The last thing Jyn is expecting when she goes to collect Cassian from his room for a walk around the base, is to discover him arguing rather heatedly with K2—though in hindsight, perhaps this shouldn't have been a surprise, given how the two tend to bicker back and forth.

But that's exactly what she discovers. As she's hitting the button to open the door, she hears K2 exclaim, "You're delusional! Absolutely not! I fancy keeping my metal parts and circuits in their proper places!"

Cassian's response is too quiet to hear—which is typical of him, even when in the midst of a debate, he tends not to get particularly loud (and certainly not as loud as K2)—but the droid's retort comes back loud and clear. "This is blackmail! And how dare you—" he cuts himself short when the door glides open to reveal Jyn.

Both K2 and Cassian stare at her, K2 with the unmistakable side eye that tells of his sheepishness and embarrassment about having been caught—now just what she's caught him at, Jyn can't quite figure out—and Cassian with soft, unmistakably amused eyes.

No one says a word for a moment, until Jyn steps forward, grinning. "Am I interrupting something?" From the other side of the wall, for a moment she'd been worried it was an actual fight, but now she sees them, she can clearly see it is just one of their squabbles—one of their many ways of showing affection for one another.

K2 stands up abruptly. "No, you aren't, because this one," he jerks a thumb towards Cassian, "has nothing intelligent to say."

Jyn looks to Cassian, whose face just splits into a grin and he replies, "Hmm, the Captain of Intelligence can't say anything intelligent? Might be time to find a replacement. Or must be the meds."

K2 sniffs. "Well now you're just being ridiculous."

"You're the one who said I wasn't saying anything intelligent!"

"I think I will leave now, seeing as this looks to no longer be a productive conversation." The droid slides past Jyn and out the door before either of them can protest.

He's just disappeared from sight, when Cassian calls out, "Just remember what I said! After all you did happen to—"

"CASSIAN!" K2's voice thunders back to them. "We swore never to talk about that incident again!"

"No, you swore!" Cassian yells. "I never agreed to anything!"

The lack of response seems to indicate that either K2 doesn't have a properly scathing comeback, or that he's fled. Or both.

Jyn gives Cassian a perplexed look. "What was all that about? 'Incident?' 'Delusional?' Care to enlighten me?"

Cassian gives her a thoughtful look and seems to consider it, before saying honestly, "Yes, but not right this minute, and it isn't really for me to tell. As much as I like to rib him about it and hold it over his head, I won't tell you about the 'Incident,' as he's dubbed it. It's for him to tell if he chooses."

Jyn nods. It's only fair. She recognizes they have a strong friendship, and she doesn't expect Cassian to break promises and confidence with K2 for her sake. She wouldn't want that. "Deal. Now, how about a walk?"

Cassian's face brightens even more. "That would be lovely."

He holds out a hand to her, and she helps him rise from where he'd been sitting propped up on the bed. It's a slow, careful process, but so much easier than even a day ago. It's been six days since Yevez sent Cassian from med bay, and three days since he prescribed numerous daily walks around the base to get his stiff muscles moving, and to build up strength and stamina again. She's been taking turns with K2, Bodhi, Baze and Chirrut walking with him. The first time, he'd made it out of the bed and a few steps down the hall, and that was it. He's slowly made progress, though, and there's now a short loop in the base that he can walk consistently—albeit at a slow pace—without too much exhaustion at the end.

He makes it vertical. She tucks her left hand in his right, and bends their arms, clasping his upper arm with her other hand, so she's both supporting him at the elbow if he needs it, and holding hands. He's been able to walk by himself the past few times, but she feels better having the contact just in case.

The first few times they'd been out for a walk, Cassian had tried to get her—or whoever was walking with him—to take him to where the Andelm IV citizens were. When they'd pointed out he wouldn't make it that far, he'd pointed out that they could use the wheelchair. So, they'd had to just flat out tell him that they weren't going to allow that until he was feeling better and could actually walk there and back himself, without risk of keeling over. After a few more times of pushing, he'd acquiesced and stopped asking.

But no one could ever say Cassian wasn't persistent. He just shifted tactics. He started wheedling them for information, trying to help. And they'd had to shut that down on that front as well. He'd complained that as Captain of Intelligence, he needed to know, and Jyn had pointed out that he could take a few days off to properly recover so that he could continue to be the Captain into the future.

Finally, yesterday, he had stopped wheedling.

So, they walk in silence for a while, before Cassian breaks it. "There's something I need to do."

Jyn looks over at him as they continue their slow and steady steps, questioningly.

He glances at her and clarifies, "Some of this I've mentioned already, and I'm sure you've talked to Baze and Chirrut some, about what happened from their perspective, but I can tell you about mine, now. Just, bear with me, please."

Her confusion clears. They had not yet circled back around to talking about what had happened, not after their late-night conversation. And now, apparently Cassian is ready to tell her, and the 'something he has to do,' is share that horrifying day with her.

"When I found Baze and Chirrut, that's when I met them: the couple with stars in their hearts. I knew the minute I saw them, that their story wouldn't end well. But I desperately hoped that I could change that. I thought that maybe, just maybe we could make it. But one of them, she couldn't walk well, she had a wound in her leg, and something must have crushed her, too, because her breathing… it wasn't good. But she fought, Jyn." Cassian's voice is filled with admiration and pain. "She didn't want to leave her wife, so she fought and I tried to help, because I didn't want to be responsible for ripping them apart, but in the end, I was anyway."

She knows he's wrong, that it wasn't his fault; it was the empire's. And while she doesn't have all the facts yet, she knows he did everything he could. But she doesn't say it yet. Instead, she keeps quiet, because if she speaks now, before she has the whole picture, he could dismiss her and say that she's wrong because she doesn't know what happened. So, she waits.

"We got them moving, and my god, Jyn, I couldn't believe it. I thought she would collapse within the first ten feet, and I'd be faced with carrying her or leaving her and her wife behind—because I knew there was no way I was taking her wife from her side. But she hung on, they hung on to each other, they hung on for each other. The way they hung on for each other, it's the way you hung on for me on Ord Mantel," he tells her, turning his head to look at her.

She nods. "And the way you hung on for me on the way back from Scarif, and in the med bay, just a few days ago."

He nods. "Sometimes that's enough. But sometimes, the imperial war machine wins, even when they lose. Even when they don't reach their objective of destroying all life on a planet, even when we win by saving those lives, it feels like we lose."

Jyn hums her understanding and squeezes his hand.

He shakes his head a bit, before continuing, "We got moving, and I stayed with them as we slowly fell behind. I'd told Chirrut and Baze to get everyone else to the Falcon and we were maybe halfway there when I heard another ship screaming down towards us. There was nowhere for us to take cover, we were sitting ducks in the middle of an open alley, so I gave them the only cover I could, I threw them against the wall and tried to shield them. And that TIE Fighter came down and gods Jyn, it felt so close, I could hear the metal shrieking, feel the heat of its blast. But miraculously, we came out unscathed. Or, well, mostly unscathed. I think that's when this happened," he gestures in the general area of his chest wound, "but I'm not sure because I was a little preoccupied with trying to shield them, and with my shoulder dislocating from a piece of rubble striking it."

Jyn nods. "I'd say 'a lot going on,' to quote you from a few nights ago, is a bit of an understatement."

He half grins in self-deprecation. "Perhaps. Probably, because that's also when the ground troops hit us. The Fighter crashing had brought down a lot of rubble, and blocked our path with a 6' wall, and probably did this," gestures again to the site of his impalement, "but it also saved our lives. Because it brought down a bit of rubble between us and the squad that suddenly materialized, and gave us cover. I still cannot fathom why they landed ground troops in a city they were about to bomb. But they did, and while the rubble gave Leeta—the injured woman—cover and time to rest, her wife and I managed to take down probably half of their squad. But one of them suck up on us." Cassian closes his eyes for a moment, before opening them again and squeezing Jyn's hand. "I almost failed right there."

She frowns. "What?"

"I almost failed you."

Ah, his promise. She understands. He'd almost died right then. Failed to keep his promise to come back.

"And then Solo showed up out of nowhere. I owe him my life, that arrogant, stubborn fool who doesn't listen to orders and can't remember his codes to save his life."

Jyn grins. She's fully aware that the two have started to develop quite a camaraderie. Solo's frequent appearances in med bay were a pretty clear indicator, and now she has confirmation from Cassian. Despite his seemingly harsh words, she can tell he truly appreciates the other Captain.

"And then, we were so close, Jyn," he murmurs. "We just had one last obstacle to overcome, that 6' wall that had come down. But we were totally exposed going over it, and I knew there was probably going to be another squad any moment, with our luck. We went as fast as we could, we just weren't quite fast enough. We got everyone over but Leeta and myself, and they tried lifting her from above while I lifted from below. She was halfway up, moments away from safety, when a blaster hit her in the back."

He stops walking, then, and turns to face Jyn. They've paused on the edges of a hangar bay, and before Jyn turns to face him, she sees K2 enter from the other side, talking with a woman. The droid stops as well, apparently unaware of Jyn and Cassian's presence, preoccupied with his current conversation. She can't quite see the person from afar with K2 standing in the way, but she doesn't spend any more time trying to figure out who it is before she turns to focus on Cassian.

"She and I fell back, and that was the first time I had any indication that something was wrong with me," he admits with a wince of remembered pain. "Because when I hit the ground and she landed on top of me, something felt wrong. I just didn't give myself time to think about it because she'd just been hit, I hadn't been. And the moment I saw her wound, I knew. She was gone. And she knew it, too. She knew it, and she didn't want to die, because she didn't want to leave her wife. I can still hear her scream, Jyn." He closes his eyes, voice thickening. "Not in agony, no. She screamed her wife's name not because of the physical pain of her wounds, but because she knew she was about to lose her. She was dying, and she wanted the one person who meant everything to her to be there. But her wife was already over the wall and the damn stormtroopers were firing and she couldn't get back."

He pauses, and Jyn isn't sure if he's finished, if this is the end of the story, but it's not, because he quickly opens his eyes and stares down at her, sadness and weariness clouding his face. "I held her as she died. I couldn't do anything for her then, I couldn't save her." Some of the sadness clears as he straightens his shoulders. "But I can do something for her now. She asked me to pass something along to her wife. And I promised I would."

Jyn nods. "Well of course you will. You can do that when you're feeling better. We'll track down this woman."

Cassian smiles. "I already have." And he looks away.

Jyn follows his gaze and it lands on K2, who's looking back at her. When he sees her look over, he takes a step back and lets the person with him be seen. Jyn immediately recognizes Schaeli.

And all of the pieces click into place. How Schaeli had so clearly just experienced profound personal loss, how she'd described experiencing rebels who self-sacrificed for complete strangers, how one of those rebels had shielded her with his own body to protect her from shrapnel, and how Cassian had just described that same scene from his perspective. That the rebel who had made Schaeli reevaluate tucking her head down and ignoring the evils of the Empire just by offering her unquestioning, selfless aid in a moment of need had been Cassian.

K2 clearly says something to Schaeli and gestures towards them, because then Schaeli's eyes travel across the hangar and meet Jyn's first, smiling at her. Her gaze then flicks to beside Jyn, to see who her companion is, and she freezes, eyes widening.

Cassian squeezes Jyn's hand before letting go and moving forward, slowly, carefully. And Jyn stays. This is not a moment that she belongs in.

Schaeli takes a few hesitant steps forward as well, with K2 following behind, and when the three meet in the center, K2 puts his hand on Cassian's shoulder and Cassian looks up at him. Jyn can't see his face, but she can imagine the grateful smile there.

Now that she thinks about it, it had been a little suspicious when Cassian had stopped pestering to go see the people of Andelm IV, to help vet them, to help them settle in. She should have known better. And in fact, she did know that if he really wanted to, he could have circumnavigated them no problem—he's the Captain of Intelligence after all, and working around barriers and impossibilities is his job. She knows there are people in the base that he could have called on to help, to provide him data pads, information, and more, who would have helped without hesitation.

And she's been grateful that he's acquiesced to her request to just not. To rest. And let them handle it all. He had chosen not to activate his in-base network, and she loves him for it.

But, she hadn't known about this personal debt he felt he owed. That there was someone who was hurting badly, whom he felt he could offer just a small piece of comfort. If she had, then she would have realized that he wouldn't stop. Because Cassian would always do everything in his power to help someone who he knows is so badly hurting, no matter the personal cost. So, he'd just switched tactics, become more subtle and switched co-conspirators to K2. And as the droid makes his way towards her, leaving Cassian and Schalie to talk alone, Jyn realizes something else. That when Cassian had said, "there's something I need to do" at the start of this whole conversation, he hadn't actually meant telling her the rest of what happened on Andelm IV, as she had thought—or, as he had allowed her to believe. He'd meant his need to tell Schaeli what her wife's last words had been, and telling Jyn about that day was a lead in to explaining what he needed to do… and a distraction.

You sneak, she thought, both in exasperation and in awe at his well-planned subterfuge. She shakes her head. I suppose I should be grateful that this is the only thing he's done. Because she knows he could have activated his in base network and done all sorts of things behind the scenes, and she also knows that he hasn't.

K2 reaches her and turns to stand beside her, watching the duo.

She folds her arms. "You're a disloyal, scheming traitor," she accuses with no heat, suppressing a smile.

Kay huffs. "On the contrary, I'd say I'm loyal to a fault, because when Cassian begged me to find someone and conveniently cross paths with him while on a walk with you, I found that I would rather risk your wrath and potential personal injury to myself, than suffer through his forlorn, begging stares. So arguably, I was very loyal. To Cassian."

Jyn grins. "Is that what you were talking about this morning? When you called him delusional? And then stormed out for talking about the 'Incident?'"

"He told you?!" K2 exclaims in outrage, clearly mistaking Jyn mentioning the Incident with thinking Cassian had actually shared it with her. "Well, it was ages ago and I'm sure he told it all wrong, it's not like it's totally my fault I got him shot, he could have dodged!"

Her jaw drops. "What?! You got Cassian shot?" she demands.

K2 falls silent and looks down at her. "So, he didn't tell you?"

She's still flabbergasted. "Tell me what?! No! He said something about loyalty!"

"Oh, well then I have no idea what you're talking about."

"You just said you got Cassian shot once!"

"I have no idea what you're talking about. Oh, is that Leia calling?"

It isn't. Leia definitely isn't calling K2, but he scurries off before she can stop him. She stares after him, dying to know what the true story behind this is. But she doesn't follow him. Not this time. She doesn't want to leave Cassian. And besides, she's a patient creature when she wants to be. She can wait until K2 thinks she's forgotten about it, and that's when she'll pounce and wring it out of him. Because she will wring it out of him.

She makes a note of this in the back of her mind, before turning back to watch Cassian and Schaeli. As she does, she leans her back against the hangar wall and slides down to a seated position, settling in to wait. She won't intrude on their moment earned from blaster fire, desperation and hope, but she's not going to leave. Not when Cassian's still recovering. So, she sets in to watch from afar, watching for tell-tale signs that he's had enough, that she might need to step in.

She doesn't.

But she waits anyway, content, feeling no rush.

She waits while they talk, while Schaeli eyes Cassian's figure, clearly picking out the way he doesn't hold himself quite upright, the way his shoulders hunch forward ever so slightly. The other woman takes all of this in, listens as Cassian speaks with her, and finally carefully hugs him, indescribable grief mixed with thanks washing over her face.

And Jyn smiles. They're going to be all right.

The citizens of Andelm IV will grieve and process, and eventually find new homes with the new chance at life they have been given, whether those homes are with the Rebellion, or elsewhere.

Schaeli will always carry Leeta with her, and boldly step into the Alliance where she'll have people to welcome her with open, eager arms, where Jyn will be at the front of the line.

Han and Chewie will continue to try to keep their aloof distance from everyone, all the while getting pulled in further and further, until it's too late and they don't realize it. And then they'll embrace it.

Bodhi will continue to be a calming, welcoming presence to everyone he meets, carving out spaces for everyone he cares about.

Baze and Chirrut's burns will heal, and they will continue their fond bickering, and fight wherever they are needed, stealing the breaths from people who watch their partnership in awe.

Leia will continue to hold the Alliance together in every imaginable way, giving hope to planet after planet, to an entire galaxy, until one day, hope will be everywhere.

And as for Jyn and Cassian…

xxXxx xxXxx xxXxx xxXxx xxXxx

(End Flashback)

This had been the turning point. From then on, there were no walls. The guardedness that had cloaked their carefreeness and bliss in the first few months after Scarif disappeared. The closing off that had sunk its teeth into them after Ord Mantell, vanished. In its place, grew an understanding, a connection that, when Jyn thinks about it too hard, takes her breath away. The walls are no longer between them, but surround them, giving them a space where they can give all to each other, without holding back. A space that will sometimes grow when they are with their chosen family, in order for them to pull their friends inside, to laugh with them, to cherish them. A space that will sometimes shrink until it is so small it is just the two of them, Cassian and Jyn, sitting together, be it in the shadows or the sunlight.

So as for Cassian and Jyn, they will be there by their friends' sides, every step of the way. They will go where they are needed, be that sliding by quietly, unnoticed, or stepping in front of innocents to shield them from the Empire's wrath. They won't always be in the same place together, but they will forge ahead even when a galaxy stands between them, because they know they will always, always make it back to each other. Always.

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A.N. The last bit after the end flashback note, connects back to the end of ch 3, where this story was positioned as being told from the present (also in ch 1), as flashbacks to the past. I know that was ages ago (17 chs ago! And a long time timewise ago...), so I'll include this little note here to hopefully help clarify it.

And wow, here we are at the end, my friends. The end to an adventure that for me, began many, many (too many) years ago. It's been quite a ride, sometimes a slog and sometimes a dizzying race, but I am happy and proud to say that it's all wrapped up now.

Thank you to those of you who have stuck with it since the beginning. And hello and welcome to those who just picked it up now that it's complete, and have now made it to the end. It's been a true joy to write this (though it certainly has had its moments of frustration), and I hope that this last chapter pulls things together in a satisfactory way.

Until the next time!