Chapter 10: JynChapter TextJyn isn't a huge fan of Hutt Space in general, but Tatooine in particular annoys her. She doesn't like how the Hutts do business, but in many ways they're no worse than half the galaxy, and they're only a downgrade from the Empire if you're human; half the time, Jyn thinks the popular human Core distaste for Hutts is being treated in a way they treat other sentient species. It reminds her of the morgue on Bestine: the attendant's mouth curling around the word xenos like it's nothing, like dead crew members were nothing.
Anyway, Hutts are bastards but so is pretty much everyone else - it's just that Jabba Desilijc Tiure is an incompetent administrator and a pervert, and runs the continent of Tatooine not chiefly inhabited by Tuskens as an open slave economy. The signs are obvious to anyone who knows how to look. It makes Jyn itch under her skin for her own safety, even with all their safe conducts and business deals, and it makes her fantasise about breaking a few shackles here, a few necks there. Ahsoka's told her about the transmitters in widespread use here; Jyn reckons she could slice them effectively enough, if someone needed her to. But Tatooinians aren't in the habit of trusting strangers. She can't blame them. And she knows she can't save the suffering people in front of her, not while the Hutts have the Empire's full cooperation. She can't do more than start and win fights with spacers who decide they are easy pickings.
This also relieves the boredom of each consecutive Tatooine run - that and the money. Amira pays higher than usual because they have to split up, and that means increased risk. Jyn can't take the active role she usually does here; Jabba really goes for young humanoid females. Locals always ask her about it when they land on other Hutt-controlled planets, his predilections are such common knowledge. It's not specific to humans - he also goes for Twi'leks, and Jyn has seen the odd Tholothian around too - but it's striking enough that Ahsoka takes point on these runs. Bib Fortuna is frightened of her, and even Jabba knows she's a predator.
The thought makes Jyn smile, sitting in the shade with a sherbet and people-watching idly on a Mos Eisley street. She's aware most people find Ahsoka subtly alarming, that that's why Ahsoka avoids baring her teeth and tries to manage her movements so that she walks a little more heavily, doesn't circle or startle people. But Jyn has never been scared of it, and Ahsoka no longer cautiously masks it around her any more.
Someone did tell Jyn, about six months back, that any decent human would rein in a creature like Ahsoka. Jyn enjoyed handing out that black eye.
She finishes her sherbet, drops some small change into the waitress' pocket - that way she might actually get to keep the tip - and leaves the café. It's far past the dead noon hour, but there's still time before the twilight hours when what respectable business there is in Mos Eisley closes its shutters tight against the criminal element. Not that Jyn thinks that makes much difference.
Better-fed, better-armed, and known - this is their fourth run in the year and a half they've been working for Matariki and Amira, and for all it has an actual spaceport Mos Eisley isn't so large a town that Jyn and Ahsoka didn't quickly build a reputation - Jyn doesn't feel at any particular risk here. No-one is likely to try to snatch her. Rob her, maybe, but she can handle that.
The deliveries she's ordered should be arriving back at the Lady Luck soon; the refuelling she oversaw this morning, and she's expecting Ahsoka tomorrow, so they can inspect and sign for their cargo and take off tomorrow evening. In more organised spaceports they'd have a slot and be obliged to declare themselves to air traffic control. Here they have a berth which they have to pay for by the rotation and the air traffic situation is best described as anarchy. Jyn has got much better at flying the Lady Luck , but she always has Ahsoka do take-off and landing here, because Jedi senses are better than a radar and Ahsoka's let slip that her Jedi teachers had her flying from the day her feet could reach the pedals. Thirty years of practice has to be good for something.
The elderly Toydarian she bought power couplings from last time snarls at her for getting too close to his merchandise, laid out on banks before his shop. She raises both her hands and her eyebrows at him, completes the exchange of courtesies in Huttese - she's getting much better at the Tatooinian dialect - and saunters on. It's strange to keep coming back somewhere, she thinks, strange to be known, even if not under her own name. It's not an unpleasant feeling, but she, like Ahsoka, is always waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The Lady Luck is berthed in a good spot; out of the way, which keeps the town's tiny but enterprising Jawa population off it, but not so far out of the way as to make deliveries inconvenient or obvious to the customs authorities, who are in any case well bribed. Jyn waits in the shade outside for her deliveries - food, water, and some spare parts, though not medicine, which is high priced for shitty quality out here - and signs for it when it arrives. By the time she has everything stored away the desert night is falling cold and heavy over Mos Eisley, and Jyn goes out with a torch and a blaster to tramp around the ship and check there's nothing nesting in the struts or hanging around like a bad smell before going back indoors and locking up for the night. No-one choosing to be out and about in Mos Eisley at this time of day is someone Jyn wants to face unarmed, or be caught off-guard by. She still feels safe, but she's aware she'd feel safer with Ahsoka here; when Ahsoka isn't around, she sleeps with a blaster to hand.
Ahsoka has said that she's sure that's not mentally healthy, but Ahsoka sleeps with her lightsabers under her head when shit's getting tough, and is officially not allowed to comment. At least Jyn's blaster has a safety catch and a stun setting.
Jyn wakes with the dawn. Tatooinians rise early and do business early, the better to avoid baking in the light of the two suns. Jyn has no business to take care of yet - Ahsoka will set out from Jabba's palace with the earliest light, and won't be here until early afternoon - but if anyone shows up, these are considered business hours. And Jyn is now a respectable businesswoman, or at least as respectable as anyone who regularly runs packages of black-market ryll can be. Theirs is destined for the same medical suppliers who sell bacta, since in the right doses, it's a powerful painkiller. But no-one here on Tatooine actually knows their business is legitimate, and in the wrong doses ryll will make you hallucinate till you see pink Pacithhips dancing under your deck plating. Jyn has heard herself referred to as a spice runner out of the Ileenium system, and while she's indifferent, she knows it bothers Ahsoka. Spice running isn't exactly what she was raised to, even if she's made a few veiled references to an episode when she was a teenager and got mixed up with amateurs who turned out to be dealing with the Pyke Syndicate. Jyn hasn't asked, since the memory clearly troubles Ahsoka, but they're not exactly going to be ostracized for their work. Around here, buying and selling without cheating or shooting anyone - even if what you're buying and selling is ryll - makes you a model citizen.
Ahsoka arrives back just as Jyn's closing up for the obligatory midday break; Jyn recognises her partner's hooded figure and distinctive air-light stride from across the spaceport, and pauses in her closing to wait for Ahsoka. Ahsoka raises a hand and pushes back her hood as she gets closer, and Jyn squints to try to see if there's any change in her, any sign of trouble they might not be able to handle. But Ahsoka seems fine. There's no change in her movement or obvious injury, and she's being followed by a gravsled with a tarp tied down tightly over it.
So much for subtle, Jyn thinks, with a faint roll of her eyes.
"All good?" Jyn yells, when Ahsoka's in Togruta hearing range. Ahsoka nods back, because Jyn won't hear a thing she responds with, and quickens her pace. Jyn goes round and opens the cargo bay back up again.
When she comes back, Ahsoka and the gravsled are pretty much right in front of her. The gravsled makes to slide up into the ship, the droid controlling it bleeping officiously, but Jyn steps in front of it and makes her opinions clear in Huttese. She speaks it better than she used to, and she's never been fool enough to believe that Jabba wouldn't bug his suppliers if he had the slightest opportunity. Jabba likes to have organic slaves around him, but unlike many Hutts he considers most of them luxury goods rather than standard fittings, and prefers droids or mercenaries to do a lot of work that slaves might otherwise be assigned. Things where people with few options might be tempted into turning on Jabba in return for their freedom. They might not be in good hands with most of Jabba's business partners or adversaries, but as Jyn knows perfectly well, desperate people do dangerous things.
She and Ahsoka unload the gravsled, and Ahsoka sends the droid on its way with an extra squirt of oil for its joints and a spare battery pack she apparently promised it. Jyn squints at her in the increasingly overwhelming heat: Ahsoka's always had a strange soft spot for droids, which is weird in a Clone Wars veteran, and speaks fluent Binary, which is slightly less weird given the tonal commonalities with the human-audible Togruta range and the fact that just about every pilot can swear at their astromech in a common language, but she doesn't usually hand out presents to worn-out old astromechs fallen on hard times.
Actually, when Jyn puts it like that, maybe it's not that weird.
"He just reminds me of someone," Ahsoka says apologetically, as they carry the wrapped blocks of ryll inside.
"You don't need to be sorry for that." Jyn closes the cargo bay door - with relief; it's getting very hot and Jyn will need to run the cooling systems to get the ship's interior back down to temperature, even though every porthole and windscreen has been shaded since ten in the morning - and starts packing the blocks away in smuggling compartments. They are also carrying a shipment of culinary spices, which are already mostly loaded, so it's a pain in the arse to get the smuggling compartments sorted. But with the two of them working together it only takes about an hour and then they're done and sorted. Ready for lift-off this evening.
Jyn wipes the sweat off her face and the back of her neck with a towel, and tosses Ahsoka a cool drink from the fridge. "You should have taken a break," she says, eyeing Ahsoka, who is lying flat out on a bench seat with a cold wet towel wrapped her montrals, and who caught the drink with the Force rather than lifting her hand.
"Oh, I wanted to get it done." Ahsoka cracks the seal on the can, which is still in midair, and finally sits up to drink from it. "The journey back wasn't too bad. And Jabba's given up on trying to test me, so there was less bullshit than usual."
"Hmm," Jyn says. She's seen Jabba interact with Ahsoka only once, due chiefly to the fact that Jabba then made a whole lot of unsolicited comments about Jyn herself, who ended up beating the crap out of one of his bodyguards under the guise of a 'friendly sparring match' because she couldn't beat the crap out of Jabba. But Jyn does remember that Jabba was frightened of Ahsoka, and trying not to act like it, which meant he pushed her hard. Ahsoka kept her famous cool.
"Seriously. He doesn't have much of a long-term interest in people, you know. Explains why he's such a small-timer." Ahsoka wedges a cushion behind the small of her back and stretches her legs out. "He can't earn loyalty and he's too cheap to pay for it. Which is why he's not even on the Hutt Council any more, he just stays out here tormenting half of Tatooine and extorting the other half."
"He's still got Fett hanging around like a bad smell."
Ahsoka grimaces. She and Fett have some kind of history that stretches back into the Clone Wars - much though that doesn't make sense, given Fett is only slightly older than Jyn, and would have been even younger than Ahsoka when the Clone Wars broke out. Ahsoka was worried about him identifying her to Jabba, but it's been so many years since they met, and Ahsoka is so careful with her appearance changes, that Fett either hasn't recognised her or hasn't bothered to take his suspicions to Jabba. Neither of them is under any illusions about the likelihood that Jabba would sell them straight out to the Imperial garrison if he thought it would be worth the profit.
"Fett does what he does, I leave him alone, he leaves me alone," is all Ahsoka says. "Who knows what goes through his head under the helmet. No, I remember the kind of shit Ziro Tiure used to get away with - Jabba's uncle. He had so much influence the Hutt Council paid for Cad Bane to spring him out of jail."
Jyn whistles through her teeth. Bane is dead - Saw took him out after a Moff who couldn't find the Partisans paid for Bane to do it instead and he killed one of Saw's best lieutenants - but Jyn remembers the planning that went into that operation, and the number of people who died to see it done. He was a legend. Legends don't come cheap.
"Held up the Senate Rotunda," Ahsoka says, leaning her head back against the wall and staring into the distance. "Nearly killed Anakin."
Anakin is the name of Ahsoka's former teacher. She talks about him more when they're on Tatooine, or have just been to Tatooine, and Jyn files away the snippets she hears. If he grew up around here - poor, Jyn infers, or maybe even enslaved - then it's no wonder he could and would eat anything.
"You must have been angry," Jyn says.
"Jedi don't get angry," Ahsoka says, which is not, Jyn knows, the same as 'no'. "It's bad for their control of the Force, which is bad for everyone and everything around them." She stretches. "But I did think Obi-Wan was just a bit more focused than he would otherwise have been on recapturing Bane."
Two snippets in one day. Ahsoka's feeling nostalgic, apparently. She has her eyes closed and a faint sweet, wistful smile on her lips. It doesn't bare her teeth, so she's not really happy.
"Did something happen?" Jyn asks.
Ahsoka cracks open one sea-blue eye. "What do you mean?"
"You don't usually talk about them this much."
"Oh." Ahsoka opens both eyes. "Anakin lived here for a long time when he was a child. Even thirty years on, the city and the desert remember him well." She sighs, crushes the empty can in her fist, and sits up straighter. "I keep feeling like I could turn around and see him any minute now, you know? Which is weird, because I'm older than he was when he died, now."
Jyn says nothing.
Ahsoka pitches the can across the room into a bin. "And that had me thinking about Obi-Wan. They were so close, it was hard to think of one without the other, and I guess…" She falls silent.
"I guess what?" Jyn says, eventually.
"I kept thinking I could sense him, around Jabba's palace," Ahsoka says, with obvious reluctance. She scrubs her hands across her face. "But they're both dead. I know they are. The Empire didn't get Obi-Wan or his name would be off the kill lists, but if he were alive, I would surely have been able to reach him, some time in the last… sixteen years. Force knows I have tried."
Jyn doesn't reply. Ahsoka's staring at the opposite wall without seeing her, and she has a lost look on her face that Jyn knows well. She gets it sometimes herself, when she thinks about Saw and forgets, for an instant, that he abandoned her.
Instead, Jyn gets up and chucks her own empty can into the bin, and says: "Do you want first crack at the fresher?"
Ahsoka twitches like she's startled, and makes an indeterminate noise.
"I'll go, then." She grips Ahsoka's shoulder, and shakes lightly. "I'll be quick. Eat something."
Ahsoka clasps her wrist, and runs her thumb over the veins absently; then she looks up and smiles wearily at Jyn. "Thanks," she says.
"Hey." Jyn shrugs. "What are friends for?"
Ahsoka squeezes her hand and then lets go, and after a second, so does Jyn.
Ahsoka sleeps for several hours at the noonday rest, or what should have been the noonday rest, if Jyn and Ahsoka hadn't spent an hour packing smuggling compartments. Jyn knows this, because she gets back from getting herself something to eat to find Ahsoka meditating, which Jyn now knows from experience Ahsoka believes to be an adequate substitute for sleep.
The galaxy at large can take it from Jyn Erso, reluctant expert in the dumb shit Jedi will do instead of taking care of themselves, that meditation is not an adequate substitute for sleep. Jyn stares meaningfully at Ahsoka and thinks loud thoughts about sleeping until Ahsoka opens her mouth and says irritably "Fine, fine, I can take a hint," before getting up and going to bed.
They both wake rested, and Ahsoka even admits that Jyn was right to get her to sleep, irritating as it was. They still have a couple of hours before takeoff; Jyn opens the cargo bay door so they can sit on it, and have an almost entirely uninterrupted view of the suns setting. Well, a better view than you're going to get anywhere other than out in the desert. Jyn has been out there at night before, due to equipment malfunction that left them sitting pretty in the middle of the desert trying to fix the speeders and avoid Tusken Raiders, and she's never seen so many stars in her life. The ambient light from Mos Eisley isn't enough to drown them out. If Jyn were a daydreaming kind of person, she'd say nothing would be enough for that.
She and Ahsoka sit on the ramp, shoulder to shoulder with three inches of automatic space in between them, and watch the sky turn from pink to blood red to deep marine blue. Still an hour before takeoff.
"You think about them a lot?" Jyn asks. She tries not to think about her parents or Saw, personally; especially not Saw.
Ahsoka knows what she means straight away. She sets her bowl down on her lap - soup and noodles and jerky softened in the hot soup, because frankly neither Jyn nor Ahsoka trusts the meat round here if they haven't hunted it themselves - and her mouth twists. "Almost every day," she says finally. "And when I remember it's been a few days since I thought about them, I feel terrible. It's - you know, I've lived nearly as long without them in my life as I did with them in my life, and it never gets better."
Maybe because she keeps the wound fresh. Jyn doesn't say that. "Does it comfort you?" she says instead.
"Remembering them?" Ahsoka smiles, and she does bare her teeth now. "Oh, yes. I think of what they'd do, or say, and sometimes it helps, and sometimes it just makes me laugh. And sometimes people remind me of them, and that makes me feel better. They're gone but - they're not truly gone, Jyn. The Force is in all things."
Jyn absorbs that. "Sounds like something my mother would have said."
"It's a pretty basic religious tenet." Ahsoka pokes at her noodles with a fork. "Do you look like her?"
"No," Jyn says automatically. She doesn't remember much, but she does know that. "No, I look like my father. Except my hair is darker than his was. She had dark hair."
Ahsoka receives this very small piece of information like it's a gift.
"She was a fighter," Jyn adds. She remembers that too.
Ahsoka smiles again.
"Are you like them?" Jyn asks. "Obi-Wan and Anakin?"
"I'm not as patient as Obi-Wan," Ahsoka says. "Or as reckless as Anakin."
Jyn snorts. "Are you sure?"
Ahsoka elbows her. "Of course I'm sure."
"I mean, if we're talking reckless -"
"Oh, shut up," Ahsoka says, but she laughs.
"Anakin taught me to fly," she says later, when they are finally taking off for Olimar. "I already knew how to handle a ship - the basics, at least - but Anakin taught me how to build one from the ground up, and then how to handle it like I stole it."
"Hmm," Jyn says, as they break the stratosphere.
"Obi-Wan taught me moving meditations. They weren't commonly taught to initiates, because you're supposed to be able to find the Force in stillness, but he said he suffered through ten years of one padawan with the mortal fidgets and he wasn't doing another ten."
Jyn grins at that.
"Come to think of it," Ahsoka says, "I am pretty sure Anakin also taught me how to steal a ship."
She punches them into hyperspace, and Jyn gives in and laughs.
"They would have liked you," Ahsoka says.
Jyn reaches over and takes her hand, and they sit there in the cockpit with more ghosts around them than can reasonably fit inside, and both of them are smiling.
Chapter 11: AhsokaChapter TextTwo years after the Zabirliss , Jyn still doesn't shout a lot, but she can certainly make her presence felt, even in a hangar the size of a podracing course. Ahsoka is on top of the Lady Luck with a soldering iron, and she can feel Jyn seething long before Jyn rounds a small battered ship-to-surface tender.
Ahsoka whistles and waves the hand with the soldering iron in, and their astromech warbles from inside the ship. Jyn looks up and around, sweeping the area with that familiar sharp glance, and spots Ahsoka immediately.
ARE YOU SURE FULCRUM IS A VALUABLE ASSET, she thinks at the top of her voice.
Unfortunately, yes, I trained him myself, Ahsoka thinks back. They've been practising this - Jyn has enough of an affinity with the Force that it should be possible - but unless Jyn is focussing very carefully under ideal conditions it's likely she won't get more than confirmation and amused apology.
It takes another ten minutes for Jyn to skirt her way round, disappear into the ship, and appear with a clatter by the astromech. She hauls herself out, avoiding the patches of exposed wiring that N8 shields with a distressed whistle, and clambers onto the flattest and most comfortable seat near Ahsoka.
"He's a pain in my arse," Jyn says, without preamble. Working out how to communicate telepathically has not been without its hiccups, but Jyn never hesitates to pick up a conversation exactly where they left off, and thus far, everyone has assumed it's got more to do with the quality of their working relationship than the Force.
"How can I put this," Ahsoka says, firing the soldering iron back up and bending to her work. She can feel Jyn's eyes on the point of her shoulder. "I could tell you weren't getting along."
Jyn snorts explosively. Behind her mask, Ahsoka grins.
Cassian Andor is about Jyn's age, and Ahsoka has known of him for slightly longer. Draven flagged him up as a Fulcrum prospect when he was thirteen; Ahsoka insisted on holding off for several years, and finally started training him when he was about seventeen, and had learned everything he was going to from the other instructors available to him at that time. He's advanced far beyond that in the decade since; he's one of the Alliance's finest, a credit to Draven, perhaps even a credit to herself, though he's been entirely independent of her work for more than five years.
Jyn's never met him before. It took about five hours on the surface of Serenata, a very small and sleepy moon off the planet D'Qar which happens to be a Rebel-friendly staging post through the Sanbra sector, for her and Andor to figure out they hated each other's guts. Neither knows much about the other and both are too professional to ask Ahsoka for more details, but Ahsoka knew where this was going the second Andor spotted and commented on Jyn's crystal. The crystal has been entirely invisible since and all three of them have tacitly agreed not to talk religion or politics.
Andor doesn't like Jedi. Ahsoka knows this. There are a lot of people under the Rebel Alliance's banner who are held together only by the common enemy of the Emperor, and that certainly includes Andor - who was raised a Separatist and who has never actually stopped being a Separatist, and who treats Ahsoka with a careful, professional distance - and Jyn. They have a lot in common, but that's not something they're likely to notice unless forced. And unless they stop pissing each other off.
Ahsoka doesn't give that good odds, not with Jyn seething behind her.
"N-8, try now," Ahsoka says. Down in the open panel N-8 connects two wires and sparks don't fly, which is exactly what Ahsoka was hoping for.
"Think we'll be good to go soon?"
"We could go now if we had to, but I don't like doing a patch job." Ahsoka flips her mask back up. "You dislike him that much?"
Jyn's mouth has twisted grimly, and she's pulling at her necklace on its cord, the crystal concealed in her palm. "I don't trust him," she says at last.
"I'd forgotten what you're like when you don't trust people."
"I've never distrusted you like I distrust him. There's something fake there."
"I think he's just trying to be likeable. Or he was, before you got so hostile. It's a survival strategy for someone in his line of work."
Jyn snorts. "Well, he chucked that in."
"That's probably what's bothering you."
"He watches you like he thinks you're dangerous."
Ahsoka wiggles her fingers at Jyn, and tugs on the Force just enough to create a breeze that will brush past Jyn's cheek. Jyn smiles. "That's not about my species. And he's not wrong, either."
Jyn gets to her feet with a grunt. "We're all dangerous, if you want to put it like that." (Ahsoka grins. Jyn is dangerous; Ahsoka has seen her brawl.) "How much longer till the handover's complete?"
"Twenty-four hours. Hang in there." Ahsoka flips her mask back down and bends back to her work.
Jyn rolls her eyes and sighs, then jumps back into the ship, landing so close to N-8 that she actually apologises. She never used to say anything much to their droids; Ahsoka likes to think she's mellowing.
Ahsoka spends another couple of hours working on the hull, until she's completely satisfied with it; this much time to work on it is a luxury. She lets herself back in, closes the top hatch, and packs away her repair kit before she takes to the fresher, and when she comes out she finds Jyn has already made dinner.
"Thanks. I thought it was my turn?"
"Thought I might as well do something useful."
"Well, thanks," Ahsoka repeats. It's a kind of starchy rice stew in heavy broth, with pieces of meat scattered through it: Jyn has added vegetables to her own, and given Ahsoka nearly all of the meat.
"You're welcome," Jyn says absently, without the awkward, shrugging self-consciousness she used to have. "I can keep it hot if you aren't hungry yet."
"I'm hungry," Ahsoka says, sitting down next to her and stretching her feet out alongside Jyn's. Hers stretch significantly further; she always forgets how small Jyn is.
They eat in companionable silence for a few minutes, and then whatever has been quietly simmering in Jyn's head comes to the boil. By this point, Ahsoka knows how to wait for it.
"Do we really need to stick around while Fulcrum hangs about staring at me like I'm something on the bottom of his shoe?"
Ahsoka chews and swallows before answering. "Unfortunately yes. The same transport that's picking him up has our cargo for the Naboo hit."
Jyn rolls her eyes, but doesn't complain.
They have a packed schedule for the next few months; the Empire is moving, even if it's not clear what their objectives are. Intelligence is speculating wildly under Draven's heavy guiding hand, but there's little to go on right now, just the disappearance of certain scientists in apparently unconnected disciplines - engineering, epigenetic modification, geology - Imperial money trails that vanish as if they never existed, changes in policing on certain Mid-Rim worlds, the introduction of specific bills in the Senate that receive Imperial assent before they get out of committee. It's nothing that should be tangible on the ground, but Ahsoka can feel it. So can Jyn, which is why she agreed to two Rebel-affiliated missions when they normally keep a respectable arm's-length away. Whatever happened in the break with Saw, whatever Ives did to her on Glarean, Jyn still wants to fight.
So they agreed to hit Kamino, to verify or disprove that the Empire is working on cloning again - they must still have some clones in service, or DNA samples; if not the original template from Jango Fett, then material from Cody, perhaps - but it makes Ahsoka sick to think about that, so she tries not to. And then they have a trip to Naboo on the docket, carefully timed to avoid official attention on the Emperor's home planet. His interest in it seems largely cosmetic, perhaps because it makes him look more human, and for some reason the most feared of his enforcers won't go there. But they need to be careful, which is why they will legitimately be trading a cargo of Ryloth opals for watersilk. The opals themselves are the product of some careful money-laundering by the Rebellion.
The whole thing is underpinned by the fact that it's Ahsoka, making these trips; neither Rex nor Dormé knows Jyn and making Jyn aware of them is, in the Rebellion's eyes, a risk. She had to insist on Jyn's presence. Draven tried to suggest she leave Jyn with Cassian and fly solo, but Ahsoka will not leave Jyn if she has any other choice at all. She can't do that to her.
Draven sulked for a while, but the complaints magically stopped after Jyn and Cassian's first meeting. Possibly it's as clear to Draven as it is to Ahsoka that if Jyn and Cassian are left unattended on the same planet for any length of time they will either become an unstoppable team or murder each other - and in close combat the odds don't favour Cassian.
"Reckon you can manage one more day without dropping him in the swamp?" Ahsoka asks. The spaceport is built on the only steady ground for miles around, eloquent testimony to the priorities of the conglomerate that built it fifty years ago. The locals mostly live on stilts and move by boat, and the whole place smells slightly of mould. Including, at this point, the spaceport. Ahsoka has almost stopped noticing it.
Jyn snorts and swallows her last mouthful of rice and vegetables. "No promises," she says, but she feels slightly lighter in the Force, so instead of trying to make the case for not dumping Cassian Andor in the swamp to drown Ahsoka grins, finishes her dinner, and goes to wash her hands again. She still has grease ground under her nails.
She senses Cassian's arrival when she's in there, and sighs. The cover story is that he's a go-between, selling forged documentation. It's common in the Outer Rim, where it's impossibly difficult and expensive to secure a lot of official qualifications. Most people won't even look sideways at it. The Empire charges even for birth and immunisation certificates - prices a lot of people can't pay, even assuming the charges are honestly levied, which they often aren't. Without documentation you are ineligible for whatever support the Imperial state may or may not offer. In some ways you're not even legally a person. And it's easy, then, to tell people on rich planets that they did everything right, and that's why they deserve to be cared for while children starve.
There's a reason Saw Gerrera encouraged Jyn to develop her forgery skills. It's probably the most marketable skill she has.
Ahsoka finishes up and exits as quickly as possible. She is reasonably sure she would know if Jyn were in the middle of an attempt on Cassian's life, or vice versa, and she can't sense anything like that; at the same time, the atmosphere inside the ship is thickening perceptibly. She finds Jyn and Cassian behaving with perfect professionalism - which is to say they are on opposite sides of the cabin and staring at each other like competing packs of lothwolves.
"I was expecting to find Garo here," Cassian is saying.
"She's in the fresher. If you've got a delivery to make, make it." Jyn does her best to sound bored, but her hand is casually close to her blaster.
Ahsoka bites back a sigh. "I'm here," she says.
Jyn relaxes. Cassian does not - sensibly, he keeps one wary eye on Jyn; Ahsoka is just grateful that this time he hasn't brought the immense reprogrammed Imperial droid who is his almost constant companion - but he does turn to Ahsoka. He doesn't like or trust her, of course. He knows what she is, and he has his own painful history with the Jedi, even if it's second hand. But he knows she can be relied on, and that's close enough.
"I don't have a delivery to make," he says. "I just came to let you know that the expected delivery will be coming in this evening, not tomorrow morning. Schedule's been pushed up."
"And this couldn't be trusted to a comm?" Jyn says, with a faint snort.
Cassian doesn't react. They all know Jyn's comment is petty, much as she's got a point. It's important that Cassian is not connected to the ship that he is technically going to stow away on (much as Shara Bey will be expecting him) in order to avoid official attention. Their comms are as secure as they're going to get, but there's no reason to borrow trouble.
"Thank you for telling us," Ahsoka says. "We'll be getting off the ground as soon as we have it, so I doubt our paths will cross for a while."
He nods. "I've also been instructed to offer you these." He removes a pack of scandocs from his jacket pocket - Jyn tenses, but Ahsoka pushes a pulse of calm in her direction - and hands them to Ahsoka.
"I thought you didn't have a delivery to make," Jyn says, instinctively suspicious.
"These are separate from the original agreement. Official issue."
Ahsoka skims through the scandocs: fake identities, essentially, and a kind of olive branch for the tense discussions over Jyn's role; two are included that are clearly meant to be customisable to a basic description of her. Though why Draven thinks Jyn would take the risk of using Alliance-provided scandocs which the Alliance might easily use to track her, when Jyn's been crystal clear throughout she wants nothing to do with any Rebel other than Ahsoka, is completely beyond Ahsoka. Maybe it's just a nice gesture.
And maybe Ahsoka will grow gills overnight. She tosses the packet of scandocs across the cabin to Jyn, who doesn't take her eyes off Cassian as she lifts a hand to catch them. It's a neat trick, and it alarms people wonderfully. They both have a reputation for having eyes in the back of their heads now.
"What do you think?" Ahsoka says. "You're the expert."
"Classy work," Jyn says, giving them a cursory once-over. "You want to use them?"
"Let's keep our options open," Ahsoka says mildly. Cassian looks powerfully annoyed, but also like he didn't really expect anything else. He made the outreach, though, and that will have been the limit of Draven's expectations. Jyn didn't react with hostility, which was the limit of Ahsoka's expectations.
"Thank you," she says to Cassian. "May the Force be with you."
Cassian nods shortly to Jyn, who nods back. "Until we meet again," he says to Ahsoka. The words sound friendly, but the tone comes out as one of the blander, emptier courtesies Ahsoka has ever heard in her life. Oh well.
He leaves, and Jyn drops the Alliance-issue scandocs on the main table. "You going to use them?"
"If I need to," Ahsoka says. "I didn't think you would."
Jyn snorts. "No thanks. I'd rather not have Fulcrum tracking me all over the system."
"For the sake of galactic peace I would rather not have Fulcrum tracking you all over the system," Ahsoka says. "I think this is meant as a sort of acknowledgement that we work together. I would have been more concerned if they'd only provided for me."
Jyn huffs her scepticism, but doesn't argue.
"Some day I'd like to know what happened to make you trust them so little," Ahsoka say, taking a risk.
Jyn drops onto one of the bench seats. Her mouth is sour, her head heavy; Ahsoka senses old grief in her Force presence, but her anger is deeply buried. Ahsoka is reminded of their time on Lah'mu, the abandoned farmhouse where someone had died.
"If you ever want to tell me," Ahsoka adds. Jyn almost smiles and looks away, and Ahsoka drops the subject.
They take on a cargo of Ryloth opals in the evening, sleep a few hours, and take off before dawn. Ahsoka sets course for the Rishi Maze. It's been so many years, but her hands still know the coordinates well.
The clones had mixed feelings about Kamino. It was one of the few things no clone would talk to her about, and since Order 66 Ahsoka has never had either the opportunity or the cruelty to ask. It was the only home most of them ever knew, and it was also the place where thousands or even millions of their brothers were maimed or killed in the name of the Kaminoans' product. Considering the chips that caused the wholesale murder of the Jedi, Kamino was both their creation and their undoing. It's rare for the Alliance to find and secure a living clone, of the very few still alive in Imperial ranks. It's even rarer for a dechipped clone to survive the first post-chip shock of coming awake from twenty years of brainwashing.
Kamino's secretive cloning facilities were abandoned by the Kaminoans on Imperial orders the day the war ended. Imperial officers confiscated some material and barred the Kaminoans from most of the hemisphere. Officially the war was over, and the Emperor's reward to them for staffing half of it was to outlaw cloning. Kamino has suffered. Its newfound poverty has had grievous civilian consequences, and the vast majority of its rapidly dwindling population lives off-planet, where there are jobs and supplies are available. Ahsoka knows it, and she wants to be angry on their behalf, and for the children and the innocents she is. But Lama Su, Nala Se, the others who were deeply involved in the production of the Grand Army of the Republic, with the quality controls and stress testing that were thinly veiled child abuse and murder…
Ahsoka takes a deep breath out, and releases her anger to the Force. Kamino is showing suspicious signs of wealth now, and there is a possibility that the Emperor is exploring cloning again. It's most likely he's using Jango Fett's blueprint. The only place where the Rebellion can get information on the old blueprints and cloning processes is the silent graveyard of Kamino's abandoned cloning facility - and there are very few who know more about the Grand Army of the Republic than Ahsoka and Rex.
Ahsoka takes over in the cockpit as soon as they come out of hyperspace near the Rishi Maze. Jyn's a capable pilot, by this point, but Ahsoka is better with the delicate work. Getting close to Kamino without using any of the old lanes made safe by the Jedi and the clones will be very difficult indeed. Rex and his brothers surveyed the system and reported no unusual military presence, which is why Rex weighed the risk of acting alone against the risk of exposing his brothers to harm and decided that there was no benefit in bringing so many of the known clone survivors within range of the Empire.
Ahsoka wonders how easily Wolffe agreed to that, but Rex's relationship with his brothers is high on the list of things she won't be interfering with.
She makes her approach carefully, masked by their cloaking capacity (much more widely available than it used to be, during the war, though the Alliance can't justify the outrageous cost of fitting it to battle cruisers) and then by the storm, which is typically Kamino. Which is to say the seas are turbulent, the rain is pouring, and the winds buffet the Lady Luck like they could pick her up and throw her all the way southeast to Kamino's depleted capital. When they're finally hovering over Tipoca City the gale eases a bit, though it's still raining like the weather can wash Kamino's disgrace off the face of the planet.
Shamefulness is culturally dependent, Ahsoka remembers Shaak Ti saying during that long-ago trip to Kamino, where she learned how to care for bacta. We cannot demand that individuals feel it, however repugnant we may consider their actions.
Ahsoka understands better now the tightrope that Shaak Ti walked all the years of the war, but she still draws her lips back instinctively as she guides them into land on a decrepit landing platform, disgust rattling in her ribcage.
"You're growling." Jyn unclipped her seatbelt when the turbulence stopped and is now standing in the doorway of the cockpit, leaning against the doorjamb and adjusting her gloves. Jyn goes nowhere unarmed; Ahsoka has lost count of the knives and vibroblades she has collected over the years, and the same truncheons she had on the Zabirliss are strapped over her back. She carries two blasters, a small but lethal holdout holstered at the small of her back under a boxy jacket that conceals her weapons and will deflect some blows, and a second strapped to her thigh. Even her gloves are reinforced, the better to punch and block with, and of course they make it that much harder to leave tell-tale DNA behind.
Her face is settled and focused but not grim as it used to be. Ahsoka takes comfort in her presence, and thinks to herself how much Rex will like Jyn, whether he ever knows her by her true name or not.
"Sorry," she says belatedly.
"I don't care," Jyn says, with her usual magnificent indifference to Ahsoka's predatory capabilities. "I just thought you'd want to know. Something making you angry?"
"This infernal landing platform and the crosswind," Ahsoka says, because it's easier, right now, when she needs to be calm. But it's Fives' dying eyes, Jesse's helmet, Rex's tears, the last glimpse she ever had of Cody's stoic face that flicker through her mind as she guides the Lady Luck in to land.
"Sure," Jyn says, crisp with disbelief.
Against all her better instincts, Ahsoka laughs. "At least you know me."
The landing platform is slippery and disused, algae growing up over its surface. No wonder landing was hell. As Ahsoka sets her foot down she gets a faint, disarming flash of something that might be a vision or might be her imagination, the landing platform clean and solid, and a man hunched under sodden Jedi robes whose silhouette and stance she knows painfully well; but the story of Obi-Wan's first visit, though never well-known among the Jedi, was widely told among the clones. This might be… a memory of an imagined moment.
She misses Obi-Wan and Anakin so much sometimes, and now is not the moment to be distracted. If they get caught here they are comprehensively fucked. She pushes the image away, and anchors herself in Jyn's solid, wary presence. Since that horrible day over Bestine Jyn has never doubted her, and she's never given Ahsoka reason to doubt her in return.
Ahsoka keys open the door with old codes: Force pressure means her fingers do not touch the pads. Clone codes, not Jedi codes, less risky than tripping a security system, but still. Adrenaline slips into Ahsoka's bloodstream as the door creaks open.
The Kaminoans built well. The structure holds, despite the pressure of relentless currents on the piling, and emergency lights flicker to life as Ahsoka and Jyn move. Although there's dust everywhere, and the cavernous rooms below glass-panelled walkways where clones studied and ate and trained are eerily empty and abandoned, at first glance nothing seems to have decayed irreparably. Ahsoka is hooded, Jyn masked, against the security cameras that may be present: their first stop is the security kiosk Ahsoka remembers, where they find that the cameras are dead, their systems long run down and no longer maintained by dedicated technicians. Just in case - the Kaminoans seldom operated more sophisticated security, trusting to the trainers, their isolated position, and the hundreds of thousands of clones living on base to protect them - Jyn releases a neat little virus into the system that mimics random error, as if a piece of code replicated badly and crashed the system. It's a thing of beauty, and anyone coming in will have to individually restart every system from scratch before they can get any of them working again - but none of them will work for longer than three minutes before the virus reappears, replicates, and begins to crash all the systems again. That's not long enough for anything smaller than a conglomerate or a major Imperial outpost - it risks enough coming online for them to be discovered and hunted down by life signs or heat signatures - but it's perfect for something the size of Kamino. Amira gave Ahsoka an incredibly odd look when she bought the virus, but she won't say anything; their working relationship is too good, and she has nothing to gain by it.
And she's married to a Mandalorian. Matariki still grieves the destruction of Mandalore, and there are places where it's unsafe for her to wear beskar'gam. Amira knows that whatever Ahsoka has planned it won't be pleasant for the Emperor, and so she keeps quiet.
Ahsoka watches the lights wink off around the kiosk, the camera images flicker and die, until they are left surrounded by a pile of expensive slag that is lucky to have survived the damp.
"Right," Jyn says, retrieving her data chip. "Where next?"
Ahsoka closes her eyes and lets her mind unfold across this satellite settlement of Tipoca City. Rex is already on-planet, per their agreement, and he will be within a kilometre or so. She filters out the echo and ring of clone footsteps, knowing it's only the memory of them that this place holds, and listens past the colonies of scavengers and invertebrates that have established themselves in Kamino's nooks and crannies. And then, a single familiar presence not far off, gleaming like gold in the Force: Rex. She would know him anywhere.
She opens her eyes again. Jyn, patient, is watching her back. Her truncheons are still holstered but her blaster is out just in case.
"You won't need that," Ahsoka says.
Jyn shrugs. She brings up the rear as Ahsoka steps out of the security kiosk and heads directly for Rex.
Rex is in what was once a trainers' ready room, and is now dusty with decades of disuse. He shot out the lock panel to get in, and he has his feet up on the sofa - eating what looks like chocolate cake out of a sealed packet, and apparently idly watching something on a datapad propped up on an abandoned helmet. But neither Ahsoka nor Jyn is green enough to miss the half-hidden blaster in his hand, or the way he relaxes when he sees who it is.
"Commander Tano," he says, and he's only got more weathered since Ahsoka last saw him, but the way that grin splits his face and the lilt of his voice over her old rank is everything she remembers. She can't stop herself grinning back as he puts the blaster aside and gets to his feet to hug her. "I don't know. You never call, you never write, and then you dump me in mystery osik back on Kamino , of all the places."
She laughs as she wraps her arms around him tightly and squeezes until he complains and smacks her on the shoulder. Jyn's curiosity is a living thing; Ahsoka can sense it, though the woman herself is still hovering in the doorway. "I guess some things never change, Rex."
"You managed to make a friend," he retorts. His grip is as solid and sure as ever, though the last of the blond has given way to white, and he has shaved his head clean and grown out a beard Ahsoka thinks looks awful, but which does disguise the tell-tale contours of his face. Ahsoka has never seen a clone die of old age, but every time she waves goodbye to Rex she is painfully aware that one day one of them won't make it to the next rendez-vous, and it will probably be Rex. "I'd say that's different."
Ahsoka lets go of Rex and half-turns, holding a hand out to Jyn. "Liana, come and meet Rex - Rex, this is Liana. We kept running into each other, so we decided to spare the Force the hard work of getting us into the same quadrant and start working together."
Jyn cracks an uncertain smile and moves forward into the ready room. Her blaster has been holstered, but the tension hasn't gone out of her shoulders. She offers Rex a hand to clasp, and he grips it tightly. "Liana Hallik," she says. "Nice to meet someone who knows how to keep Ahsoka out of trouble. You'll have to give me tips."
Rex laughs. "Good to know she has someone watching her back. You're not Alliance?"
Some of that tension winds its way into Jyn's jaw, but she keeps her cool. "I work with Ahsoka. If she wants to do Alliance jobs, she does Alliance jobs. That doesn't mean I'm signing on."
"My main concern is are you watching her back," Rex says. He hasn't let go of Jyn's hand, and both of their gazes have turned hard and guarded.
Ahsoka sighs. Her older vod'e sometimes act a little too much like brothers for anyone's convenience. "Rex," she says. "Liana helped me find Hila Martha and Chatter."
Rex pauses. Jyn flicks a glance at Ahsoka. "The bodies in the cave? The Jedi and the guy with the blood oath, right?"
"Beskar'entye," Ahsoka confirms. Armour debt. Same concept, different words, but Jyn's picking up more and more scraps of Mando'a and she knows what Ahsoka means.
"Well, Tarkin's on the list," Jyn says. "We could be lucky."
Rex knows about Chatter's armour debt: Ahsoka told him years ago. He gives Jyn a searching look. "That was you? You helped find the holocron Chatter hid?"
Jyn nods shortly, but she's relaxing a little.
"You've had years to hand Ahsoka in," Rex observes.
All the iron goes back into Jyn's spine, and she drops Rex's hand. "Ahsoka sticks with me," she says, stepping back to stand at Ahsoka's shoulder. "I stick with her."
"Yeah, I see that." Rex squints at Jyn. "You remind me of someone."
Jyn raises her eyebrows, insolent.
"We all knew Saw Gerrera," Ahsoka says. "I see it too."
"Good man, Saw," Rex says.
Jyn says nothing. She doesn't talk to Ahsoka about a lot of things, but Saw is a particularly painful issue. Still, Rex's respect for her old mentor clearly gains him points.
Ahsoka changes the subject.
Rex bolts the last of his chocolate cake - Ahsoka frequently gets the feeling, when dealing with him, that he would still like to put a boot into some of his old trainers; the snack is probably stolen stasis rations, Rex always liked the cake and could never get supplies of it, and the crumbs everywhere are not a coincidence - and taps his datapad. A holo springs to life, clearly delineating a map of this sector of Kamino, and how it connects to the central databank where Jango Fett's DNA was secured. As far as they know, this area was never touched again, after the last of the babies in tubes were decanted. All embryos were destroyed, and the remaining cadets were taken off Kamino to complete their training as stormtroopers - those that Blitz didn't take with him when he ran to the Alliance. In theory, and Blitz and those of the Cuy'val Dar who saw the final fate of Mandalore and defected are the best source they have on this, the databanks have not been touched since the day, six months after Empire Day, that Tipoca City was closed down for good.
"The Alliance has several motives for this raid," Rex says. "First is exploring the possibility that they are trying and failing to recreate clonetroopers."
"Why failing?" Jyn asks, her eyes sharp.
Rex shakes his head. "The clones were tailor-made for the Jedi, and we learned from them. If that hadn't been true, fewer Jedi would have died when Order 66 came down. The Empire can't recreate what the clones had because they don't have the Jedi to do it."
"The Emperor could tailor clones to the Sith," Ahsoka points out. There's a kind of bittersweet warmth in her heart, and she knows Jyn senses that she feels off, because Jyn has shifted her foot across so her calf is pressing against Ahsoka's, grounding her. "We know he has several apprentices in various stages of training, some of whom were once padawans and initiates. Some of the padawans may recall enough of how the clones worked with Jedi to try to replicate that."
"Yeah, but they'll still be Sith. Not a cooperative bunch. We survived - if we survived - through loyalty and working together." Rex clears his throat. "Either way, an army of clones based off Jango Fett would be dangerous. They could take samples from any of the clones we know never overcame their chips - there were some pretty famous names among them. But that risks significant variation. If they took a sample off Boba Fett, they'd have to overcome the issue of the modifications, and they'd also have to catch him off his guard."
Rex sounds almost proud of him. Ahsoka has crossed paths with Boba Fett only rarely - it's a big galaxy, and if they do happen to meet on Tatooine or at Maz's cantina they ignore each other studiously - but from what she can tell, there's a lot there for a fellow warrior to be proud of. Fett is wary, clever, courageous and controlled, and he's made a name for himself that anyone might envy, if they felt like fame was the way forward.
"I never heard Boba Fett was a clonetrooper," Jyn says.
"He isn't," Rex says. "He is a clone, but he was never modified, and he wasn't raised as a trooper. He wasn't like the rest of us. He's Jango's son."
Only because Ahsoka knows Jyn does she know that Jyn is dying to take apart that logic, which is some kind of a clue, she thinks; which tells Ahsoka another little something about the mistakes Saw Gerrera made with Jyn that led to a bunker on Tamsye Prime. But Jyn says nothing to Rex. If being around Jyn has eased Ahsoka's own tendency to isolation, then being around Ahsoka has made Jyn free to show the kindness she first offered Ahsoka on Glarean in more than just brief, inarticulate flashes.
Rex carries on. "The simplest thing to do would be to secure the samples - if they're still here. If they're not here, well, we need to find a cloning facility, and that will be Intelligence's job."
Ahsoka runs her hand over her mouth. "So what are the secondary objectives?"
"Anything we can get on a possible genefix for the rapid aging." Rex raises an eyebrow at the slight change to Jyn's face. "Do I look like I'm in my thirties to you?"
Jyn shakes her head. Ahsoka has a lump in her throat; she clears it with a cough. They cracked the chips as soon as Ahsoka made contact with Bail Organa, her memories of Rex's own rushed deactivation procedure in a medbay under fire forming the basis of the Alliance's standard intake treatment for their few defector clones, and those they have managed to rescue. A complex operation, and one that had to be abandoned as the estimated numbers of clones in the ranks dwindled and access to them got more dangerous, but Ahsoka managed to get some out safely. The Rebel Alliance's army is built on their expertise.
The rapid aging, though… it was proprietary to the Kaminoans, and it seems like Nala Se may have taken the secret to her disgraceful grave. They have no answers. There are Kaminoans who have defected to the Alliance - a few, at least, and some are even scientists. But none of them know the exact details of the rapid aging mechanism. Those who did were quietly killed off by the Empire, or arrested on spurious charges and vanished, the same day that Tipoca City was closed down. Of course, Palpatine knew exactly who they were. And the Kaminoans shared their secrets with absolutely nobody else.
Ahsoka thinks back to the list of scientists who have vanished under mysterious circumstances over the last two years - the period when the Alliance realised there was a pattern of disappearances and followed up on it. None of the names were Kaminoan, but she wonders whether, if Draven looked further back for more otherwise unexplained disappearances, he might find a few. Perhaps not among the geologists, whose value to the Empire remains unclear unless they are strip-mining unidentified planets for resources again, but among the epigeneticists and developmental biologists.
"Intelligence are working on finding the scientists the Empire disappeared, but it's not a high priority operation," Rex says. "Not compared to some."
Jyn's eyes flicker, tell-tale. Perversely, Ahsoka's glad of it. It means that whatever impression Rex made by being so suspicious, she still likes him enough to hate the choices that have made the clones' lives a low priority.
"Never been a fan of cost-benefit calculations," Jyn says evenly. As much as Ahsoka's had to make those tough calls herself, she knows what Jyn means. "Where do we start, then? The databanks?"
Rex nods. "I already did a recce. They're not guarded, and there are no new safeguards on the doors."
Ahsoka raises her eyebrows. "Walking down memory lane, Rex?"
"I took a stroll," Rex says, and the finality of his tone says he doesn't want to talk about it any more. He takes his datapad back, and gets to his feet, dusting chocolate crumbs off his trousers. It's strange to see him here, wearing battered civilian spacer's clothes, looking three decades older than his true age, herself as shabby as their surroundings; she keeps feeling like she sees a mirror image that reaches back into the past, from these silent halls to a forgotten reality.
Ahsoka rises to her feet as Jyn does. The coffee table is in her way. "I missed you, Rex."
"I always miss you, kid," Rex replies. Ahsoka pushes the coffee table across a metre with the Force, and hugs Rex again. His heartbeat is still steady, and he's still warm and comforting. Master Plo, Anakin, Obi-Wan, Grandmaster Yoda, Padmé, Cody, Master Luminara, Aayla Secura, Shaak Ti - everyone Ahsoka ever looked to for support is gone, except Rex. There's a deep-seated comfort to being in his presence that nothing else can match.
"Glad to be working together again," Ahsoka says, muffled, before Rex lets go.
Rex takes point on the way to the databank. Jyn falls in beside Ahsoka's shoulder.
You guys were close, huh, Jyn thinks at Ahsoka, with careful deliberation. It's not always easy for Jyn to project words, especially if she's feeling mixed up about what she's thinking.
"Rex fought Order 66 long enough to warn me," Ahsoka replies, in an undertone. "We fought together for the full three years of the war, and we escaped together."
Jyn catches her eye and holds it for a long minute, and then she does something Ahsoka wasn't expecting. Her hand slips off the grip of her holstered blaster, and reaches for Ahsoka's instead. Her grasp is tight, but not bruising, and the understanding it signifies makes Ahsoka's heart flip.
So how come you went your separate ways? Jyn thinks.
"Too identifiable," Ahsoka answers, still quiet. Her trial had been headline news throughout the Core, and anyone not purely preoccupied with local news had heard of the scandalous trial and dramatic acquittal of Ahsoka Tano. Maul didn't know who she was, he had to torture that information out of Jesse, but Maul was single-minded, and focused only on adults of fighting age who stood between him and Obi-Wan Kenobi. Ahsoka never crossed paths with him as Padawan Tano until the day she fought him on Mandalore, and she only rarely locked swords with Crimson Dawn under his rule. Wherever he's gone now - because it seems Qi'ra No-Name is in charge for real, rather than a figurehead - he isn't currently a threat to Ahsoka. And he probably knows as little about her as he always did.
Back then, the same couldn't be said for the rest of the galaxy - or at least the bits of it that went in for law enforcement. Ahsoka's mugshot would have ruined any chance of anonymity Rex had.
Apparently Jyn hears the pain in her voice. For several more moments, she doesn't let go. For the hour's walk to the hall, Ahsoka tries to meditate, to steady herself in every falling footstep.
Jyn slices their way into the heavily protected hall that contains the samples of Jango Fett's DNA. One of the things Andor delivered, since it was too restricted to be trusted even to Bey, was the keys and codes necessary to get access to the hall. Draven may be under the impression that Ahsoka will be doing the slicing - it's technically straightforward enough, and Ahsoka's familiarity with Kamino means she should have a basic grasp of how their tech works - but Draven doesn't know and hasn't cared to find out how they work as a team, because he's so convinced Jyn is temporary. Ahsoka has never implemented a plan with Jyn that doesn't involve total information sharing, within reason, and she's not about to start now; Jyn's willingness to trust Ahsoka is still new, and given what Ahsoka knows of her background, it comes with a certain weight.
Draven isn't in the field, Ahsoka tells herself, as the final door slides open and Jyn slots the panel back into place and rises to her feet. He isn't here to make the judgement calls she can.
Jyn doesn't look back to check Ahsoka's location; she knows where Ahsoka is, lightsabers lit. They have little opportunity to fight alongside each other with the lightsabers in play, but they still practise in the cargo bay, and now they have a symmetry when they work together that Ahsoka hasn't experienced since she last fought alongside Rex.
She doesn't normally think about it - most people have no baseline for her normal anyway, so people's astonishment usually has more to do with her predator's teeth or movement than anything else - but Rex does know her. The quick glance he shoots at Jyn, who has pulled her blaster again, and Ahsoka behind her, is telling. He's surprised.
"Are we hanging around here or what," says Jyn.
"Just impressed by the dream team," Rex says, almost sweetly. He and Cody were always shit-stirrers, Ahsoka remembers. They only looked like reasonable people next to - well, next to Anakin and Obi-Wan. And probably herself, but she at least had the excuse of being a teenager.
"I'd invite you along but I'm not sure the ship can take a third," Jyn retorts. "What am I looking at? I've never done the biological weapon shit."
"There's actual biological samples, and then there's a full readout of his gene-code." The hall is surprisingly small for the layers of security wrapped round it, and everything is labelled only in Kaminoan. Not merely in Kaminoan, but in a specific kind of shorthand only scientists and doctors use, and Ahsoka has no idea where to begin. But the clones are clever and adaptable and they share information - so despite Nala Se's best efforts, Rex and most of his brothers can read it. Rex pulls on gloves and gestures at drawers that slide out at a touch, glass cabinets that hold blue glowing tubes in stasis. Fett's actual biological material isn't blue, of course, but it's encased in some kind of Kaminoan proprietary medium that is.
"And we take all of it?" Jyn sizes up the tubes, and looks back to Ahsoka. "We're going to need that backpack."
Ahsoka nods, and removes the padded, empty backpack she's carrying. Rex has a matching one. "Where are you expecting to find the genefix information?"
"Kaminoans don't use data tapes," Rex says. He crosses the room to one of the cabinets, which contains a kind of honeycomb structure full of short black sticks that look kind of like deathsticks. "These are more their style. Most of this is just administrative shit, but…" He walks along two cabinets, and peers at the neat shorthand label. It's not even Aurebesh. "This records the early experiments. You know, they started with direct clones of Jango, and then they started fucking with the genetic material to try to improve on it, and that shit interacts with the rapid aging, so..."
"They kept records," Ahsoka says.
"Did they ever publish?" Jyn asks, which takes both Rex and Ahsoka by surprise.
"I didn't know you were a scientist," Ahsoka says.
Jyn's scowl is also a surprise. "I'm not."
"No," Rex says. "Well, no, they did, but they never published the data. Said it was exclusive to them and they were under a Senate embargo never to release the data, or whatever."
"That makes sense," Ahsoka says.
"Nothing the Senate did makes sense." Rex tries to break into the cabinet. "Hey, Liana. Can you slice your way into this?"
"Might be easier to break it," Jyn says, drawing a truncheon.
"Not this stuff, trust me." Rex sighs.
"So basically we need everything in this room," Jyn says, examining the cabinet Rex wants her to get into, and the lock. She holsters her truncheon again, and pulls out her tools. "The Empire hasn't been here for years. What does that mean?"
Ahsoka scuffs her foot along the dusty floor. Rex and Jyn have left clear footprints, identifiable. She tugs on the Force, and a breeze blurs across the floor, smudging the footprints to nothing. "It means either their plans have not advanced very far, or they're not high priority, or they have decided to use a fresh source for their clones. Maybe a different template. Or maybe the clone genetic material… available to them."
"I don't know what happened to Cody," Rex says, watching Jyn's hands as she works. Jyn doesn't like this degree of scrutiny, but in deference to the heavy emotional atmosphere, she seems to be tolerating it. "Fox lived for a while, I think. And he was… handy."
Ahsoka swallows back bile. Now she knows what the Chancellor was, and what he most likely caused to happen to Fives, she - well, she has questions about the shot that Fox fired which ended Fives' life. Fox would have been a very ready tool to the Emperor's hand, not because of his own disposition or wishes, but because as commander of the Coruscant Guard he was always there . As a consequence, the potential for a strong, malevolent and unsuspected Force user to overcome Fox's mind was there too.
Fox might even have volunteered to give up material, his mind clouded and directed by the Emperor. Although there's risk that some of his DNA samples might have degraded with age or undesirable epigenetic modification from being exposed to every hardship under the sun, he would still be a powerful adversary, cloned many times over. And unlike Jango Fett he wouldn't even have been able to choose it freely.
Ahsoka turns and strides over to the samples in their glowing tubes.
"What's got into you?" Rex says, as Jyn pops the cabinet open and starts pulling out sticks to fill Rex's rucksack.
"This makes me sick," Ahsoka says, staring at the last remnants of Jango Fett, the blueprints for so many of her oldest friends. "All of it. It makes me sick."
Jyn doesn't stop what she's doing. She carries on when Ahsoka cannot. Rex hesitates, then sighs a defeated acknowledgement. "It's not new, kid."
Ahsoka closes her jaw tight shut.
"I'm fine with this, if you want to help Ahsoka," Jyn says to Rex. "You want the other cabinet too?"
"Let's clear the place out," Rex says. And he stands by Ahsoka while they strip the hall of every piece of information and every single sample it contains.
Ahsoka remembers their escape from Order 66. How Rex was willing to be merciless to save her, and the tears that streaked his face when she removed his helmet. She sticks close to him.
It only takes an hour to empty the hall, and the walk back to Rex's ship is too short. Jyn's gone quiet, and she's watching Rex and Ahsoka with uncomfortably knowing eyes as they talk in fits and starts. Ahsoka misses him already. He keeps her laughing, but the old reminiscences sting, too. She dwells on them with more ease when Rex isn't here, the reality of all her best stories from when she was a kid, and thought things were fair.
Jyn hangs around outside while they load the ship, a tiny two-person craft adapted for a single pilot and an astromech. When Ahsoka comes out with Rex, she's standing under one of the wings, arms folded, shoulders hunched, peering up at the sky. Iron grey and raining. Jyn's hair is plastered to her head. She squints like Saw does.
"You need to hit atmo right now?" Jyn says to Rex, without preamble. "Or you have time for dinner?"
Ahsoka glues her top teeth to her bottom teeth so her jaw can't drop. No-one except Amira and Matariki has been inside Lady Luck since they refurbished her on Jakku, and that was purely a business matter that made them both monstrously uncomfortable.
"I have time before my departure window," Rex says, "but we can't leave all this crap unsecured."
"Our landing platform is bigger." Jyn shrugs. "I'm not saying I could do it, but Ahsoka can. And I can get back to Lady Luck on foot myself. That old graveyard is empty."
Ahsoka senses Rex's wince more than she sees it, but Jyn's right. "If you're sure," she says.
Jyn resettles her shoulders and glares at Ahsoka. "Wouldn't have said it if I didn't mean it. See you back at the ship, okay?"
She lopes back inside, the doors sliding shut behind her.
"I don't remember saying yes," Rex says.
"You mean to say you don't want to come round for dinner?" Ahsoka enquires, purely for the pleasure of watching him roll his eyes comprehensively. She heads back up the ramp into Rex's ship, which has low ceilings that do her montrals no good. She hunches her shoulders slightly to avoid hitting them.
"I didn't say that either," Rex replies, nudging past her. "But your friend looked like she was going to knock me over the head and drag me off to your ship if I said no." He settles in the pilot's seat, and she takes the jump seat.
"She knows we've known each other for a long time." Ahsoka gazes out of the viewport as Rex re-engages the astromech and lifts off.
"Yeah. How much exactly does she know?"
"She knows I'm a Jedi," Ahsoka says. "We collaborate on everything, so she knows what I do. She knows I'm with the Alliance. She's not Alliance herself."
Rex huffs. "Broke off the same time Gerrera did?"
Ahsoka shakes her head. "He abandoned her. So she's got some issues with Alliance-linked stuff."
Rex's sudden silence leaves no sound in the air except the soft beeping of the astromech, and the low hum and rattle of the ship. Distantly, Ahsoka can hear the rumble of the ship fighting against the headwinds as Rex circles low, looking for Jyn and Ahsoka's ship.
"I don't know why," Ahsoka says. "I've never asked. She's concealing her identity for some reason, and I don't know what that is, but given both her parents were murdered by the Empire, it's probably a good reason. She knows my full name."
Rex gives a sharp intake of breath. "Are you sure that was smart?"
"She's had four years to hand me in as a Jedi." Ahsoka points out the Lady Luck , down below. "She hasn't yet. Do you want me to land this thing?"
Rex eyes up the available space. "I can manage, with R-12 here. She seems pretty devoted to you, Ahsoka. And the two of you are pretty in sync."
"She's harsh, but she's kind." Ahsoka hesitates. "I think she wanted us to have a chance to talk by ourselves. I've missed you, Rex - so much."
"Aliit ori'shya tal'din," Rex says, with a warmth in his voice that makes Ahsoka wish she didn't have to leave him behind. Family is more than blood. "I wish we did more jobs together."
There's a long pause as he lands the ship next to Lady Luck. "So I can count on seeing Liana next time we cross paths, huh?"
"Yes," Ahsoka says. She doesn't even have to think about it.
"Huh," Rex repeats, and says nothing else.
It's nice showing Rex around the Lady Luck . It feels strange to have him here, in a way that makes a lump rise into her throat, but it's not uncomfortable. He seems like he fits into the space, and telling him the story behind the ship is easy, tossing in snippets as she points out the repairs they've made, the small homelinesses of decorations, the droids they're using (who aren't Artoo, but aren't nothing, either). Ahsoka keeps talking as she starts to cook, a simple, quick meat sauce for noodles that Jyn likes.
"So you and Liana were the last two left standing?" Rex says. "And you decided to stick together?"
"Yeah." Ahsoka pulls down the dried noodles from the cupboard. "Get a drink from the cooler if you like. Yeah, we… work well together, I guess, we always have."
"It's good to see you not working alone," Rex says bluntly. "I was worried about you. Now you've got Liana, I can worry a bit less."
Ahsoka's hands still on the pans and spoons as she thinks about Lah'mu, Jyn's broken-open face when she said everyone else had forgotten the terrible things that happened there, the way she had offered her real name like she was throwing herself over a cliff, sitting on her childhood home's front doorstep with her green-grey eyes and bone-white face gleaming in the dawn. "She won't leave me behind. We've been through a lot together."
"I can tell," Rex says, with some kind of unfamiliar modulation in his voice, some kind of grinning insinuation Ahsoka doesn't quite get. He cracks open a beer. "So she's pretty impressive, is she?"
"She's a very good fighter," Ahsoka says. It sounds lame; she suppresses a wince. "And an excellent slicer. She can forge, too. Of course she's impressive."
"And she's pretty and she's clever and -"
"I will throw you off my ship ," Ahsoka threatens belatedly, waving a spoon at him. "I'm sure the aiwhas are hungry."
Rex's smile has turned to a shit-eating grin. "They eat krill. Does she know about your giant crush on her?"
"We work together! We're professional!"
"She bullied me into coming round to dinner because she knew you missed me. That ship has left orbit, kid."
Ahsoka's cheeks have gone hot with embarrassment. "She'll be here any minute now, Rex, so please, will you just shut up?"
"The two of you move in sync. It's the cutest shit I've seen since Waxer and Boil adopted that Twi'lek."
"For fuck's sake." Ahsoka turns back to the stove. "I don't need romance in my life. I'm just grateful for Liana."
She feels rather than hears Jyn letting herself in, and kicks Rex in the ankle. "So you shut up. How's Wolffe?"
Rex rolls his eyes. "Same old grumpy bastard. He sends his regards."
"Now that is a surprise." Wolffe has trouble looking Ahsoka in the eye; she spent a week stopping him from eating a blaster after the Alliance dechipped him, and then a very kind therapist took her aside and told her that her presence brought back difficult memories for Wolffe. She has no trouble guessing what kind of memories: the 501st had little to do with the Wolfpack, but Ahsoka spent every spare moment she could with Master Plo. She remembers being thirteen or so, at the very beginning of the war, hanging around Master Plo's ship and playing sabacc for trinkets with his men. Wolffe had both eyes back then.
She and Wolffe have talked about Ventress several times. But Master Plo's name has only passed between them once, and given Wolffe's reaction, Ahsoka will never try that again.
"What he actually said was tell that stripy kid to watch her back."
Ahsoka laughs, sharp and unforced but still somehow off-balance. Wolffe hasn't called her stripy since before her trial. "That sounds more like him. Liana," she calls, before Jyn's footsteps ring on the decking. "We're in here."
Jyn yells a muffled acknowledgement. Coat off, Ahsoka diagnoses.
"I didn't hear her come in," Rex mutters.
"She can move quietly when she feels like it. And your hearing isn't what it used to be." Ahsoka raises her voice again. "Noodles for dinner. You want a beer?"
"Well, I'm not going to say no to that." Jyn appears in the galley doorway, her hair plastered darkly to her skull with the rain, water gleaming off finely modelled cheekbones, her eyes turned as grey as the clouds with contrast. She's ditched her coat and truncheons, but the blasters have probably been stuffed down the back of a bench seat in case Rex turns out to be a surprise threat and she's still wearing all the knives. Ahsoka tosses a can over her shoulder and Jyn catches it without looking at it, the same silly trick they've been using to make their competitors think they have eyes in the backs of their heads, except -
Rex's eyebrows are halfway up his forehead. Jyn nods coolly at him and cracks open her beer. "You didn't get one for yourself, Ahsoka?"
"I don't feel like it." Ahsoka stirs the sauce.
"Remember the stuff Jesse used to brew up?" Rex says, nostalgically.
"That stuff was illegal in every sector we went through." Ahsoka puts water on to boil. "If it wasn't illegal when we arrived, it was by the time we left. Appo used to give himself migraines trying to find it."
"Appo worried too much about the wrong things," Rex says, more comfortably than Ahsoka can. It's still difficult to think about Appo, who she remembers as a disciplinarian but a good man, and who died because a thirteen-year-old padawan tried to cut their way out of the burning Jedi Temple. At least Ahsoka never saw any of the men under her command try to kill a Jedi who wasn't her. She finds that easier to bear than Appo raising a blaster to a child before Bail Organa's very eyes, so close that Ahsoka could name the padawan from Bail's description.
She hears worse things have happened to some of the padawans who almost escaped than just being shot. The Inquisitors had to come from somewhere.
"Work friend?" Jyn says ironically.
"Battle buddy," Rex replies, and Jyn nods, takes a long drink of beer. She still has her boots on, but she wiped the soles clean.
"You all grew up here?" she says, jerking her head at the hull, meaning the city outside.
"Yeah," Rex says.
"Must have been pretty crowded."
"You have no idea," Rex says, rolling his eyes, and Ahsoka smiles. She remembers Kamino full of life, but also stuffed to the gills. There might even have been more space shipboard. "You got brothers? Or sisters?"
Jyn lifts herself up onto a counter and perches there, hip right by Ahsoka's workspace. "No. Only child."
"Well, if you ever wanted brothers, Kamino would have put you right off." Rex's smile is affectionate; he shakes his head at Jyn's raised eyebrows. "Nah, I loved 'em. But personal space didn't get issued with our regulation blacks."
Ahsoka's wrist brushes against the side of Jyn's thigh as she cooks. Jyn glances down, but Ahsoka sends her a tiny pulse of calm - accident, it's all fine - and Jyn refocuses on Rex.
"I've never fought in a uniformed army, but I thought that was generally true."
Rex shrugs. "I wouldn't know a lot about anything other than the GAR, and that's been over and done for a long time now." He relaxes back against the wall he's leaning against.
"You can get a chair if you want one," Ahsoka says.
"I'm good. So you fought with Saw Gerrera, Liana?"
Probably Rex hasn't noticed; Jyn's tells have got more subtle since she and Ahsoka first met, and Rex hasn't spent long enough around them to know what they are. But Ahsoka can feel shutters sliding down behind Jyn's eyes. "Yeah." Jyn necks half the can of beer. "Learned a lot of what I know from him."
"We worked with his Partisans on Onderon, when Steela Gerrera was in charge."
"You never told me that," Jyn says to Ahsoka.
"You never asked," Ahsoka returns amiably, stealing a gulp of Jyn's beer almost automatically.
An obvious mistake. Rex is absolutely primed to tease the shit out of her. Ahsoka would know that even if the Force weren't telling her so very, very clearly.
"I told you that ship had left orbit," Rex says, in Mando'a.
"What ship?" Jyn replies, in the same language, same distinctive accent, though hers is mangled by her natural Coruscanti. Rex stares at her.
Jyn shrugs. "I always liked languages," she says in Basic. "And I haven't got the vocal cords for Togruta."
"Huh," Rex says, after a long moment. "No ship. It's just an old joke." He takes a pull of his beer. "You planning on working with Ahsoka permanently?"
Jyn's eyes don't dart towards Ahsoka. That's another tell she's ironed out. "What's permanent these days? I'll stick around until she kicks me out."
"I can't kick you out," Ahsoka says. "You own half the ship and you're the only person who knows how to restart the sonics when they glitch."
She's timed it right: both Jyn and Rex laugh.
Dinner tastes great. Rex has to leave minutes after Jyn has tidied away the plates, and she doesn't come through from the galley for a long time. Ahsoka stands outside in the rain and watches Rex's ship take off. When she comes back into the ship, Jyn's hung a towel where she'll see it; Ahsoka takes it, and dries her face slowly, and then her montrals, and then presses her face into the towel again. She still has it in her lap when Jyn wanders into the cockpit and drops ungracefully into the co-pilot's seat.
"You meditating?"
"No," Ahsoka says, head tilted back into the headrest Jyn modified for her montrals, open eyes gazing at the distant, obscured horizon. "It would probably help if I did."
Jyn gets up and clatters off. When she comes back she has a small collection of weaponry, and a dry shirt, trousers and blanket tucked under her arm. She drops the latter on Ahsoka's lap and sits down on the floor. "You can't meditate in wet clothes."
"Actually," Ahsoka says, feeling contrary.
"You're dripping."
Ahsoka gets up and steps into the next cabin to change. When she's redressed, and has tossed her wet clothes into the laundry bin, she returns, and sits cross-legged on the floor opposite Jyn.
Jyn has blasters and knives and a weapons care kit spread around her; she's working, and she doesn't even look up to acknowledge Ahsoka. But as Ahsoka lets her eyes slip closed and falls into her old familiar pattern of meditative breathing, the crystal around Jyn's neck sings its now-familiar song.