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***
The Category IV attacks on a Wednesday.
Jyn watches the broadcast on the warehouse television with everyone else, the footage grainy and beyond shaky. It's not the first Category IV to show up this year. It's not even the second, or the third.
It breaks through the Wall in thirty minutes flat.
Everyone talks about nothing else for the rest of the day. Even the managers don't bother pretending to do their jobs, letting the workers murmur agitatedly amongst themselves as they hurry to and fro between offices, all wearing the same pinched expression.
What's the point? They've all been here for years, risking their lives day after day to build something to keep the kaijus out, something they've been told and promised will protect them and their families — and, with one short news clip, they've just found out that all of their blood, sweat, and tears over the years have amounted to absolutely nothing.
She doesn't say anything to anyone; just keeps her head down, focuses on her work. She's never particularly liked Wednesdays to begin with.
It doesn't even take them an hour to find her.
General Draven is clad in the same stiff uniform, starched and pressed to rigid perfection. It's a lot more decorated than she remembers, though.
She squints at him, her nose wrinkled. He looks nearly as happy to see her as she is to see him. It's a small comfort.
"How long have you known I was here?"
He gives her an ornery once-over, thin lips pursed. "Is that going to have any effect on whether you come back with us now?"
Three hours later, they're approaching the Shatterdome.
Jyn's long stopped trying to estimate just how far out they are from her piece of the Wall. She peers through the glass, trying to be interested in the sight of the large landing platform dotted over with jets and choppers and uniformed personnel running about, no bigger than ants from where they are.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, a spark of adrenaline flickers. The barest, dullest sense of pure familiarity.
It dissipates into nothingness within seconds.
She hums, keeping her tone deliberately light. "Looks like an upgrade from the last rust bucket."
Across from her, Draven bristles — but he keeps his mouth shut, his stoic expression cracking at the corners with the sheer effort.
In that moment, Jyn realises just how desperate the situation is.
She's not sure what kind of welcome party she's expecting, but it's definitely not the fucking Secretary of Defense.
"Miss Erso," Secretary Mothma greets, one hand extended. Jyn almost declines to take it, but not because she's feeling contrary. It's more that Mothma's perfectly pressed pantsuit is so pearly white, it's almost making Jyn worry that she's going to mess it up with a mere handshake.
She also doesn't miss the specific form of address used by the Secretary. Guess three years of being M.I.A doesn't exactly entitle her to keep her old rank of sergeant.
"Madam Secretary," Jyn says shortly, releasing the other woman's hand as soon as she can. "You sure went to a lot of trouble looking for someone to run a kamikaze mission."
To her credit, Mothma doesn't look all that fazed. "It's not a… kamikaze mission," she says, her mouth twisting slightly with the uncouthness of the phrase. She gestures to her left, and a dark-haired man steps forward smartly. "This is Captain Cassian Andor. He'll show you to your room. Take some time to get settled, have a look around. We'll sit down for a proper briefing in an hour."
Another round of brisk nods, and with a final nod, the Secretary is striding away, already embroiled in a heated conversation with Draven as they head indoors, both their voices kept low to avoid drawing attention. Perfect role models of diplomacy.
Jyn tilts her head, not bothering to disguise the fact that she's looking her assigned guide up and down. She takes a full two seconds to size him and his perfectly pressed military uniform up, the stripes of his rank displayed boldly on his sleeve.
She definitely doesn't miss the slight clench of his jaw at her once-over.
"Do I have a strict curfew, too?" she asks flatly. "They usually leave a list of rules on the fridge — you know, along with a few emergency numbers."
Captain Cassian Andor doesn't seem the faintest bit amused.
"I would highly suggest that you start taking this seriously, Miss Erso," he says. His voice is a lot softer than she was expecting, his accent turning his sombre words into something of a lilt. Almost musical, even.
It does nothing to mask the hard steel in his voice.
It's not just his voice, either. The clench of his jaw; the rigid set of his shoulders; the glint in his eyes. It's all over him, like a second skin.
She rolls her eyes, striding past him without waiting for an indication of where to go. After all, wherever her room is, it can't be out here with the fuel tanks and cargo bins.
"If you're gonna be this fun all the time, you might as well skip the 'Miss Erso' bullshit," she says, shoving down the muted note of surprise at the way he immediately pivots to follow her — like he was already expecting her to do it. "At least use my first name when you're biting my head off."
"This is no time for games," he says, calm but firm. His voice echoes slightly as they turn off from the main hangar, entering a small corridor. "The entire navy is on high alert."
She snorts, automatically swerving to follow him through a left turn. "In case you missed it, the entire world's been on high alert for about ten years now."
She doesn't bother getting acquainted with her assigned room. They're all the same, anyway. Enclosed steel cabin. Standard military-issue bedframe and mattress. A sturdy box of a closet on one end. A small table on the other, for anything one would want to keep.
It's exactly the same kind of room she'd spent three years in — and yet, totally different. She'd had stuff in her old room. Pictures. Memories.
She dumps her bag on the foot of the bed, keeping her gaze lowered in a resolute attempt at ignoring the bare grey walls. Raking a hand through her bangs, she shakes them out of her eyes before turning to face her lone spectator.
"So," she says, as lightly as she can. "What comes first?"
The first thing Cassian does is take her to her Jaeger.
She'd taken it as a figure of speech. The last thing she'd been expecting to see was her Jaeger.
"Oh, God," she breathes, her feet taking her forward before she can even think about it. "Rebel Rogue."
It's like she's stepped right into a memory. More like a dream, she thinks hazily, her eyes drinking the sight in. How many hours had she spent in that magnificent machine? How many hours had she spent hooked up to every part of it through pilot's armour, its spine directly connected to hers? How many hours had she spent in that Conn-Pod, getting strapped into the footrests with her father right next to—
She blinks hard against the sudden sting in her eyes, fingers clenching hard on the rail in front of her as she shoves the memory down, buries it deep. "She looks… wonderful."
"She'd better!"
She whirls around in confusion.
That confusion instantly melts into happiness when she sees Bodhi Rook standing in front of her, with that same warm, slightly sheepish grin on his face. "Because if she doesn't, I've just wasted half the year getting her completely fitted out with that shiny new all-iron hull. No alloys, mind you."
"Bodhi," Jyn exclaims, stepping forward to engulf him in an eager hug. "Shit, I didn't realise you'd still be here."
Bodhi laughs — hearty and yet, a little watery. Just the way she remembers it. "While we're being honest? Neither did I."
Behind Jyn, the sound of a low cough breaks the temporary silence. Annoyance spikes through her at the reminder of Cassian's presence, and she reluctantly releases Bodhi, stepping back to give her old friend a proper once-over.
"J-Tech Chief Bodhi Rook," she says, giving him an affectionate punch to the shoulder. "The only other person I've ever willingly trusted with my life."
Bodhi grins, clearly embarrassed by the praise. "Besides this old girl, you mean," he says, gesturing towards the Jaeger standing behind her.
Jyn beams at him. "Have you kept her well-oiled for me, then?"
"He's done a bit more than that," Cassian says briskly. "She's got a double-core nuclear reactor now, running on forty engines per muscle strand and a brand new fluid synapse system." His gaze flicks to her — dark, but not unkind. "He's spent the last two years working on nothing else."
She looks at Bodhi in surprise. Her friend's face is now beet red all over, his slight shoulders lifted in a sheepish shrug.
"Yeah, well," Bodhi stammers, shoving his hands into his pockets, "I figured if you ever came back for one last rodeo, you'd appreciate the upgrades."
Jyn inhales sharply, tearing her gaze away for one more look at her beloved Jaeger.
This time, when Cassian clears his throat pointedly, the stab of annoyance is significantly smaller than before.
(It's still a stab, though. Definitely above minor pricking level.)
"We're due for a meeting with the Secretary and General Draven," Cassian says, turning towards Bodhi. "Excuse us."
Jyn listens to Mon Mothma ramble on, keeping her expression as neutral as she can manage throughout the Secretary's ten-minute spiel on 'your country's hour of need' and 'a great service to your people, and to all of humanity'.
Through it all, she can feel Cassian's eyes trained on her.
He's a lot more well-practiced in the art of subtlety than she would have thought. Even with him standing right by Mothma's chair, it had taken her a full minute to detect the veiled weight of his gaze on her.
The second Mothma finally runs out of steam, all eyes instantly turn to Jyn.
She clears her throat. "No offence, ma'am — but why don't you just cut the crap and tell me what the hell I'm actually here for?"
Draven's entire face turns red, and for a moment, Jyn thinks he might actually leap across the table and throttle her. She can picture it so easily: 'Insubordination!' he'd probably yell, towering over her. 'Disgrace!'
But then Cassian steps forward.
He takes a single step and turns to face her with his whole body. It's a deceptively small movement that brings him stiflingly close, his lean frame practically looming over her chair.
"We need a Mark-3 Jaeger. We have a Mark-3 Jaeger." His head tilts, ever so slightly. "All we're missing is a Mark-3 Jaeger pilot."
She stares up at him, brows furrowed. "Good summary."
For the rest of the briefing, Draven takes over to explain the technical aspects of the mission itself.
It seems basic enough. Get to the breach when it opens, fight off the kaiju that emerges, drop a thousand-kilogram nuke down the passage, hightail it out of there before getting caught in the blast of over a million tons of TNT going off, all at once.
No one asks her for her opinion.
To be perfectly honest, she's not sure she even has one.
"Okay," she says slowly, leaning back in her chair as a dull ache starts throbbing in her head. Aren't there supposed to be shiny pitchers and glasses of water set out for everyone at these types of meetings?
She shakes her head, resisting the urge to rub at her temples. There's something missing. Jaegers don't run with just one pilot.
"So," she says, looking around the table, "which unlucky bastard is going to be strapped up in the Conn-Pod with me?"
For the first time throughout the meeting, everyone's rhythm falters. Mothma and Draven are exchanging looks between them like she's not even there.
Cassian merely straightens, his expression perfectly blank. "You're scheduled to spar with a number of candidates tomorrow morning. If all goes according to plan, you'll have a co-pilot before noon."
She almost scoffs out loud, just barely catching herself in time.
"If all goes according to plan," she repeats under her breath. She looks up, offering him the blandest smile she can muster. "Sounds perfect."
Jyn's not an intelligence officer. Jyn's never been trained as an intelligence officer.
But she's sure as hell not an idiot, either.
She's well aware that whatever Cassian's job is, it's a hell of a lot closer to being her handler than her guide. Guides don't shadow you with that dimly disapproving look on their face at all times. Guides don't stay on your tail like they're expecting you to set fire to everything the second they look away.
Either way, she's relieved when she wakes up the next morning, and he's not already hovering right outside her door, like a pillar of lawful judgement.
It'd have been easy, too. Her room's directly opposite his. (Another unsurprising coincidence.)
Instead of waiting around for him to show up, she follows the disembodied voice chiming tinnily over the PA, announcing breakfast in the canteen.
She's barely taken two steps past the wide threshold of the mess hall when a tray appears out of nowhere, thrust towards her with no warning.
"They're fresh out of eggs," the man bearing the tray informs her, mouth curved with an easy smile. "Saved you the last of it, though."
She glances down at the tray, finding it unexpectedly difficult to recover with her usual speed. She looks back up at the man, feeling both unsettled and strangely reassured by his enduring smile and the faded grey of his irises. "I— oh, er, that's okay. I don't—"
A burly man materialises at the first's side. "Our table's this way," he grunts, a fully laden tray in each hand. His gaze barely seems to pass over Jyn, but she feels the distinct weight of it nonetheless. He turns, starting off down a row of tables. "Come on, you two."
You two?
"Yes, you," the smiling man says, gesturing for Jyn to go ahead of him.
Save for a small start, she thinks she does a rather decent job of concealing her surprise.
There's a third man already seated at the table that Jyn finds herself being escorted to. He's a rather lanky sort of fellow, the warm undertones of his dark skin starkly contrasted against the cool, dull grey of the walls and aluminium tables. The way he's sitting makes Jyn think that he must be significantly taller than her, his knees all folded in under the table's surface.
It makes her think of the flight simulations she used to watch when she was younger, the taller pilots bending their limbs this way and that as they crowded themselves into the ludicrously small cockpits of fighter jets.
He's also sporting a pair of thick-framed black glasses, which he pushes up higher on the bridge of his nose as she approaches the table.
"Jyn Erso," he says. It's an odd tone she's never quite heard before — nuanced, but still monotone. Not expressive, exactly. More like an imitation of expressiveness.
She lowers herself into a seat, still eyeing him warily. "And you are…?"
"This is Kay," the smiling man says, setting her tray in front of her. "The most brilliant kaiju researcher on the planet."
The burly man scoffs. "Not that it's a very long list to start with," he says, sliding one tray over to the smiling man.
"It's Doctor Tuesso," Kay grouches, shooting a glare at the smiling man. "I did not spend twelve years of my life working towards the highest honours in my field to be addressed so cavalier—"
"K-Science expert," Jyn says, one brow raised. "That why you're called 'Kay'?"
Kay looks at her, nose wrinkled. "No," he says. He sounds vaguely affronted.
"I am Chirrut," the smiling man says. He gestures to the burly man, who's already demolished at least a third of his overloaded tray. "This is Baze."
Jyn blinks, something immediately clicking in her head. "Îmwe and Malbus," she blurts with a start, looking between them. "You guys pilot Kyber Guardian."
The Kyber Guardian is a Mark-3 Jaeger — just like the one she used to pilot. She's known it for years now. Everyone has. It's tough to avoid, when its pilots have got a record fourteen kaiju kills to their names.
Baze snorts, pausing work on his potatoes to gesture with his fork towards Chirrut. "He pilots Kyber Guardian. I just get dragged along for the ride."
Chirrut laughs, light and breezy. Jyn watches them, a sense of awe dawning on her. It would be impossible to mistake their bond as anything less than drift compatible.
She clears her throat, shoving down the memories resurfacing in the waters of her mind.
"I saw Pathfinder in the hangar bay," she says instead, picking up the fork on her tray as she turns the conversation to the last Mark-2 Jaeger in existence.
"Yes," Chirrut says with a smile. "The Damerons left the mess hall about five minutes ago."
"Don't worry," Baze advises dryly. "You can always get their autograph some other time."
Her mouth is already curving with a smile before she can even catch herself. She shakes her head, turning her attention back to her food.
That's when she notices that Kay's gaze is still aimed at her.
She glances up at him questioningly, only to watch his sharp gaze narrow, a small but definite glint flashing behind those thick frames.
He coughs behind a hand. "Cassian failed to mention how… diminutive you are."
She resists the urge to groan at the mere mention of the rigid captain's name. Instead, she cocks her head challengingly. "Yeah? Well, he didn't mention you at all."
Chirrut hums, idle but calming. "Please forgive us," he says, the mellow timbre of his voice instantly soothing Jyn's frazzled nerves. "Kay can be very direct. It's nothing personal. He just prefers to cut straight to the point."
Jyn relaxes slightly, her defensive stare still trained on Kay. "Sounds like fun."
Although, privately, she's a little relieved. She hates when people hide behind niceties. She always has. People who offer her a smile and then wait till her back is turned to spew their self-righteous shit are the worst. Direct, she can deal with.
Kay's gaze flicks down to her untouched tray, and then back up to her face. "You should eat."
For some reason, the words sound strangely ominous.
She finds out why when she gets to the combat room thirty minutes later.
"Holy shit," she says, dropping her bag onto a bench. It lands with a dull thud. She turns away from the crowd gathered in the room to raise a brow at Cassian, hands moving to unzip her jacket. "If you've scheduled me to fight the entire Shatterdome, I really doubt we'll be done by noon."
He doesn't move, but she feels his gaze on her as she strips off her jacket and dumps it onto her bag. "You're not fighting anyone. You're sparring. It's a conversation, n—"
"Not an argument," she finishes automatically, shaking her head with a scoff. "Yeah, well, if I'm seriously scheduled to converse with everyone here, I really hope you're prepared to miss lunch."
Cassian merely shrugs, everyone turning to salute Draven as he enters the room. "I had a big breakfast," he says mildly, before moving off to talk with the general.
Jyn stares after him, eyes wide with disbelief.
Jesus Christ, she thinks, bending to unlace her boots. Even his jokes are rigid.
Jyn loses count somewhere after the twelfth or thirteenth candidate.
Honestly, she's a little too preoccupied with Cassian to really focus on anything else.
She can't help it. He's had this look on his face, ever since she took down candidate number one. Like he's just been forced to swallow a huge wedge of lemon, or something.
It's rude, is what it is. She's got just enough self-respect to admit that she'd used to be a good fighter, but she's over three years out of practice, and she's working her ass off to get back into the swing of combat training, all because they want her to. Thankfully, her strength and stamina levels are still fine, decently maintained by all that time spent working on the highest reaches of the Wall she could volunteer for.
All the same, it's not exactly easy to just slip back into training mode after so much time away. He could show a little appreciation for the sheer effort she's bringing to the mat here.
But, no. She's defeated every single person he's thrown her way, and all she gets from him is that fucking disdain.
Maybe he's just disappointed that none of his precious candidates have managed to beat her yet. Yeah, he'd probably love to see her get trounced like a rookie.
Either way, she's had enough.
"Four points to one," Cassian announces at the end of another round, his tone infuriatingly bland even as his brow twitches in that way, yet again.
Jyn exhales tightly, whirling around to face him before slamming the end of her training staff into the mat. "All right, what the fuck?" she demands, her other hand on her hip.
Draven looks thoroughly gobsmacked.
Cassian, however, lowers the tablet in his hands, his gaze landing unflinchingly on hers.
"Is there a problem?"
She clamps down on the urge to hurl her staff at him like a javelin. It'd probably just bounce right off his chest, if the rest of him is made up of the same stone that his face is.
"Why don't you tell me," she says instead through gritted teeth, pushing her damp bangs off her sweaty forehead. "What is it, huh? You're mad that I haven't been dropped on my arse yet? Look, it's not my fault that none of your people are up to scratch."
A flash of something streaks through Cassian's hooded eyes. Good, she thinks savagely. It's the first sign of real emotion she's seen from him. It makes her stand up a little straighter, pay a little bit more attention.
"My people," Cassian says silkily, "are more than adequate. They're not the problem here, I can assure you."
Her jaw drops. "Wha— me? What the hell did I do?!"
The tablet drops to Cassian's side. "You're careless, reckless, and unpredictable. Your fighting style is, at best, utterly disorganised. With your reflexes, you could have taken every one of your opponents down in a single minute. Instead, each match is taking you nearly three times as long to complete — all because you refuse to stick to standard combat techniques."
All of the air seems to have been sucked out of the room. Probably because it feels like everyone is holding their breath, at the exact same time.
Jyn snaps her gaping mouth shut, her eyes narrowing into a sharp glare.
"Right," she says, half under her breath.
She swipes a hand through her bangs, shoving them off her heated forehead again.
"Right," she says, a little louder. She anchors her tone with a note of command, squaring her shoulders as she holds Cassian's stare. "Let's go."
Tension hovers in the room, thick and tangible.
Cassian's face barely even twitches. If she hadn't been watching his eyes as closely as she was, she would have completely missed the gleam of surprise and, more unexpectedly, intrigue.
"What?"
She lifts the staff from the mat, pointing the end at him. "You, me, let's go." She juts her chin out defiantly, the murmurs already starting from the candidates gathered behind her. "You want me to stick to standard combat techniques, right? Hope you're ready to give one hell of a masterclass."
Draven scoffs loudly. "Absolutely not. What an outrageous—"
He breaks off abruptly, staring open-mouthed at Cassian as a tablet is pressed into his slack hands.
Cassian turns to face her, the picture of cool determination. "Very well."
She takes advantage of the brief time-out to grab a quick drink of water, wiping her mouth off on the back of one hand as she glares at Cassian out of the corner of her eye. He doesn't seem to notice, as he's calmly shrugging off his military jacket and laying it carefully on the bench, next to hers. She scoffs inwardly, and turns away as he starts unbuttoning his perfectly starched white shirt, the standard issue training tank underneath already peeking through the lightly translucent fabric.
So fucking organised.
A strong smattering of applause starts up once Cassian selects a staff, and turns deliberately towards the mat.
No cheers, though, Jyn notes churlishly. Looks like the Captain is content to command the respect of his subordinates, and make do without their friendship.
"You'll have to excuse me if the conversation gets a little heated," she informs him as they cross the mat to switch sides, her bare arm the slightest of inches away from brushing his as they pass each other by. "I'd promise to dial it down, but, you know. I've been told I can be unpredictable."
Cassian pivots to face her at the same time she does to face him, both of them staring each other down from across the mat. "In that case, I won't bother to hold back, either."
She shifts her grip on her staff, jaw clenching resolutely. "Good."
Two minutes later, she's flat on her back with all the wind knocked out of her, staring down the end of Cassian's staff where it hovers barely an inch away from her face.
"Four points to three," he breathes, low and ragged. "I win."
She's so stunned that when he lifts off her and offers her a hand, she automatically takes it to pull herself up.
She shakes her head, the haze of revelation rapidly clearing from her dazed senses. "Technically, you can't win a conversation," she grumbles, loud enough so that he can hear her over the resounding applause that's broken out in the room.
Perhaps it's just her being uncharacteristically optimistic — but as he releases her hand and steps back, she thinks she just might catch the slightest hint of a smile playing on his lips.
"All right," Draven says flatly, the applause dying down instantly at the note of unyielding command in his voice. "That's quite enough."
"Yes, it is," Jyn says instantly, whirling round to level a determined look at him. "You can clear my dance card, General. Captain Andor's my co-pilot."
"What do you mean, 'no'?"
Draven levels a flat look at her. "It means exactly what it sounds like, Erso. No."
She stares blankly at him. "I don't understand."
Draven doesn't even blink. "You are not required to understand."
She shoves down the urge to toss another flippant comment back in his face. This is more important than taking a potshot at Davits Draven's pride.
"What's the problem?" she asks instead, glancing sideways at the man standing stoic and silent behind the chair next to hers. "Have you not been trained?"
"The issue has nothing to do with Captain Andor's competencies," Draven cuts in tightly.
"Well, then," she says, turning her attention back to the general, "why not?"
Draven leans forward to prop his elbows on his desk, and breathes out sharply, nostrils flaring wide. Somewhere, in the back of Jyn's mind, a distant memory of a rhinoceros flashes up, from a trip to the zoo taken whole lifetimes ago.
"It's out of the question, Erso," he bites out, evidently making a concerted effort to enunciate as clearly as he can. "And that's the end of it."
"No, it's not," Jyn continues doggedly. "Why is it out of the question? Look, you're the one who dragged me down here to run this mission for you. If I don't have a co-pilot, I can't do that."
"And we will give you a co-pilot," Draven grits out, fingers steepled in front of him. "As we've said."
"One who's not going to be anywhere near as suitable," she retorts. "Trust between pilots is everything when you're in a Jaeger. That trust has to go both ways. How is there even any debate about this?"
Her gaze snaps to Cassian. He hasn't so much as coughed since they entered Draven's office.
"Aren't you going to say something?" she demands.
He doesn't even look at her. He doesn't look at Draven, either. He keeps his eyes fixed on the general's desk, expression shuttered.
For some reason, that's the thing that sets her off. Her blood's boiling before she quite even knows it, indignant heat flaring in her gut.
"Look," she says forcefully, turning in her chair to face Cassian, "I may be a little rusty at this game, but I know what that was out there. We're drift compatible — and you know it, too."
Nothing.
Nothing from Cassian. Nothing but the barest stiffening of his shoulders under his military jacket.
Draven sets his palms to the surface of his desk, clearing his throat to draw her attention.
"Miss Erso," he says, his tone bland. "This discussion is over. You will meet with your assigned co-pilot after lunch."
He waits pointedly until she tears her eyes from Cassian, meeting her disbelieving gaze with his hard one. "Dismissed."
"Cassian? Cassian Andor?"
Jyn glares mulishly at Bodhi as she tears into a crusty roll. "Who the hell else? Is there a mob of Cassians running round on this rig that I haven't heard about?"
Bodhi opens and closes his mouth, his cauliflower-laden fork forgotten. He blinks, and leans forward. "Your co-pilot is Cassian?"
She grunts irritably, stabbing at the margarine tub with a knife. She's had just about enough of Cassian's name as she would like for the day.
"No," she says flatly. "Because apparently, being drift compatible isn't nearly enough to fulfil whatever mad criteria Draven's worked up in his head for me." She throws in an ungraceful snort for good measure. "God knows I'm hardly going to be good enough for his pet captain."
She'd rather get thrown down onto the training mat ten more back-breaking times than admit it... but being dismissed so promptly while Cassian stayed behind for another private tête-à-tête with the general had stung rather far more than she'd liked.
Not that she'd wanted Cassian to accompany her out, or anything.
(Well. He's supposed to be her guide, isn't he?!)
Beside Bodhi, Chirrut hums, thoughtful. "Something tells me there's a bit more to it than that."
Beside Chirrut, Baze barks a gruff something — not even a laugh, really. "Careful. Might just be the chilli dogs talking."
Bodhi stares into space, dismay clouding over his face. "I didn't even know Cassian had drift compatibility."
"Then again," Kay says shortly, "you've never asked."
Jyn casts him a skeptical glance. "You knew?"
Kay shrugs — or, more accurately, performs a half-hearted imitation of a shrug. "It's not precisely a secret. He's trained extensively as a pilot. It's on his Corps file." His nose wrinkles. "If it is a secret, it's a very poorly guarded one."
"Then why hasn't he ever piloted?" Bodhi demands. "I'm up in mission control all day. I'd know if he's ever piloted!"
Kay carefully builds himself a forkful of mashed potato, levering it into his mouth and chewing silently for a full ten seconds.
"If I were to guess," he says after a long moment, his tone measured, "I'd say it's because he's never found anyone he's drift compatible with before."
She's not sure who she's expecting when the knock sounds at her door an hour later, but one glance through the peephole is enough to make her lunch churn in her gut.
Despite herself, she's already pulling the door open, forcing her features to adopt a disinterested expression. "Whatever it is I've done wrong this time, can it wait? I don't want to be late meeting my new co-pilot."
Cassian's face is stoic as ever, but she spots the tic jumping in his jaw with no trouble at all. "Can we talk? I'll try to be quick about it."
She spins about abruptly, leaving the door open as she strides over to her cot. "Sure, Captain," she bites out, dropping down onto the mattress so she can put her boots on.
He steps past the threshold slowly, the hinges of the door squealing lowly as he moves it closed — no, leaves it ajar. She's not sure if he's trying to be polite, or just following the rules. Hell, she's sure not going to ask.
He moves into the centre of the room, planting himself in front of her like he's getting ready to give some sort of status report. She half expects him to clasp his hands behind his back.
He's changed his clothes, she realises dimly. He's now in dark pants and a tan jacket — not the stiff cut of the formal military uniform, but still regulation issue, the stripes of his rank visible on a patch on his sleeve. It's a looser, rougher style, one that she's seen nearly everyone else in the Shatterdome sporting.
In fact, aside from Draven and Cassian, no one else had really seemed to care all that much about uniforms.
And now, looking at the man before her... well. She supposes Draven's the only one who still cares about uniforms.
Cassian clears his throat, and looks at her. There's something about his gaze that she hasn't seen before yet. It's almost stormy.
"I was the one who requested to be removed from consideration as your co-pilot."
She looks at him over her booted foot, heel propped on the steel frame of her bed as she fusses with the laces. "What?"
He looks at her steadily. "I was very insistent about it. I wanted to prevent even the slightest possibility of becoming your co-pilot."
She stares at him, hands now completely stilled. What the fuck is he playing at?
"The drift requires us to share memories, Jyn," he continues, his fingers clenching and unclenching at his side, over and over. "We'd have to be in each other's minds. We'd know every thought the other ever had."
"I'm aware of that," she says shortly. Her booted foot drops to the floor with a flat thud. "What does that have to do with—"
The answer dawns on her before she can even get the rest of the question out.
"You don't want me in your head," she says, struggling to keep her voice steady. "You don't want me knowing what you know."
For the first time since she's known him, Cassian fidgets.
"Your track record as a pilot, as well as your performance in the combat room earlier this morning, shows a tendency to react on impulse. Take uncalculated risks. I didn't think we had enough reason to trust you with certain… details."
Jyn scoffs. Purely on instinct.
And then she shakes her head, and scoffs again. On purpose, this time.
"Unbelievable," she mutters. Her other foot dangles motionlessly above the floor, still bare. "Un-fucking-believable."
The silence presses in on them in the small cabin, a tangible force weighing against her eardrums.
She shakes her head again, bending to shove her foot into her second boot. "Well, congratulations, Captain. Crisis averted. You can take your details and—"
"The Jaeger programme's been decommissioned."
Her body freezes all over, one hand still stuck in her undone boot.
Slowly, she looks up.
There's no resignation on Cassian's face. No defeat, no reluctance. He simply looks at her, steady and intense as ever.
"The United Nations made its decision about three weeks ago. Major powers began withdrawing their funding on the very same day. The US was the last to do so, about four days ago." He draws a deep, bracing breath. "The President will make the announcement in three days' time."
"I don't understand," Jyn says sharply, brows knitted together. "The other Shatterdomes—"
"Completely inoperational. They turned out the lights on the Hong Kong base on Thursday."
"Secretary Mothma—"
"Is defying direct orders just by being here," Cassian finishes, his tone resolute. "But she's prepared to face the consequences." He pauses, shoulders squaring slightly. "We all are."
She rests her hands on her knees, struggling to process the information. Drawing a shallow breath, she lets it out slowly, thoughts flitting restlessly around the already overcrowded space of her mind.
Fuck it. She really doubts there's a polite way to ask what she wants to ask.
"Does that mean this is a suicide mission?"
Cassian's brows tuck together slightly, as if in disagreement.
"It means this mission is covert," he amends carefully. "Extremely covert."
She stares at him. "Does the President know?"
He shakes his head, firm.
"This thing that you've just become a part of," he says. "This isn't an army anymore, Jyn. As of four days ago, we're now the rebellion."
Cassian explains everything as they head towards the hangar bay.
It takes Jyn no effort at all to arrive at the conclusion that he's, without a doubt, absolutely right.
The wall is a hopeless endeavour. Hiding behind it won't save anyone; only prolong the inevitable. The Jaegers can fight the kaijus off, but they take far too much time and money to build — far beyond what the UN can afford, especially with the ever-increasing frequency and scale of kaiju attacks. Even that is pocket change compared to the money required to cover rebuilding costs, to fix whatever havoc the monsters have already wreaked.
But if the Jaegers don't fight, there isn't going to be anything left to rebuild. Or anyone left to rebuild it, for that matter.
Destroying the breach isn't just the Defense Corps' only hope.
It's humanity's.
Jyn shakes her head, her bangs fluttering about her eyes as they walk down the narrow corridor.
"Why are you telling me all this?" she says grimly, fingers clenched into fists as she focuses on maintaining an even gait. "I'm already here. I've already agreed to run this mission for you. Is all this supposed to make me more or less excited about it?"
Cassian glances sideways at her, his longer legs keeping up with her stride with little visible effort. "I withdrew my earlier request and put in a new one."
She scoffs as they wheel around a corner. "Oh, yeah? What's that, then? Ground me before I even get to touch Rebel Rogue? Get me thrown onto the first chopper out of the Shatterdome before I can spill the beans?"
The entrance to her Jaeger's Conn-Pod comes into view at the end of the passageway. She's almost too distracted with the unsettling familiarity of the sight to catch Cassian's answer.
"To become your co-pilot."
She stops dead in her tracks, whirling around to stare at him. He stops too, mirroring her movements perfectly.
She lifts her chin. "Why would you do that?"
He meets her gaze unflinchingly. "Trust goes both ways."
Something settles in her gut at hearing her words echoed back to her in his voice, his cadence — something that blooms with a steady heat, a spark flinting into flame.
She blinks, snapping out of their temporary standstill with a sharply drawn breath.
"All right, then," she says. Privately, she's surprised at the lack of wariness in her own voice.
She turns towards the Conn-Pod entrance, tilting her head in silent invitation. "Let's go."
"It wasn't the bumpiest neural handshake I've ever seen," Bodhi offers.
Jyn sighs, tossing a small wrench aside. "Thanks, Bodhi."
He winces at the sound of it clattering onto the pile of tools lying on the table. "It's not your fault you went out of alignment. Your father—"
"Died three years ago," she says forcefully, jabbing a screwdriver into the small engine she's putting back together.
It's something she used to do when she was younger. Find something small, take it apart, put it back together. A calming technique, something to regain her focus. She'd learned it from her father.
'Remember, Jyn. When we are in the drift, we are one. There is no you. There is no me. There is only Rebel Rogue.'
There was once a time where if she wanted to hear his voice, all she had to do was look to her right.
Now, she only hears it in her nightmares. It lies there, along with the lines in his face, the shape of his smile. Buried deep in her sub-conscious, beneath all the other memories, all the other experiences she's spent three years trying to build a wall to protect herself from.
But the drift doesn't care about all that. There are no walls in the drift.
She shakes her head, glares harder at the small engine she's working on. "Three years, Bodhi. Three years, and I still can't fucking get over that."
Bodhi looks at her, his thin shoulders sagging. "You were still connected to him when it happened, Jyn. You didn't just see it. You felt it. Reliving that would be more than enough to push anyone out of alignment."
"Well, it shouldn't have been enough for me," Jyn says stubbornly, twisting the screwdriver fiercely. "Especially not when I was going in with a first-time drifter."
Bodhi tilts his head, cautious. "It's not Cassian's fault he lost control, either."
"I know it's not," Jyn bursts out, throwing the screwdriver aside frustratedly. "It's just— fuck."
She pitches forward, burying her face in her dirty hands, breathing in the murky scent of greased metal on her fingertips.
Unbidden, images echo through her brain. She's used to that, the leftovers from the drift lingering in the spaces of her mind. She'd learned to tune them out a long time ago, just let them float on by and try to focus on something else.
But these are new images. Images that don't belong to her, or her father.
Glass and steel being shattered to bits. People running, screaming fervently to each other, in a language she recognises but doesn't understand. A giant block of concrete, blood smeared across its sandpaper surface.
And a voice she's never heard before.
¡Déjame, Cassian! Déjame y anda!
She pulls her face out of her hands, exhaling deeply.
"He was so far down the rabbit hole back there, Bodhi," she says, her voice small. "He was so lost. I couldn't pull him out of that, no matter how hard I tried. I could barely even find him. We just kept spiralling further and further, both of us."
She swallows, lifting her gaze to her friend. "What if I'm never going to be able to do that?"
"'We'," Bodhi says instantly. At the questioning lift of her brow, he shrugs. "It is 'we', isn't it? It's both of you. Together."
She bites at her bottom lip, brows furrowed as she processes that.
"Yeah," she says, after a long moment. "Yeah, it is."
The second the door swings open, she opens her mouth, and then pauses.
"Oh, good," she says, taking in Cassian's state of dress. He's still in the dark pants from earlier, but he's stripped down to the training tank he wears underneath everything. "You're already dressed. Let's go."
He stares at her, too surprised to avoid her gaze, like he'd been doing the entire time they were getting unstrapped and helped down from the Conn-Pod harnesses.
"Go?" he repeats, his mouth forming the word like it's an entirely new concept to him. "Go where?"
She huffs, hefting the strap of her bag up onto her shoulder and cocking her head impatiently. "We've got work to do, Captain. Now move."
They spend the next two hours ensconced in the empty combat room.
She scrounges up a couple rolls of hand wraps from an equipment cupboard in the corner. She even manages to dig up a pair of kickboxing pads from the very bottom. They definitely look like they've seen better days, but they'll do.
She registers the faint shadow of surprise on Cassian's face at her first one-two.
"Oh, yeah," she says, already half breathless with the anticipation building in her gut. "Don't think I'm taking it easy on you just because it's training."
To his credit, he holds up rather well under her practiced assault. He takes every punch and kick without so much as a wince. He even starts swiping back at her a couple of times, just to test her reflexes.
He's also surprisingly vocal, calling for sequences and specific moves at frequent intervals. He even lets out a couple grunts of 'good' or 'that's it' when she performs a combination exceptionally well, her fist or her foot connecting with a sharp, satisfying thwack. To be completely honest, she's not quite sure if he's even aware that he's doing it.
Before switching roles, they take a quick break for a drink of water.
"There's a ton of shit I don't miss about life in a Shatterdome," she pants as she bends over her bag. "Getting to punch someone for free? Not one of them."
He catches the extra bottle of water she tosses his way, surveying her with a bemused expression. "I'll have to take your word for it."
She snickers into her bottle, mindful not to choke on the water she's gulping down. "What, you don't like combat training?"
He swallows his mouthful of water, appearing to consider the question far more seriously than she'd intended. "I like it better than most things," he decides after a long beat. "But I suppose I'm more useful in a strategy meeting."
She tilts her head curiously, one hand on her hip. "How so?"
He presses his mouth into a thin line, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. "I don't mean that in reference to my personal competencies. Just... in a general sense. After all, missions are what make all this—" he gestures around the room vaguely "—useful to the world."
She nods slowly, humming around another gulp of water. "Ah. You're one of those."
Cassian starts at that, blinking at her almost owlishly. "One of what?"
She shrugs, squinting up at him through her damp bangs. "One of those heavy dudes. Not, like, heavy," she says quickly, hands spread as if to mime a wider, rounder waistline. "I mean, well — everything's so… heavy with you."
He raises a brow, dragging the back of his hand across his sweat-soaked forehead. "How so?"
She scoffs, feeling lighter than she has in years. "Come on. You're telling me you wear your formal uniform every day? That's just a habit?"
"Yes," he says instantly.
She gives him a look.
"No," he says, just as promptly. His face softens, the hard edge of his jaw relaxing slightly. "All right. It was intentional. For your arrival."
She nods, a little triumphantly. Whatever, she knew it. She's allowed to be a little smug.
"Well, you can stop worrying I'm going to turn the entire Shatterdome upside down," she says, popping the top of her bottle closed before setting it down on the bench. "Or, I don't know. Steal everyone's left shoe, or something." She shrugs breezily. "Not too sure precisely what kind of havoc you expected me to raise."
He shakes his head, but she's relatively confident in identifying that expression on his face as a smile.
It's small... but it counts.
"This is pretty close," he says dryly, gesturing to the mat they're about to head back onto.
She allows herself a grin, tossing the roll of hand wrap at him. "Wrap up. It's your turn."
Kay stares when they sit down to dinner across from him, his small eyes unblinking behind the frames of his glasses. "What are you doing?"
Jyn barely spares him a glance. "Having dinner," she retorts without missing a beat, grabbing a fresh roll from the bowl in the centre of the table. "What are you doing?"
Kay ignores her pointedly. "Cassian, what's going on?"
Cassian seems more disgruntled than confused by the question, frowning as he slides the margarine tub over so it's within Jyn's reach. "It's dinnertime, Kay. We're eating dinner. What does it look like?"
"Slow down," Chirrut advises as Jyn starts wolfing down her roll before the butter knife's even left her grip. "It's not going anywhere."
Instead of responding, she grabs Baze's cup, gulping down a hasty sip of water before returning to the half devoured roll.
"Sure," Baze says, sounding vaguely bemused. "Help yourself."
Bodhi stares at them over the remnants of his own dinner, his expression comically torn between horrified and awed. "You two look like you've been in a fight."
Cassian nods, reaching out to grab a roll for himself. "Training," he says — but it's muffled by the lump of grilled chicken currently occupying his mouth.
Kay's brows shoot up on the considerable expanse of his forehead. "What," he says, sounding mildly aghast, "together?"
Jyn swallows a spoonful of peas. "Nah, we each picked a corner of the room and drew a chalk line on the floor so we'd stay on our own sides," she says, her tone heavy with sarcasm. "'Cause that's how you pilot a Jaeger, isn't it?"
Kay doesn't rise to the bait. Instead, calculating gaze flicks to her. "I thought you two were grounded."
Cassian nods. "We are."
She shrugs. "For now."
Tearing her eyes away from her dinner, she turns to glance at him — only to find that he's already looking at her. They both nod at the same time, before turning back to focus on their trays.
"Spooky," Bodhi remarks.
Chirrut merely laughs. Baze says nothing, but his hooded eyes crinkle in amusement.
Kay makes a small sound, somewhere between a tsk and tch. "In any case," he says, one hand tugging primly at the knot of his tie, "do try to avoid blowing up the entire compound."
Jyn flicks a kernel of corn at him. Beside her, Cassian shakes his head, mouth too full of bread to respond.
"What's that about, anyway?"
Cassian peers at her, his brows knitting in a frown. "What's what about?"
She drags her forearm across her damp forehead, pushing her bangs off her overheated skin as she goes. "You and Kay. The whole… Bananas in Pyjamas double act. How'd that happen?"
All of a sudden, Cassian lunges, the end of his staff hurtling towards her sternum. She instantly moves to parry the blow, knocking back his follow-up attack with a neat twist of her own staff and countering with a jab of her own, which he dodges smoothly.
They pull back, circling each other with light, calculated steps, their staffs held in front of them.
"You make us sound like Dumb and Dumber," Cassian says between measured breaths, his tone no less dry for it.
"No arguments there," she says instantly, before charging forward with a basic kendo cut, her staff slicing through the air.
He avoids that easily enough, but he's forced to bring up his own weapon to block the series of quick strokes she immediately goes into, spinning about in tight, concise circles to throw off his attempts to anticipate her moves.
They somehow end up locked in a mutual hold, their bodies facing opposite directions with their right arms pressed almost flush against each other. One of his arms is locked behind his back, her staff trapped in the crook of his elbow. The other grips his weapon tight, arching backwards to block hers.
"It's just kind of weird," she says, her chest heaving with the elevated pace of her breathing.
"It's not that weird," he says, just as out of breath as she is.
She performs a nifty little slip-and-slide, expertly maneuvering her staff free as she turns her knee sideways, forcing his to buckle and drop to the mat. He rolls into it, coming back up just in time to block her next three strikes and deliver two of his own.
"It's weird," she insists as she shifts into a defensive stance.
"It's not," he repeats, his left foot sliding forward in the mat before he launches into his own attack combination. Strike, strike, jab, strike. Dodge, dodge. Jab, spin, strike again.
He drops to one knee, his staff clocking out in a low arc that has her leaping into a small jump to avoid it, her ankles tucking neatly under herself. She's not sure how he even gets close enough to do it, but he somehow manages to swing his weapon sharply back around, connecting squarely with the backs of her knees to, quite literally, sweep her off her feet.
She lands flat on her back, huffing with both the impact and the physical exertion of the round.
"I've really gotta remember to try that out for myself one day," she grumbles, making no moves to get up off the mat.
A shadow crosses over her closed eyelids, and she pries them open to squint up at Cassian. He's looming over her, the shock of dark hair on his head haloed by the fluorescent lights in the ceiling.
"That's what you said yesterday," he reminds her, putting out a hand to help her up.
She reaches up to take it, pulling herself up with a groan. " Fuck, I'm old," she announces with a grimace, fire burning throughout all her limbs. Her gaze slides to Cassian, one brow arching as they turn towards the bench. "No chance of an in-house spa about, is there?"
He huffs a short laugh, still working to steady his breathing. "Oh, yeah. It's right on the generator level. Feel free to book an appointment through General Draven."
She sniggers, trading her training staff for a water bottle. "That what you and Kay like to do on the weekends? Book a nice double massage, maybe get some hot oil in the mix. Wrap a fluffy white towel around your waists, and just… bro it out."
Cassian shakes his head, hands working to mop up the sweat on his face with a towel. "It's really quite simple, actually. Kay was the first person I met when I arrived here. We just happened to get along."
Jyn stares at him. "'Get along'? How the fuck does anyone manage to do that with Kay?" She pauses dramatically, rolling her eyes for emphasis. "Sorry — Doctor Tuesso."
Cassian shrugs, one hand propped on his hip. "He's really not that bad, Jyn."
She stares at him. "Last night, he spent ten minutes lecturing me at dinner, in front of everyone, because he felt that my Vitamin C intake was too low."
He winces, shooting her a furtive look as he reaches for his water bottle. "He can be… abrasive at times. But he means well."
"At breakfast this morning, he told me that I was, statistically speaking, the smallest person in the world to ever pilot a Jaeger." Jyn cocks her head, leaning forward for pointed emphasis. "Statistically speaking."
He pauses, swallowing a mouthful of water to level a thoughtful look at her. "Well—"
"Don't," she warns, stray droplets splashing from her bottle as she points it sharply in his direction.
He snickers, setting his water bottle down. "You ready for round five, or what?"
She rolls her eyes, tossing her own bottle aside to follow him back onto the mat. "Ready when you are, B-One," she quips, twirling her staff before flashing him a flippant smile.
They train together for three days, holed up in the combat room ten to twelve hours a day, meditating side by side for a full hour every night.
Cassian keeps up more than adequately with her. Somewhere in between all the years of running in and out of briefing rooms, he's clearly carved out the time necessary to maintain a decent fitness regime.
Jyn's not exactly surprised by it.
However, it does makes her even more annoyed than she already is that for all his time in the Corps, he's been wasting his pilot potential on fucking strategy meetings.
"Especially with a fucking simulator score like that," she grumbles, lowering her kettlebell to the mat with a grunt. "Who the fuck goes into the simulator eighty-fucking-seven times, and comes out with a perfect fucking score, every single time?!"
Cassian sets his own kettlebell down with a grimace, rising back up to push a damp lock of dark hair off his forehead. "Pilots who don't pilot real Jaegers, I guess."
"Even pilots who pilot real Jaegers don't get perfect scores," she argues as they move towards the bench. "You know how many times I've gotten a perfect score?"
He bends to reach for his water bottle, a shadow of a wince crossing his sweat-damp face. "Less than eighty-seven?"
"A lot less," she retorts as she pops the top on her own bottle, throwing her head back for a generous swig as Cassian starts to remove his soaked training shirt. She swallows her water with a hearty flourish, wiping off her mouth with the back of her hand. "Although, to be perfectly fair, I never actually went into the simulator eighty-seven—"
He pauses midway through mopping his dripping face, raising a brow at her over the scrunched-up mass of his shirt. "You were saying?"
Suddenly painfully aware that she's currently staring at his shirtless form with her mouth hanging open, Jyn blinks sharply, snapping her jaw shut.
"I was—" she starts to say, and then she stops.
After a long moment, she gives up on trying to find the appropriate way to ask the question currently burning a hole through her head. Hell, it's Cassian. He already knows she's about as delicate as a sledgehammer.
She raises a hand, gesturing cautiously towards him with her water bottle. "How'd that happen?"
He blinks, his gaze following the direction of her point. "Oh," he says, like he's just noticed the large, curved scar raked across the right side of his ribcage, all six inches of it. "Yeah, it's— it's nothing, really. Just an old injury."
Her eyes narrow on his. "From what, exactly?"
He pauses, glancing at her intently. It's a different kind of scrutiny than the one she's used to from Cassian, though. She's not sure why.
He wipes at his jaw, running his shirt down his neck slowly, as if in contemplation.
"Do you remember the kaiju Destroyer?"
She nods automatically. "Acapulco, Mexico. Eight years ago. Category Two. The first one ever." She looks at him, brows furrowed. "Why?"
Cassian doesn't look at her. Instead, his gaze remains trained on the wet lump of his shirt, still cupped in his hands. "Nearly three thousand people died that day. Three thousand." The shirt wrinkles in his grasp. "Including my mother, my brother, and my sister."
Jyn is quiet, her entire body stilling within a split second.
"I was with my sister when it happened," he says, staring down at his own shirt. "It was her leg. She was stuck. Trapped under this… this huge piece of rubble. She told me to leave her, to go."
¡Déjame, Cassian! a voice echoes in Jyn's head. Déjame y anda!
His fingers clench on the shirt, the fabric crumpling into itself. "I tried to get her out. But the piece she was caught under… it was too big. Too heavy."
He inhales, his shoulders stiffening. "Then Destroyer struck the building right across the street from us. It was a hospital."
Jyn waits. She feels like she's barely even able to breathe.
Cassian straightens. "She was killed instantly," he says. "I was still in the middle of the street. Got caught in the fallout. Ended up with half a windowpane deep in my side." He keeps his head down as he shakes out the wet shirt. "Three days after getting discharged from hospital, I was on a plane headed for the Corps Recruitment Base in California."
His voice is different, Jyn realises. Cleaner. More detached — like he's reporting to a superior instead of confiding in his co-pilot.
She's silent, allowing herself five full seconds to think about it.
Coming to a decision, she sets down her water bottle, and turns towards him, one hand grasping at the hem of her own shirt.
Cassian blinks hazily, his head turning towards her at the sudden movement. "Wha—"
The rest of his question dies in his throat, and he's left standing there, mouth hanging open at the sight of her exposed left side.
"When the kaiju pierced through the hull, the windshield shattered. I didn't even realise it at first," she confesses, not quite looking at him. "All I could see in that moment was my father, being ripped right out of the Conn-Pod."
Her fingers clench tighter on the hem of her shirt, and she locks her quivering elbow in place, forcing herself to keep the material raised high over her side. "I only realised I was bleeding through my armour half an hour later, about ten minutes before spying land." She swallows, pushing against the clenching sensation in her throat. "Honestly, I don't even know how I made it past ten seconds without losing consciousness."
Cassian's face is unreadable as she tugs her shirt back down, covering the large, raised scar carved into the left side of her torso. She can more or less tell what he's thinking, though. It's the same thing she's been thinking for the last three years.
How the hell did she make it back to land, all while piloting a Jaeger on her own?
She's not sure how to respond if he asks the question. Truth be told, even after all these years, she's still not quite sure how she did it. The neurological overload alone should have killed her within minutes.
They're both quiet then, the faint ticking of the large clock on the far wall the only sound in the room for several long moments.
He clears his throat, soft. "Does it hurt?" At her surprised glance, he shrugs. "Your file says you used to pilot left hemisphere. I was a little surprised when you took the right spot that day."
She considers the question, tipping her water bottle back and forth in her hand. "Sort of? I mean, I try not to think about it too much. It flares up a little now and then. I… I just took right hemi to be safe, I suppose."
She lifts her gaze to his face, clearing her throat completely casually. "What about you? Does it— does it hurt?"
His expression is pensive.
"Sometimes," he decides after a moment. "But yeah, I guess my left side is definitely stronger now." His gaze flicks towards her. "That's a strange thing to base drift compatibility on."
She snorts, shaking her head. "That's not drift compatibility. It's— it's scar compatibility." She shrugs, brushing her sticky bangs out of her eyes. "We're scar compatible."
He huffs a dry laugh, dropping his shirt onto the bench. "Chirrut and Baze must be green with envy."
Her brows shoot up in surprise, but the laugh is already bubbling out of her throat, catching her off guard. That was definitely a better joke than she's come to expect from him over the last few days.
She just might be rubbing off on him after all.
To be fair, Cassian's a lot easier to be around than Jyn would have guessed, especially after the first twelve hours they'd spent together. First impressions are important for a reason, after all.
He actually does have a sense of humour, for one. It's buried pretty deep, she'll concede to that — but, hey, it's there.
He does this thing whenever he cracks a joke, too. He'll raise an eyebrow, and one shoulder cocks upwards, like he's particularly proud of himself for having had a thought that wasn't all about, whatever, recon missions or something.
For a high-ranking officer in the Corps, it's stupidly endearing.
Whenever she remembers to be endeared by it, that is.
Most of the time, they're too worn out from five or six straight hours of strength and agility training to do more than exchange quiet grunts and nods. By the time the sun goes down, they're usually reduced to communicating exclusively via light nudges and monosyllabic responses.
They've actually gotten pretty good at it, if she does say so herself.
One morning, Jyn shows up to breakfast wearing Cassian's shirt — a fact Kay points out with all the grace of a cantankerous alley cat that's had its tail stepped on.
"Oh," she says, blinking down at herself blearily. "Must've grabbed the wrong one yesterday."
"Did you, now," Bodhi says, his voice oddly strained.
She shrugs, piling potatoes onto her plate. "Whatever, I'll fix it later."
"Fix what later?" Cassian says, slipping into the empty seat next to hers.
She hands the potatoes over to him, her other hand tugging absently at the loose collar of the shirt. "Snagged yours by mistake."
"Oh," Cassian says, blinking at her attire as if seeing for the first time. After a beat, he shrugs, and starts scooping potatoes onto his own plate. "Whatever, you can change later."
"That's what I said," Jyn says, the words muffled through a mouthful of potato.
Beside Kay, Chirrut nods. "Training's going well, then," he says, sounding more amused than approving.
"Sure," Baze says, watching stoically as Cassian steals his mug of hot coffee for a hasty gulp. "Help yourself."
On the fourth day, everyone gathers in the hangar bay to watch the President's address.
"At this point in time," he booms through the speakers, "the most important thing for all of us is to remain calm. Even now, our fathers and mothers, our brothers and sisters, our children in the Defense Corps are doing everything they can to protect us from the ongoing threat. And for their continued service, for their bravery and valour in the face of unprecedented crisis — we salute them."
Baze scoffs under his breath. Even Chirrut's smile seems more wry than polite.
Next to Jyn, Bodhi shakes his head. "Yeah, salute us by cutting off our funding," he mutters, fingers fidgeting restlessly. "I'd like to salute you, too."
Jyn's lips twist in a grim smile, but her eyes remain firmly fixed on the screen — where Mon Mothma stands, just behind the President, facing forward with her chin held high.
If Jyn didn't know any better, she would swear a glint of something flashes in the Defense Secretary's eyes. Something that looks a lot like defiance. Something like determination, but at the same time, purer, somehow.
Something like hope.
The first of the alarms go off on the fifth day, barely an hour after sunset.
"It's a Category Four," Draven barks in the control room, pointing sharply at the screen hooked up to the live feed. "Codename: Lightning." His sharp gaze cuts to Baze and Chirrut. "Suit up. Kyber Guardian's going hunting."
Jyn goes rigid when his gaze passes over her and Cassian — but then it moves right on to the pair standing just a few places down.
"Dameron, Bey," Draven calls. "Get ready. Pathfinder's following right behind."
Jyn watches out of the corner of her eye as the two pilots nod and turn on their heel, following Chirrut and Baze out of the room. She hasn't had much of time nor opportunity to talk with Kes Dameron and Shara Bey over the last few days, but their Jaeger's stellar track record speaks for itself. It doesn't take a strategic analyst to understand why Draven would entrust Pathfinder with the responsibility of taking down this kaiju over Rebel Rogue.
All the same, she doesn't miss the way Cassian stiffens when Draven's gaze flicks over them again.
"The rest of you, get to your stations," the general orders, turning away from them. "I want that monster's head on a silver platter."
The next thirty minutes are a buzzing blur.
The energy in the control room is palpable, anticipation and fear and determination radiating off every single person gathered there as they watch the fight unfold on their screens, monitoring power and fuel levels and muttering urgently into headsets as Draven barks order after order.
Both Kyber Guardian and Pathfinder hold themselves well, but Lightning is the largest Category IV yet. It's mean, and vicious, and it barely even seems to slow down even when Pathfinder blasts five thousand kilojoules of plasma energy directly into its side.
And then the breach stirs again.
"General," Bodhi says, his eyes widening. "The breach— it's—"
"Spit it out," Draven snaps, shoulders rigid.
Bodhi turns, his face paling. "It's a double event, sir. Another kaiju."
The entire room goes deathly silent, all eyes turning to Draven.
The general reels back a single step. For one terrible, heart-stopping moment, Jyn thinks he might keel over altogether.
And then it's like an invisible hand hits the 'play' button, and the general lunges forward, hands closing around the microphone.
"Kyber Guardian, Pathfinder," he says, the veins standing out on his neck. "Be warned, a second kaiju has just emerged from the breach. I repeat, a second kaiju is incoming."
"Roger that!" Chirrut's voice echoes through the room, out of breath with the effort of holding Lightning off.
"We see it!" a second voice calls — Shara Bey.
"Guardian, Guardian," Kes Dameron shouts urgently. "Kaiju number two, on your tail!"
"We can't get it off!" Baze yells, his voice strained and raw.
"Hold on," Shara Bey shouts, her voice crackling through the chaos. "We're coming! Repeat, we—"
Jyn watches, horrified, as Pathfinder gets torn clean in two, the large claws of the first kaiju closing around its shoulders, pulling steel and iron apart in a blaze of sparking explosions. It's just that quick. One minute, Pathfinder's swinging her large fist into her opponent's head, metal crunching into bone. The next… she's completely, utterly destroyed.
The monster drops both mangled halves of the Jaeger into the water, static flooding in through the speakers as the mech hits with a splash, turning over on its side as it's swallowed up by the waves.
"We've lost Pathfinder," Bodhi reports. His voice is thin; heavy with grim finality.
Draven slams his fist into the control panel.
Jyn swallows thickly, her arm brushing against Cassian's. He remains still and unmoving, his posture ramrod straight.
For a full ten seconds, the battle rages on. Static blares from Pathfinder's destroyed comms. On the other end, Chirrut and Baze's ragged shouts dip in and out intermittently over the crackling speakers.
Suddenly, Draven springs back up, whirling around to glare at her and Cassian.
"Suit up," he orders, his low tone slicing through the air. "Rebel Rogue ships out in two fucking minutes."
Rebel Rogue and Kyber Guardian return to the Shatterdome nearly an hour later, heavily battered but victorious.
Jyn's not even sure how much of a victory it even is. Both Category IVs are well and truly dead, of course.
Despite that, she's never felt less like celebrating anything before in her life.
She finds Cassian an hour after their debrief, in his room across from hers, sitting motionless on his bed.
"Hey," she says quietly, slipping through the door and easing it shut behind her.
Cassian is silent as she pads over to his cot, sitting down on the mattress beside him.
She's not sure what to say. It's been three years since she's been in this fight. It's been three long years since she's lost anyone to it — friends, family, comrades, anyone.
In three years, she hasn't let herself get close enough to anyone to lose them, really. Not since her father.
So she just sits there, next to Cassian. Waiting.
His hands are braced on the edge of the mattress, fingers flexing and unflexing with a sub-conscious rhythm.
"We fought well," he says, his voice rough. It's not a question.
"Yes," she says with a small nod. "Chirrut and Baze, too." She pauses, glancing at him. "We all did."
He nods — just the barest dip of his chin, barely visible by the light of his bedside lamp.
"They have a son," Cassian says.
The tone of his voice makes Jyn's head turn. She's seen him tired and exhausted several times over the last few days, but he's never sounded like this.
He draws a slow, shallow breath, letting it out again between parted lips. "His name is Poe. He's supposed to turn six next month."
For a long, long moment, they're silent in Cassian's room, with only the gentle rise and fall of their breathing thrumming through the heavy quiet.
And then Jyn slides her hand an inch over, her little finger grazing Cassian's.
"Let's make sure he does, then," she decides.
She lifts her head, turning towards Cassian.
His is already raised, facing her with the same expression of resolution.
"Yeah," he says, nodding resolutely. "Yeah. Let's do that."
The final briefing takes place the next day, right after the short memorial held for the Damerons.
"We're speeding everything up," Draven says, his voice taut and posture rigid. "The kaijus' attack pattern has accelerated beyond our original estimations. The latest from the K-Science lab is that the next breach opening will take place at approximately oh-two hundred hours, tomorrow."
"Chances of another double event are high, at about ninety-three percent," Kay adds, pushing his glasses up on his nose. "Chances of the first Category Five appearance — sixty-four percent."
Jyn grits her teeth, her gaze flicking to Cassian before she can help it. Their eyes meet at the exact same time, heads slanting in sync.
Draven clears his throat. "A couple of changes now that we're down to two Jaegers instead of three. Kyber Guardian will carry the nuke, so guard your back," the general says, his gaze settling on Chirrut and Baze. "Do not let that thing go off before it's in the breach."
The words Draven doesn't say hang over their heads, like a dark cloud hovering ominously in the enclosed space of the briefing room.
He doesn't remind Chirrut and Baze to get themselves clear of the blast before detonating, because that's simply not a priority for this mission. The one and only objective is to get that bomb into the breach passage.
"Rebel Rogue," Draven continues, his eyes finding Jyn and Cassian. "You find the bigger kaiju, and you lock onto it. Keep it as far away from Guardian as you can."
"Please don't lead it to the city, though," Kay adds. "Just a suggestion."
At the exact same time, Jyn and Cassian's heads turn, shooting twin glares at the kaiju expert. Chirrut's mouth curves with a small smile, as Baze quickly disguises his snort with a cough.
Draven clears his throat, leaning forward to command their attention.
"Now," he says gruffly, a growing flush of splotched red just visible above the stiff line of his uniform collar, "obviously, Secretary Mothma is unable to be here at this time. She had some words of encouragement for the four of you, which she requested I pass on."
He leans back, nose scrunching with displeasure. "Obviously, I declined. If the survival of the human race isn't motivation enough, I highly doubt a few flowery words will do it."
Silence rings throughout the room.
Jyn blinks. She can't quite figure out if she's on the verge of crying, or laughing.
"Questions?" Draven asks, his tone forceful. "No? Very good. Dismissed."
She doesn't say anything, but when she veers off in the opposite direction of the combat room towards the hangar bay, Cassian swerves instantly to follow. Like he'd already been expecting her to do it.
She can't quite explain it, but she feels a certain comfort settle in around her chest when Rebel Rogue comes into view — a soft, almost tangible weight, wrapping around her thudding heart. She sinks down to the floor of the ledge. Wordlessly, Cassian follows her lead.
They sit there in silence for several long minutes, with their legs dangling over two hundred feet off the ground, watching as engineers and mechanics scramble about on platforms and ladders to patch up Rebel Rogue in time.
"She's incredible," Cassian says.
Jyn blinks, her gaze sliding to him. He's completely focused on the giant mech before them, eyes wide and soft, the corners crinkled. He looks… almost entranced. It's the most vulnerable she's seen him yet.
She'd been connected to him the first time he'd been hooked up to the Jaeger. She'd felt his awe then, swelling grandly in her mind as it was in his. In that moment, she'd assumed it was merely the novelty of it all — the eyes of a new pilot, being opened for the very first time.
She hadn't realised it was awe for Rebel Rogue herself. Awe for Jyn's— no, for their Jaeger.
Heat pricks at her eyes. She turns away, blinking sharply. "Yes," she says, forcing her voice to hold steady. "She is."
He's silent then, but something shifts. She can feel it, in the very air between them.
"Your father was very gifted," he says quietly.
Something clenches in her chest, turning over on itself.
The Corps have records, and files, and mountains of data — but Cassian wouldn't need any of that. He's been in her head, just as she's been in his. He wouldn't need an official record to know who it was that designed the living mech they've both been connected to, body and mind.
"He was," she manages to say.
She can feel his gaze on the side of her face.
"You've never talked to me about him."
She attempts a snort, but it's far shakier than she likes. "Do I need to?" she says lightly, brushing her bangs out of her eyes. "You've already been in my head twice now. There's not much space to hide in the drift."
He doesn't say anything.
"His last thought," she hears herself saying, her voice ragged and low, "was that he didn't want me to die."
She blinks back against the blurring wetness in her eyes, the large frame of Rebel Rogue swimming in and out of clarity before her. "We were in this… this huge thing that he'd built to keep me safe. To keep all of us safe. And, in those final moments, he spent his last breath worrying that he might have failed."
Her fingers curl tight into a ball, but she can't stop them from trembling.
"It's not fair," she mutters, showers of sparks melting into yellow rain through the veil of her unshed tears. "He gave his entire life to this. He should be here to see it happen. To witness our fate decided." She draws a shaky breath, teeth grinding together as she struggles to fight back the sobs building up in her chest. "It's not fair."
Cassian waits in patient silence. He doesn't try to take her hand, or pat her shoulder, or offer her a fucking tissue or something. He just sits there, quiet and motionless as she wrests back control over herself.
She's grateful for it. The last thing she wants right now is pity — least of all his, for some indefinable reason.
She counts the seconds that tick by, forcing her pounding heart to slow to the rhythm she sets her mind on. It takes a full minute, but she gets there.
Next to her, Cassian shifts.
"You're here."
She pauses, brows furrowing as she attempts to decipher his pronouncement.
He turns, his steady gaze landing on hers.
"You made it back," he says, soft but firm. "That was an impossible thing you did, Jyn. You could have died that day too, but… you didn't. You could have chosen not to come back, but you did. You're here. You're here, and you're still fighting." He pauses, his head tilting. "That's what your father wanted most of all, isn't it?"
She stares at him, eyes still glossy with the last of her withheld tears.
Suddenly, a smile splits across her face. She laughs, turning to shake her head at Rebel Rogue.
"God," she says, heady with an amusement that's unexpectedly poignant, "if he could have met you. I'm not all that sure he would've approved of you piloting his Jaeger, you know," she adds, her crinkled eyes sliding sideways to him, catching his confused expression. "You're what he would have undoubtedly called a 'stiff'."
Cassian smiles, ducking his head in an uncharacteristic display of self-consciousness. "I'm not that bad."
She snorts. "Yeah, you were," she retorts playfully, nudging at him with an elbow.
She leans back from him, letting her gaze travel over his face, a collection of wrinkles and lines aging him far beyond his years — the story of his war-ravaged life played out to anyone who would care enough to look closely.
She clears her throat, pretending to squint as if deep in thought. "But, approval or not… I think he would have liked you."
The light in his eyes is enough to remind her of that which she'd spent years thinking she'd lost forever. Something she never thought would ever be hers again — up until about a week ago, that is. Something she hadn't dared let herself so much as dream about for three long, lonely years.
Hope.
She shrugs dismissively, her attempt to feign careless contempt somewhat spoiled by the upward quirk of her lips. "Don't let it get to your head or anything. Papa liked everybody. He probably would've even found something to like about Kay."
"I see," Cassian says, with a solemn nod. "So… you take after your mother, then."
He doesn't even bother pretending to dodge the punch she throws his way, the wide smile on his face mirroring hers exactly.
She grins, leaping to her feet. "Let's go," she commands, one hand thrust out towards Cassian.
He takes it, looking vaguely bemused as he rises from the ledge. "Go where?"
She plants her hands on her hips, casting a quick glance at the giant digital clock on the southern wall of the hangar. "We've got eighteen hours till we ship out. That's plenty of time for me to kick your ass in a few more rounds." She clicks her tongue at him warningly, already turning towards the open doorway. "Don't think I'm letting you off easy just because you made your first official kill yesterday."
Cassian's brows lift slightly even as he moves to keep pace with her. "And here I was thinking you hadn't even noticed."
"Congratulations," she says. Her attempt at a flat tone is utterly spoiled by the smile that refuses to leave her face. "Well done, Captain."
His grin turns lopsided, and he pulls ahead of her easily, his longer legs besting her with minimal effort. "Better late than never," he calls over his shoulder.
She wakes up an hour before the sturdy, block-shaped alarm clock by her bed goes off.
It's still a whole hour more than she'd expected herself to be able to sleep for.
To her surprise, she's not all that surprised to open her door to the sight of Cassian opening his.
"You're early," she shoots half-heartedly, turning to close her own door.
"Speak for yourself," he says, turning to meet her in the middle of the corridor.
She shrugs as they start off down the passageway. "I was thinking I'd get a few extra minutes on the punching bag while waiting for you."
"Careful," he says instantly as they turn the corner. "You don't want to tire yourself out before tonight."
She casts him a sidelong glance, one brow lifting skeptically. "Oh, yeah? Where're you headed, a whole half an hour before reveille?"
He purses his lips, a little grudgingly. "I thought I might squeeze in some free weights while waiting for you."
'Careful,' she imagines echoing to him. Maybe along with a snarky little smirk.
Instead, she merely allows herself a small smile before tearing her gaze from his face, turning to focus on the path they're walking towards the combat room.
At midnight, everyone gathers in the hangar bay for one last speech from Draven — pilots, mechanics, engineers, officers; every single person in the entire Shatterdome, crowded into the large room for the first time since Jyn's arrived.
The unprecedented sight strikes something deep inside her. It's probably ridiculous, but somehow, she feels connected to every single one of them. She and Cassian are the ones who work the Jaeger, but they're the ones who make it possible.
They're not just a bunch of people who happen to be her colleagues, or whatever.
They're her people.
She'd almost forgotten what it's like, to feel that way about the men and women around her.
As for the speech itself, she doesn't remember much of it. She can't focus properly, too hyper-aware of the way her suit feels on her body, the spinal clamp running down her back, the weight of the alloy plates on her shoulders.
She remembers some of it, though.
"There may come a day when humanity falls. When every single one of us is erased from the face of this earth, our legacy faded into dust. But I will tell you this without a shadow of a doubt — that day is sure as hell not today."
"So much for 'a few flowery words'," Cassian murmurs to her amidst the roaring cheers of their comrades.
She snorts, letting her metal-encased elbow bumping into his. "Are you kidding? I was just worried he'd actually try to hug us."
His grin is breathless, and wide, and it doesn't catch her quite as off guard as she thinks it will.
Thirty minutes and a fleeting eternity later, they're being strapped into their Conn-Pod harnesses.
"How're we looking, Bodhi?" Cassian calls through his helmet.
"Readouts are clean and green," the J-Tech engineer responds readily over the comms. "Energy levels from the reactor are—"
"Cassian," a voice interrupts, tinny and stilted. "I took the liberty of running a few calculations on the outcome of the mission you are about to embark on."
Cassian's head whips up, his brows snapping together. "Kay, don't—"
"Chances of severe physical damage: eighty-nine percent. Chances of severe neurological damage: seventy-two percent. Chances of—"
"Someone get him out of my ear," Jyn orders irritably, adjusting her helmet before flipping her tinted visor into place.
"He's gagged," Bodhi reports cheerfully, after the brief strains of a minor struggle. "Knew that duct tape was gonna come in handy. For something other than patching up your neurobionic interface electrodes, I mean. Kidding," he adds quickly, his voice quivering nervously, "kidding, I did not apply duct tape to your electrodes."
Jyn's pretty sure there's a sex joke in there somewhere, but she's too wired up to care. She shakes her head, and focuses on clearing her mind.
"Time for a shake?" she calls, glancing sideways at Cassian.
He nods, as Bodhi announces, "Initiating neurological handshake in three, two..."
She closes her eyes, letting herself slip into the drift, focusing on finding the eye of the hazy, intangible storm overlapping between the realms of the conscious and the sub-conscious. When she feels Cassian's mind brushing up against hers, she relaxes into the contact, letting herself meld into him and he into her.
"Neurological handshake holding steady," Bodhi reports, his voice quaking slightly in the way it does whenever he's trying to talk through a particularly wide grin. The mental image makes her smile, and she feels Cassian's emotions surge as well, lifting alongside hers. "Rebel Rogue is locked and loaded!"
She turns through the helmet, catching Cassian's eye through the yellow of his visor.
"Ready?" he asks, mouth curved with a wide grin.
She grins right back, and the rush of anticipation doubles, his determination boosting hers. "You're in my head. Do you even need to ask?"
The anticipation starts to die down the closer they get to the drop point, buoyant excitement giving way to trepidation.
"It's gonna be a rough one," their lead chopper pilot, Sefla, warns them through the comms. "Sea's not behaving today."
"Of course it isn't," Jyn mutters, exchanging a wary glance with Cassian. She's piloted Rebel Rogue while completely submerged before, of course, but never for the entirety of a mission.
"All right, listen up!" yells the helo team leader, Melshi. "Kyber Guardian, Rebel Rogue! Hunch up and brace for impact. We're cutting you guys loose in five, four, three, two—"
The drop has always been one of the things Jyn both loves and hates most. The feeling of being suspended mid-air makes her feel unbridled, unhinged. Like she's spiralled completely out of control, been left to the mercies of too many invisible hands that aren't hers, even if it's just for those few seconds.
But the feeling of hurtling through the air in a Jaeger.
The feeling of doing anything in a Jaeger, really.
That feeling… it's beyond description.
When Rebel Rogue's feet hits the water, she bends automatically, letting her body absorb the impact as it travels through the stirrups clamped over her feet.
She straightens once they're touching the seabed, casting a cursory glance over the readouts flashing up on her visor.
"Marching," she announces to Cassian. She feels rather than hears his agreement, and just like that, they're moving — left leg, and then the right, repeating the pattern over and over until they're nearly at eye level with the roiling surface of the choppy waters.
"Remember to lock up, guys," Bodhi's voice crackles in through the comms. "Windows and doors."
"All ports sealed," Baze's familiar gruff rumble acknowledges. "Kyber Guardian going under."
About a hundred metres ahead of them, the smooth, ridged head of Baze and Chirrut's Jaeger disappears under the the waves. The nuke strapped to their back is already submerged, the ring of its core gleaming fiery red fifty feet under the surface.
"All ports sealed," Cassian echoes promptly. Before Jyn can turn her head, he's already nodding at her. "Rebel Rogue going under."
And, together, they take the last step to bring them completely under.
"It's three thousand metres to the breach," Bodhi reports, his voice wavering as the comms adjust to the Jaegers' submerged state. "We're picking up two signatures so far. Both Category Fours."
"No codenames?" Chirrut wonders.
"How about 'Pot' and 'Roast'," Draven supplies flatly, his voice ringing sharp and clear through the comms. "Eyes on the prize, soldiers. Get that nuke into the net, because there's no overtime in tonight's game."
God. Draven's cracking sports jokes now.
They're all most definitely going to die.
"It's getting too dark," Jyn mutters as they move in sync, left leg, and then the right, one after the other. She can already feel her muscles starting to strain with the effort. It's really just walking, but it's getting harder and harder with every step that brings them deeper underwater, the restlessly shifting current rocking against them, pressing in from every possible angle and direction.
She sets her jaw resolutely, directing all her attention towards conserving her energy. "We won't be able to see anything by the time we get to the breach."
"Lights aren't really doing much either," Baze grunts through the comms.
"Follow the glow of the bomb," Chirrut advises placidly. He barely even sounds out of breath. Jyn's not sure if she's impressed or jealous.
"We would," she says dryly, swinging her left elbow painstakingly to help her right leg drive forward in the harness. "If we could see it."
"Switching to instruments," Cassian decides, pulling up their thermosensors.
"Keep going," Draven commands. "Maintain positions until— fucking hell!"
"Rogue," Bodhi cuts in urgently before any of them can respond. "Kaiju coming up on your right, two o'clock!"
Both of them are already whipping their heads round before he can even finish.
"Where?" Jyn demands, fighting to keep her limbs moving forward even as she struggles to catch sight of the monster. "We don't see anything!"
"It's moving too fast," Cassian realises aloud, his jaw clenching.
"Faster than any kaiju's been known to do," Bodhi confirms, his usually buoyant tone anchored down with grim tension. "All right, this one's codenamed Blacksaber. It looks like it's circling around. You both had better— wait. Wait—"
Chirrut's voice crackles in sharply. "Rogue, right flank!"
They both turn — but it's too late to get out of the way. They manage to bring Rogue's giant iron hands up just in time, the kaiju slamming full force into it and driving them back so their heels dig into the seabed.
"Fuck, she's a lively one!" Jyn bites out, gritting her teeth as she gathers her energy to push back against the open jaws of the kaiju, its razor sharp teeth straining and clattering against Rogue's metal palms, like swords on shields.
She can't even appreciate the sheer dramatic irony of the monster being codenamed Blacksaber right now.
"Hold on, Rogue!" Baze yells. "We're coming on—"
Draven swoops in before he can finish. "Guardian, watch your six!"
The second kaiju barrels in out of nowhere, even bigger and meaner than the first. It opens its large, misshapen mouth, letting loose an ear-shattering roar as it hurtles straight for Kyber Guardian.
"Deploying energy spear," Chirrut's voice reports, the weapon already extending from their Jaeger's hand even as he speaks.
Out of the corner of her eye, Jyn watches as Kyber Guardian drops low, neatly sidestepping the second kaiju's charge and bringing the large, crackling staff down on its back, the weapon piercing deep into its thick leather hide. Their kaiju — codenamed Deathtrooper — buckles instantly, bellowing loudly as glowing blue blood starts to gush from the wound.
"Shit, they're fast," Jyn mutters in awe. It's always different, watching a Jaeger fight up close. Being in one, you barely even have time to register anything. You're just moving on to the next thing, and the next, and the next, until either you or your enemy is defeated.
Watching one is always something else altogether.
"So are we," Cassian grunts, the exertion of holding off their own kaiju evident in his voice. He turns at the same time she does, gazes meeting through their tinted visors. "Light it up?"
Her mouth curves with a fierce grin, and she nods. "Light it up."
Together, they flex low, bracing their feet and gathering their elbows in close. On a silent count audible to only them, they drop their heads and spring forward, launching their fists directly into Blacksaber's chest in a tight one-two punch, executed in perfect unison.
"Deploying plasma cannon," Jyn shouts, both of them bringing up their left arms at the same time. Rebel Rogue's left arm swings up accordingly, her palm opening to expose the charging cannon built into its centre.
Jyn lets Cassian's focus align with her own, both of them honing each other in on their target.
"Fire!"
Blacksaber's still flailing about in the water, struggling to recover its bearings when the blast hits right in the middle of its torso. Its jaws stretch in an anguished roar, its hunched body twisting in on itself as the same blue blood starts to ebb from the hole that's been punched right through it. Finally, it slumps sideways motionlessly, its own blood still gushing from its middle, lighting up the water around it like a radioactive halo.
"Blacksaber is down," Bodhi's voice confirms, exuberant. "I repeat, Blacksaber is down!"
Lucky, Jyn realises fervently. It's rare that a single hit will put a Category IV down, even with a plasma cannon.
"How's Guardian doing!" Cassian yells as they're moving back into a ready stance, just in case the kaiju stirs again. There have been too many occasions where complacency led Jaeger pilots to their doom.
"This one's pretty stubborn," Baze reports tightly, his tone clipped. "Three hits and it still isn't going down."
Draven's voice floods in through the comms, sharp and authoritative. "Rebel Rogue, you have to get that thing off Guardian's back. They have to make the drop before—"
The general's cut off before he can finish. Jyn's not entirely sure if it's him that's abruptly stopped speaking, or if it's the sudden, violent rumble of the earth beneath Rebel Rogue's feet that's temporarily blanking out their comms signal.
Her gaze darts quickly about the cockpit, jumping rapidly from one display to another in an urgent search for some kind of clue. And then, static rushes back into her ear.
"The breach is reopening," Bodhi shouts, tremulous. "Another kaiju's coming through!"
Holy fuck, she can see it. It's clambering right out of the seabed, its grotesque form silhouetted against the molten lava churning within the large split.
It's… it's huge.
"Jesus Christ," she breathes, her mouth falling open.
A shock of sudden, striking fear streaks through the drift. She's not even sure if it belongs to her or Cassian.
"It's a Category Five," Bodhi says grimly, all traces of quivering gone from his voice. "I repeat — Category Five."
Suddenly, Kay's voice streams in through their helmets.
"This is the first triple event on record," he announces, his clear, detached monotone a shock to their overwrought senses. "The chances of this happening were approximately twenty-eight—"
"Kay!" Cassian barks, at the exact same moment Jyn snaps "shut up!"
"All right," Draven cuts in, the harsh intensity of his voice slicing through the compressed air. "Listen up. Kyber Guardian, you need to get that bomb into the breach while it's still open. Rebel Rogue, clear their path, and take these bastards down."
"Roger that," Chirrut and Baze acknowledge.
She and Cassian are already slipping into motion, hastening to cover the distance their fight with Blacksaber has taken them from Kyber Guardian.
"Yes, sir!" they both yell, their minds turning towards each other's at the same time.
"We'll lure the Category Five away," Jyn calls breathlessly, her muscles burning as she forces them to keep pushing against the overwhelming pressure of the harness. "Distract it, give them a—"
Without any warning, the Category Five — War-Mantle — pounces onto Kyber Guardian. Its sheer size forces the Jaeger down, the mech buckling under the impossible weight of the gargantuan monster so that its knees hit the seafloor hard. The impact sends clouds of soil shooting up, swirls of blackened brown dirt kicking up around them as Guardian wrestles with the kaiju. The fiery light of the pulsing breach washes over them, turning everything red and orange in the darkness.
"Deathtrooper's coming back around!" Bodhi yells. "Guardian, get up!"
"Cannon!" Jyn yells at Cassian, both of them still pumping their limbs against the heavy drag of both the Conn-Pod harness and the water pressure surrounding them from all sides.
He hits the button accordingly, both of them swinging their left arms up as Rebel Rogue follows suit, its powerful arm driving through the water to level towards its target. "Fire!"
In the next few seconds that pass, Jyn feels as if she's watching everything happen from miles away.
The plasma burst from the cannon appears to travel in slow motion, rippling through the water towards its target.
Deathtrooper charges at full speed, but the kaiju appears to hit the kneeling Kyber Guardian frame-by-frame, its teeth and pointed claws wrapping around the Jaeger's right arm even as the larger War-Mantle presses down on Guardian's broad shoulders.
The plasma burst explodes into Deathtrooper's side, splashes and sparks of green-blue careening everywhere, blooming outwards like a fireworks display.
The kaiju roars, and, with one final surge of energy, rips Kyber Guardian's arm clean off.
No, Jyn screams, over the ragged cries of Chirrut and Baze.
No, she screams, as War-Mantle forces them even further down into the dirt, cracks beginning to form in the seabed under the combined weight of kaiju and Jaeger. Next to them, Deathtrooper stumbles blindly in the dirt, neon blue blood leaking from the gaping hole in its side as it picks itself up for one last lunge.
No, she screams, as War-Mantle shoves its giant, grotesque claw deep into Kyber Guardian's shoulder, in a slanted strike that cuts right through the mech's large joints and right into its glowing, sparking core.
She screams, and screams… but there's no sound at all.
Someone's yelling something, but it sounds miles away. Maybe it's Cassian. Maybe it's Bodhi or Draven, over the comms.
She registers a brief flicker of static in her helmet, and then—
"Stay back."
Baze. His familiar, gruff voice, reduced to no more than a breathy rasp.
She freezes. All of her sudden, her thudding heart seems to go still in her very chest.
"The bomb," he gasps through the comms, hissing sharply as War-Mantle digs its claw even deeper, dragging upwards as if meaning to carve a slice right out of Kyber Guardian's chest, the screech of metal piercing the air. "Detonating. Five."
For a brief moment she and Cassian tense — and then they're moving, wheeling around as fast as they can.
"Four."
They forge ahead, right leg, left leg, one at a time, pushing against the current.
"Three."
She gasps through the burn in her lungs, fights through the ache in her muscles.
"Two."
She chokes on a breathless sob, half-stumbling against the anchor of the harnesses for a split second.
"One."
The blast surges through the water, knocking Rebel Rogue off her feet as if in slow motion. The Jaeger is propelled forward in a boiling blaze of shrapnel and bubbles. Jyn and Cassian hang there helplessly, suspended in mid-air for all of five seconds before they're hitting the seabed once again, their knees bracing automatically to absorb the impact.
She blinks slowly, and, with a very dull sort of alarm, suddenly arrives at the realisation that everything's been painted white. She squeezes her eyelids shut, prying them open again as the colour seeps back into her scope of vision, forming shapes and shadows.
There's also a sharp, ringing sensation. At first, she thinks it's in her ears.
But when she recovers from the impact, shaking her head to jolt her senses back into full function, she realises it's in the Jaeger cockpit itself — real, tangible warning alarms going off around her.
"Jyn! Cassian! Can you hear me?"
She recognises Bodhi's voice, her brain still struggling to form coherent thoughts.
"Jyn!"
"I hear you," she croaks, moving to flex her hands on impulse. She's held still by the Conn-Pod, her limbs too dazed to push against the heavy weight of the harness.
On instinct, she opens her mouth to ask about Chirrut and Baze.
Almost immediately, she closes it again. There's no point. She felt the blast for herself, from a hundred metres away.
She blinks hard, redirecting her focus on her comms.
"... where you were hit," Bodhi is reporting rapidly, his voice strained taut. "Hull damage is at sixty-eight percent and climbing. The ocean pressure's not helping."
There's a loud roaring sort of noise, making it difficult to hear Bodhi properly. Jyn glances around the Conn-Pod, mostly out of irritation.
Her heart sinks at the sight of water rapidly welling up around them.
"Shit," Jyn mutters. Gathering what little strength she has left, she raises her head. "Cassian. Cassian."
He looks about as good as she feels, still blinking the shock from his unfocused eyes. "I'm here."
She frowns. Something about his tone sounds off. "You all right?"
He grimaces, his restrained grunt barely audible through their comms. "I'm fine."
"Most of the blast hit you on the left," Bodhi informs them. The words are spilling out of him much faster than usual. "According to Cassian's vitals—"
"I'm fine," Cassian interrupts fiercely, pulling himself upright in the harness. "General, the bomb—"
"There is no bomb," Draven's voice cuts in tightly. "Pull back."
"What," Jyn demands.
"Hull damage at seventy-two percent," Bodhi reports, an edge of panic entering his voice.
"We have no way to close that breach," Draven snaps, his voice crackling over the comms. "That bomb took out War-Mantle and bought you some time to pull back, so do it. Now."
Jyn's gaze finds Cassian just as his finds hers. She doesn't actually need to look at him to know what he thinks of Draven's command. She can feel it right there in the drift, surging alongside her own emotions, determination and defiance melding and merging as one.
Both kaiju are down. Baze and Chirrut had made sure of it.
Their path is clear.
She takes a deep breath.
"Kay."
"I am present." The K-Science expert's familiar monotone sounds thinner than usual.
She doesn't allow herself even a second to process that, charging ahead with the thoughts rapidly knitting together in her head. "Is Rebel Rogue's core reactor intact?"
Draven's voice leaks into the static. "Erso, did you hear me—"
Kay's flat voice slices through the comm, somehow ringing clearer than the general's. "Yes."
She rips her gaze from Cassian's, staring straight ahead. "If I send core power into full capacity overload, how long will it take to melt down?"
"Approximately thirty seconds."
There's no pause between the question and the answer — almost like Kay already knew exactly what she was thinking.
"Seventy-eight percent," Bodhi says, his voice quavering. "You have to— Jyn?"
They're marching forward, step by agonising step. Out of the corner of her eye, she catches Cassian's gaze.
"Rebel Rogue." Draven sounds as livid as she's ever heard him. "Hold it right this instant."
"Can't, General," Jyn says.
Cassian nods. "We've got a breach to close."
"This is suicide," Draven roars. "I'm ordering the both of you—"
"Switching off comms," Cassian says calmly, a brief scratch of static streaking through their helmets before disappearing into nothingness.
"Lousy conversation anyway," Jyn grits out half-heartedly, forcing her limbs to power forward against the impossible weight of the harness.
"We can do it, right?" Cassian's focused on the breach straight ahead, his movements and tone tense. "It'll work?"
Jyn grimaces through the flare of pain in her strained shoulders. "I have to override the reactor's safeguards manually, but yeah, I can do it. You know where the evacuation pods are?
Cassian's head whips towards her then, his features twisted with a strange expression, one she's never seen on him before. Anger.
"Forget it, Jyn," he snaps, still pushing his arms and legs forward. "If we're doing this, we're doing it together."
"You don't know where the reactor controls are," she bites back.
It's true, too. That particular bit of information isn't exactly general knowledge for pilots. Jyn only knows because she knows every inch of Rebel Rogue inside out, from her beloved mech's steel head to its weighted toes.
It's funny, really. She's never really believed in fate, or destiny, or any of that idealistic crap.
But all the same, if it had been any other pilot, in any other Jaeger… none of this would be possible. It had to be her. It had to be her Jaeger.
"You can't pilot on your own!" Cassian shouts over the roar of the water rushing into the cockpit.
She glances at the readouts before her. Hull damage is at eighty-six percent. It won't be long before it buckles completely, sending water flooding throughout the cockpit.
"Yes, I can," she shouts back, concentrating on charging forward. The breach is less than a thousand metres away now. She can see through to the inside, the unnatural purplish-blue glow of the cavernous walls beneath. "I've done it before!"
"It nearly killed you!"
The readouts start flashing red. Hull damage has just passed ninety percent.
She swallows, her dry throat constricting around nothing. Tearing her gaze from the flashing numbers, she takes another deep breath, and turns to look at him.
Cassian's wearing down even faster than she is, his injuries starting to take a toll on him. She can feel in the drift.
Despite that, he doesn't even slow down.
"This is a very bad idea," she calls to him.
He huffs a breathless laugh, more of a gasp than anything. "I know."
She's still moving, arms and legs pushing against the growing weight of the harness, every step bringing them closer to their own deaths.
She can't take her eyes off him.
"You'll stay with me?"
His gaze finds hers, the two of them locking together amidst the chaos of flashing lights and blaring sirens.
They're right at the edge of the breach now.
All they have to do is jump.
"All the way."
***
The memorial is a silent affair.
No one feels much like talking, anyway. Even Draven seems to prefer the quiet, leaving long, weighted pauses in between his sentences that reverberate throughout the hangar bay as he stares out at the crowd. Finally, he gives up on the speech and, tucking aside the tablet he's been reading off, turns on his heel and salutes the portraits of their fallen comrades projected onscreen.
Kay stands in the third row, stiff and stoic as ever, but a telltale quiver to his nostrils betrays his sorrow.
Next to him, Bodhi weeps openly but silently, with no more than the slightest of sniffles as tears stream down his cheeks.
Secretary Mothma stands right at the front, two seats off from the aisle. Her chin is held high as she holds her salute, her eyes trained on the screen under the flat of her raised palm.
Once everyone is dismissed, Draven makes his way to her side.
"The President sends his condolences and gratitude," the Secretary murmurs softly. "He wanted to be here, but he has a live address to make, at oh-eight-hundred."
"Good," Draven says shortly. "We've got enough to deal with round here, anyway."
With the Jaeger programme newly recommissioned, everyone in the Shatterdome has barely had a chance to celebrate their victory. There's been far too much to do over the last twenty-four hours, what with getting the complex ready for a new season of Jaeger research and building.
There will be time to celebrate.
Secretary Mothma looks around the crowd milling about, helping to stack and store chairs as they go. Her brows lift. "They didn't attend?"
The grim line of Draven's lips twitches, almost imperceptibly. "I told them not to."
Jyn lets her feet swing carelessly in the air, her booted toes knocking dully into each other.
"Watch it," Cassian grunts beside her, his arm brushing into hers in gentle warning. "You're not steady enough for that yet."
"Speak for yourself," she grumbles, but she stills her legs obligingly.
Once they'd entered the breach, they'd had to force a manual ejection from their Conn-Pod harnesses, leaving their oxygen levels critically low, and Jyn with severe muscle strains in her left thigh. It had been a tense minute, both of them scrambling to get to the reactor controls and then the evacuation pods, all while wading through rising water levels with blurred vision and the screaming, burning protest of their oxygen-deprived lungs.
And then there's the added bonus of the heightened radiation levels down in the breach. According to Kay, it's a miracle they'd made it out with 'almost negligent amounts of brain damage'.
She'd responded by threatening to inflict some brain damage of her own.
To be fair, her painkillers had been wearing off at the time. She can't exactly be blamed for that.
But still. They'd made it out. They'd survived.
Also, fuck Cassian's mother-hen hovering. She's not the one who wound up with heavy bruising all along a half-dislocated left shoulder, and three fractured ribs. ("Hairline fracture," Cassian would correct snappishly. What an idiot.)
Even so, she clamps down on the natural impulse to start swinging her feet again. She doesn't like him worrying, but that doesn't mean she wants him to.
They sit there on the ledge, with their legs dangling motionless two hundred feet off the ground, watching as engineers and mechanics rush about to a brisk, intangible rhythm. They swerve around pillars and large trundling carts and each other, the tops of their heads and helmets no more than large spots of moving colour from her vantage point up on the ledge.
It reminds her of when her father used to take her on long hikes and fishing trips, and they would stop by rivers to watch the water rush over and around rocks and boulders. She'd been fascinated by that, sticking her hand into the water lapping at the shallow banks to watch it move around her fingers, unperturbed by the minuscule blockage that was her tiny palm.
"Got to find a way to move on," Galen had laughed.
She wrinkles her nose at the large wreaths being set up in front of the two projected images on the north wall of the hangar. "Baze doesn't even like flowers."
Cassian shrugs carefully, his left arm shifting uncomfortably in the sling looped around his torso. "Chirrut does."
"Chirrut likes everything." She starts to kick her feet again, and then stops. "He's basically a hippie. Minus the drugs."
"Baze likes Chirrut," Cassian points out.
She nods, reluctant to take her eyes off her fallen comrades, memorising every curve and line of their faces. "Well. That works, then."
They lapse into silence, letting the quiet hustle of the hangar activity rise from the main floor to surround them, blanketing them in a comfortable companionship.
"We should get back to medical," Cassian says after a few minutes. "Before Draven realises we're gone."
Jyn rolls her eyes, but she just barely manages to hold back the scoff. If she'd thought Cassian's hovering was bad, Draven's is far worse. He's even requested that their medal ceremony be pushed back an extra week, to give them "ample time to recuperate".
He's the one who fucking recommended them for the stupid medal in the first place.
"Yeah," she says instead, still looking at Baze's crooked nose and Chirrut's gentle smile. "All right."
Neither of them moves to get up off the ledge, their arms pressed against each other.
The next twelve days are a blur of physical therapy and closely regulated medication.
Kay and Bodhi appear almost too frequently, brimming with updates about Shatterdome life.
"The general seems none too pleased about having to transport you both to Washington for the ceremony," Kay says, with a small sniff. "He would do well to recall that after the events of the past two weeks, the chances of a mishap befalling the two of you on a simple twelve-hour plane journey are approximately one in twelve point four milli—"
"Don't you have work to do," Jyn snaps, but it's half-hearted at best. Privately, she's a little relieved for the distraction. All they ever see on the flatscreen in the medical bay is report after report on the aftermath of the Kaiju War.
Funnily enough, General Draven seems almost disappointed when the doctors clear them both for air travel. To tell the truth, Jyn doesn't care one way or the other.
"Honestly," she grumbles as she tests her new walking cane out, "I'm just glad I don't have to lug that stupid crutch around anymore."
Cassian snorts gently. "More like the stupid crutch was lugging you around."
For all of Draven's fussing, the ceremony itself is surprisingly short. They get off the plane, they sit in chairs, listen to speeches from a bunch of important people, shake hands with the President and Secretary Mothma, receive their medals, and smile politely for what feels like a million pictures.
The only hitch crops up when they come face to face with a little boy with Kes Dameron's broad, high cheekbones and strong jaw, and Shara Bey's thick dark curls and deep-set eyes.
For a brief moment, Jyn is frozen, her feet rooted to the spot at the sheer shock of how familiar the boy looks, in his neatly starched black suit.
But then Cassian steps forward, dropping to one knee without hesitation and extending a hand to the child. Poe Dameron, all of six years old, meets the captain's eye without flinching, putting his own small hand out in greeting.
"Thank you, Poe Dameron," Cassian says somberly. "For everything."
"Thank you, Captain Cassian Andor," the boy says, his chin held high. He turns to Jyn when she moves forward, slowly and carefully. "Thank you, Jyn Erso."
She reaches out, taking the hand the boy offers her. "Thank you," she manages to get out, just barely holding off the heat pricking at her eyes.
They shake hands with his guardian — Shara Bey's aged mother, standing taller than all of them despite her five-foot frame — and watch the two get led off towards a waiting car, two Secret Service agents flanking them on other side.
As for Chirrut and Baze, it seems the only remaining family they've had throughout their time in the Corps had been each other. Their medals are accepted by Draven on their behalf, to be brought back to the Shatterdome and displayed along with their memorial plaques.
Draven looks about as delighted as they feel when Mothma tells they have to give at least one interview.
"Captain Andor will do all the talking," he tells them tersely as the camera crew sets up, voice lowered and body angled away from the reporter getting her mic adjusted.
"Hi," Jyn says when the reporter comes up to them with a hand outstretched in greeting. "He's gonna do all the talking."
The slap of Draven's palm to his forehead practically echoes throughout the room.
They're back at the Shatterdome the very same day. The whole process takes barely sixteen hours.
They're given an hour to rest, and then they're called to the briefing room.
"The Jaeger programme's being recommissioned," Draven announces with no preamble. "The UN will take a formal vote in three days' time, but for now, the G7 are planning to carry the motion through. With their endorsement, majority of the world will no doubt follow suit."
Cassian rests his elbows on the armrests of his chair gingerly. He's gained a lot more mobility over the last week, even graduating out of the sling, but he's still nowhere near full capacity. "What does that mean for us?"
"It means you're about to get a lot of little brothers and sisters," Draven says, somehow managing to look both thoroughly displeased and excited about the idea. "The other Shatterdomes will reopen soon, but in case you haven't noticed, you're the only two Jaeger pilots left in the world. Who else is going to teach the next batch of trainees how to work a mech?"
"Trainees?" Jyn demands, her brows furrowing in surprise. "New pilots?"
"Recruitment is scheduled to begin the Monday after next," Draven says briskly. "You two have until then to submit a finalised list of criteria and requirements."
Jyn shifts in her chair, a discomforting warmth prickling at the back of her neck. "With all due respect, General, I don't think I'm qualified to teach anybody anything military-related."
Draven's eyes slide over to her. "Secretary Mothma will be disappointed to hear that. Especially after she's had your old rank officially reinstated as of about—" he casts a quick glance at his watch, "—four hours ago."
She just barely manages to refrain from letting her jaw drop in front of the general. Instead, she leans back in her chair, turning to exchange a bewildered look with Cassian.
Funnily enough, he doesn't look surprised at all. He meets her gaze straight on, the corners of his mouth quirking upwards in a soft smile.
"Bodhi Rook will be conducting his own intake for new J-Tech engineers as well," Draven continues, clearly uncaring of her dazed state. "We'll need a few extra hands around here if we're going to build new Jaegers. We'll start him off with two, and see how it goes from there."
"What about Kay?" Cassian asks.
Draven grimaces. It's no secret that the K-science expert has been nagging the general nonstop for extra help with studying the kaiju.
"He can choose one person," Draven says flatly. "One. And that person has to volunteer."
Jyn snorts.
"Fair enough," Cassian says.
"Good evening, Sergeant."
Jyn rolls her eyes as she sits at the table, Cassian carefully lowering himself into a seat next to her. "How do you know?"
Kay shrugs blandly. "My job is knowledge, Sergeant."
As if on cue, she and Cassian turn their gazes on Bodhi at the same time, one brow raised each in wordless expectation.
"He hacked Corps files," the engineer offers readily.
"I'm in the Corps," Kay shoots back testily. "It's not hacking if it's my own organisation's files."
"Hacking means you weren't authorised access," Bodhi corrects.
Kay waves a dismissive hand. "Agree to disagree."
"The only time you'll ever hear Kay saying that," Cassian says conversationally to Jyn as they ladle mashed potatoes and peas onto their plates.
They decide to call it an early night, heading back to their quarters right after dinner.
It's really because they don't actually have anything better to do. They're still banned from the training room, and if either of them so much as even thinks of strenuous physical activity, they'd probably both get a scolding from Draven, a rebuking look from Bodhi and a two-hour lecture on recovery from Kay.
It's mostly because they've been up since two in the morning getting ready for the flight to D.C. and the medal ceremony right after. After two full weeks of rest, a full day of travel and socialising has taken its toll on her. She's completely worn out in that way that always makes her feel oddly hyper-aware of her blood flowing through her veins — like her hands and feet are pulsing nonstop, to the tip of every finger and toe. She's exhausted to say the least, and she's sure Cassian is, too.
All the same, she can't seem to fall asleep. Maybe it's the excitement of the day. Maybe it's all the new information. Hearing her future laid out in front of her in that briefing room had been a little overwhelming, to say the least.
Maybe it's just the mild shock of being back in her own bed after two weeks in the infirmary. Not that it was ever particularly comfortable to begin with, but she's never really minded it, not when she's usually falling into it already half-dead on her feet from twelve straight hours of training.
After one long, fruitless hour of tossing and turning in the dark, she gives up, grabs her cane, and pads across the dim hallway.
As she opens the door, Cassian looks up from where he's seated on the edge of the bed, arms bent and half raised at his sides. The overhead lights of the cabin are off, but the reading lamp above his bed is still on, turning everything a warm yellow.
Dimly recognising the positioning of his arms from his physical therapy exercises, she raises a brow as she slips into the room, angling her body so her cane can fit through the doorway.
"You should be asleep," she informs him, closing the door behind herself.
"So should you," he counters, continuing to move his arms in slow circles through the air. All the same, he scoots sideways on the mattress, freeing up some room for her to sink down onto.
He glances at her as she lowers herself onto the bed, gently stretching her bad leg out in front of her. "Still hurting?"
"It's better," she says truthfully, setting her cane aside. "The cane helps."
"Good," Cassian says. "Draven had that made special for you, you know. You're his favourite now."
"I will jab my fancy new cane into your ribs," she warns, snatching his pillow to prop it against the wall. "The injured ones."
He snorts and, with one last rotation of his arm, stretches out his shoulders so that his back arches, the lean muscle twisting under his thin tank top. "I apologise, Sergeant."
He shifts carefully, moving back on the bed so he's propped against the wall too, the length of his arm pressed to hers.
She glances sideways at his face, noting the faint pinch in his expression. "Still hurting?"
"Better," he says, one hand ghosting over his side as if trying to perform some kind of Jedi mind trick on himself. "The medic says it'll be another two weeks or so before I can return to light training, but it's definitely getting better."
"Just in time for the new recruits to rally around their fearless leader," she teases.
"Leaders," he corrects, letting his hand drop to his lap as he looks at her. "And there's absolutely no doubt that if one of us is going to be called 'fearless', it's going to be you, Jyn."
He smiles then, the curve of his mouth slight but sure, his dark eyes finding and holding hers.
It makes her heart ache in a funny way that doesn't hurt. It's not pain, but it throbs the exact same way.
She reaches up before he can turn away, her fingers curling around the soft edge of his jaw to keep his face angled towards her. Before she can think too hard about it, she leans up, and presses her lips to his.
For one heart-stopping second, Cassian's entire body stills, his mouth motionless against hers.
And then he's moving, leaning into her eagerly, his hand grazing over her arm and sliding up to cup her face, all while kissing her as hard as she can remember having ever been kissed.
She turns towards him, just as eagerly if not more, her free hand bracing on the sliver of mattress between their bodies as she attempts to—
They break apart at the exact same time, both of them hissing sharply in pain. His hand presses against his ribs, and hers passes over her bad leg.
They meet each other's gazes — faces still frozen in twin winces — and dissolve into quiet, muffled chuckles.
"We'll wait," she says, settling back against the wall, dropping her head to rest contentedly on the incline of his shoulder. "There's time."
His hand covers hers, fingers threading into hers on her lap.
"Yes," he says, and she feels the warm weight of his cheek on her head. "There is."
Recruitment tryouts begin three weeks later.
Cassian sidles up next to Jyn in the training room, where they're watching the third batch of twenty-four candidates work on a kata.
"This batch looks better than the last," he murmurs lowly, keeping his expression impassive.
"I want the Skywalker twins," she announces quietly, her eyes roving slowly over the group as they follow after the instructor at the front of the room. "Their drift compatibility is off the charts, their test scores are insane, and I want them."
Cassian's eyes linger on the subject of their discussion — the duo positioned towards the back of the room, their heads just about visible through the evenly spaced crowd, one dark, one sandy.
"Their form's not perfect," he observes idly.
Jyn grins, turning to look at him. "Exactly why I want them."
He shakes his head in a way she recognises to be his way of fondly saying 'I should've known'. "We'll put them on the list."
They still have two more batches of candidates to appraise before making their cutoff selections, and then another full day's worth of trials to choose the final eight. From then on, the officially selected recruits will be split into two teams for training. It's mostly for administrative purposes, Draven's explained. In practice, they'll likely end up doing a large proportion of the training together.
"They are the list," Jyn insists. "They're on the list, and they're with me. Team Malbus is so gonna kick Team Îmwe's ass."
Cassian snorts under his breath. "We're all on the same squad."
"In battle," she adds stubbornly. "In this room? My team's gonna eat yours for breakfast, Andor."
He sniggers, straightening as the group completes the last moves of the kata. Once that's done, they both have to address the group, dismiss them, and bring in the next one.
"Whatever you say, Erso," Cassian says, taking advantage of everyone's momentary distraction to let his hand brush over her hip as he passes her by. "Whatever you say."