0 BBY

YAVIN 4

"Glareshades." The fluorescent light slid over the tinted lenses as Ben held them out in her hand.

The girl with hard green eyes shook her head and the shades disappeared back into the bag.

On the table was a collection of Ben and Cassian's personal equipment. After his assignment to the Jedha mission, he had promptly discovered their new contact to have almost nothing in the way of possessions. He supposed that should be no surprise since she had so recently been sprung from the Wobani Imperial labor camp.

"Macrobinoculars." Another shake of the dark head, and they too disappeared.

Ben selected item after item from the table, submitting each in turn to the girl's scrutiny. The scene looked more to Cassian like a street vendor pawning off her wares to a disinterested customer. The dark-haired girl kept shaking her head at the things offered, occasionally accepting one or two.

"Rangefinder." Headshake. Cassian reached over and took it from Ben's hand before she could put it away, shoving it into his own bag. She stared at him a moment, her empty hand still upheld, then turned her attention back to the items on the table.

"Stun baton." Taken.

Earlier in the war room, Cassian had been hastily debriefed and showered with new information on their new contact—the only shower he'd had in days, he brooded—before they had brought the girl herself in for a chat.

Cassian had not expected what had walked through the door a moment later.

Jyn Erso.

He had not expected her to be so young, younger even than Ben. He had not expected the apathy she displayed both towards her father's ventures and the Rebellion's cause. He had not expected the intensity of the fire in her flinty green eyes, or rather the control she exercised over it. More often than not in those twenty-or-so minutes, it had been concentrated on him. He was convinced that if he looked in a mirror, his cheeks would be burned bright red.

All these things surprised him, but the thing he least expected was the conviction with which this girl carried herself. She was a lost thing, broken and distrustful and just plain angry at the universe. Cassian didn't need a datapad or file to know this. But of all the things he had happened upon in this vast and war-torn galaxy, he had never encountered such a strong and deep-rooted sense of peace as Jyn Erso commanded. This girl was weathered and honed, a wild card pulled from a cruel and cosmic deck.

"Glowlamp." Another headshake and the torch was gone.

Come to think of it, Cassian mused to himself as he watched them, so was Ben. No one could ever quite tell what she was thinking, but everyone knew when she had made a choice. When she got it into her head to do something, she was sure as hell going to do it. No second thoughts. That's what made her dangerous. That's what made both of them dangerous—but Jyn perhaps more so. She didn't seem as much given to deliberation, being more wont to act first. He had heard as much himself from his friends on Extraction Team Bravo. This Erso girl had displayed an utter lack of appreciation for her rescuers on Wobani, taking every opportunity to escape both them and the Empire, only restrained by their very own K-2.

The Alliance called such people volatiles. Caspian called them mad fools. People like that should be handled with utmost care, he could remember Draven telling him once. Imagine you're holding a touchy blaster. Always expect it to go off when you're not expecting it to.

Well, it wasn't like he hadn't had practice, raising someone like Ben. He told himself this, attempting to maintain a certain level of confidence in his own abilities. It was only one girl, right? Right. He had dealt with one, he could surely deal with another.

But what he hadn't prepared himself for, was having them both together in the same place. Even as he ushered Jyn into the tiny grey room where Ben awaited them, Cassian considered belatedly whether it was such a good idea that they meet at all.

Then they locked eyes and it was done.

The green ones flashed only fleetingly with interest as they found the scars on the other's face. They cleared just as quickly, latched onto the hazel ones, and refused to let go. Those hazel eyes exhibited obvious reservation, but Cassian descried something else in them when they settled on the lost girl with the broken past. He could have sworn it was familiarity. When they shook hands, they did so in silence, like they didn't even need to know each other's names.

To an outsider, the entire exchange might have appeared civil, if somewhat strained. To Cassian, it felt more like being caught between two circling forces of nature. Like watching two starfighters teeter between impending crash and narrow avoidance.

So, he sat there in the tiny room, at a table with two wild cards, contemplating the amount of concern he should acknowledge, and half-wishing K-2 was there to give him his odds of walking out unscathed. For now, it seemed relatively calm, as they continued on with their peddler-patron routine.

"Bacta patches." Headshake, put away.

"Watch." Headshake, put away.

"Toothbrush." Taken.

"Hydropak." Headshake, offered again. Taken.

"Engine tape." Headshake, put away.

"Blaster." Take—

"No blaster." The words slipped automatically from between Cassian's lips before he even registered what Ben had said.

"Why not?" they asked simultaneously, then glanced at each other edgily, the weapon still halfway between them.

Cassian looked from one to the other and back. "Because the general said so," he replied slowly. They all paused uncomfortably, and he wondered which of the three blasters in the room would go off first. None did, but Ben shot him a glare as she put the weapon away with the bacta patches and the engine tape.

"She should be able to protect herself," she reasoned.

Cassian shook his head, still on eggshells. "Orders." He glanced sideways at Jyn's affronted expression. "Consider it my job to protect you."

"Cassian," said Ben, "one blaster's no good between two people if they're cornered by a squadron of troopers."

"So, we won't get cornered." The mood was precariously balanced, and he'd be damned if he was the one to upset it, but he would not tolerate insubordination, especially not from Ben.

Her brows hit the sky, but after a moment she continued her work.

"Comlink." A small nod. It passed from one scarred and calloused hand to the other.

"Why is everyone here so willing to trust me with this?" Jyn wasn't talking about the comlink. She was talking about their mission.

"Not all of us are," muttered Cassian, still eyeing her askance, "but we know you want freedom, and this is how you're going to get it."

"You don't know what I want." Her green eyes were calm as ever, her voice carefully flat. "You don't know what I could do if I decide to rebel." Rebel against the Rebellion? There was not a doubt in Cassian's mind that she not only meant those words, but was entirely capable of carrying them out. He held those burning eyes for a moment, but didn't say anything.

"Forgery of official documents, high-class security infiltration, years of combat experience, evasion of capture…" Cassian and Jyn both turned at this mantra. Although she had not been cleared to sit in on the war room brief, Ben had evidently been nosing around while she waited for them.

Hazel eyes bored into green. The act was over. "That may sound like your record, but it's not. I can do most everything you can do, Jyn Erso. And I daresay I've been doing it longer. We don't need you just for your skillset. We wouldn't break just any criminal free." The way she said 'criminal' caused Jyn's eyes to narrow.

"You were selected based on who you know," Cassian interjected, placing more items from the table into his own bag. "Any link to information about this superweapon brings us hope."

"Hope," the girl mused, fiddling with the comlink in her hands. "Is hope all you people can give to the Rebellion?"

Cassian dropped his bag, practically slammed it down onto the tabletop, surprising even himself. Jyn slowly lifted her head to meet his gaze. He looked her dead on this time.

"Rebellions aren't just built on hope, Cassian." He turned his gaze to Ben. She only regarded him for a moment before turning to the Erso girl. "They're built on people like you."

"Rebellions aren't just built on hope, Cassian." He turned his gaze from green to hazel. Ben only regarded him for a moment before turning to the girl. "They're built on people like you."

"Criminals?"

The immediacy and derision of the response deepened Cassian's scowl, but Ben's features remained even. The tawny head twitched to the side.

"The hopeless," she answered. "Unfortunates and desperates. Those who have nothing left to lose. Those who will do what is necessary." She tipped her head to the other side and pierced Jyn with her gaze. "Those who will do the impossible."

"Is that so?"

The mask fell into place again. The hazel eyes blinked once.

"That is what I believe."

Jyn said nothing, just put the comlink away in her bag. Cassian felt as if this storm were on the edge of breaking. They were all saved by one little corporal, who poked his head through the door and told them it was time. Cassian and Ben rose first, waiting in a tense silence as Jyn zipped her bag shut and stood. She jostled Ben's shoulder as she passed, and disappeared through the doorway. Hazel eyes collided with sable. They exchanged a brief and incredulous glance before following.

Side-by-side and wordless, they strode down the hall until they were halfway to door that led out to the hangar. Jyn waited just inside.

"Happy flying, spacehead," Ben muttered into Cassian's ear before turning down the next hallway and leaving him to approach his new and reluctant charge alone.

Good, Cassian thought, despite the enormity of the task before him. As long as Ben had the mind to joke, she was neither too mad nor too worried. No good-byes necessary. He would be back.

The assurance in this thought was soured somewhere between the hangar door and liftoff, when a voice calling "Captain Andor!" brought him back out of the U-wing onto the landing pad. General Draven. Jyn went ahead and boarded, out of earshot. Even as the general opened his mouth, Cassian's heart started to sink. Things were about to become much more complicated.

"Galen Erso is vital to the Empire's weapon program." Draven's tone was low and grave. "Forget what you heard in there. There will be no extraction." Cassian's heart reached the soles of his boots. He knew what came next.

"You find him, you kill him. Then and there."

He kept his features expressionless as the general walked away. Mislead and terminate. Deceive and murder. No good words for these things, no matter whose banner they were executed under. Somewhere in his boots, his heart twisted, just a twinge of doubt. Should he tell Ben?

Cassian. He heard a voice, high and bell-like in his head. There is always a choice.

No. Orders were orders. Galen Erso was not her burden. He regretted ever telling her about the first man he had killed. All those years ago, he had vowed never again. This was Cassian's life. The crumby hand fate had dealt him. He turned and trudged back to the U-wing and the condemned man's daughter within, treading all the while on his own heart where it still lay in his boots.


Aboard the U-wing, Jyn Erso withdrew the blaster from inside her jacket. Ben was sharp, she would give her that. Her brother—or whoever he was—had suspected nothing as she brushed past the tawny-headed girl in the grey room, the weapon passing flawlessly between them. The K-2SO unit, however, was not fooled for a second.

"Why does she get a blaster, and I don't?"

When the captain interrogated her, she claimed she had 'found it', but the truth was something he would not have liked. Deep down, Jyn thought the intention behind the smuggled blaster was more for his benefit than hers. As the ship rose from the landing platform and the jungles of Yavin 4 fell away beneath them, the sultry words of the man in the pilot's chair echoed through her thoughts.

Rebellions are built on hope. He had said it like he had been holding onto it for a long time.

Not much later, on Jedha, she would surprise him with the same skepticism, and he would surprise her with the same single-minded response.

Neither had any idea of the change that had begun the moment Jyn stepped through the door of that war room, both in the Rebellion and in Cassian's own life. Neither had any clue of the things they were about to set in motion.


Whew! Is it hot it here or is it just me? Sparks flying in all directions, and our poor Cassian just can't seem to catch a break.