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Blood coats the inside of Jyn’s mouth. The cut is shallow, somewhere inside her lower lip, probably from that last elbow. It stings, but not enough to matter.
The floor beneath her is streaked with old dirt—sweat, oil, and blood. Across from her, the man she just dropped is groaning into the mat, one hand clutched to his ribs. Idiot. He should’ve quit three rounds ago.
The training pit echoes with grunts and shouts. Somewhere to her left, someone coughs up phlegm into a bucket. No one reacts.
It’s been three months since they’d bailed her out of an Imperial detention in exchange for her fighting skills. And while she doesn’t particularly love providing entertainment for petty criminals and bounty hunters, it’s still not the worst deal she’s ever taken. She gets food, a shoebox-sized room, and the promise of a clean set of documents at the end of her contract.
Plus, she gets to smash some ugly motherfuckers’ faces. What’s not to love?
She stretches her neck with satisfaction and starts gathering her things, already imagining how good it will feel to take a long, hot shower. But before she can walk out of the training pit and into the corridor leading to the refreshers, she hears the voice calling her.
“Hallik.”
Jyn’s head turns automatically. She spots the boss, Varko, leaning against the rail above the pit, arms crossed, lekku twitching with impatience. He never yells, he doesn’t need to; his voice is all edge and control, and everyone who has been here for longer than a week learns how to pick it up amidst the noise. The ones who don’t tend to stay much longer than that.
Jyn swears under her breath, grabs her jacket from the floor where she’d tossed it earlier, yanks it on over her sweaty shoulders, and takes the steps up from the pit two at a time.
When she reaches upstairs, Varko is standing at the edge of the balcony, surveying the pit below without expression. Two bodyguards stand a few steps behind him, as always. Jyn recognises both, though she’s only had the pleasure of breaking one’s nose so far.
“Hallik.” Varko doesn’t waste time. “You’re up tonight.”
Jyn doesn’t answer right away. She rolls one shoulder, feeling the clump of tight muscle bunched under her collarbone. She’ll need to work that out later, or it’ll slow her down. “Thought I wasn’t on schedule until next week.”
“You weren’t,” Varko says. “But plans changed. We’ve got someone new who wants in. I need you to take him for a test spin.”
She lifts an eyebrow, waiting for the rest.
“Calls himself Joreth Sward. Claims to be an ex-mercenary. Based on some of the stories he’s told, he sounds like he has potential, but no one from our network can vouch for him.”
“So, you want me to find out what he’s worth.”
Varko nods. They do this often; the pit doesn’t take outsiders unless they bleed for it first.
“Fine. Which one is he?”
Varko nods down toward the fighting floor. “Far side.”
Jyn braces her hands on the railing and scans the pit below. It takes a second to find him—there are at least two dozen bodies milling around down there, some warming up, some nursing fresh injuries—but eventually she spots a face she doesn’t recognise. Average height, average build, neutral expression. Nothing unusual at first glance.
But one thing is making him stand out: he doesn’t carry himself like someone trying to prove anything. He’s not stretching, not loosening his shoulders or bouncing on the balls of his feet like most new fighters do when they’re trying to psych themselves up. He’s just… still. Weight distributed evenly, back straight, head tilted slightly as he scans the room with a kind of detached awareness that makes Jyn’s instincts prickle.
“How long’s he been here?”
“Two hours,” Varko says. “Didn’t talk much. Put his name in with Marn at intake. Said he’d fight whoever we gave him.”
Jyn looks at him again. The newcomer’s gaze tracks one of the medics moving through the lower concourse, then follows a security droid as it stalks the perimeter on its programmed route.
Then his attention drifts upward, toward the balcony where she’s standing.
For a second, their eyes meet. Reflexively, Jyn stares him down, daring him to look away first. He looks right at her for a heartbeat, long enough that she registers the colour of his eyes, but then his gaze shifts past her, up the wall toward the ceiling, like she’s already been assessed and filed away. Like she’s part of the background, no more important than the stains on the mat.
Something about that indifference irritates her more than it should; it makes her feel like he’s immediately decided she’s not a threat. Luckily, though, she’ll soon have a chance to show him just how wrong he is.
She can’t stop the small smirk that curves her mouth at the thought of it.
“I’ll take him.”
“Good.” Varko doesn’t look at her, just keeps staring out over the pit. “Don’t hold back, but try not to kill him. If he’s any good, I want him alive for tomorrow.”
“And if he’s not?”
“Then make it clear he’s not welcome.”
*
The locker corridor stinks of sweat and adrenaline, a smell so ingrained in the walls that it’ll probably outlive the building itself. Jyn leans back against the wall near the prep benches, one boot propped up, shoulder braced, and tugs her gloves tight over her knuckles.
Across from her, a Rodian medic finishes wrapping the hands of some syndicate kid with too much upper body bulk and not enough brain to know when he’s outmatched. Jyn doesn’t bother watching them. Instead, she looks at the far side of the floor, through the open doorway that leads to the sectioned-off warm-up zone where tonight’s fighters are waiting.
He’s still not looking at her.
Joreth—or whatever the hell his name was—stands alone near the edge of the mats, running through slow shoulder rolls. He hasn’t so much as glanced in her direction once, even though she’s been watching him for a full three minutes now. He’s simply standing there, unhurried, like the fight is already over and he’s just waiting for someone to hand him his payout.
“Cocky or stupid,” comes a voice beside her. “What do you reckon?”
Jyn glances sideways without moving her head. Drenna—one of the older fighters, wiry and brutal, with a busted nose and an elaborate tattoo curling down her collarbone—leans against the wall next to her, sipping from a battered durasteel flask. She nods toward Joreth with her chin.
“Doesn’t matter. They both bleed the same.”
Drenna snorts into her flask. “You got a plan?”
“Yeah. The plan’s to smash his face in.”
“Shame,” Drenna grins. “Pretty face like that.”
“Not for long.”
Drenna chuckles, low and rough. “You’re in a mood tonight.”
Jyn pushes off the wall and rolls her neck. Her attention fixes on the man who still hasn’t bothered to acknowledge her existence.
Across the room, Joreth shifts his weight again, and for a moment, Jyn could swear that he knows, he knows that she’s watching, waiting for a reaction. That this whole act, this whole indifference, is some calculated bullshit designed specifically to get under her skin.
Well. If it is, then it’s working. And he’s about to find out just how much of a mistake that has been on his part.
*
The ring hums. Bodies are packed tight, heat rising like steam. The air smells like cheap alcohol and cheaper cologne, sweat and blood and the kind of desperate energy that only comes from people betting credits they don’t have on outcomes they can’t control.
Jyn blocks it all out. Her focus narrows to the man across from her.
Joreth steps through the ropes without any of the usual flex or preamble that new fighters tend to display. He’s stripped down to fighting clothes now: sleeveless top, gloves laced, torso slick with sweat that glistens under the lights. His face is a blank sheet, unreadable, almost vacant, except for the dark steadiness in his eyes. Not disinterest, she realises now. Focus.
“Main event!” the announcer’s voice crackles through the speaker, distorted and too loud. “On the left: Liana Hallik. You know her name. You know her fists, some of you more intimately than you’d like.” There’s laughter, a few elbows thrown, a whistle. “And facing her tonight, we have our fresh blood: Joreth Sward. Remember this face, everyone. It may look very different in a few minutes.”
More laughter. Someone in the back yells, “Put him in the dirt!”
Jyn steps into the centre without being called. The mat shifts under her boots, uneven with wear and old blood worked into the fibres.
Joreth crosses the ring to meet her, and his focus is on her now—exclusively, intently, like he’s making up for ignoring her earlier. It’s not cocky, the way he stares. It’s worse. It’s measured, clinical, like she’s being sorted and analysed and slotted into some mental filing system.
But whatever label he’s putting on her in his head, she’s about to shatter it. She’ll make damn sure of that.
The ref steps between them. “Rules’re simple. No elbows, no knees. I say break, you break. Now touch gloves and get ready.”
Jyn doesn’t wait for him to finish. She steps in, extends her glove with enough force to make the gesture feel like a threat. “You’ve still got time to step down and save yourself the bruises.”
Joreth meets her glove with his own, and holds her stare.
“I prefer to earn them.”
“Then you’re about to earn a full set.”
There’s a flicker at the corner of his mouth—almost a smile, there and gone. But she sees it, files it away, and immediately wants to wipe it off his face with her fist.
The bell rings.
Game on.
She starts circling, and he mirrors her, both of them testing distance. Jyn watches his feet, trying to read his stance—weight distribution, tension, any twitches or tells that might hint at his first move. There’s barely anything to grab onto, which is its own kind of information. But he’s watching her, too, tracking her shoulders, her hips, the shifts in her posture.
Shame, the words echo in her head. Pretty face like that.
Too bad.
Jyn hits first. A jab, then a cross aimed at his ribs. He parries both, but doesn’t counter, just absorbs the blows, sidesteps, resets his stance like he’s got all the time in the world.
She tries again: feints left, delivers a right cross. He pivots and lets her fist pass his jaw, near enough that she feels his body heat. Fast. Faster than she’d anticipated. For a split second, her positioning is all wrong, and she senses him just off her left side, too close for comfort. She spins, and he’s already moved again, out of reach, ghosting her like smoke.
The crowd starts to get restless. They don’t want to watch them shadowboxing; they want blood.
And blood she intends to deliver.
She picks up the pace. Left hook, right cross, uppercut that’d take his jaw off if he were stupid enough to still be there.
But he isn’t. He’s never where she leaves him. It’s infuriating.
“Did you come here to fight or to dance? Should I call for the musicians?” she barks, breath already coming quicker than she’d like. Her words earn a rough laugh from the audience members closest to the ring, but Joreth doesn’t answer. He keeps moving, circling, never more than a sidestep from her reach but somehow always out of it.
He’s reading her, she realises. The way a mechanic listens for engine trouble in an X-wing.
She clenches her teeth and closes in again: another feint, this time dropping low before driving a left hook at his ribs. And finally, it lands. He grunts, barely audible over the noise of the crowd, but it’s enough to fuel her satisfaction.
Encouraged, she launches at him again, faster now, angrier—chest, ribs, and both shots land clean. For a moment, she thinks she’s finally got the upper hand, that she’s cracked whatever twisted strategy he’s been running.
But her next hook misses as he ducks beneath it, and then immediately surges forward into her space.
He grabs her shoulder before she can reset, and they lock up in a clinch, her forearm pressed against his chest, trying to push him away and break free. His breath is warm against her temple, close, too close, and she smells him properly for the first time—salt and fabric and something grounded that cuts through the stink of the pit and registers in a way she absolutely does not have time to process right now.
And then he says, low enough that only she can hear: “Did you really think that would work?”
He’s mocking her. The son of a bitch is mocking her.
She snarls and pushes him away, channelling all of her strength, all of her fury into the shove. He lets go of her and staggers back a step, maybe two, and for a heartbeat they’re both standing, breathing hard, eyes locked.
I’m going to break you, she tries to telegraph with her stare. Not just win. Break. You.
She attacks again, a flurry of desperate, ugly blows. One connects—a hook that catches him above the ear—and she feels the impact in her arm, sharp and satisfying. His head snaps to the side, and for a fraction of a second, she thinks she’s got him.
But then his weight shifts, and before she can reset, his fist drives into her solar plexus.
The air leaves her lungs. She staggers back, one hand shooting out to grab the nearest rope for support. Pain radiates through her core, and she has to fight the instinct to double over and gasp for air.
No. She won’t give him that satisfaction. She is going to win this.
She drags herself upright, pulling air through gritted teeth. The crowd is roaring now, sensing blood, and she uses their noise to anchor herself, to drown out the pain and the ringing in her ears.
Joreth hasn’t pressed his advantage. He’s standing a few feet away, weight balanced, watching her. There’s a red mark blooming above his ear where her blow landed earlier, and she takes a grim satisfaction in that, at least.
They start circling again, but the dynamic has shifted. He is no longer assessing her, no longer waiting. He’s hunting.
She spits blood onto the mat—that cut inside her lip has opened up again—and wipes her mouth with the back of her glove. The crowd is a wall of sound around them, but she barely hears it anymore. Everything has narrowed down to the space between them, to the rhythm of his breathing and hers, to the way his weight shifts with each step.
She doesn’t wait for him to come to her. She launches forward, low and fast, feinting right before driving a left hook toward his jaw. Unsurprisingly, he avoids it—but as he does, he makes his first mistake. A stupid, textbook mistake. His left drops just a fraction too low as he counters, leaving his jaw wide open for exactly the kind of shot she’s been waiting for.
That’s it. That’s all she needs.
Jyn doesn’t hesitate. She pivots, plants her back foot, and drives her right fist straight into the exposed line of his face.
The impact is beautiful. Her glove connects with the hard ridge of his jaw, and she feels the shock travel up her arm, through her shoulder, into her chest. His head snaps back, and for one glorious instant, she sees something crack in that mask of his, something human and raw flash across his features.
He stumbles, one foot sliding back on the sweat-slick mat as his balance falters.
Got you.
The next few seconds blur together. She registers Joreth hitting the mat hard. She registers the audience going absolutely wild around them. She registers the ref shouting, counting off with one hand raised in the air.
Jyn doesn’t move; she just watches Joreth, watches the thin line of blood trickling from a split on his cheekbone, travelling down toward his jaw and catching in his stubble. She watches him push himself up onto one elbow, heaving for air, his chest rising and falling in sharp, unsteady bursts.
Three. Four. Five.
He’s not getting up. She knows it, she can see it in the way his arm shakes under his weight as he tries to force his body to cooperate.
Six. Seven.
He blinks slowly, then exhales through his nose. And then he looks up at her through the mess of his sweaty hair.
And smiles.
His split lip pulls crooked. Blood runs over his chin. He’s staring at her, watching her stand over him with an expression that does not belong on the face of a man who has just been beaten into the ground. His chest is still heaving, sweat-slicked and trembling, but his mouth curves wider.
Heat floods Jyn’s gut before she can stop it, and her pulse kicks hard in her throat. She wants to look away. She doesn’t.
Eight. Nine. His eyes haven’t left her face.
Ten.
Jyn’s arm is raised. The name “Hallik “gets shouted, distorted by the feedback of the speakers. She’s won. It’s clean, undeniable, one of her sharper finishes in weeks. She should feel that familiar satisfaction.
But all she feels is off-balance.
Joreth stays on one knee. Blood smears his collarbone, bright against his white shirt. Finally, he looks down, wipes his mouth with the back of one glove, checks his split lip like he’s noting the damage for later, and then gets to his feet.
She watches him step through the ropes and retreat across the floor, past the med tech waiting with a cold pack and a datapad, past the raging crowd. He doesn’t stop to look back.
It takes Jyn several long moments to realise her hand is still clenched into a fist at her side.
*
Usually, a cold shower is the best way to clear her head after a fight. But somehow tonight the water does nothing for her.
What is it about this fight? Why does it barely feel like a victory at all?
She leans forward under the shower head, letting the water beat down on the back of her neck. Soap stings her split knuckles where the skin is broken, and her blood runs pink before the water washes it away. Every bruise is beginning to come alive now, and she starts to register the pain that had previously been masked by adrenaline. Good. Pain means she earned it.
But did she earn it, though?
She keeps replaying the fight in her head: how he’d dodged everything she threw, then suddenly turned her own rhythm against her. Then, his arms trapping her in that clinch, close enough that she could feel his breath on her face. And then that one fatal opening in his guard which had appeared at exactly the right moment, almost gift-wrapped for her to find.
He was good. Better than anyone she’d faced in this ring. And yet, he lost.
It doesn’t make sense. Everyone makes mistakes, sure, but his had felt… wrong. Out of place.
Like he’d let her win.
The thought makes her pulse spike again, almost back to where it’d been during the fight. Would he really dare? Was this some kind of fucked-up power play?
No. Maybe?
She rinses her teeth, spit swirling red in the basin, and yanks a half-ruined towel off the hook.
If it was a power play, then it’s clearly fucking working. It almost completely ruined the joy of winning, because what if she didn’t really win, what if she didn’t earn it, what if, for some twisted reason, he handed her that win?
And what was it about that strange smile at the very end, right after she’d knocked him down? Was it some kind of sick joke? Another way to mock her? And, more importantly, why did she find it so hard to look away?
Jyn scrubs the towel over her face harder than necessary, like she can wipe the memory off. But the image is burned into her eyes now: that crooked, bloodied smile, those dark eyes...
Fuck.
She throws the towel at the locker door so hard it comes back at her, swears again under her breath, and throws on the first shirt within reach.
Fuck it. She’s not leaving it like this.
*
“What the fuck is your problem?”
She opens the door to his assigned locker room so hard that it slams the adjacent wall. Joreth is standing with his back to her, packing things into his bag—an empty water bottle, a datapad with its screen just powering down, a compact medkit. What she mostly focuses on, however, is the fact that he doesn’t even fully turn around to face her. Just looks back over his shoulder and calmly raises one eyebrow. Like a bored shopkeeper interrupted during inventory. Like she doesn’t even deserve his full attention.
She crosses the small room in three strides and shoves his shoulder hard enough to make him step sideways.
Now he turns. “Can I help you?”
“You can start by explaining what the hell that was.”
“A fight.” He zips his bag. “You won. Congratulations.”
The casual dismissal makes her want to break something. Preferably his face. “Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
Joreth leans back against the locker, arms crossed. Water’s still dripping from his hair, tracking down his neck and disappearing under his collar. There’s a cut on his lip, dark and swollen where her fist had connected.
“You dropped your guard,” she says. “Clean opening, right there for me.”
“Yes, I made a mistake. You don’t have to rub it in.”
“Bullshit. You gave it to me. I want to know why.”
He pushes off the locker. He’s close now, close enough that she can smell soap and sweat and something else underneath that makes her throat go dry.
“You saw an opening,” he says. “You are a good fighter, so you took it. That’s all there is to it.”
His eyes drop to her mouth. Only for a second, but she catches it.
Heat shoots through her, and some of that is anger, but there is a new, strange feeling creeping in. For some reason, she begins to notice the water caught in the hollow of his throat. The way his breathing has gone uneven. The way he’s looking at her.
She doesn’t know if she wants to hit him or—
No. Focus.
“Liar,” she manages.
“You want a rematch, Hallik, you know where to find me. Clearly.”
He goes for the door, but she blocks him with her body. They are now practically pressed together, less than arm’s reach, and Jyn is suddenly very aware of that fact.
“Fuck you,” she says, trying very hard to invoke some bite into her voice. “You think I’ll let you get away without an explanation?”
He tilts his head, then smiles. And it’s that same smile from the ring.
“No,” he replies. Slowly. Quietly. “I don’t think you will.”
There’s no single moment where she decides. It just happens.
The kiss is not gentle. It’s teeth and heat and tension finally snapping. It’s her grabbing the front of his shirt and dragging him into it, like she’s taking back what’s hers. He meets her without hesitation, his hand finding her waist with enough pressure to tell her that this time, he’s not backing down, not pretending.
“You dropped your guard again,” she murmurs against his mouth as they break apart for a breath. He flashes his teeth, and next thing she knows, her back is hitting the wall behind her, and she can feel his body, all of it, pressed into hers as he kisses her again. The collision with the wall knocked most of her breath from her lungs, and with his lips hungrily on her, she quickly runs out of air almost completely—but that doesn’t matter. The light-headedness only heightens all of the sensations, all of the madness, all of the hunger.
“Is that better?” he says, voice scraping with roughness she hasn’t heard in him before.
“A bit. But it still feels like you’re holding back.”
He exhales through his nose, and his eyes flick over her face like he’s making a decision.
“Oh?” he murmurs, brushing his mouth along the edge of her jaw now—close, maddeningly close, but not yet kissing. “You want me to stop holding back?”
“Unless you’re afraid you can’t keep up.”
His hand cups her face, thumb grazing the bruise on her jaw. He leans in, hovering over her lips, and she feels his words before she even hears them: “You think I can’t?”
Prove it, she wants to say, but before she can, his mouth is on hers again.
“How do you want this?” he asks in between kisses.
There’s a pause. Jyn feels a drop in her chest, like the lurch before a freefall. Her fingers curl tighter in the front of his shirt, grounding herself.
“You spent all that time in the ring analysing me. You tell me.”
There is a new spark in his eye, sharp, hungry. His hand shifts under her shirt, fingertips tracing the ridge of her ribs. His eyes don’t leave hers.
“In the ring, you struck first. Fast. Aggressive,” he says, voice low and even, like he’s narrating footage. “You set the pace. Which is exactly why I can’t let you do that just yet, if I want to win this round.”
His hand is now sliding higher, fingertips brushing the underside of her breast, unhurried, deliberate. Infuriatingly so.
“So,” he continues, mouth brushing the shell of her ear now, “I think my best chance is to start slowly. Make you wait. Make you feel every second until you give up the control.”
His warm hand cups her breast now, thumb grazing across her nipple.
“You think you’ve got me figured out,” she says.
“I think I’m getting there.” His thumb circles again, slow, maddening. “Unless you want me to stop?”
“Don’t you fucking dare.”
His mouth curves against her skin, before he pulls back just enough to look at her.
“You’re stalling,” she says.
“I’m savouring.” His hand shifts, slides down, and her stomach muscles clench in anticipation as his palm traces the line of her waist, the curve of her hip, the edge of her waistband. “You know, when I fight someone as good as you, I like to take my time. Appreciate the details.” His fingers hook into her waistband, tugging ever so slightly. “So now that I’ve got another chance to watch you up close, I’m not going to rush it, either.”
His fingers slip past the waistband, and it takes every last bit of Jyn’s self-control not to grab his hand and move it down even further.
“Annoying… bastard,” she pants out.
“So I’ve been told.”
His fingers move again, finally, sliding lower through the heat of her, and the sound she makes is somewhere between a gasp and a curse. He finds her slick, ready, and she feels his breath catch against her temple as he finds exactly the right spot.
“That’s it,” he murmurs, almost to himself, and his fingers begin to move in slow, deliberate circles that make her vision blur at the edges.
Jyn’s head falls back against the wall, her hips rock forward into his hand, and she hears herself make a sound that would embarrass her if she had any capacity left for shame.
As if finally responding to her torment, Joreth’s pace shifts. His fingers press deeper, curling inside her, and another sharp cry escapes her lips before she can bite it back. He’s not teasing anymore. He’s taking her apart piece by piece, and she loves every second of it, every small twitch, every sensation.
“Yes,” she gasps, and her fingers claw at his shoulders. She feels the muscles beneath, their tension, and it only makes her want more—more of this, more of him.
“Look at me,” he says, and it’s not a request.
Her eyes snap open. He’s watching her with that same intensity from the ring, but stripped of all pretence now. All that is left is heat, and want, and something that looks almost like wonder.
She holds his stare. Refuses to look away, even as his fingers curl again and her whole body shudders with the force of what’s about to happen.
And, stars, she definitely knows what’s about to happen.
“There you are,” he whispers, and his thumb presses down as his fingers curl again, and Jyn shatters.
The orgasm slams through her like a shockwave, whiting out everything but the pressure of his hand. She doesn’t make a sound—her throat seizes, her whole body going rigid against the wall. Joreth keeps the pressure steady, fingers coaxing out every last tremor until she is shaking, boneless, her weight sagging against him.
And when she finally comes back to herself, it’s in fragments. The buzz of the overhead light. The rough grain of the wall against her shoulder blades. The sound of her own breathing, ragged and too loud in the small room. And his hand, still pressed against her, fingers gentling now, easing her down from the high.
“I think it’s safe to say I won this round,” he murmurs against her throat, and once again she feels the smug curve of his mouth against her skin.
Jyn’s laugh is breathless, ragged.
“You really think I’m letting you go without a rematch?”
*
When she wakes up the next morning, the room is still dark, and for a long, disorienting moment, she tries to recall the events of the last night.
Then the ache settles in, and the night comes back in fragments. The fight. The locker room confrontation. The taste of his skin, the way he kissed her, the way he made her come completely undone.
Then bringing him upstairs, to her room. And everything that came after.
Jyn blinks slowly, letting her eyes adjust to the light filtering through the grime-coated window. The air smells like recycled heat and skin and something else she can’t initially place—an unfamiliar scent in a space that’s been hers alone for months now. Him.
She turns her head. He’s still there.
Joreth lies on his side, facing away from her, one arm tucked under the flat excuse for a pillow. His breathing is even and deep. The sheet has slipped down to his waist, and in the grey light she can trace the marks on his back: old scars, fresh bruises.
She should leave, slip out before this requires words. That’s the smart move. That’s what Liana Halik would do.
But Jyn doesn’t.
Instead, she finds herself cataloguing details she has no business noticing. The way his hair curls slightly at the nape of his neck. The small mole just below his shoulder blade. The way his ribs expand and contract.
Stop it.
This is nothing. This was nothing. Simply adrenaline and anger and two people who happened to be in the same place at the same time. Bodies finding an outlet for tension that had nowhere else to go. It doesn’t mean anything, doesn’t have to mean anything.
Except.
Except she can still feel the ghost of his hands on her skin. The way he’d slowed down when she needed him to without being asked, sped up when she’d most wanted it. The way he’d watched her face like her reactions mattered more than his own pleasure, like learning what made her come undone was more important than chasing his own release. The way he’d said her name—her fake name, but still—like it was worth remembering.
It’s a dangerous territory.
Jyn forces herself to sit up as quietly as humanly possible, and swings her legs over the edge of the mattress, feet finding the cold floor. Her clothes are scattered across the small room—shirt crumpled nearby, trousers kicked halfway under the bed frame. She reaches for the shirt first, pulling it on in silence, the fabric irritating the skin that is still sensitive from his mouth, his hands, his—
Don’t think about it.
Behind her, the mattress shifts, and she hears a soft exhale. She freezes, one hand on her waistband, listening.
“You’re not as quiet as you think you are.”
Shit.
“Wasn’t trying to be,” she lies.
The mattress creaks again. He’s probably shifting position, propping himself up to watch her flee like the coward she apparently is. She can picture it without looking: the sheet pooling at his hips, one arm braced behind him for support, his eyes tracking her. She doesn’t give him the satisfaction of confirming the image.
“You’re leaving?”
“Have to check in with Varko,” she says, unsure why she’s bothering to explain herself to him at all. “Debrief about the fight, get my payout.”
“Right,” he says. There’s a pause, weighted and uncomfortable, before he continues: “Why do you fight for him anyway?”
She finally turns, just enough to catch him in her peripheral vision. He’s exactly where she’d pictured him—propped on one elbow, sheet low on his hips, watching her with that same measured calm that’d made her want to break his face less than twenty-four hours ago. The bruise along his jaw has darkened overnight, purpling at the edges. She’d put that there. The thought sends something complicated and unwelcome through her chest.
“What’s it to you?”
“Just curious.” He shifts. The sheet slips lower, but she forces her eyes to stay on his face. “A fighter like you could go anywhere. Why Varko?”
Jyn finishes with her belt, fingers stilling on the buckle for just a moment. She considers her standard responses, but somehow none of them feel right in that moment.
“Varko got me out of Imperial detention a few months back,” she says finally, keeping her voice flat and factual. “I owe him.”
“Can’t you just leave? It’s not like he’s going to chase you across the galaxy.”
Jyn clenches her jaw as she busies herself with finding her boots, shoving her feet into them with more force than strictly necessary.
“He has connections that can get me clean documents,” she says to the floor. “New identity. A few more fights and I’m clear.”
“Right.”
“What?” she asks, finally turning to face him fully. “You got an opinion you want to share?”
Joreth holds her gaze for a beat too long, like he’s weighing whether whatever he’s thinking is worth the fight it’ll start. Then he shakes his head and swings his legs over the edge of the bed. The sheet falls away entirely, and Jyn forces herself not to look, not to remember how all of that had felt under her hands in the dark.
“Nothing,” he says as he reaches for his clothes. “Just seems like a lot of trust to put in someone who runs an illegal fighting pit for profit.”
“I don’t trust him.” The words come out sharper than she planned, with an unintentional defensive edge. “I trust the transaction. He gets what he wants—someone who brings in crowds and credits. I get a clean slate and a way out. Simple.”
His eyebrow twitches, and he looks like he’s about to say something else, but then a quiet rhythmic beeping cuts through the tension in the room. Joreth’s head snaps toward the sound: his bag, still slumped against the far wall where he’d dropped it last night.
Jyn watches his expression shift. It’s subtle, but she catches it: the way his jaw tightens, the brief narrowing of his eyes.
He crosses the room in three strides, crouches beside the bag, and pulls a small comm unit from an interior pocket. The beeping stops the moment his thumb finds the switch.
“Problem?”
“No.” He doesn’t look at her, doesn’t take his eyes off the comm display. His thumb moves over the surface, silencing something or acknowledging receipt, and then he’s shoving the device back into his bag with movements that are just a hair too quick to be casual. “I’d better get going. Already overstayed my welcome.”
“Right.” Jyn folds her arms across her chest, watching him move with barely-contained urgency that sets off alarm bells in the back of her mind. “And here I thought you’d at least stick around for the awkward morning-after small talk.”
He doesn’t even acknowledge the attempt at humour. Just tugs his shirt over his head and reaches for his boots.
Whatever. This is what she wanted, anyway.
Right?
“Well. Safe travels then, I guess.”
She’s already turning toward the door when his voice stops her.
“Come with me.”
She pauses, hand already on the door frame, fingers curling against cheap metal. “Well, that’s new. Didn’t take you for the clingy type. Sorry, but I’m not really interested in long-term—”
“Liana. You need to come with me. Now.”
Something about his tone makes her stop completely. There is an urgency underneath, like he’s holding back something that wants to claw its way out of his throat.
“Excuse me?”
Joreth is on his feet now, boots half-laced, shirt still untucked. He meets her stare, and suddenly, cold crawls up her spine. Suddenly, she begins to understand.
“Who are you?”
“Varko has been selling weapons to the Empire,” he says, words coming fast now like he’s racing against some invisible clock. “Advanced munitions, ship components. I’ve been gathering evidence for weeks. The original plan was to wait for the next supply drop, then pull him and his entire network in one coordinated sweep. But the timeline just moved up.” He gestures sharply at his bag, at the comm unit still blinking inside. “We’ve got maybe twenty minutes before this place turns into an active battlefield.”
The world tilts, and then refocuses too sharp.
“You’re a spy.”
It’s not a question, and he doesn’t reply. He just stares at her with that same steady gaze, except now it carries something else. Something that looks almost like regret.
Of course. It explains everything: the way he just showed up out of nowhere fighting like a hardened pro; the way he watched everything and everyone; the way he didn’t care about winning, and how he disappeared right after the fight. The datapad he was so quick to pack up when she found him last night. And…
Oh.
“So last night… That was all just part of—”
"No, Liana." He takes a step toward her, and she immediately steps back, spine hitting the door frame hard enough to hurt. He stops, hands raised slightly in what’s probably meant to be a placating gesture. “That wasn’t part of any plan. I already had all the intel I needed before you came to me last night. I was on my way out...”
“Then why? Why the fight? Why… the rest of it?”
“The fight was my way in. I had to be inside the organisation to access Varko’s private systems, to get the physical evidence we needed. But you…” He stops, jaw working like he’s physically fighting to get the next words out. “What happened after the fight, that wasn’t— That was just… me. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry,” she repeats, tasting each word individually, finding them all bitter. “That’s supposed to make me feel better somehow?”
“No.” He doesn’t try to close the distance she’s deliberately put between them. Smart man. “But that's the truth.”
The truth. She almost laughs at that, but the sound dies in her chest, strangled by something that feels too much like the ache she’d thought she’d successfully buried years ago under layers of scar tissue and deliberate isolation.
“I know you’re angry,” he continues. “And you have every right to be. But right now, in this moment, you have to come with me.”
“Don’t. Don’t you dare tell me what I have to do.”
“I’m not—” He stops, exhales hard through his nose, and she watches his hands flex and release at his sides. “I’m not giving you orders. I’m telling you what’s coming. In approximately fifteen minutes, this building is going to be crawling with Alliance operatives. It’s going to get ugly.”
“Well then, thank you so much for the warning.” She pushes off the door frame, moving past him toward the durasteel locker where she keeps her emergency bag. Fifteen minutes. She can be out of the building in five, disappear into the undercity in ten. She’s done it before, she’ll do it again, and she’ll do it without his help or his pity or whatever the hell this is. “I’ll make sure to clear out before your friends arrive.”
“I can help—”
“I don’t need your fucking help,” she snaps, yanking open the locker with enough force to rattle its cheap hinges. Her go-bag is where she always keeps it, packed and ready for exactly this kind of situation. She grabs it, checks the weight by pure reflex. Credits, ration bars, her vibroblade, a change of clothes. Everything she needs.
“I’m sorry,” he repeats, and the sadness in his voice—surely fake, like everything else—makes her want to punch him all over again. “You said you needed a new identity. There’s a woman named Zeera who operates out of Bay 7 at the main spaceport. She owes me favours. Tell her Fulcrum sent you, and she’ll set you up with a clean identity.”
“Fulcrum, huh?” A stupid fake name for a stupid fake man. She wants to spit it back at him, to tell him exactly where he can shove his charity and his guilty conscience. But the reality is that she might actually need it. It’s not like she’s getting those documents from Varko anymore, not after his entire operation gets burned to the ground in—she glances at the chrono on the wall—about thirteen minutes.
“And Liana…” She hears rustling behind her. “If you ever change your mind about any of this, you can use this to contact me directly.”
She looks back over her shoulder and finds him holding out a small encrypted comm unit between two fingers. His face has gone carefully neutral again, but his eyes haven’t quite caught up to the rest of his expression yet.
She doesn’t take the chip. Instead, she turns back to her bag and pretends to check the contents again, even though she knows exactly what’s in there.
“I don’t want anything from you.”
“I know.” She hears him set the chip down on the edge of the mattress. “Good luck, Liana. I mean that.”
She doesn’t watch him leave. Doesn’t turn around when she hears his footsteps cross the room, doesn’t flinch when the door opens and closes behind him with a soft click that sounds far too final for something that was supposed to mean nothing.
She counts to thirty in her head after the door closes. Then sixty. Only when she’s absolutely certain he’s gone does she let herself breathe properly again.
The room feels different now, smaller somehow. The rumpled sheets on the mattress look like evidence from a crime scene, and the air still carries traces of him—that clean, grounded scent she’d noticed in the ring yesterday, now mixed with something sharper and more complicated. Sweat and sex and the bitter scent of lies.
Jyn shoulders her bag and crosses to the door, then stops.
The comm chip sits on the edge of the mattress exactly where he left it. But next to it, there’s also a blaster pistol that definitely wasn’t there before. An A-180—the kind that Rebel officers carry because it’s compact, reliable and adaptable. She recognises the model from her time with Saw, from a lifetime ago when she still believed in causes and the people who fought for them and hadn’t yet learned that everyone leaves eventually.
She doesn’t need it. She’s got the vibroblade in her bag, she’s got her fists, and she’s survived this long without accepting charity from strangers who lie for a living.
But the pistol sits there gleaming dully in the grey dawn light, and she can’t stop staring at it.
It’s a good weapon. The kind of thing you give someone when you actually give a damn whether they survive what’s coming.
No, she reminds herself. He doesn’t give a damn. Why would he?
She grabs the chip first, shoves it deep into her pocket without looking at it too closely, promising herself to throw it out the first chance she gets. Then the blaster. Her fingers close around the grip, and it fits her palm like it was made specifically for her.
She checks the power cell and finds it fully charged. Of course it is.
Bastard. Stupid, considerate, lying, handsome bastard.
She shoves the blaster into her waistband, pulls her jacket over it, and moves.
Three hours later, she’s already on board a transport offworld with a full set of forged papers. And somehow, the comm chip is still in her pocket.