Was going to do it tomorrow, but this chapter just sort of typed itself ;)
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They have failed.
The Alliance never got the plans they had transmitted. All the fighting, all the lives lost have been for nothing, Saw and her father and Baze and Malbus and Bodhi and all. It did not stop at Jedha City, or with the courageous Rebels sacrificing themselves on and above Scarif. Now millions of beings, an entire world, are gone, and it will not stop there, claiming dozens of planets, billions of lives… they have failed.
The pain suffocates her; it would have been easier if she could cry, but instead she is simply crushed by this mind-shattering defeat, by the prospect of unstoppable destruction. What are their lives worth, what good is fighting a war when death at Imperial hands is the only prospect whether they fight or not?
"Liana?"
She is too distraught to be able to answer K's summons.
"Jyn?"
This, she figures, is his way of expressing concern, and she has to at least show appreciation.
"Yes?" she breathes.
"I have accessed the news feed and saw what happened to Alderaan. I am very sorry, Jyn, I am still confident that you and Cassian and the others did all you could to prevent it."
She nods but cannot bring herself to answer. She knows K means well, but it is not helping.
"What's the matter?" a new voice, unexpected but infinitely familiar and desperately missed, sounds behind them.
She cannot answer him either, so it is left to K to relay the horrific news to his master.
She does not see Cassian's face, still staring ahead of her with an unseeing gaze, but she can hear the shock and anguish in his slow footsteps as he makes his way to where she sits in the pilot's chair. Somewhere at the back of her mind, she registers that at least there is one drop of good news amid this ocean of misery, that he is back on his feet and in good enough shape to walk. He leans over to the display to glance at the bulletin, then looks at her – and the pain welling up in his dark eyes somehow makes her own burden less unbearable.
He sits crouching down beside the pilot's chair and puts a hand on her shoulder; but this is not enough, and she turns toward him and tries to pull him up to sit beside her, even though there is no room. Instead, he sits down on the floor, leans back against the side console, and gently pulls her toward him.
"Come here."
She clambers down from the chair and sinks onto his chest, her face pressed into the crook of his neck, and even though the heartbreak is still tearing her up from the inside, she finds it easier to breathe.
She does not quite know how long they sit like that; she only knows that, by the time she sits up straight and looks at him and finds him looking back at her, she figures that she can probably just about go on to face tomorrow, and maybe another day after that.
"K's right," Cassian says quietly, "You did all you could. Even if you'd given up your life on Scarif it could not have achieved more."
"We shouldn't have stopped on Eadu," she whispers back, and instantly regrets it. That, and killing her father, had been part of his orders; he disobeyed the latter but was still compelled to stick through with the former. "Seeing my father meant the world to me, but if I'd known it would've made the difference for Alderaan, I would have agreed to give up that chance."
"We'll never know," he argues, still in the same soft voice. "We don't know what happened now to make them do it. Maybe if we hadn't got to Scarif when we did, but a day sooner, things would've happened that would have stopped us from ever getting those plans at all."
"I don't know if it matters," she sighs. "I don't think they got them."
"I'll call them tomorrow," Cassian assures her, "and ask them. And then we'll see what else we can do."
Assuming she makes it past tomorrow's bank job.
"What?"
She does not know how he has managed to notice whatever tiny change of expression may have reflected that thought of hers. But this is not the time to tell him about returning favours and setting explosives. He is still not fully recovered, and she does not want to burden his conscience with the thought that she is undertaking a risky task in exchange for his treatment. Or K's conscience for that matter, with the admission that she volunteered to take on a still-riskier task to get him back to his old metal self, sort of.
She shakes her head.
"It's just… " She remembers her earlier crushing thought. "I don't know how it's possible to find the strength to keep fighting after something like this."
He raises a hand to her face – she feels a flicker of relief to see that he is now fully in command of his left arm – and brushes a strand of hair behind her ear.
"So long as we're still breathing there's hope," he says quietly, and where a week earlier Jyn would have dismissed that sort of earnest rhetoric as high-flown and impractical, she finds herself clinging to his words now. "And so long as there's hope, we keep on fighting. No matter how heavy the losses, no matter how painful the blows, we fight against the odds until they turn in our favour."
And whatever the cynical Jyn of a week ago might have thought, right now she could swear that she has never heard anything as beautiful.
x x x
"Let's go," he finally entreats her, when a cursory look at a display readout alerts him to the local time. "In two hours it will be morning. You should get some sleep."
"And you?" she asks him as they scramble to their feet.
"I'm supposed to be getting back into the bacta tank first thing tomorrow – today. The 2-1B there is a real tyrant, you know," he adds with a hint of a smile.
"I know." Seeing his surprise, she explains: "I went to see you there and had to sweet-talk him into giving me five minutes."
He shakes his head. "And to think I missed all that."
"How did you get here, anyway?" she asks when they have said goodbye to K, locked down the shuttle, and are on their way out of the landing bay.
"Same way as you," he says, pointing to a second speeder bike now parked next to hers. "I woke up when the others were all getting ready for bed, and asked to get out of the med bay so I could take a walk around the compound. Ran into that pest of a 3PO…" he scowls and she smirks despite herself, "and asked him what you were up to, and when he said you had gone out on a bike and had not come back yet, I thought I might find you here and get the latest news." His face falls. "I had no idea what kind of news we'd be getting."
At least he similarly has no idea of what other errand she had been on before coming here.
"Let's hope," she says, struggling to suppress a sigh, "that whatever news you may get tomorrow will be better."
x x x
"So… I'll see you tomorrow, right?" he asks, making a valiant attempt at a smile that still comes out crooked. By now they are standing outside the door to her cabin, where he insisted on taking her before walking back to the med bay.
"Yeah…" She wishes she could explain to him that her dejected tone has a lot more to do with saying goodbye to him now than with the nebulous prospect of seeing him tomorrow.
"What's wrong?"
Forget the Twi'leks' famed ability to read human faces; when it comes to the ability to read her face, Cassian will give any Twi'lek a run for his money.
She shakes her head. "It's just…"
He takes a step back toward her and takes her hand. "I know. Listen… if you want to, I can stay here… until you fall asleep." Seeing, and misreading, the concern on her face, he adds, "I can be a gentleman, you know."
She shakes her head with a sort of broken chuckle. "That's not what I'm worried about." For that matter, had they both not been utterly heartbroken, she might not have wanted him to be that much of a gentleman. "It's just that you'll have no time to sleep before your treatment."
"I can always start it later," he protests. "It's the last one anyway, makes no difference if it starts in the morning or afternoon, whatever the 2-1B says. Besides…" he cocks an eyebrow at her, "I can always sleep in the tank."
It strikes her then that keeping him awake a bit longer could actually be a good idea; with any luck, between the bacta and catching up on sleep, he will miss the whole data vault business, she figures as she does her best to keep the thought from registering in her face; instead, she looks up at him with a timid half-smile.
"OK."
x x x
She stirs awake and cannot immediately figure out where she is; though considering who she is next to, it does not really matter a single bit. It feels like the most natural and the most perfect thing in the world to be waking up with Cassian's arms wrapped around her, even if they fell asleep sitting against the back of the bunk and are by now leaning against it at an awkward angle. For a blissful few seconds she basks in the peace, the warmth, the closeness… until the heart-rending news of the previous night, and the business of the day before her, comes crashing down upon her. She glances over at the climate control panel and bites down on a curse; 07:43, just before mid-day local time, and just over an hour left before she is supposed to set off the vault explosion. And she just realised that there is an errand she absolutely must complete before then.
Very slowly, careful not to wake him up, she slips from under his arm; he sighs but does not wake up. For a few more seconds she sits next to him looking at his face; not as blessedly carefree as the other day, but still peaceful in his sleep; and so damn handsome. She gets ready to get up and slip out of the room, but at the last instant, on an impulse, she presses the lightest of kisses to his lips – and while he does not stir, she is struck, as if by a bolt of lightning, by an overpowering desire to really kiss him, no matter if he wakes up; to press their bodies together and forget the world outside–
Not now.
She has a debt to pay.
x x x
She actually wishes she could have kept K out of it.
She is back at the shuttle bridge in her mission gear, an explosives-laden satchel hanging off her shoulder and her speeder bike hovering outside on full power. In less than five minutes she will need to leave so as to make it to the vault in time to place the charges.
And she is damned if she can think of the right words.
"What is it, Jyn?"
"K, I need you to… relay a message… from me, to Cassian… I have to… there's something I need to do today and it could get complicated… I should be back after sunset and I'll come by to let you know if it all goes well, but if I don't… if I'm not back by local midnight, then I'm asking you to give it to him the next time he's here."
"Jyn, are you certain this cannot wait until you and Cassian have had a chance to talk?"
She nods in grave resignation. "I'm certain. The timing isn't my choice."
"Are you certain that there is nothing I can do to help?"
She sighs instead of an answer. "It's OK. I should handle it just fine."
K pauses before prompting her. "What is the message you would like to leave?"
"Tell him I… I want him to stay safe, and I pray to the Force that he makes it back to… his friends… our friends", she stumbles, unable to say out loud what she wants him to know most of all. Tell him I love him. She knows it by now with overwhelming certainty, even though she never felt anything remotely akin to this for any of the handful of men she has known, but telling him that on the chance that she does not come back would be selfish, cruel almost; she would force him to live with her confession, and with the guilt he was bound to feel if he found out about the pact that had led her to this juncture. "That's it, really," she finishes limply instead.
If K has a bad feeling about this, he knows better than to say anything.
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TBC
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See you on the 30th or thereabouts :)