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He was not a traitor, he was Never a traitor.

Saw walked towards a holographic projector while Jyn watched him nervously. "This was the message I was sent," her old mentor and protector told her solemnly.

The moment Jyn saw the hologram coalesce into a life-size image of her father, she wanted to run but her legs felt like they had been fused to the ground. The last few hours had been harrowing since she had been taken to the Rebel Alliance's stronghold on Yavin IV, but having to meet Saw again after he had abandoned her to fend for herself was something she had not wanted to do. The fact the mission led back to her father only made it worse.

Jyn had not wanted to have anything to do with the man for years, not since the day Krennic had found them when they had gotten away from the Empire, and he had just bowed his head and meekly went on with his work. Over the years Jyn's decision had been a right one; Galen Erso's reputation throughout the galaxy was as notorious as Darth Vader or Emperor Palpatine's own reputation for cruelty now his true colours had been exposed, and the veneer of benevolence had been torn back to reveal the rotten flesh lurking underneath.

Saw's excuses for the reasons behind why he'd left her had made sense, but it hadn't done anything more than making her even more bitter.

Again, her father.

Why could she not shake off the desire to just break away from that man, and stand on her own? Why did he continually have to haunt her?

But as she watched the hologram take shape she couldn't believe it; for years her father had been nothing more than a bogeyman in her dreams, and more than once she had relived the memory of her mother's murder. Only it hadn't been a Death Trooper pulling the trigger of that blaster, it had been her father, standing tall and proud in an Imperial uniform.

But the hologram of her father looked stooped, weary. While she couldn't see his face from where she was standing, she could still see enough, take in the body language recorded by the hologram to give her clues as to how he was feeling. It was obvious he was truly worn out.

Tired, as though all the life had been drained out of his spirit.

He was dressed in a uniform that screamed Imperial, but he looked too stooped in it as though he wished he could just take it off.

Jyn only had a moment to take in her father's appearance before the hologram began to speak.

"Saw, if you are watching this then perhaps there's a chance to save the Alliance," the hologram said.

What?

"Perhaps, there's a chance to explain myself," the older Erso - it was hard for her to once more take the name Erso after everything, but somehow Jyn found it virtually impossible and effortless now - went on, sounding a tad hopeful but pragmatic at the same time as if he didn't expect such an opportunity, "and, though I don't have hope for too much, a chance for Jyn, if she's alive if you can possibly find her to let her know that my love for her has never faded and how desperately I've missed her."

While the hologram had been speaking Jyn had been walking slowly around the projector, her heartbreaking with every word as all of the cast durasteel reasons she had learnt to despise her own father, her own flesh and blood for everything that had happened, and for how her life had been ruined when they had gone on the run in the first place, so she could look at her father's holographic face.

"Jyn," the hologram spoke again, startling her because she had expected this message to be purely for Saw or for the Alliance and not for her, "my Stardust…"

A soft gasp left Jyn's clamped lips at the last word.

Stardust…Long-buried memories of her father tucking her into bed, kissing her forehead, and calling her that after she had begged him to read her stories came bursting out of the dam she had been using to hold them at bay.

"…I can't imagine that you think of me. When I was taken, I faced some bitter truths," the hologram went on, the man who had recorded it completely unaware that it would eventually find its way to her, "I was told that soon enough Krennic would have you as well. As time went by, I knew you were either dead or so well hidden that he would never find you."

While she stood there, lightly crying, more than aware of her surroundings even if nearly all of her attention was focused on her father's hologram that Saw was looking at her with unhidden sympathy on his face, she couldn't help but snort in her mind. Krennic gave up looking for me, she thought disparagingly, sneering at the thought of the bastard who had hounded her father into leaving in the first place on some terrifying project the Empire wanted to be completed as she remembered being hidden not so far from the homestead, the bastard would have found me sooner if he had sent those troopers after me and actually bothered to look properly, but once he had you in his grip again that was good enough for him.

"I knew if I had refused to work if I took my own life it would only be a matter of time before Krennic realised he no longer needed me to complete the project."

Jyn was left standing there in horrified shock as the realisation blossomed into her mind. For years she had thought her father a traitor to the freedom in the galaxy, the same freedom the Empire under Palpatine and Vader were determined to grind into dust, and that he had returned to his work with gusto.

But he hadn't.

"I lied," the hologram went on (she was sure her father's recording had said something else but she had been so wrapped up in her own thoughts it had been impossible to keep listening, but now she paid more attention), "I learned to lie. I played the part of a beaten man resigned to the sanctuary of his work."

Jyn felt her chest start to heave as long-buried and dormant emotions bubbled to the surface. She felt tears beginning to sting her eyes as she began to cry as she listened to her father, and cursed herself for not once trying to find a way to find him. To save him. Maybe if she had…

While she was lost in a flow of self-loathing for not doing the right thing and only caring for herself, the hologram went on with its message.

"I made myself indispensable and all the while, I laid the groundwork of my revenge."

What?! Jyn couldn't believe what she was hearing. It was one thing to hear, to listen to her father and see the genuine regret and weariness in his face as he admitted he had pretended to play the part of another of Palpatine's servants who was a slave to the Empire but to hear him say he had worked all these years on finding a way of bringing down this project the Empire had commissioned…She had never pictured her father for being the devious type.

Her father's holographic self looked stronger as if the act of talking of what he had done was giving him the strength to become defiant.

"We call it the Death Star," he began, "there is no better name, and the day is coming soon when it will be unleashed. I've placed a weakness deep within the system, a flaw so small and powerful, they will never find it."

As her father kept speaking, Jyn felt physically sick. For years she had thought her father a traitor, but here he was proving her even more wrong. No traitor would go to all this trouble. It was definitely some revenge, it was subtle when compared to Krennic's bullying actions, and it was more effective. Death Star? What does it do?

"But Jyn," the hologram went on, an urgent tone entering into her father's manner now, "Jyn, if you're listening, my beloved," that endearment alone nearly did it for Jyn, and it was only her iron self-control which stopped her from collapsing when she heard it, and the tears came down freely now, "so much of my life has been wasted."

Jyn felt herself tremble and she had to bite her tongue control herself from bursting out crying like a little girl. But it was so incredibly difficult not to lose her control as her father went on, and she knew that as the recording went on - how long ago had this hologram been made? Was her father still alive, waiting for hope that she was coming for him? Was he worried, terrified that she hadn't gotten the message, that she hated him? The thought alone made her truly sick because she had hated him for just going off with Krennic.

But now she hoped the pompous bastard who'd stolen her family from her, from her father regretted what he did soon enough if he didn't then she would make sure he did.

"I try to think of you only in the moments when I'm strong because of the pain of not having you with me, your mother, our family. The pain of that loss is so overwhelming I risk failing even now. It's just so hard not to think of you. Think of where you are, my Stardust. Saw," her father's voice became more businesslike now he had delivered the message he had risked so much to give, though this new one was even more risky, "the reactor module, that's the key. That's the place I've laid my trap. It's well hidden and unstable. One blast to any part of it will destroy the entire station."

While her father had been speaking Jyn was starting to openly cry as she felt years of bitter loathing for her father shrivel up within her very soul now she knew that she no longer had any reason to hate him anymore.

She was left wondering how long he had worked to get this flaw into this Death Star. How had he never been discovered? Was Krennic's arrogance that overwhelming he hadn't even tried to look into what Galen was doing in reality? The fact the arrogant Imperial believed her father was on his side was obvious, but Jyn was just amazed by how far her father had gone with his plans.

She was left sobbing in heartbreak now, seeing for herself, and hearing for herself that her father never had never been a traitor. And that made all these years, these bitter wasted years while she had tried to survive, feel more wasted. What had she been doing all of these years? She cursed herself, her father had sacrificed his freedom, lost everything so he could work on a revenge plan that was on a scale so large it was almost unbelievable to her.

He had risked his life to destroying the project the Empire had come up with to rip out the soul and crush the hope of the entire galaxy, and what had she done all along?

Nothing. In comparison, she had been only into herself. She had selfishly, now she looked at it despite her own work against Palpatine's creation which had done completely away with the Old Republic when the Jedi Purges had begun on the eave of the end of the Clone Wars, moved from one world to another, getting into fights, getting locked up, and it had all been for nothing.

"You'll need the plans," Galen's business-like tone brought her out of her bitter recriminations and she focused on the hologram again and listened to what her father had to say, "The structural plans for the Death Star, to find the reactor, I know there's a complete engineering archive in the data vault at the Citadel Tower on Scarif."

Scarif. Jyn, like everyone else who had made fighting the Empire a part of day to day life knew that the Empire had built a security complex on that planet, complete with a planetary shield that enshrouded the entire place. It had been a long time since Jyn had familiarised herself with the security there, but she knew enough to know the place was well guarded and there was a permanent squadron of Star Destroyers there to protect the Imperial facility.

In short, it was the perfect place, next to the Imperial Palace, to keep anything safe since no-one in their right mind would attack it.

But I will, father, Jyn vowed, determined to redeem herself and ensure the Death Star project which had allowed Krennic to ruin her life and resulted in her mother's death, and her father's permanent enslavement to the Empire's war machine was brought down.

What's that rumbling? she thought distantly, aware of some kind of rumbling that growled in the caves Saw and his resistance group had made their base on Jedha, but she paid it little heed as she listened to her father.

"Any pressurised explosion to the reactor module will set off a chain reaction that will destroy the entire station," Galen said before the recording just faded; Jyn had no way of knowing if the recording had been finished there or if her father had been prepared to say more, but either way it made no difference to her as the room had started to shake, making her look around in alarm and worry before she collapsed to her knees.

He was never a traitor, her mind kept repeating, which stopped her from coming up with any plans to go to Scarif, find the plans to the Death Star so she could hand them over to the Rebel Alliance on a plate for them to blow the thing up, and that thought reverberated around her head as did the bitter self-loathing she was feeling.