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She tipped her head back and felt the comforting thump of her own bones against friendly steel and dust-spackled eggshell-white paint, the familiar and missed warmth of re-radiated sunlight and the smell of the city streets drifting up from the cracked sidewalk beneath her boots, and as she exhaled and opened her eyes all she could see was the deep brown-and-green shade of the awning overhead.Connected to that awning: a hole-in-the-wall tea shop that only looked like it had seen better days, but she knew that from her position on the sidewalk it was impossible to hear the quiet constant buzz of conversation within. In the reflections of the huge window -- the panes polished to a meticulous sparkle, and the bottom sill given over to a long shelf crowded with more than two dozen sparkling-clean mugs that were only identical in size and shape and color, but were all clearly distinguished from each other by names and nicknames written in brush-strokes of vivid paint -- she could see the city as it woke slowly from its noontime torpor. She could see the trees planted on either side of the winding boulevard like a curving arrow into the heart of downtown. Gnarled branches festooned in all shades of new-leaf green and the faintest hints of flower buds sprouting greedily for the sun. If she tilted her head just right, she’d be able to catch a glimpse of sun-crazed sun-struck reflections of light from the wide river that ran through these neighborhoods, the blue-green of its waters swirling and gurgling in its soothing waves of constant movement.And if she tilted her head the other way, she’d be able to see straight into the back seat of the compact car parked in front of the tea shop: it wasn’t her car, and she wouldn’t be able to drive it anyway even if she owned it, because she didn’t know how to drive and she wasn’t allowed to learn. She was all too familiar with that car anyway.And right now there was a man scrunched into that back seat: the rise and fall of his chest as he slept off the exertions and the efforts of another long night. The dark strands of his hair that clung to his cheeks -- he was getting weedy and he knew it; after all, she’d been party to night after night of him bitching about needing to get a haircut -- and she was already thinking of volunteering to do the job just to shut him up. The skewed lines of his collar that fluttered with every deep sighing breath. Eyelashes fanned onto sunburnt cheeks. The man’s hands, curled into fists even in this place that they’d claimed as their own piece of shelter, their own makeshift home.Soft bells, chiming, and she looked over her shoulder and couldn’t help but smile, because here was a friend in the black and red that were the tea shop’s colors. White cane with its tell-tale looped top tucked into the crook of his arm. A laden tray: sandwiches and two thermoses, one in red and one in green. The unexpected treat of a small crystalline bowl of strawberries, the startling red dusted with fine brown sugar. “Wake him up,” the man with the tray said, and turned sightless and unerring in her direction, the smile on his mouth echoed by the sandblasted crow’s-feet lines around his eyes. “It’s time for you to have some breakfast.”“Dinner,” she corrected him with a quiet chuckle. “Breakfast was last night.”“It must be youthful vigor that keeps you on your feet,” the man laughed softly in return.“You’re not old,” she replied, and unwrapped one of the sandwiches with her teeth. Crusty bread, dense and dark and studded with seeds, and sharp cheese with thin slices of apple and vibrant lettuce leaves. Welcome crunch and the unexpected spike of whole-grain mustard, its heat clinging to her tongue. “You spoil us so much, Chirrut,” she said, reaching out to clasp a now-empty hand.“Since you haven’t had anyone to spoil you, please allow myself -- and Baze, of course -- to indulge in that singular pleasure.” Chirrut’s smile turned mischievous. “And maybe you shouldn’t wake your companion up after all, so you can have all these sandwiches just to yourself.”He turned, and to Jyn’s eyes struck the side of the car completely and totally accidentally-on-purpose, and the impact of the white cane against the white car wasn’t that loud but it was quickly followed by a series of quiet obscenities, only some in languages that Jyn herself spoke.Jyn shook her head, swallowed her bite of bread, and laughed softly as the man in the back seat of the car kicked the door next to her open. His legs spilling out onto the street, and sunlight catching on the lines of his immense scowl. “Food,” Cassian grunted.If Jyn passed him not only the other half of her sandwich but all of the strawberries as well, their hands brushing through the open window of the car, Chirrut was no longer there to remark on it.For a moment there was nothing to be heard but the daylight breeze sweeping leaves past her feet, and the sounds of Cassian wolfing down his food, as though he’d been starving for the last week or so.Jyn opened the red thermos and took a deep breath of spice and flowers, and poured herself a cup of tea, and tilted her face back up into the sun.A weight around her free hand, the weight of a hand taking hers, and when Cassian pulled away she blinked because she was still holding something.Silver foil striped green, and she turned to frown, and look a still-chewing Cassian in the eyes. “You said you’d eaten them all,” she said, wonder and accusation mingled in her words.“I lied,” was the reply, with bits of lettuce still clinging to the corners of his mouth. As she watched, he swiped his hand roughly across his face and reached for the cup in her hand -- and, bemused, she let him take it, even though she hadn’t even tasted it yet. “I lied because I wanted you to have the whole thing. Which, here,” and he thrust the bowl of strawberries back at her, a dozen bright red fruits still within it.She still fed him some of the bonbons and some of the fruit despite his protests.She knew she had the privilege of seeing the hunted haunted grimace in his eyes easing into something gentler, something sweeter, when she touched his cheek to brush away imaginary crumbs.Again the chiming voices of the bells attached to the tea shop’s door: this time the burly man with the snow-white apron tied to his front was approaching, smartphone in an obnoxiously pink casing in his outstretched hand -- and the ringtone was something just as obnoxious, a high transposition of an out-of-season Christmas song.Jyn leaned against that man’s shoulder as she took the ringing device and answered briskly: “Stardust Retrieval.”“Hello, Jyn,” and the voice was familiar, and in this case very welcome. “You’ll be interested in this one, and that’s before I tell you I’m advancing half your usual payment beforehand.”“That’s because you’re half-expecting Cassian’n’me to break our necks before we finish the job,” Jyn said, laughing. “And you’d complain if I gave you easier jobs, so are you in or out?”“Of course we’re in, Leia,” Jyn said, and held the phone away from her ear, and hit Speaker. She angled it toward the interior of the car. “We’re listening.”“Hello, Cassian,” Leia added, quiet low voice of command that made Jyn think of the woman’s usual white suit and long braid of hair wrapped like a crown around her head, with delicate jewels threaded into the strands. “I should thank you for your heroic efforts during the previous assignment, you and Jyn both.”“You paid the hospital bills,” Cassian said as he finally got out of the car and stretched. “Long as you keep being so generous, you’ve got us.”“Then the usual rates apply for this one,” was Leia’s reply. “And triple if you finish before deadline, which for this one is ninety-six hours.”Cassian merely grunted. “That only means this is going to get messy. You have to tell me how messy.”“A little, I’m afraid,” was the reply, and Jyn shivered despite the sun. Ice near her heart, waiting to strike home.“You know about the connection between my family and that of Senator Mon Mothma,” Leia continued. “And the causes that she has attached her name and her reputation to.”“Hard to miss on the fact she’s only declared war on the Vice-President,” the burly man grunted. “And I mean actual literal war, Chirrut and I’re just waiting for the fireworks to start any day now.”“That is an accurate assessment, Baze,” Leia said. “With the current volatility in the political situation, every moment is vital, and every piece of information a critical piece of ammunition. Some time back, the senator, ahem, acquired some intelligence on the underworld networks supporting Vice-President Palpatine. Following the advice from her counselors, as well as mine, she’s kept that under constant lock and key.”“So how could it have gone missing?” Jyn asked. “And are we talking about documents or data or something else?”“The intelligence itself, which is locked into a flash drive, is still safe. But it was encrypted, and the key that decrypts the whole thing is an audio pass-phrase. No voice prints. The drive only has to be exposed to the pass-phrase and it will immediately unlock itself -- and then dump all those files onto the Internet for good measure.”“You want the intelligence to remain locked up?” Jyn asked. “Why?”“Because it’s blackmail material, pure and simple.” She heard Leia take a deep breath. “More than that I cannot explain. In a way, it’s -- tied to me. To my family.”“What exactly do you want?” Cassian asked.“Find the pass-phrase and anyone who’s heard it. Any machine that has contained it or recorded it or can broadcast it -- and destroy those machines. Make those people forget the pass-phrase or make them promise not to say it unless it’s by the senator’s say-so.”“That’s why you’re asking for us,” Jyn heard herself say, faintly. “What we do is not as important as what we are.”“I would have asked the Solo group to look into this, but they are currently working with my brother on a matter of similar importance,” Leia said. “I’m sorry. You are the only ones I can turn to right now.”“If we bring other people into this,” Cassian said, “you’ll cover their expenses as well.”“Naturally,” and Leia sounded imperious and steely once again.This time the ice creaked and shuddered, inching closer to the very heart of her, and she clutched at her chest. Clutched at the weight of the pendant that hung from its steel chain around her neck.She felt the world begin to groan around her, soft and threatening.And there was a hand on her shoulder, there were arms around her, gathering her close: her back pressed against Cassian’s front. The warmth of his breath on her neck, chasing away the freezing oncoming ice. “We haven’t said yes yet,” he was saying. “We can still walk away. We can still say no. Your choice. This time it’s your choice.”She seized his hand. Held on. “We can’t say no.”“I can and I will, if the job’ll hurt you.”“Give them a moment,” Baze suddenly said.Jyn blinked and saw the phone that she was still holding on to. Leia’s name on the display.Leia’s voice, speaking. “Call me back by sunset if you need time to decide.”The ice of the world, the ice wrapped around her heart, calving, threatening to sweep her away, except for the point of contact that was Cassian, steadying her, holding her upright.The world that could fall apart if she hid, if she ran, if -- “Leia,” she said.A long pause, and then: “I’m still here,” coming from the phone.“Ninety-six hours, you said,” Jyn whispered.“Yes.”“Quadruple our normal rates and we’ll take the job.”There was no hesitation on the other end of the line. “Done.” The phone slipped from her nerveless fingers -- she never saw or heard it land -- she only turned around and threw her arms around Cassian, hiding her eyes, hiding her fear, in him.
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Into the hush and the soft dappled shadows of a library -- a library that was just as oversized as the rest of the mansion in which it was located, the space divided into numerous alcoves that seemed to orbit a central sitting area.Jyn stared at her hands -- or, rather, the gloves that were now encasing her hands. Soft leather lining the insides. On the outside, carefully segmented and joined plates made out of copper, glowing softly in the light of the lamp beside her.Already she thought she could hear the sparking strength creeping along her veins, but where she loved to bask in sunlight that wrapped her in heat, the power within her was always threatening to freeze her where she stood -- freeze her and then shatter, leaving her devastated and cold and alone.Wire coiled and pooled around her feet, and she picked up one end and tried to send the power out in a controlled trickle, enough to run safely along the wire and into a squat metal box several feet away, with the bookshelves arranged around it at arm’s-length distance. The whole space was kitty-corner to the center of the library, seeming to hang just on the periphery like a tide-locked satellite. Shuffling footsteps moving towards her: two feet and four paws. The gentle concerned snuffle of the dog who was approaching her, who was towing a young woman forward. The cane in her other hand was white banded with reflective orange.“Don’t come any closer,” Jyn warned. “Sparking right now.”“I can feel the static electricity coming off of you,” the young woman said.“I don’t know why you wanted me to do this in here, with the books and the scores and -- your musical instruments,” Jyn said. “If I lose control, you’re losing this library, and this house.”“I have faith in you.” Whispers of skirts and shoes and a gentle unseeing regard.“You shouldn’t.”“Trust me, then, if you can’t trust yourself.” The young woman sat down on a nearby ottoman, back straight, shoulders pulled back, chin up, and began to hum, softly at first, intricate trills and runs.“Satine?” called a masculine voice. Enthralled by Satine and the music she was creating, Jyn unthinkingly held up one hand to stop the man who was entering the library.Quiet smile on those weathered features.A scratch of a melody joining with Satine’s song, but it wasn’t coming from the man: incongruously, it was coming from the great bird that winged in to land on his broad shoulder. Cruel hooked beak, golden eyes, black feathers barred in gray and red.And the dog, now sprawled out at Satine’s feet, seemed to beat out the time for the singers with the wag of its long tail.“See, that’s why I’m not afraid of you,” Satine said, suddenly. “You have control, Jyn. You do.”Abashed, Jyn sat on that hand that she had held up. “It’s funny because you can’t see me.”“Oh, dear, you’re right, I can’t see you either -- who turned out the lights?” Satine answered, laughing quietly as she turned to the dog and treated him to a thorough scritching between his ears. “Was it you, Kalevala dear?”“It certainly wasn’t me,” the man said, crossing the room to stand protectively by Satine’s ottoman. The bird on his shoulder merely rustled its massive wings as it found its balance once again. “Nor our friend Krayt here.” Jyn wanted to laugh, but there were more people coming in, and she couldn’t help but tense even though she recognized them: Cassian, of course, who immediately grabbed one of the wooden chairs so he could carry it over to her in her armchair, so he could sit next to her. And two women in his wake: “Hello, Satine; hello, Obi-Wan,” said the one with the headscarf. The long sleeves of her knee-length tunic all but hid her hands, and the hems of her loose trousers were tucked carefully into her combat boots.“Hello, Ahsoka,” Satine replied, and held out her arms for a brief embrace. “I’m glad you’re doing well. You must stay for dinner, there seems to be too much cake in the kitchen.”“You’re the best, Satine. Hey Jyn,” Ahsoka added.And Obi-Wan seemed to be shaking his head and smiling at the same time.Finally, the woman in head-to-toe black bowed gravely to everyone else. “It must be a grave matter indeed, if you’re calling on me.”“Sabé,” Obi-Wan said. “It’s good to see you again.”“And I you.”“Are we all here?” Cassian said, in the silence that followed. “There’s a job. We’re asking you for help.”“Say on,” Sabé said.Jyn listened to his voice, but not the words. She paid attention to the others instead: to the way Obi-Wan’s avian companion seemed to tilt its head this way and that, as if to keep everyone in the group in its sights. To the way Satine’s dog sat with ears pricked up. The length of thread that Ahsoka pulled out of the hem of her headscarf, and the flash of glass in Sabé’s hand.“...can’t do this alone,” Cassian was saying, now. “I can make people forget. I can crush things, and what I can’t crush, Jyn can fry into bits. And we can fight our way through the usual suspects -- but not through the assholes propping up the VP. That’s where you come in.” A pause for breath. “I know you all have your own reasons to fight against people like Palpatine. I don’t know all those reasons and frankly, we probably need to tell each other these things. But the job comes first.”She let go of the wire, and took a deep breath, taking heart from the intensity of his tone. She was aware of everyone’s eyes on her as she raised her hand and turned it palm-up, and let a trickle of power creep out into the air, out of her very skin and bones and sinews: crackling sparking bolts of electricity, just enough to be seen but not enough to reach any of the others. “I said yes to the job, even with -- even with,” she said, slowly at first. “Because it’s a job that needs to be done, and we’re capable of doing it. But Cassian’s right: we can’t do this alone. Or, we could, but we might not be able to get out of it alive. So help us, please. If we all work together -- ”“It’s not easy,” Ahsoka said, suddenly. “It can’t be easy, since we’re going up against those people. But it’s doable. We just need to be very, very, very careful.”“I agree,” Sabé said. “And what you are not telling us is almost as important as what you already have. If by doing this we might have a hope of weakening Palpatine’s position, then it is not a question of whether we will join you or not. It becomes a question of, what do you need us to do?”And Jyn would have answered, if only Satine hadn’t sighed. “Don’t start, Obi-Wan,” she said.“I was not,” was the reply. “I know you were looking at me as though trying to find the nearest box to shut me away in.”“Not exactly. I was looking at you and wondering how many companions you would let me smuggle into this place.”A start, and an amused quirk of the mouth. “Depends on how nicely you ask.”“Flirting later,” Ahsoka teased, “mission now.”And even as Jyn steeled herself against the ice creeping into her nerves, she thought she might still warm herself in the presence of these people who were almost her friends.In the presence of Cassian, who gradually shifted his chair around so he could sit shoulder-to-shoulder with her.In this group, no one thought it odd that she hid her face away in his arm.(They seemed to expect her to lean on him.)
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“Find her! It’s not like she can hide!”And Jyn very carefully didn’t curse out loud.Not that there would be anyone to hear her, with the crackling burr of lightning dancing up and down her hands -- shooting up and down her skin to glow with particular intensity in the heart of her pendant.Lightning that lit her up and gave her location away with every moment, that hissed its sweetly cruel, sweetly cold song in her ears, that would have burned away her shirt and her trousers and the bandanna she wore to keep her hair away from her face, if it hadn’t been for the special properties of the copper plates on her gloves.Lightning that had once ruled her every thought, her every movement, cold and ruthless and merciless and burning her heart within her into bleak ash.Raitei: the title she’d assumed, once in the distant past, before she had fallen literally out of the sky and into Cassian’s arms. Lightning Lord -- she’d eschewed the feminine of the title -- she’d ruled as lord and master of a thousand gangs within the thousand floors of a place and time that was so outside the normal boundaries of the world that she moved in now. She’d been Raitei, and she’d created and destroyed people within that strange place and time purely on her own whim -- on the whim of the mocking lightning that did nothing to illuminate her true path.And to be Raitei was to walk with her heart and its ashes frozen in the terrifying wildness of the lightning that quickened in her veins, alone even though there were people who fought at her side, even when there were people who dared to approach her as someone to parley with.Lightning, crackling, and she hated that she’d gotten into this, that she’d taken this mission precisely because she was the living repository of that lightning: the sheer power of destruction that she wielded in her gloved hands, that even now shot from her in lethal bolts to fill the space in which she was hiding with white-hot hissing.Hiding, and licking her wounds: she felt blood trickle steadily down her cheek, and the steady dull throb of pain in her left knee. Fatigue besieged her, attacked her from all sides, threatening to shear away the walls that she’d built between herself and the siren mindless call of the lightning -- the restraints she’d taken on for the sake of being human, for the sake of rejecting her old inhuman Raitei self.Even now she could hear her pursuers and they were coming closer and closer still: men who might know the pass-phrase for Leia’s purloined flash drive, and so they were her enemies on this mission. They were the people who could blackmail Leia, who could harm Leia’s friends and allies -- and the bruises on her own body were already incontrovertible proof that these men were the people who would hurt Jyn for nothing more than wanting to do what was right.So the lightning hissed at her, crooning seductively at the back of her mind: calling on her to take up the title she’d rejected.“No,” she whispered, as much to herself as to the voice of the lightning, and she lunged out of cover, cannonballing her way into the nearest group of opponents and lashing out with the slashing bolts of pure heat and blinding light: strike, strike, strike, the surging power in her veins calling the tune for her deadly dance as she took down one man after another. Punch to the face, kick to the groin, elbow into the chest. More and more men swarming towards her. Her fingertips were starting to burn with the cold that was spreading out from her heart: and she thought she’d break that cold with every impact, with every crash into an opponent, and the next, and the next. Punch and kick, punch and kick, and every time she had the opportunity she used the entirety of her body as a weapon, throwing herself into one body after another and leaving them dazed and gasping -- vulnerable to the hot bright flash of lightning, frying their nerves, frying their senses --Onward! Where were the others? Surely there were still men that she needed to defeat! Vicious cold in her shriek as she hurtled onward, cold and lightning in her every movement, and even the blood that she left spraying in her wake must surely be turning cold with the speed and ferocity of her strikes, the bodies falling behind her cold before they could register that they were out of the fight --There was another voice, crowding out the whisper of the lightning: another voice, calling her.Calling her by a name that was not Raitei.And the impact that threw her sideways made her scream, pure frustrated rage and she almost expected the sound to turn into ice on the air, and she leapt to her feet, cocked her fist to fight back -- Only for her fist to be trapped in a crushing one-handed grip.Pain! Pain rocketing down her bones and her nerves, pain in her mind like rending red death! Who was this, who could stand up to her, who could face the power of her lightning and her rage and not even flinch -- Brown eyes looking steadily into hers: and then those same eyes flashed blue, blue like the depths of shadows at midnight, blue like the deepest heart of the sea --Blue, and the pupils gone vertical and slitted, as though she faced a predator and she had suddenly turned into prey.The world dissolved around Jyn: endless darkness all around her and she couldn’t even call the lightning to give her sight, to give her its hum and its riptide of destruction, and all her eyes could see was the sky gone that same deep blue, the sky and its thousands upon thousands of stars. Stars like a river in that endless quiet calm night, and starlight like calm ripples, and she drew in a breath, shocked to draw in warmth at the very same time -- warmth that wrapped around her heart. Calming her, reassuring her.Brown eyes that flashed blue, the blue of strange dreams and strange nightmares: and she knew of only one person who had those twinned abilities of crushing grip and blue-dream eyes.His name broke from her lips, half an entreaty, half a question: “Cassian.”“Just one minute.”And Jyn could see again.Could see a destroyed boardroom all around her, the massive table shattered down the middle and the chairs that must have surrounded it broken and twisted and smoldering on the periphery of the room.Could see the windows that told her they were on the fortieth floor of this elegant high-rise building, the place that the mission they’d received from Leia had led them to. The city sprawled out in its bright neon glow, blazing into the night.And she could see Cassian, looming over her, braced on his hands and knees -- so that must have meant he’d knocked her onto her back, pushing her down with the immense power of his grip.The hand that she lifted to him was just her hand in its glove: no lightning arcing from her fingertips to his skin, where she touched his cheek and found him warm, alive, vital.His own bruises were already layered along his jaw. Shards of broken glass in his hair, and blood in a line that led from his mouth to his ear -- the smell of it, like rust and broken stone, hung heavy between them.Crackling noise: and with a start, Jyn recognized the cord that Cassian was wearing, that led down into the collar of his dress shirt. Recognized the voice that was yelling at him, at both of them: “Stardust Retrieval! Both of you -- report!”“Ahsoka,” Cassian was saying, now. “I’ve retrieved Jyn. Fortieth floor. Are we clear to head up?”“Give it a moment, Obi-Wan and Krayt are just breaking through -- ah, there we go, belay that, you’re all clear.”“Sabé here. I’m watching your backs. Be advised it sounds like there are more reinforcements coming in.”“You better still have enough poison for them all,” Ahsoka was saying.“When have I ever run out?”“And now you’ve jinxed it!”Jyn tuned their voices out.Whispered, “We always end up like this, don’t we?”Soft smile above her. “It wouldn’t be right otherwise. I’m -- it’s important that you are who you are. We couldn’t survive if you weren’t you -- who you are now, and who you used to be.”“Lightning and things destroyed in a ten-block radius, who are we kidding,” Jyn said, morosely, and slithered away from him so she could sit up.“There’s that. On the other hand: we wouldn’t be working at all, if not for this,” and he gestured to his eyes and to her hands. “We just fuck everyone’s shit up while we’re on the job.”“So we can stay alive. So we can stay together.”“Guys,” and now Obi-Wan was speaking through Cassian’s radio. “If you could both make your way up here.”“Problem?” Cassian asked, and Jyn felt dread in her belly like a leaden weight, ice-cold.“The opposition is here.”“Shit,” Jyn said.And she got to her feet. Cassian rose, too, and she reached out to his arms. Tried to burn the image of his face into her memory once again: tried to make him into her shield against the ice in her heart. “If I lose control this time -- you won’t be able to use your ability on me again. If I lose control again, please use all your strength against me.”She waited for him to nod.She wasn’t expecting him to grab her arms in return -- but when his mouth came forcefully down on hers, she kissed him back with everything that she had, everything that the lightning hadn’t yet turned into seething dark madness.
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“Your choice,” hissed Senator Palpatine. “If you kill me, Senator Mothma will die, too. Let me live, and she goes free.”Growling on the edges of Jyn’s hearing, and not all the sound was human in origin.Directly behind her was the massive bulk of a dire wolf, its muzzle dark with blood, its teeth stained with death -- and its eyes were the eyes of the man who crouched in a fighting stance, the eyes of the great bird of prey that was only waiting for one more signal to attack.Senator Palpatine hung suspended from an intricate network of glittering threads, and the blood that dripped from his skin fell steadily in drip-drip-drip rhythm onto the floor -- and at the other end of all those threads, at the source of all those deadly edges, was Ahsoka. Her headscarf almost completely unraveled into its components, until it was nothing more than a tattered rag in her fist.Jyn took in a ragged breath and smelled spice and musk and nothing at all good: the smell of the last vial that Sabé held in her hand, ready to uncork and shove into Palpatine’s mouth. A vicious poison, that would force him to remain lucid right to the very last beat of his heart despite the havoc it would wreak on every part of his body.Harsh breaths mingling with her own, and the weight of Cassian’s body, slack across her lap -- both of his legs broken in the struggle to take down Palpatine’s enforcers.Ventress and Maul and Bane: gone, now. Jyn had hurled each of them from the tower, knowing even as she released them that she would have to fight them again, somewhere in the future.So here was Palpatine, alone and trussed up, and he was gloating anyway.There was a vengeful whisper in her ears.She was willing to take the risk of striking him down -- it would have to be her, if the others couldn’t -- She raised her good hand to her mouth -- her left hand -- the right hand was broken again, and she could hear her bones grinding against each other -- gripped the edge of her glove in her teeth and with one swift movement stripped it away. Nothing between her and her power now, the power of Raitei that lurked in her veins: just her and the lightning that created a crackling fiery aura, sparks skittering across her skin as she held her hand up to Palpatine.“Jyn,” Cassian whispered, as he stirred and slowly slowly opened his eyes. “Don’t tell me I can’t do it,” she said, and she heard the ice forming on the edges of her words.“I can’t believe it,” Palpatine cackled. “If I’d known that this was all it would take for me to find you -- then I would have done this years ago! You, the one I’ve been looking for -- you, the one feared by every lowlife in this city! You are Raitei! How is it that you work with those who oppose me?”“My choice,” Jyn said, softly.“Your choice, really? Or is it the choice that was imposed upon you by these small minds?” That voice became a seductive murmur, crackling like distant storms on the move. “Really, Raitei, you surprise me. How is it that you allow yourself to be shackled to these lesser ones? How is it that you’ve let go of your dreams to conquer this city -- to conquer this world? This world that owes you homage because your power is strength, and you alone are placed high above the reach of every law -- release me, I beg of you, and I’ll bend all my resources to building your throne and placing you on it.”Jyn blinked, and looked down.And now there was nothing but brown in Cassian’s eyes, nothing but shadows, and in those shadows she saw herself, and only herself: herself and the lightning that burned in her. The cold dead eyes of her other self, of the woman who used to be Raitei and not Jyn: cold eyes that knew no tears. No joy even in the wake of conquering others, no joy even in the wake of breaking others’ wills to her own, no joy even in the impossible ascent of the criminal underworld to rule over the broken backs and broken necks of all those who’d opposed her.Cold empty hands. The lightning only glowed on her fingertips, and only froze her from the outside in: her hands knew no one and nothing to hold on to.Not a cup full of dark golden-red tea, scented with berries and roses.Not the smiles and laughter of people who saw her as a friend and as an ally.Not the shocked happiness of people getting their missing things back.Not -- not Cassian: who’d stepped out of nowhere and rushed to catch her, the shock of falling away from her lofty perch as Raitei turning into the shock of meeting someone who only wanted to know if she was all right. Who’d tucked her into threadbare blankets, who’d emptied his own pockets to buy her a can of hot vending-machine coffee.And that had been only the first night of their acquaintance.Cassian who’d given her so very much when he’d had nothing of his own: he’d given her a chance to become herself.“I,” she said, now.“Jyn,” Cassian said in reply.“You tried to make him dream.”“I failed,” she heard Cassian say. “He -- his will is powerful. As powerful as mine.”That was news. “Can you do it again?”“It won’t work,” he said, faltering. “Not enough strength left in me.”“Leia said -- make the people who know the pass-phrase forget. Silence them. Right?”“Make it so they can’t say the pass-phrase. Can’t write it down for someone else to say. Can’t -- share it.”“And we can’t kill him, not at least until we know Mothma is safe,” she said. Her hand was still out.The lightning was still calling to her.“Strike,” she whispered. “A very precise strike.”He blinked. “Of what?”“I made my choice,” Jyn said. She couldn’t touch him with her lightning: she wanted to touch him properly. Her skin against his, his reactions beneath her fingertips.“Jyn?”“You were going to be a doctor before all this started,” she said, her eyes fixed on Cassian’s.“Yes,” and he looked bewildered.“How far did you get? How can I take away the ability to speak? How can I take away the ability to move?”She was looking in his eyes when she saw the realization hit home, like lightning arcing, ground and sky connected in a blinding flash.And she nodded, once.Cassian’s lips, moving: a nearly soundless phrase.She laid him on the floor, and rose to her feet. Pain rocketed down every nerve as she jarred her hand, as she jarred her cuts and bruises.One step forward, and another, and another, looking down, until she was right in front of Palpatine.“Raitei,” Palpatine was saying, now.Jyn looked up.Bared her teeth in a feral grin.“You will release me,” Palpatine was saying, and his voice was even colder than the ice of her heart.“Yes,” Jyn whispered.She brought her hand up to the level of her heart, as if to offer him the source of her lightning, the source of the corroding cold that brooded within her -- “Yes, Raitei,” Palpatine said.His last words --And the coruscating spark of lethal power flowed -- one brief instant of light that connected her hand and his forehead -- Palpatine shrieked, once.Sizzling in defeat, the threads that had been holding him up gave way -- the soft thump of his body hitting the floor -- “What have you done?” Ahsoka’s voice.“He’s not dead -- and so Mothma is alive, too,” Jyn said. Sabé hastening past, dropping to her knees to turn Palpatine over -- “Pulse, heartbeat, respiration -- he’s alive, but -- ” Sabé waved her hand in front of Palpatine’s face and recoiled when there was no reaction. “What did you do?”“He’ll live,” Jyn said. “But he will never speak or move again. I’ve -- I fried part of his brain. Parts.” She tapped a spot between her own eyes with hands that didn’t emit any threatening light. “Lobotomy.”She was on her way back to a beaming Cassian when the doors slammed open -- she hissed a challenge -- “Easy, easy! It’s us!”“Solo?” Obi-Wan asked.“The one and only, and we’ve got the Senator,” was the reply. “Leia’s on the line -- ”Jyn tuned him out.Sat down next to Cassian, and leaned over until she was bent nearly double, until she could rest her forehead on his chest.He said her name, once.No one saw her smile.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
One month later
She stepped out from the shelter of the counter that ran the length of the tea shop, from the shelter of the sink and the soft drying cloths and lemon-scented dishwashing liquid, and carried her fragile burden across to the window and its waiting sill: and she kept her eyes on the tray full of mugs.There was a mug for Satine, now, in the tea shop’s collection, and next to it one marked with a paw print in the exact shape of Kalevala’s. The mug for Obi-Wan -- his had been one of the first that the shop had set aside for its regular customers -- had been joined by one on which a crooked black feather had been painted, and unlike the dog, Krayt actually used that mug, usually filled with water to the right depth for dipping a beak into.Jyn set those mugs in a cluster far away from the swinging drafts caused by the door into the shop opening and closing, far away from the dust of the city that might come blowing in with every arrival and every departure.Sharp twinge of pain in her right hand: but it was a reminder of what she’d done, and it was not the cold dull pain of ice forming beneath her heart, and she gingerly flexed her hand instead, and wiped the last lingering traces of suds off on the back of her shirt.Rustling in the door in the back of the shop: and she threw a smile at Baze as he finally took the tie out of his hair, where he’d been wearing it tightly bound all day. A busy day at the tea shop with too many chairs taken, with too many enthusiastic gossipers talking about Mon Mothma swearing solemnly to serve as the new president of the country. Cup after cup after cup of tea, and an absolutely ravaged larder, and tomorrow promised to be just as busy -- it was a good thing Chirrut had hired on a young man to bus the tables: dark brown skin and dark brown eyes, and incongruously gnarled hands.Bodhi Rook, Jyn thought, and she wondered if she’d ever have a chance to have a conversation with him.At least there was a little money in the bank, money enough to buy a new bag of bonbons for when Cassian finally finished with his physical therapy, with the rehabilitation that his broken legs required so he could walk again, run again, fight again -- drive the little hatchback again.It had been fun being a solo retrieval specialist, but it was wearing, and she’d been dealing with her own aches and pains, so there was a reason for her to move slowly and deliberately across the checked tiles of the shop.“Go on with you,” she heard Baze say when she finally ended up at the inner door. “Straight to bed and don’t forget to wrap your wrist with tape. You burn it off when you’re working, so at least support it when you’re not.”Another voice in the wake of his: “If you eat upstairs,” and it was Chirrut, of course, “please don’t get any crumbs on the comforter.”She whispered a weary affirmative, and wondered that her footsteps on the stairs leading to the attic of the building in which the coffee shop was located didn’t creak, when she could feel the lingering echoes of her pain like teeth in her skin. The pain of her broken hand and the pain in her feet, chasing leads and things to retrieve all over the city, and all by herself: sure, the gratitude had been good and so had the payments she’d received from the various clients, but it was like walking through the world with a gaping wound at her side, with a gaping absence of missing warmth.The others had tried to fill in, and that had been kind of them: she’d enlisted Ahsoka to help her find a crystal-studded tiara, and that night had ended with far too many costume-jewelry selfies. Obi-Wan had spent an entire weekend helping her search for a tiny maquette-copy of a Bernini sculpture.Even Leia had come out to work with her: and that one had nearly been too easy to the point of being mindless. Three nights searching black-net websites for a specific email message, and nothing too incriminating in it: just a many-times-misplaced manuscript for a novel. Easy money.But money was just something she used to buy things like -- food and vending-machine coffee and new sheets as a gift for Chirrut and Baze.Money was cold and crumpled and incomprehensible, and it did nothing to speed Cassian’s way to recovery -- it only bought her extra blankets.The open door at her back so she could hear the sounds of the building settling reluctantly for the night -- she was not unprotected, and she was not defenseless, not with the lightning that coiled and crackled around her heart -- and she went through the motions of washing her hair, of putting her arms into Cassian’s extra shirt, of doing up only one button. Blankets piled on to warm her feet and her hands, especially her right hand. Curled up alone in the bed and her eyes wide open though she was numb with exhaustion: looking up at the handful of stars that struggled through the neon glow of the city’s sky, with the other half of the bed only growing colder as the night’s hours wore on.The sounds of creaking and quiet words that drifted up to her from the floor below, where Baze and Chirrut had made their little home.And she must have fallen asleep because she wouldn’t be waking otherwise, waking and lighting up the room with crackling white -- outline looming over her, the rhythm of pained breathing -- “Don’t,” and that voice stopped her in her tracks.Light fading on the instant, leaving just enough afterglow to illuminate the worn shadows in a familiar face, in familiar brown eyes.She reached out and -- warmth. This was real.He was real.“Jyn,” and it was Cassian, it truly was him, slow controlled fall into hunched shoulders and his elbows braced on his knees, sitting next to the pillows.“I thought they said -- ” she began.“I didn’t want to spend another moment in the hospital.” Words pulled out of him, like thorns, like pain.“Bad dreams,” Jyn guessed.“No. It stank.”“Oh.”Nothing else to say, not even “Welcome home” -- she just pulled him down to the bed. The groan that escaped him as he fell into the pillows. The movements of his legs as he toed off his shoes and socks, as those objects fell onto the floor.“Blanket,” she said, offering.“No. Just you.”He was here. He was really here.And she wrapped her arms around him: felt the weight of his arm around her shoulders, tugging her even closer. He stank of antiseptic and of threadbare disinfected sheets, and she pushed her nose into the skin of his neck anyway, breathing deep of him, the real sense of him and the heat that he threw off.“Sleep,” she said. “Tomorrow -- we’ll get the car back from Satine and we can sleep there. Sleep easier.”“Sleep close to you.”A touch to the top of her head.“Wake me up in an hour,” he added.“No,” Jyn said, and smiled.Moonlight in her eyes when she woke once again, to find that she’d shifted in her sleep and so had he: her back pressed to his front and the steady pulse of his breaths right on the back of her neck.Or was he just breathing? Again that soft touch and she couldn’t help but lean into it, lean into him, and she’d fight to get closer if she could, if he’d let her because his arm around her waist was tightening, was drawing her firmly into the curve of his body against hers.So close that she felt rather than heard it when he said her name: “Jyn.”How could he make her shiver the way he did? How could he make her feel like she was -- not in this bed, not wrapped in blankets and the loose drape of his shirt -- like she was falling again, endlessly, with his arms to shelter in and his eyes -- She turned around just as he opened his mouth -- and she caught her breath, and gave in to the impulse. Leaned in close and brushed her nose against the corner of his mouth -- turned her head just a little, and kissed him.And she caught the sigh that escaped him, when she ran her tongue over the fullness of his lower lip.Words falling into the tiny hair’s-breadth spaces between them, where she was breathing in the warmth of him and he might have been soaking up the presence of her in the world, Cassian whispering: “You weren’t there, at the hospital.”She didn’t feel like reproaching him. “You chased me out, remember? And also I had to keep the retrieval service going.”“Didn’t want you to see me like I was.”“Which was?” Two words, she thought, and only counted the kisses she pressed to his skin: three, four, as he continued to talk, like sharing secrets.“Falling a lot. Crawling.”“We already do that, when we’re on the job,” she said, gentle reminder.“Wasn’t on a job in the hospital.”“You needed to do it, so you could come back to work with me.”“I know.” She breathed in the gustiness of his sigh. “I know all that. Rationally. But I couldn’t do it because you weren’t there.”“Not irrational at all,” she said, and then she gave up on words. Pressed needy kisses to his mouth and to his cheeks, the pronounced lines of his face, the curve of his dear eyebrows that were drawn together into almost a frown -- “Jyn,” she heard him say, and “Please -- ”Not warmth in her searching fingertips as she ran them up and down his trembling arms: instead there was a need that scorched her, that was setting her alight, as she twined her legs gently with his, as she learned his desperate kiss once again, mouth and teeth and tongue creating fire beneath her skin, along her straining nerves -- Slow, however, slow, they had to go slow -- she was recovering from injuries and he was doing the exact same thing -- she wound her hand into the hair above his nape and stroked, down. “Sssh, sssh.”“Hurts when I kiss you,” Cassian was muttering. “’m not planning to stop.”That sent fresh heat through her, making her press her thighs together against cramping insidious need, and -- she pushed him onto his back. Nipped none-too-gently at the corner of his straining mouth. “Let me.”Not an easy job to pull his clothes away when he seemed to be twisting restlessly on the sheets, trying to hold her close, trying to press into her touch. He tossed his head on the pillows, her name falling from his lips again and again.Distraction, she thought, and she tugged his hand to rest on the half-falling-open halves of his shirt as it hung from her shoulders.Moonlight and something very much like gratitude in his eyes as he thumbed the one done button open -- his hands reaching for her, coming to rest at her sides, and the weight of being possessed by him, being cherished by him -- she hadn’t even known what that meant until she’d fallen into his arms -- Clothes and barriers and even the blankets gone, now, and nothing but the bright pooling glow of the night painting the old scars on his skin: she wanted to see him. Wanted to see the need that burned in the depths of his eyes, that pulled at every inch of him, drawing her in closer and closer until she could inhale the smell of his skin, and exhale warmth over him.“Stay still,” she whispered against the curve of his collarbone. Over and over she pressed the words into his body: the darker lines leading from his wrist to the palm of his hand, the ridges of his ribs, the soft sunken spot beneath his ear, the hollow between his thigh and his groin.His hands at her hips and then at her shoulders, roving restless, fire licking at her nerves in the wake of his touch. The heat of his mouth on hers when she leaned down to him again, and every time she pulled away to gasp for breath she couldn’t stop herself from grinding against him.“Tease,” he growled, to the sharp throb low in her belly.“I know you like it,” she hissed back, sucking a savage bruise into his inner thigh.“Yes yes please Jyn please,” and the last sound became desperate and drawn out, sibilant plea.She knew him now, knew what would make him beg, knew how to use her mouth and her hands on every exposed inch of skin. Knew how to kiss the base of his cock so he’d writhe and beg for more. Knew how ticklish he was around the divot of his navel. And -- he knew her, knew what to say to make her ears burn and to fan the flame of her need higher and higher still. Dirty words blistering the air between them, that all but turned her muscles and her nerves molten, that stole her breath and pushed her to force the issue -- her wet cunt poised over the length of him that she was just barely holding upright with her shaking hand. His cock slipping into her, and the sheer gravity between them pulling her down down down, until she could feel him hitching closer, his hips jerking upwards helplessly --His hands seizing hers, holding them bound one to the other, and then -- the unspoken signal, the spike and the spark of the pull between them, that made her move on him. Rising up and falling back down, and his body shaking up to meet hers on the downstroke, over and over and over, until the world began to blur out and she was gasping his name, the breath knocked from her lungs every time they crashed together, faster and harder until she was nothing but pure need, pure desperation, waiting and waiting -- “Come on me, Jyn, come on me,” the words blurred around the edges and somehow she blinked at him, at the muscle jumping in his clenched jaw -- and gratefully she broke, his name on her mouth once again -- this time a soundless sigh.Her mind, perfectly clear and perfectly still, just for a moment.Waiting for the right time to touch him, as they began to move again, his hips driving up and her body grinding down, and her hands planted on his chest so her fingertips could trace tight circles around his nipples, something greedy in the low groan that escaped him just before his orgasm crashed into him, hard enough that she hissed and found herself coming once again.Her eyes fell closed.And opened to the line of lightning that stretched between her heart and his, where she was still sitting up over him and they were still joined.Cassian was smiling. She could see that clearly in the light that glowed between them, that flashed one more time and faded out.His smile, and the words that he was saying to her: “Just like the first time. Our first night.”“You said,” and she faltered, a little. “You said you would never be afraid of me.”“And I’m not. I fear for you. But I will never -- ever -- fear you.”He opened his arms to her.And she fell into him once again.