It's easy enough, Jyn thinks, to make bold claims about being able to survive until Bodhi comes back for them. The reality is much more complicated.
Her stomach grumbles an uncomfortable reminder as she lies in the snow, quadnocs firmly focused on the remains of the Rebel base several klicks away. Two weeks after the attack, there are still Imperial forces crawling over the base and she and Cassian are running out of supplies. They've been rationing since the first day, but there was only so much Jyn could get her hands on in the short time she had during the evacuation.
If Bodhi doesn't come soon — and Jyn knows Command won't even consider authorizing a rescue until the Imperials have left — she and Cassian are going to have to risk a raid on the base.
(Which means she is going to have a make a raid on the base because Cassian is still recovering from the injuries he took during the attack and isn't ready for combat, even though he'll insist that he is. On another mission, Jyn might let him get away with it, scared of letting him see too much — see her too clearly — by insisting he sit out.
She can't do that now.
She can't bear the risk of losing him.)
So she ignores the hunger in her belly and cold creeping through her layers of clothing to focus on memorizing the Imperial search patterns. If she can figure out which parts of the base the Imperials have already searched, she can plan the best way to avoid their patrols for a raid.
Hours later, the cold and the hunger have made her short-tempered, but at least she has some intel to bring back to Cassian. From what she can see, she thinks the Imperials are concentrating their search efforts in the base's Command areas and main hanger. That leaves some of the more distant wings mostly clear of troops.
Of course, those are also the parts of the base that were mostly destroyed during the assault, so even if there are supplies left in them, they'll be very difficult to get to.
Sighing in frustration, she takes one more pass over the base and its surrounding snow fields. She's about the pack up and head back to the cave when she notices something different — an opportunity.
There are no stormtroopers patrolling the tiny supply depot a klick away from the main base, the one the Rebels were using to provision the field infantry, the snow patrol, and the last of the pilots during the evacuation.
She knows they weren't keeping much there, but there's a chance that some supplies are left.
She debates with herself for only a minute. On the one hand, the supply depot may present an easy opportunity to get supplies, one that could avoid her having to risk her life or Cassian's on a more dangerous raid on the base itself. On the other hand, she's done only minimal surveillance and could be about to get herself killed or captured.
Cassian, she knows, would urge caution and continued observation. He'd insist that she wait until she knew for sure whether the lack of stormtroopers was a momentary lapse in the patrols or a consistent gap. He'd insist on dragging himself out here to be her back-up.
It's the last that convinces her. She can't bear the risk of Cassian, still injured, being anywhere near the Imperials. She'll have to gamble on the stormtroopers' absence for long enough to raid the depot.
She's gambled on longer odds before.
It takes her an hour of creeping through the snowfields to reach the depot. Though she doesn't run across any patrols, she's grateful for the white camo gear she brought during the evacuation. The closer she gets to base, the greater the risk that someone will spot the lone speck of movement on an otherwise empty snow field.
By the time she reaches the depot, the sun is beginning to creep towards the horizon, the wind is rising, and the biting cold has wormed its way through all of her layers.
The depot itself is little more than a comms and tracking tower — long since blasted into scrap by fleeing Rebels, Imperials, or both — and a collection of caches half-buried in the snow. The snow trenches, leftover from the Rebellion's desperate attempts to delay the Imperials from reaching the base, provide a little cover from the wind, but they're also full of the frozen bodies of Rebel soldiers who died in the field.
Jyn determinedly avoids looking at the bodies as she crouches in the snow and carefully eases the first cache from the snowbank. The sturdy durasteel container has been heavily dented and when she opens the box, the contents are gone. She bites back a curse and carefully buries the box back in the snow.
The next three boxes reveal a similar story: dented, blasted, cracked and empty.
She sits back on her heels and lets out a rough breath. She doesn't know whether the empty caches are a sign that the Rebels took everything with them when they fled or that the Imperials found and cleaned them out in the weeks since.
She's debating whether to keep looking or head back to Cassian — who must be getting worried by this point — when she hears the crunch of snow under heavy boots and the crackle of a comm.
She doesn't hesitate. She throws herself a few feet away down the trench (don't let them know there are caches) and sprawls facedown in the snow. As the footsteps draw slowly closer she frantically pulls lose snow over her body, hoping to camouflage herself as a snowdrift. Or, failing that, that she'll at least look like one of the other Rebel bodies that's been laying here for weeks.
She desperately prays to the Force that the troopers' helmets don't have infrared scanners.
(In the back of her mind, she spares a brief thought for Cassian, stuck in their emergency shelter, who'll never know what happened to her if she dies here. Of Bodhi, hopefully halfway across the galaxy, who'll never forgive himself if she does, even though there's nothing he could have done. Of all the things unsaid between the three of them that she'll never get a chance to say.
Her stomach clenches. Please, she thinks to the universe, not today.)
As the first hint of white plastoid armor comes around the corner, she goes still. A thin film of snow over her head hides her from immediate view but lets her watch the approaching stormtroopers through her eyelashes. It's a small patrol of three, heavy winter coverings muffling the normal noise of their armor.
Jyn catalogues their body language as the make their slow progress down the trench. Alert, but not tense. Weapons in hand, but held loosely. Helmets straight ahead, not scanning. Not searching.
Part of her relaxes. They aren't actively looking for anything.
She feels the weight of her baton strapped to her leg and knows she could take them all down if she had to.
She doesn't move.
Her heart pounds in her chest. She can't feel the cold anymore. Her mind is still. Her every sense is tuned towards the stormtroopers.
If they find her, she can't let them take her.
They continue down the trench. They don't hesitate over the buried cache. They don't hesitate over Jyn's frozen form.
She can't see them make the next turn in the trench, but can hear their bootsteps fade. For long minutes after they leave, she doesn't move from her sprawl in the snow. Her limbs have begun to tremble slightly and the rush of adrenaline is making her heart race.
The returning feeling of the cold seeping through her clothes finally gets her to move. She shifts carefully out from under the snow, piling it back up behind her in case the patrol returns. Now would be the time, the cautious part of her thinks, to head back to the cave.
One close call might be all the luck she has.
But…
Even with the close call and the increasing risk of Imperial soldiers, the situation hasn't changed. She and Cassian still need more supplies and this depot is the least risky place to get them. There are only two more caches to try.
If there's nothing there, Jyn will have to abandon the effort and resign herself to a riskier run on the base itself.
She moves slower through the trenches now, pausing and checking for the sound of Imperial boots every few steps. Still, she makes it to both caches without encountering another patrol. The first is just like all the others: blasted and empty.
But the last, the one farthest from the depot and closest to the base, is the treasure trove she was looking for. Hidden at the end of a trench that doesn't look like it saw any fighting and more well-hidden in the snow than the others, this cache hasn't been touched. When she opens it, she finds it full of ration packs and emergency supplies.
She slumps with relief against the side of the trench and has to let out a few shaky breaths and just stare at the contents. Her kyber necklace warms for a moment against her skin and she thinks she feels the light of a wide smile and a whisper of little sister. It might be Chirrut and Baze, watching over her from the Force, or it might be the cold finally affecting her brain, but she'll take it all the same.
She allows herself only a few moments to bask, whispers a prayer to the Force and a thank you to her Guardians, then drags her pack off her shoulders and begin to fill it.
In the end, she leaves behind a few of the bulkier items like the emergency shelter, but she manages to fit everything into her pack. With careful hands she reburies the cache, taking care to leave no trace that it's been disturbed. The items themselves looked free from trackers and her portable scanner confirmed it.
Once the durasteel box is again hidden in the snow, Jyn swings the pack back onto her shoulders, relishing the feel of its weight. She pushes to her feet, takes one last thankful glance at the now-empty cache, and starts the long journey back to her and Cassian's cave.
She hopes Cassian will be happy with her haul.
(He's not. He shouts at her for ten minutes for risking her life and potentially alerting the Imperials to their presence. Jyn shouts back that it won't do much good for them to avoid Imperial detection if they die of starvation before Bodhi can come back. They end up lying back to back in furious silence in the tent, too angry to curl up together as they've been doing for the past two weeks but too practical not to share body heat.
Cassian is the one to apologize first. Voice quiet in the cold stillness, he tells her that he can't bear to lose her. She means too much to him. She means too much to him and Bodhi both.
Jyn's apology is unspoken, communicated instead through the gentleness in her touch as she tugs Cassian to face her and slots their bodies together. Me too, her body says as she wraps her arms around him.
It's the first time any of them has spoken aloud about the unspoken thing between them.)