Happy New Year!
As I bring you the conclusion of this tale by way of new year's greetings, I want to thank all the readers from all my heart for having taken the time to read, provide encouragement, and express appreciation. Writing this story has been really exhilarating, and having people come along for the ride, and seeing that they have fun along the way, is absolutely priceless.
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"Hello, Jyn."
She tries not to show that she is somewhat taken aback by his matter-of-fact greeting when she boards the shuttle with the repulsorlift crate in tow. True, he gets out of the pilot's chair when she reaches the bridge, but he makes no move to walk over to her, let alone make any display of affection.
She wonders if this has anything to do with her relatively late arrival on board the shuttle; her excitement the night before, between the events of the day and Nawara's revelations and recalling the details of her talk with Cassian in the hangar bay, took quite a while to subside, keeping her awake into the early hours and making her sleep until the local mid-day. Then again, it looks like Cassian has not been on board that long, either, seeing how the systems are still finishing the functional check sequence; and in any case, they have to wait to hear from Nawara, who promised to get them departure clearance as one of Starfire Electronics cargo shuttles to avoid any inquiries, before they can take off.
"What's that?" Cassian asks, seeing how Jyn has brought new cargo.
"K, are you listening?" she asks instead of replying.
"Yes, I am listening. Hello, Jyn." His greeting, for all its monotone, almost sounds more animated than Cassian's.
"You may be interested to know that I have managed to get you a brand new body. A new K-2SO body," she adds, remembering Cassian's threat a few days ago.
For a second it seems that K is lost for words. "Human language cannot describe the full extent of my gratitude, Jyn," he says when he has regained his capacity for speech. "As soon as I have my faculties back I will make you a fractal drawing that might come close to expressing it."
She can barely contain her happy grin. "I'll look forward to it."
Cassian, she notes, likewise has his spirits lifted for a moment, if his pleasantly surprised look is any indication; but it does not take long before he decides to play the spoilsport. "Where did you get it?"
"It was a gift from Nawara," she explains. Best leave out the part where she volunteered to plant the explosives to get it.
"I trust him well enough," Cassian muses out loud, "but it's still a good idea to run a check on this droid's systems and circuits and make sure its memory is fully wiped, better re-format it again just to be sure. You never know how it got into Nawara's hands and what scraps of code it may have lurking in its head."
"Sure, I was about to do that." She was; but it does not make Cassian's businesslike tone any less of a letdown. Nawara must have misread him; she must have misread him, but then again, it should not be surprising when dealing with a career spy. His romantic frame of mind the other day must have been due to extraordinary circumstances, and now things are back to normal - whatever passes for normal in their lives - he must have forgotten all about it.
She understands some of his preoccupation when she chances a look at the primary display just before she leaves the bridge and sees that he is keying up a comm channel; and judging by K's silence, in all likelihood they are patching together a scrambled channel to Alliance HQ. It strikes her that of course Cassian had no chance to do it yesterday as he had intended, what between confronting Nawara and shooting troopers off her back and the final bacta treatment. No wonder he is acting tense; who knows what new atrocity the Empire may have committed in the meantime? For all they know, in the past day while they were incommunicado, the Death Star may have reached and destroyed their Yavin IV base.
Still, as she sets about unpacking the crate containing the K-2SO body and picks out the fine-gauge spanners to unscrew the back of its head, she catches herself wishing Cassian would be less reserved around her. She feels like she has known him forever by now, and at the same time as if she hardly knew him at all; she knows the key facts about his life but still has a long way before she can figure out his character, assuming she ever gets the chance. For all she knows, he might be regretting his uncharacteristically sweet conduct with her these past couple of days as a momentary weakness. She lowers the repulsorlift pallet to the floor, sits down beside the droid carcass, lifts off the metal plate hiding the circuits inside the K-2SO's metal cranium and looks for the internal power and reset switches…
"Jyn!"
She instantly springs to her feet at hearing this summons. It hits her that he would hardly call out to her in such an excited voice all across the shuttle if he were to deliver bad tidings; but before she can join him on the bridge and find out the reason, she sees him standing at the hatch connecting the passage from the bridge with the cargo hold, and her breath catches in her throat.
If she thought she had seen Cassian at his happiest back when he was asleep in the med bay, she has to instantly revise that opinion. It is not just that he looks radiant; he looks totally unguarded; devastatingly handsome and absolutely irresistible.
"They did it… they blew it up!"
She does not need to ask him what it is.
She takes a step toward him, and seeing all the pent-up tenderness and joy and gratitude and love, and hope fulfilled, mirrored in those magnificent eyes, she feels like she is flying - though it probably looks more like she is stumbling - into his open arms; and this time there is nothing and no one in the entire galaxy that can stop her from kissing him like the world is ending... or rather, like it has just begun anew.
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epilogue
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"I love you."
"I know," she answers with her most beatific smile before punctuating her reply with the lightest of kisses. What a way to wake up, wrapped in his arms and gazing at each other, no matter that they are lying on the durasteel shuttle floor.
His response is to hold her tighter, and as her eyes flutter closed with a contented sigh it occurs to her that she finally does know beyond the shadow of a doubt; and that had she been savvier in matters of the heart she would have probably seen it staring her in the face all this time. But then, all that matters is that they are here now.
By the time he is kissing her back she starts wondering if she can survive this kind of a mind-shattering, supernova-blast experience a third time with her sanity intact and her vocal cords still functioning; by the time his lips and tongue start doing wicked things to her neck she is happy to go for it regardless, when their blissful reverie is interrupted by a highly incongruous sound for a stationary ship.
...the realspace re-entry alert.
She is momentarily confused, but Cassian appears to take it perfectly in stride; relatively speaking at least: he props himself up on one elbow with a rather spectacular eye-roll.
"You should have got him a 3PO body, seriously," he mutters as he stands up, keys open the hatch he shut just before they sank to the floor, and wanders off toward the bridge. She wonders how he has managed to still have most of his clothes on, no matter how dishevelled; unlike her who ended up flinging hers all over the cargo hold floor and has to scramble to retrieve them now that she no longer has Cassian to keep her warm.
He is back at the hatch before she has had a chance to join him and K at the bridge. Instead of picking either of their mutually opposing destinations, they stay at the hatchway, and it only takes a second for him to put his arms around her again as she leans into him. She has one arm wrapped around his shoulders, and with her free hand she gently brushes away the fringe from his forehead, again struck by how much less serious and how much sweeter he looks; the fringe must be his way of making himself look more menacing, for sure.
"What did he want?" she asks, trying to collect her scattered thoughts, referring back to the unusual summons K gave them.
"To tell me we have the departure clearance," Cassian replies with a smirk, "and to give me a piece of his mind for running off without warning and sealing shut the cargo hold hatch."
"Why did you have to do that?" She was too busy to have given it much thought when he did it, but in retrospect, it was a baffling thing to do.
Whatever Cassian's motive may have been, his reaction surprises her; despite the low light, she could swear he is blushing.
"Based on experience." Seeing her expectant eyes, he adds, "The less said about it the better."
When she still makes no sign of relenting in her curiosity, making big round eyes at him, he is forced to give in.
"I was once in a... similar situation... well, nothing as amazing as this but, well, similar, when he was in a room down a hallway in full power mode. And afterwards he tried to give me a blow-by-blow commentary… he has surprisingly acute hearing," Cassian finishes amid her uncontrollable snickering.
As if to prove the incontrovertible truth of Cassian's words, K pipes up from the bridge.
"Commentary on what?"
Cassian tries to roll his eyes again, but gives up and just laughs.
x x x
"Three... two... one... go."
This time it fell to K to deliver the countdown on their departure from Dorvalla, and to Cassian to pull the lever engaging the hyperspace drive. She watches the brilliant starburst with a sense of deja vu; just over two standard days ago, they blasted away from Scarif bound for parts unknown, with the only certainty being that they had survived for the moment, and stubborn hope the only thing still keeping them alive.
By now she has seen this stubborn, crazy hope triumph over the odds, for the two of them and for their fellow Rebels alike. They must be celebrating their victory on Yavin now; the two of them will likely miss the official ceremony and the medal awards to the bravest fighters, but knowing Cassian she doubts he cares about getting a medal and knowing herself, she has her reward already.
She is too lost in thought to have seen Cassian making eyes at her, and comes back to the present with a start when he tugs at her shirt sleeve.
"What?"
She cannot figure out why, having accomplished his goal of getting her attention, he looks annoyed, but when she sees him tip his head in the direction of the cargo hold - and more importantly, in the direction of the pilot's sleeping quarters flanking it - the understanding dawns... but by then it is too late. Try as they might to make the least possible amount of noise sneaking out, it takes no more than two seconds for K to catch them.
"And where do you think you are off to?" the mechanical voice demands.
"We have things to do." Cassian does his best to sound deadpan.
K wastes no time calling his bluff.
"Could you please be more specific?"
Seeing Jyn blush, Cassian does not bother to satisfy K's curiosity, instead addressing her.
"Ignore him. He's just being jealous."
"It is not in my programming," K argues.
"Nor is being a smartmouth," Cassian shoots back, "and here you are. We really have things to do," he repeats, in a more conciliatory tone.
K is not swayed, however. "And when do you think you will be done?"
If Cassian's expression is any indication, he does his best to bite down on a snarky response. "We'll make sure to come back here before landing, K."
"That's seven hoursand forty two minutes away, and all the time while you enjoy the… rest and recreation I'll be here keeping watch." K's still-monotone voice is oddly suited to this sort of nagging, she muses.
Cassian puts a hand over his eyes in silent exasperation, but Jyn does her best to make amends for both of them.
"K, we really appreciate your running things here while we're busy. And I promise you'll get plenty of R&R, not to mention your new body, when we get home," she assures him before she follows Cassian off the bridge.
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fin
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Anyone who may have expected a more detailed account of how exactly they, well, celebrated the Rebel victory has my profound apologies. I am capable of writing smut in principle, and have done so on occasion in a couple of my previous fandoms before I posted fics on AO3, [and have very specific mental images of what exactly they do after I chicken out into the fade-to-black cuts], but I have an absurd hang-up about my beloved fictional characters' privacy. And the what-goes-where stuff would have been out of tune with the rest of the plot.
For anyone who may [doubt that I am a major nerd] wonder how my timeline stacks up against A New Hope aka Episode IV, I can confirm that my plot is timed to pretty much exactly overlap with that of Hope (I assume both to take about 2.5 "standard", i.e. 24-hour days), and can offer the following plot timeline summary that I had to put together after I arbitrarily but fortuitously decided to give Dorvalla its crazy short days. The times below are in "standard" hours starting from the time they set off from Scarif (0); the lines in italics refer to "normal" Dorvallan night-time (their 12-hour days are basically 0-4 night, 4-12 morning/day/evening, 12-16 night, 16-24 morning/day/evening).
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Timeline
0 Jyn, Cassian and K escape from Scarif
8 they arrive on Dorvalla (mid-day local time)
9-11 Jyn talks to Nawara followed by dinner
12-16 others sleep, Jyn wakes up two hours late (ca 18)
19-21 Jyn checks on Cassian at the med bay, then walks / rides bike around town
22-24 dinner
24-28 – others sleep and Jyn goes to the shuttle to charge the power cells and tweak K's interface
29-31 heist prep meeting with Nawara and Naroon
32-33 Jyn goes back to town to scope out the vault
34-36 others have dinner; Jyn has a snack in town
36-40 – others sleep, Jyn goes to the shuttle and gets the news about Alderaan (37); Cassian finds her on board the shuttle
38-44 – they sit in her cabin and doze off ca 39 (others wake up 40)
44 Jyn wakes up early afternoon local time and leaves on her mission ca 45
45½ heist goes wrong
46 she corners Cassian and they argue
46½-47 they go back and talk at the hangar bay
47-48 Jyn talks to Nawara after the others have had dinner
48-52 others sleep, Jyn goes to sleep and wakes up later (50-56)
58 Jyn goes to the shuttle in the afternoon and they find out re the Battle of Yavin; leave Dorvalla ca 60
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And that's it, my dear readers. May the new year bring you only good news, and may the Force be with you!
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PS
I have some of you to [blame] thank for putting the notion of a sequel into my head. I always approach writing a fic thinking it will be my last as I will exhaust my plot ideas on it; having proven myself wrong a few times I learned to never say never, and this time, like in other fandoms before, the wish to spend more time with these characters and readers alike has led me once more onto the path of temptation.
I have the plot of my next foray summed up and will put up the intro chapter in a day or two, but the rest will have to wait for mid-January onwards when I am back to where my Star Wars books are as I need to do a good deal of background rehash. Anyway, if you see me post something called In Living Memory, you will know what it is and who is in it ;)
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