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Where the fuck was Jyn?
He glanced around the crowded bar for a familiar brown head, but with her height and the variety of beings much taller than a human woman, he’d be lucky to spot her until she was upon him.
As skeezy bars went, Takodana was relatively tame, its customers kept in line by a strict code imposed on the city by Maz Kanata. He minded it less than he did other such worlds, filled with pirates and bounty hunters and people who kept their ties close to the chest. No one was a friend to the Empire here, but nor were they friends of the rebellion. Particularly the Alliance.
The only authority here was Maz. The last time he’d been here, she’d taken one look at him, narrowed her eyes, sighed in such a way her whole body moved, then shook her head and gestured for him to get on with ordering a drink. He never figured out what that meant but she didn’t interfere in his business or kick him out so he left it alone.
They hadn’t yet seen her this time but he hoped they weren’t infringing on her unspoken rules about keeping the war away from her turf.
And that the rumors of her Force sensitivity proved false. Everything he’d learned about the Force in the past few months sounded more like a fantasy holo than reality but one thing that came up over and over again was the ability to feel each other in the Force. There had to be ways around it—hunting down Jedi would’ve been significantly easier if not—but if someone strong in the Force could sense Force sensitivity, bringing Jyn here might’ve been a mistake.
She’d brushed off his concerns. Which was fair—she certainly knew better than him on everything to do with the Force. She’d survived this far on her own and he trusted her.
But when she disappeared into the crowd, and didn’t come back, he couldn’t help revisiting all his previous concerns. Too many things could go wrong.
“Am I boring you, Vahn?” the woman across from him asked. One delicately arched, green brow lifted as she frowned her displeasure.
He turned his head back to her and raised his own brow in response. At least this was a part he could play without much lie. “Obviously. UniTech is always boasting about the newest security systems. Tell me something I haven’t heard a hundred times.”
As Arden Vahn, mercenary and hired security for corporate firms, he didn’t have to play polite and interested as often necessary to cater to Imperial contacts. These people respected disinterest, aggression, and neutrality over the formal dance the Imperial higher classes rely on. Nor did he have to done the stifling Imperial uniform of his other aliases. He lounged back against the bench along the side of the room in comfortable cargo pants, a loose top, and a jacket that made him look a little too much like Solo for his preferences but at least it was his own clothes. And his favorite blaster on his hip because everyone here openly carried multiple weapons. (There was another blaster tucked under his jacket, a knife in his boot and vibroblade on his belt-loop. Everyone around him was armed to the teeth, some of them literally. One particular pirate he spotted had replaced his real teeth with steel fangs and he couldn’t even be surprised.)
Kilara Unduli preferred her brute strength that came from her natural morphology but she made sure at least three blasters were visible on herself at all times. She was an old contact, one he inherited from another agent before they were killed, who cared little for sides in a war but liked to gossip about her work as personal security for UniTech executives. She’d proved herself relatively reliable over the years, though tedious.
UniTech recently secured a new contract with the Imperial navy for an updated security system. Jyn insisted the changes were likely to be minor—every few years, UniTech filed new registrations for technology they repackaged as innovative but performed the same in practice. There was enough disquiet after recent losses that Command determined it worth checking out.
An easy mission after their last one, which ended with Jyn in medbay for a concussion and at least a week’s worth of repairs to their ship. They’d been imbedded with a small, localized resistance for over two months, which was exhausting in its own right, and ended with a literal bang.
He’d feel a lot better about this if he knew what was taking Jyn so long. They’d been sitting side by side, talking with Kilara and plying her with Jogan-drop martinis, when Jyn lurched to her feet, tossed out a quick “Be right back!”, and darted off.
There was a method to her madness but he was still learning it. He trusted her instincts—they’d come in handy more than once—but she’d been gone for at least ten minutes and if Kilara didn’t come up with something more interesting soon, he was bailing. They’d gotten enough to make the stopover on Takodana worth it.
Kilara sighed, leaning her elbow against the table and peaking up at him from beneath her long, pale lashes. “Where did your lovely friend go? Talisa seemed much more understanding.”
For this mission, Jyn had leveraged an old alias, Talisa Varless, who’d once done codebreaking for Crimson Dawn, giving her an established reputation and a modicum of wary respect in this crowd. She’d had been much more inquisitive about the specifics of the security coding, getting into a debate over the advantages and disadvantages of code cylinders—Kilara vehemently for, convinced of their incorruptibility. They’d built a combative rapport, commiserating over shutta bosses—Jyn’s sounding suspiciously like Draven—and a shared love for slicing.
He couldn’t blame Kilara; he’d rather be spending time with Jyn too.
If she’d just get back here. Before discretion lost its appeal.
As if summoned, Jyn shoved her way through the throngs standing near their table, wielding elbows with precision to keep wandering hands away. She slid onto the bench. Leaning into the movement, she let her momentum carry her all the way across the seat to his side, sneaking an arm around his waist. Her hand slipped under his jacket and she pressed against him with her shoulder like she was trying to melt into him.
Out of sight, her fingers slipped a small data key into the inner pocket of his jacket. And if he wasn’t mistaken, a handful of credit chips too.
They hadn’t been playing the couple this time but they’d done it before, so he relaxed into it, slinging his own arm across her back. The excuse allowed her to slip him whatever she’d stolen and provided a reason why she wasn’t going anywhere with Kilara later, which seemed like the woman’s goal.
Jyn was warm, the feel of her against him still new enough to send his heart racing despite himself. They lived in close proximity, so it wasn’t unusual, exactly, but it was too easy to pretend her affection might be real. She never went over-the-top, clinging and lovestruck, preferring to wrap around him with a glare on her face as if daring the galaxy to comment on it. Perfectly believable, because it was perfectly Jyn.
“If one more person tells me the EE-3 is the better blaster, I’ll start shooting,” she said. She still carried his old A-180 on her hip, which garnered more than a few comments from the cockier bounty hunters around.
“Do you have a preferred blaster, then?” Kilara asked, tilting her head toward Jyn and honing in, the same way she had when he first introduced them. Any displeasure with Arden vanished with a smile, seemingly unbothered by Talisa’s clear attachment to Arden.
“Whichever one is in my hand,” Jyn answered, reaching forward to his drink to take a sip. It was the only one on the table he could be certain wasn’t tampered with, as it hadn’t left his sight after he tested it. Her eyes caught Kilara’s then drifted over, back the way she’d come. “Though I saw one I wanted earlier. Might help myself.”
Kilara narrowed her eyes, finally recognizing that whatever potential Jyn was hinting at earlier had passed. “Looks like you’ve already got your hands full.”
Jyn shrugged, the movement brushed her shoulder against his chest. Too many layers of clothing separated them for him to take it as anything other than the innocent gesture it was, and yet. Suddenly he wished he’d left the jacket on the ship. And the shirt, for good measure.
—————
“What did you get?” he asked, setting a hand on her lower back to steer her toward the door. Once they’d escaped Kilara, secured the name of a semi-reputable bacta dealer on Inusagi, Jyn nudged him with the sign it was time to go. Before whoever she’d robbed caught up to them.
“There’s a bounty hunter here. They’re looking for—an artifact.”
“What kind of artifact?”
She looked back at him, staring as if willing him to hear what she wasn’t saying. It was the expression she always wore when telling him something about the Force; like she didn’t have words to explain it or feared speaking it aloud.
Something to do with the Force, then. In his readings on the subject, he’d stumbled across plenty of legends around mystical artifacts used by both Jedi and Sith. For training, for passing along secret knowledge, for preserving history. Hard to know what was fact or fiction but at this point, he was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.
Some of it, at least.
“The details are on that key,” Jyn said. “Luke could use it.”
“So could you.”
Her lips pursed as she turned away from him. “He needs all the help he can get. This is the kind of thing he’s been looking for.”
The young pilot was open with his lack of knowledge around the Force and had made a concerted effort to seek out those who’d known the Jedi, scouring archives for mentions of their training regiments. Solo had even brought back a crate full of actual books on the topic he’d ’happened to find’ on a supply run. (Chewie made a snide remark about ‘finding’ involving an out-of-the-way stop on Onderon, of all places, after hunting down rumors of lost Jedi archives for over a month. Solo refused to translate that part but he wasn’t the only one who understood Shyriiwook.)
They never really talked about her own Force sensitivity. Acknowledged it, yes, but he knew little of how she’d learned what she knew or whether she wished to train like Skywalker.
Or build a lightsaber to house the kyber crystal she wore. The only thing she’d said was that it had been her mother’s, but there were few things the Jedi used kyber crystals for and he was willing to bet that particular one had once resided within such a weapon.
She’d be deadly with a lightsaber. The way she wielded her tonfa, and a staff the times he’d seen her train with one, lent itself well to the style. He wasn’t ready to broach the topic with her, not yet, but he’d studied enough to figure out how to put a lightsaber together. If she asked. The parts weren’t hard to come by, it was the crystal that made them unique.
He could wait. She might never be interested but it was worth knowing all the same.
Something about the Force scared her. Or maybe it wasn’t fear, exactly, so much as a habit long engrained that denying its connection to her was second nature. He knew what it was like to hid part of oneself for so long it was easier to forget it existed at all.
“Twice now, you’ve come to enjoy my hospitality introducing yourself. It’s impolite.” A soft voice interrupted, halting them in their steps. The short figure of Maz Kanata appeared between them and their ship, goggles raised to sit on top of her head and hands on her hips. She cocked her head at them eyes narrowed. “And you’ve brought a friend this time.”
It took him too long to recover. Nevertheless, Cassian stepped forward, adding a jaunt to his step and a sheepish smile on his face. “Ah, of course! Mistress Kanata, it’s such an honor. I meant no offense, you see, I simply didn’t want to impose—”
“No need for the theatrics,” Maz waved a hand in the air and walked closer, peering up at him in a way that felt like looking down on him. “I don’t care to hear whatever role you’re playing today. Whatever name you use, your kind brings trouble.”
“No trouble,” Jyn told her, lifting her hands to show they were empty. Not harmless, though, which Maz seemed to understand perfectly. Instead of backing away, she ambled closer, drawing her goggles down to pear at Jyn through their glass. Jyn stared back, the only sign of her disquiet the clenching of her fists at her side.
“ Hmmphf,” Maz grumbled. “You’re not who I expected to show up here.”
“And who do you think I am?”
Cassian moved to stand beside Jyn, shoulder slightly behind hers, so she felt him there even when her eyes were fixed on the older woman. No one knew quite how old Maz Kanata was but everything Cassian had heard said she’d been around a long time. Generations of outlaws on the edges of the Republic knew her name.
If she’d survived this long, it wasn’t by being a fool. Especially if she was truly Force sensitive, which he was willing to believe at the way she studied Jyn as if reading schematics, assessing how she was put together, how she worked.
Jyn shifted her weight from one foot to the other and Cassian braced himself to run.
Maz gazed at Jyn and shook her head. “I’m no threat to you, child. But you shouldn’t be here.”
“Then we’ll just be on our way,” Cassian said but he made no move to pass her, keeping one hand near his blaster.
“You shouldn’t be here either,” Maz told him. She patted him on the leg as she stepped by him, speaking all the while. “Not that I’m complaining—you’re easy on the eyes. But if you’re going to stop by, be polite and bring a gift. Who shows up empty-handed?” The last part seemed aimed to the sky.
When she was out of sight, Jyn pressed a hand to her forehead. “She’s loud. ”
Cassian frowned. “She seemed soft-spoken to me.”
“No, she’s—” Jyn shook her head, waving a hand in twirls by her ears. “ There. Very there. ”
“In—the Force?” He still didn’t quite understand how it worked. Too abstract for his mind, which liked to break things down into what could be seen and heard, touched and learned. The closest thing he could imagine to what Jyn described as sensing a presence was how he could tell when she entered a room, or left, or how he found her on Home One when she tucked herself into a quiet corner. But that was only Jyn. Not everyone he met.
What would that be like? Overwhelming, he thought. Exhausting. And loud, if the sound was movement and feeling in the Force. Did it stop when she slept?
She nodded.
“We shouldn’t have come here.” He marched forward, putting a hand on her shoulder to bring her along with him as he hurried them toward their ship. “How are you supposed to hide if everyone can sense each other?”
“She doesn’t want to draw attention anymore than we do.”
“That doesn’t mean she won’t sell you out if it saves herself.” He wouldn’t relax until they were well off-world and safely in hyperspace.
They settled into the cockpit, Jyn going about the pre-flight checks while he warmed up the engines and cleared their takeoff with the castle’s control tower. Moving fluidly in the cramped space without getting in each other’s way, accomplishing their tasks in time with the other like a dance they’d been doing for decades rather than months.
This was the easy part. For all the questions he had for her, the unknowns, there was never a moment she didn’t fit. In his space, in his life. Inside his guard, having broken through long before he understood the threat she posed to his isolation.
Spies like him belonged in solitude. There was a reason Kay had been his best—only—friend. The lines he crossed, the risks he took, the lies he lived—they weren’t conducive to personal ties. He kept the distance between himself and the rest of the galaxy that was necessary to do his job but from the beginning, it had never been a choice to leave Jyn behind.
If she wanted to hunt down a lost Jedi artifact, he’d help her do it.