PART THREE – FIN
Hurry, hurry, hurry!
He didn't get to the cliff fast enough to save Steela. He didn't get Tysha to a surgeon to save her and the baby.
But maybe – just maybe, if he hurries – he can save the Ersos.
You owe me this much, he tells the universe as he makes the jump to hyperspace. You took my sister, my girlfriend, and my daughter. You owe me this one family.
Saw finds Lyra Erso's body when he lands on Lah'mu. Galen is nowhere to be found, and he knows what that means, but there's still a chance. The only footprints he finds are adult-sized, in no way small enough to abide a little girl.
He makes his way into the cave, keeping his eyes peeled for Stormtroopers and stifling the nascent hope he sees when he sees the panel he and Galen Erso disguised as a boulder still tightly closed.
He pulls up the panel with an impossible hope in his heart and light floods into the chamber.
A child's head snaps up at the sound and the light, a dying lantern clutched in her hand. The light catches the flecks in her eyes.
Galen's Stardust. Saw's heart soars.
"Come, my child." He beckons, his heart pounding with victory. "Come!"
Finally, he's there in time.
...
Once Jyn realizes who it is she climbs the ladder and spills out of the bunker with all her possessions forgotten. Saw scoops her up.
"Are they gone?" Jyn whimpers into his shoulder.
"For now, but they'll be back." He sets her down but still keeps ahold of her hand – he needs to be sure she doesn't run off. "We need to go now."
They rush out of the cave as fast as Jyn's little legs can carry her, each one of Saw's steps equaling two of hers. He makes sure that their path to his shuttle cuts Lyra Erso's final resting place a wide berth. Whether or not Jyn witnessed her mother's death, she doesn't need to see her body.
"You're my copilot," he says and hoists her into a seat. "Don't touch any of the controls, just tell me if you see any Imperials."
"Okay," Jyn agrees and fixes her eyes on the viewport ahead. Saw fastens his restraints, checks to make sure Jyn fastened hers, and takes off.
…
"You hungry?" he asks and hands her one of the ration bars he stocks on his shuttle. It's not the most appetizing thing he could offer an eight-year-old, but he can't imagine Jyn ate while she hid in the bunker and if he remembers anything from Tysha reading her baby holobook aloud, the only the thing worse than an overtired child is a hungry and overtired one.
Jyn takes the bar and chomps off a wolfish bite. Saw doubts she even tastes it, which is probably a good thing.
"Where are we going?" she asks between bites.
"Do you remember when I brought you and your family to Lah'mu and you asked about going to my home planet?"
"Are we going there?"
He nods. "Jyn, it's not a nice place. There are no other kids, no toys to play with, and sometimes the Empire comes and attacks us."
Jyn ignores him in favor of wolfing down the ration bar and he continues. "The Empire attacks and people die. People will die while you're there."
"I understand," she says and smooths the wrapper from the ration bar. "I still want to go."
He has no clue what he's going to do with her. He has no family to send her to. The thought of enlisting the aid of Tysha's adoption-minded cousin crosses his mind but he nixes it. A newborn can be explained away as an unexpected pregnancy or a foundling on a doorstep, but an eight-year-old girl? Eight-year-olds have pasts and backstories and records that Tysha's cousin can't explain away.
Besides, he has no right to ask her to do this after the sterile letter he sent telling her how Tysha and the baby died. He had to copy it over three times until he managed not to get any tears on it, and a protocol droid could have done a better job. He should have asked Lux to help him with it; he was always good with words.
Jyn puts the wrapper on the nearest console, turns in her seat and confirms "I want to stay with you."
"You will," the words pop out of Saw's mouth for some reason. "Go into the back and take a nap. It's the middle of the night, Onderon time."
She unbuckles her restraints and obediently plods off to the back of the shuttle where he assumes she'll stretch out on one of the benches. I've fed her and got her to rest; that's a start at least. Now I just have to figure out what in the name of the force I'm going to do with her in a war zone. There are no families for her to play with, no school for her to learn her letters and numbers…
Numbers.
Galen Erso was a genius crystallographer and a dedicated father. At eight years old, Jyn has probably learned her numbers, as well as basic math.
An idea pops into Saw's head.
…
"How high do you know your numbers?"
"As far as they go," Jyn answers, her head craning around so she can get a better look at a tee-muss tied to a stake.
Saw gently tugs on her hand to get her attention. "So you can count to a hundred without any problem?"
"To a thousand."
Even better. "And you can write the numbers down?"
The look she gives him says of course I can, I'm not a baby.
That's perfect. He takes her to one of the supply tents and pulls back the flap.
"Tivik, I brought you some help."
Tivik turns around with datapad in his hand. "I'll take any you send my – a kid?"
Jyn shrinks back a little and Saw places a hand on her back. "Tivik, meet your new assistant. She's told me she's a good counter."
Tivik's jaw drops. "Is she yours?"
For a second Saw thinks of answering in the affirmative – the whole camp knows he already fathered one child – but he nixes the idea. "She's a friend's, and she's the best help we could ask for. Name's Jyn."
Tivik probably doesn't believe him entirely but he shrugs because like Saw predicted, he also doesn't want to count all the supplies on his own. "Fine by me. Jyn, grab a piece of flimsi and start counting blaster cartridges."
…
At the end of the day Jyn hands him a flimsi and he takes a good look at the numbers.
"Did you have any issues counting?" he asks while still keeping his eyes on the flimsi.
"No," Jyn plops onto his bed. "It was easy and Tivik taught me how to play sabaac."
Saw makes a mental note to make sure she doesn't get involved in some of the sabaac games with the other partisans. "Did you bet anything?"
"Cartridges," she replies, shelling off her shoes and squirming under the blanket. "We had to put them back though."
"We need all the cartridges we can get to fight the Empire," he agrees and tucks her in. He figures he can sleep on the floor tonight if she's so set on having his bed. Instead he snags his pillow, tucks the one Tysha used to use under Jyn's head, and drops to the floor.
She leans over the side of the bed. "Can I count with you tomorrow?"
"Why? Is Tivik giving you trouble?"
"No. I just like you better."
He makes sure she doesn't see his expression. "Sorry Jyn, but I'm busy with other things."
"Oh." Jyn shifts in bed and mumbles "Goodnight, Saw."
When he wakes up in the middle of the night from the same nightmare he's had since he put Steela in the ground, Jyn Erso lies snuggled next to him, her little head using his chest as a pillow. He doesn't fashion himself as very cuddly, but she's sound asleep all the same.
Saw smiles and loops his arm around her as he drifts off, so when she wakes up she knows he saw her.
…
Through the years Jyn graduates from counting weapons to moving them in the convoys, to using them on the battlefield. Her lessons turn from the alphabet and numbers to basic battlefield practices, how to bind a wound, and how to tell a liar from the twitch of his eye.
Through the years the rumors about Jyn graduate from merely annoying to dangerous.
When she first arrived on Onderon people whispered that Jyn was his, and he'll admit they have reason. He did get Tysha pregnant, what would keep him from seeing other girls?
I heard her mother was a Beast Rider girl, only fifteen years old when she had the child.
I heard Saw gave some Iziz prostitute fifty credits for a good night and ended up with a baby.
I heard her mother was a noblewoman who had to go hide away in shame.
But as Jyn grows so does the evidence that Saw isn't lying when he says she isn't his. And when they get to Jedha the rumors become more accurate.
I heard she's a noble from an ancient Onderonian house, and Saw plans to crown her once the Empire falls.
I heard she's a slave on the run from the mines.
I heard she's an Imperial officer's daughter.
It's the last one that scares Saw to the core. Because some day Jyn will snap back so she doesn't have to listen to the whispering anymore, and she'll confirm it. And then goodness knows what those in earshot will do to her.
Not even Saw's influence could stop them if they knew. So in the days leading up to the day he makes the third greatest mistake of his life, he fills a pack.
A knife.
A loaded blaster.
Some rations and a water bottle.
It's an easy thing to say, on the surface.
"Stay here until I come back for you," he says and hands her the pack.
Jyn shoulders it and slinks down against the wall of the bunker. "Are you sure you don't want me to cover your back?"
She's sixteen now, and his best fighter. She's sure-footed and brave as Steela, quick as Tysha, and just like them she's doomed if she stays with him. But she has something else, a steeliness in her soul that he planted there to make sure she could survive on her own.
If she stays, his men will kill her. If she stays, he'll look weak. If he looks weak, the dream dies.
"I'm sure." He climbs out of the bunker and forces himself not to look back. If he looks back, Jyn might realize that something's going on.
He leaves her in the bunker along with the last shreds of his heart.
…
Years later he makes the fourth decision he regrets, big time.
He wasn't supposed to go back to Geonosis after he left with Phoenix Squadron. But he's never been one to leave a task undone.
He takes a team beneath the surface, all of them wearing helmets but him. In his mind, helmets restrict your peripheral vision. Their mission is simple: take the canisters of insecticide back to the Alliance and give them the proof they need.
It's foolproof, unless falling debris cracked the canisters long ago and once they're freed from the boulders, so is the gas.
Green poison billows from the container, and all at once Saw's lungs are on fire.
"Azar," he gasps, trying to expel the stuff from his lungs and his voice filled with all the desperation in his men's when they collapse. "Azar!"
The last thing Saw sees before the blast takes him is Azar and Tivik grabbing him under the arms and dragging him away.
…
"Wow Saw, you really did it this time."
"What did you expect? He's been doing it ever since he was a kid."
Saw recognizes that voice.
He forces his eyes open through the hellstorm of pain, blinking to make out two women against a bright background. One of the women crosses her arms and looks at him disapprovingly.
The other has her hands buried in his chest.
Saw sputters. "Tysha?"
"Who am I?" the standing shadow cries. "Chopped liver?"
Now he can see her clear as day – Steela, her arms crossed and her annoyance at being passed over apparent.
They're back from the dead.
"No," Steela corrects and Saw realizes he's spoken aloud. "We're not back from the dead. You're about to be dead."
"Not if I have anything to do with it," Tysha grunts and moves her hands in his chest. Saw doesn't know if it's because of the shock or wherever they are, but it doesn't hurt. "I don't want to up the number of patients I've lost after I'm dead."
He opens his mouth to say something but words fail him. This is new. He usually has a smart-mouthed comment raring to fly free from his lips at all times, but now - well, who could blame him?
Tysha snorts in frustration. "Who's working on you back in the land of the living? Azar?" When Saw doesn't answer because his mouth is still hanging open, she answers her own question. "It has to be Azar. Nobody else would do this."
With Tysha occupied, Steela leans over him.
"I am going to kriffing kill you," she hisses. "I don't care if you die in two seconds or two centuries, I'm going to string you up by your toes and beat you with a stick. You held a gun on the last Geonosian egg?"
He stammers. "I-It was a matter of the rebellion's success."
"I thought you were above threatening unborn children. I thought you were above genocide." Steela snaps. "And I also thought you were above torture. Are you serious, Saw?"
Saw flushes. "The Empire was doing something on Geonosis and that bug knew what it was!"
"You found out what is was anyway," Steela crosses her arms. "The Separatists tortured you during the Clone War; you know what it's like and you inflicted it onto another being. I thought you were better than this!"
"Thought?"
"Yeah, thought." She sighs. "I guess I was wrong."
"You thought I wouldn't do anything it takes to bring down the Empire? To bring freedom to Onderon and all the other planets it's suffocating?"
"I thought you were the person who held me in his arms when I fell off that cliff. I thought you were the person who brought General Tandin to our side with words, not violence. Basically I thought you were still my brother, and now I'm not sure anymore."
Saw glares at her but he's stopped when pain tightens his chest like a vice. He digs his fingers into his legs to keep from screaming.
"Finally, they got it," Tysha mumbles, ignoring his sudden distress. "Yes, Azar, Geonosian insecticide works by eating at the lungs. You have to reinforce them."
A baby's cry comes from somewhere. Steela cranes her neck. "Hey Tysha…"
"Would you pick her up?" Tysha quips. "I'm a little busy here."
"Gladly." Steela takes a few steps to the left and bends over a cradle. (How did he miss the cradle?) She straightens up with a bundle in her arms.
"Steela," Saw gasps and strains to see the bundle. "Steela, bring her here."
"With Tysha working on you? Not a chance." Steela smiles at the bundle. "Anyway, my niece likes me. She's so cute."
"And change that gravestone," Tysha says almost as an afterthought, threading a needle. "I didn't name her Steela. It would've gotten too confusing."
"What did you name her?"
"No time," she says, sweat gleaming on her brow. "Look Saw, I'm not going to lie to you. The damage is extensive, but it looks like they're going to try something. Depending if Azar has brains or not, it'll help save your life or it will kill you. Get ready."
"Wait," he tries to sit up, but one look from his sister stops him in his tracks. "Let me see the baby. Tysha!"
Tysha doesn't listen.
…
Saw wakes up with the mother of all headaches, a life support system for lungs and cybernetic legs, so it turns out the doctors and Tysha's meddling saved his life.
But could anyone have saved his mind?
It may be the insecticide. It may be his encounter with his dead family. It may be the never-ending war pressing in on him. But the moment he has with Steela, Tysha, and the daughter whose face he couldn't see is the last clear one.
His final years are a blur of explosions, gasping breaths, and paranoia with sprinkles of betrayal. Lies sniffed out by Bor Gullet, tiny victories that he doesn't celebrate anymore, and the crushing hopelessness when he sees the kyber shipments leave Jedha.
It's like he tells Jyn when, wonder of wonders, she arrives on Jedha. There's not much of him left.
But there's still a very little.
…
No one knows where he ended: standing strong facing the destruction of Jedha, sucking in his final rattling breaths through lungs filling with fluid, both wishing that it isn't and embracing that it is the end. He learned a long time ago that there will always be another fight calling for him, but although the call of duty rings strong in his bones, it's drowned out by the other song – the song of Saw, the weathered and tired man who begs for respite in the deepest part of himself.
As he slips he sees the dead dance before his eyes. His parents and Steela, Hutch, Dono, all his men, Tysha – and even Jyn Erso, who he knows is flying away from this grave of a planet and into the safety of space.
He sees Onderon – the jungle and the blue sky, the rupings and fambaas and dalgos, the city of Iziz in the distance, and the gravel under his feet.
Saw blinks, and looks down.
He has feet.
His hands fly to his throat and yes, yes his medical equipment is gone. His joints no longer creak with premature aging, his hands are smooth and welcoming rather than the callused messes they were and his mind is crystal clear, free from the paranoia of his final years and the insanity chipping away at his soul.
He is young once more.
And wherever he is, he feels in his bones that he has seen the end of war.
Saw stands there a while, drinking in the glory of youth and health and peace.
"Daddy!"
A child races from the fuzzy edges of wherever he is, four years old at the most and with her hair styled in two little puffs at the top of her head. Saw gets down on a knee mostly out of habit and holds his arms open. He expects the child to run straight through him or to duck around him to her daddy because there's no way, there's no possible way this adorable little one is…
"Daddy!"
The girl runs smack into Saw and she's there, so solidly wonderfully there in his arms.
She wraps her arms around his neck.
"Daddy, you're home."
…
With his daughter riding on his shoulders, he makes his way to the others.
Steela, talking and laughing with Dono.
King Dendup and General Tandin, sitting and watching the scene with smiles on their faces.
Tysha, calling for her daughter.
Tivik, cracking what's no doubt a crude joke.
Jyn and Galen and Lyra, hugging each other as if they'll be separated again.
All so happy. All so peaceful. It's been so long since he felt those things he doesn't remember what it's like.
"Are you ready, Daddy?" his daughter asks and reaches one hand down to grab his.
He takes a deep breath and closes his hand around hers.
"I think so," he says and steps forward into the cheers and the arms of all those he loved.
And for the rest of eternity, Saw Gerrera feels peace as he dances with his daughter, his friends, and his sister, somewhere far beyond the blue Onderon sky.
It may not have been the happiest story, but it's a happier ending.
Thank you to Starwarshobbitfics for your review. And speaking of which, please review!
Until next time,
LS