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There has never been ‘permanent peace’ in human history. But, there have been plenty of ages with decades of peace. In short, my hope is, haughtily enough, for a few decades of peace in the future.
2 ABY, Felucian Jungle
When they started, they tried to be smart about this. They reasoned that if they had to be walking through the night, their best bet was to pace themselves, stay alert for rancors and gelagrubs and troopers, and reach the tiny spaceport by daylight before the last transport off planet for months. With the imperial presence on Felucia what it was, the Alliance couldn’t risk sending in another ship for them.
Of course, they originally meant to make the journey during the day, but after a scuffle and hasty retreat from their last place of residence (involving a bartender with an eye for bad credit lines, the head of an amateur militia, and a very angry tee-muss), they were delayed and had no choice but to walk through the night.
Jyn supposes the one advantage is that it’s much cooler at night, and she feels somewhat more energized without the humidity of the day closing in around her.
But that’s the only advantage. Hiking through the jungle in the dead of night is mostly just miserable, their headlamps bobbing ahead at the never-ending path to the spaceport, always too many klicks away.
The original plan was to rest every two hours, but the trail turns steep ten minutes in and they find themselves stopped after one, breathing heavily and swatting at flies.
“How’re your ribs?” she says. She turns her head so her lamp is on Cassian’s face, hoping he won’t lie if she can see him. She’s right, or maybe he decides it’s not worth it at this point.
“They hurt.” He shrugs and rubs the right side of his chest, where the tee-muss clipped him in the village. “But I don’t think they’re broken.”
“Good.” Jyn nods and turns away, hoping he won’t ask–
“Your shoulder?”
“Nothing’s broken.” Not a lie, but she definitely pulled something, or several somethings. It throbs with every step and doubts she’ll make it through the night without any sort of painkiller, but she won’t admit that yet.
Cassian accepts her answer and settles his gaze on the trail ahead. “Ready to continue?”
Jyn re-adjusts her pack. “Whenever you are.”
When they stop at hour two, Cassian actually puts down his pack and leans against a tree, adjusting the clothes sticking to his skin.
Jyn bounces on her heels with impatience. “Ugh, don’t do that. Then I’ll put down my pack and sit down and then I’ll fall asleep.”
He looks up. “You’re tired?”
“No more than you are.” She glares. It’s the middle of the night and they’re walking through the woods. Of course she’s exhausted. “Come on, let’s just keep going.”
“If we don’t pace ourselves, we won’t make it in time.” He takes measured sips of water from his canteen and makes no move to pick up his pack.
“Fine.” She lets her pack slide to the ground, grunting as the strap slides off her bad shoulder.
Of course, Cassian notices. “Are you sure you don’t need something for that?”
“I’m sure.”
“Jyn.”
“I’ll need it more later.”
Cassian’s lips press together in a thin line, but he doesn’t say anything.
They stand in silence for the next few minutes, taking small sips of water and catching their breath.
When they decide to continue, it’s by mutual, unspoken agreement and they don’t speak as they walk. Jyn can feel Cassian’s disapproval through the darkness, but she doesn’t plan on speaking first– until Cassian stumbles.
He catches himself, but Jyn hears the gasp of pain and sees the hand on his chest as he straightens.
And she stops, because normally, Cassian doesn’t trip. He’s one of the most graceful sentients she knows, even (sometimes especially) when he’s protecting an injury.
So she breaks first. “You okay?”
“Fine.” But he’s still holding his ribs and breathing carefully.
“You’re sure nothing’s broken?”
“I’m sure.” His hand drops and he adjusts his pack. “I just didn’t see that rock.”
He must be tired. There’s no way he would’ve missed it fully alert.
“Maybe we should talk,” she says.
His head snaps up.
“To keep ourselves awake.”
“Of course.” He lets out a breath and looks away. They start walking again, plodding slowly along the trail. “What about?”
“Anything.”
“All right. What’s your favorite color?”
“Seriously?”
“What?”
“That’s so boring, the point is to keep us awake.”
Cassian glares. “Then why don’t you ask the questions?”
“Fine. What’s your favorite childhood memory?”
He’s silent for long enough that she starts to think he won’t answer, but then he says, “From Dantooine.”
“Really?” she says without thinking. “Not Fest?”
He throws her a weary look.
“Sorry,” she mutters into her chest. “We don’t have to talk about it.” She tries to pick up her pace and walk on ahead of him, but his legs are so damn long she barely gets a few steps ahead. “My favorite color is blue.”
They fall silent again, and Jyn kicks herself. She only meant to make the conversation more interesting, but of course it just made everything worse. Someday, she thinks, she and Cassian will be able to have a prolonged conversation without falling into awkwardness, but today (tonight) is apparently not that day.
Cassian sighs. “I had a friend,” he says, “when the Alliance was on Dantooine. One day after training, we were exploring and found a cenote. No one else knew about it, and we didn’t tell anyone. It was just for us, where we could get away from everything.”
Jyn swallows, afraid he’ll stop talking if she says anything. She doesn’t have to guess what became of his friend, and why he didn’t name them.
“I think that’s my favorite childhood memory,” he says.
She can’t help it, she has to ask. “It’s not something from… before?”
“Is there really a before and after?” He shakes his head, the light from his headlamp swinging back and forth across the path. “In our lifetimes, there was always a war.”
“But you didn’t always know about it, right?”
“What difference does it make?” His face is hard, tired eyes glued to the path.
“Innocence,” she says. He’s started moving faster, and she has to jog to catch up with him.
He shakes his head again. “I’m not nostalgic for a time of innocence.”
“Why not?”
“Because I would never wish for ignorance.”
This makes her suddenly angry, and if it wouldn’t slow them down she’d grab his shirt and make him stop so she could face him. “Innocence is important, Cassian.”
He doesn’t look at her, just keeps staring ahead with the same pained expression.
She takes a deep breath. “If… if you had a child, and the war was still going on, what would you tell them?”
“That there’s a war going on.”
“But would you spare them no detail?” she says. “Or would you hold back all the particulars of grief and suffering and selfishness and politics?”
He’s silent.
“See?” she says. “Innocence matters.”
“It’s irrelevant,” he says. “I’ll never have a child.”
“How do you know?”
He cocks an eyebrow. “There’s a war going on.”
“After the war.” She sees his mouth open to protest and adds, “Rebellions are built on hope, remember?”
He sobers. “Hope for the collective, yes.”
“You can’t have hope personally, too?”
He stops this time, so suddenly she nearly runs into him. “Do you have personal hopes, Jyn? For after?”
She refuses to give in. “I asked you first.”
“No.”
“No you don’t, or no you’re not answering?”
He looks away and starts walking again, more slowly, one hand scrubbing down his face. “It’s too late for this.”
He has a point. She’s exhausted– barely coherent to carry on any conversation, much less this one, but she suddenly wants to see it to the end. “You said it yourself,” she says. “Rebellions are built on hope. Of course I have personal hopes for after.”
For a moment, he looks almost sad and Jyn has a thought.
“You don’t want to die fighting, do you?” she says quietly.
“Of course not,” he murmurs.
“Me neither.” It’s a new feeling for her– she used to be very careful not to care if she lived to see the end of the war. Alone in the galaxy, she was aware of her chances.
But now… when it’s dark, and she’s exhausted, and looks at him standing beside her, it’s somehow not hard to imagine she’ll live. And she’s always surprised by how much she wants that to be true. She raises her chin. “So we won’t.”
He sighs. “Jyn…”
“Nope, I’m calling it.” She adjusts her pack and strides ahead of him, allowing the moment of indignation to fuel her. “Neither of us are dying until the war is over. New rule.”
He catches up easily. “You can’t just say that, Jyn.”
“And why not?” She throws out her hands. “What harm does it do? Why can’t we assume we’ll live to see peace? Why can’t we assume we’ll be happy one day? Why can’t we imagine a life after this? With no war, no fighting, a home and a family–”
“A what?” Cassian stops in his tracks and Jyn realizes what she said.
She stops as well, although facing pointedly away from him, face burning and wishing very much to be swallowed up by the ground. This is what happens when she’s too tired. She never meant to say that out loud– especially to him. That particular… fantasy was supposed to be just for her, an indulgence for the dead of the night, just before sleeping.
Sleep. She needs to sleep. They both do. By any rights, they should both be asleep right now, but the galaxy has a cruel sense of humor so they’re stuck here. Awake, in the middle of the woods.
She starts walking again. “Never mind.”
“No, wait.” He follows, matches her stride. “What did you say?”
“I said why can’t I imagine a life after this.” She’s careful this time, says I instead of we. Hopes he’ll let it go, because she’s not ready for this, she didn’t prepare. And she can’t imagine facing the rejection in the middle of the night, in the woods of a foreign planet, covered in sweat and insect bites and half dead from exhaustion.
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
Well. It’s what he’s going to get.
“Jyn.” He catches her elbow and she stops. “Turn around.”
“We should keep going.”
“Please.”
Maybe it’s the way he says it– pleading, almost desperate, or maybe she’s too tired to resist anymore. She spins on her heel, squints into the light of his headlamp and braces for the truth. “What do you want to say?”
“I… I do hope for those things,” he says, so quietly she almost can’t hear.
Jyn’s suddenly uncomfortable and she can’t say why. She hopes he’s not just saying that because of what she revealed. She nods, a jerky, awkward motion. “That’s good.”
She turns around and starts walking again, although her pack suddenly feels so much heavier.
“Wait.”
She sighs, turns around.
“Did you mean it? When you said you wanted a family?”
Jyn swallows and feels her cheeks heat up. Another time, she might’ve answered honestly, by telling him that her favorite memories are from Lah’mu, when it was just her and her parents and they were happy, and she felt peaceful. To anyone else, she might’ve admitted she only imagined such a future with him, and no one else.
But she’s silent, because she’s already said too much and she’s not ready for that far-fetched dream to fade.
“It doesn’t matter.” She looks at the ground.
“Yes, it does.”
When she looks up he’s stepped forward, close enough for her to reach up and touch him.
“What you want always matters.”
When she looks up, the light of her headlamp hits his throat and she can see his pulse jumping in his neck. His eyes are tired but so, so sincere she might have to rethink her favorite color.
And suddenly all her willpower is gone, worn away by exhaustion and proximity and all the months since Scarif. So she damns the consequences and presses up on her toes to kiss him.
She has to squeeze her eyes closed against the glare of his headlamp, and he smells like sweat and dirt (she’s probably no better). But he reciprocates faster than she’s ready for (faster than she ever hoped), and she leans into it until her shoulder starts aching and she has to adjust her pack.
She breaks away and steps back, breathing hard as she messes with the strap.
“Do you need something for that?”
“No, I’m fine.” It’s true, she can barely feel it through the adrenaline because he sounds breathless and stunned and she’s suddenly so, so happy. She holds out her hand. “Let’s keep going.”
His lips curve up in a half-smile as he takes it, and they continue on like that, walking through the night.