It felt like taking a drink of hot broth, like a heartbeat coursing straight over her skin. It was just a little push, a little thud, a little thrum in her veins. It was surprisingly peaceful, dying.

Tied up in Cassian's arms, Jyn felt safe for the first time in her entire life. Right there on the beach, surrounded by chaos, with the shockwave hurtling toward her, she felt safe. And when it hit, in its oddly warm and docile way, the shockwave was a blanket over Jyn in a luxurious bed.

She closed her eyes and smiled, really smiled, as she felt the realization come over her that her life was over. Nothing had ever been easy, not from the moment that she and her parents had gone into hiding. Nothing had really been peaceful; she'd been abandoned by Saw as a teenager with lethal weapons as her only supplies. Her life had been meant to be brief, Jyn thought, but at the very least, she had accomplished something .

She took her last breath before the shockwave hit, breathing in the rusty sort of smell that Cassian carried with him. She tightened her arms around him and listened to his racing heart, and then the energy of the strike hit her and meshed with his pulse. Jyn's breath lingered in her lungs until it burned.

And then she breathed out, which was odd, because as far as Jyn Erso knew, dead people couldn't breathe in either direction.

"Jyn."

Cassian's voice came through the ringing in Jyn's ears and the heavy weight of silence. At first she didn't answer him, too confused to register that he could speak if he, too, was dead. But then he said it again.

"Jyn?"

She took a step back, which seemed unlikely. She eyed the way her boots pressed on the sand, and she looked out at the water, and she realized sunlight was glinting blissfully off the waves.

"Jyn."

She finally looked up at Cassian, blinking quickly as she took him in. He was clean. He had not been clean before; he'd been covered in sweat and oil and the detritus of battle. His hair looked like he'd washed and styled it; his shirt was a fresh, unmarred beige linen. His trousers and boots were free of stains or tears, and there were no weapons at his hips. Jyn glanced down at herself and saw a clean, tight gray tunic, a pair of new black leggings, and boots that reflected the sunlight.

"So we are dead," she affirmed, meeting Cassian's eyes. He seemed just as confused as her. He looked out at the water and murmured,

"They struck the planet. I saw the… the shock wave was coming straight for us. I felt it."

"I did, too," Jyn nodded. "That's how I know we're dead. And look at us, anyway. I doubt either of us has ever been this clean before. But I can say, Captain, that I am honored to be standing here dead with you."

"Jyn." Cassian shook his head and started turning in a slow circle. "Something is not right."

Jyn followed his eyes, turning around as he was doing. There was nothing. There was no base, no communications tower. There were no TIE fighters screaming overhead, no walkers marching and firing, no X-wings crashing onto the sand. There were no shoretroopers, no deathtroopers, no blaster fire, no explosions. There was no blood on the beach. No shrapnel. The trees were all swaying in a warm, peaceful wind, utterly untouched by warfare. There was absolutely no evidence that anyone had ever been here until right now, in this very minute.

"Mm-hmm," Jyn said, putting her hands on her hips. "We are most certainly dead."

Cassian scoffed a little and shrugged. "What are dead people supposed to do, then, if they find themselves marooned on an atoll?"

"Well," Jyn mused, kicking at the sand a little, "I would assume that dead people do not need food or water or anything like that. I suppose we just… stand here. Until…"

She trailed off then, for she had no good real answer to his question. Jyn frowned when she realized her stomach was growling with actual hunger. How long had it been since she'd eaten before they'd died? Many hours, but that shouldn't matter. She walked rather determinedly up the beach and dragged her boot over the sand, looking for buried evidence of what had happened.

"Time travel?" she heard Cassian ask helplessly, and Jyn responded,

"No such thing."

"Well," he called up to her, "I find myself awfully thirsty for a dead person. And if we are dead, allow me to be the first to declare that the afterlife is very unimpressive."

"How did our clothes change, then?" Jyn demanded sharply, whirling to glare down to where Cassian stood. She held her arms up and asked, "If we're not dead, where is everyone else? Did I imagine a battle here? Did I imagine sending plans to the Alliance? Was that all some sort of dream? If we're not dead, why were you and I left standing holding one another on a beach while everything else disappeared?"

"I don't know," Cassian admitted, "but I am very thirsty."

It took them five hours to find a lens of freshwater floating above the saltwater. They used shells and stones to dig, and by the time they reached the water, Jyn was so thirsty she thought she would die. Except, of course, she was already dead.

She used a shell to scoop water into her mouth as she lay on her belly and dangled over the edge of the makeshift well she and Cassian had built. Cassian did the same, making a contented little sound when at last he swallowed water. They drank for a long time, until Jyn finally set her face down sideways on the hot sand and shut her eyes.

"We are not dead," Cassian declared. "We have… gone somewhere. I have no idea what has happened, Jyn, but we are not dead."

"I know." She breathed in and out a few times, feeling the warm air in her lungs. She registered the feel of the sand on her cheek, of the sunlight baking her skin. She nearly fell asleep then, overwhelmed by the fatigue of battle and of digging, by her confusion and her grief.

"Cassian? Jyn? What a bizarre set of circumstances this is. I must admit, I never saw this scenario coming. Not ever."

Jyn's eyes flew open, and she shaded her face from the sun to see K-2SO looming over her. As she scrambled to her feet, Cassian embraced the droid around his middle, sending K-2SO staggering back a bit. K-2SO tapped Cassian's back and said blandly,

"There, there."

"I thought you were destroyed!" Jyn exclaimed. K-2SO looked down at himself, at his fingers and his feet, and he shrugged.

"It would appear as though I was not destroyed. At first I assumed a reprogramming, but then I found you two lying on the sand here. I can not seem to find the base…"

"The base is gone, Kay," Cassian said gravely. "Everything's gone. It's like the place has been… I don't know… reset. Like nobody ever built anything here, or fought any battles here."

"And we're the only ones left," Jyn added. K-2SO tipped his head and said in a condescending tone,

"What a silly thing to assume. If I found you two, what's to say there aren't more… survivors?"

Jyn looked at Cassian then, feeling alarmed. She shook her head and gulped.

"I want to know what's going on here," she said softly. Cassian nodded, but K-2SO said,

"First thing's first. Scarif experiences heavy rainfall nearly every day around sunset. There are dark clouds on the horizon. Does anyone have any ideas for shelter?"

When Jyn and Cassian stayed silent, K-2SO sighed,

"No, I didn't think so. Well, we can either sit out in the rain, or we can begin assembling materials. Actually, let's not make that 'sitting out' part a choice, shall we? I'll start gathering palm fronds."

He walked off then, his footsteps heavy on the sand. Jyn put her hands on Cassian's shoulders and stared up into his dark eyes.

"We are going to figure out what's happened," she declared, "and somehow, in the not very distant future, we will be somewhere comfortable and safe."

Cassian choked out a little laugh and shook his head. He dragged the pad of his thumb under Jyn's eye and asked quietly,

"Have you ever been anywhere comfortable and safe, Jyn Erso?"

"Not really," she said with a little smile, "but seeing as I'm still not entirely convinced I'm alive at all, I'm willing to be a bit optimistic. To have a bit of hope."

Cassian looked at her for a long moment, his lips parting a little as though there was something he wanted to say. Before he could, K-2SO barked at them,

"Survival supplies do not gather themselves, so come help me. Thank you very much."

"Kay, it doesn't need to be quite that tall."

"Yes, it does. I'm that tall."

"You can stoop down. That's a waste of materials."

Jyn rolled her eyes and smirked at the banter between Cassian and K-2SO. She pushed through a cluster of dense jungle greenery and glanced around, looking for reeds or sticks or anything firm enough to bolster their shelter. Suddenly she ran smack into something hard, and she gasped when she saw what her boots had hit.

It was a crate made from durasteel, only slightly dulled but looking mostly new. Jyn's eyes went wide when she saw the distinctive round symbol plastered on every side of the cube. It was the symbol of the Old Republic. Jyn crouched down, her breath catching in her chest as she unlatched the crate and pried it open. Then she just stared, for the amount of supplies in the crate was absolutely staggering.

Jyn's fingers shook like mad as she took containers and boxes and vessels out of the crate. She read labels as she went and took a mental inventory. A 4000-pack of desalination tablets. Ration bars. Nutrient tabs. Bread powder. Five compressed sleeping sacks. A medical kit with everything from bacta gel strips to Nyex and phosovane salts. Three solar-charged lanterns. A waterproof tarp. Five blasters.

Jyn tried to call out to Cassian and K-2, but she could not quite find her voice. She picked up one of the small ration bars, the kind that would fuel a human for four days, and turned it over, confused by the Republic marks on it. There was a small holodoc inside the case, and Jyn figured it would be long dead. She pulled it out of the crate and pressed the power button, shocked when the screen illuminated and words came clearly into view.

In the case of the discovery of Separatist forces on Scarif, contact High General Ki-Adi-Mundi or Clone Commander 2224 using your battalion's subspace transceiver.

Jyn froze. Clone Commander? This supply crate was from the Clone Wars? She set the holodoc down and picked up the ration bar again. This food had to be over twenty years old, Jyn realized. Surely it wasn't any good anymore. With her fingers trembling terribly, Jyn tore open the packaging and tentatively sniffed the ration bar. It didn't smell like anything, but, then, ration bars never did. There was no mold, no rot. It was still chewy in her mouth when she was brave enough to bite it. There was no sour or acerbic taste to indicate it had gone off.

Jyn swallowed the ration bar and pulled herself to stand on shaking legs. She peered through the trees, back to the place where the Imperial base had been. She saw only beach there. It was as if they had come to another time. She looked at the other bite of ration in her hand and studied it again. Then she ate it and put the lid back on the supply crate, turning on her heels and marching back to where Cassian and K-2SO were working on a shelter.

"Hello, boys," she said nervously. Cassian turned from where he was knitting palm fronds together, frowning when he saw Jyn's face.

"You've gone exceptionally pale," K-2 noted. "Has something more extraordinary than usual happened?"

"I found something," Jyn said simply. "You two should come and have a look."

"When I first suggested time travel, you insisted that there was no such thing," Cassian reminded Jyn.

"I know." She sipped clean water from a canteen they'd found in the crate and passed it to Cassian. K-2SO was sitting beneath the waterproof tarp, which was probably smart given that the sky had gone dark and was threatening rain any moment. The lantern between Cassian and Jyn flickered on automatically. Cassian sighed and chewed at his ration bar.

"Nothing in that crate seems twenty years old," he said, and once again Jyn nodded.

"I know."

"The Imperial base is gone," Cassian mused, and Jyn scoffed.

"It doesn't exist yet. There is no Empire. Not yet."

"So, are we dead or not?" Cassian asked, taking another bite of ration bar. Jyn shook her head helplessly and shrugged. She studied Cassian's rugged face, his sharp features and his glittering dark eyes. She remembered the way it had felt to be snared up against him at the moment the shockwave had hit, and she whispered,

"I think I'm alive, Cassian. I feel… rather alive."

"So do I," he admitted. The rain started then, a gentle fall of water from the dark sky that danced against the palms overhead and speckled the lantern's glass. When it began to rain harder, K-2 called from the shelter,

"Do I need to start rattling off odds of lightning strikes or discussing the merits of dry clothing?"

Cassian rolled his eyes and said, "I'm not dead. Nobody would torment me with that in any afterlife."

Jyn giggled a bit and crawled across the sand with Cassian toward the shelter. The waterproof tarp was large enough to cover them, but to stay dry, she and Cassian had to huddle toward the back. K-2SO was enormous, which didn't help the situation, but he seemed to neither notice nor care about his size. He crouched rather awkwardly in the corner and said,

"I have been thinking."

"No," Cassian said with mock disbelief. K-2 waited a moment and then said crisply,

"The odds of time travel being a plausible reality are infinitesimally small."

"Do you have a better explanation, K?" Cassian demanded. "You were killed on the Imperial base. Jyn and I watched the explosion from the Death Star. We were hit by the shockwave, then everything was peaceful and all the evidence of war was gone. There's a supply crate with fresh materials dated twenty years into the past. Do you have a more likely scenario in mind, K? What are Jyn and I missing here?"

At first, K-2SO said nothing. Then at last he said in a less biting tone than usual, "My power supply is at nine percent, Cassian. I am going to go into rest mode until the sun comes back up, at which point I will recharge with solar power for approximately ten hours. Please be aware that my functionality will be minimal until I have recharged."

"Understood," Cassian nodded. K-2 situated himself more firmly in the corner of the shelter. As his illuminated eyes went dark and his body went utterly still, his mechanical voice said,

"Goodnight, probably-dead-people."

Jyn couldn't help but giggle again at that, even though what was in question was whether she and Cassian were souls lost in some sort of bizarre afterlife. Finally she managed to get herself burrowed into a sleeping sack atop the sand. Cassian put the lantern at their feet and pulled himself into the bag beside Jyn's. She listened to the rain for a long time, until she finally convinced herself to look Cassian in the eyes. She was so close to him now, almost as close as she'd been when they'd…

"We died on that beach, Cassian," Jyn insisted, still unable to calibrate any reality beside that. She heard her own voice crack as very unwelcome tears welled up in her eyes. "There was a battle. There was a base. There was a strike from the Death Star. And we died."

"Jyn," Cassian whispered back, his voice barely audible over the pattering of the rain, "Don't you think that if you were dead, you would get to see your father and your mother? I have people I'd like to see, too."

"Do you suppose it works like that when you die?" Jyn asked, honestly not knowing the answer. Cassian didn't answer for a moment. He seemed to be studying Jyn's face the way she'd done to him earlier. Finally he murmured,

"You wanted to wind up somewhere comfortable and safe."

"I still do," Jyn nodded, her skin swishing a little against the material of the sleeping sack's pillow. Cassian smirked at her, his eyes shining even in the dim light from the lantern.

"This probably isn't what you had in mind," he mused. "A makeshift tent on a rainy beach that was, earlier today, a battlefield. Do you feel comfortable and safe, Jyn Erso?"

"I did," she said truthfully, speaking before she could think, "when we held one another on that beach. When we died together, Cassian. I felt very comfortable with your arms around me, and mine around you. And I did feel safe."

Suddenly his mischievous dark eyes went visibly wet, and his throat bobbed a little. He nodded against the pillow of his own sleep sack, and he admitted, "I was more than happy to die there with you. I liked it. The feel of holding you. Of you holding me. I liked it, Jyn."

"Perhaps… perhaps we could do that again now," Jyn suggested cautiously. She unzipped her sleeping sack and avoided Cassian's eyes as she murmured, "I believe you can attach two of these together."

"I would sleep better," Cassian told her, latching the zippers together and yanking upward. Suddenly Jyn found herself scooting toward him, feeling his left arm lacing around her body. She put her right arm over his waist, pressing her palm against his back, and she touched her forehead to his chest.

Then she shut her eyes and felt very comfortable, and very safe. She knew so little about Cassian. She knew that he had joined the Rebel Alliance as a child, that his life had been spent as a spy and a soldier. She knew that he was intelligent but hot-headed, but she knew very little about him as a man.

"What's your favorite food in the entire galaxy?" she whispered, and she felt his laughter rumble through his chest as Cassian replied,

"I had a crab-stuffed cream puff on Mon Calamari that was really delicious. I'd eat that a thousand times over. You?"

Jyn shut her eyes and smiled to herself, remembering the smell of her mother's kitchen on Lah'mu. She said confidently, "My favorite food is bantha stew with shallots."

"Do I get to ask a question now?" Cassian teased, and Jyn nodded against his chest. She breathed in his metallic, leather-bound scent again, and she listened as he asked, "Do you believe in second chances?"

Jyn's breath caught in her throat as she contemplated her answer. She tried not to cry, tried and failed to sound steely, as she said, "I should hope so. I would have liked for my father to have a real second chance."

Then she paused, for she was doing a bit of calculation in her mind. She pulled back from Cassian's chest and looked up at him, and she said in a rushed whisper,

"If we are indeed in the time of the Clone Wars, then my father is alive. My mother. I might… I could see them."

Cassian raised his eyebrows and looked rather sad. "Even if we were in the past, how would that work? Do you see a ship? What would you say to them if you found them? You know how stories go, whenever traveling through time is mentioned. Change the past…"

"Erase the future." Jyn frowned and shut her eyes. She shook her head and insisted, "If my parents are out there, I want to find them."

"Of course you do," Cassian said. "So many people we would love to see again. But, alas, here we are. Lying on sand under a rainproof tarp. Lucky to have found ration bars. We are definitely not in possession of a ship, and even if we were…"

"Erase the future," Jyn repeated. She met Cassian's eyes and noted, "All of this is, of course, assuming that we are not dead. And I am still… it's just… I know I died with you on that beach."

Cassian smirked. "I'll bet if I kissed you right now you'd become convinced you weren't dead."

Jyn's mouth fell open and she laughed as she countered, "I'll bet if I slapped your cheek right now, you'd feel it, alive or dead."

Cassian smiled, but then he dug his teeth into his lip and said, "Do you know what the most beautiful thing I've ever seen is?"

Jyn's chest twisted oddly then, and she shook her head. "No. What is it?"

Cassian licked his bottom lip and measured his words. "After I shot Krennic, and I saw you out on that catwalk… I had no idea then that we would be swallowed whole by the shockwave, you know? And so I saw you, injured and angry, and I met your eyes, and I thought to myself… if I make it out of here alive, I'm going to kiss that beautiful woman."

Jyn shut her eyes, feeling very dizzy even though she was lying down. She thought of the sight of Cassian falling when they'd retrieved the Death Star plans. Her stomach had flopped at the sight of him lying still and quiet. She thought of the way he'd seemed to her after shooting Krennic - like a hero, like the only real friend she'd ever had, like a handsome man that she wanted to know better. She thought of the feel of him on the beach when the light and heat had been racing toward them.

"There's only one problem," Jyn whispered, reaching on impulse to drag her knuckles over his scruff.

"What's that?" Cassian asked, and Jyn sighed as she heard the rain fall harder than ever.

"You don't know if you made it out alive."

"If I try and find out," Cassian began, cupping Jyn's jaw and pulling her toward him a little, "are you going to slap me?"

Jyn just shook her head, unable to even say the word 'no' for how much her heart had begun to race. Then, suddenly and pleasantly, her lips were on his. Cassian pressed his mouth against Jyn's in a gentle, almost soothing way, and she could not help but kiss him back rather eagerly. Before she knew what was happening, she was flush against him, feeling his tongue run over the roof of her mouth, pulling his bottom lip between her teeth. Her hand tightened against his scruff, and his fingers danced anxiously through her hair. When Jyn finally had the presence of mind to pull away, she shook her head, convinced the entire planet had turned upside-down.

"Not dead," she muttered frantically. "That shockwave came and everything disappeared, but… no, I am not dead."

She knew because of the thrumming in her chest, the way her breath came quickly through her clenched teeth. She knew because of the heat and tension in her body, and because of the way Cassian was staring at her. His throat bobbed again and he nodded.

"I agree," he said, his voice shaking a little, "and if we are dead, and that is what happens to dead people, I am not going to complain."

Jyn shut her eyes and managed to actually think for a moment. "Kay-Tu found you and me," she noted. "There have to be others. There must be. We'll find them. We'll start looking in the morning."

"That sounds like a good plan," Cassian said. "In the meantime, can I try my best to make this little shelter comfortable and safe for you?"

Jyn smiled sadly at him and nodded. "It won't take much," she assured him. She rotated so that her back was to him, and she let him pull her back against his body. He threaded an arm around her, and she felt him kiss her hair.

Somehow, despite her very mortality being in question, Jyn managed to sleep. She managed to fall asleep there in the shelter on the rain-drenched sand, wrapped up in Cassian the way she'd been on the beach where they had died together.

"How long will he have to spend recharging?" Jyn asked tersely, looking down to where K-2SO lay prone on the sand. His solar panels had been pulled from his trunk and were soaking in power. From behind her, where he was packing materials back into the supply crate, Cassian said,

"Six more hours. We'll just have to wait."

Jyn let out an impatient huff and started walking around the immediate vicinity. She studied the palm trees, the low plants, and the sand, looking for any sign at all of the battle that had raged the day before.

"It feels like nobody's ever been here at all," Jyn noted. She turned to look at Cassian, who frowned and shrugged as he said,

"I think we need to stop thinking so hard. We have no way of getting off this planet, let alone of getting any definitive answers."

Jyn opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, a man's voice said,

"Fine, then. I'll give you credit this time, Chirrut. You were right."

Jyn whirled and gasped, for Baze Maldus and Chirrut Imwe were walking toward them. Both men looked clean and freshly clothed, just like Cassian and Jyn had when they'd 'awakened' on the beach. Baze pulled a supply crate identical to the one Jyn had found, using a makeshift net of palm fronds to drag it over the sand. Jyn just stared, but Cassian rushed over and put his hands on Chirrut's shoulders.

"You're both alive, too. Or… dead, too. We're not sure."

"We are not dead," Chirrut said confidently. "The Force is still with me; I can still feel its power. I can still feel stirrings of souls, from everyone here. Even your recharging droid."

Baze Malbus rolled his eyes and sighed. "All I know is that I was shot to bits, and then I wasn't. It was like waking from a nightmare, except I'd lost my repeater cannon."

"Sorry to hear that," Jyn said on instinct. Then she gestured to their supply crate and asked, "Did your crate have blasters in it?"

"Yeah. Puny little ones," Baze complained. His face shifted a bit then. "Everything in this crate is from the Clone Wars. None of it is expired."

"We figured out the same thing," Cassian nodded. He looked around the sandy little forest in which they stood and declared, "Something very strange has happened to us all, and I have no idea how to figure out what that was."

"Is it really so important to know?" Chirrut demanded. Jyn frowned at the blind monk, who gave a serene little smile and shrugged. "I died in the arms of Baze Malbus. I remember that vividly. It can not be said that I did not die. And, yet, here I stand, alive. Not in some sort of existence that follows death. We died. And we are alive. Does the why or the how matter nearly as much as that simple fact?"

"Of course it does," Baze said gruffly. "The base, the walkers, the battle all disappeared, Chirrut. And now we have supply crates, fresh and new and from the past. You think the why of that does not matter?"

"Do you suspect what we do?" Jyn asked. "Do you think we were all somehow… thrown through time when the weapon struck?"

Baze hesitated for a moment and then asked, "How did you die, Jyn?"

Jyn blinked quickly. She glanced up at Cassian and then back to Baze. "We transmitted the Death Star plans to the Rebel Alliance. The Death Star hit the planet; Cassian and I were standing on a beach when the shockwave washed over us."

"And then?" Baze asked in a clip. Cassian replied,

"And then it was quiet and peaceful for a moment… and everything shifted . We did not move, not physically. We never lost consciousness. But after the shockwave, the battle disappeared. The base disappeared. We were wearing new clothes. But we never moved."

"Oh, yes, you did," Chirrut insisted. He leaned on a bamboo pole, which Jyn figured he must have acquired because his old staff was gone. Chirrut's milky eyes glinted a little, and he mused, "Ships go so quickly through space. Over enormous distance. You think the Force can not also move us through time?"

"This has nothing to do with the damned Force!" Baze cried, and Chirrut reached to rub Baze's shoulder a little.

"You do not know, and neither do I," Chirrut said in a soothing voice. "But anything is possible."

"So what do we do now?" Jyn demanded. She gestured around and pointed out, "We have some twenty-year-old supplies and each other. But we have no ship. We have no subspace transceiver. How do we leave? How do we get off this planet?"

"Is that such an important goal?" asked Chirrut. He laughed a little and dragged his bamboo pole over the sand as he said, "There is fresh water if you dig. There is food if you look properly. We have materials to shelter. Why must we leave?"

Jyn growled a little, feeling frustrated. "You want us to spend the rest of our lives marooned here?"

"There was no 'rest of our lives,'" Chirrut pointed out. "We all died. This is all… a bonus."

"A bonus," Baze repeated, shaking his head. "What sort of bonus doesn't involve my repeater cannon?"

Jyn couldn't help but smile at that. Cassian looked at the other three, then back to where K-2 was recharging on the ground. He sighed and said,

"I suppose we ought to go ahead and set up some kind of camp, then."

"A village," Jyn corrected him. While Cassian and Baze frowned curiously at her, Chirrut gave a knowing little smile. Jyn clarified, "Others might come. K-2 found us. You found us. Maybe Bodhi's out there. Others. We'll set up a village, and if others come, it will grow."

"And what will we name our little village?" Chirrut asked. Jyn swallowed hard and said simply,

"Rogue. It will be called Rogue, because I don't think any of us have ever followed rules very well, but now we seem to be ignoring them entirely."

The next two weeks were spent settling into a strange little routine. Every other morning at sunrise, K-2SO went to the well that had been dug into the lens of fresh water, and he filled up four large canisters. On the alternating days, Jyn took two jugs to the ocean and, using a desalination tablet in each, made them potable. The group ate ration bars every four days, and on the fifth and sixth days, they harvested coconuts and wild tropical fruits, which they ate with bread powder. They slept in two shelters, with K-2 going into rest mode in the shelter where Jyn and Cassian slept. The other shelter was for Baze and Chirrut, along with the supply crates.

They spent their time playing some familiar board games that they'd crafted from stones and lines in the sand and leaves. They talked about everything. Chirrut lectured about the Force, Baze told harrowing tales of his life as a freelance assassin, Jyn discussed what it had been like to be passed around and never feel grounded, and Cassian told stories of the Alliance in its early years. They sang songs, teaching each other tunes they'd all picked up through the years.

One afternoon, as the sky was beginning to cloud up with the impending nightly rainstorm, everyone sat in a circle and munched on the ration bars that would sustain them for the next four days. They'd been discussing the traditions of dancing on various planets, and K-2SO declared,

"I find dancing to be among the sillier activities that humans enjoy."

"That's because if you danced, it would look like you were having a seizure," Baze Malbus declared. Jyn stifled a laugh as K-2 said indignantly,

"I can not have a seizure. And I have absolutely no interest in dancing. I'd like to see you be elegant. Would you like to know the odds of you looking elegant under any circumstance, Baze Malbus?"

Baze chuckled and shook his head. "I'm sure those odds are very long. What about you, Jyn? Do you dance?"

Jyn's eyebrows flew up, and she shook her head. "I certainly don't make a habit of it."

"I do," Cassian said casually. Jyn looked at him in surprise, and he grinned around the circle as he took the last bite of his ration bar. He said rather proudly, "I've danced the Boxnov Three-Step more times than I can count. There are many cantinas in the galaxy, you know."

"Ah… the Boxnov Three-Step," Chirrut Imwe nodded. "I have heard the music for it many times. Beautiful."

"How does it go?" Jyn asked curiously. Chirrut's glazed eyes crinkled, and he suggested,

"I will sing it, and Cassian will show you how to do the dance."

"Oh, no." Jyn shook her head vigorously. "I told you. I don't dance."

"I predict that you will learn quickly," K-2 declared in a rare compliment. Jyn's mouth fell open, and before she knew what was happening, she was being hauled to her feet by Cassian and swept into a formal-feeling stance. Cassian wrapped his right arm around Jyn, letting his palm rest between her shoulder blades. He took her right hand in his left, snaring his fingers around hers and holding their arms out a bit.

"Everything happens in threes," he explained, but Jyn smirked and shook her head.

"I don't dance," she repeated. Baze Malbus bellowed a laugh and said,

"You do now, Jyn. Go on, Chirrut. Sing!"

Chirrut laughed low in his throat and then began to sing a lilting, rhythmic song that felt more like a lullaby than a dance tune.

" First I went to the ends of my home, then I circled round again. When the land disappeared into sky, I let down my shields and my ship hurtled high into the clouds, then into the black. And I knew that I would never in a hundred thousand lifetimes come back… "

Jyn tried to listen to Chirrut's singing, but found it difficult given the way that Cassian had started to guide her movements. Her feet were clumsy, from the sand and from inexperience, but Cassian's hand pressed more firmly on her back as he moved her. Forward, to the side, back, to the side… their feet made a sort of square, lingering on a spot for two beats before moving on. Cassian lowered his lips to Jyn's ear and whispered,

"One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two, three… you feel it?"

"I feel it," Jyn nodded breathlessly, for she had indeed begun to feel the natural pulse of the dance. The first gentle raindrops of the nightly deluge began to trickle from the sky, and Chirrut's somber, soulful voice finished the song.

" And, no, I'll never come back here, but I will go on without your fear. "

After the words ended, the rain started falling a bit harder. Cassian did not release Jyn, and she stared up at him in the dimming light. Baze Malbus muttered,

"Well, I think that's our cue, Chirrut. Rain. Dancing. Let's go to our shelter, hmm?"

Jyn blinked quickly, still staring at Cassian, but she had the presence of mind to say quietly, "Goodnight, Baze. Goodnight, Chirrut."

K-2SO rose to his enormous height and said crisply, "I, too, will retire now, seeing as how the odds of you two -"

"Enough, Kay-Tu. Goodnight," Cassian said, his eyes locked on Jyn's. "Put yourself in rest mode, will you?"

"Oh, yes. I will make myself blissfully unaware of anything happening in my shelter. Good evening to you both."

Jyn knew the droid was mocking them, that the other two men had sensed what she did now. She wanted Cassian. She'd liked the feel of him holding her ever since he'd first done it weeks earlier. She'd liked the feel of him kissing her when he'd done that, too. But now, as she stood poised to dance with no music, she found that she wanted Cassian very badly indeed.

"Tell me again what your father used to say about men," Cassian said quietly, his black hair and his chiseled face getting soaked by the warm rain. Jyn let out a shaking sigh and said,

"He told me that some men only want a woman for her body. He told me to find someone who wanted me for my soul. He told me to watch out for rogues."

"Rogues," Cassian repeated, nodding. "I am a rogue. Are you watching out for me, Jyn?"

"Perhaps not in the way my father meant it," Jyn said. She shut her eyes and thought hard. She had a contraceptive arm implant, placed at the insistence of Saw Gerrera when she was thirteen years old. There were certain men in his ranks that Saw just didn't trust around a blossoming young woman, he'd said. That had always made Jyn feel a little frightened, though it had done more to spur her to learn to defend herself against a physical attack. The implant would need to be removed by a surgical droid if she ever wanted children. Right now, right this very minute, Jyn could go into her shelter with Cassian and do the sorts of things her father had warned her about.

A small part of her thought that was silly, but a much larger part of her screamed for it. She let go of Cassian's hand and put both her palms on his rain-soaked scruff, and she looked him straight in his dark eyes.

"I stopped caring a week ago," she informed him. When he seemed confused, she clarified, "I stopped caring whether we're alive or dead, or what year it is, or whether the Empire exists, or about the Death Star plans. Do you know why I stopped caring, Cassian?"

"Why did you stop caring?" he asked, lowering his head and touching his forehead to hers. Jyn swallowed past the lump in her throat and said,

"I stopped caring because… I am with friends. I am with you . And I am comfortable, and I feel safe."

"And isn't that all you ever wanted?" Cassian asked, smiling a little. Jyn let out a choked little laugh and nodded.

"Right this moment, I think I would be more comfortable in the shelter… out of these wet clothes, preferably."

"Well, Jyn Erso," Cassian grinned, his voice low and smooth and punctuated by the sound of the rain, "I want you to be comfortable. Let's go."