Disclaimer: Though I am a fan of Star Wars I am not as well versed as many, so there very probably will be some discrepancies with my story. Please note that this entire story is a divergence from canon, so if you have a problem with some of my mistakes just think of it that way. Thank you!
6
Hi·rae·th
A homesickness for a home you can't return to, or that never was.
Jyn's childhood home was decrepit. It seemed that no one moved in after her family was torn apart and the house was in disarray, windows were broken out and the door was hanging on it's hinges. Her eyes followed every curve of the house, making a note of every window and every piece of wood that used to be a gate, and compared it to her childhood memory.
She vastly preferred her childhood memory.
Her feet carried her forward and she could hear Cassian following closely behind her. Instead of entering the house first she went around the back where two rocks sat up against the back of the house. They were tombstones.
She dropped to her knees in the dark sand, waving off Cassian's hands, and scooted forwards. Reaching out she ran her fingers over the etching.
"Why are you carving gravestones?" Jyn asked her father on the afternoon that he had made them, she had just turned eight the day before and in her childhood mind this seemed like a big turn from the joy of yesterday.
"You remember our plan right?" Galen asked, blowing away the stone dust as he etched her mother's name.
"Yes." Jyn replied glumly, thinking of the hole in the cave.
"These are so that the bad men will think that your mother and you are no longer here and won't look too hard for you."
Jyn scrunched her nose, "But momma and I aren't dead."
Galen chuckled at his daughter's confusion. "I know that and you know that, but they won't."
"Jyn?" Cassian's voice interrupted her memory and she realized that there were tears running down her face. "What are these?"
She wiped at them with her sleeve and gave the gravestone that said 'Lyra Erso' a pat.
"These were a cover for my mother and I-when the Krennic found us my father told them that my mother and I had died-these were supposed to be proof." But her mother had actually died. Jyn wondered morbidly if her mother was actually buried here but doubted it.
Standing Jyn entered the house through the back door which was rusty with age and squealed open. Dust floated in the sunlight that filtered in through the broken windows and all of the furniture that had once been neatly kept by her mother was turned over. Their kitchen cupboards were flung open and dishes were shattered on the floor.
The sight of it nearly knocked the breath out of Jyn, she could almost envision her mother sitting at the little table by the window with her feet drawn up underneath her as she read a book or her father puttering around the house, tinkering with things that weren't broken.
Glass crunched under her feet as she headed further into the house, entering the hallway that led to the two bedrooms. She pressed her palm onto a pad next to one of the doors and entered her childhood bedroom which was just as torn up as the rest of the house, one of her stuffed animals was torn to shreds and spread throughout the room.
She backed quickly out of the room not wanting to be in any longer and nearly knocked into Cassian, who gripped her shoulders to steady her. "Are you alright?" he asked and she shook her head, not really having the words to describe what she was feeling.
She headed further down the hallway to the last door and pressed her palm onto it. The door slid open and she stepped into her parents bedroom. Nostalgia hit her hard, she was surprised that the room still felt like her parent's-it even smelled like them still if that were even possible.
It was torn up as well but not as much as the rest of the house, the sheets had been pulled off of the bed and the mattress was cut into and the innards were pulled out. The dresser drawers were open on her father's side of the bed and empty. They must have let him take his things when they took him.
"I don't know what i'm looking for." Jyn finally said, turning around to look at Cassian who was watching her very closely. "They could have at least given us a hint how am I supposed to find something if I don't even know what I'm looking for? I never wanted to come back here there is nothing for me here-" her voice grew increasingly panicked and she ran a hand through her hair causing it to stand on end.
Cassian grabbed her hand and dragged her into his arms, holding her as she rambled on. "Hey, it's alright there is no pressure." He never returned to his childhood home either, he knew that the emotions that he would have felt would have been too much.
"This doesn't even feel like home-it's a hideout…" she trailed off before pulling away with surprise "It's a hideout!" She let go of him and hurried about the bed.
"My mother used to tell me all about the secret compartments that this place had and that it was easy to put things where they won't be found. When I was being bad she used to take away my toys and hide them and told me that if I could find them then I could have them back-but I never could find them…" Jyn racked her entire memory of her mother and her mother's movements. She remembered her mother used to sit in this corner when she was having a hard day… Jyn's finger's slid over a button so tiny that it was hard to see with the naked eye.
A little compartment in the corner popped open and Jyn shared a triumphant look with Cassian. Reaching inside she pulled out a tiny stack of photos with a note on top that said 'For Jyn'.
"They knew you would come back here one day." Cassian said reading the note over her shoulder.
Together they sat on the ruined mattress and flipped through the photos. There were many of her as an infant and a little girl. "I don't know where any of these places are." Jyn said glumly, her excitement over their discovery soon fading.
The last image was of her and her parents holding her between them, she looked about two or three and she was reaching towards the camera. Cassian flipped the photo over and neatly printed on the back in her mother's handwriting was:
'Jyn age 2, Trip to Tatooine'
Jyn ran a finger over the writing, "Do you think this means anything?"
"I don't know but I know that Tatooine isn't a place that people just take 'trips' to." Cassian said with distaste.
"I've never been-well I guess that's not true-but I don't remember ever having been."
"I've been there on a few missions and let me tell you it's hot and dry and just generally not a very good place to be." They stood and headed back through the house, Cassian complaining about Tatooine the entire way. He was telling Jyn about all of the sand when the sound of a ship made them go silent.
Cassian dragged Jyn to the floor and pressed a finger to his lips, Jyn wanted to make a comment about him being the one doing all the talking but she held her tongue. They crawled through the glass until they were underneath a window.
Cassian peered over the sill and cursed. "Those are Stormtroopers outside. We must have triggered some alarm when we came inside."
Jyn's heart leapt into her throat and she reached down for her blaster.
"Lets go out the back." She murmured and they began their crawl a crossed the room to the back door.
They managed to get outside just as the Stormtroopers entered the house, then they were running. It was a moment before they heard "Hey stop right there!"
Blasts shot past them as they ran for their lives. "Zigzag! Zigzag!" Jyn yelled to Cassian as they ran a crossed the overgrown field and back towards the ship.
"I am try to get from point a to point b as fast as possible!" Cassian yelled from ahead of her.
"Yes but if you don't want to get shot," she turned her body in order to fire back at the pursuing Stormtroopers, "Then you need to zigzag!"
"Is this really the best time to be arguing about this?"
Jyn ignored him as they made it to the ship and swung herself inside. They were in the air in seconds, lifting away from the surface of the planet and away from the Stormtroopers who were below.
"We need to get away from this planet before they call for backup-if they haven't already." Cassian said from the controls looking over at Jyn who looked odd "Are you alright?"
"I…" Jyn said as the adrenaline faded and her shoulder began to ache. She pulled her jacket off with some difficulty and hissed with pain when she saw her shoulder which was covered with blood.
"You were hit?" Cassian was trying to focus both on piloting their ship through the atmosphere and on her.
"Yes. Keep your eyes up front Andor." She hissed as the ship shuddered from the resistance of the atmosphere. "It just grazed me, nothing serious."
"And you were the one who was telling me to zigzag." Cassian joked as they made it through the atmosphere and into open space.
Jyn's glare kept him from making any more ill-timed jokes, "Anyways," He hurried on "Tattoine is unfortunately at least a week's journey away. This old girl needs fuel, not to mention we don't have any other supplies."
Jyn nodded, reaching out to type their parameters into the navigation "Alright… setting a course for Corellia." She informed him before turning to watch Lah'mu fade into the distance.
- Author's Note -
So let me tell you, trying to decipher a map of the Star War's Galaxy causing a bigger headache than staring at a text book for an hour. But it's working out... slowly. Again not the most well versed in the Star Wars universe but many of you who know the movies very well can already tell where I'm going with all of this! But hopefully I surprise you with some of the twists I have in store.
More to come so please read and review!
-LittleMoonLover-