"Hands up!"

Jyn is not like that.

Jyn fights the dark so, so hard. Even when it is intriguing, enthralling, entrancing, even when it is clad in purity.

Jyn dreams.

It is not a first, because she is a warrior. The blaster is in her hand, again, and this time she aims it at the Director. She doesn't wonder where she got it from, but if she was actually the one attacking him before he came home, because such is the nature of dreams. She approaches, seductive, almost as if she was not bringing death as an offering, but lust. Her lips part, she can hardly breathe.

She is unable to shoot, and there is no way next time would be easier, not that there would be one. She has switched from wishing him dead in a horrible way, to saving the galaxy from him yet somehow not wanting him to suffer, and now she can't bring herself to get rid of him. I saved him.

Rey lowers the blaster. Drops it. It falls down, down, down.

Krennic has the upper hand now, perhaps always had. It is not what Jyn would do, approaching still, her hands at her buttons, one, two, three... Cleavage cold in the fresh air, using her feminine wiles. This isn't me. Lyra's daughter, vulgar. Galen's daughter, wanton. She bits her lip and the Director's glacial gaze finally is unable to resist, follows her hands. It is useless. Krennic, her husband, probably knows that she isn't the real Jyn, or maybe she doesn't exist anymore, never existed, not as she imagined herself. He wouldn't believe she just had a nervous breakdown and didn't mean any harm, or that she had been forced into this. He would know she cannot be forced or broken. She would rather die. Then I'll throw myself out the window. The question remains, will he kill her with his own gun, or call for his men to do it? No other than me is allowed to lay a hand on the Lady Krennic. It seems a mercy to die from his hand, a single perfect shot and forever on his mind. Her heart beating painfully, she feels herself tremble in fear and adrenaline. More than one good occasion was spoiled. Because now there is no way another -girl- being could gain his trust and complete the mission. The plan has failed forever. The officer will take this out on everyone, and first on the Resistance. Dad, mom. Whatever you do to me I'll do to you tenfold. But. Not you.

Dad, mom

. She hates that despite the storm of emotions, she ends up wondering if he would want her one last time and if she would cooperate. Maybe they both deserve closure, maybe she is tainted enough to desire him even in such circumstances. Or maybe this hasn't happened yet. There is no time in the realm of dreams.

Write Jyn Krennic. Did she really hope to marry him and remain unchanged? It would take care of whatever little sensitivity remained after she discovered the reality of fighting for a cause. It bothers her still, and she thinks maybe Krennic is right and these things are better left to men, like too strong an alcohol. She remembers tasting awful contraband liquor. Seasoned pilots could gulp it down with barely any side-effect, while others would sleep, cry or rage. She wants to accept the sheltering, the protection. Worse, she feels that awful, terrible, no-good pull to protect him. Jyn gives a dry sob. She is crying for the woman she had become, for her kin endlessly waiting for her help, for her friends when they would find out, even for him who had come to tolerate her and lost a woman he liked, or thought he could like. When he embraces her she doesn't hold back anymore, real tears hidden into the man's uniform jacket. Maybe if you don't see it… She runs her hands along his back, the gaudy belt cold around the tunic. Her bare legs feel more than naked against the thick luxurious fabric.

"You don't know?", she asks, mouth buried in white, as if she couldn't handle the thought. "Look into your sancrosanct archives. My friends. Your victims. Your… experiments". What is going on is much more important than any love story. Still, she hopes he would be hurt that she chose others over him, and that these others were his mortal enemies.

"I loved you… I love you". She had finally found out one could hate and love at the same time, even if the second one won in the end. She has nothing to lose telling him, though it would haunt him. She hopes, in a way, that he will be left with the memory that she hasn't been able to kill him, but knowing him, he will probably remember her aiming at him. There is strength in this, weakness in love.

"Hold me", she whispers, and without even thinking of what a bad idea it is, she adds "Take me". She seeks comfort. She isn't even pleading for mercy, not daring to hope. He doesn't do mercy, certainly not for rebels. Krennics don't, he would say. But he seeks her lips. She gives in, slightly opening her mouth to him. What if the rebellion manages to get back on their feet only to discover she has betrayed? The mere idea is terrifying. And at the same time, she has to deal with the current situation, she cannot stay idle and wait for a possible change. This is how we stay alive. She wonders if somehow this isn't her excuse to act in such a despicable way. This cannot be allowed to go too far, to create attachment, she tells herself as she kisses him back, light headed from fear and desire. Too late. Nothing is possible between them - her, a rebel, and him, the man keeping her family hostage, who may kill them anytime. She cannot trust him, and he cannot trust her either. I saved him. She hopes he will push her away, because she has already used up all her self control. And yet as inappropriate as it is, isn't it part and parcel of the unwritten rules that the man who takes the king down becomes the new leader? The man who took the resistance down… It all belongs to him, from the luxurious liquors to the most beautiful ornament under his family roof. If he wants to drink it all, he could. If he wants to help himself to the resistance's poster child, who would stop him? Surely, a gentleman would at least wait until she isn't mourning anymore, but then a lady wouldn't throw herself at her friends' murderer… No, my friends are safe, they weren't there, he said… He said.

Jyn feels him harden in their embrace quicker than a man who claims not to have time for women would usually. She grazes and grinds against him. Her hand seeks him as her eyes did before, without him even asking, and she pats and rubs there. She wants to deny it is a turn on. His eyes won't let her. She breaks contact, looks up for clues.

His lips are bruised and swollen though not from fighting and this is all she sees, friends forgotten, until she reaches his gaze, deep and definitely fixated on hers. Such a powerful man and she affects him so. The embrace. Familiar, comforting. Neither would have acknowledged it.

It is divine justice, almost ancient in its simplicity. She wanted him dead for so long, and now it is happening and it is horrible. A punishment for him, for her maybe even more. The blaster -it is Krennic's, sophisticated, gaudy and too heavy for a woman- is in her hand again. Shoot, Galen pleads. Shoot, Lyra pleads. Maybe he hasn't pushed the red button yet. She throws the blaster far, far away.

Jyn is not like that. Or maybe she is. White glove reaching for red button. Coward. She wakes up and she screams.

Chapter 15 is there and it's fucking scary.

Quote on power belongs to Winston Graham. And the mercy shot is my obsession with Coup de grace.

Power is not an endlessly divisible thing. Yet it must exist. Someone must possess it and since man is not perfectable; as you admit, it must at times be misused. Who is likely, to misuse it more: the demagogue who finds it suddenly in his possession, like a man with a heady wine who has never tasted liquor before; or a man who by heredity has learned - and been taught - how to use it, a man who, having known liquor all his life, may taste the heady wine without becoming drunk upon it?