*chants* almost there, almost there
Jul. 2nd, 2018 03:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghrainetitle: per ardua ad astra (20/?)
verse: Death Star
characters: Jyn Erso, Cassian Andor; Leia Organa, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo; Jyn/Cassian, Han/Leia, Luke & Leia
stuff that happens:
previous chapters: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen
Leia looked blank. “You’re who?”
Of course, they hadn’t told her Jyn’s name. The agent who’d received the plans, her father’s plans, carried them and protected them, didn’t know who she was. Jyn exhaled through her teeth.
“Jyn Erso,” she said impatiently. “I’m here with Cassian Andor.”
“Cassian Andor?” Leia’s large eyes went enormous. “That’s impossible!”
The princess sprang up. She was tiny: thin and easily three or four inches shorter than Jyn. It didn’t keep her from launching herself forward before Jyn could respond.
Only for a moment, though. Jyn had scarcely turned on her heel when they heard a blaster shot, then something crashing—no, shattering—in the detention security area.
Cassian!
Raw instinct sent Jyn hurtling forward, panic and height carrying her right past Leia. She didn’t hear any clamour beyond the whatever-it-was breaking. Cassian would have said something if he were in danger, to warn her and another spy away. But—but—what could even shatter, anyway, except …
Cameras, Jyn thought, desperately praying: and sure enough, Cassian stood upright at the station, one hand in the air to silence others, and a distinct note of irritation in his voice.
“—these shoddy contraptions—”
“Yes, captain,” someone said through the intercom. “We understand completely. No idea how it could have happened.”
“You’d better get an idea,” said Cassian. Sure enough, the cameras hung brokenly from the walls, part melted, with only a few jagged edges where their lenses had been. Jyn breathed properly again.
“Yes, sir. We’ll investigate the matter.”
“Good,” he snarled, and switched off the intercom, just as Leia caught up with Jyn, nearly slamming into her back. In fairness, she straightened right away and moved to the side.
“Andor?” she said incredulously.
Cassian turned towards them, even more unreadable than usual. He inclined his head to the princess.
“Açatal,” he said.
Leia, lips tight, responded,
“Tanain.”
A full three seconds passed, the shards of plastiglass forming some sort of counterpoint in Jyn’s head. She didn’t know if she ached for the Alderaanians, or for Cassian in particular, or herself (Papa), or some uncertain proportion of them all, but it froze her in place, froze her throat to her lungs.
“Maybe someone could mention how we’re going to get out of here? Not in code?” demanded the larger not-stormtrooper, distracting her just enough that Jyn bothered to look their way.
Both men had blasters out—they, or more probably the Wookiee, had apparently understood Cassian’s hints—and seemed to have only just removed their helmets. Both were pleasant-looking enough, the one taller than Cassian and attractive in an even, strong-featured way, the other a blond, blue-eyed boy only a few inches taller than Jyn, his face as soft as his companion’s was sharp. Boy might be a bit much, but he couldn’t be more than twenty.
“That gives us a few minutes,” said Cassian.
Jyn ignored that to focus on the maybe-Rebels. “You’re with the Rebellion?” she demanded. “You can get us out of here?”
“Yes!” said the blond one. “I’m Luke Sk—”
“No,” the other burst out. “We’re definitely not.”
Luke glared at him. So did the Wookiee.
“I didn’t sign up for another rescue!”
“Shut up, Han,” Luke hissed.
Han, if that was his real name, turned to them. “Listen. We’re here to rescue the princess, not …” He eyed them. “Whatever you are.”
Leia looked him up and down. With considerably more contempt than she’d directed at Jyn, she said, “You didn’t even plan an escape route? Some rescue!”
Jyn, giving them up as hopeless, made her way over to Cassian. “You got any ideas?”
“Maybe you’d like it better in your cell, Highness,” Han snapped.
“Walk out the way they came in,” Cassian murmured to Jyn. “But it’d be suspicious. And they’re not exactly convincing.”
Jyn glanced over. Luke, clearly the brains of the operation, stood a little aside, trying to contact someone on his comlink. Han was still sputtering at Leia while she furiously shot back. Meanwhile, the Wookiee peered at the ceiling, managing to infuse the gesture with immense long-suffering.
“Look,” Luke told the princess, giving up on his ally (Jyn assumed) on the comlink. “We’ve got your R2 unit. I’m here with Ben Kenobi. We just—”
“Ben Kenobi?” Leia exclaimed. “Where?”
The name meant nothing to Jyn, but Cassian’s eyes went wide.
“You’ve got to be joking.”
Luke shook his head. “He’s training me in the ways of the Jedi,” he said proudly. “Well, right now he’s disabling the tractor beam. But he’s my teacher.”
By raw exertion of will, Jyn and Cassian managed not to ask any more questions about that. Cassian already had the local schematic open on the terminal, and they ran through its lines and curves, trying to find a solution where she knew pretty well they wouldn’t. They’d already had to make someone disappear, and—
Leia deserted her squabble to march over to them, peering down at the terminal. “What about that compartment right there?” She pointed at the rectangle that made up the trash compactor. “It doesn’t look occupied.”
Jyn choked. “Er, no, but—ah—”
“It’s for trash,” said Cassian. “Definitely a last resort.”
“We don’t have time for anything else,” Leia said impatiently, and reached past to activate it.
“Uh—”
“Come on!” she called out to the others. Luke came running right away, but Han hesitated, exuding skepticism.
Leia had plainly never hesitated in her life. She rushed over to the compartment doors, Luke towed by sheer force of personality. Han, grumbling inaudibly, followed his Wookiee friend towards her.
Beyond them, the doors scraped open, the compactor’s stench filling the air. Trash-stench, thankfully, and not dead body-stench—though the first would probably cover the latter, and—
Han, in a tone of utter conviction, said, “I am not going down there.”
“If you want to die, I won’t stop you,” retorted Leia.
Jyn’s patience frayed. Under her breath, she said to Cassian, “We have to go with them, don’t we?”
“With Leia,” he murmured back. “And they’ve got a ship.”
That sealed it. With one shallow inhalation of the repugnant air, Jyn extracted Kay’s datachip, dropping it into her jacket’s inside pocket.
“Do you have one of your knives on you?” asked Cassian.
She had all of them, and three blasters. Neither understanding nor hesitating, Jyn passed a knife over, and watched as he cut a tear in his sleeve and then a long, shallow cut on the skin beneath it, squeezing the top of his arm to splatter blood on the terminal. A cover story, she realized. Of course. Cowardice in the face of a Rebel attack wouldn’t look nearly as bad as open betrayal, if they could sell it. If they had to sell it.
That’s the man I know and love, she almost said wryly, then remembered and bit it back. She didn’t know when the thought of love had first come to her by its proper name. Everything felt so simple and natural that, now and then, she nearly forgot they hadn’t talked about it.
Han said, “I don’t want to—look, it’s going to take more than—”
“Then into the chute, flyboy!”
Suiting actions to words, Leia jumped down, Luke in faithful pursuit. Han heaved what might have been the galaxy’s most dramatic sigh, and followed them. His leap into the trash compactor was immediately followed by the sound of blaster bolts rocketing around the armoured walls of the compactor.
“We’re going to die,” muttered Jyn.
“Maybe,” Cassian said, not at all reassuringly. He triggered the command to shut the compactor doors, and they raced around just in time to throw themselves through the closing gates. Jyn could only hope that it wasn’t the compaction hour.
Inside, she grimaced from the fall and the memory of the last time she’d launched something in here. No point thinking about it, unless … no. Dread still climbed over her, though, diminished by Cassian landing behind her with only a quick exhalation, and not at all diminished by the smell or the trash-ridden water. Trash and—no.
She focused on the others. Han looked disgusted, while Luke and Leia were screaming at him in such perfect synchrony that Jyn could hardly tell their voices apart.
“Will you forget it?”
“Put that thing away!”
Han bristled. “Absolutely, Your Worship. Look, I had everything under control until you led us down here.”
The hell he did. Behind her, Cassian scoffed under his breath.
“It could be worse!” Leia said.
And something groaned.
Maybe the compactor was changing levels, Jyn told herself, even if it sounded more like an unearthly moan than anything else. She might believe in the Force, but she wasn’t superstitious; she drew her blaster, at the same time as Han and Luke.
The Wookiee howled.
“It’s worse,” said Han.
Luke gave an odd sort of jump. “There’s something alive in here!”
No. Not alive.
“That’s your imagination,” Jyn and Han said, in near as exact unison as Luke and Leia.
Han twitched, undoubtedly out of the same irritation that Jyn herself felt. A bit more than irritation, fine.
Cassian sloshed forward to stand at her side, as if broadcasting his allegiance. A small relief trickled through her at that, and perhaps him. At any rate, they stayed together in their patch of filth, while Han didn’t seem to have anyone but the Wookiee. Maybe Luke, but she didn’t get the sense that they knew each other well.
Luke screamed, “Something just moved past my leg!”
“It’s probably just an arm,” she said without thinking.
Han froze in place, no longer even trying to move through the churning waters, and slowly turned to stare at them.
“Just a what?”
Even Luke glanced up, eyes wide.
Jyn shrugged. “It’s not as bad as it sounds.”
“Not quite,” Cassian said.
She glowered up at him.
“Traitor,” she muttered, and even she could hear the total lack of conviction behind it. Jyn rolled her eyes.
“Who are you people?” demanded Han.
Leia, for her part, seemed to be preoccupied with navigating her own area of water, entirely unconcerned with all of this. She’d probably disposed of a few corpses in her time, too. The Wookiee, meanwhile, was busy howling at the walls. And before Jyn or Cassian could manufacture a response to Han, Luke yelled again.
“Look! Did you see that?”
Han turned back around. “What?”
With a choked shriek, Luke crashed underwater, seized by—something. Something with tentacles, and a single staring eye rising up like a periscope, and … Force, that thing had probably eaten Zekheret. She’d seen plenty of bizarre Imperial procedures at this point, but what the hell? Who kept a tentacle monster in a trash container? Was this her father’s idea, or some other innovation?
She struggled through the water to help, while Han and, surprisingly, Leia screamed after Luke. He surfaced once, a tentacle around his neck, yelling something about blasting it. But Jyn didn’t know how they could hit it without being as likely to blast Luke as the thing; Han tried, but concern kept his aim low. Cassian, predictably less concerned with the lives of strangers, did shoot at the tentacle around Luke’s neck and hit it, but the shots seemed only to irritate it. The whatever-it-was dragged Luke underwater again.
The walls shuddered, and Jyn stiffened. She and Cassian shared a horrified look, but before they could think of anything else, the water bubbled where Luke had been, and he burst upwards, inhaling great heaving breaths.
“What happened?” said Leia.
“I don’t know,” Luke gasped. “It just let go of me and disappeared.”
Bad, Jyn thought. Very, very bad.
If Cassian had not imagined being killed because of his cover rather than in discovery of it, he certainly had never imagined being killed by trash compaction. After everything he and Jyn had survived, they were going to get smashed to death? Really?
He and Jyn desperately tried to help Luke prop up a long beam between the walls, as if that could stop it. Slow it, maybe, if Luke’s droid friend got around to checking his comlink in the next minute and a half, and had the tools to hack into the Death Star’s computer system. At least it was impractically unified, care of Galen Erso, and—
Cassian knew his mind was spinning, a foolish rush from one thing to another, with Jyn right here and death closing in on them again.
“One thing’s for sure. We’re all going to be a lot thinner!” said Han.
At least he wasn’t as much of a fool as that one.
The walls kept closing in, the beams making only the weakest of obstacles. Irresistibly, the water rose higher up their legs. Far higher on Leia, and even Jyn. They weren’t going to die by crushing, of course. It’d be drowning. It couldn’t be punishment for Zekheret, the galaxy didn’t work like that, but …
“Jyn,” he said, and jerked his head at the nearest pile of trash. “You need to get up there. I can help, just—”
She scowled. “No, I’m not—” Then she broke off, her eyes flying wide open. Without another word of protest, she turned to grasp at the pile of trash, clambering out of the water. Cassian instantly whipped about to support her as she scrambled up, keeping her from sliding back whenever a chunk of wet trash slipped under her feet.
Luke was shrieking at the unresponsive droid through his comlink, Han and Leia shouting at each other, but Cassian ignored these beyond registering their existence in the back of his mind. He could only think of Jyn. She came first, always, and must live the longest, able to seize any last chance that might somehow arrive. Only when she managed relative stability high up the pile did he bother paying attention to the others.
“I’m trying!” Leia struggled up much more slowly than Jyn, weighed down by her robes. Han, at least, was trying to help her while the beam bent further. But the next few moments only brought the water higher, the walls nearer, and this was officially the worst idea that Leia had ever come up with—
From Luke’s comlink, a prim robotic voice called out,
“Are you there, sir?”
“Threepio!” he screamed, while the others sucked in their breaths.
“We’ve had some problems,” said the droid, his tone distinctly petulant.
“Will you shut up and listen to me?” Luke shouted. “Shut down all garbage mashers on the detention level, will you? Do you copy? Shut down all the garbage mashers on the detention level!”
The walls ground closer. Perhaps the last seconds of Cassian’s life ticked on—his hand somehow found its way around Jyn’s ankle—
And the compaction stopped.
Leia and her would-be rescuers shouted in relief and victory. Cassian couldn’t; he barely raised his voice unless a role called for it. But he was smiling as he turned back to Jyn.
“Can you help?” she said.
All processes scraped to an absolute halt. Jyn, who almost never asked for assistance of any kind, was reaching out to him—reaching out because she had only the one hand to do it with. The other was clenched above her head, her fingers closed about a large datachip.
Kay’s datachip.
Kay.
In that moment, Cassian loved her.
Not that moment alone, of course. Loving her wasn’t a revelation. It wasn’t even the first time he’d thought it; he didn’t know when that had been. But his mind spun a tight orbit about it, unable to track any other data. I love you. Jyn. Jyn, I love you, I—
As inexorably as the water had risen, his whole body leaned towards her, like some withered thing towards the sun. And Jyn tilted her face down, just as she’d lifted it up in the hangar on Yavin. Inverted, but mostly the same, her eyes as soft and wondering as his must be. He couldn’t identify her expression beyond that, beyond good, because nobody—nobody except Jyn, rather—had ever looked at him that way in his life. Like he was the star and not her.
This time, though, her smile didn’t tremble on her lips the way it had before, uncertain of itself. She grinned down at him, bright and triumphant.
Nothing could have prevented him from smiling back, feeling it invade his entire face. “Jyn—”
This was why Jyn had offered so little protest, he understood now. She must have remembered that she took the datachip before Cassian could do it. She’d put it in her pocket, and she was so much smaller that the water might easily have swamped the little datachip. This miserable place might have killed Kay more thoroughly than any stormtrooper, and Jyn had thought of it, before herself.
“Jyn,” he murmured, so little between them that she must feel her name on her own mouth, “Jyn, I—”
Neither looked away. They stood here, trapped with four other people, surrounded by stinking trash and quite possibly the rotting corpse of a man they’d murdered, and he couldn’t think of anything but looking at her and kissing her.
“Cassian,” she breathed, and he did feel it: his name, his name on both their mouths as they leaned that fractional distance closer. The others were still shouting and laughing in relief, maybe seeing them and maybe not, and who cared—
“Listen to them,” wailed the droid. “They’re dying, Artoo! Curse my metal body! I wasn’t fast enough!”
Inevitably, Jyn and Cassian opened their eyes, pulling back enough to meet each other’s glances. She looked exactly how he felt: annoyed, amused, and awkward, all at once. With equally resigned sighs, they stepped apart.
The droid, Threepio, was still in vapours.
“It’s all my fault! My poor master!”
Luke, to his credit, rushed to reassure the panicked droid that they’d made it. What sort of bastard could have programmed that one? Droids developed personalities through their lives, like everyone else, but almost never fear. He’d only seen it at the hands of careless or malicious programmers. Or amateur ones, simply re-imagining the traits they saw around them, without regard for convenience or utility.
“You did great,” Luke told Threepio, with every appearance of earnestness. Cassian’s evaluation of him ticked up. “Hey … hey, open the pressure maintenance hatch on unit number … where are we?”
Han disentangled himself and checked the panel. “Three-two-six-eight-two-seven.”
With that, Threepio—or more likely, the R2 unit who seemed to be accompanying him—managed to deposit them in an unused hallway. It wasn’t one that Cassian found particularly distinguishable from any other ones, but at least didn’t seem that far off from the section they did know.
All six of them emerged from the compactor like a herd of swamp creatures. Han and Luke did little to dispel the impression, shrugging off their armour like shells, while the other four did their best to wring the water out of their clothes. Jyn and Cassian had both lost their caps, though Jyn’s hair was at least still pinned back, while Leia adjusted her coils.
“If we can just ignore any more female advice,” said Han, “we ought to be able to get out of here.”
Cassian glanced up, genuinely startled. He’d thought the man an ass, but not that much of one. Dismissing him after one narrow-eyed look, he turned back to Jyn. She’d gone motionless at his side, jaw tight and face blank. Cassian, who knew perfectly well that she could and would maul a man over less, kept his hand on her arm.
“Can I have the datachip back?”
Jyn scowled, but her focus on Han broke. She pressed the chip into his hand.
“Thank you,” he said quietly.
She nodded, with a solemn glance that seemed to comprehend all it meant. Beyond them all, Leia turned her back on Han, trying to look haughty, and about halfway succeeding.
“Well,” said Luke, “let’s get moving.”
verse: Death Star
characters: Jyn Erso, Cassian Andor; Leia Organa, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo; Jyn/Cassian, Han/Leia, Luke & Leia
stuff that happens:
previous chapters: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen
In that moment, Cassian loved her.
Not that moment alone, of course. Loving her wasn’t a revelation. It wasn’t even the first time he’d thought it; he didn’t know when that had been. But his mind spun a tight orbit about it, unable to track any other data. I love you. Jyn. Jyn, I love you, I—
As inexorably as the water had risen, his whole body leaned towards her, like some withered thing towards the sun.
Not that moment alone, of course. Loving her wasn’t a revelation. It wasn’t even the first time he’d thought it; he didn’t know when that had been. But his mind spun a tight orbit about it, unable to track any other data. I love you. Jyn. Jyn, I love you, I—
As inexorably as the water had risen, his whole body leaned towards her, like some withered thing towards the sun.
Leia looked blank. “You’re who?”
Of course, they hadn’t told her Jyn’s name. The agent who’d received the plans, her father’s plans, carried them and protected them, didn’t know who she was. Jyn exhaled through her teeth.
“Jyn Erso,” she said impatiently. “I’m here with Cassian Andor.”
“Cassian Andor?” Leia’s large eyes went enormous. “That’s impossible!”
The princess sprang up. She was tiny: thin and easily three or four inches shorter than Jyn. It didn’t keep her from launching herself forward before Jyn could respond.
Only for a moment, though. Jyn had scarcely turned on her heel when they heard a blaster shot, then something crashing—no, shattering—in the detention security area.
Cassian!
Raw instinct sent Jyn hurtling forward, panic and height carrying her right past Leia. She didn’t hear any clamour beyond the whatever-it-was breaking. Cassian would have said something if he were in danger, to warn her and another spy away. But—but—what could even shatter, anyway, except …
Cameras, Jyn thought, desperately praying: and sure enough, Cassian stood upright at the station, one hand in the air to silence others, and a distinct note of irritation in his voice.
“—these shoddy contraptions—”
“Yes, captain,” someone said through the intercom. “We understand completely. No idea how it could have happened.”
“You’d better get an idea,” said Cassian. Sure enough, the cameras hung brokenly from the walls, part melted, with only a few jagged edges where their lenses had been. Jyn breathed properly again.
“Yes, sir. We’ll investigate the matter.”
“Good,” he snarled, and switched off the intercom, just as Leia caught up with Jyn, nearly slamming into her back. In fairness, she straightened right away and moved to the side.
“Andor?” she said incredulously.
Cassian turned towards them, even more unreadable than usual. He inclined his head to the princess.
“Açatal,” he said.
Leia, lips tight, responded,
“Tanain.”
A full three seconds passed, the shards of plastiglass forming some sort of counterpoint in Jyn’s head. She didn’t know if she ached for the Alderaanians, or for Cassian in particular, or herself (Papa), or some uncertain proportion of them all, but it froze her in place, froze her throat to her lungs.
“Maybe someone could mention how we’re going to get out of here? Not in code?” demanded the larger not-stormtrooper, distracting her just enough that Jyn bothered to look their way.
Both men had blasters out—they, or more probably the Wookiee, had apparently understood Cassian’s hints—and seemed to have only just removed their helmets. Both were pleasant-looking enough, the one taller than Cassian and attractive in an even, strong-featured way, the other a blond, blue-eyed boy only a few inches taller than Jyn, his face as soft as his companion’s was sharp. Boy might be a bit much, but he couldn’t be more than twenty.
“That gives us a few minutes,” said Cassian.
Jyn ignored that to focus on the maybe-Rebels. “You’re with the Rebellion?” she demanded. “You can get us out of here?”
“Yes!” said the blond one. “I’m Luke Sk—”
“No,” the other burst out. “We’re definitely not.”
Luke glared at him. So did the Wookiee.
“I didn’t sign up for another rescue!”
“Shut up, Han,” Luke hissed.
Han, if that was his real name, turned to them. “Listen. We’re here to rescue the princess, not …” He eyed them. “Whatever you are.”
Leia looked him up and down. With considerably more contempt than she’d directed at Jyn, she said, “You didn’t even plan an escape route? Some rescue!”
Jyn, giving them up as hopeless, made her way over to Cassian. “You got any ideas?”
“Maybe you’d like it better in your cell, Highness,” Han snapped.
“Walk out the way they came in,” Cassian murmured to Jyn. “But it’d be suspicious. And they’re not exactly convincing.”
Jyn glanced over. Luke, clearly the brains of the operation, stood a little aside, trying to contact someone on his comlink. Han was still sputtering at Leia while she furiously shot back. Meanwhile, the Wookiee peered at the ceiling, managing to infuse the gesture with immense long-suffering.
“Look,” Luke told the princess, giving up on his ally (Jyn assumed) on the comlink. “We’ve got your R2 unit. I’m here with Ben Kenobi. We just—”
“Ben Kenobi?” Leia exclaimed. “Where?”
The name meant nothing to Jyn, but Cassian’s eyes went wide.
“You’ve got to be joking.”
Luke shook his head. “He’s training me in the ways of the Jedi,” he said proudly. “Well, right now he’s disabling the tractor beam. But he’s my teacher.”
By raw exertion of will, Jyn and Cassian managed not to ask any more questions about that. Cassian already had the local schematic open on the terminal, and they ran through its lines and curves, trying to find a solution where she knew pretty well they wouldn’t. They’d already had to make someone disappear, and—
Leia deserted her squabble to march over to them, peering down at the terminal. “What about that compartment right there?” She pointed at the rectangle that made up the trash compactor. “It doesn’t look occupied.”
Jyn choked. “Er, no, but—ah—”
“It’s for trash,” said Cassian. “Definitely a last resort.”
“We don’t have time for anything else,” Leia said impatiently, and reached past to activate it.
“Uh—”
“Come on!” she called out to the others. Luke came running right away, but Han hesitated, exuding skepticism.
Leia had plainly never hesitated in her life. She rushed over to the compartment doors, Luke towed by sheer force of personality. Han, grumbling inaudibly, followed his Wookiee friend towards her.
Beyond them, the doors scraped open, the compactor’s stench filling the air. Trash-stench, thankfully, and not dead body-stench—though the first would probably cover the latter, and—
Han, in a tone of utter conviction, said, “I am not going down there.”
“If you want to die, I won’t stop you,” retorted Leia.
Jyn’s patience frayed. Under her breath, she said to Cassian, “We have to go with them, don’t we?”
“With Leia,” he murmured back. “And they’ve got a ship.”
That sealed it. With one shallow inhalation of the repugnant air, Jyn extracted Kay’s datachip, dropping it into her jacket’s inside pocket.
“Do you have one of your knives on you?” asked Cassian.
She had all of them, and three blasters. Neither understanding nor hesitating, Jyn passed a knife over, and watched as he cut a tear in his sleeve and then a long, shallow cut on the skin beneath it, squeezing the top of his arm to splatter blood on the terminal. A cover story, she realized. Of course. Cowardice in the face of a Rebel attack wouldn’t look nearly as bad as open betrayal, if they could sell it. If they had to sell it.
That’s the man I know and love, she almost said wryly, then remembered and bit it back. She didn’t know when the thought of love had first come to her by its proper name. Everything felt so simple and natural that, now and then, she nearly forgot they hadn’t talked about it.
Han said, “I don’t want to—look, it’s going to take more than—”
“Then into the chute, flyboy!”
Suiting actions to words, Leia jumped down, Luke in faithful pursuit. Han heaved what might have been the galaxy’s most dramatic sigh, and followed them. His leap into the trash compactor was immediately followed by the sound of blaster bolts rocketing around the armoured walls of the compactor.
“We’re going to die,” muttered Jyn.
“Maybe,” Cassian said, not at all reassuringly. He triggered the command to shut the compactor doors, and they raced around just in time to throw themselves through the closing gates. Jyn could only hope that it wasn’t the compaction hour.
Inside, she grimaced from the fall and the memory of the last time she’d launched something in here. No point thinking about it, unless … no. Dread still climbed over her, though, diminished by Cassian landing behind her with only a quick exhalation, and not at all diminished by the smell or the trash-ridden water. Trash and—no.
She focused on the others. Han looked disgusted, while Luke and Leia were screaming at him in such perfect synchrony that Jyn could hardly tell their voices apart.
“Will you forget it?”
“Put that thing away!”
Han bristled. “Absolutely, Your Worship. Look, I had everything under control until you led us down here.”
The hell he did. Behind her, Cassian scoffed under his breath.
“It could be worse!” Leia said.
And something groaned.
Maybe the compactor was changing levels, Jyn told herself, even if it sounded more like an unearthly moan than anything else. She might believe in the Force, but she wasn’t superstitious; she drew her blaster, at the same time as Han and Luke.
The Wookiee howled.
“It’s worse,” said Han.
Luke gave an odd sort of jump. “There’s something alive in here!”
No. Not alive.
“That’s your imagination,” Jyn and Han said, in near as exact unison as Luke and Leia.
Han twitched, undoubtedly out of the same irritation that Jyn herself felt. A bit more than irritation, fine.
Cassian sloshed forward to stand at her side, as if broadcasting his allegiance. A small relief trickled through her at that, and perhaps him. At any rate, they stayed together in their patch of filth, while Han didn’t seem to have anyone but the Wookiee. Maybe Luke, but she didn’t get the sense that they knew each other well.
Luke screamed, “Something just moved past my leg!”
“It’s probably just an arm,” she said without thinking.
Han froze in place, no longer even trying to move through the churning waters, and slowly turned to stare at them.
“Just a what?”
Even Luke glanced up, eyes wide.
Jyn shrugged. “It’s not as bad as it sounds.”
“Not quite,” Cassian said.
She glowered up at him.
“Traitor,” she muttered, and even she could hear the total lack of conviction behind it. Jyn rolled her eyes.
“Who are you people?” demanded Han.
Leia, for her part, seemed to be preoccupied with navigating her own area of water, entirely unconcerned with all of this. She’d probably disposed of a few corpses in her time, too. The Wookiee, meanwhile, was busy howling at the walls. And before Jyn or Cassian could manufacture a response to Han, Luke yelled again.
“Look! Did you see that?”
Han turned back around. “What?”
With a choked shriek, Luke crashed underwater, seized by—something. Something with tentacles, and a single staring eye rising up like a periscope, and … Force, that thing had probably eaten Zekheret. She’d seen plenty of bizarre Imperial procedures at this point, but what the hell? Who kept a tentacle monster in a trash container? Was this her father’s idea, or some other innovation?
She struggled through the water to help, while Han and, surprisingly, Leia screamed after Luke. He surfaced once, a tentacle around his neck, yelling something about blasting it. But Jyn didn’t know how they could hit it without being as likely to blast Luke as the thing; Han tried, but concern kept his aim low. Cassian, predictably less concerned with the lives of strangers, did shoot at the tentacle around Luke’s neck and hit it, but the shots seemed only to irritate it. The whatever-it-was dragged Luke underwater again.
The walls shuddered, and Jyn stiffened. She and Cassian shared a horrified look, but before they could think of anything else, the water bubbled where Luke had been, and he burst upwards, inhaling great heaving breaths.
“What happened?” said Leia.
“I don’t know,” Luke gasped. “It just let go of me and disappeared.”
Bad, Jyn thought. Very, very bad.
If Cassian had not imagined being killed because of his cover rather than in discovery of it, he certainly had never imagined being killed by trash compaction. After everything he and Jyn had survived, they were going to get smashed to death? Really?
He and Jyn desperately tried to help Luke prop up a long beam between the walls, as if that could stop it. Slow it, maybe, if Luke’s droid friend got around to checking his comlink in the next minute and a half, and had the tools to hack into the Death Star’s computer system. At least it was impractically unified, care of Galen Erso, and—
Cassian knew his mind was spinning, a foolish rush from one thing to another, with Jyn right here and death closing in on them again.
“One thing’s for sure. We’re all going to be a lot thinner!” said Han.
At least he wasn’t as much of a fool as that one.
The walls kept closing in, the beams making only the weakest of obstacles. Irresistibly, the water rose higher up their legs. Far higher on Leia, and even Jyn. They weren’t going to die by crushing, of course. It’d be drowning. It couldn’t be punishment for Zekheret, the galaxy didn’t work like that, but …
“Jyn,” he said, and jerked his head at the nearest pile of trash. “You need to get up there. I can help, just—”
She scowled. “No, I’m not—” Then she broke off, her eyes flying wide open. Without another word of protest, she turned to grasp at the pile of trash, clambering out of the water. Cassian instantly whipped about to support her as she scrambled up, keeping her from sliding back whenever a chunk of wet trash slipped under her feet.
Luke was shrieking at the unresponsive droid through his comlink, Han and Leia shouting at each other, but Cassian ignored these beyond registering their existence in the back of his mind. He could only think of Jyn. She came first, always, and must live the longest, able to seize any last chance that might somehow arrive. Only when she managed relative stability high up the pile did he bother paying attention to the others.
“I’m trying!” Leia struggled up much more slowly than Jyn, weighed down by her robes. Han, at least, was trying to help her while the beam bent further. But the next few moments only brought the water higher, the walls nearer, and this was officially the worst idea that Leia had ever come up with—
From Luke’s comlink, a prim robotic voice called out,
“Are you there, sir?”
“Threepio!” he screamed, while the others sucked in their breaths.
“We’ve had some problems,” said the droid, his tone distinctly petulant.
“Will you shut up and listen to me?” Luke shouted. “Shut down all garbage mashers on the detention level, will you? Do you copy? Shut down all the garbage mashers on the detention level!”
The walls ground closer. Perhaps the last seconds of Cassian’s life ticked on—his hand somehow found its way around Jyn’s ankle—
And the compaction stopped.
Leia and her would-be rescuers shouted in relief and victory. Cassian couldn’t; he barely raised his voice unless a role called for it. But he was smiling as he turned back to Jyn.
“Can you help?” she said.
All processes scraped to an absolute halt. Jyn, who almost never asked for assistance of any kind, was reaching out to him—reaching out because she had only the one hand to do it with. The other was clenched above her head, her fingers closed about a large datachip.
Kay’s datachip.
Kay.
In that moment, Cassian loved her.
Not that moment alone, of course. Loving her wasn’t a revelation. It wasn’t even the first time he’d thought it; he didn’t know when that had been. But his mind spun a tight orbit about it, unable to track any other data. I love you. Jyn. Jyn, I love you, I—
As inexorably as the water had risen, his whole body leaned towards her, like some withered thing towards the sun. And Jyn tilted her face down, just as she’d lifted it up in the hangar on Yavin. Inverted, but mostly the same, her eyes as soft and wondering as his must be. He couldn’t identify her expression beyond that, beyond good, because nobody—nobody except Jyn, rather—had ever looked at him that way in his life. Like he was the star and not her.
This time, though, her smile didn’t tremble on her lips the way it had before, uncertain of itself. She grinned down at him, bright and triumphant.
Nothing could have prevented him from smiling back, feeling it invade his entire face. “Jyn—”
This was why Jyn had offered so little protest, he understood now. She must have remembered that she took the datachip before Cassian could do it. She’d put it in her pocket, and she was so much smaller that the water might easily have swamped the little datachip. This miserable place might have killed Kay more thoroughly than any stormtrooper, and Jyn had thought of it, before herself.
“Jyn,” he murmured, so little between them that she must feel her name on her own mouth, “Jyn, I—”
Neither looked away. They stood here, trapped with four other people, surrounded by stinking trash and quite possibly the rotting corpse of a man they’d murdered, and he couldn’t think of anything but looking at her and kissing her.
“Cassian,” she breathed, and he did feel it: his name, his name on both their mouths as they leaned that fractional distance closer. The others were still shouting and laughing in relief, maybe seeing them and maybe not, and who cared—
“Listen to them,” wailed the droid. “They’re dying, Artoo! Curse my metal body! I wasn’t fast enough!”
Inevitably, Jyn and Cassian opened their eyes, pulling back enough to meet each other’s glances. She looked exactly how he felt: annoyed, amused, and awkward, all at once. With equally resigned sighs, they stepped apart.
The droid, Threepio, was still in vapours.
“It’s all my fault! My poor master!”
Luke, to his credit, rushed to reassure the panicked droid that they’d made it. What sort of bastard could have programmed that one? Droids developed personalities through their lives, like everyone else, but almost never fear. He’d only seen it at the hands of careless or malicious programmers. Or amateur ones, simply re-imagining the traits they saw around them, without regard for convenience or utility.
“You did great,” Luke told Threepio, with every appearance of earnestness. Cassian’s evaluation of him ticked up. “Hey … hey, open the pressure maintenance hatch on unit number … where are we?”
Han disentangled himself and checked the panel. “Three-two-six-eight-two-seven.”
With that, Threepio—or more likely, the R2 unit who seemed to be accompanying him—managed to deposit them in an unused hallway. It wasn’t one that Cassian found particularly distinguishable from any other ones, but at least didn’t seem that far off from the section they did know.
All six of them emerged from the compactor like a herd of swamp creatures. Han and Luke did little to dispel the impression, shrugging off their armour like shells, while the other four did their best to wring the water out of their clothes. Jyn and Cassian had both lost their caps, though Jyn’s hair was at least still pinned back, while Leia adjusted her coils.
“If we can just ignore any more female advice,” said Han, “we ought to be able to get out of here.”
Cassian glanced up, genuinely startled. He’d thought the man an ass, but not that much of one. Dismissing him after one narrow-eyed look, he turned back to Jyn. She’d gone motionless at his side, jaw tight and face blank. Cassian, who knew perfectly well that she could and would maul a man over less, kept his hand on her arm.
“Can I have the datachip back?”
Jyn scowled, but her focus on Han broke. She pressed the chip into his hand.
“Thank you,” he said quietly.
She nodded, with a solemn glance that seemed to comprehend all it meant. Beyond them all, Leia turned her back on Han, trying to look haughty, and about halfway succeeding.
“Well,” said Luke, “let’s get moving.”