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“Jyn,” Cassian pants. He’s leaning heavily on Melshi, who’s holding him upright so he can breathe. “Jyn.” He gropes for her with his hand not pressed to the blaster burn low on his right side. At least he’s stopped trying to tear off the bacta patch. He snags a fistful of her vest. His eyes are black and ferocious like when he hauled her away from her father’s holo message on Jedha; away from his dead body on Eadu. Now they’re overly bright and unfocussed. She smells blood every time he exhales.
“I’m here. I’m here, Cassian.” She cups his face with one hand. His skin is cold. His scrapes and bruises, the smear of blood on his lower lip, are the only colors on his face.
“Jyn,” he gasps again, then turns his face away to cough because he may be a lying bastard but he’s still a gentleman. He apologized for screaming in agony when Melshi had to help her drag him on board the shuttle; apologized again when he dropped like a dead weight and couldn’t move. Blood spatters her leg anyway and she couldn’t give less of a damn. He shudders in pain, drags in a breath and she’s sure she hears something grinding. There’s more blood on his lips. He’s slipping away from them, like accomplishing their mission gave him permission to die. “Don’t let…let them…” He drags in a breath. “Not the wall. Please. Don’t…” He pants, grips her vest. “Not a brick. Don’t let them.”
“We won’t, Cassian,” Melshi says, as if he understands what Cassian’s saying.
Bewildered, terrified, she glances helplessly at Chirrut and Baze. Baze is sitting leaning against the opposite wall, exhausted and stiff with pain. Chirrut is laying on his side with his head on Baze’s thigh, littered with bacta patches. Jyn dreads to even guess at his injuries—Melshi said he was caught in an explosion—and Baze was shot several times rescuing him. But Chirrut and Baze are both awake and aware. She doesn’t think they’re dying, just like she doesn’t think Melshi or Bodhi are dying, though Melshi was shot twice himself and Bodhi’s badly burned.
They’re all covered with bacta patches. There’s plenty to spare, with so few of them left. She tried to refuse the one on her ankle, give it to Cassian instead, but Melshi had insisted there were enough.
They might be wasted on Cassian. Jyn’s trying not to think about that.
“It doesn’t matter what he says. Just keep him talking,” Baze tells her. Chirrut’s chin dips as he nods, though he isn’t speaking. But he’s alert behind his clouded eyes. Present in a way Cassian isn’t.
“Please,” Cassian wheezes. “I, I need… You have—"
“We won’t let them brick you, Cassian. Don’t worry,” Melshi says when Cassian can’t speak because the blood is choking him. He coughs again, scatters red. Melshi’s arms are as tight as he dares around Cassian’s chest and shoulders. His stubble scrapes Cassian’s cheek. “I remember.”
“Melshi?” Cassian blinks, hits his friend’s nose when he turns his head in panicked search for him. “Melshi…” He fumbles at Melshi’s fingers with his left hand, the one not fisted and shaking in Jyn’s vest. “Where… I can’t—”
“I’ve got you. It’s all right.” Melshi wrinkles his hurt nose, moves his fingers to make it easier for Cassian to latch on to them. Now Cassian’s holding Melshi and Jyn, like he’s tethering himself to them both, to survival.
“No one’s going to turn you into a brick, Cassian,” she tells him. She has no idea what he’s talking about, but Jyn is well-worn acquaintances with the kind of agony that tears reason to shreds. Cassian’s eyes are fathomless, staring through her like Galen did. I have so much to tell you. But her father died without telling her anything.
Not now. Not him. Not after what we just survived. She forces herself to smile, though inside she’s raging against the universe. “We’re going home, and—”
Cassian coughs, wracked, spitting blood. His next breath is a rattling, wet heave. He hauls his gaze back to Jyn, tears glittering on his lashes. Shakes his head. “Not Ferrix,” he wheezes. “Not…not the wall. Don’t let me die there. Please.”
“Don’t say that!” She slaps her hand around his wrist, holds so tightly she’s probably hurting him. “You’re not dying!”
“Jyn,” Melshi says.
“Please.” It’s like Cassian can’t hear her. His head lolls against Melshi’s neck. “There’s no one… Nobody left, who…who would—”
“Stop it!”
“Jyn,” Melshi repeats. A warning.
She snaps her gaze to him. “He’s talking about dying.”
“Let him talk.” Chirrut’s voice is weak but it carries. “He’s not dead if he’s still talking.”
“He’s wasting his energy,” she snarls. And Galen had spoken to her until he stopped breathing.
“We’re going to Yavin, Cass,” Melshi says next to his ear. “Yavin, remember? Not Ferrix. That’s home now. And there’s the river near the temple. Remember that?”
Cassian manages a nod, another breath. “You’ll…bring me there. Like…like I—?”
“Yeah,” Melshi rasps. He swallows. “Just like you said. We’ll take you to the river, wash you clean.”
She doesn’t want to hear this. Jyn does not want to hear this. Cassian didn’t save her so she can watch him drown in his own blood while he and Melshi discuss his funeral like they’re planning their next sabbac game. “You need to stop talking,” she says to him, desperate. “Please. Save your breath.” Don’t force me to listen.
Cassian blinks slowly at her. He’s moving less, weakening. His wrist shakes like a trapped bird in her hand. His lips move loosely before he speaks, like he’s groping for the words. “But…I need to…”
“It’s okay. We’re listening.” Melshi throws Jyn a glare that’s furious and stricken. “Tell me about the marks again. So I don’t forget.”
Cassian nods, then sucks in a couple more breaths, gathering his strength. He hauls his head up, groaning with effort, then coughs more blood. Melshi carries him through it, holding him while he heaves and grapples air into his lungs. Jyn rockets up to her knees still holding his wrist, but she doesn’t know what to do. She remembers helping him walk, how his ribs moved under her arm. There’s no place on his body she can touch without hurting him.
His lips are tinged blue under the blood when he finally stops coughing. He lets go of her vest and Melshi’s fingers and only her grip on his wrist keeps his right hand from falling. His left hand drops like an unattended stone. She lowers his hand to her leg, tries to knit their fingers. He fumbles for her palm instead, dragging his other hand over to hold hers still.
Cassian draws three lines with his index finger one after another, stacking them across her palm. “Faull.”
She folds her hand into a fist when he’s finished, as if she could keep his touch safe on her skin. “Faull.” She rolls the unfamiliar word over her tongue. “What does that mean?”
“Earth,” Melshi says when Cassian doesn’t answer.
Cassian reaches for her other hand, sways and almost keels over. Jyn grabs his arm. Cassian moans in pain but he doesn’t fall. Melshi shuffles painfully closer to steady him.
Jyn moves Cassian’s hand onto her left palm for him. “What’s next?”
He drags his finger through another three lines that rise and fall like waves. “Veezh,” he whispers.
“Veezh,” she repeats, trying to say it right. “That means water, doesn’t it?”
Cassian nods. He turns away to cough. There’s more blood every time. We’re wasting the bacta, she thinks hysterically, then bites the inside of her lip so she won’t let the sound of grief punch out of her throat. She’s not going to grieve, because Cassian isn’t dead. And they’ll be home soon. He’ll be fine.
He has to be fine.
He hauls in another breath with a sound like agony, then reaches to touch her face. Jyn leans closer because he can barely lift his arm, ignoring her own injuries’ howling. She has to close her eyes and concentrate to feel the three gently curving lines he draws on her forehead, each one ending in a loose spiral.
“Seyo.”
“Seyo,” she repeats. “Air.”
“Sky,” Melshi corrects her softly. “’Seyo’ means, ‘sky.’”
Cassian nods.
“Sky,” Jyn says. Her voice is reedy and her eyes sting. She ruthlessly shoves it down. There’s no time.
There was never time. She’s known him for less than three days, hurtled from reluctant allies to partners to something more than friends. And now maybe he’ll die before she learns if she could love him.
The pleased curve of Cassian’s bloodless lips is as warm and gentle as the light fading in his eyes. Jyn takes his wrist again when he can’t lift his arm. “Where?”
“Zheve,” he says, then frowns. He closes his eyes, digging deep. “Heart.”
She moves his hand to the center of her chest. “Here?”
He nods. “Ahlat.” This time the lines aren’t stacked. He draws one that goes straight, then curves up, then straight again. Then he adds two vertical parallel lines to the first straight horizontal one.
It’s hard to picture it, even when he draws it again. It’s not until Melshi says, “Animal,” that it makes sense.
“Those are legs!” Jyn exclaims.
Cassian grins at her but there’s blood on his teeth, new beads of sweat on his ashen face. He’s using up more strength than he has.
Jyn’s chest flares with anger. She wants to scream at him, slap his hand away, make him stop. But she bites her lip, lets the fury smolder inside her instead. As if the heat of it could somehow keep Cassian alive. “What’s next?” she asks, and her voice is steady and kind.
“Under your ribs. That’s the last,” Melshi answers for him. He’s gently rubbing Cassian’s side, beneath the wreckage of his ribs.
She straightens enough to move Cassian’s hand to her belly. “Here?”
He can’t speak, so he draws another vertical line, his fingertip trembling over the cloth of her shirt. He adds two more lines branching off each side of the first at an angle, like arms reaching for the sky. When he names the drawing, it’s barely more than a shaped puff of air. “Erdu.”
“Erdu,” Jyn says. “Tree? No, forest. It’s ‘forest,’ right?”
Cassian gifts her with another ghastly smile.
“Faull, veezh, seyo, ahlat, erdu,” Jyn says, voice thick. “I’ll remember.”
Cassian wheezes in relief, then sags back against Melshi. He tucks his head against Melshi’s neck like a child and closes his eyes, his chest heaving as he struggles to breathe. His fists go lax and she takes his hands before they slide away. His fingers are cold and loose in her own. There’s a blue tinge to his cracked and dirt-rimed fingernails.
Melshi sees it and his eyes widen in alarm. “Cassian,” he hisses. He slides his arms around him, shakes his shoulder gently, then less gently when Cassian’s mouth twitches but he doesn’t open his eyes. “Cassian!” He reaches for Cassian’s chest, knuckles curled for a sternum rub, then hesitates over the shattered bones. He goes for Cassian’s ear instead, tugging it sharply like his friend’s a recalcitrant child. Cassian doesn’t react. He barely twitches when Jyn pinches a fingertip, pressing down until the terrifying blue goes white.
“Cassian!” she shouts, and maybe he turns slightly towards her, but it’s not enough, he’s still sinking.
She’s about to do a sternum rub anyway, his ribs be damned, when Melshi barks, “Keef! Keef Girgo! Wake the krif up!” yanking on his ear.
Cassian makes a face and his eyes crack open. Jyn’s relief blasts out of her in a sob.
“Not.” Cassian’s gurgling breath heaves in and out. “Keef.”
“Yeah, well. You’re the damn jerkass who chose it.” Melshi’s grinning despite the tears in his voice. He strokes Cassian’s wet hair back from his forehead, his own hand shaking. “You don’t like it, you keep your damn eyes open. Got it?”
Cassian wheezes something too airless to be a reply. Fresh blood trails over his lips.
“Cassian.” Jyn pushes herself closer despite how it makes her wounds flare with pain. She’s more gentle than she wants to be when she cups his face in her hands. She’s frantic, but she won’t risk hurting him. “Cassian. Look at me. Look at me, Cassian.” She turns his head for him, steadies his gaze so he can meet her own. His eyes are shrouded, unfocussed in a way that makes her think of Eadu, her father’s gaze fixed and unseeing. “I promise…” She stops, violently pushes down grief she has no right to feel because he’s still alive. “I promise, we will do what you want. But only if you promise to stay here. You understand? You have to promise to fight as long and as hard as you can. I know it hurts,” she adds quickly, because his eyes are wide with incredulity and pain. “I know you’re tired. And…and you’ll be able to rest soon. Once we’re home on Yavin and you’re in medical. But we’re not home yet, so you need to promise me you’re going to keep fighting. Or…” She clenches her jaw. “Or I swear, I will take your cold, broken corpse to Ferrix myself and…and let them do whatever they want to you.”
“Jyn!” That’s Baze, gruff and dark with shock and anger. She’d forgotten he and Chirrut were there, they’ve been so quiet. She ignores him, just like she ignores Melshi’s gasp and how Chirrut hasn’t said anything at all.
She can’t ignore how Cassian’s eyes go even wider, then liquid with the betrayal he’s too weak to hide.
“Promise me,” she says again, forcing herself not to waver, to stay detached and cruel. He can forgive her later, or never as long as he lives, as long as he lives. “Promise me you’ll fight, and.” She swallows. They’re just words. She’s not prophesizing. “And…if you can’t anymore, I’ll do what you want. After.”
He blinks and tears run down his face, but he’s glaring at her the way he did after Eadu, when she’d called him a stormtrooper. It’s beautiful, because it means he’s still there; he can see her; he’s still alive.
“Promise me,” she says one more time.
He’s still glaring, still devastated, and he can’t breathe enough to speak. But he nods, and that’s enough. It’s everything.
“Thought I’d find you here.”
Jyn’s stupidly relieved she just wiped her eyes of tears even as she whirls up into a defensive crouch, then can’t help the full-body flinch when the too fast movement reignites her nearly healed wounds. She ignores the pain, yanking her blaster—Cassian’s blaster—from the holster at her thigh, has it aimed at Melshi the same instant she recognizes his face and the distinct cadence of his voice. It takes her a moment to lower the weapon all the same. She’s not used to this place, these people. She knows intellectually no one here is planning on hurting her, but she’s had to look over her shoulder almost her entire life. Old habits die hard.
“Whoa!” Melshi reels back with his palms up, then hisses in pain from his own wounds. “We good?” he asks a second later when she’s still pointing the weapon at him. He looks entirely calm, but he can’t hide the tightness around his mouth and eyes. He was almost as badly wounded as Baze, Jyn reminds herself. He probably shouldn’t be out here at all, let alone forced to stand stiffly while she threatens him.
She holsters her blaster and straightens so he can relax, then tries not to feel badly when she sees his grateful exhale as he drops his hands. He’d been one of the Pathfinders who’d pulled her off Wobani, after all; he knows her proclivities and still sneaked up behind her.
Well, to be fair he probably hadn’t. She could blame it on the noise of the river, but it’s not that loud. She just hadn’t been paying attention.
Less than three days on this base and you’re already going soft. She ignores Saw’s voice in her head, nods at Melshi in belated welcome. “Should you be out of medical?” she asks, just before it hits maybe there’s a reason he came looking for her and her blood turns to ice.
“They’re fine,” he says immediately, catching her fear. “Give or take,” he adds, grimacing. “The droid told me Chirrut can come out of the bacta tonight. Cassian sometime tomorrow. Hopefully.”
Jyn nods shakily, so relieved her legs are trembling. She sits back down on the bench, moving over so he can join her. She automatically presses her hand to the kyber pendant beneath her shirt, calming herself with the warm, comforting weight. “What about Baze and Bodhi?”
“Baze was still sleeping when I left.” He sits with another near-silent sigh, close enough for her to feel the heat from his body. It’s not terribly welcome on this hot, humid planet, but she doesn’t move farther away. He grimaces, then puts his palm over his side where Jyn guesses is the worst of his wounds. He slumps a little, dropping his hand. “Bodhi’s awake.”
Jyn takes a slow breath. “So he knows.”
“Yeah.” Melshi’s lips twitch unhappily. “Some of the surviving Red and Gold squadron pilots were with him when I left. So…”
He doesn’t finish; maybe he doesn’t know what to say. “They’ll understand,” Jyn completes for him.
It doesn’t make her feel less guilty about not being there for him herself. Bodhi’s a pilot, but he was on the ground with them right from the beginning. And she and Cassian are probably the closest things to friends he has right now. She should be with him, but that means she’d have to face whatever he’s feeling, and she can barely face her own. “How did you know I’d be out here?” she asks, because it’s the one safe thing she can think of to say.
Melshi gives a tiny jerk of a shrug, then juts his chin at the water. It’s shaded where they are under the thick curves of the tree branches, dim other than the scattered beams of sunlight. “It’s peaceful, and far enough from the base anyone who wants to find you’d have to work at it.” He makes a face that’s oddly apologetic. “And, I don’t know. It makes sense. After…” He winces again.
After. She can still feel the lines Cassian drew on her skin. Maybe it’s just that death seems so close right now, with more than a billion people wiped out of existence. First Jedha, then Scarif, now Alderaan. The galaxy is full to bursting with ghosts. She wonders how many of them will get farewell rituals, or even have someone to remember them.
“What did he mean, about being bricked?” Jyn asks, when the weight of the dead becomes too much to bear in silence.
She sees the tension creep into Melshi’s shoulders and he glances at her, eyes hooded and suddenly wary. “It’s how they memorialize their dead on Ferrix. They make their ashes into bricks, and put the brick in a wall. So they’re always part of the community.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.” She thinks it might be nice, even, to be part of something solid and useful even after you’re dead. A tangible legacy.
He relaxes, nodding in agreement. She realizes he was worried about how she’d react. “Better than anything I figured I’d get. Cass wasn’t born on Ferrix, though. He was adopted and brought there when he was nine. He said he never felt like he fit in. Like, he was never welcome there, no matter what he did. He didn’t want to be…trapped, I guess, somewhere he didn’t belong.”
Jyn grimaces because she knows what that feels like. She thought she had a home with her parents, but they both abandoned her, albeit unwillingly. Then she thought she had Saw and his Partisans, until her last name became inconvenient and Saw abandoned her too.
She hasn’t had a place to belong for most of her life. Until Cassian leaned close to her ear and whispered welcome home, and she realized maybe she could be.
“I was thinking about what he said on the shuttle,” Jyn says quietly, eyes on the river. “About what he wanted done with his body. I was trying to figure out how we could do it. Carry him here, then into the water.”
“Hoversled.” Melshi says it with such shocking immediacy she turns sharply to stare at him. He crosses his arms, nods at the water. “Getting him into the river’d be trickier without KayToo, but the bank’s not too steep here. I figure we could use a manual backboard from medical. Or one of the machinists could rig up something.” He glances around at the towering length of the trees. “They could make a stretcher out of wood, so we could use it in the water. And then carry him deeper in the forest and leave him on it.”
Jyn imagines Cassian’s body alone and vulnerable in the wilderness, nothing to show he’d mattered to anyone but cryptic designs on his skin. Until he decayed to bones and there’d be nothing to show at all. She shivers. “It’d be like we just left him behind.”
“The dead are always left behind. In the ground, above the ground, burned to ash, stuck in a wall, obliterated by the Force-damned Death Star…” Melshi shrugs his shoulders. “What’s the difference?”
“The difference is not being left to rot in the middle of kriffing nowhere,” Jyn snaps. “At least a wall is a place. At least…at least if you’re obliterated you’re not abandoned!”
“Doubt the Aldaraanians would agree with you about that.” His voice is dry acid. “It’s what he wants, Jyn,” he goes on more sharply. “You know how few of us have the luxury of even dying among people who give a mynock’s ass about us? Let alone getting the sendoff we’d want? If Cassian makes the final jump and his last kriffing request is to be covered in glockaw sauce and served to kriffing lizard monkeys and I can do that for him? You bet your ass I’m gonna—” He stops abruptly at the wet squeak that bursts out of her. “Are you laughing?”
She shakes her head helplessly because she is, except she’s not because it’s clawing out her throat as miserable, hiccupping sobs. “S’not funny,” she growls—she tries to growl—but it doesn’t work because her voice is thick and full of tears and she’s still kriffing laughing like she’s lost her mind.
“I know it’s not funny. You’re the one falling all over yourself,” Melshi grouses, though there’s not much heat in it anymore. She hears him shift closer, before there’s the tentative warmth of his palm on her shoulder. “You, uh, you okay?”
She shakes her head again, swiping furiously at her eyes. “It’s not funny.” Her voice is a humiliating creak. “He was dying and we’re just…just supposed to abandon his body! Like he’s nothing!”
Like her father, twisted and bloody in the rain before the Alliance bombs pulverized what was left of him.
Like her mother, prone and cold in the last moments of Jyn’s childhood.
Like Saw, crushed by the rage of a dying planet.
She’d left all of them behind. Abandoned them. And Cassian…
“He came back for me.” She wipes her nose with her sleeve, feeling horrifically young and out of control, and like she’s just ripped herself open.
“Cassian always comes back.” Melshi gives her shoulder a small, gentle squeeze. He takes a breath. “And I get it. The idea of him…of going on without him makes me sick. It keeps me up at night. And if I do what he wants, after…he won’t even have a marker. There’ll be no way for anyone else to know he even existed. And that’s…” He shakes his head. “I hate that part. The whole galaxy should know what he’s done for them. But, he’s my best friend. He saved my life. Kriff, he saved my soul. I’m here fighting the Empire because of him. And one of the only things he’s ever asked me is to give his body back to the forest if he dies. He doesn’t want a monument. He doesn’t care if he’s never remembered. He wants what they did on the planet where he was born. And I’d never deny him that just ‘cause I’m not comfortable with it. It’s not for me.”
Jyn gulps, clears more water out of her eyes. “Is that really how he thinks of it? He… It’s giving your body back?”
“Yeah.” Melshi nods. “He told me. The forest gave his people life. So, when they die they give their bodies back to it. And, a gift’s not abandoned even if you never see it again, right?” His lips curl into a small, sad smile. “You already gave it away.” He shrugs. “I don’t know. Doesn’t seem too bad, really.”
“I guess not,” Jyn murmurs. Better than what she was expecting on Scarif, definitely. Or for any of the ops Saw sent her on. The Partisans never went back for their dead. They only went back for their wounded if the risk of capture was too great to leave them. And the only ritual Saw allowed in the aftermath was a toast to the fallen.
There’s even a kind of beauty in it, giving someone’s body back to the entity who created them. Like coming full circle. But it’s still hard for her to imagine walking away, leaving his body cold, empty and alone. She doesn’t ever want to leave him behind.
And maybe that’s the crux of it, right there: She barely knows Cassian, but she can’t stand the idea of ever leaving him behind.
Her breath still shudders on her next inhale but she feels…not better, but, more solid. More like she can contain all the ugly, wounded things inside her again. “He really scared me.”
“Yeah,” Melshi says, rough. He squeezes her shoulder. “Me too.”
“He’d given up,” she goes on doggedly. “Like, he knew we’d succeeded and he’d just, stopped trying.” She looks at Melshi. “That’s why I made him promise. Because he was ready to die.”
“I know. It was still shitty.”
“I know.” She’d do it again in a heartbeat if it meant he’d live.
Silence settles between them, soft as the river’s whispering. Jyn kicks a stone into the water, smiles slightly at the heavy plonk when it sinks. She takes more breaths and now they’re not shuddering anymore. “I came here because he’s going to wake up tomorrow and I don’t know how to tell him the plans are gone. That Alderaan is gone. That everything we did was for nothing.”
“It wasn’t for nothing,” Melshi says instantly, with so much confidence she might believe him, except the speed of his negation underlines how little he believes it himself. He pulls his hand from her shoulder, crosses his arms again. “The Imps destroyed their entire archive because of us. They lost a whole base. That’s not nothing.”
“They destroyed a whole planet because we couldn’t stop them,” Jyn retorts. “And I have to tell Cassian. And.” She swallows. “He might give up again. It might be too much.” It feels like too much. She doesn’t say it.
Melshi shakes his head. “It’ll give him a new reason to fight.”
“What if it doesn’t?”
Melshi exhales, runs his fingers over his scalp. He suddenly looks as tired as she feels, as overwhelmed and disheartened. “Then we fight for him. You, me, the rest of Rogue one. Until he can fight for himself.” He moves farther away so they can see each other better when he looks at her. “All it takes is one spark to light a fire. And if he’s lost his, we’ll just give it back to him.”
Pretty words. Cassian is good at those too—Rebellions are built on hope—so was Saw. But words can be pretty without being true. “You make it sound easy. It’s not.” She looks down at her hands resting in loose, useless fists on her thighs. The new, pink scars. She has so many of them. “What if I don’t have enough fire left to give him?”
“It doesn’t have to be yours, Jyn.”
She jerks her head up. His soft, earnest eyes remind her so much of Cassian’s. “It doesn’t have to be just you,” he says. “You’re not alone. He’s not alone. He’s got all of us.”
Her smile is a crooked, bitter thing, but she’s startled she found one at all. “Not many of us left.”
“Didn’t you tell us that one fighter with a sharp stick and nothing left to lose can take the day?” Melshi grins, and maybe it’s as crooked and tenuous as hers, but at least it’s real. “You’re right, there’s not many of us left. But Cassian’s one of them. And…” His smile goes tight, breaks. “And maybe Scarif was for nothing. But, Cassian’s been that one fighter. And he organized a prison break that freed nearly five thousand men from a supposedly inescapable Imperial prison. It's true. He did that,” he adds at her slack astonishment. “And I remember what he looked like, the first day he was brought to our floor. So scared it was like he’d gone numb with it. Like, part of him was sure he was gonna die there, but the rest of him didn’t know it yet.”
Jyn frowns. “You just said he broke you all out.”
“Cause he did,” Melshi says flatly. “That’s what I mean. He didn’t die. He snapped out of the fear and a thirty-four days later we climbed out of that kriffing place and swam to freedom.
“That’s what he does, Jyn,” Melshi says. “He gets back up and he starts climbing. And he comes back.”
“He almost didn’t, this time.”
“Yeah. Well.” Melshi grimaces. “He’s tired. We all are. And, I don’t think any of us figured we were coming home from Scarif. I think…I think for a bit he just forgot there were still more chances.” His smile creeps back. “Luckily you’re just as much of a stubborn, devious asshole as he is.”
She smirks a little, though her heart’s not really in it and it fades quickly. She looks back at the water. “Sometimes you can’t afford to be kind.”
“No,” he says on a breath. “Sometimes you can’t.”
She bites the inside of her lip, watching his shoulders curve with sorrow, his hands clench just like hers. And she thinks how Cassian said each of the volunteers he’d gathered for her would be lost without a cause; not just him. For all his pretty words, Melshi is just as lost as she is. So she says: “Well, you should know, right? You called him ‘Keef Girgo.’ I mean, that’s just cruel.”
Melshi laughs, grins at her as he takes her offering. “That was the name he gave us on Narkina Five. He told me he was only gonna use it for a few weeks, while he was laying low on some tourist planet and trying to figure out what the hell he was gonna do with the rest of his life. And then he wound up in prison for a month and had to keep it.”
Jyn frowns. “What did he get arrested for?”
Melshi smiles ruefully. “Looking suspicious.”
Jyn blinks. “Bantha shit.”
“It’s not!” He looks gleefully offended. “That’s what he told me!”
Jyn blinks again. “He’s a spy."
Melshi spreads his hands, still grinning. “He was on vacation?”
She bursts out laughing, and then keeps laughing because she’s so grateful it’s not that awful, choking hysteria of before. Melshi laughs with her, and for a little while she feels as warm and buoyant as the sunlight dappling the water.
“Clearly I’m going to have to teach him how to not attract attention,” Jyn says loftily. “As well as choose better aliases.”
“I’m pretty sure the ship’s already launched on that one,” Melshi says. “He has another alias named ‘Aach,’ which sounds like a head cold.”
Jyn shakes her head in mock defeat. “Force save us, he’s hopeless.” She shifts closer to Melshi, until their sides touch from hip to shoulder. It’s hot, but she doesn’t mind. She’s experienced plenty of cold in her life, and she likes the reminder she’s not alone. None of them are.
Melshi puts his arm across her back, hooks his hand on her far shoulder. She doesn’t mind that either. “I’ll come with you, when he wakes up,” he says quietly. “We can tell him together.”
“Thank you,” she says, just as quietly. “We should go back soon, anyway. I want to be there when they wake Chirrut up. And I want to make sure Bodhi and Baze are all right.”
“Yeah. That’d be good.” He takes another breath. “Cassian will be okay. This isn’t going to break him. He scared the shit out of me too. But, he’s not ready to go yet. I know he’s not. The fight’s not over.”
And it just got harder, and maybe impossible to win. Jyn doesn’t say that. Instead she leans her head on Melshi’s shoulder, lets him take a bit of her weight. She opens her mouth, but then hesitates. She doesn’t want to make herself more vulnerable than she already feels, and she knows Melshi even less well than she knows Cassian. But Cassian trusts Melshi, and she trusts Cassian, and Cassian told her the Rebellion, these people, were her home.
She wants to have a home again. So she says, “If I die, scatter my ashes on Lah’mu. Near the ocean.”
For a moment Melshi goes still beneath her. “I’ll make sure to do that for you. If I can,” he says, taking this offering too.
“What about you?” she asks, because trust needs to go both ways.
“Shove my corpse into a missile casing and shoot it at a Star Destroyer.”
That surprises another laugh out of her. “Can I write something rude on it first?”
“Only if it’s really nasty.” She can hear his grin in his voice.
She grins back. “I’m sure I’ll think of something.”
“I’m sure you will.” He pats her shoulder like he has all the confidence in the world. Then he shifts, gently dislodging her, and stretches. He makes a small, unhappy noise like he forgot he’s still in pain. “Time to head back?”
“Yeah.” The shadows have lengthened while she’s been sitting with him. She gives a tight little nod, an even tighter smile. She’s always considered herself brave, but she’s dreading going back to the base, facing the others’ grief along with her own. Despair is a dark, clinging thing, chill and claustrophobic as a cave. But she hasn’t run out of chances yet, and maybe she still has enough fire to spare.
And she’s not alone, even if she doesn’t.
She gets up first and offers Melshi her hand, because he looks like he’s working up the courage to stand, and his sheepishly grateful smile shows her she’s right.
They start walking, picking their way carefully among the underbrush and loose stones. Melshi keeps hold of her hand, and that’s another thing she doesn’t mind.
They go back that way: together, hand in hand. Away from the shadowed forest and the sigh of the river, out into the bright Yavin sun.
END