Chapter 25: Jyn iiiChapter TextInside the hut the air is cool. Kenobi shut all the shutters and curtains against the heat, and once Jyn and Ahsoka close the door behind themselves the only light comes from a few warm-toned solar lamps. The place still looks like a hermitage, but hell, that's what it is.
Kenobi makes his tea quietly. Unlike before, he doesn't speak. Jyn thinks, now, of the things he knew he would have to tell Ahsoka, of how much he must have feared her reaction. He has the look of a man who's gearing up to say something unpleasant now. Jyn would think it was more revelations about Anakin Skywalker, except she's seen the way Kenobi looks at them, and carefully refrains from comment. If falling in love is what did for Skywalker, he probably fears for Ahsoka.
Well, Jyn thinks, this is going to fucking suck.
She doesn't bring it up; waits to see what Kenobi will say. Ahsoka waits likewise, and Jyn feels, with relief, that sense of being back in sync with her partner.
Kenobi seems to be waiting for them to crack. But with the two of them together, that will take time he doesn't have. Jyn can see it in his face when he figures it out.
"Ahsoka," he begins, "as glad as I am to see you have found someone who knows you so well and cares for you so much, I must caution you - for your sake, and Miss Hallik's, and the galaxy's - that this is not a path you should walk down."
Impressively ominous, Jyn has to admit.
"What kind of a path are we talking here?" she says, raising her eyebrows.
"Attachment," Ahsoka says, as if Jyn hasn't heard Ahsoka talk about the concept before. "He's talking about attachment."
"Can you truthfully say you are not dependent on each other?" Kenobi says sadly.
"If this is what complete independence looks like, I think it a more likely path to the Dark side than love," Ahsoka says, equally sadly. "No sentient is totally without ties. Allowing your love to cloud your judgement is a separate matter. We have both been equally guilty there."
"Satine and I parted," Kenobi says, with unnecessary emphasis. Who the fuck is Satine, Jyn wonders. "For the sake of our respective duties."
"I was talking about Anakin," Ahsoka says, producing an instant, frozen silence. Jyn holds her breath as two pairs of blue eyes bore into each other, but Kenobi blinks first, and Ahsoka settles very slightly back into her seat.
"Every time Liana and I part, we walk straight back into each other again," Ahsoka says. "If you haven't noticed the way the Force pulls oddly around her, you must be even more alarmed by her disapproval than I thought."
Scared of her, Jyn translates, and leans back in her chair. She offers Kenobi a deliberately self-satisfied grin. "It's true," she says. "I'd heard the galaxy was a small place, but I can usually go six months without running into the same people. Ahsoka? Every corner I turned she was on the other side."
Kenobi looks unconvinced. "Love is a dangerous game for Jedi. Ahsoka, think about what became of Anakin -"
"I am insulted to learn you think I love like Anakin used to," Ahsoka says, and Jyn can hear new anger showing through the cracks of her voice. The pain she showed earlier has had some time to mature: she's had a few weeks to accustom herself to the idea that Kenobi ditched her. This rejection, however, is new, and Jyn isn't pleased about it either. Quite apart from the fact that Kenobi is trying to guilt them into going their separate ways - a thing Jyn won't do at his order or anyone else's - he has the fucking gall to question Ahsoka's judgement after so clearly showing the flaws in his own.
Her voice is maybe a little louder than she intended. Jyn can tell by the way it brings Kenobi up sharp, and by the way Ahsoka herself winces and softens her voice on her next sentences. "I trust Liana's judgement implicitly. I trust her to complete the tasks we have chosen to undertake. I trust her principles and her abilities, and I trust her not to ask me to abandon my integrity."
Jyn feels like she has no breath left at all, only a dizzying warmth that takes over her chest and heart and makes her grip at the table to stop herself swaying. She knows she's smiling, and she knows it's a bit stupid, from the way that Ahsoka smiles back and grips her hand.
I love you too , Jyn thinks. You didn't need all those words.
She gets back a sense from Ahsoka that all those words were important.
"I trusted Satine," Kenobi says. "As beautiful as that speech was, Ahsoka -"
"We are speaking of the same Duchess Satine Kryze, I hope," Ahsoka says, cutting him off brutally. "The pacifist and non-interventionist who repeatedly labelled you a warmonger?"
Ouch , Jyn thinks.
"From a certain point of view," Kenobi begins.
"From any point of view, you deserve better in a relationship," Ahsoka says. "Anakin told me all about those missions, and Rex backed him up. Maybe she was kinder when you were younger, but whoever she became is not, I agree, someone you could have stayed with."
"None of this changes that your relationship with Miss Hallik is dangerous for you both," Kenobi says.
Jyn shrugs. "I've been safer with Ahsoka than I've ever been in my life."
"Liana has saved my life more times over than I care to count," Ahsoka says. "I understand you're still struggling with your own bad experiences, Obi-Wan. But you shouldn't project them onto other people."
"You're being far too cavalier about this, Ahsoka." Kenobi sounds angry now, and Jyn's hand twitches automatically closer to her blaster.
"On the contrary," Ahsoka retorts, "I've put far more thought into this than you seem to realise. Do you think it was easy, after fifteen years of travelling alone - even Rex and I split up, for safety, so I was completely alone - to choose companionship? Do you think it was easy to trust? I was the Alliance's first spy - do you know how often I have chosen to forgo sentient companionship, and keep my secrets? There is more darkness in isolation than there is anywhere else. It's an echo chamber that lets the darkest of your thoughts thrive."
There's an implicit accusation there that makes Kenobi whiten under his tan. Jyn stretches her legs out and stares at her feet under the table.
"What are you accusing me of?"
"Nothing," Ahsoka says, "except bad judgement." She glances at Jyn. "Do I think this path is easy? No. Do I think it will lead to hard choices? Yes. Do I think there will be hard choices either way, and that joy is worth it? Yes."
"Nothing is forever," Jyn says. It comes out quieter than she means, and she didn't even really mean to say it aloud, but both Jedi hear her and fall silent. She clears her throat, and says, louder and rougher: "If what you think is that we should sell up our ship and go our separate ways, Kenobi, just fucking say it. Sure, it'll fuck up the scope of our work for the Alliance. Sure, the next time the Empire shows up for us it'll be that much harder to run or to fight. Sure, it'll leave us drifting again. I don't know if you've ever lived that life, but it's hell. If that's what you really think, just fucking say it."
Talking is exhausting, Jyn thinks. Abruptly, she finds she doesn't want to deal with this any more. She doesn't want anything to do with this. She didn't sign up for cryptic sages or disapproving uncle figures. If she wanted those she'd head back to Jedha. At least Baze and Chirrut made sense.
"Miss Hallik," Kenobi begins.
"It's Liana, you pretentious little shit," Jyn says. She gets to her feet. "Ahsoka, I'll be in the speeder when you're done."
Ahsoka nods slightly. "This will be a long discussion, I think."
"Fine. Whatever." She lets herself out of the front door into a sun so hot it feels like she's being baked instantly. It swings shut behind her as she hears Ahsoka say: "Let's talk about fear, Master Obi-Wan."
Fucking hell, Jyn thinks, one of those discussions. When Ahsoka gets philosophical it's sometimes very hard to get her off the subject. She's grateful she's not going to have to listen to it.
She goes down to the speeder and gets in. She parked it in the shade, so after a few minutes of running the climate control it's cool enough for her to sit in, shove her chair back as far as it will go, and relax. She takes in a deep breath, and lets her mind empty, as much as it can; it's hard at first, because she's still pissed off at Kenobi, but she thinks of Ahsoka praising her judgement and integrity and sheds that anger, at least for now. Another deep breath, and another, and slowly some of the tension winds out of her shoulders, and that faint sweet sound she sometimes hears that might be from her crystal comes to her like a lullaby or a reward. It's peaceful. Soothing. Familiar.
Jyn doesn't quite mean to fall asleep, but hell. It's not like she's got anything else to do.
She wakes up an unspecified amount of time later. The shadows have changed, but here in the canyon Jyn can't tell what that means exactly, and Ahsoka's leaning over her, so she can't see the time on the dash.
"Sleeping beauty," Ahsoka says. She clearly feels better; more light-hearted, at least. Jyn reaches up to run her fingers down the edge of one lek, and Ahsoka smiles at her.
"Did he figure his shit out?" Jyn says, on a yawn.
"Up to a point," Ahsoka says diplomatically. "He…" She hesitates. "You have to understand, Anakin and Padmé were very dear to him, and he was completely blindsided by Anakin's Fall. And he hasn't seen me since I was seventeen, and I'll freely admit that I didn't have the best judgement back then."
"So he's depressed, miserable, and stuck in a backwater with enough guilt to knock a battle-cruiser out of orbit," Jyn says, closing her eyes again. "Not actually my problem, unless he chooses to take it out on you."
"Kind of you," Ahsoka says dryly.
"You're the one who goes in for universal compassion, not me," Jyn says. Ahsoka kisses the cheek she burned a couple of hours ago, and Jyn turns into the kiss, catching Ahsoka's lips with her own.
"Obi-Wan offered to show me where Luke is," Ahsoka says. "Just in case. It's apparently not far, but we'll need to be careful."
Jyn raises both eyebrows.
"Obi-Wan didn't make a great impression on Owen and Beru Lars." Ahsoka climbs over Jyn to get into the driver's seat. "And the locals around here don't like strangers."
Jyn looks past Ahsoka, out of the window, and sees Kenobi taking out an ancient Clone Wars-era jalopy. It looks like it's covered in bantha fluff.
"Fine," she says. "I can't say I blame them." She looks at the timer on the dash, visible now that Ahsoka's settled into her seat. "Time's getting on to get back to the ship."
"I know," Ahsoka says. "I was thinking we could stay on-planet for tonight, take off early tomorrow morning. And then… we'll figure it out."
"We always do."
Ahsoka starts the speeder, and follows after Kenobi, who's keeping to a sedate pace that's probably all the jalopy can manage. "Apparently Luke is the image of Anakin. Obi-Wan keeps an eye out for him sometimes."
"Torturing himself," Jyn says, folding her arms.
"Well, from some perspectives," Ahsoka murmurs.
"I hope for the kid's sake he knows Luke is not the same as his dad," Jyn says.
"Hmm," Ahsoka says grimly. "I'd thought of that."
Ahsoka drives in silence, and Jyn watches the road. It's not the way they came, but they come out not far off from the ship, and Ahsoka only has to tilt the speeder onto its side to get through the passage once. The advantage of Kenobi's jalopy is that it's so skinny.
Once out of the canyons, they head due south-east for a while, and then slow as they wind through the dunes until the white dome of a homestead and banks of vaporators come into view. Kenobi stops on the other side of a large dune and climbs off his jalopy to walk up its side; Ahsoka follows him, and Jyn, grudgingly, does likewise. By the time she's following Ahsoka up the side of the dune, Kenobi is lying on his stomach just the other side of the ridge, peering over.
Fucking hell, does he expect this lot to shoot him? Jyn thinks at Ahsoka, who merely nods and takes up a position next to him. Jyn sighs heavily, but goes along with it.
On the other side of the ridge, near the homestead, a boy in his late teens, dressed in the same light beige colours most locals seem to wear, is working on the heavy metal door of the homestead. He has tools spread around him and a small droid handing him things occasionally. Jyn can't see it clearly, but it looks like a shabby home-made project rather than something purpose-bought. The boy's not wearing a hat; his fair hair gleams in the sunshine.
Ahsoka gives a sharp intake of breath, so Jyn has to assume this is Luke Skywalker.
"He has no training at all," Ahsoka mutters. "It's like looking directly into a sun."
"I know," Kenobi says wearily. "I have begged Owen Lars to let me train him, but he refuses. Afraid of him turning out the way Anakin did."
"Lars knows about Darth Vader?"
"Not in so many words," Kenobi says, "but he's aware that Luke must be kept very far away from the Empire, and he never had a high opinion of Anakin to begin with." There's a long pause, and then Kenobi says wistfully: "Luke reminds me of Padmé."
"She is his mother," Ahsoka says, but there's a wavering in her voice which says the idea hits her too. "Will he sense us?"
"Unlikely," Kenobi says. "But Owen usually returns from town at about this time, so we should not linger."
They stay another five minutes and then leave. In the far distance Jyn can see a trail from a speeder that isn't being carefully driven, so it's probably for the best that they clear off quickly.
They return to the Lady Luck , and Ahsoka spends some few minutes talking to Kenobi about its perfections, but she doesn't invite him onboard. Jyn sees it, and is selfishly glad; she doesn't want Kenobi in their space. Ahsoka is polite about it, but she clearly needs space from Kenobi too, some kind of a break.
It's been a lot of revelations in a very short space of time. Jyn can't blame her.
Still, there's something sad about the way they're standing together. Jyn can imagine a time when Ahsoka was shorter, and he was taller; when her faith in him had never been shaken, and his trust had never been broken. She imagines it was kinder, and they were happier - as slender a chance as that seems, given the war.
Jyn clears her throat. "I'll park this stupid thing," she says, and nods to Kenobi. "Kenobi."
"Liana," Kenobi says.
So he can learn. Jyn's pleased to hear it. The smile that twitches at the corner of her mouth is real.
She docks the speeder, and heads into the crew quarters of the ship to start cooking. Ahsoka will show up when she's ready, and she'll probably be hungry.
Chapter 26: AhsokaChapter TextAhsoka's last conversation with Obi-Wan Kenobi is not a long one. Much has already been spoken between them that Ahsoka never dreamed would see the light of day, and they both, she suspects, have a lot to think about. Sitting in Obi-Wan's hut in the Jundland Wastes they spoke to each other as Jedi to Jedi, or like family members with painful histories between them. Jyn, of course, would say they are family members with painful histories between them, but it's not quite the same as family, like what she and Jyn have offered each other is not quite the same as the marriage Anakin and Padmé tried to make, or whatever vows Obi-Wan and Duchess Satine consciously walked away from.
Here, standing outside the Lady Luck while the suns sink, they can set that aside for a little while and just be… Master Obi-Wan and Ahsoka. Ahsoka recognises the look on his face; it's the same expression he wore when she contacted the Council from Mandalore, and he saw, at last, that she was safe and unhurt. And she recognises the way she feels right now from that time too, when she still had grievances with him - some more legitimate than others - and yet took comfort in his presence, and was glad to be reunited with him, however briefly.
Master Obi-Wan glances up into the ship. "I'm glad you are well," he says, "and safe. And regardless of my concerns, which remain very real - I am glad you have someone to take care of you."
"Rex told me that, too," Ahsoka says. She smiles when he does. "He's well. Crankier than he used to be, but we all are."
"You don't say," Master Obi-Wan says dryly.
"I know you'll tell me it's safer for him not to know your whereabouts," Ahsoka says.
Master Obi-Wan inclines his head. "The risk to Luke," is all he says in reply.
"I will tell him you're alive, with your permission," Ahsoka says. "On a long-term, deep-cover mission."
Master Obi-Wan hesitates, but he smiles, and that's agreement, that smile: Ahsoka remembers it. He seemed like a stranger when first she saw him again, but more and more she sees the same expressions, the same eyes, in a face heavily marked by grief and years. And he sounds like himself, too. Whatever he has lost, he has kept the power of his voice.
"One day I hope I will see him again," he says quietly. "There are so many of my friends I would like to see again."
Ahsoka wants to say we'll meet again but she knows how bad the odds are; she knows how unsafe it will be for her and Jyn to return here repeatedly. They have already taken a significant risk coming here in the first place. She doesn't ask the Force if she'll be back; this is one question she would prefer to let time answer.
"Who knows?" she says. "Something's coming. The tide is changing. It may throw us all onto the same shore."
"I hope so," Master Obi-Wan says. "I hope so."
Ahsoka puts her arms around him one last time. He's so much thinner than he used to be. "Take care of yourself," she says.
"And you," Master Obi-Wan says, holding her in return. "May the Force be with you, Ahsoka Tano."
Ahsoka thinks once more of currents; and how they shape continents, given time, given strength. The tiniest curl of unease twists in her mind, and with the ease of long practice, she lets it go. There is no point dwelling on what may come to pass. At least, not right now.
"And also with you," she says, and very gently, she lets go and steps back.
The breeze picks up his fringe and pushes it across his face, and he smiles at her like he knows perfect peace, when Ahsoka knows how very far that is from the truth. She's never imagined seeing him again, because she has for so long believed him dead, but if she had imagined it she wouldn't have expected to feel as she does now, as she does every time she says goodbye to Rex. This palpable sense that it may be the last time she ever sees him. That next time, one of them might not make it to the rendezvous, and it probably won't be her.
Perhaps it's because of that that she says what she does. "I forgive you," she says, "for the pain your choices caused me. I choose to let that go."
Master Obi-Wan bows his head gravely. His eyes are a little too bright. "Safe travels," he says.
Ahsoka bows to him in return. "Take care of Luke. And call for aid, if you need it."
She watches as he drives the ancient jalopy away; watches until it disappears into the shadows of the canyons and gullies. And then she walks back into the ship, and closes the ramp behind her.
Jyn's cooking. To be more exact, she's thrown the components for a meat stew in the pressure cooker and gone to use the fresher. Ahsoka can't open the pressure cooker, but she compares the contents of the chiller to what they were this morning and decides that Jyn must think her very hungry and very much in need of comfort. Ahsoka's stomach rumbles. Jyn isn't wrong.
She goes to the cockpit and checks on N-8 and the ship; nothing out of the ordinary and everything as it should be. It's a relief, but Ahsoka still prowls over the ship just to make sure, to check in with her own two hands and see things for herself. Jyn comes out of the fresher halfway through and finds Ahsoka headfirst in the fuel systems, humming at them and listening to the echoes to check for flaws. She's not sure what she's singing, it might be a tune Kix or Jesse picked up and then sang until the rest of them couldn't get it out of their heads, but from the puzzled and reluctantly endeared look on her face, Jyn doesn't recognise it either.
"I think you can probably take a break," Jyn says. Her hair is loose on her shoulders, the two short locks at the front hanging down to her cheekbones, and she's changed into leggings and a jumper and the soft boots she wears around the ship. She looks much younger and much less stern than she did earlier, when Ahsoka honestly thought she might try to stab Obi-Wan out of sheer disgust, but there's also tiredness in the tiny lines at the corners of her eyes and the brackets around her mouth. "I already talked to N-8. Everything's fine. We could leave tonight, if you wanted."
"I just want to make sure," Ahsoka says. She feels sort of like she's trying to settle her mind back into place, after the day's dramatics.
"Okay," Jyn says. "Dinner in forty."
Ahsoka flicks her a salute just to hear her snort with amusement.
Ahsoka spends another twenty minutes checking over the ship, and then decides it's probably not going to fall apart if she gets in the fresher. They're still using sonics not water - the upgrade remains impractical for the moment - and Ahsoka has to calibrate them carefully to avoid accidentally deafening herself, but the thrum of them is still comforting, to be clean is still a relief, and she can splash her face with water in the sink and clear her head. Changing clothes helps too, as does the fact that - almost from the moment the sonic cuts off - Ahsoka can smell the stew Jyn's made, rich and flavourful. When she comes through Jyn is already ladling it into a bowl, and passes her the spoon without comment.
"Smells good," Ahsoka comments.
"Thanks." Jyn leans into her side, and Ahsoka kisses the top of her head. "Suns're setting and it looks pretty great. We can watch from the cockpit, if you like."
"Sounds good."
Jyn takes a bread roll from the cupboard and zaps it in the heater before they get through; Ahsoka could probably use the fibre, but she doesn't really want it right now. They take their bowls through to the cockpit without much further discussion, Jyn snagging a bottle of cold water on the way; they sit in their usual seats, and watch the suns set while they eat and pass the water bottle between them. The quiet is restful, and the view is spectacular; the sky flaring pink, the suns gliding to their rest in shades of red and gold. There's a raw beauty to Tatooine, if you don't mind desert. Though Jyn and Ahsoka will be finding sand in their boots for weeks, if not months.
"Pretty," Ahsoka says.
"Yeah," Jyn says, takes a bite of bread roll, and talks through it. "Prettier from in here. I don't fancy the climate."
Ahsoka laughs, and they fall back into their shared silence. Ahsoka finishes her stew, sets her bowl down, and lets her head lean back against the headrest, sinking into her chair and watching the suns slide beneath the horizon through half-closed eyes. A deep purple is taking over the sky, bleeding to midnight blue. It's straightforwardly, uncomplicatedly beautiful, and Ahsoka takes pleasure in it, after an extremely long day of extremely unpleasant revelations. The only good things about today have been those few quiet moments with Obi-Wan, Jyn's furious defence of her, and the glimpse she caught of Luke, burning like one of the twin suns.
For a second, she thinks of her dream again: two suns and a star. And then Jyn speaks.
"Ahsoka?"
Ahsoka turns her head, but doesn't open her eyes the whole way. "Hmm?" Then she takes in the way Jyn looks, and open her eyes and sits up all the way. Jyn's sitting tensely in her seat, half folded over with her hands tightly clasped and her jaw set oddly.
Jyn says nothing for a long second.
"Tell me," Ahsoka says softly, her heart sinking.
Jyn swallows hard, and then she sets her jaw and looks directly at Jyn, her green-grey eyes troubled. "If you're going to leave me, don't do it because that fucker thinks we're a bad idea."
Ahsoka feels her jaw drop. "Jyn," she says, hearing her voice echo oddly through her surprise, but Jyn just grits her teeth and looks at her like she's expecting to be shot. "No," Ahsoka says, her shock melting to overwhelming warmth. "Jyn. No, never. If we go our separate ways, it won't be over this. I promise."
Tiny muscles in Jyn's face soften and ease, and her death grip on her own hands relaxes. She straightens a little. "Good," she says, a little rougher than usual. "Good." Her eyes are locked with Ahsoka's; she blinks, and ducks her head. "Okay, then."
"Come here," Ahsoka says, extending both hands, and - when Jyn gets up and takes them - drawing Jyn onto her lap. A reluctant smile curls around Jyn's lips, and she leans her forehead against Ahsoka's, her eyes slipping shut, a deep breath exhaling from her chest. Her hands come to rest on Ahsoka's shoulders; her thumbs brush the edges of Ahsoka's lekku. There are no primary lights on in the cockpit, and the suns have now fully set, so Ahsoka sees her only in outline against the secondary lights of the controls and the thousands of unrecognised stars, senses her more in sound and movement through the air. Ahsoka knows the sense of Jyn's shape better than anyone else's.
"You were really worried about that?" she murmurs, kissing both Jyn's cheeks, ghosting a touch across her lips, and feels Jyn's eyes snap open in the brush of her eyelashes.
"Can you fucking blame me?" Jyn says, raw. "He's your teacher. You trusted his judgement more than anyone else's."
"Not just anyone else's," Ahsoka says thoughtfully. There's an echo in Jyn's voice that isn't about sound, and Ahsoka thinks once more of the ways that Jyn has identified her abandonment by Saw with Obi-Wan's choice to leave Ahsoka to her own devices. "I think it's part of growing up, learning to rely on your own judgement, and to think twice about that of people you used to rely on implicitly."
"Hmm," Jyn says, and her hands slide over Ahsoka's lekku. It took a minute for Jyn to figure out the right pressure - they're sensitive, and there are spots where they are too sensitive, or places where they slide into montrals and the wrong kind of touch can have Ahsoka very confused about dimensions and relative space, with unfortunate elbow-meets-kidney results - but now she knows how to spark electricity in Ahsoka's blood, and she does it. Regularly.
"Obi-Wan is right that love is risky for Jedi," Ahsoka says. "For anyone in a position of any kind of power who doesn't choose to hold themselves accountable. Attachment is, in a lot of ways, failing to hold yourself accountable."
A sigh from the darkness. "Explain it to me like I'm that kid off Jedha."
"Bana. I would never tell that innocent child half the things that have happened to me." Ahsoka reaches one hand up from Jyn's waist to stroke her hair off her face. "Anakin's unwillingness to hold himself accountable for the way he acted around Padmé, or his responsibilities towards the Order. He always played fast and loose with the rules according to what suited him, and there's a degree to which that doesn't matter, and a degree to which -"
"You lose yourself," Jyn says, surprising Ahsoka. Ahsoka waits. "I saw it with the Partisans. The lines you're willing to cross are… important."
"Yes," Ahsoka says. "Or… my failure, and Obi-Wan's failure, to sense the degree to which Anakin was running off the rails. We only saw the man we loved, and we made excuses for his eccentricities, and didn't see how deeply rooted they were, or what poisonous fruit they would bear. But attachment can also be… a refusal to accept change. To accept that things change."
"So," Jyn says. "Accountability. That matters."
"Integrity, too," Ahsoka says. "Trust. Trusting someone's skills, and abilities, and right to choose for themselves. Attachment is about possession, and part of that is refusing to let others make their own choices. Possessiveness is an unattractive trait in any sentient, but in a Jedi, it's actively dangerous. Because most Jedi could make someone do whatever they wanted." She sighs. "Except then they wouldn't be a Jedi."
"This just sounds like a set of instructions," Jyn says. "How not to wreck the whole fucking galaxy by being a spoilt brat with superpowers."
Ahsoka's laugh catches her by surprise, bubbling out of her chest. "Jyn Erso. You take my breath away."
"There are better ways to do that." Jyn leans forward to catch Ahsoka's mouth with her own; slightly clumsily in the darkness, because her night vision is so much worse than Ahsoka's. Ahsoka flicks her fingers, and the primary lights rise to ten percent, just enough to make out Jyn's face, for Jyn to see Ahsoka's markings. Ahsoka sinks into the kiss, luxuriates in it, feels Jyn slide a little further forward on her lap and leans back so that the chair sinks slightly backwards.
Jyn breaks the kiss. "I want to know how you got tried for crimes against the Republic."
Ahsoka remembers that Jyn was surprised to hear that, and is shocked all over again. "I thought you knew," she says. "I assumed the first thing you did when you learned my true name was look me up."
"No," Jyn says, audibly awkward and embarrassed, and then adds: "You didn't look me up. At least, not on any of the systems I've got access to. I have an alert on that name."
Ahsoka snorts. "I assumed you'd tell me your story when you were ready. I didn't want to pry."
She feels her whole sense of Jyn in the Force soften, and Jyn leans down to kiss her again, soft and loving. "Well," Jyn says. "That's what I was doing too."
"There's little to tell, ultimately," Ahsoka says. "In my case. Before the end of the Clone Wars, I was framed for terrorism by one of my best friends, a fellow padawan, who had Fallen to the Dark. She was a healer, and the Clone Wars just - made a terrible mess of her mind. I don't think using me to take the fall was her original plan, but I was assigned to investigate, and - well." Ahsoka shakes her head. "The Council were forced to expel me from the Order and turn me over for a military trial, because I was technically a member of the GAR." She remembers the echo of the court chamber, and Moff Tarkin's cold eyes. "It was terrifying. I felt the Council didn't support me, I'd been stripped of everything I knew, I thought nothing could get any worse."
"You were a child," Jyn says, clearly outraged.
"Ssh. I know. I know." Ahsoka touches her fingertips to Jyn's mouth, and Jyn shuts it with a snap. "I made my peace with it a long time ago. You can swear at Master Yoda in your head, if you ever get to meet him. I know you enjoyed messing with Obi-Wan." She hopes to raise a smirk at least, but Jyn won't be distracted.
"So then what happened?"
"They told me to consider it my trial of knighthood, and offered to knight me," Ahsoka says. If she shuts her eyes, she's back in that sunlit chamber, her silka beads shining on Anakin's palm, Master Plo's hopeful eyes fixed on her face. All those people who thought the weight of evidence justified turning her over to Tarkin to face military law. "I think my greatest act as a Jedi may have been refusing."
"What?" Jyn's openly baffled.
"I wasn't ready," Ahsoka says. Jyn's hair has fallen back into her face; she pushes it off to the sides again. "I wasn't ready to be a knight. I wasn't ready to trust the Order, or the Council. I needed space and time, and I was smart enough to take it." She sighs. "Of course, I found plenty of trouble to get into all by myself, and not long afterwards I found myself circling back to the Order, and then Order 66 happened…"
"So seventeen was… not a good year," Jyn says, clearly struggling for words.
"No." Ahsoka sighs. "That's the only thing left about me you didn't know, I think - that and a few Rebel secrets, which you'll excuse my keeping."
"You're excused," Jyn says, exactly the same way she said it to Obi-Wan, and for a minute they both laugh, and everything is easy, and Ahsoka's trial for her life is just a bad memory. The quiet the cockpit settles into is relaxed again.
Then Jyn clears her throat, and shifts on Ahsoka's lap. Ahsoka's hands go to her hips. "Uncomfortable? We could just go to bed."
"No. I mean, not about that." Jyn looks down at Ahsoka, her face hard to read. "I'm not sure where I was born. Maybe Coruscant. I don't know. But when I was little, we lived on Imperial Center. My father was a scientist, and he did… something, for the Empire, I don't know what. I just know he and my mother argued a lot, and then one day Saw took us away, and we went to live on Lah'mu." She bites her tongue. The words are coming out faster than Ahsoka expected, from Jyn, who keeps her cards close to her chest most of the time. She runs her hands down Jyn's back, which usually soothes her.
"They came for us on Lah'mu," Jyn says. "The Empire. My mother hid me and went to - I don't know what she went to do, if she expected to rescue my father or - I don't know if she knew anything about fighting, but a single woman with one blaster against four deathtroopers and an officer -"
A Jedi's odds, Ahsoka thinks, but she also thinks she knows how this story ends, and it's not with Lyra Erso's glorious victory.
"They killed her," Jyn says. "She shot the officer, and the deathtroopers killed her. They took my father, and I went back to my hiding place. They didn't find me. Saw did. He took me, and changed my name, and made me swear to keep the real one secret, in case the Empire found me." She shrugs uncomfortably. "I don't know what they wanted me for. Leverage?"
"Maybe," Ahsoka says. "A tool to use against your father."
"He's probably dead," Jyn says. Her eyes are resting somewhere around Ahsoka's collarbones, her hand tugging restlessly on her crystal necklace. "It's been so long. He's probably dead."
"Perhaps," Ahsoka says, trying to be kind. It's likely Jyn is right. "Do you remember what your father worked on? It might be possible to find out."
"No," Jyn says, clearly frustrated. "I've tried, but… no, I don't remember." She pauses. "I remember the officer's name. He visited a lot. Like he was a friend, but my mother hated him. Orson Krennic."
"Orson Krennic," Ahsoka repeats, frowning.
Jyn leans forward, hands on her shoulders. "Do you know the name?"
"No," Ahsoka says. She runs one hand up Jyn's side. "But it rings of something. I don't know. Maybe it'll come to me later."
"Maybe," Jyn echoes. She sits back up and shrugs, avoiding Ahsoka's eyes again. "That's my story. It's not as interesting as yours. You already know the rest."
Between them echoes the emptiness of the bunker on Tamsye Prime. Jyn's shoulders are tight like she knows her deflection is hollow: weak, from an experienced liar.
"Saw raised you," Ahsoka says, as gently as she can.
Jyn hesitates. "Yes," she says. "I - yes." A short pause, and then she clarifies: "Not as his daughter."
"As a fighter," Ahsoka guesses. "A Partisan."
Jyn nods very slightly.
"You were one of the best, I imagine," Ahsoka says. She can imagine it all too clearly after her glimpse in the bunker, a teenaged Jyn, all bloody teeth and defiance, making up for her size with sheer viciousness.
" The best," Jyn corrects, with the speed of pride. Ahsoka smiles. Her hands have settled on Jyn's hips; she keeps them there, lets her thumbs stroke over the sharp jut of bone beneath cloth. They eat better than they once did, and Jyn balances her meals with the sharp eyes of someone who has starved, but Jyn will never not be wiry.
"I believe you."
Jyn finally catches Ahsoka's eye, and tilts her chin pugnaciously. "You'd better."
Ahsoka laughs, and leans forward to slant her mouth across Jyn's. Ahsoka's always worried about Jyn catching tongue or lip on Ahsoka's sharp carnivore teeth, but Jyn relishes the risk, and she leans hungrily into the kiss now.
Jyn breaks away when she's out of breath, and looks away from Ahsoka again. "You're probably," she begins, and then huffs, and tries: "If you want to know - Maybe you guessed -"
She breaks off and swears in Togruta, a quick sharp whistle that she only uses when truly frustrated.
"That last whistle should be a little higher," Ahsoka observes. "That inflection suggests meiloorun fruit, not corpse."
Jyn snorts. Her hands on Ahsoka's shoulders have gone bruisingly tight, but at Ahsoka's remark she seems to realise it and loosens them deliberately. Then she says, with effort: "There are things I don't… like."
"Flickering lights," Ahsoka supplies. "Hunger. The dark." Jyn meets her eyes with surprise, and Ahsoka adds delicately: "The chance you might be left behind."
Jyn turns white and then flushes, almost as if she's angry; but it's not anger Ahsoka senses from her. It's shame.
"I know what it is, to feel abandoned," Ahsoka says. She reaches a hand up, and brushes strands of hair off Jyn's face, tucks them behind her ears. "I felt like I'd been thrown to the wolves, when I was surrendered to Tarkin for judgement. I left the Jedi Order because I could no longer trust them not to cut me loose. Your issues with abandonment are not unfamiliar to me."
"You loved them," Jyn says. "You couldn't understand why they did it. You had no warning. It came from nowhere."
She's talking about herself, Ahsoka knows, and her heart aches for the frightened, stubborn young woman she once met, counterfeiting confidence for a stranger.
"All of that," Ahsoka says quietly.
Jyn leans forward and rests her head against Ahsoka's shoulder, turning her face into Ahsoka's left montral. Ahsoka strokes her back again, and Jyn's hands grip tightly, as one fierce tremor of remembered grief runs through her and she falls into unnatural, rigid stillness. When she sits up her eyes are wet and her jaw is set but she isn't crying.
"We could go and find Saw," Ahsoka offers. "Ask him why he did it. You deserve closure."
Jyn laughs, harsh and startling. "Saw doesn't justify his decisions after he's made them. He's not Kenobi. It's in the past. It can stay there."
"It might help you," Ahsoka suggests. "Not to have to carry this anger with you."
Jyn drops a kiss on the middle of her forehead, her hand sliding around the back of Ahsoka's neck to keep her balance. "Meeting him wouldn't change shit. There's nothing he can say that will change what he did back then, and that's what I'm angry about. It's in the past."
"I want you to be happy," Ahsoka says. "You deserve to be at peace."
That, for some reason, makes Jyn smile. Who says I'm not happy? she asks Ahsoka without words, pushing her the memory of every laugh, every joke, every slow day when Ahsoka's circadian rhythm coincides with Jyn's and they sleep in each other's arms, the soft bed in Queen Breha's mountain palace, the sparring matches, the casual touches. What makes you think I'm not happy?
Ahsoka concedes. " Solah ," she says, half-lifting her hands in surrender like this is a duel and Jyn's just knocked both her sabers from her grip. "But tell me, if you want to find him. I want you to have what you need."
Jyn gives her a strange look, but Ahsoka senses no discontent or discomfort, only surprise shading into pleased recognition. "I do." She shakes her head. "I'm not going to chase Saw for answers he won't give me. I don't need that from him."
"Okay," Ahsoka says, and Jyn nods, sharply, like they've made a decision together.
There's a moment of silence; the atmosphere perceptibly lightens.
"I wish we'd both always been happy." Ahsoka leans up again and wraps her arms around Jyn's waist, feels Jyn's arms slide around her neck. She kisses Jyn's throat and lets the flat of her canine graze Jyn's skin; it always makes Jyn shiver in the best way. "I wish we'd had long, uneventful, sunny childhoods -"
"I don't," Jyn says, taking Ahsoka by complete surprise. She cups Ahsoka's face in both hands and kisses Ahsoka like she wants to get lost in her, fierce and tender, and when she lets go they're both gasping for breath. "I don't. However we got here, this is where we are now. There's no other life I would choose."
I love you , Ahsoka says, spelling it out carefully, in the hope that physical proximity will mean Jyn gets every word.
"I know," Jyn says. "You said so before."
Jyn signs on as an affiliate member of the Rebel Alliance in a cramped meeting room on Dantooine, a base so minor it is currently in the process of being dismantled. Bail Organa nonetheless takes the trouble to show up and witness her papers himself, to the visible irritation of Davits Draven. Cassian Andor doesn't trouble to be irritated, little though he likes Senator Organa - there's politics there, Ahsoka knows - but he is certainly confused.
"You should fall in love with brilliant slicers and saboteurs more often," Bail says to Ahsoka. "Our recruiting numbers could use it."
"No thanks," Jyn says, glaring at the paperwork - which is not in her own name, nor the name Bail knows her under, but the man has manners and he knows Ahsoka so he says nothing. "There's no room on the ship." She signs her false name for the last time, and straightens up. "I recruited myself."
"I would expect nothing less," Bail says gravely, and shakes Jyn's hand. "May the Force be with you."
Jyn grips Bail's hand like she might be trying to crush it, which is what she does when she's being sincere; another habit picked up from Saw. She glances back at Ahsoka.
"And also with you," Ahsoka replies.
She remembers this moment: holds it close. For a second, the currents of fate pulling them onward feel like nothing at all.
Chapter 27: JynNotes:Finally at the end! Thank you for joining me on this wild ride <3
Chapter TextAhsoka is kept busy when they land at Massassi Base, this time; for some reason there is new paperwork, and required additional permits, and extra copies of something or other needed. No matter how many times Ahsoka tries to pull rank, the clerk refuses to be budged, and eventually Ahsoka rolls her eyes and signals to Jyn to go and visit Requisitions for the restock that they need, and reconnect with the members of the small informal network that keep them up to date on what's happening here, at the nerve centre of the Rebellion. Jyn remains an affiliate rather than a ranking member of the Alliance - and it can stay that way, as far as she's concerned - and Ahsoka, while a founding member, and the kind of a legend that lights up the eyes of the Alliance's High Council, is so shrouded in mystery and layers of confidentiality that she's not always in the loop. Jyn can usually fix this by going and having a drink and a natter and a game of cards with a few people. She doesn't love socialising, but she knows about information gathering, and she knows instinctively in her bones how to insinuate herself into a Rebel group.
The quartermaster's warehouse is always the best place to start and it will be quiet now. Jyn goes along and settles in for a long and boring conversation that may pick up a few useful tidbits of information, in between the lines. She knows the human behind the counter, Rafa: gambles too much and always knows the news as a consequence. Friendly enough with Jyn, likes Ahsoka all right, depending on how many risks her sister has been running lately. Jyn assumes Ahsoka recruited Trace, and Rafa followed along. Last time they played sabacc, Jyn lost on purpose.
Rafa's talking with a colleague, a familiar lilac-skinned Twi'lek with well-cared-for lekku and nails and the faintest ghost of a scar on her neck, someone who responds to Rafa's animated chat with cool friendliness and looks straight past Jyn as if they've never met. And Filyns never has met this identity, so Jyn holds back and doesn't draw attention to herself until Rafa and Filyns' conversation comes to an end and Rafa turns to Jyn and greets her with a smile. "Blown out all your blaster cartridges?"
"I was hoping for power converters," Jyn says, with the friendliest grin she can muster in reply. "Is Lei in town? I dented my truncheons on the last stormtrooper I got."
"No, but we've got a new guy in who does as well with that kind of thing." Rafa pulls a dented datapad from under the scratched counter, and passes it over. It's chained to the desk, which seems a stupid precaution to Jyn, especially when Rafa is just as light-fingered. Either of them could have the chain off and be off with the datapad before you could say blaster. "You're an old hand now, but let me know if there's anything that confuses you."
Jyn fills out the forms in the name of Sentier Harriott, which is one of the approved aliases that the Alliance knows about and which is linked to the affiliate agent number they gave her. (Naturally, Jyn has never used her real name with them - and nor does she use her Alliance aliases on anything serious.) Sentier Harriott uses her stylus in a very specific way, mostly because Jyn uses her as practice for forgery. She's focusing on that, but not so much that she doesn't notice a specific person slipping discreetly into the quartermaster's, casual as if all he wants is parts for his vicious bastard droid.
Fuck it all to hell. Well, if Cassian Andor plays nice, Jyn will play nice too. But the skin between her shoulders is itching.
Jyn wants to get out her truncheons and start swinging. Remind Andor who is the threat around here. But Ahsoka has asked Jyn to keep the violence to a minimum on Alliance premises, and in any case, she doesn't have her truncheons on her, only a few knives.
She completes her requisition forms and has Rafa check them and sign off on them, now that the other woman is done with her chit-chat with Andor. For some reason, he charms people, except Jyn (and Ahsoka, who trained him and is therefore exempt). She dawdles over the last few signatures, checking everything with a meticulousness she doesn't usually trouble her head with, until she can see under lowered eyelids that Andor is justifying the need for a form Q097(b), since he specifically needs the provisions of pages 9 through 11 to secure Imperial components for - Yes, it's for the droid, Kaytoo.
Well, that should distract him. Andor cares about nothing so much as that droid. Jyn slips quietly out, and takes a roundabout route back to the Lady Luck.
It's not roundabout enough; she's stopped at the sole vending machine that does some of the protein balls Ahsoka likes, which should make it look like there's an innocent reason she cut sideways through the junk store she isn't authorised to be in and hopped a pulse-electrified fence, when Andor appears in her blind spot.
"Can I help you, Willix?" Jyn says, overtly bored even as her heart is racing. She doesn't have to be nice to Andor, whichever name she's using now; she is independent, and owes him no respect for rank. And first mate of a ship outranks a captain of ground-pounders, anyway.
"I need to run your debrief, if you've got a spare moment," says Andor. It's not a request.
Jyn wants to kill him and run. She's stronger than he is, pound for pound, and the better fighter. But that won't get her any closer to what she wants, and - for everything she hates about him, his single-minded loyalty to the Alliance, his callousness, his insistence on the bigger picture, she still knows that Ahsoka trains this man, and that she likes him.
Jyn sees the clone behind the cafeteria counter raise his head just slightly, and catches his eye, blinks a short-code sign for the letter A. They'll know who she means. She's never met a single clone, of the handful still alive and affiliated with the Rebellion, willing to call Ahsoka by the legion of awe-inflected titles the Rebellion has created for her.
The clone's eyes flick to Andor. Jyn jerks her chin infinitesimally: no.
"Debrief," she says to Andor, falsely light. "Sure."
She walks with Andor, cataloguing each step he leads her on, as they head away from the sunlight, into the deeper nerve centres of the Rebellion, places Jyn has not just been encouraged to stay away from but actively ordered to avoid. It's a shame that no-one trusts a good slicer these days. She sees fewer and fewer people out of uniform, fewer and fewer windows onto the sunlight; they pass sliding metallic doors that require ID, which doesn't worry Jyn any more than she's already concerned. She can steal one of those.
"You know," Andor says, as they wait for a lift that will sink them further down into the base, "I grew up on a Separatist planet."
"Yeah?" Jyn says, bluntly uninterested. What is he trying to get at; that he doesn't like the sight of a clone, or hates that she is so closely linked to a Jedi? Boo fucking hoo. The Clone Wars are dead and gone, and if Andor can't refocus on the here and now, that's not her problem.
Her nerves jangle as the lift judders, and she can't help thinking about the beast some of the Partisans whispered of and Saw wouldn't tell her of, the shadow in the deeps, the knower of truths. The Rebel Alliance won't torture her; they're not made for it. And if they put her to question, Jyn is well-tested. She can trust herself, at least for a while. Everyone breaks, sooner or later, but -
It won't happen; Ahsoka will come for her. Ahsoka would not have agreed to this. The clone behind the counter, it might have been Boil but he's changed his hair, will be searching for Ahsoka now, will probably have found her. Jyn will not lower herself to checking her chrono but it's been long enough for Ahsoka to have been alerted, to be on her way.
"Good trip?" Andor says, standing still for a biometric lock. Jyn's fingers pass over the heavy cuffs of her jacket, the cunning inner pockets swing into her chest. This will be harder, but doable, she tells her thundering heart.
Jyn shrugs indifferently. "Nothing special."
It's too fucking dark. Can't the Alliance spring for lightbulbs which actually work?
A final door slides open; it looks thicker and heavier than the others, and it's guarded by droids, not people she can bamboozle or break. They look almost blind, but they are live to her appearance. Jyn feels like her face is on camera; it itches.
The door closes behind her and Andor, who comes to a sharp halt and salutes the figures ahead of them, standing by a table in strange blue light. The light of star maps and navigational systems; Jyn knows it. It lights strangely on Captain Andor's bones as he leans against a screen, turns Mon Mothma with her pale skin and white dress into the ghost of a drowned woman. And another man moves out of the shadows, blunt-faced and ageing, looking like a bruiser without a fight, his eyes flat like a shark's.
Jyn has always feared Davits Draven. Saw didn't trust him, and he doesn't respect Ahsoka.
Instead of reaching for her kyber crystal Jyn wrenches out a seat at the broad tactical table. It scrapes across the concrete floor with a screech that makes Mothma blink hard, and Jyn sits down without asking permission, crosses one ankle over her knee, and folds her arms.
"Well," she says, brittle and light. "I'm here. Get it over with."
Draven picks up a sheet of flimsi, the top one of a stack marked CONFIDENTIAL: ABSOLUTE, and reads out her Imperial arrest record. It takes a while.
"Better than a stack of medals," Jyn says, when he's done. Mon Mothma is waiting in the background, hovering, as sharks do before they've decided if you are prey.
"But none of those arrests took place under your real name," Draven says, coolly. "Which you also haven't seen fit to share with the Alliance."
The crystal is colder than deep space on Jyn's breastbone and there's ice at the base of her spine. She meets Draven's eyes and raises her eyebrows like she really doesn't care.
"It's fortunate the Empire didn't know who you really were," Draven says, pushing the stack of flimsis across the table to Jyn so that it splays out in front of her, so that Jyn can see, when she lets her eyes flicker down, images of the life she's lived. Family photos she has no copies of, pictures of her with Saw she didn't know existed. Security footage. "Isn't it, Jyn Erso?"
Jyn folds her arms tighter. "What do you want?" she says.
Draven presses his fists into the surface of the table and leans over. Andor lifts his head like a hunting hawk, and Mothma folds her hands before her.
"When were you last in contact with your father?" Draven says.
"I was eight," Jyn says. Her lips are numb and cold and she can hear the bitterness in her own voice. "I like to think he's dead. It makes it easier."
Andor doesn't look away. She'd hate him more if he did.
"Tell us what you do know about him," Draven orders, and suddenly, all Jyn's anger is for this nondescript man who orders murder with his morning coffee.
"I don't know anything," she says flatly.
"You are the last person who saw Galen Erso alive. We have a possible sighting. Anything you can tell us may help to confirm it."
Jyn knows like she knows her own name that if she does confirm it, then they will send out Andor with his rifle and his droid to bring a quiet end to a beaten man.
"I have nothing to tell you," Jyn says, and lets her mouth twist nastily. Her kyber crystal, all of a sudden, has gone warm again. She tilts her chin and grins at Draven with a mouth like blood. Saw's finest fighter. His weapon of first resort. "What are you going to do to me?"
"Well, for a start," Draven begins, low and angry, and then there's a strange smell of melting metal and he leans back, hand going to his blaster.
Jyn twists in her seat, and sees white fire burning hot through the thick blast doors, in the shape of a tall oval. She turns back, and finds that Andor has drawn a blaster, and Mon Mothma has pushed its barrel down. Jyn examines her nails. They're dirty and broken and nothing much to look at, but she's seen people do it in the holos.
She waits for the clang of metal hitting the floor, and the sound of Ahsoka's too-light footsteps, like she's always walking on air, and then she says:
"Hey, Ahsoka."
"Hey, cyar'e ," Ahsoka says, and tosses Jyn's truncheons onto the table next to her. "Mon. Captain Andor. General Draven. You forgot to tell your door-guards to expect me."
Jyn's not fooled by the flippancy. Neither are they. Ahsoka's displeasure bubbles under her easygoing words.
"Fulcrum," Draven starts, clearly fulminating internally.
"Yes?" Ahsoka says, very gently. She hasn't turned off her lightsabers.
"You were under orders to remain at your post!"
"I did," Ahsoka says, still gently. She's standing right behind Jyn's chair now, and Jyn can't help her savage grin. "Until I was advised that I'd been given useless busywork to distract me while my business partner was interrogated, alone, without representation. She has deserved better of you."
Jyn gets up. She kicks the chair in, and draws her truncheons to her hands. She can reach Andor from here before he can fire and disable him.
"She has withheld vital information," Draven snaps. "We have been searching for the Erso daughter for years-"
"Pretty embarrassing that you looked in all the wrong places, then," Jyn cuts in, taking the stack of flimsis and folding them into her pockets. She may as well profit from this. "What did you want, anyway?"
"That's beyond your clearance, Erso," Draven says roughly.
"Davits," says Mon Mothma, "she deserves to know."
Like a stone thrown into a still pool of water, and the ripples are silent. Jyn closes her fists around her truncheons, and then self-consciously lightens her grip.
"I deserve to know what?" she says.
"Your father was kidnapped by a man named Orson Krennic, who is now one of the Empire's chief engineers," Mon Mothma says, moving forward into the light. "The abduction took place after your mother lost her life. We assume there was a confrontation."
There's a pause, and then Jyn nods like she's parting with money she doesn't want to lose. "I saw that. She shot Krennic."
"There are rumours that an Imperial pilot has now defected and gone to Saw Gerrera in the Holy City of Jedha with an urgent message from your father relating to a new Imperial weapon." Mothma's eyes are cool and almost pupilless in the strange light, but she manages to sound like she cares. "As you know, relations between Gerrera and the Alliance are… poor." (Jyn can't disguise her snort.) "However, you are not just Galen and Lyra Erso's daughter; you are Gerrera's foster-daughter. We were hoping that, if you could provide sufficient information to validate the pilot's story, you might be able to secure his release to the Alliance."
A message from your father. Jyn grounds her feet so she does not sway.
"I'll think about it," she says, through lips that feel so swollen and stupid she can hardly make out the words.
"You have three hours," Draven says harshly. "Get your thinking done by then."
"Sunset," Ahsoka corrects. "We will have decided this by sunset."
"You're not invited."
"I won't do this without her," Jyn says, swift and instinctive as a live wire. "We work as a pair, or not at all."
"Very well," Mon Mothma says, before Draven can snarl. "We look forward to your decision." She nods at Andor. "Captain Andor will be able to answer any questions you might have."
Jyn doesn't reply. She swipes the mission briefing, and walks away, Ahsoka on her heels. The door is broken for good, the droids tied up neatly and struggling, and around them, there's silence.
It stays that way until Ahsoka makes the lift go another stop above the last floor it's supposed to stop at, forces the door, and helps Jyn out into a cracked and darkened corridor that leads to the open sky, a high-up window on the stepped stone and green jungles.
"He's alive," Jyn says dumbly, and Ahsoka doesn't have to ask who she means.
"We'll find him," Ahsoka says, comfortingly.
"It's been sixteen years."
"We'll find him," Ahsoka repeats.
"But if we do - what the fuck do I do with him?"
"You don't have to figure it out now," Ahsoka says, looping an arm around Jyn's shoulders and pulling her close. "You don't have to figure it out alone."
"What the fuck do you say to someone who let you down like that?" Jyn trembles. She grabs Ahsoka's hands and holds them tight so she stops. "He never came back."
Ahsoka says nothing for a second, and then she almost laughs.
"When you work it out," she says, "let me know."