Archive of Our Own

Jyn’s sitting by Cassian’s hospital bed when he wakes for good. She can see the confusion, the fear and wariness that makes her wonder where else he’s waken without knowing where he is, and puts a hand on his shoulder, gently so as not to hurt anything else. “You’re in the hospital,” she tells him. “You’ve been out for almost a week.”

The panic recedes in his gaze slowly, as his gaze skates over her face, down her body. “We survived, then?” he asks, his voice weak but the surprise comes through clearly, and Jyn could laugh if she remembered how. If she wasn’t still remembering her father’s hand falling from her cheek and Stardust, the fear of the Death Star program. Krennic in his Empire tattoos, pointing his gun at her. Cassian’s face as Krennic fell, the fear and the resignation and stubborn hope.

“Just barely. You broke basically all your ribs, lost enough blood for three people, and a lot of other things the doctors wouldn’t tell me.” It didn’t escape her that no emergency contact had appeared, other than Mothma, once.

“And the others?”

“All here. Baze and Chirrut got out yesterday.” They’re gone by now, outside of the reach of the FBI and trackers. Jyn would have seen them off, if it weren’t outside her radius. “Bodhi’s been badly burned, but the doctors say he should recover.” She pauses, but Cassian’s looking at her like he knows. “Kay—he’s in a medically induced coma. There was a shot…” She trails off. She hadn’t liked Kay, really, the acerbic man with his old Empire tattoos and the way he looked at her like she wasn’t worth anything and he was only tolerating her for Cassian’s sake, but he’d slammed those doors shut and held them long enough for her and Cassian to climb.

Cassian swallows, and nods. “And was it—did they—”

“It’s gone,” she says. There’s more to that story someone will tell him later, someone who was there—about the Organized Crime team, Agent Organa and the new Skywalker kid and that smuggler Solo, who’d together managed to blow up the server against all odds. But that’s for later. “The Death Star is gone.”

Something relaxes in him. She wonders if she should be calling a nurse, getting him more drugs, but she has a feeling he’d rather have the pain then have his mind fogged. “And you?”

“I got away with a concussion and a broken arm.” She lifts her hand off his shoulder to gesture towards her sling. Cassian keeps looking at her, and she starts to shrug defensively before she remembers it’ll hurt. “I still can’t go farther than a mile from you, remember?”

“There’s plenty of room in a mile,” he points out, and she shifts, uncomfortable.

“I thought—” And she’s had a lot of time to think this past week, about the past few days, about her life. About prison and the way they’d pulled her out of it. About Cassian with a sniper rifle, not taking the shot. About Saw’s fierce smile and not-quite comfort, about her father’s hand in her hair, one last time. “I thought maybe, if Mothma approves, I might see if I could help out more. Clearly you need my help,” she adds quickly.

“Good.”

Jyn reaches out, sets her hand on the bed. “You wouldn’t mind, me being around?” she asks.

Cassian smiles. It’s the first time she thinks she’s seen one reach his eyes. “I think I’ll survive it.”

On the bed, their fingers brush, then hold.

///

It’s not until a month after the destruction of the Death Star that Jyn returns to the FBI bullpen. Cassian had been put on recovery for a month, and he’s still to be her keeper, according to what Mothma had told her after leaving Cassian’s hospital room—Cassian wasn’t fired, she was his charge for the next five years, and Bodhi was to be admitted as an agent pending a training course, like he wanted. Until that had happened, Jyn hadn’t really thought much about just what pull Cassian had in the office, as a white collar agent, but Mothma’s had walked into his hospital room, and when she came out everything was settled. Cassian hasn’t said how he did any of that, but Jyn has a feeling it’s hard to fire the agent who’d been critical in causing a substantial blow to the biggest mob on the east coast.  

But that gave Jyn a month to fill, and she’s used that time to figure out her own life. She has a room now, a shitty one bedroom apartment that she can only afford because it’s so very tiny and shitty, but it’s hers. She’d run her five mile radius as far as she could, testing it, testing the feel of the tracking anklet against her skin. It’s small enough to chafe, but she thinks of prison walls, thinks of Krennick on the balcony of Scarif, and thinks she can probably live with it. It’s big enough for her to go for long, aimless runs through the city, to remind herself of her old haunts, to go visit Baze and Chirrut after they return and let them make her dinner.

And she mourns. Or maybe it’s not mourning, because her father’s been dead to her for years, and Saw had left her behind, but—it feels like mourning. Like she’s lost something she hadn’t realized she still had. It makes her run more, for hours on end, around the edges of her radius until she knows them by heart, the bodega on the other side of the street she can’t get to with its drooping awning and neon 24 HOUR sign, the fire hydrant just out of reach.

She hasn’t seen Cassian through it all. Part of her wanted to—to seek him out, to see how he was doing because she had a feeling enforced bed rest wasn’t something he was good at, to just—see him. But she doesn’t. He doesn’t seek her out either, is how she justifies it to herself. She gets texts, on the phone the Bureau provided her with, making sure she’s found housing and referring her to people to get her credentials set up, but they’re all impersonal. She has a feeling Mothma could be sending her the same texts and she wouldn’t know any different. It’s not that she’s disappointed, she didn’t expect anything else. She texts back in the same vein, quick short texts confirming she’s received the information and is not doing anything criminal (She isn’t. Really. Much. Nothing she’ll get caught for, and it’s more just so she reminds herself she can, that she’s not in a cage).

But then she walks in, and it feels like everyone’s looking at her—the criminal. The mobster’s daughter. The fanatic’s adopted daughter.

She tilts her head up. Let them stare.

“Erso.” Cassian’s voice carries over the noise of the bullpen, but he’s next to her suddenly, his hand just next to her shoulder, like he’s not sure he should be touching her. “You’re with me, let’s go.”

Everyone abruptly stops looking at her, or looks away from him. It doesn’t matter, anyway, because Cassian is striding out of the bullpen and Jyn has to hurry to catch up, walking as quickly as she can so no one will notice that her strides are shorter. 

“Where are we going?” she demands, once they get into the elevator. He’s leaning against the elevator wall; she has a feeling it’s less the nonchalant lean he’d done before and more because he’s getting tired. He looks tired, his skin paler than it was before. But she does him the courtesy of not mentioning it.

“We’ve got a case. There’s an art smuggling ring, on new Corsucant.” He must see something in her face, because honestly, that’s boring. “You never know where smuggling rings lead. Many times they’re profitable enterprises for bigger gangs.”

That makes her smile. She’s ready to be doing something again.

////

“You’re staying in the car.”

“I am not.” Cassian makes to get out of the driver’s seat; Jyn pushes him back in. Gently, because he’s still injured, but enough that he’ll notice that she can.

“You are,” she informs him. “You are not ready to go sneaking around a museum.”

“I was declared healthy—”

“You could barely stay standing while we were investigating in daylight,” Jyn points out, and his eyes narrow like she’s hit a nerve. She probably wasn’t supposed to see that. “I’m going. You can stay here and I’ll keep you on my cell phone, or you can come with me and I’ll lose you. Your choice.”

His jaw works, grinds. Frustration is a good look on him; that thwarted anger and rueful admiration is something Jyn could get used to. It’s definitely better than the impassive face he generally makes. “Fine,” he mutters, and leans back into the car. “But you report everything. And no taking the art.”

“Don’t you trust me?” she demands, insulted.  

“I do,” he replies, suddenly serious, and Jyn swallows before she turns to go into the dark museum.          

///

“Well done,” Mothma says, flipping through the report of the smugglers. Jyn doesn’t know what Cassian put in there, how much. If he mentioned the part where she ‘borrowed’ a Manet to use as bait. She’s pretty sure he didn’t, because Mothma looks up, and smiles at them. “You two do good work.”

“Thank you,” Cassian says from where he’s leaning against the bookshelf. He’d refused to sit down, and Jyn had considered arguing that he really ought to, but not in front of Mothma. She’d allow him his pride. “It was mainly Jyn.”

Jyn doesn’t blush, or anything stupid like that. She had done good work. She knows it. The last person who had told her so was her mother.

“Whatever it was, it works.” Mothma shuts the report. “Good job. Get some rest. There’ll be something new in the morning.”

///

The next morning, the smugglers have apparently disappeared, and Organized Crime has another one of those medal ceremonies because they’ve dismantled a major part of the Empire. Jyn doesn’t think much of it.

///

By the time Bodhi gets out of his training, they’ve figured out how to work together, more or less. It consists of a lot of them arguing, because Jyn swears Cassian makes things a thousand times harder than he has to sometimes by listening to everything Mothma says, and she’s pretty sure he’s been ready to kill her more than once when she tells him just that. But she’s also learned that he has a sense of humor, despite the weight he carries; she’s learned that somehow, miraculously, he’s never failed to be at her back when she’s needed him. Even when he leave, like he does sometimes for days on end on tasks she’s not allowed to know about, he comes back. She’s learned that he thinks sideways when she thinks straight, that he won’t back down from a fight but he sometimes he’s too quick to take another route instead of standing up for the right one. She’s learned that he’s as stubborn as she is, and that he is the only one who can make the FBI coffee machine make palatable coffee.

She tells Bodhi some of this, as he’s settling into his desk. Cassian’s up in his office, though he’d greeted Bodhi with a smile and a clap on the shoulder before ducking in to take a call.

“So, you like him?” Bodhi asks. “I mean, he seemed…capable, you know. Before. And I’m grateful, obviously, that he saved me and got me this place and all. But do you like him? As a person? Even after—” Bodhi pauses, like he’s thinking if he wants to finish the sentence, but continues. “Even after Eadu?”  

Jyn opens her mouth, closes it. She hadn’t thought about it like that. Eadu feels like a lifetime ago. “I…”

“Briefing room,” comes the call from Cassian’s office, and Bodhi jumps. Jyn just laughs, and goes.

///

Jyn does not like Cassian, she’s decided forty-eight hours and about fifteen bruises later, as she runs down a corridor, Cassian next to her. She’s lost sight of Bodhi, but he better be getting the door open like he said he would, because otherwise she and Cassian will be pinned here in this endless maze by the men with guns who work for the people who have been laundering money this week. She does not like Cassian, because liking Cassian would mean that she liked getting into these situations, and she does not.

Cassian stops suddenly, kneeling down to grab another gun out of his boot.

“Cassian, what—”

“Go!” he snaps, taking careful aim. The first of the men go down. “I’ll hold them.”

She takes one step, then, “No,” she decides, and shoots over his shoulder.

“I said—”

“I’m not leaving you,” she retorts, and she has a single glance at the confusion on Cassian’s face before the door behind them whooshes open and Bodhi’s there with what looks like a machine gun.

///

“I hate you,” she says, as they tumble into the back of the car and Bodhi’s rushing away.

“Me too,” Bodhi adds.

Cassian doesn’t look up from his phone, where he’s presumably reporting in, but his voice reeks with innocence. “What did I do?” he asks, and if Jyn has the energy, she’d hit him for that. As she doesn’t, she just reaches out with her foot, kicks him with as much energy as she can muster, which isn’t much.  He looks up at that, glances over at her with one of his quick, blink and you miss them smiles. She smiles back. Maybe she doesn’t hate him.

///

 It takes Jyn two months, though if anyone asks she figured it out much sooner and just waited that long to confront Cassian about it. But she has her excuses—how’s she supposed to know how the FBI works? She’s in transition. She’s still chafing on her leash, doesn’t have the resources she’d have had if her every motion wasn’t tracked. But all of it boils down her walking into Cassian’s office one morning and shutting the door before he’s even greeted her.

“Yes?” Cassian asks, turning away from his computer. He doesn’t look taken aback, but he never does.

She throws herself into the seat across from his, the one that she always sits in when they’re in Cassian’s office, which is more than she’s at her official desk downstairs.

“You aren’t white collar,” she announces. Cassian’s expression doesn’t change. But that doesn’t tell her anything.

“What do you mean?” he asks, which isn’t a denial.

“I mean, that half of our missions are only tangentially white collar related. I mean that every time we do a job, you disappear for a few minutes, then the next day Organized Crime has a massive raid. I mean you disappear on secret tasks that I’m pretty sure only Mothma knows about. I mean that whatever department you work for,” she leans forward, accusing. She’s supposed to be working with him. She’s supposed to know, not be kept in the dark. “It is not white collar.”

For a long moment, he just watches her, and she can almost see his brain working behind his gaze, though she doesn’t know what it is. She never knows what it’s doing, except that she does, except that he’s the man who’s never left her behind and who lets her do her job without second guessing and who gave her a gun and never appeared to wonder if she’d use it in his back. Except he’s also the man who was going to shoot her father, maybe with grief but not with regret, who loses the trees for the forest. She’s seen him lie, utterly straight-faced, and walk away afterwards without blinking. She knows he can.

“I am white collar, in between,” is what he says, and Jyn hadn’t realized she’d stopped breathing.

“And not in between?”

Cassian’s gaze flicks to the door, to the windows, then back to her. “Not in between, I am what I am needed to be,” he replies. “There are things, that need to be done, that the government cannot be seen doing. That is what I do.”

“So these missions—”

“Some of them have been white collar.” Cassian shrugs. He hasn’t looked away from her, but his hands are both on the table, within sight. “Others, well. We learn things.” He doesn’t blink. “Sometimes people die, during raids. It is regrettable, but happens.”

“And I—” she gets to her feet, has to pace, to move. “And you’ve been using me?” she demands, spinning to face him again. “Without telling me? Just—using me?” She starts to pace again. “What about everyone else, do they know? That you’re lying through your teeth every time—”

“Jyn.” Her name is a statement in his mouth, like once her father’s had been. She doesn’t have a choice but to look at him. “If anyone—the press, the Empire, anyone who will talk—finds out what I do, the bureau will immediately disavow me, and I will not live long enough to go to trial.” His hands are still on the table, but he’s at his most intense, the fires lit behind his eyes. “No one knows.”

“But—Bodhi. Kay.”

“Kay—” the pain flickers over his face, the pain his old partner always evokes. “Kay knew. Kay volunteered. So did Bodhi. I believe he said that he wanted to get things done, not be chained by bureaucracy.”

“But not me.”

“Not you.” Cassian nods. “Mothma thought it too risky.”

“And you?” Of course he wouldn’t tell, of course he wouldn’t choose her over his precious orders. She curls her hand into a fist. If the table wasn’t between them, she might just punch him right in his perfect mouth. When he hesitates, she snorts without any humor. “I almost died for you and your precious fight! Good to see what that’s—”

“I—” There’s something else across his face, an emotion she’s not sure she’s seen before, that twists in his gaze. Something in it reminds her of her father. “I was not sure you would want to know. What I do…” he shakes his head. “It is not something to believe in. It is not, oh,” he says a few words in Spanish, shakes his head again. She’s never seen him not have words like that. For all he’s not chatty, he always has something to say, always knows the right lie to tell. “It is not the good fight, let’s say. Not the fight you came to us to fight. I wanted—I wanted you to believe in it still.”

It stills her fist, at least. It’s still bullshit, and maybe it’s justification, she knows he can justify anything to himself, but—but at least it’s not just following orders bullshit. And there’s a part of her, a shifty part of her she’s been trying to deny, that is happy he cares. That is pleased he wanted her to think well of him.

“I would rather know.” She slams her hands onto his desk, so she can lean down and glare at him. She’s taller than him like this. She likes this angle. “For future reference, I would always rather know.”

“Noted.”

“Do you have any other secrets?” she demands. “Any other orders that have intimately to do with me that you’ve been keeping from me?”

He pauses a second, then, “No. I believe that’s all.” She glares at him a moment longer, but his face is innocent. It’s not like she could tell, anyway. She’s never met a better liar.

“Good.” She jerks back, turns to stalk out of the room. She can feel Cassian’s eyes on her, as she goes.

Her hand’s on the doorknob when she stops, turns back. Cassian’s watching her, his shoulder just the slightest bit off his usual parade rest. “I still believe.” His brow furrows. “In the fight. In what I’ve apparently been doing.” She looks down at her hands, bruised and calloused. “It’s not like my hands are clean either. And it’s necessary.” She finds it in her, somehow, to smile at Cassian, maybe not whole-heartedly, but enough. “They couldn’t do it in the light without us, right?”

Something like incredulity comes across Cassian’s face, and then—then there’s a smile, bright and real and surprised at itself, like it always is whenever he smiles, and Jyn closes the door on that.

///

It’s different, after she knows. Things about how they’re treated around the office make more sense, no one impolite but everyone wary, like they don’t quite want to admit they exist. Bodhi lets out a relieved breath when she tells him, babbling about how hard it was to lie to her as he’s busy tracking a cell phone for their latest lead, his words tumbling over themselves as his fingers move crisply and surely over the keyboard. Mothma doesn’t look at her any differently, and Jyn wonders if Cassian even told her she knows. She hopes he didn’t. Hopes this is a secret just for them, for their team.

She doesn’t even tell Baze and Chirrut, when they come back into town, but she has a feeling they know. Chirrut hands her a piece of paper, as she leaves, and tells her to give it to Cassian. She doesn’t think it’s a holidays card.

///

“Are you almost done?” Cassian demands, and Bodhi swears at him in what Jyn thinks is Urdu, though she’s also definitely heard him swearing at her in Chinese and maybe German sometimes.

“I’m sorry, is my hacking the safe taking too long?” he demands.

“No, no,” Cassian retorts. One of the guards ducks around the corner as he speaks; Jyn and Cassian’s bullets both come close to his head, and he hides back. “We simply only have maybe thirty seconds until the rest of the guards come, and I do not have a machine gun this time, so—”

“I’m going as fast as I can,” Bodhi replies, and Jyn rolls her eyes as she shoots at the next person trying to take a shot at them.

“Go faster,” Cassian snaps, and Jyn’s about to say something sharp to him when she hears the sound of more feet. Shit. Cassian swears this time, something in Spanish that must be bad because Cassian doesn’t swear, normally. “Jyn, do you—”

“One more clip,” she tells him, and takes the extra clip he hands her. “It still won’t be enough.”

“You two are very pessimistic, has anyone ever told you that?” Bodhi asks, still working. Cassian shifts slightly, so his body is covering Bodhi more.

“I prefer fatalistic,” Jyn tells him. The footsteps have stopped, which mean that they’re getting ready to charge. There is really absolutely zero cover here. Of course the Empire stronghold wouldn’t have cover in the hallway to their safe, probably for exactly this reason.

Cassian gives her a sidelong look, and then his hand is on her shoulder. He doesn’t say anything, but she nods anyway. It’s a stupid time to think about the comfort of his touch, of what it sparks in her. Or maybe it’s the best time, to die thinking of this, of Cassian at her side and Bodhi working behind her. If she’s honest, she always thought she’d die alone.

“Go, go—what?” the yell comes from around the corner, and then there’s the rat-a-tat of a machine gun, and the thuds of people falling. It feels like it goes on forever, but it’s only a few seconds—enough seconds for Bodhi to make a low cry of victory and for something to click—then it’s over, and there’s silence.

“Jyn, get the data,” Cassian orders, and raises his gun, advancing towards the silent corner. Jyn exchanges a look with Bodhi, then Bodhi’s opening the safe and Jyn falls into step with Cassian. “I said—”

“Bodhi’s on it,” she informs him in a whisper. He makes a face like he shouldn’t have expected anything else, and—there’s a sound from the corner, and he freezes.

“Are you done yet?” comes a voice, and Jyn’s laughing as Baze comes around the corner, a massive gun over his shoulder.

“Be patient. That’s a complicated system,” Chirrut adds from next to him, his cane tapping innocently, and Cassian’s eyebrows go up.

“Isn’t he—”

“Yes,” Jyn adds, grinning, and lowers her gun. “What are you doing here?”

Chirrut smiles gently at her. “I had a feeling you’d need help.”

“Someone mentioned they had hired more guards here, last minute,” Baze grunts. “Knew you’d be caught.”

“Which comes to the same thing.”

“Except yours is ridiculous mystical—”

“Thank you,” Cassian says simply, and it seems like he’s considering shaking their hands or something, but Baze’s baleful look makes him think better of it.

“Okay, got it,” Bodhi announces, and comes jogging up to them. “Can we go now?”

Cassian pulls himself up, like he’s remembered himself. “Jyn, take sweep. If anyone’s behind us, shout, Baze can take them out. I’ll take point.”

“Yes, sir,” Baze grunts, shouldering his gun. Chirrut pats his arm, muttering something to him.

“I could take point,” Jyn objects, because she’s got just as good aim as Cassian and she doesn’t need to be protected. Cassian puts his hand on her arm again, so she looks at him.

“Yes,” he agrees, and his face is close to hers, probably so they can talk quietly. She has the incongruous, idiotic instinct to brush his hair out of his eyes. He really should cut it. Focusing on that is easier than the look he’s giving her, the one that she feels like says more than she can read. “But I need you to watch our backs.”

“Oh,” she mumbles, and pulls away before she does something stupid.

///

Maybe it’s a cliché, but they have to infiltrate a ball. Jyn scowls at her reflection, as she puts on the glittering earrings that she was loaned for this assignment—Mothma gave her the explicit instructions about how to return them, and she was detailed enough that it scared even Jyn. It looks weird on her, anyway. She’s made for jeans and t-shirts, for clothing she can move in. Not this elegant gown, in a deep blue that apparently will make her skin glow. She feels naked. It’s not particularly immodest, really, but her shoulders are bared and the neckline lower than she’s used to, the slit up her leg higher than anything she’s worn before. That at least will make it easier to fight, if she has to.

It’s not that she’s never worn pretty clothes. She has, occasionally, because sometimes that’s the easiest way to get in places. But she’s never been like the women at Saw’s who knew how to smile and simper and flirt and get things from men (or women, sometimes); she’s had sex but it’s always been fast and for nothing more than mutual satisfaction. This…display, isn’t something that fits.

She slips on the heels, takes a few steps in them to get her balance. She managed to argue the FBI into giving her chunky heels at least, but she’ll still need to ditch them if she needs to run. Or move at all.

The cab drops her off at the rendezvous point, the van Bodhi will be monitoring from. Like usual, it’s just the three of them, though she suspects Bodhi has Chirrut on speed dial at this point.

“Okay,” she announces, once Bodhi has pulled the door open to let her in. “I’m here, can we go already?”

“Ready for your Cinderella moment?” Bodhi asks. He smiles at her, his easy smile to coax her into a better mood. “You look—you clean up nice, Jyn.”

She has to smile at that, even if she’s pretty sure it’s not true. “Thanks.” It’s only then that she looks past him, to Cassian. Cassian looks, of course, devastatingly handsome in his tuxedo, even if he looks a little like she feels, like he’d rather not be wearing it at all. At last he gets to wear pants. She decides to focus on that, rather than the intensity of Cassian’s gaze, the way it flicks over her once than focuses almost aggressively on her face. “So?” she asks, and waits. She knows—it’s not that she’s seen Cassian with women, or men for that matter, but she can guess the sort of people he’d go with. Women comfortable in their bodies, who could wear a gown like this and make it shine, make him shine by being next to him.

“Let’s go,” he agrees, and pushes past her to hop out of the van first. He holds out a hand to help her down, which she ignores, even if landing on the heels was a bad call. His lips twitch into a smile.

///

“Next time, I’m wearing flats,” Jyn announces, throwing herself onto the couch next to where Bodhi’s sprawled in an armchair. Doing it loudly means that she can distract from the fact that she’s looking around, trying to take in Cassian’s apartment for the first time. She doesn’t know what she expected, when Cassian said they could come regroup because it was too early and too late for them to go home and they were all too covered in something gross to go to their respective places anyway. It comes off a lot like his office—neat, comfortable, and without any individual touches. At least not in the guest bathroom she’d used, or the living room they’re in now. There’s a bedroom she considered opening the door into, but she’d decided not to. She’s rather proud of that decision.

Next to her, Bodhi snorts. He looks a little ridiculous in a spare pair of Cassian’s sweat pants and a t-shirt that are clearly the wrong size on him. To be fair, she probably does too, swimming in them even more. She’s lucky Cassian isn’t built like Baze, that’d be embarrassing. At least the clothes are soft and warm, and smell good. And aren’t dresses and heels. “Next time, we avoid the sewers.”

“Amen to both,” Cassian adds, coming in from what she assumes is the kitchen. His gaze flicks over them both, and his lips twist. “I have never felt like a large man until I met you two.”

“Hey!” Bodhi protests, and Jyn flips him off. Maybe it’s being in his home, maybe it’s being out of his own fancy clothes, but Cassian seems a little more relaxed, as he takes the spot on the couch next to her.

“I am never wearing heels again,” Jyn announces, louder. Just to make sure everyone knows. She digs her toe into Cassian’s calf, to really dig it in. Her anklet scrapes against the couch. “If you try to make me, I will cut this anklet and run, I swear.”

“Noted.” Cassian glances down at her foot, now resting an inch away from his, then quickly away. “No more parties for us.”

“And no more sewers,” Bodhi adds. “How did I even end up there? I was supposed to be in the van.”

“Your own fault for leaving the van.”

“Your fault, for needing it,” Bodhi points accusingly at her. “I could have stayed dry and nice-smelling if you hadn’t decided to need a distraction.”

“You smell plenty nice now.”

“I smell like Cassian,” Bodhi throws back. He sniffs at his sweatshirt. “Which, fine. I guess smells good.”

“You honor me,” Cassian drawls. He’s got a little smile on, as he looks at them, even as Bodhi continues to complain.

“I am sorry about the dress,” she tells him. Which, well. She sort of is. She’s sorry because it probably cost a shitton of money. “Will ruining it get Mothma angry at you?”

Cassian shrugs. “I will tell her it was the dress or the information. She’ll understand.”

“And I saved the earrings.”

“And you saved the earrings,” Cassian agrees. He shifts, slumps a little, and it makes their shoulders almost brush. They aren’t even touching, not even through their respective sweatshirts, but it brings back a flash of the dancefloor back in the gala—of Cassian’s arm wrapped around her waist, his hand low on her back, and the heat of his body, a breath away from being pressed against hers. “The dress was—too much, anyway.”

“Too much?”

He smiles are her, and maybe it’s him being out of his suits or work wear, but he seems softer. “You look much more like you like this.”

“And that’s a good thing?” She can’t quite get rid of the image of him with a different woman, tall and glamorous and deadly.

His hand moves slightly, like he thought about touching her. “Yes, Jyn. That’s a good thing.”

///

She still runs, often. Runs to the very edge of her tether, until she can see the other side, that bodega that’s like every other bodega except for how she can’t go in it. She watches that far away world, where she can’t go, the outside of her cage, and dreams about breaking the lock.

///

Kay wakes on a Tuesday. Jyn only knows because she’s in Cassian’s office when he gets the call, is working on deciphering the handwriting in a ledger they’d acquired as Cassian finishes up some paperwork. She sees his face go blank for a moment, then light up like he’s seeing the sun for the first time, then he’s bolting from the office before he’s even finished hanging up the phone call with only a word of explanation. Jyn and Bodhi finish up the paperwork Cassian was supposed to be doing, which he should be grateful for because she hates paperwork like very little else, then follow after.

Cassian is in the chair next to Kay’s bed, when they get there, leaning close to hear something the other man is saying. His face is alight like he can’t hide his smile, and Jyn gets a sudden flash of herself at his bedside, months ago. Before she really knew anything, just knew that she needed to be there.

She stops in the doorway, so Bodhi nearly bumps into her. “Are you okay?” he asks.

“Yeah, just—I’m going to text Baze,” she says, holding up her phone. “They should know.”

“Yeah,” Bodhi agrees slowly. She’s pretty sure she hasn’t fooled him, though she doesn’t know exactly what she’s not fooling him about. “Okay. I’ll tell Cassian that’s where you’ve gone.”

“Okay. Yeah. I’ll be in in a second,” she says, and ducks away. She hears Bodhi’s voice, then Kay’s, then Cassian’s, as she walks down the hall, presses her head back against the wall. She’s glad Kay’s awake, that he’s healing. She is. She’s glad Cassian’s best friend is back. She was just used to how things were.

She takes a deep breath, shoots a text to Baze because she wasn’t lying about that, then goes into the room. Bodhi’s hovering near the end of the bed, but all three men look at her when she walks in.

“Hi.” She raises a hand, because she’s not sure what else to do. “Glad you’re up, Kay.”

“You’re still here, then?” Kay asks, and Cassian hisses out something that could be his name. “What? I didn’t know we were adopting criminals.”

“Weren’t you a criminal?” Jyn retorts. She takes a few steps into the room, but—normally she’d go next to Cassian, but that feels weird. She stands next to Bodhi instead.

Kay hums, like she made a fair point. “Still, this is who you replace me with?” he asks Cassian, and Jyn swallows and tries not to show that it hit.

“No, you’re irreplaceable, my friend,” Cassian assures him, and Kay nods his agreement and Jyn clenches her fist in her pocket.

///

Kay is back up and about in far less time than he should have taken, in Jyn’s opinion. He was in a coma for months, shouldn’t he have a long convalescence? But he’s back, and back in the office, almost before she blinks.

“Why are you in Cassian’s office so much?” Kay asks, the first day he’s back, as Jyn starts to follow Cassian back to his office to do her work, like she always does. “Are you having sex?”

“What?” Jyn demands, as Cassian almost yelps,

“Kay!”

“What?” Kay asks, as Bodhi starts making noises at his desk that sound suspiciously like laughter. She glares at him, but he is hunched over his computer, so she can’t see his face. She’s still going to take it out on him next time they’re sparring. “I have observed you around people you’re attracted to in the past. You are—”

“Kay!” Cassian snaps again. Jyn wishes he looked embarrassed too, but he doesn’t. He’s just stern. Maybe even angry. “Boundaries, remember?”

“Right.” Kay doesn’t look convinced. “I’m sorry. I will keep my extremely accurate observations to myself, in the future.”

“Just—” Cassian shakes his head. “Don’t, Kay. You know that.”

“Fine.” Kay snorts, and Cassian makes a sound that sounds suspiciously like a groan, and continues on to his office.

Jyn lingers, because she can’t help it. “So, about these other people…”

“More attractive than you,” Kay informs her immediately, without tact or malice. “But never around as long.”

“Why?” Bodhi asks, peeking over his computer. He’s still got his face compressed like he’s trying not to laugh. “Do you care what kind of women Cassian usually sleeps with?”

“Just curious to see who can break through that thick skin,” she retorts.

“Uh-huh.” Bodhi does not sound convinced. She just shoots him a glare, and grabs her papers to go to Cassian’s office. He at least will let her ignore that.

But he’s not working, when she gets there, just looking at his computer screen with a faraway look on his face, that gets pushed back into apology when she sits down. “I’m sorry about Kay,” he says immediately. “If he’s making you uncomfortable, I can—”

“It’s fine.” It’s not, really. Or it is, Kay talking about them having sex is—it’s whatever, she can deal with it. What she can’t is how, at the briefing, Kay had gone to sit at Cassian’s right, where she’d been sitting for the past few months.

His eyes narrow. “Are you sure?” he asks, and Jyn scowls.

“It’s fine,” she repeats, making it a threat. Cassian presses his lips together, but lets the silence lapse over them as they work.

///

“I can’t just fix computer hardware,” Bodhi mutters, though from the sound over the comms, he has a screwdriver out and is apparently doing just that. Cassian can’t reply, because he’s talking to his source a block away. It’s too far for Jyn’s taste; if Bodhi manages to get the information off of the hard drive and it doesn’t match up to what the informant said and this is a trap, Jyn’s too far away for a good shot. It’s why she’d tried to insist that she should do the meet, and Cassian the back-up—he’s a better sniper than her—but his source will balk if it’s not him, apparently.

“Do it fast,” she tells him, and narrows her eyes at the man Cassian’s talking to—a big man, probably at least six inches taller than Cassian, who still leans down to talk to him like he’s cowed, and Jyn would ask for the story about that if she wasn’t sure Cassian wouldn’t tell and Kay would look at her like she was an idiot for not knowing. “You’ve got to—”

“I know,” Bodhi retorts. “Damn it, Jyn, I’m a doctor, not a hard ware guy!”

“You’re not a—”

“You are lucky it’s Jyn you said that to, with the similarity of her name,” Kay says, and Jyn manages not to make a face. “What if you...” He keeps talking, but Jyn’s stopped understanding any of what he says. She doesn’t get what Bodhi says back either, because it’s all in nerd tech speak. Whatever it is, they sound excited—or Bodhi does, Kay never sounds anything—and they’re talking over each other.

Jyn tries to tune them out. The meet is almost done; Cassian is nodding, apparently satisfied. He shifts slightly—not enough to give away her position or even to indicate she’s there, but she knows it’s a question.

“Bodhi—”

“We’re just—oh, shit,” Bodhi says, and she doesn’t need more than that, and neither does Cassian, apparently, because his gun is out and the man is laid out on the ground with a bullet in his thigh before the knife falls from his hand.

“Good work, Bodhi,” Cassian says, looking at the man moaning. Jyn stows her gun. This was a pointless mission, clearly. They didn’t even get the information they needed.

“Thanks, but that was mainly Kay. I wouldn’t ever have thought to—”

“It was a simple inference.” She can’t entirely tell over comms, but Kay sounds smug.

“It was brilliant,” Bodhi enthuses, and she hears a slap like he’s clapped Kay on the back. She can definitely hear the smile in Bodhi’s voice, the one he uses just with her and Cassian and sometimes Baze and Chirrut, with the team.

“Are we taking him back or dealing with him here?” Jyn interrupts the lovefest, scowling as she trots down the street towards Cassian.

“We’ve got the cameras,” Bodhi announces, and by we apparently he means him and Kay, that they’re a pair. Jyn presses her lips together. “No one’s around. The silencer worked well, no one noticed.”

Cassian looks down at the man, his face impassive. “We deal with him here, then,” he says, and the man’s eyes widen.

“Cassian—”

Cassian glances back at her, his gaze softening just enough to assure her how much of this is for show. Then he’s watching the man again, and she’s reminded again just how dangerous he is. She pushes away any reaction that might get out of her, and steps up to stand next to him, ignoring Bodhi and Kay’s voices in her ears. 

///

Jyn doesn’t get drunk at the work Halloween party, because she’s not stupid. She lets loose a little more, however, at the work Halloween afterparty at the bar downstairs. She’s not the only one; she’s seen Organa and Solo going shot for shot, Skywalker and Antilles in the middle of some sort of contest that comes from their backwoods hometown, even Mothma and Radisson sipping something that looks like whiskey.

She doesn’t drink anything so classy, but the team has gotten into some sort of challenge about the worst drinks they can order, and it’s doing her head in a little. 

“What?” Cassian asks, sputtering, when he’s finished Bodhi’s latest concoction, “Was that?”

“You don’t want to know,” Bodhi tells him, laughing. He leans back in his seat, looking well at peace with the world.

“I can taste vodka. Gin. Something—”

“Really, we don’t want to know,” Jyn interrupts Kay.

“Fine. Live in ignorance.” He shakes his head.

“My turn,” Cassian announces, and gets up out of his chair. Jyn isn’t really drunk, but she’ll use it as an excuse for why she watches him make his way up to the bar. When Bodhi had won the lots draw to pick their team’s theme costume, she’d thought the Firefly thing would be good—she got to wear plenty of leather that she could move in, rather than something skimpy. But she’d underestimated how good Cassian would look in the tight pants and gun belt of Mal Reynolds. Maybe she is a stereotype, because there was just something about a man with a gun belt slung around narrow hips…

“You’re staring,” Bodhi declares. He really is drunk, she thinks, and happy with it. His face is flushed even through his dark skin, which somehow matches his Hawaiian shirt.  “I’m supposed to be your husband, Mrs. Washburne.”

“You know I don’t watch the show, I don’t know what you mean.” Jyn replies.

“I do,” Kay volunteers. He’s pretty drunk too, so it looks like his whole body is swaying. “Zoe is married to Wash, not Mal. Wash is jealous all the time.” He looks down at himself, at his semi-priestly shirt. “Book never marries anyone.”

“That’s not necessarily true,” Bodhi argues, and then they start discussing some sort of backstory that Jyn ignores. She goes back to watching the bar, instead. Solo and Organa are fighting now, which is a normal enough sight that she barely even registers it. There’s an office bet about when they hook up—she has a few weeks from now, so she might go over and interrupt if they get too close. Cassian is waiting for their orders, leaning against the bar. He might be a little drunk too, but he’s still an island of stillness in the hectic energy of the bar. Even now, months after meeting him, she has the same impression of him, that he could blend into the background with merely a thought. That he’s hiding things, beneath that assessing gaze.

She pulls her gaze away before he turns back to them, heading their way with some drinks. Bodhi and Kay don’t seem to notice he’s back; their argument has gotten to the point of big arm movements and Bodhi trying to drunkenly look something up on his phone.

“What—”

“Something about Firefly, I don’t know,” She tells Cassian, shaking her head. With Kay and Bodhi’s argument leading to flailing arms, she has to slide away from them; it presses her and Cassian close together. Maybe she’s drunker than she thought, if it’s burning this much. “Here, let me try your drink.”

“Be warned, it’s—” Jyn takes a gulp, then nearly spits it out. Now her mouth and eyes and everything is burning too. “Spicy,” Cassian finishes, hiding a smirk badly.

“What the hell?” she asks. “Who drinks this?”

Bodhi grabs a glass, takes a sip. “Oh, this is good!” he tells Cassian, whose smirk only grows.

“Sorry, guera,” Cassian asks, and he must be tipsy if he’s willing to tease . “Is it too much for you? Are you forfeiting?”

“No.” She’s not forfeiting. She’s just. Taking a break, for a moment, as she recovers. At least she has the gratification of watching Kay’s face turn red when he takes his own sip.

///

The whole team ends up in one cab, mainly because Bodhi and Kay are both too drunk to get home on their own, and somehow the idea of Cassian and Jyn taking one each on their ways home isn’t discussed. They pour Kay into his apartment first, then hand Bodhi off to his roommate, who rolls her eyes at his excited mumbling but assures them she’ll take it from here.

Then they’re in front of Jyn’s apartment. “Good night,” Jyn says, as she opens the door.

Inside the cab, Cassian’s eyes glint as he looks up at her. “Good night, Jyn,” he tells her. His accent’s been getting progressively thicker with each drink; it makes each word sound like music.

“Are you—” She’s not drunk, is barely past tipsy, but she still feels like she doesn’t have the words. She takes a breath. “Do you want to come up, have some coffee before you head home?” She smiles, to lighten the mood. “Someone has to go into work without a hangover tomorrow.”

“I—si, yes.” He nods. “Coffee would probably be good.”

“Okay.” He pays the cab driver, which she’ll let him simply because he makes significantly more than she does, and gets out, lets her lead him upstairs. If she were slightly more sober, in a slightly worse mood, she might be ashamed of her little studio, which barely fits a bed, a table, and a couch, but though Cassian’s gaze does its usual assessing pass, she doesn’t find any judgment there as she goes to the kitchenette.

“When do you have for the Organa and Solo pool?” she asks, as she starts the water boiling. It won’t be fancy coffee, but it’ll be something.

“September 3^rd.”

“Oh, you lost badly.”

“I don’t think so.” When she turns in surprise, he’s leaning against her table, his arms crossed over his chest. The room feels smaller than it should. “It’s been a secret, I think. Maybe from themselves as much as anyone, that it matters. But it’s been happening.”

“And you know this?”

He taps his temple. “I see things.”

“Yes, super-spy, I know.” She leans against the counter, mirroring his pose. “I’m still planning to win.”

“We’ll see.” There’s something about the tilt of his lips, the way his head cocks, confident without arrogance, that makes Jyn wonder what else he’d be like that about. He’s always so competent. Would he touch someone with that same competence? Would he touch her—

The water boiler dings, and Jyn starts. She turns back to the coffee machine before she lets herself blush, or consider being embarrassed about fantasizing about Cassian.

She finishes the coffee, adds the cream he drinks his with, then hands him a mug to his murmured thanks. There’s just enough room for both of them on the couch, but it’s enough.

They don’t talk, as they drink their coffee, but it’s not uncomfortable. She’s always been able to sit in silence with Cassian. They’re both people of silence, after all, neither of them much for filling words with meaningless chatter. It’s why they work, as partners.

She steals a look at him. At the sharpness of his profile, the crisp cut of his facial hair, softened by the lushness of his lips, the way his hair falls messily into his eyes. It’s only been a few months, but that face has already become a touchstone, something she can rely on. She’s relied on other people before, and it’s never worked. She’s not sure about this, either. He might leave too. He might decide Kay is the better partner, might decide she’s too wild or too reckless or too—something—to have around, and leave her behind, just like everyone else did. Rip her away from everything, from her desk and her chair and this little apartment and Bodhi’s grin and clever wit. Or—he might not. She’s never known anyone like Cassian before. He’s not her father or her mother, not Saw, not any of the people who have drifted in and out of her life before.

His gaze is on the coffee, but he must feel her looking, because he glances over at her, his lips quirking in a question and a smile at once.

She takes a second to consider. Then she stops considering. “Cassian,” she asks first, because this is important. “Are you drunk?”

“Not really, no.” He shrugs. “No self-respecting Mexican would get drunk off of tequila, it’s in our blood.”

“Okay. Good.” She sets down her coffee. He follows suit, confused and watchful—but not even he expects it when she moves, throwing a leg over his thighs so she’s in his lap, her hands braced on the back of the couch behind him.

“Wha—Jyn?” His voice is hoarse. She smiles to herself, satisfied.

“Cassian,” she echoes, and then, because he’s looking up at her with wide, surprised eyes, leans in.

Their lips barely touch when he’s pushing her back, gentle but firm. “No, we—”

“You want this too.” She knows she’s right. She knows this isn’t just her. Knows how he looks at her, how he smiles at her, how his fingers sometimes brush over her arm like he wishes they could linger. Knows what Kay said, what Bodhi’s joked. She knows she’s right. “Come on, Cass—”

“I can’t,” he repeats, which is stupid, so Jyn squirms on his lap, which gets him to groan quietly. “Jyn.” Her name is a whole world; she wants to hear him say it like that always.

“We both want this. It’s been there since the beginning. Just—I’m sick of waiting.”

“I can’t,” Cassian repeats. His body is rigid under hers, pressing back into the couch like he’s afraid. “It’s—”

“Come on,” she says, and this time instead of going for his lips she goes for the side of his jaw, to taste the sharpness there. “What are you afraid of?”

“Jyn,” he says a third time, and presses her back again. When she meets his gaze, trying not to be petulant that he’s making this so difficult, it’s steady and serious and almost sad. “I’ve done many things I…am not proud of, in this job. I won’t make you one of those.”

She rolls her eyes. “I’m not drunk.”

“That’s not—” He’s not looking away, has caught her in his gaze. “You’re my CI.”

“So you’re not doing this because of some regulation?” She scoffs, but it hurts. She’d thought they were past that. Thought she might matter more to him than that.

“I’m not doing this because I have almost total power over you,” Cassian replies, still steady. “I’m not—I can’t. Not when you’re bound to me. I may be many things, but I won’t be that.”

“This has nothing to do with that.”

“Of course it does.” Cassian retorts, his voice suddenly sharper than she’s heard it in a long time. “You’d never be here if it wasn’t for that thing around your ankle.”

“I don’t care about it.” She tries to purr it, to make it as sexy as she can.

“I do.”  He pushes harder this time, and she falls back, off of him. He really—he’s saying no. He’s not saying he doesn’t want her, he’s saying no, because of his stupid—honor, or the rules, or whatever. He’s saying no, and now she’s laid everything out and he knows and he said no and it seems she wasn’t good enough, not for him to want her, not enough to stay.

“Get out.”

“Jyn.”

“Get out!” she yells, and he stands. She doesn’t want to look at him, wants to hide her humiliation, but she hears, feels him stop in front of the door, and she has to look up. He still has that look on, that isn’t quite sad or regretful or yearning, but somehow is all at once.

“I—”

“Go!” she orders, and he goes.

She curls her legs up into her body, and refuses to cry.

///

She doesn’t go to work the next day. She’s half expecting a summons, but Cassian must have at least the sense to leave her be. Instead, she runs—runs and runs and runs, in circles around her radius until her legs are burning and her breath pounds out of her. She looks at the other side of the street, at that stupid fucking bodega outside her radius, and down at the anklet.

Then she turns, and heads back home.

///

Baze and Chirrut are waiting at the door when she gets back. They let themselves in, bickering between each other as she showers and gets dressed, like they know she doesn’t want to talk about it, then Baze somehow bullies her oven into producing a decent meal.

It’s only after, once she’s full of the warmth, that Chirrut speaks. “He’s a good man.”

“I don’t care.” So was Saw, so was her father. Many good men have decided she wasn’t enough. Have left her behind, with more to bind her to them than whatever she and Cassian have. 

“We can get it off,” Baze says, a statement and an offer and a question. She looks down at the anklet.

“Maybe,” she says, and thinks about what it would feel like to run free.

///

Bodhi shows up after Baze and Chirrut leaves. She glares when she opens the door. “Did he send you?” she demands. She hadn’t questioned her friends; she’s long since given up comprehending how Chirrut always has uncannily perfect understanding. But Bodhi—

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, unless it has something to do with what a bad mood Cassian was in today.” Bodhi holds up a six pack. “Hair of the dog?”

She hesitates, then opens the door. “You were afraid I ran.”

Bodhi sets the six pack on the table before he answers, clearly considering. “I thought something happened, and you might have done something rash.”

“I didn’t.” She doesn’t mention Baze’s offer.

“I’m glad.” Bodhi grins at her, and clinks his bottle against hers. Then his face goes more serious. “If you ever do go—tell me goodbye first, okay? I promise I won’t tell til you’re gone.”

She lets out a long breath. “Okay,” she promises. “I can do that.”

///

“Oh, Jyn is back,” Kay says when she walks in the next day. She thinks he might even sound pleased. “You didn’t scare her away forever, Cassian.”

“I’m glad.” Cassian’s staring at her, his brow furrowed like he didn’t expect her to be there. She doesn’t know how weak he thinks she is, that some humiliation like that will make her wallow for more than a day, so she just meets his gaze, dares him to say something.

He doesn’t, just nods at her, something like an apology. She turns away. She doesn’t want it.

Cassian doesn’t ask for more. “We’re out in twenty.”

“I’ll be there.”

This time, Cassian doesn’t hesitate to give her a gun. He doesn’t question her presence at his back. He simply assumes she’ll be there, with Bodhi behind them and Kay monitoring from the van, and she finds that she doesn’t question he’ll be there either.

///

The anklet chafes more, as winter sets in. There’s a dust up in the Hoth neighborhood, that ends in not all Organized Crime dying. Solo kisses Organa dramatically at the celebration, and when Skywalker starts demanding what’s happening, Solo tells him it’s been a thing since September. Cassian pretends not to smirk as he collects his winnings, but Jyn glares as she sees him counting. Asshole.

///

There aren’t any gunshots, this time. Or at least not yet. Instead, Jyn pulls her hat farther over her head and makes herself not play with the ink drying at her temple. Next to her, Cassian looks perfectly relaxed in his Empire uniform, but then again, he’s probably done that before. It’s some comfort that Kay, lurking behind them, seems as uncomfortable as she feels.

“Next right,” Bodhi says in their ear.

None of them acknowledge it more than taking that right. A pair of men with large guns slung over their backs pass them; Cassian nods when they look at them. The men nod back, keep going. Jyn hates infiltration. She really wishes they could just shoot their way in every time.

“Left,” Bodhi says, and then—“Oh, shit.”

“What?” Jyn mutters.

“They noticed the guard is down. You’re going to get blown soon.”

Jyn glances at Cassian, but he’s not looking at her, is looking back at Kay instead.

“I know,” Kay agrees, and shakes his head, adjusting his posture. “Someday you are going to stop bringing me on these, and I am going to rejoice.”

“Yes, but this is not then,” Cassian agrees, and he’s pulling off his hat, ruffling up his hair and tugging at his uniform so it looks messy. “Jyn—”

“Yes, I get it,” She snaps, and rubs at her tattoo so it’s clear it’s not real ink. Cassian is handing his gun to Kay, who holds it like he’s not entirely sure what to do with it. Jyn reluctantly does the same. “If you don’t get this back to me—”

“I know how to do this work,” Kay retorts. “There has only been a 3% failure rate of times when I have underperformed. This will not be one of them.”

“I don’t know the percentages, but—”

“Let’s go,” Cassian interrupts. Jyn huffs out a breath, and holds out her hands for Kay to push her forward with the butt of his gun. She much prefers to be the one holding the gun, that’s for sure.

///

“We can make arrangements for you, if you’d like to go somewhere for the holidays,” Cassian says. They’re in the car on the way back from a job that went well enough, as there were no shots fired and everyone is in one piece, though Kay is still whining about how he stubbed his toe to Bodhi, whose patience is really admirable. “Figure out a way to get you there.”

“I don’t have anywhere to go.” She’d have figured he knew that. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

“No.”

“Do you have anywhere to go?” Bodhi asks, probably as a respite from Kay.

“No.” Cassian glances away, out of the window.

“I don’t either,” Kay volunteers. “But I suppose you all knew that.”

Bodhi stops at a stoplight, and turns in his seat to look at them. “Okay, yeah, you’re all coming with me.”

“I—”

“Did that sound like a question?” Bodhi asks, and Cassian subsides, looking bewildered. Jyn sympathizes.

///

Kay corners her at her desk. She’s only there because Cassian is on one of his solo missions, and she doesn’t like to be in his office alone, even if she could break in easily enough. It feels too empty.

“What do you want?” she asks, after he’s been hovering for long enough to irritate her.

“I would like to declare a truce.”

“A truce?” she saves the form she was working on, looks up at him. There’s no way he wouldn’t tower over her, so she leans back in her chair so at least her neck won’t start to hurt.

“I believe it would be good for the working relationship of this team if we were to get along,” Kay says, like he read it out of a textbook. “So a truce is in order.”

“We get along.”

“You are threatened by me.” Jyn glances around, but Bodhi, thank everything, is out to lunch, so it’s just them in their corner of the bullpen. “I disrupted your relationship with Cassian, like you disrupted mine. Neither of us are pleased by it.”

She shrugs, but she’d thought she had kept that under wraps better. “Nothing to do about it.”

“No. But the team had a 67% increase in success rate when we work together, so we should establish communication.” He takes a breath, steels himself. Jyn waits. She’s intrigued despite herself for what will come next. “I respect your competence, Jyn Erso. You are skilled at what you do. And you have made it more enjoyable to work here. Having more people to associate with makes it more pleasant for Cassian and me both.”

“More people?” she asks, because that’s the easiest to address in Kay’s speech.

“The other agents are wary of us. They were more so, before you and Bodhi began. We are too dangerous and do things in ways they do not understand. People in general are scared of it.” Kay doesn’t seem disturbed by what he’s saying. “You are not. It is better, since you have come.” Kay nods to himself, satisfied, like he does when he’s successfully found an incongruity in some data.

“Kay.” Jyn makes herself say. She can return a magnanimous gesture. She can’t let Kay do it better, at least. “I respect your skills as well. And I’ll try to get along better.”

“Good.” Kay doesn’t quite smile, but his shoulder droop a little so they’re less tense. “I will enjoy being your friend, Jyn Erso.”

///

Bodhi’s family is loud and there’s just so many of them, so many Jyn can’t keep track of who’s related how. It’s not even a Christmas party really, Bodhi had told them, because none of them are Christian, but it’s close enough to a holiday party that they’re not getting out of it because apparently winter is a time for family. She’s grateful for the invitation, she is, but—even her vague memories of family Christmases was of just her and her parents. At Saw’s, it was generally the few people who didn’t have other families getting drunk together. She doesn’t understand this loud, mad, loving chaos.

It’s enough that she’s grateful when Cassian steps in, and his own eyes widen, like he’s as surprised by it as she is. Bodhi whisks the dish that he’d brought out of his hands, and herds him over to meet his mother; Jyn manages not to laugh at Cassian’s expression as the woman skips shaking his hand to hug him, thanking him profusely for her Bodhi’s new job.

It takes him a few more minutes to extricate himself, then he finds his way quickly over to her. “You survive the introductions?” she asks, handing him a drink, because he looks like he needs it.

“Only barely.” His gaze skims over the party again, but it’s not the fear or confusion that she knows is on her face whenever she looks at it. If she had to put a word to it, it’s wistful.

“Okay?” she asks, nudging him with her hip. He shakes himself, looks down at the drink in his hand. “I’ve never been to one of these either.”

“I have.” He shrugs. “I had Christmases like this, once.”

Jyn doesn’t know what to say to that, so she doesn’t say anything. Cassian doesn’t share much about his past, and she can respect that. She doesn’t talk about her past either.

They sit in silence for a while longer, until Bodhi comes along to scoop them up, drops them off at a table with Kay and a bunch of teenagers who are so fascinated by the fact that they’re allowed to carry guns that Jyn’s close to grabbing whatever gun she knows Cassian has on him to shoot them, before his hand on her arm stills her.

After, they go to a bar, just her and Cassian and Bodhi and Kay, and Baze and Chirrut come from wherever they were spending their time to join them. Bodhi’s apologizing to Cassian about how his aunt was hitting on him, Kay is reenacting said incident to Baze and Chirrut, and Jyn leans back and watches them. All of them. She can hardly remember childhood, can hardly remember a Christmas spent with her parents. But this is better than anything she can remember.

Baze looks up from Kay’s enthusiastic storytelling to catch her eye, meets her gaze with a quick, uncharacteristic wink. She laughs, and gets up for another round. The anklet is still sore around her ankle, but it barely hurts at all.

///

Barely a day after they get back after New Year’s, Cassian goes on another one of his solo missions. In the interim, Jyn is “loaned” to another agent, which is such a fucking indignity she might be more contrary than usual, because she won’t be loaned to anyone. It doesn’t matter that it’s only a week, like Cassian had told her as he left, with one of his too heavy looks and a movement like he was considering brushing her cheek. It’s a week of being loaned out like a new toy.

For the first week, Jyn’s in a bad mood because the new agent is an asshole who doesn’t listen to her and apparently thinks that having a pet criminal means that he can tell her to pick locks and beat people up. He doesn’t give her a gun, or tell her what to do more than one step ahead; she of course reacts by figuring out the mission details on her own, and realizing that not only is he an asshole, he’s incompetent too, and his slow burn strategy is just not going to work. She guesses she doesn’t actually know much about the FBI, other than Cassian and Mothma, but still—his plan has none of Cassian’s resourceful cleverness. It doesn’t even have the brutal skill of one of Organized Crime’s raids. It’s just. Overcautious and stupid.

Still, Jyn plays along, because she doesn’t want to spoil this gig and get sent back to prison, to her real cage. Even if the radius chafe more, with this idiot holding her reins. When she’s not even being useful. But Bodhi warns her to behave, half-joking about what Cassian will expect when he gets back, and she knows he’s right, so she lasts out the week.

Then Cassian doesn’t come back. The first day is nothing, sometimes missions go over, and his sort of missions especially are often unpredictable. The second day, Bodhi starts to fuss and fumble, even as he says encouraging things about how Cassian’s a badass and can get out of anything. The third day, Kay—who actually knows what the mission is—starts looking worried, and that’s when Jyn really starts her campaign to figure out what Cassian was doing and why he couldn’t bring her with him to watch his back. But Mothma’s impenetrable, Kay won’t answer and Jyn doesn’t have the heart to press when he looks so worried, and even Chirrut just shakes his head, says something about how Cassian has gone from his sight, but he knows that he’s not in New York.   

Jyn rages, nearly breaks her whole apartment, runs and runs and runs, when she’s not doing her stupid busywork for the idiotic agent who is keeping her leashed here, when she should be gone to wherever Cassian is.

On day twelve of Cassian being gone, day five of him being MIA, Jyn can’t stand it anymore. The agent orders her on yet another creeping, roundabout sneak around the premises to record the movements of the guards, though they’ve been the same for the past four weeks, and Jyn is stuck here doing a pointless job incorrectly while Cassian is out there doing who knows what. She slips past the guards, and goes in.

Fourteen days after Cassian’s been gone, she’s in a meeting with Mothma and the agent, watching the agent rant and rave about how unmanageable she is and just what a liability.

“She’s wild and reckless and she didn’t listen to anything I said!” he yells, and Jyn glances at Mothma, who’s straight faced.

“I got the target,” she points out, when the agent pauses for breath. “In about a month less than you would have.”

“But you did it wrong!” he shouts back. “She disobeyed a direct order, she always did, how can we trust her in the field when she’s nothing more than a common criminal—”

“Jyn follows orders when they’re good orders,” comes a voice from behind them, and Jyn’s on her feet in an instant, because—Cassian’s there, having slipped in behind the closed door at some point, with a black eye and in jeans and a over-large sweatshirt that makes him look a little homeless and he’s here and alive and such a overdramatic idiot for waiting for the perfect moment to intervene, how long had he been hovering there?

“Cassian!” Jyn can’t help her breath. Her heart’s beating like it’s making up for the time Cassian was missing.

“Agent Andor,” Mothma says, and when Jyn looks back she’s smiling too, like she feels a bit of the relief Jyn feels.

Cassian moves into the room. He seems steady on his feet, but there’s something to the rigidity of his body that Jyn knows means he’s holding himself together by nothing more than will. He glances at her, nothing more than that, but there’s a smile there, and Jyn feels like she can breathe again. “Jyn achieved the mission goal, using the most efficient tactics that would ensure the least danger to all involved and the least risk of being discovered. It would be a textbook job that you told her to do. Unless, of course, you told her to do something else. Something that was not, in fact, this excellent strategy.” He’s staring at the agent now, that steady unwavering stare that once made Jyn consider faltering. “Which is it?”

The agent only meets his gaze for a few seconds before snorting and throwing up his hands. “Screw you too, Andor. If she turns on you, it’s your own fault.” He storms out of the office. Mothma watches him go evenly, then turns to Cassian. Jyn can’t help it, now that the asshole is gone; she’s next to Cassian, trying to show by her actions at least that she’ll catch him if he does let himself go, even if she can’t say that.

“Agent Andor,” Mothma says, and there’s the smile again. “You had a number of people here worried. Did you—”

“It’s done,” Cassian says, and Mothma nods.

“Very good. We’ll have the full debrief once you’ve rested.”

Cassian nods, and leaves. Jyn doesn’t spare Mothma another look before going with him.

He makes it to his office, but Jyn doesn’t even have a chance to close the door before he’s swaying.

“Cassian—”

“Jyn,” he breathes, and she doesn’t know if he actually moves or if he falls or if she’s the one who moves, but she’s got her arms around him as he hugs her back, his face buried in her hair. She holds on as tightly as she can without hurting him. He smells a little weird and she’s not sure where these clothes have been, but underneath it he feels like Cassian, even if he’s shaking a little, even if she’s holding him up maybe more than he’d like to admit. It’s Cassian, safe and back here, back where he should be.

“You,” she orders, without letting him go, “Are not allowed to go without me again.”

“Anywhere?” he asks, his voice a whisper in her ear. His fingers are twining in the edges of her hair now, like he can’t believe it’s there.

“No jobs,” she amends. “Nowhere where you’d need me to have your back.” She turns her head a little, so the next words will be muffled. “Nowhere you might not come back from.”

“Jyn,” he breathes again, and no one will ever say her name like that. “I’ll always come back.”

He doesn’t know that, though. Other people have said that to her, and they were wrong. She won’t let Cassian be wrong.

“Cassian!” That’s Bodhi’s voice from the door, then, “Kay, Cassian’s back!” Then there are more arms around her and apparently they’re doing group hugs now. Jyn laughs, and loosens her hold enough for Bodhi to take her place.

///

She meets Lando at a FBI bar, which is somehow ironic. But she’s there to get a drink with the team after a long, long week, and he comes up to her at the bar with a “There’s no way you’re FBI.”

She turns to him. He’s a good looking man, and carries himself with the sort of cockiness that means he knows it. “Neither are you,” she returns, and he laughs, loud and easy. It’s almost surprising. She hasn’t hung out with someone who laughs like that in a year.

“I’m not,” he agrees, and shoots a thumb over at the Organized Crime table, where Skywalker appears to be mediating a loud dispute between Organa and Solo. “I’m friends with them, for my sins. What are you going here?”

“I’m…” What is she? She’s not sure. “I’m with them,” she ends with, and nods over to where the team is sitting. She doesn’t have to look to know that Cassian is watching, but she doesn’t want to see his face.

“They don’t look FBI either,” he observes, which gives him points for honesty and observance. “I’m Lando.” He holds out a hand.

“Jyn,” She replies, and takes his hand. It’s calloused, rough. This is a man who’s done things with his life.

“Jyn,” he repeats, like he’s tasting the name. It’s not like Cassian says it, but he’s got a nice voice, and a nice mouth. “So, Jyn-not-FBI, you’re far too lovely to be drinking with all those men. Have a drink with me instead?”

She raises an eyebrow. “How are you different?”

“I’m much more amusing,” he promises, and she snorts, but she ends up with a phone number as she goes back to the table.

“Who was that?” Bodhi asks, when she sits back down.

“He was attracted to you,” Kay observes. “He stood three inches closer to you than is the societally accepted norm, and looked at your breasts—”

“Thank you, Kay,” Jyn interrupts him. “He’s a friend of Organized Crime’s.”

“And?” Bodhi prompts.

“And I have a phone number,” Jyn admits. Bodhi hoots, then pulls out his phone.

“Okay, name?”

“Lando.”

Bodhi hums. She’s pretty sure he’s already hacking everything about this man, but if Lando can’t stand up to that, he’s not worth calling.

“Cassian, your heart rate has picked up,” Kay says, and it’s only then that Jyn forces herself to look at Cassian. He’s not looking at her, just down at his beer.

“You have something to say?” Jyn demands. He had his chance. He could have—they could have—he had the chance to have the right to say something about this, and he turned her down. And never said anything else, not after he ended up collapsed in her arms, not after he looks at her sometimes, like she’s the only thing in the world. He hasn’t said anything, so if he tries to say something now—

“No,” Cassian says, and looks up with something that’s almost a smile on his face. “I just hope he’s worthy of you.”

Jyn opens her mouth. Closes it. Why didn’t he say something?

“Okay, it looks like he’s a CI, like Solo,” Bodhi’s saying. Kay’s leaned over his shoulder to look at his phone. “Except a little more criminal. Oh, he’s in charge of Cloud City, that apartment complex that the Empire tried to edge into a few months ago, but he’s been working with OC since then…I can’t find any weird kinks or anything, Jyn, you should be okay.”

“That’s assuming she has no weird kinks,” Kay points out, and Bodhi makes an agreeing sound.

Jyn shakes her head. “I’m not telling you when I go on this date.”

“Then tell Chirrut and Baze.” It’s not an order, quite, but it’s not a suggestion either. Jyn glares at Cassian, but he doesn’t look away. “He’s worked for the Empire before, yes? Then you tell someone so if it’s a trap, we can get you out.”

Jyn really wishes he didn’t have a point. “Fine,” she agrees. “But no watching through security cameras,” she tells Bodhi, who puts a hand to his heart.

“Would I ever?”

“Yes,” Kay states. “You followed me when I would not tell you I was going to ComicCon. And when Cassian has a mission you don’t have clearance to know about. And you attempted to track Chirrut once but he—”

“Shush!” Bodhi mutters, looking around like there are bugs everywhere, which Jyn wouldn’t put quite past Mothma.

“Are you going to let her do this?” Kay asks Cassian, apparently moving on from Bodhi.

“He can’t let me do anything,” Jyn snaps.

“He can. He could shorten your leash. Or he could say that Lando is too criminal for you to associate with. Or he could—”

“Jyn can do what she wants,” Cassian interrupts. Jyn appreciates that, she does. But Kay’s words are a reminder of the cage she can’t escape.

///

She does, in fact, tell Baze where she’s going on her date—not because Cassian ordered her to, but because he has a point and she’s not going to be stupid. But it turns out not to be necessary—they go to an Italian place well within Jyn’s radius and Lando’s amusing, laughs quickly and easily but doesn’t blink when she tests him by telling him who her father is. At the end of the night, he’s perfectly ready to see her into a cab, but it’s been a really long time so she invites him upstairs, and it’s good. He’s a generous lover, and the sex is fun and mutually satisfactory.

He doesn’t look at her like she’s his world. He doesn’t touch her with the gentle desperation she’s imagined. He doesn’t say her name quite right. He doesn’t move with her like they’re two halves of a whole, so attuned they don’t need words. But it’s good. It’s fun. It scratches the itch.

///

Bodhi wolf whistles when she walks into the office the next day.

“Did you—”

“I did not track you, on cameras or otherwise.” Bodhi holds up his hands. “You just look like a woman who finally had sex.”

“You are less tense,” Kay agrees.

“Oh, fuck off,” she tells them, but the fact is she is more relaxed, and she’s maybe not as snappish as she should be.

She hesitates before going into Cassian’s office, but screw it, she hasn’t done anything wrong. Cassian looks up when she walks in.

“Have a good night?”

“It was fun,” she tells him. Something moves across his face, something pained, but then he looks back down, and doesn’t say anything else.

///

It’s the same after that, and it isn’t. The job is the same, the team is still a well oiled machine, working well enough together that even Mothma comments on it. Even out of work, they still spend more time than is probably healthy together, though she’s not sure who else she would talk to—who else would understand. But it’s the same, and Bodhi jokes and Kay is an asshole but he’s theirs and Cassian has his understated humor and his watchful gaze. Except—there’s something different, something about how Cassian holds himself around her, and she knows she’s not hallucinating because Chirrut comments on it too, when he comes with them one night.

“You are not in harmony,” he points out, and Jyn throws up her arms.

“He’s the one acting weird!”

Baze snorts. “You’re the one who’s sleeping with someone else.”

“And why should that matter?” Jyn asks. She gets two scornful looks for that, which is fair enough. “He doesn’t get to freeze me out for this. He said no.”

“He’s in his own cage,” Chirrut says. “Don’t judge him too harshly for it.”

“He doesn’t have a leash.”

“Not all our cages have bars.” Chirrut smiles. “Give him time.”

“I’ve given him time. And it ran out.” Jyn retorts. “Now, are we going in, or not?”

“All in good time,” Chirrut tells her, and Jyn’s snort is perfectly in time with Baze’s.

///

Jyn isn’t easily surprised, but it still takes her aback, when she walks into work and there’s a cupcake on her desk with a candle stuck into it.

“What—”

“You’ve been here one year,” Kay tells her, like she didn’t know already. She hadn’t, really. She’s not one for anniversaries, for count downs. Even birthdays rarely mattered; celebrating with her parents are hazy memories; at Saw’s it was a pat on the back if there was any acknowledgment at all. But when she checks the date on her phone, she finds that Kay is right—it’s been a year since she walked into that shadowed room and made a deal.

“Bodhi decided that we should celebrate,” Kay goes on, looking at the cupcake like it’s offended him. “I thought that we would only do that if we celebrated the times everyone started, but then Cassian becomes a problem, so we should not celebrate anyone. But I was overruled.”

“Thanks, Kay.”

“He’s the only one who thinks that,” Bodhi pipes in, fumbling a lighter out of his pocket. “The rest of us wanted to celebrate. You’ve been here a year! Which means we’ve been a team for basically that long. It’s something to celebrate.”

“It is,” Cassian agrees, and Jyn had barely noticed he was there, but there he is, leaning against the wall next to her desk like it’s a year ago and he’s leaning on the wall in that shadowed room. Except there’s a smile in his eyes this time, and he’s not holding himself like he’s about to strike, or at least not any more than he always does. “Blow out the candle, then.”

“Is this like a birthday?” Jyn asks. Her voice is even, which she’s glad about. It’s—she’s not going to cry or anything, but she doesn’t remember the last time someone celebrated anything like this with her. Baze and Chirrut were sometimes around for a birthday, but she didn’t make a big deal out of it and neither did they. “Do I make a wish?”

“Wishes are unnecessary on birthdays,” Kay points out.

“You can do what you want,” Cassian tells her, like a promise, like it means more, and she shifts so that the anklet hits her ankle.

“We make our own traditions,” Bodhi agrees. “Now seriously, blow out the candle before the fire alarms go out.”  

She laughs, Cassian snorts, Kay makes an agreeing him, and she blows out the candle.

“To many more!” Bodhi claps his hands. She can’t help but laugh again, at the ridiculousness of the single candle, the cupcake, the way the other agents are giving them an even wider berth than usual.

“Are we going to cut the cupcake into four parts, too?” Kay asks, and Jyn barely resists the urge to lick the whole thing, just to be contrary. Instead, she very graciously allows them each a corner, because they got her a cupcake and they’re here.

///

They all have nightmares. They’ve had enough overnight stake outs and nights hiding in safehouses and the nights they all crash at one apartment, too exhausted to go farther than that for Jyn to know that. Kay usually sleeps like the dead, but sometimes he thrashes, mumbles things about not wanting to, he’s a different person now. Bodhi just screams, loud enough that it often wakes the others, though they don’t mention it. Cassian doesn’t yell, but the muffled sounds he makes are almost worse, the way it sounds like he’s trained himself out of screaming. When he wakes, he starts to pace wherever they are, stops by each person in the room like he’s checking they’re really there.

Jyn—she doesn’t know what she does, exactly, but she knows she dreams of Krennick and his cold eyes, of fire and Saw’s hand reaching for her, of her father’s hand falling from her cheek. She dreams of Bodhi’s body, of Chirrut turning unseeing eyes on her and saying he doesn’t know who she is, of Baze shoving her from a room. She dreams of Cassian falling, of watching his breath leave his body. Of his knife at her throat, telling her it’s orders. She dreams of running, running, running, and leaving everything behind.

Sometimes, after a nightmare, there’s more than one of them awake. They sit in silence then, even Kay, and watch the others sleep.

///

“No.”

“What?”

“No,” Jyn states. She has her arms folded over her chest, watching as Cassian packs his bags. “No, you are not going alone.”

“I have my—”

“No.” This time it’s Bodhi who says it, appearing in the doorway. “If you go, I’ll just track you.”

“This is a solo mission. I appreciate your concern, but—”

“You have a 85% increased chance of injury, failure, or death without your team,” Kay adds. He takes up the part of the doorway Bodhi doesn’t. “We would all prefer to lower those odds.”

“And that’s sweet, but—”

“Cassian.” Jyn must have something in her voice, because he looks at her, this time. “What makes you think you have a choice?”

He blinks, like he’s confused. “This is not a—a pleasant thing to do. I would not have you bear it too.”

“We won’t let you carry it alone,” Jyn tells him, and a confused smile breaks over Cassian’s face. Jyn doesn’t look away. She won’t let him go away and not come back.

///

Lando proposes a date out to the beach, and Jyn has to say, “I can’t go there.”

“Why not?” Lando asks, stretching out in her bed. He looks good like this, in her bed.

“My radius.” She shakes her leg a bit, so the anklet clanks.

“Oh, that sucks.” Lando rolls onto his side, so he can face her. “How do you stand it? I’d have cut it and run within the first week, and screw the consequences.”

She’d have thought she would have too, once. Before the Death Star. Before Bodhi’s fierce drive and Kay’s stubborn need and Cassian—and Cassian, and the way he lives his fight, the belief he carries with him and the way he’s infected her with it too.

“It’s not so bad,” she replies slowly. “And it’s not forever.”

“What, three and a half more years?” Lando asks, shaking his head. “Might as well be.”

Jyn shrugs. “And maybe I’ll go before that. But for right now, I’m doing good.”

Lando laughs. “You’ve got strange priorities, Jyn Erso.” He doesn’t understand. Of course he doesn’t. She knows who would.

“Yeah, well.” She rolls over, on top of him. “I think you’ll like my priorities now.”

///

“This is the first time in two weeks you were shot at,” Kay observes in their ear pieces. Jyn’s running too fast to retort, but she has some choice words for him. “I thought we were going for a new record.”

“Kay,” Cassian warns, then, “Jyn, if you get them three paces farther, I have a sightline.”

“Great.” Jyn mutters. “I love being bait.”

“You were the only one small enough—”

“I know!” she backs up, judges the line of the window. Bodhi is quiet on the comms, which probably means he’s fine; he starts talking when he’s anxious. As long as everyone’s chasing her, then he has time to get his job done. The footsteps pound behind her, and then there’s six of them, in front of her with wow, massive guns.

She tilts her head up, levels her gun.

“You’re trapped, little girl,” the man in front growls, and she rolls her eyes.

“You’re in the shot,” Cassian tells her. The men cock their guns.

“You should have known better than to challenge the Empire!”

“The Empire is falling,” she says, and then she throws herself up, to the pipes on the walls, and when the gunshots are done ringing out the men are on the ground.

“Jyn?” Cassian demands.

“I’m good.” She keeps climbing. The window’s the easiest exit.

“Bodhi?”

“Done. We’re out.”

“Good. Rendez—” One more gunshot, and Jyn looks down to see one of the guards had moved. “Rendezvous at the van,” Cassian continues. Jyn considers sticking her tongue out at the man below her, but decides that’s beneath her, and keeps climbing up to the window. It’s only once she’s out that she realizes she hadn’t even considered the idea that Cassian could have missed, could have not gotten all of them. Could have not covered her.

///

They end up at Cassian’s that night, because her apartment is too small for all of them, Bodhi’s roommate judges them, Baze and Chirrut like to keep their rooms secret and secure, and Kay had refused to let them into his apartment after the one time a lamp was entirely accidentally broken. Jyn likes it at Cassian’s best, anyway; what she’d once seen as impersonal she can now see through. She can see the way he chose the couches for comfort, but that they’re all arranged so that anyone sitting in them has a good sightlines and an easy path to the door or the guns she bets he has stored everywhere; she’s looked in his cupboard and see how he stocks Bodhi’s favorite tea and the cereal she likes as a late night snack.

“So,” Bodhi asks, after he’s finished regaling them all with an animated retelling of his latest date, because somehow Bodhi never finds people who appreciate him but this guy maybe appreciated him a little too much, enough that Jyn and Cassian exchanged a look halfway through the story that meant Bodhi was getting checked for stalkers, “Cassian, what about you?”

“Me?” There’s always something so odd about Cassian out of work clothes, when he looks—well, soft, despite the deadliness he carries with him. Now, he’s in jeans and a warm-looking sweater, and Jyn is glad he’s in the armchair instead of the loveseat so she’s not tempted to see if it feels warm, too.  

“My eternal quest for love is doomed, Jyn has Lando, and romance isn’t Kay’s thing. So what about you?” Bodhi toasts him with his tea mug. “Don’t make me get out my Pakistani mother impression, I can do it.”

Jyn doesn’t know if she wants to stare at Cassian or not look at him as he replies, so she stares. Cassian doesn’t look at her, just at Bodhi. “There’s no one.”

“No one?” Bodhi snorts. “Come on, guy who looks like you, who’s an honest to god FBI agent hero—that’s irresistible.”

“And when would I have time?” Cassian shakes his head. “And after what I’ve done? I would either be lying to a partner, or they would be horrified by me and what I’ve done. No, there’s no one.”

Jyn’s stomach twists. She’s not sure if she’s pleased or not. She doesn’t want Cassian lonely or unhappy. But she’s viciously happy he doesn’t have anyone else. She’s gotten accustomed to Kay’s place in his life, and she knows he and Bodhi have a friendship apart from her, and that’s fine. But no one else gets him.

“There are other agents,” Bodhi suggests. “Skywalker’s cute, in the right light.”

“He’s too young,” Jyn interjects, as Cassian says,

“No,” with the firm edge that means he’s really done with a subject.

 Jyn meets Cassian’s questioning look head on. Skywalker is too young. Too young, and too idealistic for someone like Cassian, who lives his life so that people like Skywalker can have their ideals. Skywalker wouldn’t understand a good life in the shadows. 

“Fine, fine. I won’t mention you to my mother.” Bodhi subsides. “But Jyn, how do you feel about a double date? To keep me safe, next time?”

“I think that’d be hard to explain,” Jyn replies. Even after all this time, none of the team has met Lando. She’s not sure she wants them to.

“I’m doomed to only meet weirdos,” Bodhi mourns.

“I can come on your dates,” Kay volunteers. “I have found I have a 100% success rate in scaring off people who want Cassian’s attention.”

“I am desperate enough I might take you up on that,” Bodhi groans.

Jyn pauses, as Cassian’s showing them out, later that night. She’s at the door, but—“You know I—we’re not afraid of you, right?” she asks, before he can close the door behind her. “You did everything for the right reasons, because you had to. I—people know that.”

“Yes,” he agrees, and when he smiles it’s sad. He drifts back, away from the hand she was thinking of using to touch him. “I know.”

///

The door slams shut behind her, and then Cassian’s rounding on her. “What was that?” he demands, and she’s not sure she’s ever heard him angry like this.

“What was what?” She tilts her chin up, doesn’t move back. She’s not wrong.

“I told you to stay put and cover our retreat.”

“There was a whole wing you didn’t consider! The weapons could have been there just as easily, I had to search it.”

“You had to do what I said. If the weapons weren’t in the main depot—”

“I would have found them! It was a bad plan, Cassian, and you know it.” She glares at him, daring him to say otherwise.

“That’s not the problem! We were counting on you to cover our retreat, and you weren’t there. If we hadn’t gotten lucky—”

“Bodhi’s fine!”

“Because we were lucky! Lucky won’t do everything, mensita,” he spits back. His hands are curled over the edge of his chair, his knuckles white. She feels the same. She’s a second from punching him. “How would you feel if Bodhi was shot because you weren’t at your post?”

“You could have handled it.” If she hadn’t trusted him to be there, she wouldn’t have done it, doesn’t he understand?

“Not if I thought you were!” He goes into a string of Spanish, then picks back up in English. “There are orders I don’t care if you disobey because they don’t matter. There are times I need you to tell me that I am being foolish. But when there are tactical orders your team relies on, you do them.”

Jyn shifts. Maybe she should have been there. Maybe—there are still moments, when she forgets she’s on a team.

But she’s not going to say that, and she hates the guilt, and screw Cassian anyway for yelling at her like this. She’s not a child. She’s his partner. And she wants him to hurt too, to feel bad and guilty. “So you’re really just mad about this?”

Cassian doesn’t react. “What else would I be angry about?”

“Lando. You’re just jealous, and you’re taking it out—”

“Of course I’m jealous,” Cassian snaps, and his hands are up and waving. “You know how I feel about you, of course I’m jealous he can be with you. But that has nothing to do with you putting all of us at risk!”

“I didn’t!”

“You did,” Cassian takes a breath, and drags himself in, until he’s closed off again and Jyn wants to scream. “It worked out this time. But you do something like that again, I am benching you.”

“What—”

“I mean it.” Cassian catches her eyes, and she can just read that steady assurance in them, the knowledge he knows what he’s doing is right. He’d looked like that before he almost shot her father, too. “If you’re going to put other people at risk, I can’t have you in the field.”

“Fuck you,” she shoots back, and turns and storms out of the office, past Bodhi’s wide eyes and Kay’s considering look, out into the city than onward and onward until she’s at the end of her radius. Her hand is on her phone, and she has Baze’s number ready. She could go. She could go and fuck Cassian and his orders and this whole place and the way she knows she did the right thing and Cassian and his rules and that bullshit that keeps her from doing what’s necessary. Saw had it right, he knew. Knew that eventually they’d let you go, once you stopped playing by their rules, and you had to go first.

She lifts her foot. One step. One step, and she’d be over. One step. That’s all it’d take. One step, and she’d be free. Baze and Chirrut will get her out, and Lando will help too, and she’ll be gone, free to run and do what she wants.

“You said you’d say good-bye.”

She turns, and there’s Bodhi, waiting.

“Bodhi—”

“If you ran. You promised you’d say good-bye, first.” Bodhi walks up to the line only they can see. “Are you saying good-bye?”

“I didn’t mean to risk you getting hurt,” she offers. It’s not an answer, and both of them know it.

“I know. I mean, you still did, but it worked out.” Bodhi shrugs. “I knew what I was signing up for, on this team.”

“Cassian would have gotten you out, no matter what.”

“He’d die trying, that’s for sure.” Bodhi gives her a sidelong look. “Does that scare you?”

“What?”

“Knowing Cassian would die for you.”

“Cassian would die for anything, if it meant taking the Empire down.”

“Yeah, because that’s less scary.” Bodhi lets out a breath. “I think I would, too. I was ready too, back when I deserted.”

“So was I.” They all were. It had been a surprise, when she ended up living.

“I know this sucks for you, more than the rest of us. That you have the anklet too. And you and Cassian have your whole—thing, that makes it complicated.”

“We don’t—”

“Yeah, right. I might not be a super-spy, but I’m not blind.” Bodhi shakes his head. “I’d just miss you, if you were gone. The team wouldn’t be right.”

“Cassian threatened to bench me.”

“He wouldn’t.”

“Cassian means what he says.”

“Cassian makes empty threats all the time.” Bodhi snorts. “He lies like he breathes.”

“Not to us.” Jyn’s breath feels like it hurts. “Not to me.”

“He was scared, Jyn.” Bodhi’s voice is soft. Too soft, too knowing. “Scared when we got hit then scared because he didn’t know where you were. Scared there was another reason you weren’t there.”

That gets Jyn to look at him, because she hadn’t even thought of that. He’d been angry, not scared—but she of all people understands the connection. “He thought I was down?”

“We both did, until you called in.” Bodhi nods. His face is tight, like it is in his nightmares. “He was scared, and so he was made threats he wouldn’t keep, to scare you into line.”

That makes more sense than it doesn’t. Makes sense for why Cassian, cool under fire Cassian, would have exploded like that. She’s not sure what she would do if she thought Cassian was dead, but she’s sure it wouldn’t be bloodless. “I didn’t think of that.”

“That’s what I’m here for. Your friendly neighborhood emotionally competent spiderman.” Bodhi pushes back that tightness in a way that should maybe be worrisome, then grins, does finger guns that get Jyn to chuckle and shift back, away from the line.  

She pauses, before she turns to go back. “Did he—did either of you—think I’d run?”

Bodhi hums. “He might have.” It makes her fists clench, as she glances behind her, across the street.

“I wouldn’t have abandoned you to run.”

“I think it’s less that, and more…” Bodhi shrugs, and tucks a strand of his hair back behind his ear. “More that he’s counting down the days, until you’re set free and leave. It wouldn’t surprise him that you went early.”

“I…”

“We all know how much you hate being caged in like this,” Bodhi tells her, gentle. “Cassian most of all, because he’s the one holding the key.”

Jyn swallows. “And you?” she asks. “Did you think I’d gone?”

 Bodhi laughs, and shakes his head. “No. You might run when you’re angry. But you’d miss us too much.”

“Oh I would?” she retorts, and lets him walk her away from the edge. She doesn’t look back.

///

As soon as they get back to the office, Jyn walks right back into Cassian’s office, and shuts the door again. Cassian’s head jerks up, and that confused, pleased look from the day after Halloween goes across his face before it’s pushed down.

“You’re right, I shouldn’t have gone off like that without telling you where I was going,” she announces, throwing herself down into the chair. “But you don’t get to yell at me like I’m a child, either.”

Cassian takes a second, then he nods. “Okay.”

“Good.” Then, because she can’t promise she won’t run, but she wants—she doesn’t want him afraid she will. “Make the coffee maker make me real coffee?”

Cassian’s smile flickers, and he gets up. They’re in the doorway when she remembers the last things she had to say. “And me accusing you of being jealous was out of line. It won’t happen again.”

He sighs, and his hand comes up, like he’s going to touch her shoulder, or her face, then drops it. “I only want you to be happy, Jyn,” he says simply, but there’s so much more in his face, in his voice. It thrums in her, through her. Why can’t Lando say her name like that? “If he makes you happy, then I am happy.”

You would make me happier, she doesn’t say. She’s tried that, and he hasn’t said anything to indicate anything has changed.

The silence stretches, until finally he slips away, and Jyn’s left watching him go over to the coffee machine. She swears she can still feel the phantom of his touch on her cheek.

///

“Do you want to meet my team?” Jyn asks, and Lando hesitates. Jyn finds she’s not surprised. She might even be relieved. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

“It’s not that this isn’t fun.” Lando leans in, takes her hands. “And you’re great. But at a certain point knowing I’m a stand in for someone you can’t have is too much.”

“Yeah.” Jyn doesn’t see a point in denying it, or fighting it. It’s not like he’s wrong. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Lando grins. She’s going to miss those grins, even if they weren’t the smiles she really wanted. Then he adds. “It’s not just Andor, you know.

“What?” She doesn’t know what else he could mean.

“You might have said you’re not an agent,” Lando lets go of her hands. “But that job is your life. Everything else is secondary.”

She rocks back at that. “It has to be done.”

“I’m not saying it doesn’t.” He stands. She watches him get up, put his coat on. He’s a good man. A bit of a scoundrel, but a good man. A part of her wishes she could love him. A part of her knows he’s not the sort she needs, the sort of man she could trust to stay. To come back. Who can see through her and not flinch. “And if you ever need out, give me a call.”

“Of course.” She pauses, then. “If you ever need help, or get yourself in a bad spot—give me a call.”

“Oh don’t worry, I will,” he agrees, and then he’s gone.

///

“Do you want to get drunk?” Bodhi asks.

“I’m good.”

“Here is chocolate,” Kay says, putting a Snickers bar on her desk. “It is what one gives, after a break up.”

“Thanks, but I’m good.”

“Hey, I know we aren’t best friends or anything, but if you want—I know something, about men like Lando,” says Organa. “If you want to talk…”

“I’m good,” says Jyn, then, because female solidarity and all that, even if Organized Crime gets all the credit for their work. She also knows Organa’s going through some shit; Solo got taken a few weeks ago by one of his old criminal contacts and they haven’t heard from him since.  “But thank you for the offer.” Organa gives her a tight lipped smile.

“I can make him regret it,” Baze offers. Chirrut scowls at him. Baze doesn’t take it back.

“I’m good,” she tells them. “Really.”

Cassian shows up at her apartment, not too late because they actually got out of work at a reasonable hour, and Jyn’s not sure if that was on purpose. “I’m sorry,” he says, and Jyn wonders if he knows that it really is all his fault. “What do you need?”

“Nothing,” Jyn says, but lets him in. Cassian leans against the counter as she starts the water to make some of the tea Bodhi’s gotten her hooked on. He still takes up too much space in her apartment; he still takes up too much space in her mind. He still looks like he fits into this space, still and cool and too serious so he can hide his fire, always a moment away from disappearing.

He doesn’t look away, just waits. Waits her out like no one else can, until she turns and—“I’m not heartbroken. I never—I didn’t think it would last with Lando, not really.” He nods. She’s glad he’s good at keeping his emotions hidden; she doesn’t know what he’s feeling right now and she doesn’t really care. She just needs him to listen. “I just wish—my parents were in love, you know? I don’t remember much but I remember that. Is it too much to hope for that? To hope for something like that? Even with what we do?”

“No,” he says, another one of his words that carry more weight than their meaning, “You should hope for everything, Jyn. You should get it.”

She doesn’t have any words for that, so instead she reaches out, almost blindly, and Cassian lets her pull him into a hug, lets her bury her face in his chest and take in the stability there, his constancy and his warmth. He might not have what she wants from him, but he’s still here, still always here, murmuring something in Spanish in her ear.

“I’m not crying,” she mutters. “I’m not even sad, really.”

“Lo se,” he tells her, “Lo se.” Then, quieter, so quiet she thinks she’s imagining it, “Just don’t run. Not for this. Not yet.”

///

Chirrut walks into the FBI office, and Jyn knows the world is ending. Then Baze walks in behind him, and she’s certain of it.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she demands. She’d been trying to bully the coffee machine into submission, so she gets to them first.

Chirrut turns to her, as Baze eyes the rest of the bull pen like they’ll bite. “We have a tip.”

“Oh.” That’s not something she thought she’d ever hear. “Um, yeah, I can—”

“Just for you, and your team,” Chirrut continues. “It is not for the rest, not yet.”

That makes more sense. “Come on up, then,” she says, and shows them up to Cassian’s office, Bodhi and Kay trailing after.

Cassian doesn’t look surprised when they come in, but he never looks surprised. “What’s happening?”

“There are whispers,” Chirrut says. “That the Empire is building another Death Star.”

Jyn’s world spins to a halt. Her father had died for that. She nearly died for it. They all did. She can hear Bodhi’s shocked, pained exhale; see Kay sway like he’s been physically hit.

Cassian stands, and tucks his gun into his belt. “Then we confirm or deny.”

“Shouldn’t we, you know. Ask Mothma?” Jyn asks. It’s a lifeline, something to hold onto. Something to stop her world from spinning. To make the sacrifices worthwhile.

Cassian’s grabbing his jacket already. “I’ll tell her on the way to my sources.” He smiles, almost, even if it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Didn’t you once tell me there are things more important than orders?” He looks around. “Bodhi, Kay—see what you can find out online. Keep us updated. Chirrut, tell them where to look. Jyn, you’re with me.” He jerks his head at the door. “There will not be another Scarif.”

“No,” Jyn agrees, and Bodhi’s face is set and Kay is nodding and Baze looks ready to tear the world apart and Chirrut smiles like he knew this would happen and is pleased and ready. “There won’t be.”

///

This time, it’s Jyn who wakes up in the hospital bed, and Cassian is sitting at her bedside. “What—”

“We won,” Cassian says immediately. She feels like crap, and he looks it. “Mothma got the message, even if some of the secondary teams got wrong information. Organized Crime disabled it.”

She smiles, lets herself relax. Of course they did. “Was there another medal ceremony?”

“It’s tomorrow. We can be sick still.”

“Good.” And—she knows he wouldn’t be joking if the news was bad, but, “The others?”

“Better off than you. Baze and Chirrut are in the wind for a while, but they said they’d be back if you called. Bodhi got a pretty bad concussion. Kay’s fine.”

“And you?”

“Mobile.” Jyn rolls her eyes. “I’m fine. The bullet went right through.”

It probably shouldn’t be a relief that he only got shot, but it is. She never signed up for easy work. She leans back in her bed, lets Cassian crane over her. She’s more exhausted than she’d thought, or the painkillers she’s on are really good. “Will you be here?” she asks, as she feels herself drift off. “When I wake up?”

“Of course,” he says, his hand on hers. It doesn’t occur to her to doubt him.  

///

“You’ve served the department well in the last two years,” Mothma says, and Jyn looks between her and Cassian, who’s leaning against the wall watching, much like he had that moment two years ago when all of this began. “And this last escapade with the Death Star demonstrated a courage and devotion to duty not all my agents have.”

“What does that mean?” Jyn demands. She’s not sure where Mothma’s leading, or why Cassian didn’t give her any clues what this meeting was.

“That means,” Mothma replies, and then she smiles, and Jyn knows something big is happening. “That you’ve been pardoned.” Jyn blinks. She must have misheard.

“What?”

“You’re free. I have the authority of the President himself to take the anklet off. Now, if you would like.”

Jyn stares at the Director, then at Cassian, who nods encouragingly.

“This isn’t why I did it.”

Mothma actually grins at that. Jyn’s not convinced this isn’t a fever-dream. “That’s why it’s happening,” she says.

Then Cassian’s in front of her, and he’s kneeling, his hands around the anklet. It’s all—it’s too much, all at once; it’s Cassian in front of her, smiling as the anklet falls from her leg.

“There,” he says. “You’re free.”

///

She walks. No one follows her, and she’s glad of it, needs this time to herself. She loves those men, back at the office, but this is her time. Her battle.

She looks out, at the bodega that’s taunted her for two years. At this place that’s farther than she could ever go. At the walls of her cage.

One deep breath, and then she steps over.

There’s no fanfare. No one even gets why it’s momentous, her stepping across the street. But she takes a deep breath, and starts to run.

///

She knocks on Cassian’s apartment door hours later. She’s sweaty and gross from running, but he’s seen her worse off. Seen her bloody and dying and covered in sewer crud, and he’s still here.

When there’s no answer, she knocks again, louder.

“What—” Cassian demands, opening the door—then he stops, like he’s drawn up short by the sight of her. “Jyn?” he says, like it’s a miracle.

“Hi.” She walks in past him. There’s a bottle of beer on the table, an empty one next to it. “Have you been drinking?”

Cassian ignores the question. He has a lopsided sort of smile on, something wry. “Is this goodbye, then?”

“What?”

“Have you come to say goodbye before you leave?” he asks. He’s tense like she hasn’t seen him since those first days, since before Scarif, but his words are biting sharp. “I’m honored.”

“I—What are you talking about?” Normally she understands Cassian better than anyone, but she has no idea what he’s on about.

“You’re free, Jyn.” He waves a hand. “Your cage is open. Go, run free. Don’t be confined here, where you never wanted to be.” That wry smile, again. “We’ll be fine. Don’t worry about us. I’m always fine.”

She stares. Then she stares again. Then, “You stupid, stupid man,” she mutters, and stalks towards him so she can properly get in his face. “I’m not leaving.”

“You’re not?” His brow furrows; she’s never seen him look properly confused like that.

“No. I couldn’t.” She smiles this time, maybe that same wry smile. “You’ve bound me. You and the team and the things you made me care about.”

“I didn’t do any of that.” He reaches out, but his hand freezes before it can touch her. “I didn’t want to do any of that. You—you’re stardust, Jyn. You shouldn’t be bound here. Not by someone like me.”

“You are the first person in my life who has never left me. Who I believe never will.” She looks up at him, and screw her fears, screw everything—Cassian is looking at her like there is nothing in the world but her. “Why should I not be bound by that?”

“I—”

“I’m not leaving, Cassian. I’m not leaving you even if I’m not caged, and you no longer have power over me I don’t grant.” She takes a step forward, into him, slides her hands around his neck. “Would you still regret me?”

“Jyn,” he breathes, a smile lighting over his face like the sun rising, and the word and the sight thrum through her for a moment before their lips meet and that’s all she can think of, can feel; until she’s drowning in him and never wants to come up for air.

///

Cassian seems to think they should get to the bed, but Jyn’s been waiting for this for two years, for lifetimes, and the bed is too far away. She lets them get to the couch instead, but even that is a struggle, when she never wants to stop kissing Cassian, wants to taste every inch of his skin and feel his lips and the scrape of his beard over her whole body, when his hands are under her shirt and they’re just what she imagined, rough-edged and gentle all at once.

“Jyn,” Cassian says again, once they’ve settled the couch-bed debate, and they’ve fallen so he’s on his back and she’s straddling his hips. The mere sound of her name on his lips makes her shiver, and the feel of his eyes on her makes her need to kiss him again, again and again.

There’s no talk of waiting; Jyn can’t wait any longer, and she knows that Cassian wouldn’t have a problem telling her wanted to if he did. Instead she lets him sit up long enough to tug his shirt off, and somewhere during that he’s gotten her shirt off because he’s sneaky like that, she should have known.

It’s not the first time they’ve been this undressed in each other’s presence; modesty sometimes has to be sacrificed for the mission. It’s never bothered her before. But she knows he’s never looked at her like this, like all the passion he usually hides has been let loose and pointed at her. She shifts, a little uncomfortably. She knows she’s not—she isn’t—and she’s still in the clothes she’d worn to work, not anything fancy—

“Beautiful,” is what he says, his palms scraping over her stomach, up over the cotton of her bra, then under, those gorgeous capable hands making her squirm and shiver and want. “So beautiful.”

Jyn doesn’t have anything to say to that, doesn’t have words and doesn’t need the, so she drags her attention back down to him, because he’s beautiful too, lean and muscled and scarred.

She presses her lips to the scars at his ribs, the remnants of Scarif. Then the ones she doesn’t know about, knife marks and bullet wounds and jagged edges she might never fully hear the story of but she doesn’t care, she knows him under it, and now she gets to know the sounds he makes, the low groans and growled out Spanish that she takes as encouragement.

It’s not perfect; the couch might have been, in retrospect, a bad idea because it doesn’t give them enough room and unexpectedly he doesn’t have condoms in his living room, and they’re both a little unsure and a little desperate in ways that makes them clumsy. But none of that matters when Cassian’s fingers are in her and he’s watching her come apart like he’s learning every part of her, like he’s figuring out what’s best to do next time, like he wants to do this again and again and again and she can’t think like this and she doesn’t need to. None of it matters when he’s finally inside her and they’re moving together, fumbling at first but finding a rhythm quickly because they know how to act together, and her fingers are digging into his back and he’s mumbling something she can’t understand into her neck, his lips brushing against her skin in ways that make her arch and moan. None of it matters because Cassian chokes out her name as he comes, and if usually it’s a whole world now it’s a galaxy, a prayer and a promise and a thousand thing besides, and it’s probably his fingers at her clit that actually pushes her over but it feels like that word is what does it, her name in his mouth echoing like it’ll never stop.

///

Jyn trails her fingers over the edge of Cassian’s dresser. His bedroom is as stark and neat as the rest of his apartment; other than the bits of personality that come from bedrooms, there’s nothing about it that couldn’t be picked up and moved in a moment.

“What were you expecting to find?” Cassian asks, and Jyn turns back to him. He’s lying on the bed, watching her, and half of his expression is the smug, languid satisfaction men always have after sex, but part of it is something wary. All of it is gorgeous, the pleased feline smile and the readiness to shift into action.

“I’m not sure,” Jyn admits.

“The bodies aren’t hidden here.” Cassian doesn’t look away, like he’s trying to warn her of something. He probably is. “And there are bodies.”

Jyn knows. Knows there are bodies and secrets he’ll never tell, and knows that he could say the same of her. Knows about the nightmares and the regrets and the things he doesn’t, can’t let himself, regret. Knows that she’ll want to run sometimes, that even now it’s scaring her a little, the depth of what this could be, what it already is.

“Hiding bodies only means they’ll turn up again. Burning them is more effective,” she tells him, and it startles a laugh out of him, one she kisses away when she climbs back onto the bed, settles in next to him. His skin is warm and welcoming, and she curls into it, into him.

///

“To Jyn!” Bodhi toasts. “Our newest official department consultant.”

“It is an increase in rank from CI,” Kay agrees, as their glass clink.

“Anything would be,” Jyn adds. “Sorry to get legit on you,” She tells Baze and Chirrut.

“You were never not going to,” Chirrut tells her, smiling. “You were meant for greater things than crime.”

Baze nods. “We’re proud of you, little sister,” he rumbles, and Jyn turns her head away so no one will see her absolutely not blushing.

Cassian hums his agreement. He’s next to her in the booth, barely touching except for his hand folded around hers, but that, and the smile he can’t seem to contain when he looks at her, is enough.

“You know,” Bodhi remarks, bringing her back to the conversation now that it’s not just about her. “We still don’t have a proper team name. We aren’t really white collar, that pretense stopped a long time ago. We need something to measure up to Organized Crime.”

“What do you suggest?” Cassian asks, and Bodhi purses his lips, thinking.

“We get veto power,” Jyn adds, a warning, and Bodhi glares at her.

“It’ll be good.”

“Technically, the Director needs to approve a call sign,” Cassian points out, and gets Jyn’s elbow in his side for his troubles.

///

The gunfire comes in starts and stops, which means they’re professionals behind her. Which is just great, really. Jyn keeps running. She just needs to get to the end of this hallway, needs to get to the window with the fire escape.

She doesn’t bother stopping, just ducks her head, covers her face so that only leather is on the outside, and throws herself at the window so it shatters. She rolls through, but she misjudged, keeps rolling towards the edge—

Then there’s a hand on her arm, dragging her to a stop, and the sharp quick hitch of bullets next to her.

“Good?” Cassian asks, and she nods and shoots over his shoulder, where one of the guards must be ahead of the others.

“Let’s go,” she says, and kicks the ladder down. “Have you heard—”

“You’re the last.” Cassian gestures for her to start climbing first, then starts down after her. “I saw Bodhi to the servers, he’s in the van with Kay.” She doesn’t smile, because they’re still climbing and the guards are probably regrouping and possibly will meet them at the bottom, but she could. For this man who always, always, comes back for her; who’s bound her with ties not even she wants to break.

She taps her comm, so it comes to life. “Rogue One,” she says to her team. “We’re coming home.”