shaky hand. A bit of the bitters splashed onto the table, unnoticed. A glass full of amber liquid slid across the table into outstretched fingers. The vessels rose, clinked together. There was a pause and they both slammed empty back on the table, one right after the other. Almost immediately, a bottle appeared and began to refill them, the alcohol slopping over the rims and onto the table again.

"Papa." The single word broke the silence and Ben's eyes flicked up from her glass.

"What?"

"Her father." Cassian lifted his glass to his lips and regarded the contents briefly. "She called him Papa, too." He knocked the liquid back quickly and slammed his glass on the table again. Ben's followed a moment later. She grabbed the bottle and started to pour. None of it spilled this time.

"You…killed him then?"

"No. Red Squadron lit up the station before I could get him to safety. The Rebellion killed him. It's going to kill all of us." Two empty glasses hit the table again and Ben lifted the bottle once more.

"Maybe so. But if you say the Rebellion killed Galen Erso, then it is on my conscience, too. This is one burden you don't have to bear alone."

"Yes, it is." Cassian bowed his head and rubbed hard at the bridge of his nose. "You didn't see the way she looked at me. And the things I said to her…"

"So, this is it then?" He could her something building in her voice. "Captain Andor is admitting defeat?"

"All I do is destroy things," he answered, looking into his glass. "Like that planet-killer. Pfassk, Ben, if only you'd seen it." He felt oddly cold. And tired, so tired. "Jyn, she's the key. She'll figure it out for all of us. They don't need someone like me anymo—"

She slapped him, so suddenly and forcefully it made his fingertips tingle. He blinked and looked her in the eye for perhaps the first time since landing, hardly feeling the sting in his left cheek. Tired brown met blazing hazel. He got the feeling she had been wanting to do that for a long time. The scars on her face had turned an angry pink. Cassian wondered vaguely if it was more from fury or the three shots she had just downed.

"Stop it!" she snapped, pointing a finger at him. That terror was plain on her face again. "Stop adding links to your own chain! Stop taking sole blame for everyone's mistakes!"

She pushed out from the table and knocked back the fourth shot.

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Cassian," she muttered as she stood. That sobered and stung him more than any physical blow could have. He stood, too, his glass of bitters forgotten. Her back was to him, and he glared at her such that he knew she could feel it, but no retort came to his lips.

He knew this was a means of rousing him from his defeat, but he would never have expected it from her. He suddenly felt as if the floor were shifting under his feet. This was his Benduday. His hope. Why would she cut him with such words? Why would she scold him when she knew what he needed was encouragement and comfort? Because the truth is more important, said a little voice somewhere in his head. Because there's no time for wallowing.

"You're right," he said. An idea had occurred to him. It tugged at the back of his brain, small but powerful. A choice. Like the beginnings of a rebellion. There is always a choice.

She had turned, tentatively, probably wondering how she had swayed him so quickly. Cassian picked up his glass from the table and emptied it. He set it back down gingerly, as if it might explode into shards of glass. Then he turned, crossed the room, and slipped through the door before it could open all the way.

"Cassian?" he heard her voice behind him. "Where are you going?"

"There is something I have to do," he said without looking at her.

"What?" But her question went unanswered. He could feel that terror coming from her. It radiated like a power core.

"Cassian," she said again, but he still did not turn. The were entering the hangar now, and Cassian spotted a defeated-looking Melshi coming his way.

"Sergeant."

"Captain." The soldier gave a shake of his head. "I couldn't listen in on that Council any longer. They won't go for the Erso girl's plan. Say it's too risky."

"Then we'll make our own plan," Cassian answered. He took Melshi by the shoulder and steered him back around. "Come with me."

"Cassian!" The terror managed to suffuse Ben's voice. Finally, he turned to her with an odd smile on his face.

"I never welcomed Jyn to her new home," was all he said.

Ben watched Cassian go, speechless with confusion. Terrified she could no longer read him. Terrified that he had returned so changed. Too changed.

"You." She turned and found the same monk she had met not an hour before, sitting cross-legged on a small crate. "You do not like being left behind," he said, the same distant smile spreading across his face. His eyes had found her face again. They were penetrating in a way that made her bristle.

"Why do you look at me like that, monk?" She poured every bit of insolence she had into her words. She was not in the mood for making friends. "You don't have eyes to stare with."

"One does not need eyes to see what I see," he replied, standing.

"And what is that?" She moved her hands to her hips as he stepped forward, feeling the air with his fingers.

"Pain," he said, and she felt her features slacken just a bit. "Such scars you carry. Anyone who understands you at all would know that the ones most visible"—she went rigid as he touched a finger to the left side of her face—"are the least of them."

Ben pulled away, feeling oddly calmed by his touch, as if he had absorbed her terror through his fingertips. Her right hand tugged absently at the cuff of her left sleeve.

"I wish I could tell you there is no more pain to be had, my child," Chirrut continued. His milky eyes clouded. "I see a great deal more coming, but your captain," he smiled again, "his burden is almost lifted." Ben regarded him closely, puzzling at his certainty, puzzling at how his sightless eyes read her like a book. Then she searched the floor, perhaps for the right words.

"There was time when we lived only for each other," she said finally, pulling at her left sleeve again, as if she wanted to tear it off. "As long as one survived, the other had purpose."

"But now he lives for another." The fidgeting stopped and Ben's entire being stilled. She raised her head and stared into nothing before turning her eyes to the monk. Suddenly, she knew exactly what Cassian was doing. More than that, she knew why.

"And now he lives for another," she said.

Inside the Council chambers, discussions were at a crawl. Jyn was reminded why she had spent her entire life avoiding organizations like this. Nobody listened. Nobody wanted to hear what Galen Erso's daughter had to say.

They called her "criminal". Worse, they called her "girl". Jyn ignored them. Time was fast running out.

"Send your best troops to Scarif," she entreated the doubtful masses. "Send the whole rebel fleet if you have to. We need to capture the Death Star plans if there is any hope of destroying it."

One of the doubters, a woman with worried eyes, peered at Jyn from behind a golden hood. "You're asking us to invade an Imperial installation based on nothing but hope?"

An image of baleful dark eyes flashed in her mind. They held resolve and sincerity. Finally, she was beginning to understand. Jyn felt her mask slip, and a smile crossed her face.

"Rebellions are built on hope."

Wait whaaa? Risen from the dead?! Yes I am. There really aren't enough apologies in the world to express how sorry I am for my absence (I didn't choose the penname CommitmentIssues for nothing). Let's just say I have come to point in my life where, for a little while, I have more time to focus on things I have neglected, and fortunately, find I can return to the same stories. After a very lengthy hiatus, I am back and determined to complete this story that has lain unfinished for far too long.