—Saw Gerrera's Final Shadow:
Bodhi huddles himself in the cramped engine compartment of Cassian's battered U-wing. The mechanisms' heat is always one to warm him. He's relatively warmed, no danger of hypothermia, but still in him seeps the bitter chill.
The kind hum of the engine lulls Bodhi's soul to rest for the night.
"Bodhi!" Someone beyond the little compartment yells for him. He scrambles out; stumbling when he realizes his legs have fallen asleep along with him.
He squints at the bright light of the cabin and the rising sun of Eadu's dawn, missing the dark and warmth of the shuttle's thrumming heart. "W-what?" He finds K-2SO in the cockpit, his index finger pointed out the viewport.
"An Imperial transport," the droid's gaze follows the said ship along the sky, straight from the horizon to the facility.
Bodhi's eyes widen as his mind goes on overdrive. "Bad-bad-bad-bad-bad." He says this a few more times until K-2SO's attention diverts to him.
He tries to shrug nonchalantly, but he feels like it looks like a suppressed spasm. "Jyn's on that facility."
"We know," Cassian enters the cockpit. "What about it?"
"There are stormtroopers there," he explains, "And so is Jyn. And now a whole bunch of other people. It can't a coincidence. We have to go get her." Bodhi thinks. "She might compromise Galen and Fracture."
Cassian shakes his head. "She doesn't know about Galen's business with us or Operation Fracture." And she doesn't.
"She knows about Base One," Bodhi argues.
Cassian shifts his relationships into numbers and equations; human interactions are merely calculations of perfect values into trusting relationships. His best friend is a droid he reprogrammed—though some part of Bodhi really hopes that he and Kay-Tu actually share the position. Cassian is impersonal, though deep down Bodhi knows he isn't.
But there needs to be something other than Bodhi's concern for the girl if they're to go rescue her. The most important thing to Cassian is the rebellion. It's the greatest reason he needs.
"We can't just do what we want, Bodhi." Cassian nods to Kay-Tu. "Go comm Base One and we'll see their input on the matter."
They turn their head simultaneously when they see the boarding ramp lower. Cassian's hand goes straight to his blaster. They stalk towards the cabin.
Chirrut and Baze are standing there in the rain of last night, dripping wet and most likely colder than Bodhi felt earlier—but Chirrut is still smiling. "I see Bodhi Rook has been found. What of Jyn Erso?"
They step inside as Chirrut's partner grunts. "Do you not even feel that she's here, Chirrut?"
He shrugs. "Well, they've been moving her around. Under the mountain, around the platform. Now she's on top. How tall is the tower?"
"You mean she's on top?" Cassian softens the tight grasp on his blaster.
Above ground, the facility has three floors. Below it, so much more…
The very top is Galen's living space. Bodhi's never actually been in it, but his flybys suggest that it's a great place.
"Yes," Chirrut hums as Baze hands him a towel.
Jyn is there; Jyn is with her father. Bodhi hasn't failed. Not yet.
K-2 joins them just as Baze and Chirrut towel off the rest of the storm. "Cassian, mission as previous: retrieve Jyn and Bodhi."
Cassian nods and looks to the two men they rescued in Jedha (Bodhi not included.) "We need to leave you both somewhere else on the planet. There's a protocol for this." He shucks on his coat and flourishes the hood.
All Bodhi thinks is how impractical it is to where a fur coat in a storm.
Krennic spends the flight to Eadu nursing the outrage and humiliation Tarkin had sent his way. It's a kind fire, bright enough to fight against the rare light of the Eadu sunrise, warding off the chill of the trickling rain that sweeps through his shuttle.
He went directly from the ashes of Jedha to this planet of storm. He had, unfortunately, no time to assemble his death squad: no one to assail the unfortunate person who had sent the publicly defected pilot to his doom on Jedha.
His boots squeal against wet metal and he blinks raindrops from his eyes. The weather is somehow kinder than he remembers. His old friend, his colleague, Galen Erso is standing on the platform. "Galen," he greets.
"A wonderful morning, Director Krennic," the other man nods. "This is a surprise visit." Krennic notes the way he says the words almost as if they mean something else.
He nods, "Yes, well, I believed you should hear the success of our commitment from me."
Galen shows shock. "A success?"
"Yes, the weapon has been fired," he informs proudly. "Jedha and its Holy City. The last remnants of the traitorous Jedi. You must be very proud."
"Proud as I can be, Orson."
It's false humility, of course. Krennic is certain of that. "I do hope breakfast here is still favorable?"
Galen shrugs, "Why not?"
They make for the mess hall together. An assortment of stormtroopers, engineers, and officers allow them through the brunt of the meal line. A few people, particularly the med center crew, smile at Galen and greet him kindly.
As they sit, Krennic cannot bear his curiosity. "Pardon my asking, old friend, but why the sudden interest of the people?"
Galen coughs softly. "There was a spacecraft that crashed in the canyon last night." Not the first time it has happened. "My daughter was a survivor of the mishap."
"Your daughter?"
His people couldn't find the little girl on Lah'mu, but still Krennic had baited Galen several times with the notion that they would find her. (For the first few years, he did try though. Because Galen was a friend. This activity was, of course, the misadventures Tarkin referenced, to which he stopped sending people to Lah'mu after it started inhibiting the engineers' performances.)
"Yes," he replies within bites of fruit. Krennic sips his caf in thought.
The presence of Galen's daughter is unprecedented. Considering the Erso family's connections to Saw Gerrera, the child must be old acquaintances with the late rebel leader. Perhaps it was Gerrera who retrieved the child before Krennic's stormtroopers could find her. She might be the rebel's ghost. A weapon the Partisans have developed as long as the Death Star.
But Galen has done so much for the Empire; this is the reward the galaxy treats to him, just as Krennic's success is a reward for his work. But Krennic needs to be sure. Assess the danger, and stop it. This is the last shadow of Saw Gerrera. All Krennic needs to do is shine a light and stamp it away.
"And where has she been," Krennic asks, "all these years?"
Galen shrugs. It appears to be a joy he'd rather not understand. One of the principles Lyra had imprinted upon Galen postmortem. Truth will ruin the tale, accept and be thankful. "Does it really matter, Orson?"
"Well, if she has decided to join the Empire, there is always a study of history," Krennic begins. "In a facility this vital, it is virtually required."
He laughs. "Let her be my daughter first before she becomes my employee, old friend." Krennic is disbelieving, though he has not had a daughter to sympathize with Galen.
"I would just like to speak to the girl, is all," Krennic amends, "You can't hide this from the people in the core, Galen; and you can't properly keep her here until a superior makes a transfer official."
He smiles and sets the cup of caf down. "And fortunate for you, I am a superior willing to do the task."
"I see," Galen appears to agree, "She's in trauma after the crash, but on the road to recovery. She's been made to rest in my quarters."
"What grand accommodations," Krennic comments. "Perhaps you have something to do. I will not be in your way."
He stands and makes for the turbolift, which opens directly onto Galen's quarters on the highest floor. To call it such is an understatement. Krennic made sure to provide him something not unlike a suite. Compared to the others who live in the facility, which burrows deeper underground into the truth of the experiment.
Krennic waits in the lift as it crosses two, three floors into a fairly grand round room, surrounded with transparasteel windows. The girl is sitting on the counter, sipping a cup of bantha milk.
His doubts of genetics fall apart when he sees her eyes.
Jyn tries to put the cup down with care onto the chiseled crystal counter. She was surprised when the droids led her here, to say the least. "This is where my father stays?" She had asked the medical droid MT-R3.
"Yes, Jyn Erso." She still flinches when she hears the droids say her name. They repeated it multiple times in the med center, while they were taking her blood. After which, they put a bacta patch to her ribs and brought her up a turbolift.
Jyn stares around the suite. "Can you get me a glass of bantha milk? Fermented, hopefully." The droid leaves her to scan the entire place.
It doesn't have the duracrete walls of the mercher hall that Kestrel worked—and eventually 'died'—in, or the tall crystal chandeliers of the school Tanith went to (or the steel metal bars where she was first detained.) Every which way she turns, she sees the bronzed mountains of Eadu, and the soft stain on the invisisteel windows showered with rain.
There is only one bed in the whole suite, as expected. It smells of detergent and nothing else. Her father probably doesn't sleep in it too often. A protocol droid is arranging datapads and holodocs on a shelf, and all around doesn't really notice her.
In another partition is a beautifully cluttered workspace. Stack of flimsi are everywhere, flickering holoprojectors, maybe running on her father's dream on kyber crystals as an energy source. It looks like a place her father would spend his life contentedly.
There's also a 'fresher. Not a sonic shower—or, stars forbid, the public one in Wobani—but an actual shower with water and everything. Jyn freshens up for an obscene amount of time, finds a stack of clothes once she steps out and puts them on. She feels better knowing there isn't a logo on the loose-fitting green shirt.
She returns to the living room to find the milk she asked for on the counter. Jyn sighs and takes a sip. It was beautiful, better than where she'd stayed in her previous three lives—or anywhere.
The sound of the turbolift plays to remind Jyn of the cost of this all. "Papa?"
"I'm afraid your father is caught up in something at the moment."
Jyn doesn't remember his voice—a faint whisper, perhaps a few words heard beyond closed doors. But she knows his posture, so distinctly etched into her memories in the dirt and the faint green rings of Lah'mu. Saw Gerrera stands there, lighting up the hatch again. Oh, Jyn has hoped the hatch would finally break apart, and she can climb out to join the light.
And finally, after years and years, she comes face to face with the man in white. "It's you." She narrows her eyes at him. The protocol droids are in the other rooms, keeping the place tidy. Jyn is alone in the waiting room with the man who took her father from her.
"Pardon?"
Jyn remembers those moments under Saw's care where she imagined finding the man in white, stealing Saw's overlarge blaster and shooting this man in his sleep.
She shakes her head. "You don't look a day older than when I last saw you on Lah'mu." Letting it be, allowing the man in white to sleep into another day, it's the only thing that kept the shadows in her cave at bay.
"The benefits of middle age, Miss Erso," he smiles acidly. "Though deteriorating memory is a curse. I forget you were there as well." Jyn wants him to remember—needs him to remember what he's done to her.
Because men like him don't deserve quick deaths. "It's hard to forget a day like that." She'd spit his name back at him if she only knew it.
"My condolences for your mother." Yet he apologizes. The Alliance does not. "My name is Orson Krennic, Director of Imperial Weapons Research and your father's superior."
"Are you here to take me to the Empire, too?" It's a stupid question. She is already there. They found her in the ruins of a ship, ready to fight them off with a half-battered blaster and three broken ribs.
Director Orson Krennic takes seven strides from the entrance of the turbolift to the cracking leather couch in the room. "And you would rather I didn't?"
"I don't know what I'd rather," she replies, "But I won't be against it." She will not. This is the only way she can be kept with her father without anyone taking him away.
"So you've considered the Empire?" His eyes lock into hers the way Cassian would, but she squirms under his glare. His conviction makes her uncomfortable.
Maybe it's the inhibition of the few sips of bantha milk, or the soft comfort of being in a homely suite after taking an actual shower three days without one; but she tells him the truth. "I've promised an old friend that I wouldn't. And for so many years, I didn't."
"I take it you mean Saw Gerrera." He leans on his elbows, lacing his fingers as she turns the barstool to face him.
Jyn nods.
"I offer my condolences again. He died in the mining accident in Jedha."
A mining accident? It's no mining accident. It's his weapon. The Death Star, they call it. Orson Krennic forced her father to make such a monstrosity. Orson Krennic forced her father out of her life. "Saw and I had a falling out, but that's… sad to hear."
"Do you take me for a fool?" Krennic remarks. Somewhere in her mind, Jyn actually does. "You don't deny your connection to Saw Gerrera, and in extension his rebel allegiance. Perhaps you already know what goes on in this facility, beneath what you see."
"I didn't fight with Saw's people to bring down the Empire," Jyn hisses. "I fought with them because they were a people I could trust. Because that day on Lah'mu took my parents from me, and they were the ones who found me." He knows the day. He has to know which day she's talking about.
"I promised Saw once never to look for the people who took my father," Jyn tells him. "So I found my father instead."
Aside from his rhythmic chant, Chirrut had also recited several passages. Jyn plays one in her mind and listens to it echo within her cave. Home shall be your constant. You need not find it, for it shall find you.
When she was lost, Saw found her. Saw and his people gave her home. They were her home. Until the fateful day their devotion to the cause took them from her. Jyn's learned that the people who care don't really leave. They are only taken. Like her mother, and her father, and Saw…
The Alliance took her mother. This man took her father, and his ambition took Saw. "If you answer some questions, I will make sure you can stay here with your father." Jyn can't trust his word, but oh how desperately does she want to be in this safety. Long enough, she's been an orphan. Long enough, she's been lost.
She wants home to find her. If she just answers…
This is what she promised the Alliance. She isn't going to talk for them. No matter what the Alliance has done for her, Saw died for what they believed in.
"What do you want to know?"
Galen finds Krennic on his way up to his suite. "Has the transfer been made?"
"I have all I need," Orson nods. "It's official. Congratulations, Galen. You have your daughter back."
He smiles. "Thank you, old friend."
"And I have to do the work I was meant to do," Orson notes as they turn away from each other and Galen makes for the turbolift.
The ride up is always so silent. Galen has always thought maybe some music would liven up the turbolift, but then he thinks how stupid it would be to stand alone for minutes listening to cantina music.
"Jyn?" He steps into the suite. It's overly lavish, too much for him; too little against what his daughter deserves. The droids set up his workroom with a bed, moving whatever belongings he had in it to his bedroom.
Galen hopes the droid didn't find anything important; anything that could lead the Empire to the Alliance.
He rolls his fingers around Lyra's necklace, and remembers Lah'mu. He remembers the Death Troopers, guns at the ready but not quite aiming for anything. Then the plasma bolts from the side of the mountain, born from the guns of the Alliance. It's unknown who shot first, but they know who was shot first.
But they didn't shoot his daughter. She is there in front of him, grown and alive. Galen missed vital years, where he could have chased away the young boys who saw her face—the face that reminds him often of Lyra. He holds her necklace out. "You left this at the med center."
She takes it and puts it on around her neck. "Thank you, Papa." He isn't used to her voice, deeper than that of the child he remembers. It's hardened and practiced, and broken. What has this galaxy done to his stardust?
Galen brushes a piece of her hair behind her ear. "Where were you—all these years?"
Jyn draws them both into an embrace. "I waited on Lah'mu. Years, looking for you… and Mama." Her next blink takes to long to open. "Then Saw found me." She hesitates. "I looked for you. I was looking for you, then our ship crashed."
"But Jedha—" She was with Saw Gerrera. Saw was on Jedha. Jedha is dead. Dead because of the Death Star. His monster. Galen shakes his head.
"I know." She knows about the Death Star. She was on Jedha. She settles her head at the crook of her neck. No matter how grown she has become, she is still small. "Papa, I'm alive. I wasn't there on Jedha. I'm here."
Baze has beat his heart to the rhythm of Chirrut's praying so often that he knows the precise moment that constant drone ends. Beyond the echo of dead whispers is the sound of Eadu as Bodhi and Cassian push them through its living spirit.
"Where are we going?" Chirrut asks the droid, who has been made to sit with them as the two young men take to flying the ship.
The droid's head reels up to look at them both. Baze recalls the argument that went between the captain and the droid when he was told to sit in the back. "A village in the valley."
Chirrut chuckles. "Try saying that ten times fast." He then returns to his prayer. Baze puts his hand to his chest to conduct the pumps to every verse of Chirrut's chant. He feels his hand shiver within the warm cabin.
"A village in the valley. A village in the valley. A village in the—" The droid's speech eventually degrades in something along the lines of avillyvichvalley. Baze grunts and returns to listening to Chirrut's voice.
He doesn't even feel them descend. "We're here," Cassian tells them as he presses the boarding ramp open. "Just Chirrut and Baze."
"Why?" Chirrut is naturally curious. And yet, when he is asked a question, he doesn't answer. (And if he does, it's usually unhelpful.)
Bodhi looks better than he did on Jedha. The flying must have cleared his head if not just a little. "There's a mission protocol for what's about to happen next. No offense or anything, but you guys aren't part of it. Not that I don't like you—"
"They understand, Bodhi," Cassian interjects.
Baze nods. Just to prove that they do. K-2SO approaches them with an umbrella. He tries to suppress the small laugh that pops in his throat, but instead gets a strange look from Chirrut.
"What is it?" Chirrut asks. "Is it something I can't see?" Baze thinks of nodding, but then remembers that he won't be able to see the gesture. He makes a sound instead.
"You should really stop doing that," his partner comments. Baze rolls his eyes. "I saw that by the way. Don't ask how I know." As if Chirrut is ever going to answer.