Chapter 3 - ch 7-9

Chapter 7: AhsokaNotes:Some of the thoughts about Ahsoka and Jyn's mercantile adventures here are inspired by gallorostromegalus's spectacular Bathtub Bacta meta post, and the discussions that spiralled off that. I encourage you to seek it out. It is hysterical.

Chapter TextNaboo is awful, but over fast. Captain Fran's wife is Nubian, it turns out, from the far south, a ground-born woman who never liked space travel and kept a home ready for Fran to touch base there, someone who grinds her teeth and wears a fresh tattoo on one shoulder the same vivid red as Fran's hair was. The product sells, their ex-shipmates' final salaries are disbursed, and Aleta and Ahsoka are suddenly a lot better off. It wouldn't be enough to pay for a berth on Theed for more than the day they stopped to offload their cargo, but the south is much cheaper, much more down-to-earth, and Aleta buys an upgrade for their astromech, a mouse droid to keep the place clean, supplies, an extra module for the navicomputer, while Ahsoka stays in the ship plotting a course. They haven't renamed her, out of mingled respect and laziness; it seems both unsurprising and painful that Liseeth is the name of the bay where Captain Fran and Padma met, the same way that Padma bearing a variant of long-gone Padmé's name ("it's common around here; half the women my age are named after the queen") is not a shock, just a very uncomfortable surprise. 

They also haven't talked about the way Aleta unhesitatingly fronts for the pair of them, on this extremely human planet. Ahsoka hasn't even asked: Aleta just did it and Ahsoka hid her gratitude and went along with it. Aleta's certainly trying to protect her - the Gungans have withdrawn to their strongholds and keep themselves to themselves, and in most parts of Naboo the human population have quickly grown used to streets that are once more filled only with their own species. The fact that she doesn't know how keen Ahsoka is to avoid being spotted on the Emperor's home planet is irrelevant.

Still, with or without Aleta shielding her, Ahsoka's grateful to be gone. Padma's a sentimental woman in her own way - there's a light burning before a holo of Fran day and night - but she looks straight past the Liseeth when she renounces all legal claim to it, and doesn't ask Ahsoka and Aleta to keep in touch. The Naboo hide everything, whether behind elaborate costumes or heavy makeup or courtesies, but Padma does not trouble to conceal how very much she wants them gone. Which tells Ahsoka just how deeply she feels it, and makes her feel much better about the malfunction and systems death she and Aleta stage a month later, in a tricky junction that's known as Spacer's Graveyard for a reason, and where their ship can disappear into an asteroid belt of nearly identical freighter wrecks, and - should anyone have the gonads to get close enough - be plausibly explained away by impacts from other craft or space debris, their own bodies presumed dead and floating, desiccated, in the permanently emergency lit hull of the ship.

They ghost out into the Western Reaches and have themselves declared dead, empty their accounts and launder the money. Ahsoka constructs a false trail in the navicomputer while Aleta wipes the droid, since Ahsoka's distaste was apparently obvious. Ahsoka goes from Sonera to Garo and soaks herself in a tub of dye until the orange of her skin has turned to red, and the white stripes to yellow; Aleta cleans the transfer tattoos off her face with rubbing alcohol, dyes her hair black, slips in long-wear brown contact lenses, and forges scandocs in the name of Liana Hallik. She really is very talented - as good as anyone Ahsoka's ever hired - and on Naboo you can get anything to change anyone into anyone they want to be. That's where the tech that made Obi-Wan into Rako Hardeen came from, much as they've all lived to regret that episode.

Or died.

The point is: they are as safe as they can be until the ship is changed, and that they accomplish by taking off for Jakku and transforming the Liseeth to match her new owners. 

It takes two weeks of bargaining, but they get it done, at the cost of their bank accounts. Liana looks noticeably twitchy.

"We need a paying job," Liana says bluntly, folding her arms.

"This ship needs a name," Ahsoka says.

Liana huffs and rolls her eyes.

"I'm very serious." 

"Call it Lady Luck ," Liana says. "We could use some. And half the ships in the galaxy are called something like that, so…"

"Good idea." Ahsoka marks it in.

"Credits," Liana presses. "No-one around here has any money except the water lords, and -"

"I know, I know." Ahsoka pushes the padd away from herself and folds her arms. "How do you feel about bacta smuggling?"

Liana stills. Ahsoka can see her thinking. Lucrative, risky, but the product itself is not dangerous, and it won't make either of them feel disgusting.

"Is this a Rebellion thing?" she says slowly.

"No. The Cloudriders are affiliated, not part of the Alliance, and the friend who asked if I could get involved, he's a Wookiee flying with a Corellian. Neutral parties." 

"Only reason the Wookiees are neutral is because they can't reach the Emperor to rip his arms off," Liana mutters, but Ahsoka can see she's thinking about it. "This friend of yours, can we trust him?"

"Chewbacca, yes," Ahsoka says, and smiles. "He and I go way back."

Can we trust him, Liana said. We. It's not just the thought of working with Chewbacca that's making her smile.

"Huh," Liana says. "Okay." She points an admonishing finger at Ahsoka. "But no Alliance. If the Alliance gets involved, I'm out."

Ahsoka nods. Better to leave the Fulcrum identity for another time. "Some day you've got to tell me why you hate them so much."

"I don't hate them," Liana says. "I just."

She wavers for a minute, then walks away without explaining. But she doesn't raise objections.

So Liana and Garo and the Lady Luck lift off from the surface of Jakku, and head for a highly deniable moon in the Corellian Independent System.

Ahsoka is absolutely right: Liana likes Chewbacca. Chewbacca likes Liana too, though when Liana isn't looking or listening he cocks his head at Ahsoka and roars something about her having said she would work alone. 

This is the problem with people who have known you since you were a child. They have no qualms about calling you on your shit. There are so few of them left to her, though, that Ahsoka doesn't waste her time getting annoyed, and tries very hard to pretend she's not embarrassed. There is, of course, no reason to be embarrassed. 

"I can't argue with the Force," she says instead. "No sense running away from each other when we'll only be dragged back. And I thought you were going it alone, too?"

Chewbacca was not in a good place, when last witnessed, but Ahsoka hadn't been in a position to fix it. She'd been very surprised to see him sounding so much better when she received the carefully coded invitation to find a ship and join him running bacta to the Cloudriders. And even more surprised to meet the inimitable Han Solo and find Chewbacca not just tolerating but apparently enjoying Solo's patent brand of bullshit, nonsensical plans, and badly hidden altruism.

Chewbacca howls something disparaging that boils down to woo woo Force bullshit, and then adds something about Han being an idiot, and, well, somebody's got to keep him out of trouble.

Ahsoka can't help pointing out that Chewbacca is very bad at that, considering some of the stories Han has regaled an unimpressed Liana with, and Chewbacca doesn't have time to reply before Liana comes back with a question about the bacta.

The Corellian operation is not a small one, but it's discreet. The Empire has a stranglehold on bacta production, allegedly for quality control purposes, but Ahsoka has seen the quality of the bacta they use, and the prices they charge for it. The vast majority of civilians can barely afford the lowest quality of Imperial bacta, which won't do you any harm, but certainly won't do you as much good as it should, for the price. Coincidentally, it's very similar to the blend used for junior stormtroopers - but it leaves out the dose of ryl designed to get them back on their feet faster than they should be. 

Many hospitals and clinics, therefore, either involve themselves in the black market (with mixed results), brew up their own (with similarly mixed results), or buy from the Corellians. They have an uneasy relationship with the Empire, although no-one knows better than Han that that doesn't prevent Imperial recruiting, or Imperial 'assistance' with external borders. But it also doesn't stop the Corellians taking up a business opportunity, or the chance to thumb their collective noses at the Emperor. And there's no Corellian who doesn't have their eyes turned to the sky, Han declares proudly but anecdotally, so the obvious solution is several moons hosting bacta production plants, and shipping off vats in the care of handpicked smugglers of different statuses and cover stories, each moon unknown to the production manager of the next. It's an effective system, in part because the vats are so easy to care for. Shinies on Kamino used to do it all the time.

Installing the vats in their temporary ship-board home does take a bit of work, though, which is why they've been here a couple of days - that, and the Corellians need to vet Ahsoka and Liana's assumed identities. Ahsoka doesn't waste time worrying about that. Liana's work is very, very good, and though she's clearly uncomfortable with the scrutiny, she seems to trust Ahsoka enough to bear it. Ahsoka won't pretend she isn't touched by that.

Liana leads Ahsoka to the section of the Lady Luck where the vats have been piped in, and goes brusquely over the guidelines they've been given for caring for their cargo, like she wants to make sure she understands it all. But she clearly has the basics down, and knows it. This is about something else, and Ahsoka thinks she can probably guess what. Corellia doesn't officially support the Rebellion, but sympathies are strong, in this particular corner of the system, and there's no doubt that Ahsoka and Chewbacca's own links to the Alliance earned them trust here. Han and Liana are along for the ride, and curiously similarly insistent that this is temporary, that they're here for the payday, nothing else motivates them. The sight of discreetly flagged firebird symbols and murmured asides makes them both act uneasy. Ahsoka and Chewbacca haven't yet had time to discuss this much - quite apart from anything else, while neither Han nor Liana understands Togruta, Liana can follow basic Wookiee and Han's listening comprehension is extremely good - but it seems clear that whatever Han and Liana's stories are exactly, they have more in common than either would care to admit.

Ahsoka waits until Liana has finished answering questions, then gives her last answer, and tacks into the end: "Of course, this is just a trial run."

Liana gives her a sharp glance. "Yeah," she says.

"We'll see how it goes," Ahsoka persists, aspiring to Obi-Wan's breeziness.

"Yeah," Liana repeats, a little more dryly.

Ahsoka catches her eye. Liana holds her gaze for a second, then shakes her head and snorts, but there's a tiny smirk tucked into one corner of that hard mouth. Ahsoka will take it.

Han claims to have the best navicomputer in the galaxy. Ahsoka doesn't have trouble believing it. He talks to her sometimes, aww L3 don't do me like this, c'mon girl, shit you're a genius - but he also talks to the ship as a whole, and sometimes it's hard to tell if he knows the difference between the two. Anyway, when the navicomputer charts a course, Ahsoka copies and uses it. It reminds her of flying with Anakin; mad, but it's going to work. And Han is genuinely an excellent pilot, and his experience escaping Imperial patrols is also very real; Chewbacca vouches for it.

Ahsoka's glad when they're on their way. Liana is getting accustomed to Han and Chewbacca - they crossed an important line when Chewbacca made her laugh threatening to dump Han in a bacta vat and leave him there until he grew a brain - but she's still perceptibly happier when it's just the three of them. The ship, Liana herself, and Ahsoka, whom she has decided to trust.

The route to the Cloudriders' base is quiet. It's a little finicky, but nothing Ahsoka can't manage with the navicomputer and astromech. She teaches Liana a little piloting, loses repeatedly at sabacc - it's much harder when she closes herself off to the Force - and wins at dejarik. Sparring matches tend to end without a clear victor, at least for the first couple of rounds, since Liana is so good at the shock and awe that can temporarily overwhelm a Force-sensitive opponent; she knows exactly how to telegraph one thing and do another. But after the first couple of rounds Ahsoka can beat her without difficulty, which sets Ahsoka off-balance in some ill-defined way she can only soothe by reminding herself that Liana would never, in reality, engage a Force-sensitive opponent without first tilting the odds so far in her favour that her adversary fell off the other end.

Going over the vats is easy; she can't even remember who taught her how to do this, it was so long ago, but it was during the two weeks she spent in Tipoca City trailing Shaak Ti around while the then-Chancellor got nearly killed on Naboo (and Ahsoka only wishes whoever it was that time had succeeded) and her master got repeatedly electrocuted trying to prevent it. Ahsoka was bored, and Shaak Ti was engaged in delicate negotiations with the Kaminoans, and whatever Anakin Skywalker had successfully raised her to be, it wasn't a diplomat. She followed Shaak Ti round for a couple of days, audibly broadcasting how much she hated the longnecks for talking about the vod'e like they were nothing but products, and then Shaak Ti - who had many of the same thoughts but was better at releasing them to the Force, and also had a headache after two days of Ahsoka simmering in the background - had assigned her a lot of meditative homework and left her to the shinies. And they'd taken her to the vats, and shown her how they worked. Ahsoka meditated best in movement anyway, for all that most Jedi forms of meditation that weren't battle meditation were meant to be accomplished sitting still. The movements were easy, the parameters straightforward, it's not hard for Ahsoka to replicate now, and it's not hard for Liana to learn. She learns fast; Ahsoka has to assume she's never been given a choice.

Getting into the Cloudriders' base is interesting. Ahsoka's visited this particular one before, but she arrived on foot, and that was when Enfys' mother was still leading the Cloudriders - must have been six years ago now, not long after Ahsoka first met Liana. Enfys has done well for herself, done well for the Cloudriders, and this, Ahsoka suspects, is now a valued outpost rather than a necessary linchpin of the Cloudriders' defences. It has that air. 

They're welcomed. However much more prosperous the Cloudriders may be at the moment - Ahsoka can see Liana sneaking glances at the equipment, the bright eyes and species-appropriate straight spines of Enfys' fighters, hear her mentally contrasting them with other groups. Even wrapped up in the layers of dramatic armour the Cloudriders favour, it's obvious they are healthy and well-prepared. 

Ahsoka whistles to Chewbacca: is this what your coaxium bought? 

Yes , Chewbacca roars back.

A good day's work , Ahsoka comments.

Chewbacca laughs, but he sounds pleased. 

"You know I can't understand the whistling sh-stuff," Han complains, returning from a search that has turned up both his holdout blasters and consequently made him sullen. 

"Maybe it's none of your business," Ahsoka says, and turns to see how Liana is getting on. Unsurprisingly, it's not going quite as well; she seems to have handed over most of her weapons with a fairly good grace, but now the scanner has stopped around her neck. It's probably pinging off the kyber crystal there, which, yes, Liana is refusing to identify, and while that's exactly what Ahsoka would have advised her to do, if she keeps up that stance she's going to start a fight.

Han purses his lips and whistles himself. "Five credits on Liana," he says to Chewbacca.

Do you take me for a sucker? Chewbacca howls back, genially. 

Ahsoka goes over to Liana, who is one more threat from punching the Cloudrider searching her in the stomach.

"You can't move into this base with an undeclared weapon on you," the Cloudrider says, xir hand hovering over xir blaster.

"I told you, it's not a weapon," Liana says, and her voice drops to a growl as she sees the Cloudrider's hand twitch. "Get your fingers off that blaster, sleemo, I'm faster than you are."

"Wanna race?" the Cloudrider suggests.

"I don't think that will be necessary," Ahsoka says, concentrating for a brief moment; the metal of the blaster becomes too heavy to lift. "Liana, what's going on here?"

"Searching for weapons is fine," Liana says, with a tremendous effort of will. It's obviously not all that fine, but Ahsoka expected this, they discussed it. "Going after my necklace is not fucking fine."

Ahsoka nods, and watches a tiny piece of tension slide from Liana's shoulders, like she's relieved Ahsoka's siding with her. She lays a hand on Liana's shoulder and draws her a little closer. "It's a memorial necklace. I can vouch for it. Leave it be."

"And who the fuck do you think you are, vouching for anyone?"

Ahsoka raises one of her temporarily yellow brow markings. "Why don't you ask Enfys?" she suggests, sweet as Senator Chuchi used to be, before the war came to Pantora and she had to harden up. 

"I'll do that," the Cloudrider snaps, and points a menacing three fingers at them. "Don't even think of trying anything."

Liana gives this the contemptuous snort it deserves, but only after the Cloudrider's walked away. She glances up at Ahsoka, and there's something like contrition warring with righteousness in her gaze. Ahsoka grips her shoulder tighter instinctively. 

"Sorry -" Liana begins, and Ahsoka cuts her off with a shake of the head.

"You have nothing to apologise for." She squeezes Liana's shoulder once again; Liana looks her in the eye for a moment and gives her a hard, deliberate nod, then folds her arms and looks elsewhere.

Enfys insists on speaking to Liana personally - Ahsoka expected that - but she doesn't prevent Ahsoka joining Liana, and she seems more amused than anything else. Not that Liana knows that, since Enfys masks herself so thoroughly and masters her movements so carefully, but to Ahsoka's senses it's obvious.

Liana stays polite, for all it's clearly a strain, and Ahsoka can see the remnants of Saw's warrior underneath the years of hard and lonely living. Enfys likes her, and trusts what she sees: Ahsoka can tell, because she takes off the mask and gives Liana the same solemn look and practised speech of welcome she gives all newcomers. Ahsoka can feel Liana jerk in surprise when the mask comes off; Enfys looks much younger than she truly is.

Liana gives a jerky but sincere nod of acceptance, and says something equally stilted about being glad to be here, then turns a look on Ahsoka that seems to ask if all the crap is over and they can get on with their business now.

Ahsoka doesn't stifle her smile.

"Unused to formality?" Enfys says wryly.

"Not much call for it where I come from," Liana answers, warily.

Enfys just smiles, and turns to welcome Chewbacca and Han, who she very clearly knows. Liana dedicates herself to messing with her cuffs and jacket, but Ahsoka can tell she's curious. Ahsoka makes a mental note to ask Chewbacca if she can tell Liana about the Great Coaxium Caper. Preferably out of earshot of Han, who is understandably sensitive about how the whole thing went, although whether that has more to do with the betrayals involved, the number of times he should have died, or the fact that he tried and failed to persuade Q'ira No-Name to leave Crimson Dawn is beyond Ahsoka. 

Han, Liana, Chewbacca and Ahsoka unload the bacta and reload it into hovercarts waiting for their charge. Ahsoka keeps an eye out, and sees that Liana has relaxed minutely - enough that no fights will start, and that when one of the Cloudriders invites her to come and see to the bacta's disposition with Chewbacca, Liana signals that Ahsoka doesn't need to join her. Enfys watches with interest, and follows Ahsoka to the Lady Luck as Ahsoka prepares to land it in a more hidden dock. The Empire is quiet around here, apparently - the reason for its choice as a loading point - but Ahsoka doesn't feel like taking the risk, and neither does Han, it seems. The Falcon lifts off before the Lady does, and moves with a delicacy that surprises Ahsoka. Anakin always used to say flying a freighter like that was like flying a house, and Ahsoka herself has never found them easy to move with the precision Han is showing off here. 

"He's good," she murmurs.

Enfys leans against the back of Ahsoka's shoulder, looking out the viewport. It makes Ahsoka's montrals itch. Too much proximity. "Yes," Enfys says. "And a good heart, for all he denies it."

Ahsoka doesn't answer that. Han is right; a good heart is a liability. 

"What about your… friend, Liana?"

"She also has a good heart," Ahsoka says, deliberately misconstruing Enfys' meaning. "Doesn't need to deny it, though. People tend to assume it doesn't exist."

Enfys is watching Ahsoka's face in the pale reflection of the viewport.

"Please take a seat," Ahsoka says, just annoyed enough for a little snip to get back into her tone, a tiny reminder of a girl who died fifteen years ago. "And fasten your seatbelt for takeoff."

"We're already in the air," Enfys says.

Ahsoka lets the Lady Luck slide, just a little, just enough to send Enfys staggering into the wall. She keeps her eyes front as Enfys curses and staggers her way to a seat, and doesn't respond to Enfys' eyes on her, thoughtful and watching.

She's a little bit concerned that when she relocates Liana she will have started (and won) a fight, but when she, Enfys and Han return to the upper levels of the Cloudriders' base - Enfys carrying several small toys and treats Han just happened to pick up for the children, since they were allegedly going cheap, and which he absolutely won't risk his reputation for by handing over directly - Liana and Chewbacca each have a drink in hand, and are playing pazaak. Liana seems to be translating for those who don't speak Wookiee, and while Ahsoka can tell she's still on edge, she looks relaxed enough to fool the Cloudriders. If Ahsoka turns off her other senses, and looks at Liana like a stranger would - harder to do here, because the echoes on the rock and sheet metal are strange on her montrals, and her body leans on the Force to compensate - she seems completely comfortable.

"You winning?" Ahsoka asks, as casual as she might once have been among the 501st, when they were the pride of the Galactic Army of the Republic rather than Vader's Fist.

"No, they're all card sharks here." Liana tips a wink at the youngest of the Cloudriders in the group, who flushes almost imperceptibly. "I'd better throw my hand in before they clean me out."

"You do that. Any trouble with the loading?"

"No. Any trouble with the landing?"

Ahsoka shakes her head, and Liana nods, throwing her hand of cards in and rising to her feet.

"Apparently we arrived in time for Sankari," Liana says. "Midwinter festival around here. So there'll be actual protein, not synth for a change."

Ahsoka doesn't suppress the look of longing she can feel crossing her face. She can live off anything, though she has been eating better than usual lately - Liana, who always has at least one and a half eyes on the money, and who evidently knew hunger from an earlier age than Ahsoka did, balances their supplies carefully and eats vegetarian so Ahsoka can afford to live almost entirely off protein. But with the repairs to the Lady Luck and other expenses, they can't afford protein that wasn't grown in a factory, and it's been a very long time since Ahsoka had fresh meat. 

"I've missed that," she says. "Not cheap to have it shipboard. Maybe I can do some hunting before we leave."

"There's a few Togruta around," Enfys says. "They can show you the best spots." She nods at Liana, friendly. "But first you might want to get paid."

The Sankari festival goes well; Liana seems genuinely interested in the paper garlands and the ritualised greetings and the great chalice of something alcoholic that steams with heat and smells as intoxicating as it is. Ahsoka is too; she's never been around for one of these, and Enfys and the older fighters are telling stories that are very obviously old stories, the ones rolled out every year until you're bored of them, but still next year you want to hear them again. It's very obviously not quite the form the festival is supposed to take - there are no children so the youngest of the fighters have to sing the calls to the songs rather than the responses, and there's no grandfather to bless the chalice, and a thousand other murmured shortcomings - but still. There's a joy and a community to it Ahsoka has missed, and even though the noise is enough to startle her sensitive hearing - she's too used to straining for the slightest sound, or operating in a quiet ship where the only significant sound comes from Liana swearing at the vats, astromech, and ship - it's so nice to feel uncomplicated happiness in the Force she doesn't care. Enfys seems relaxed; Han is telling tall tales, and Liana's laughing at him. Even Chewbacca looks like he's enjoying himself.

Ahsoka settles back into her seat and relaxes a little. For once, she feels, she can drop her guard a little.

Liana glances over her shoulder, as if to check where Ahsoka is, and smiles when she catches her eye. Ahsoka smiles back.

Of course, it's during the hunting expedition that everything goes righteously to fuck. It's a beautiful clear cold day, but overnight a fresh fall of snow has kissed the high rocky peaks the Cloudrider outpost is hiding in, restricting movement and muffling Ahsoka's hearing. It's still far better than most of her companions', even the other Togruta, who is old enough to remember a time before the Clone Wars came to Shili and calls Ahsoka a young'un. She smiles at his words, and reins back on her use of the Force to amplify and clarify the confused reflections she's getting from her montrals. Among other species, she can be pretty confident that nobody really knows how Togruta hearing works, but this is different. It's nice, though, to cooperate with someone who doesn't need her to explain how she hunts. Between him and Chewbacca, she feels pretty much at home.

They pick up several small mammals, winter coats or no winter coats, and two of the great woollen-coated, heavy-horned goats that stand as high as Ahsoka's shoulder; a wampa emerges to try to scavenge the goats, but is no match for Chewbacca, Ahsoka and her companion combined. Ahsoka wipes her face free of blood and calls, in a high victorious tone beyond human hearing, and a second wampa howls in the near distance and flees. Chewbacca roars his approval, and the Togruta laughs. Some of the Cloudriders look and feel disconcerted or even disgusted, but Ahsoka tries not to let that bother her. She isn't among sentients she needs to appease. 

They're debating whether to return or carry on hunting when something explodes high over the cliff face and Ahsoka instinctively flings herself back against the rock, cowering for cover as her eyes frantically search the sky. Chewbacca roars and pulls Ahsoka backwards, back into a narrow cave where the rest of their part y have already taken shelter. It smells like old wet fur and rancid blood, which - Ahsoka's nose twitches - does not come from their kills. It's not recent enough. 

One of the Cloudriders peers out of the crevice that leads to the outside world, and lets out a short, heavy sigh. Ahsoka's vision is blurring and her montrals are humming with confused signals, a sure sign that the shockwave concussed her, but she can still see a small ship rigged with heavy guns hovering in the crisp air, and the body of the old Togruta, mostly concealed beneath the snow. 

It takes Ahsoka a little while to focus long enough to see it clearly, but the ship carries the stylised half-circle of the cartel Crimson Dawn.

"Shit," says the group leader matter-of-factly. "Now we have to wait for them to go away."

What? Chewbacca howls softly, as they retreat backwards into the cave. Snow and rocks fell heavily over their group: only one of the hunters is dead, but Ahsoka's muddled senses pick up injury and pain among the others. You never mentioned anything about this!

"It doesn't happen often! They know we have a base here but they don't know where." The Cloudrider twitches nervously out of Chewbacca's way, or tries to; he's looming. "They come along and… and buzz us, every now and again. They didn't see us or they'd have blown the side off the mountain by now."

And when they see the kills? Chewbacca demands. This is too complicated, so Ahsoka has to translate. Her head is swimming so she puts a hand out to the rough, cold stone wall. Scents don't hold well on ice, but she knows this one. After her earlier fight, it's still deeply buried beneath her nails and between her teeth.

"Chewbacca, we're in a wampa nest. They'll assume it was one of the local wampas." 

Chewbacca lifts his head and sniffs, then lets out a considering growl. Fine. At least it's not here now.

"Hmm," Ahsoka says, pulling her coat closer around herself. She hasn't been this cold since… since that moon with Death Watch, and that idiot Lux Bonteri, but she was a child then, or not much more than one anyway.

Fucking shit, look at you , Chewbacca roars, and then directs an aside at the Cloudrider. Liana Hallik is going to take this out of your hide, you know.

Ahsoka drifts. At some point, her eyes flicker open to the unfamiliar sound of Liana shouting, and then Han's big clumsy hand pats her own, awkwardly.

"It's okay, Garo," he says, and Ahsoka almost doesn't recognize her false name. "Stay still. Liana has it all under control." Ahsoka can see him look sideways and say "Man, I should have put money on this."

There's cooling bacta on her aching montrals, and Chewbacca grumbles that she's safe. Ahsoka closes her eyes again to rest.

Chapter 8: JynChapter TextThe Cloudriders' one saving grace, in Jyn's opinion, is that - once the Crimson Dawn ship has flown out of range - they take very good care of Garo, and don't try to tell Jyn she shouldn't be angry at them for nearly getting her business partner killed. By the time they get up to the mountainside where smoke and snow rumbled and the hunting party disappeared, Garo is curled up next to Chewbacca, sickly peach under the red and yellow dye, and trembling. Her eyes are out of focus, and her right shoulder and ankle are swollen despite the rough strapping Chewbacca has wrapped them in and the anti-inflammatories he's given her. She was struck by something heavy, apparently, and Jyn feels cold all over when she thinks about Garo being crushed to death like her hunting companion outside. When they saw him, mostly buried beneath the snow, Han looked at Jyn like he was afraid of what she might do next, but Jyn saw at once it wasn't Garo, and nearly passed out with relief.

She couldn't do this by herself.

Han and Chewbacca are having some kind of slanging match about Crimson Dawn; Jyn doesn't know what it's about and doesn't care. They mostly communicate in shouts and roars anyway: it's not important.

Getting Garo out of here to medical attention is.

Garo responds to her name, but fitfully, which might be because serious damage has been done or because she's not used to hearing it. Jyn doesn't know the real one, and suddenly that fact clutches at her ribs like claws. Still, if Garo stays awake and stays alive they can figure all that out later. If they can keep her breathing, Jyn can forget that she ever wished she knew more about Garo, and carry on, balanced, with the first person she's trusted since Saw.

Jyn shudders. Trust is a word that tastes strange. Han looks at her oddly, but Jyn glares back at him, and grips the side of Garo's stretcher, tight, tight, with fingers that are going white in the cold. Her ears are ringing, and she has the weirdest feeling like her crystal is throbbing in rhythm with her pulse, a tiny beating heart wrenched from her chest.

The Cloudriders rush Garo to the infirmary and put her straight into treatment. Jyn can't see her - and that interdiction has Jyn balancing on a fine blade edge - because she's not accredited staff and there's no room in the treatment bay anyway, but they assure Jyn it looks good, it's going to be fine, Garo is strong and healthy.

Jyn feels ready to fight a war. She has all this bright hard anger built up inside her, and nowhere to put it. She wants to scream at someone, she wants to make them understand what they've done - but the only people who will come near her are Han, who's done nothing to deserve her rage and can't handle it anyway, and Chewie, who she couldn't touch if she tried. Jyn balls her fists and counts, slow, slow, like Saw taught her. Saw, who knew that fury was a tool and one that slipped easily in the hand.

Don't fuck this up, Jyn, don't fuck this up; there are people here that could put you down and would love to do it, and you can't fight them all.

Jyn paces the corridor outside the infirmary because it's the only option left to her. People get out of her way, except for Han and Chewbacca, who are hanging out with hands on blasters at a decent distance. Whether they are meant for her or for whoever tries to get in her way Jyn doesn't know, and doesn't find out, because Enfys herself comes down to the infirmary, and - after briefly conferring with a nurse who's watching Jyn like an unexploded bomb - comes over to Jyn.

"We have a sparring bay," Enfys says.

Jyn's lips peel back from her teeth. "You offering to take me on?"

Enfys laughs. "Not now. But we have a holographic training programme. It probably goes up high enough to challenge you."

It does. Jyn staggers out with bleeding knuckles, a fat lip and a weak ankle ten minutes after stepping into the ring, totally heedless of her audience. Enfys hands her a bottle of water silently, and smirks at the feeble, stunned applause, and one uncertain whoop. 

Jyn glances round and nods shortly, then opens the bottle and empties it down her throat. You don't notacknowledge the cheering, not at something like this.

She feels better. More centred. "Thanks," she says to Enfys.

"No problem," Enfys replies. "May I say that that was very impressive?"

"Thanks," Jyn repeats.

"Did you say who trained you?"

Jyn shrugs, one-shouldered. "No."

Chewbacca, who has been lounging by the door, roars his approval at Jyn. She nods.

"I thought you might fight like a Jedi," Enfys says, when they're clear of the people, out into an empty corridor. She pitches her voice so it won't carry. "Considering. But you don't."

"I don't know where you got that idea," Jyn says. 

Chewbacca cackles.

Enfys walks her back to the infirmary, where Garo is stable, a healthier colour under the still-staining dye and breathing normally. Jyn doesn't know how the monitors work, but the traces and noises look reassuringly regular, and the medical staff who treat the bleeds and strap the ankle keep her in the same room as Garo.

"I hope you'll consider staying with us for a while, until Garo is better," Enfys says. Jyn wonders if she, too, has been asking herself what Garo's real name is. "There will, of course, be compensation, since she was injured on our watch."

Jyn's lips twist involuntarily. "Thank you," she says, and then pauses, and lets instinct lead her. "We'll leave when Garo's on the road to recovery, I think. It's up to her."

She knows where they're going to go. She examines that knowledge gingerly, like a new tattoo, and decides she doesn't have to think about it now.

Jyn knows herself. She takes Garo to Lah'mu.

Garo recovers as quickly as can be expected from the head injury. She's easily tired, still a little dazed, and vulnerable; Jyn helps her coat her montrals in bacta and suppresses the way it makes Jyn herself shiver. This feels a little like sharing too much. But Garo is bright-eyed and alert, and the scans the med-droids did say she's out of danger. The shoulder and ankle, too, will heal with time and physio. The Cloudriders give them the bacta, provisions, and a holovid of physiotherapy exercises for free, along with generous injury compensation. Jyn wonders precisely who they think they've nearly killed, and buys Garo meat jerky and steaks to keep in the freezer with a respectable portion of the excess. Real protein, rather than synth, might speed her healing. So will time and safety to rest, and Jyn doesn't feel like hanging around under the inquisitive eyes of the Cloudriders. Crimson Dawn buzzing their bases isn't unusual, allegedly - though Qi'ra No-Name can't be holding that much of a grudge or they'd all be a lot more dead than they are - but after Enfys' compensation order, and Jyn's performance in the sparring bay, they are not just rare visitors but curiosities. Jyn prefers to hear gossip rather than be part of it.

Enfys tries, again, to talk to Jyn about where she comes from, and once more she fails. Jyn is just not interested in sharing, especially with someone affiliated with the Alliance. Fortunately, it seems like Enfys can see the way her shoulders stiffen, the way she flinches from words that are meant to be friendly, and she drops it. She doesn't ask where Jyn plans to take Garo, either, especially as Garo seems willing to go along with it: she just leaves Jyn and Garo with a comm code, and an invitation to return at any time.

Han acts up weirdly, which is not surprising, since most of what Han does is weird. Jyn pretty much ignores him, and only half takes on board Chewbacca's explanation that Han's just strange like that, he's sorry to see them go but for some reason he can't say it. Chewbacca either doesn't notice her distraction or pretends not to, and shakes her hand gravely like he's a human instead of a Wookiee when he says she was good to work with. Jyn hisses at him through her teeth and smacks him on the shoulder like she can give a proper Wookiee greeting, which - given his roaring laugh and the friendly blow that almost sends her flying - she can't. She smiles for the first time since she learned that Garo's hunting party had been crushed under snow and ice.

Stay in touch , Chewbacca roars. You work well with us. Colleagues are useful.

"We're colleagues?" Jyn says, trying to recover her dignity.

Yes , Chewbacca howls. Deal with it.

Before Jyn catches herself, she laughs. Just for a second and it's more like a bark, but she laughs.

The flight to Lah'mu is fine. Jyn can get a shuttle to shift, and Garo has taught her her way around theLady Luck . It's harder when Jyn's effectively flying solo, especially when Garo is complaining that she wants to help for more than the strictly allotted hours the meddroids outlined, and Jyn has to argue with her until she agrees to rest. But Jyn is well-fed and well-rested, and she can handle this. The jangling of her nerves and the unease in her heart discomfit her, but the steadiness of her hands tells her she can handle this.

She went back to Lah'mu, once, after Tamsye Prime. Nothing much had changed except that there was a lot more rust, and that her mother's body had gone. Jyn tidied up the house, the havoc wreaked by searching stormtroopers. And then she got drunk on cheap moonshine, cried a lot, concluded there was nothing to be learned, and left.

She arrived then via a stolen ground-level speeder, so it's impossible to know if what she sees now from orbit has been like this for years. There are no signs of life on the whole southern continent where the Ersos lived. That can't be right; Jyn remembers that there were settlements, and above the mountain range that demarcates the place where the two continents are slowly merging, there are still towns and cities.

A closer look proves that there were settlements, once, maybe fifteen years ago. For a few moments Jyn sits, frozen.

Garo leans over the back of the pilot's seat. "Empire," she says.

Jyn feels herself nod jerkily. 

"Do you want me to help land?"

"No," Jyn snaps reflexively, like she's coming back to life. "Sit down."

Garo chuckles, and straps herself into the co-pilot's seat. "Are we going on holiday?"

"I know it's safe here," Jyn says curtly. "That's all. You need to rest."

She can hear herself acting unreasonably. She doesn't know why Garo isn't snapping back. When she sneaks a glance sideways at the Togruta, Garo's gazing out of the viewport like she hasn't a care in the world. Jyn has never noticed Garo using any kind of Jedi mind power on her; the way Garo talks and acts, she doesn't think Garo would. But maybe she uses them just enough to know the sharpness of the edge Jyn has been balanced on. It's not just Garo who needs a rest. Jyn can't lose the one person she can count on, not like this. She knows death is random, life is transient, and there will always be things out of her control. But - 

Jyn needs to concentrate to land. As it is, she takes three goes to get the Lady Luck into the hidden landing place in the sea cave, even though it could take a much larger ship. She's not half as good as Garo.

Jyn lets out a long breath and sits back in her seat as the landing gear settles. They can be safe here, for a while. Perhaps not for more than a few weeks, but long enough for them both to pull themselves together. There's no-one living who might try to come back here. Her father is gone, the Force only knows where - probably dead, quietly killed off in some Imperial cell - and her mother has been cremated and memorialised on Coruscant, a city even Jyn knows she hated. She herself has been officially presumed dead for well over a decade: Saw made sure of it, and later Jyn checked. Unofficially - well, Saw likely thinks she's dead too.

Sometimes Jyn thinks that's the truth. That she's just a ghost. The child with plaits who saw the Empire coming and ran for her life would have grown up to be someone else, and all that's left is the flickering end of what might - Jyn doesn't know - have been a bright future, cloaked under many names, each one less truthful than the last.

Jyn inhales, exhales, releases the harness buckles, stands. 

"It's not far," she says. "The place we're staying."

Jyn's parents left speeders here, and because Lyra knew how to protect her equipment they are not rusty. The batteries have run down, though, and Jyn has to crawl around finding a power source to jump-start them from. They're also old, pre-Clone Wars, and there are a few confusing minutes where Jyn tries to remember how they work, and then a bitter shock of reality as she realises that these are just the same as some of the older ones that Saw had. He must have given these to Lyra, back when the Partisans were powerful and growing. And for some reason he's never come back for them.

Saw's from Onderon, Jyn remembers, and though he was born a city boy he spent enough time in the deep jungle to know not to meddle with the dead, however departed. The Partisans who were still with him from that time used to tell her the stories. Jyn masks her shudder and tells herself not to be such a fucking fool. It wouldn't be worth coming back here for a couple of speeders, and Saw's not superstitious, anyway; she never heard tales like that from him . She's just… on edge.

Garo's hand covers one of hers on the steering wheel, calloused and warm. She has elegant hands. Strong, but finely made. Jyn stares at this one for a second before belatedly looking up at Garo, whose wide blue eyes are watching her thoughtfully but without pity. That's good. Jyn couldn't bear pity.

"I'm fine," Jyn lies, and starts the speeder. It creaks and then roars into life.

It takes twenty minutes to get to the old farmstead without crashing the speeder. Jyn doesn't crash the speeder, but there are a few nasty jolts, and Garo winces and grips the handle.

"We can't all be you," Jyn says.

"I'll take a look at the suspension later," Garo replies. 

Jyn grunts, and eases her foot over the accelerator to smoothen the ride.

Lah'mu is looking its best, which isn't much. The clouds are clearing, leaving only filmy wisps of grey over the lilac sky, and the weak sun casts a gleam over rain-wet mountains and the farm they are fast approaching. It's summer, which means they can probably expect less rain than usual, and none of the freezing fog. Maybe. Jyn can't remember. They lived by the seasons when Jyn was a child, but not for long, and in any case Jyn has been so many other places over the years, and learned none of their seasonal quirks either. 

"Nice," Garo remarks when Jyn parks the speeder (under cover, where it wouldn't be readily visible from the air) and they both get out. Jyn casts a wary glance at her, but she seems to mean it. "This is where you grew up?"

"For a while. I wasn't born here." Jyn stamps around looking for signs of Imperial presence and finds nothing. To all appearances no-one has been here since she came by years ago, except the odd scavenging marmorat; she hopes they haven't been eating the wires.

That being the case, Jyn breaks open the door into a tiny ante chamber where she used to drop her muddy boots as a child, and jimmies open the door into the main house. It's resistant. She has to shoot the lock off in the end, and it will be a pain to replace. But then - fingers crossed - she is never coming back. Given that she's apparently taken up with an Alliance operative, however loosely attached Garo is to the Rebellion, it won't be safe to do so again.

When she ducks back out of the house she finds Garo is still standing by the speeder, one hand on its shell.

"It's clear," Jyn says, walking towards her so she doesn't have to shout. Garo's usually exceptionally acute hearing is still muffled, and she says it sometimes echoes weirdly.

"Something terrible happened here, didn't it," Garo says, and Jyn stops in her tracks.

Jedi, she thinks, her heart wavering somewhere around the level of her toecaps.

"The land remembers," Garo says.

"Good for it," Jyn replies, straight from her most bitter childhood memories. "Nobody else does."

Garo gives her a long, clear look.

Jyn clears her throat uncomfortably. 

"You don't have to tell me anything."

"I don't mind," Jyn blurts, and it's - a lie, but it's not untrue. She doesn't want to talk about it. But she feels driven to tell. "It - they came looking for my father. He was a scientist. My mother hid me, and then went back to fight…"

At least, that's what Jyn thought happened. Now, much older, and with much more experience of the dirty, serrated edges of a civil war, she wonders. But she can't ask Lyra.

"She shot one of them, and they killed her and took my father."

"But not you."

Jyn shakes her head silently. "They couldn't find me. It was Saw. My mother called for help, and…"

"He was too late for them. But not for you." Garo sighs. "It was your mother who gave you the crystal."

Jyn nods, and then some tiny curl of unfamiliar hope rises up in her chest. "You told me once it was a lightsaber blank. If she was a Jedi, did you know her?"

Garo shakes her head. "I don't know. I don't think so. I was at war a lot - the Grand Army was my world."

Jyn frowns. "How old were you?"

"Fourteen? Yes. Fourteen, I think, when the war started."

Jyn inhales sharply. Fourteen is not surprisingly young to fight, not now. But she always thought that there used to be real armies, trained soldiers, not desperate civilians, half-starved adults and frightened children with whatever ancient blaster they could scrabble out of Grandmother's emergency box and jars of homemade explosive. "I thought things were different, back then."

"In some ways," Garo says, "not so much." Her lopsided smile bares some of her teeth, and it makes her look older, more tired and less mysterious than Jyn has ever seen her.

Jyn stares at her helplessly. A faint, fine mizzle has started up, and her clothes and Garo's are slowly being coated in droplets of water, soaking through the crap waterproofing. The speeder's under cover, but the wind is blowing horizontally, so the mizzle is too.

"Come in out of the rain," she says at last, and surprises herself with the faint echo of her father's voice in her own.

Garo opens her arms to her, and - to Jyn's shock - Jyn steps into Garo's embrace, and holds onto her tight.

The house is cold and dusty. Jyn turns lights on, whacks the heater with an abandoned hydrospanner, rips the dusty sheets off the beds and replaces them with bed rolls she brought from the ship. Garo is focussed on figuring out the hotplate; she has water already boiling when she looks up and says to Jyn: "That's a cubbyhole. You're not going to fit in there."

Jyn's bedroom was spacious for an eight year old, that much is true, but if she curls up she'll still fit fine. There's only one adult-sized bed. She remembers sleeping between her parents until her own was welded together by her mother's brisk hand.

"Well you sure as hell aren't," Jyn says. Garo is more than half a metre taller than her.

Garo wrinkles her nose at Jyn, disrupting her markings. The dye she uses is tenacious, but she hasn't bothered to redo it since her immersion in bacta, and over the course of the last few days in space Jyn has started to see the faint echoes of Garo's real markings. Garo doesn't seem on edge about it either. Jyn feels weirdly honoured by that.

"Share with me," Garo says. "There's space. And it won't disrupt my rest, before you start on that. My nightmares are no worse than yours." 

Jyn blinks at her. 

"Unless you really don't want to."

"No, that's fine," Jyn says, and goes out to do battle with the water filter, which is currently producing nasty rusty shit. By the time that's done, and has turned the hot water on, Garo's cooked a meal. She's not a bad cook, although some of these things on Jyn's plate are totally unfamiliar and she's pretty sure she shouldn't ask what they are. 

"My master grew up on the Outer Rim," Garo says, the first real piece of information she's divulged about her previous life - besides the bare facts that she was a Jedi, and went to war at fourteen. She could have guessed at Jyn's curiosity through some kind of mind trick, but Jyn thinks it's more likely that she noticed Jyn turning things over with her spoon. "My teacher," she adds, misinterpreting Jyn's glance. "He could cook things I was sure weren't edible. I stopped asking what they were after a bit."

"So you didn't go hungry, at least," Jyn says. She knows the importance of that deep in her bones.

"Mostly, no," Garo says. "My teachers and the boys looked after me."

A slight shadow passes across her face, and she looks down at her meal. She's eating with the precise, regular, rapid bites of someone who has too often starved and knows how not to eat too much at once. Jyn remembers with a pang just how thin she was in Maz Kanata's cantina, and also that the Clone Wars lasted three years, and ended with the mass execution of the Jedi - right down to the tiniest children - by the clonetroopers that had fought alongside them. Saw rarely talked about the clonetroopers, but from her curtailed childhood Jyn knew he considered them traitors, and the Jedi unjustly maligned. Not that he'd liked the Jedi, but he was scrupulously fair, in his own way.

Clonetroopers. Garo's boys, who fed her and fought for her for three years, and then when she was seventeen…

The wave of anger takes Jyn by surprise, and apparently Garo too, the way she's blinking at Jyn.

Jyn says the first thing that comes to mind, which is:

"How did you get out alive?"

The surprise reassembles in a slightly different shape on Garo's face. "One of my boys was able to fight the conditioning. He held the rest off long enough for me to escape."

"A good friend," Jyn observes. She can't imagine anyone else doing that for her. 

"Yes," Garo says softly. 

Well, maybe one person.

After dinner Jyn cleans up while Garo does the exercises that are meant to strengthen her damaged muscles, and then they both go to bed. Garo is warm and lanky and seems to be made entirely of sleek muscle, except for the montrals. Jyn doesn't move in her sleep, usually, so avoiding those should not be a problem.

Jyn twitches awake in the middle of the night to a nightmare that's not hers: a fair-haired clone holding a blaster trained on her. The barrel weaves with his trembling hands and his eyes are screaming even as he whispers good soldiers follow orders , and a voice comes out of Jyn's mouth in the dream but it sounds like Garo's: Rex, what's happening -

Jyn turns onto her back and the dream breaks. Garo mumbles and frowns, a deep crease between her brows, tight lines around her eyes. Jyn taps her shoulder clumsily. "Hey," she says. "Wake up."

Garo's eyelids flicker. 

"You're having a nightmare," Jyn says, and Garo's eyes flash wide open. 

"I'm sorry," Garo murmurs regretfully. Her voice is soft with sleep but it doesn't creak like Jyn's. 

"It's fine," Jyn says. "It's not like you snore."

Garo cracks an absent smile - Jyn can tell it's absent because she can see the canines Garo usually automatically masks. Her eyes dip to Jyn's chest, where the crystal has come loose from her shirt in the night and is hanging from her neck; her fingers reach out and brush it loosely. Jyn suppresses the urge to snatch it back.

"'S warm," Garo says.

"I sleep with it right by my skin," Jyn says. "Of course it's warm."

"''S singing."

"I can't hear it," Jyn says, and looks helplessly back at Garo, who is watching her through half-lidded eyes, like a desert cat on Glarean, and like a desert cat she looks so relaxed she's defenceless. But she's not. Garo is never defenceless. "Go back to sleep."

Jyn turns back over and takes her own advice. She dreams of the high sweet singing of the holocron, like river music in a dry cavern that's as much sepulchre as cave, and it makes her smile.

Garo gets up before she does, because Garo has some kind of freakish internal clock that means she always knows when it's just before dawn. Togrutas evolved as crepuscular hunters, Jyn has read. In practice this means that Garo keeps incredibly peculiar hours when shipboard, napping at irregular intervals and coming alight with energy when Jyn is about to pass out, and that she climbs over Jyn very neatly and carefully to get up and do her exercises now. 

Jyn lies snoozing for a few more minutes, which feels like degenerate luxury, and then gets up and makes caf. She drinks it blistering hot but Garo likes it cooler, so Jyn wraps a blanket round her shoulders, shoves her toes into her boots, and takes both cups outside to watch Garo. Garo has already done her physio, and is now running through a limited selection of her exercises at half-speed. The sky is lightening towards dawn, and the white blaze of Garo's sabers cuts through the early morning mist.

Jyn watches. It's good to see that Garo's getting back to her usual standards of fitness. A week here should bring her back to full health, and thanks to Enfys' guilty conscience, they have the credits to make a week's rest affordable.

By the time Garo draws her exercises to a close, Jyn has almost finished her cup of caf. She picks up Garo's, and holds it out to her silently; Garo deactivates the lightsabers and hooks them onto her belt, then comes over to take the caf from her. She leans against the wall with one hand, casually stretching out thighs and hamstrings and ankles as she sips at her caf.

"Rex," Jyn says, swirling her caf in the bottom of the cup. "The clone who saved you?"

"Yes," Garo says. "He was my teacher's clone commander, and then my teacher assigned him to me to keep me out of trouble in my first command." Her jaw tightens slightly. "I'm sorry you had to witness that." 

Jyn shrugs awkwardly. "Didn't know Jedi could share dreams."

"They can't, as a rule. It's very rare even with other Force-sensitives, and you're only slightly sensitive."

Jyn nearly drops the last inch of caf, but catches the cup by the rim. "What?"

"Force-sensitivity, in various forms and strengths, is common. The kind of Force-sensitivity that makes a Jedi is very uncommon. You don't have it, or you would have heard the crystal singing, but you knewsomething was wrong on Irob's ship, and again on Bestine. Pilots, great fighters, artists, musicians..." Garo hands her cup to Jyn so she can stretch out her arms and back. "You're not a secret Jedi, if that's what you were wondering," she adds, flexing forward and talking in the general direction of her knees. "But… the Force is with you."

"You said that to me on Tamsye Prime," Jyn says, finishing her cup.

"Yup."

"Do you think I got it from my mother?"

"Could be," Garo says, rather strained, stretching her good shoulder. "The kyber crystal she gave you might have had an effect, too."

Jyn hesitates, and then says: "Her name was Lyra. Lyra Erso. But I don't know what her maiden name was."

Garo shakes her head. She's not reacting to the surname Jyn keeps such a careful secret, and Jyn knows her tells now. And Jyn's chest feels strangely light for the admission. 

She wanted to know Garo's name. You don't get without giving, that's just sense. And it's only fair.

And - she feels safe, even here, where everything went wrong for her, even if it had gone wrong for her parents long before. Jyn passes the cup of caf back to Garo when she looks like she needs it, and sets her own down onto the ground. She folds her arms on her knees, and stares out into the dissipating mist. It's chilly enough she needs the blanket.

"Jyn," she says finally. "My real name is Jyn Erso."

TIEs don't drop from the stratosphere to zoom over the marshy grass, the sky doesn't fall in, and Garo doesn't pull a blaster: instead, she sits down next to Jyn. Out of the corner of Jyn's eye, she looks touched, but not worryingly interested.

"My real name is Ahsoka," she says. "Ahsoka Tano."

Chapter 9: AhsokaChapter TextThey stay on Lah'mu for another week, and Ahsoka spends that time getting used to hearing her name on Jyn's lips, and to calling her by her true name. They have agreed that in front of others they will remain Garo and Liana, but Jyn asks to be called by her name otherwise, leans into the sound of it with a complicated look on her face, like some half-starved akul that fears the fire as much as much as it wants the warmth. They don't speak of that - they don't speak further of where they came from; they have already shared so much - but Ahsoka knows the feeling, instinctively, deep down in her bones. It's trust: a quality she and Jyn have likewise been starved of for many long years. She hasn't had a companion she could trust since she was a teenager, leaving dear friends and uncertain allies all behind as her missions take her and the Force directs her, and it's a strange, dizzying feeling. To know what Jyn will do next, not because the Force is nudging her, but because she knows Jyn. To recognise the half-awake cantankerous mumbling and the way Jyn pulls the pillow over her head in the morning when Ahsoka gets up, because she's seen it before.

She knows Jyn, and she trusts Jyn, and unlike so many people Ahsoka has trusted she has neither been obliged to let Jyn go or forced to leave her behind. (She thinks often of Obi-Wan, of Anakin, of Rex: Jyn is nothing like any of them.) She knows it could happen, is even likely to happen, but she has what she has now and she intends to be glad of it. She has a friend .

She remembers Jyn on Tamsye Prime, her hesitant outreach on Takodana, the terrible wild look on her face when she returned to the ship on Bestine too - the obvious fear that Ahsoka had left her behind. Ahsoka isn't the only one who had felt the lack of someone to lean on. Jyn's loyalty, once given, is total; it makes Ahsoka wonder if she should credit Saw or the mysterious Erso parents, and even more it makes her wonder what the hell Saw was thinking, leaving Jyn in that bunker. 

Over the course of the week Ahsoka feels her strength returning. Her head is healed, the ringing in her montrals passed off; Jyn applies bacta and Ahsoka applies Force-healing to the torn ligaments in her arm, and gradually they heal up to almost full strength. Jyn scrutinises her form as she practises with the careful eye of someone who's watching for weakness so she can guard Ahsoka's bad side rather than ripping into the exposed soft parts, and it makes Ahsoka smile. She knows Jyn is beginning to stop worrying about her health when Jyn steps up and offers to spar with her: still at half speed, pulling punches, mysteriously not dumping Ahsoka on the ground even when Ahsoka leaves herself wide open. But still, it's practice, and Jyn is always stronger than she seems.

Ahsoka also knows that Jyn's concern for her is ebbing when she finds Jyn frowning over star maps and business notes, clearly thinking through their next job.

"Planning a heist?" Ahsoka teases, setting down the kony rodents she hunted in the mountains and skinned and cleaned elsewhere. Jyn has already turned on the oven at some point, and now she gets up and stuffs the jointed rodents into a tray with a (rather dry but still edible) spice rub they found in the cupboards and some oil, and slides the tray into the oven. 

"Not a heist," she says finally, scrubbing her hands clean. "We're kitted out for bacta, and it pays well, so I thought it would be worth trying that again. Maybe somewhere else."

Ahsoka's pleasantly surprised, and it's a small enough condition to agree to staying away from their last supply run. Reasonable, considering what happened to Ahsoka last time, and the importance of keeping their footprint on the galaxy light. Jyn spoke her real name as if she were as anxious as Ahsoka to hide herself. 

"That works for me," Ahsoka says, taking a seat. "I could put some feelers out. Find out who else might be in the business. No price-gouging. And no direct connection to the Alliance."

Jyn nods, accepting the proposed conditions. She's tapping her fingers on the table so lightly and slowly it barely makes a sound. A human might not hear it, but Ahsoka can.

"Jyn?"

Jyn looks up, and smiles briefly. She gets up and starts getting out more ingredients for dinner; grips Ahsoka's shoulder lightly, reassuringly, along the way. Ahsoka covers Jyn's hand with her own, and this time Jyn's smile has more substance.

They're still sharing a bed. The tiny cupboard Jyn slept in as a child is not susceptible to modification, and there's no other way to put together a proper bed. Besides, there's plenty of room for them both, and since the first incident Ahsoka hasn't let her dreams spill into Jyn's mind. She keeps a more careful guard on herself.

Jyn leans into Ahsoka's shoulder, avoiding squashing her montral like it's second nature, and relaxes.

"Jyn?"

"Mrgh. Yeah?" 

Back when they were on Glarean and Jyn was going by Kestrel, or back on Irob's ship, Jyn had two settings: asleep, but wakeful at the first hint of movement, and feverishly alert. Ahsoka is interested to discover that when she feels safe she will let herself be sleepy.

"Do you like the plan?"

"Yeah," Jyn says, indistinctly. "It's a good plan." There's a pause. "Haven't planned a future since Saw."

Ahsoka's eyes don't fly open in the darkness, because she's smarter than to react like that. "Hmm," she murmurs, in quiet acknowledgement, and then she slings an arm over Jyn's shoulder and squeezes. When she would have moved her arm, Jyn leans into it, and eventually, Ahsoka just falls asleep like that.

The kyber crystal hanging around Jyn's neck is warm under Ahsoka's arm, and in the distant reaches of her mind she can hear it singing. She remembers her first impression of Jyn - someone led by the Force, swept up in its currents - and though she has rarely been this safe and warm since she was a child, her dreams are uneasy.

They spend a further week choosing their path and plotting it out. Ahsoka has plenty of acquaintances who smuggle bacta; it's one of the Alliance's most valuable sidelines, and it's where a lot of the clones who escaped Order 66 or were later freed went. Every clone knows how a batch of bacta works. She works through her list carefully, plotting her choices against their closeness to the Alliance, their closeness to Lah'mu, and the pricing involved. The former is the most important: Jyn hasn't told her what happened with Saw Gerrera, and Ahsoka hasn't pressed, but her antipathy to the Alliance is clear, even though Saw is no longer closely linked to the Alliance. There is some painful story there. Furthermore, Jyn was afraid when she gave Ahsoka her name: afraid, and consciously overcoming it. She has a past she does not want explored. Ahsoka can hardly blame her for that.

They settle on a pair of smugglers Ahsoka knows in the Ileenium system, on a small backwater planet called Olimar. They're brokers and receivers of dubiously legal goods rather than actively smuggling themselves, but they do run a small transport fleet. And they do trade in bacta, which doesn't need to be transported in enormous quantities to be enormously valuable, especially if it's high-quality - and Amira and Matariki trade in nothing that isn't high-quality. Ahsoka saw Amira dance, before she left off being the most desirable Twi'lek dancer across half the galaxy, cashed in her expensive presents and costumes, and ran off with an exiled Mandalorian. She isn't surprised that Amira has an eye for, and an obstinate insistence on, quality; nor is she surprised that Amira has a flourishing business now, several years after her unceremonious departure from the centre stage position she tired of when the balance of power tipped too heavily towards Imperial patrons. Amira doesn't settle .

Maybe Ahsoka should have offered to put Filyns in touch with Amira, instead of Cham Syndulla. Amira would have made that ship Filyns', and Irob would have been lucky to keep his life. As for Thyrian…

Ahsoka doesn't know Matariki quite as well as she does Amira - Matariki's a mercenary, a sometime bodyguard, young enough to have been raised in Duchess Satine's reforming tradition, but still politely wary of a Jedi. (Not that she knows , of course, not for sure - but somewhere under the surface, some instinct registers that Ahsoka is not a baseline Togruta, and keeps her at arm's length. Ahsoka knows it possibly better than Matariki herself.) But Ahsoka has sparred with Matariki a little, and spoken Mandalorian with her to smooth off the distinctive accent she picked up from the clones. And Ahsoka sees why Amira, who prizes quality, chose Matariki over all the partners in crime she might have had. Filyns might not even have noticed that Thyrian was gone.

Jyn lands the Lady Luck in a wild meadow a couple of kilometres off, and they make the short walk to Amira and Matariki's quaint wooden farmhouse, complete with chickens. Olimar isn't highly developed - it certainly doesn't have a fully functioning customs system, which is ideal for their purposes - and the farmhouse's architecture is the same as half the local buildings. They probably adapted it, rather than building from scratch. But it's still startlingly bucolic for women more easily placed in a barracks or a nightclub.

This impression dissipates when Matariki appears, sizes up Ahsoka and Jyn with a single glance, and lays a hand on the blaster holstered on her hip, which is so oversized it must be throwing off her balance. Ahsoka's tempted to make an inappropriate joke, but she can feel Jyn coiling with tension next to her; a glance sees Jyn's eyes flickering around, calculating angles.

"We've come to do business," Ahsoka says, holding up pacifying hands. "Is Amira available to talk?"

Matariki's hand hovers over the blaster, and then drops. "Garo. Almost didn't recognise you. I didn't know you'd gone into independent business." Her eyes linger on Jyn, as much a question as her earlier statement.

Ahsoka nods. "We bought a ship." She gestures to Jyn. "This is Liana, my business partner."

"Business partner or bodyguard?" Matariki asks sceptically, and the sunlight glitters on Jyn's teeth when she replies.

"Both."

There's a faint approving glitter in Matariki's eye as she tips her chin at Jyn. Ahsoka's glad. This will be easier if they like each other: Amira rates Matariki's judgement highly. 

Matariki's gaze turns back to Ahsoka. "Your comm said you were looking to do bacta runs. Still true?"

Ahsoka nods. "We did a run for the Cloudriders. A test. It went well, and it was good business, so we thought we'd expand."

"Why not stay with the Cloudriders?"

"There was a security lapse," Jyn says, looking particularly forbidding. She always does when there's any kind of reference to that incident. "We won't be going back until they sort their shit out."

Ahsoka lets it slide. Matariki's eyes dart from Jyn to Ahsoka and back again, and maybe she likes what she sees, because the corner of her mouth twitches and she opens the farmhouse door to let them in.

It's defensible. That's Ahsoka's overriding impression of the house, and she's not sure whether to be embarrassed of it or not, but since Jyn is looking around as if she's thinking the same thing, she doesn't feel too bad. Ahsoka has never seen much of Olimar - the Ileenium system is out of her usual way and she's only visited Amira and Matariki briefly before - but the interior style seems in keeping with local preferences, flowing wood, smooth curves. The wood has been treated to make it resist fire and blasterfire, and the rooms and corridors provide clear vantage points and bottlenecks for a defender inside the house. Ahsoka is confident that Matariki has this place covered in cameras, sensors and traps. It's bigger than the house they had before; the business must be doing well, which is promising for Jyn and Ahsoka. The touches of luxury Amira likes are mostly hidden away, ostentation swapped for practicality in the parts of the building where Amira and Matariki do business, but Ahsoka won't be surprised if her actual study is the gaudiest thing since Orn Free Taa's personal craft. Amira believes in dazzling people first and taking their money second.

Jyn glances at Ahsoka and then starts to make small talk with Matariki, a seemingly casual exchange of information about Matariki's weapons and Jyn's own preferred arms (Matariki doesn't believe you can truly get anything done with a pair of truncheons; Jyn estimates the number of stormtrooper skulls she's smashed in). She's only talkative for a purpose, Ahsoka has noticed, and in this case the talk, pitched just slightly louder than usual, allows Ahsoka to withdraw a little and focus on using her montrals and the sound's echoes to find the hidden parts of the building she knows are there. In the echoes she can sense deep underground cellars, filled with crates or boxes; she cuts the echo with a soft hum too low for either human to hear, and confirms for herself that the only other person in the building besides the three of them is Amira. 

"We'll wait here," Matariki announces, letting them into a pleasant room with fortified walls and windows made of transparisteel, rather than glass. Jyn's eyes narrow very slightly as she catches that - the reflection off transparisteel is always just a little different. "Amira's negotiating with Jabba the Hutt and it always puts her in a mood."

Ahsoka's not surprised; Jabba the Hutt's proclivities are well-known, and many of Amira's less fortunate colleagues have met their end at his court. She's amazed Amira can bring herself to deal with him at all, but Amira's pragmatism is blistering. Whatever of his wealth she can take from him she will take willingly. 

"You expecting trouble?" Jyn says coolly, nodding at the windows.

"We have occasional visitors," Matariki replies equally smoothly. "You probably know the kind of thing, if you hang around with this one. So we keep the place well protected."

Jyn nods. Perhaps her sideways glance at Ahsoka does make it look as if she's used to fending off murderers with Ahsoka in their sights.

Matariki never talks business until Amira is in the room; at least, not strictly, not obviously. She sounds out Ahsoka and Jyn's experience, talks through the Lady Luck 's capacity and compares it to other ships the three of them have known. Ahsoka is much more the engineer than Jyn is, but she's also a known quantity, relatively speaking. It's Jyn Matariki wants to know more about. Ahsoka wondered how Jyn would take this, remembering her stiff, uncomfortable response to Enfys' gentle questioning, but this situation seems to be one she understands much better and Matariki seems to be far enough from a Rebel to avoid striking that particular tender spot of Jyn's. She responds with a calm but never unwary confidence, and a mixture of the truth and obfuscation that commands Ahsoka's admiration. 

For all her worries about what Jyn might go through, Ahsoka has never doubted that Jyn would be all right by herself.

Upstairs there's a crash. Jyn and Ahsoka both stiffen, but Matariki remains completely relaxed. 

"Probably a datapad," she says. "Or a screen. Amira doesn't like Jabba."

"Right," Jyn says.

"How are you in Hutt Space? If a couple of runs work out, we might ask if you'd be willing to take on some business in that direction." Matariki shrugs. "We worked with Han Solo for a while but he thought it would be a better deal to work directly rather than be the go-between."

Ahsoka arches an eyebrow marking. "Did you take that one out of his hide?" 

Matariki snorts. "Not with Chewbacca around. No, he was reasonably honest about it, we didn't lose out. And he's not as reliable as I'd like for that run. He's got history with some cartel and it makes him jumpy. But at least when Chewbacca was on board Amira didn't have to deal directly with Jabba. Puts her in a lousy mood."

"We can come back another time if she wants to throw some more shit," Jyn offers dryly, almost like she's at her ease. Ahsoka's reminded of her playing cards with the Cloudriders. "We've all been there."

Matariki grins. "The hazards of being a businesswoman in this galaxy."

They chat for a few more minutes, and then Amira appears; Ahsoka hears her coming, and nudges her foot against Jyn's as warning, so that when the door opens Jyn's head is already turning. 

Amira's on sharp form, her black eyes glittering and her posture ram-rod straight. She's more severely dressed than Ahsoka remembers her preferring, but Jabba is Jabba, and it may be that Amira just detests the way he links her past career to her present. She has her temper under rigid control, and her tension eases ever so slightly when she sees how relaxed Matariki is: in the Force, Ahsoka can feel the suppressed anger and resentment Amira carries with her release, ever so slightly, as Matariki smiles at her. Matariki has very strong natural shields, and is hard to read - Ahsoka's often wondered if it's connected to her tightly controlled defensive physical ability, whereas Amira has trained herself to express as much as possible, but the Archives are gone and Ahsoka was never bookish enough as a youngling or padawan to read up on that sort of thing. But Ahsoka's pretty sure she can read enough from the way Matariki holds herself now to be sure that the contract is a done deal.

Amira, though, likes to make you think nothing is certain until it is, regardless of whether or not she's feeling better. It's what makes her and Matariki so successful, against the odds. So Amira spins out their discussion, asks the hard questions, repeats questions to see if Jyn or Ahsoka will answer differently, dissects the details of their backgrounds, and generally acts like this is an interrogation. Ahsoka wonders, at first, how Jyn will react to this; she knows Jyn has a temper, and she does become perceptibly cooler as Amira interrogates her. But she doesn't snap, she stays calm and professional, and once more Ahsoka thinks about Jyn calling herself Saw Gerrera's best warrior, the fact that Cham Syndulla might have recognised her, and what Saw's plans for her originally had been before he abandoned her on Tamsye Prime. It doesn't seem like she was ever just a fighter. But then he left her. It doesn't make sense, even if behind that mysterious Erso name lies a dangerous past. Since when has Saw been scared of that?

Amira insists on inspecting the Lady Luck . It's probably good business practice, and they cleaned and smartened her up this morning when they made planetfall. These small freighters don't have the air scrubbing facilities of the immense warships Ahsoka spent her adolescence on, and even those got a bit stale and dry after two months in space. Lady Luck needed a good airing out.

Amira has zeroed in on Jyn as the unknown quantity, and as they walk towards the Lady Luck is subjecting her to forensic questioning about her piloting qualifications, which are minimal.

"Garo is the pilot. She taught me," Jyn says, glancing back. 

"You're getting better all the time," Ahsoka grins, and collects a funny look from both Matariki and Amira.

Both Matariki and Amira go over the ship with a fine-toothed comb. Now Ahsoka is the one who's tense, uncomfortable; Lady Luck is the first ship she's been responsible for for any length of time since the Clone Wars, the only fixed base she's had. Amira and Matariki are not strangers, but they aren't within her circle of trust, either. To have them poking round her ship is… strange. It makes her want to usher them out, take off, and go to hyperspace.

Jyn brushes past Ahsoka mid-inspection, deliberately knocking into her shoulder, and something settles in her gut. She doesn't know what; doesn't think about it too hard because there isn't any time, but sets it aside to meditate over later. Whatever it is it makes it easier to smile, civil, professional, and act welcoming, until Matariki and Amira show themselves out, thank Jyn and Ahsoka for their time, and announce that they'll take the rest of the day to think about it and contact them in the morning. Politely, Jyn and Ahsoka agree, and then as soon as they're out of sight both women go back into the ship and fling themselves across the banked seats in the tiny ready room. Jyn takes a bottle of water out and drinks the lot without pausing to breathe; Ahsoka watches, idly, while Jyn gulps it down like she's dying of thirst, and then when Jyn lets her hand drop and the empty bottle in it, she says: "Professional outfit, I thought."

Silently, eyes closed, Jyn nods. 

"Can we work with them?"

Jyn opens her eyes and squints at the ceiling. After a thoughtful second, she said: "Yes." There was a pause. "I forgot how tiring it is."

There are layers in that sentence. Ahsoka lets them sit, unacknowledged for the moment, firstly because she understands what Jyn means, and secondly because it tells her a lot about how Jyn thinks. They have other options than Amira and Matariki: could even freelance like Han and Chewbacca, if they wanted, no brokers involved. But it's true they are reaching the point where they need money, and Jyn, who clearly suffered scarcity from a very early age, feels that faster than Ahsoka - who was in battle as a teenager, but who never went hungry, not until the Empire rose. Jyn, too, doesn't have the Force to bear her up: she doesn't feel it, not consciously, though Ahsoka sometimes forgets that, what with the kyber crystal and the singing holocron and the way the currents of the Force eddy round her.

And then they have both been women of the shadows for so long. Scrutiny, even this kind of scrutiny, is strange and exhausting.

"Yeah," Ahsoka says at last.

"Do you think we got it?"

"I think we got it," Ahsoka replies.

Jyn builds a fire outside so they can sit out for dinner and watch the stars pinwheel over the rich stands of trees that made landing such a pain, and cooks kebabs of meat and dried fruit over the flames. Heavier on the dried fruit for her, lighter for Ahsoka, who has to watch her digestion when it comes to vegetable matter. Ahsoka brings out a bottle of Corellian brandy she's been saving, and well, if they're celebrating prematurely, making planetfall is something to celebrate too. Living another day is something to celebrate too.

Ahsoka finds herself smiling.

" K'oyacyi ," she says, and clinks her glass against Jyn's. Jyn looks mildly confused, but reciprocates - and then comprehension visibly dawns.

"Cheers," she replies.

"Pretty universal, isn't it," Ahsoka says, leaning back into the enormous tree trunk they're sitting against. She hopes there are no ants under the cushions they hauled off the ready room seats. She does not want to fly halfway across the galaxy with ants on board.

"It's Mandalorian, right?"

Ahsoka nods. "You know any?"

"Everyone picks up the swearwords, don't they?" Jyn leans forward and pokes the fire with a stick, turning over a burning log. "I haven't got a hope in hell of learning Togruta."

Ahsoka laughs. "I'm pretty sure I could teach you to whistle the swearwords there, too."

Jyn smiles; a real smile, an absent one that she isn't thinking about, that softens those sea-glass eyes and glints off flat human incisors. "Worth a shot." She wipes the rim of her plate with a thumb, licks the juices from her skin. "You learned it from the clones?"

"Yes," Ahsoka says, and then adds: "A dialect, technically." She doesn't mention her short-lived stint on Mandalore, the one that involved teaching a class rather than fighting Darth Maul. Korkie Kryze had been too polite to refer openly to her distinctive accent and syntax, but none of his classmates had shared that. She had to give them points for keeping out of human earshot - and subtract all of those points again for not remembering that Togruta and human earshot were two very different things.

"Was it hard?" Jyn asks, idly.

Rex spoke nothing but Mando'a to me every day for two weeks because I asked him to , Ahsoka wants to say. Fives taught me to swear. Kix used to quiz me on my homework in two languages, and when I didn't do as well as I wanted he'd tell me I was learning more out with the boys than any of those kids at the Temple. 

But she's not ready to talk about them yet, not even to Jyn. Fives, who died, Kix, who was captured, Rex, who she may never see again.

"Yeah," Jyn says, more softly, "I get it."

Ahsoka reaches the few inches across to clasp her hand. Jyn grips back, hard.

In the morning Amira calls to say the job is theirs, if they want it.