Chapter 17: Jyn iiChapter TextJedha is a cold desert moon, orbiting NaJedha. It's more hospitable than NaJedha, technically, but only because Jedha doesn't have the algae which turn pink the oceans and the wildlife alike, and which have a debilitating effect on most organic digestive systems. Still, there's more industry on NaJedha, and the moon remains sparsely populated except for the Holy City, which - even after seventeen years of the Empire - remains a popular pilgrim destination. So it has a full spaceport (which Jyn and Ahsoka will not be setting foot in), an Imperial presence (which they will go a long way to hide from) and a significant civilian footprint spreading out from the original sandstone walls of the Holy City. It also, unless things have changed over the years, contains one of Saw's hideouts.
Running into Saw is unlikely - he had many other bases, and even though the Partisans have been forced onto the back foot in recent years, Saw still has his personal strength - but not impossible, and the thought makes Jyn grit her teeth. Ahsoka may be ready to face Obi-Wan Kenobi, or at least to contemplate it, but Jyn doesn't know how to look Saw in the eye without all those years of bitter words rolling off her tongue. Besides, it's likely few of the Partisans with him now know her. And if there's a mess - the presence of stormtroopers and an Inquisitor promises a mess - the Partisans are likely to get involved in a way that might not go well for Jyn and Ahsoka as independent actors.
Jyn shakes her worries off impatiently as Ahsoka lands, under cover of darkness, in a dried-up riverbed not too far from the city. There's no full Imperial garrison, not with purpose-built barracks, but the city does have Imperial administrators and a detachment of stormtroopers - plus whatever is expected to arrive later today. Jyn and Ahsoka will need to make their way to the city before dawn, retrieve the kid known by mysterious means to the Rebel Alliance, and run. All of that as quickly as possible.
"Worried?" Ahsoka says, engaging the landing gear.
"Of course I'm fucking worried," Jyn says.
Ahsoka shoots her an overly knowing look. "You've been here before."
Jyn sighs. "Saw's got people here."
"Are they likely to shoot you on sight?"
"Not on sight." Jyn fidgets in her seat as the Lady Luck settles onto the uneven ground. "They probably don't know who I am." She sighs, and crosses her arms. "I know the city… a little."
"Likewise. A little." Ahsoka reads off the instruments, pausing. "All the younglings visited the Temple of the Kyber. A lot of ancient Light-side sects started here."
"Like the Jedi Order?"
"I don't know." Ahsoka unstraps herself, and grins wryly at Jyn as she stands. "I missed that module in History class because I was at the Second Battle of Geonosis and ended up getting a pass, due to being buried alive in a tank."
"A - what ?" Sometimes Ahsoka's childhood makes no sense to Jyn. "So is that why this kid is here? All the Light-side stuff?"
"According to Fulcrum, it's why the child's father wouldn't leave. He felt his daughter was safe here, and could be trained and protected from herself by the Guardians of the Whills. Most of their significantly Force-sensitive members were… taken, by the Empire, but the Guardians don't conceptualise Force-sensitivity as the Jedi did, or as the Empire does. In terms of raw power to do certain things. Or midichlorians. There are still Guardians who could teach this little one control."
Jyn scratches her head, and then pulls on a concealing scarf to hide her face and hair as much as possible. Ahsoka has tucked her lightsabers into hidden sheathes beneath her arms, and is wearing a heavy cloak and helmet like those worn by devotees of the Clan of the Toribota. Which at least disguises the distinctive montrals.
"Why the hell didn't they move?" Jyn says, digging out her goggles. "An Imperial city? They're defenceless out here. If they weren't, we wouldn't be here in the first place."
"The Jedi don't take children against their parents' wishes. The dangers were explained to the father." Ahsoka's voice has turned heavy and sad.
Jyn thinks of all the ways her childhood could have gone, and the ways it did, and sighs. "Right. Fine. Cleaning up after other people's bad decisions, whatever."
"That's unfair," Ahsoka says mildly.
"I'm not feeling fair."
"I can see that."
Jyn rolls her eyes.
It's a short speeder trip to Jedha City, keeping low to the ground and reducing engine revs to minimise blowback until they get onto the road; once they approach the informal settlements they stop, cache the speeder, and approach on foot. Jyn traps the speeder with an electric lock; anyone touching it in their absence will regret their life choices.
Ahsoka knows exactly where they are going; Jyn has a good idea, but she doesn't move with the confidence Ahsoka does. Tall and distinctive, Ahsoka stays separate from her to avoid forming too obvious a group: Jyn doesn't like it, but she keeps a few metres back as she follows Ahsoka through the thickening crowd. Even as dawn is breaking, the streets of Jedha City grow busy. Jyn can hear the cries and bells of different sects' dawn services; there are some, she remembers, that ring throughout the night, calling the faithful to ritual. She's glad of the cover, but it means that they move slowly, and that Jyn has to work to keep touch with Ahsoka. In theory she can just use her comm or yell for Ahsoka's mind, but comms aren't always safe with Imperial listening technology, and if there's an Inquisitor coming in later in the day, then Jyn shouting for Ahsoka is likely to get their attention. There are very few telepathic species and most of them can't communicate with humans.
Jedha City looks worse than she remembers. More run-down and more watchful. There are signs of Imperial crackdowns, and she hasn't yet seen one Guardian of the Whills, which is ominous. Though they were much restricted in their movements for the brief period when Jyn stayed here with Saw, they were still permitted to practise their religion. The whole place feels strange. Off-balance. She's seen no Imperial patrols, only local peacekeepers who don't give her or Ahsoka a second glance, but nothing's quite right. There are still children playing in the streets, but they are more skittish than Jyn remembers.
"I don't like this," she murmurs, catching up to Ahsoka as they wait to cross a street.
"Well that makes two of us," Ahsoka hums in reply.
The unpleasant atmosphere follows them all the way to a small gateway, which Ahsoka ducks through; Jyn keeps walking for a few seconds, stops at a fruit stall and buys a snack, and then uses the cover of a crowd of pilgrims to disappear through the same gateway unnoticed. It turns into a dark passageway; she keeps walking, loose and casual, until she breaks through into a small dusty courtyard with a few wizened fruit trees and tiles that children have drawn on in coloured chalks, and sees the flash of Ahsoka's dark robes disappear into the stair of a tenement building. Jyn jams the toe of her boot into the door and forces it open, and then climbs the stair after Ahsoka, still eating. It's a nice building, which is to say, the paint is peeling but the stairs have been swept.
"You had breakfast less than an hour ago," Ahsoka says, when Jyn catches up.
"What can I say," Jyn says, crunching loudly and obnoxiously. Behind the helmet and robes she can't see Ahsoka's face, but Ahsoka's silent sigh is more of a full-body sort of thing.
Ahsoka's soft knock at the door they stand before is greeted with silence, at first; Jyn lays her hand on one of her blasters and draws it from its holster, praying that the kid hasn't already been taken and the tenement flat filled with stormtroopers. They'd be fish in a barrel. Then the door swings open, and behind it is a frightened man, average height, average looks, distinctive to Jyn only in that he's terrified. Her heart sinks. He'll need to figure out how to be casual if they're going to get him out as well as his daughter. He's human, at least, which means less scrutiny from stormtroopers. Provided he can stop sweating visibly.
The girl, at least, is calmer, sitting at the kitchen table and scribbling with crayons, dressed in the colourful felt layers all the children around here wear. The colours are a little different to usual, but Jyn looks closely and realises that the normal red or orange would show up the slight green tint to the girl's skin; the mother, wherever she is, is probably Mirialan, and the father is trying to hide that fact, probably to try to preserve the protection he gets from his own human heritage. The girl's too young for traditional tattoos, but she wears a cold-weather cap instead of a headcovering, and Jyn's never seen any Mirialan of any gender go without a headcovering that covers throat and ears.
When Ahsoka shuts the door she looks directly at Ahsoka and says with smiling confidence: "I knew you'd come."
An ordinary child of six would be scared, Jyn thinks, of someone who looms like Ahsoka does in those enveloping robes and that great metal helmet. But if the kid's a Jedi, then she must know Ahsoka means to protect her.
"I'm pleased to meet you," Ahsoka says warmly. "Has your daddy talked to you about going on a long trip?"
Jyn's heart twists, thinking about the escape from Coruscant. She was this kid's age - or thereabouts - she doesn't remember clearly.
The child nods. "I'm Bana! What's your name?"
"Call me Sonera," Ahsoka says, "and this is my friend, Kestrel."
Jyn nods awkwardly. Kestrel is her least favourite of the fake names, but possibly that's all for the better, since the identity might need burning to the ground after this.
Bana gives her a smile that's too knowing, and hops down from her chair to hug Jyn very tightly around the knees. "It's going to be okay," she announces, with a little-girl confidence that Jyn doesn't ever remember possessing.
"Sure, kid," Jyn says, staring down at the top of her head.
Bana's father winces. "Bana, we don't hug strangers."
Bana clearly does hug strangers, whether her father likes it or not. Ahsoka, Jyn can tell, is amused.
"Are you ready to go?" Jyn says. "We should leave as soon as possible."
The father nods. He hasn't mentioned his name, which is probably for the wisest. Jyn eyes him, and then the kid. It won't pass at a close look - Jyn is entirely human and clearly an offworlder - but for a while, they might look like a family group. They'll certainly be less eye-catching that way.
"You stick with me," she says. "Bana, when we get out into the street, hold my hand and your dad's, stay with us no matter what. Sonera will be close by. Do exactly what I tell you to."
Ahsoka nods.
Bana and her father gather up their things. They're not taking much with them, a rucksack each, but it seems unlikely they have much to take, and Bana's bundled up in a way that suggests she's actually wearing most of her clothes. The flat is small and bare; though clearly well-cared for, it needs repairs and redecoration, more than one man with little money and a kid to watch can manage. (Again Jyn wonders where the mother is, if there is a mother, or any other parent at all.) Through one shutter, which doesn't fit the outward-facing window cleanly, Jyn can see that the sun is now fully up.
Ahsoka leaves first. Jyn hangs back with the civilians, waiting for Bana's dad to lock the door and check his pockets for keys, comm, and other personal needs, like this is an ordinary day. Bana hangs on to Jyn's hand and chatters about the swallows that live in the tenement building's eaves, and when Bana's dad turns to head down the stairs Jyn scoops Bana onto her hip and carries her down. Bana's a tall girl for her age, but not very solid, and Jyn remembers what she noticed earlier without really grasping it: the children on the streets aren't just skittish, they're skinny. The Guardians of the Whills used to feed everyone who came to them for a meal, though as their resources dwindled the food got poorer.
Jyn's heart twists unpleasantly as she sets Bana down at the foot of the stairs. She can't help but feel like Bana's dad has waited too long to get out.
When they get out of the passageway, Jyn sees Ahsoka just ahead, browsing a collection of prayer pamphlets, overpriced at three credits a download, and Force knows what happens to your personal data if you do download them; if the Empire doesn't leave little viruses in those, Jyn doesn't think much of their critical thinking. She doesn't need to signal to Ahsoka, who will already have sensed her presence, and sure enough, Ahsoka begins to move unhurriedly. Jyn walks past and drops her fruit core into someone else's bin, moving a little faster than Ahsoka. Because of course they aren't here together.
"Got your list?" she says to Bana's dad.
"Right here," he replies, patting his pocket like he really does have a shopping list, and flashing her a small, thin smile that almost passes for a tired, hardworking dad with an exhausting kid who just needs to do the weekly shop, rather than smuggle his daughter out of an occupied city.
"Good." Jyn looks down at Bana, and holds tight to her hand. Bana took the left unhesitatingly, even though it meant some rearrangement, and Jyn wonders how Bana knows she's right-handed, or if she even realises what she's done. "Tell me more about the birds, Bana."
This is an excellent move. Jyn, who has no interest in birds, can make suitable noises and filter out the talk while ostensibly listening to Bana's monologue, and Bana talks so enthusiastically that even a pair of passing peacekeepers smile when she gets into the difference between the different kinds of flight feathers. It doesn't calm Jyn, who's still focussed on their surroundings, on threading them calmly but steadily through the growing crowd, and who feels her hand growing too tight on Bana's. The kid is too smart to complain. She knows something's wrong.
They are winding their way through a maze of streets about the Temple, a giant sandstone bulk to their right, its many doors all boarded off with metal sheets. They approach a main street, twice as wide as the lane which girds the Temple and significantly raised above it, in order to meet the Temple of the Kyber's great gates. The lane they are walking along has narrowed with the passage of time and street vendors and shopkeepers building onto it; they're in a natural bottleneck, but at least it's a little quieter than the even more touristy main street, with its famous views and photograph points and endless tourguides. Ahsoka is slightly ahead of Jyn's little group, which means that when stormtroopers march along the main street and block the road, Ahsoka is almost in the front rank.
Jyn's heart double-thumps painfully. She comes to an abrupt halt next to a shop, eyes up its wares, and says the only thing she can think of: "Do we need another casserole, or ?..."
Jyn isn't sure that kind of pot is even called a casserole and she certainly doesn't buy cookware that looks like, under the heavy colourful glaze with images of the Temple of the Kyber, it will shatter in the oven.
"The one we have will last," Bana's father says, gallantly playing along. He's starting to sweat.
"We could come back." Jyn glances down at the kid. "Blue or pink?"
"I like the sunrise!" Bana says.
"I know," Bana's father replies, ruffling her hair. His smile has turned to a pale rictus; this is more stormtroopers than Jyn has ever seen on Jedha, and the great gates of the Temple of the Kyber are now being cranked open to accommodate them. "You keep waking me up for the sunrise after making me stay up stargazing with you."
Bana pouts. "Daddy, you said it was fun."
Jyn chuckles, because she should, but her eyes are on Ahsoka - who has stepped back, but isn't moving. A delegation of stormtroopers is moving forward behind the barrier, headed by a gangly figure in black, a Zabrak with hair buzzed short.
Ah, fuck , Jyn thinks, and is appalled when the Zabrak's head turns, her eyes passing over and catching on Jyn, and then stopping at Ahsoka.
Shit, Jyn thinks, every more eloquent swearword she's ever known slipping from her mind, shit, shit, fuck -
She and Ahsoka came here to get the kid out. Ahsoka will never forgive her if she leaves the kid. Jyn can't defend her from that many stormtroopers. Jyn has to defend her. Jyn can't leave her. Jyn can't leave the kid.
Under her shirt, Jyn's kyber crystal burns suddenly and sharply against her chest, and Jyn hears like it's a blessing - Trust the Force .
Not that that's ever helped. Lyra never outlived her last words.
Jyn swallows bitter bile and forces out: "Fun or not, this isn't getting the shopping done," before pulling Bana and her father down an alleyway next to the shop. The press of people is starting to move back from the great gates and the blockade as fast as possible; Jyn can hear stormtroopers calling orders, pushing and shoving are beginning to break out, and as she herds her civilians down the alleyway she finds herself straining her ears to hear a lightsaber's snap-hiss. Ahsoka wouldn't - it wouldn't be safe - but the Inquisitor -
Screaming breaks out behind them, and blaster fire. Bana's father tries to bolt, still holding his daughter, and Jyn grabs Bana and picks her up, seizing the back of the man's jacket with her free hand and sprinting clumsily forward. Never mind the fucking stormtroopers, they have to get off the fucking road. This alleyway has a covered walkway full of shops on one side, and she drags them into it for the greater cover, but the shops are already closing up, the shutters she noticed earlier coming down, and there are no easy routes off the street, all Jyn can see is an opening onto another main road a few hundred metres away that will no doubt be blocked off as soon as the garrison can double out of their barracks. Her heart is pounding, her crystal is still fucking burning, Bana's dad is wheezing, Bana herself is trembling and crying, and Jyn wants to cry because - Ahsoka, Ahsoka, she left Ahsoka, she has to stop, dump this pair and send them on ahead and go back, she abandoned Ahsoka who would never let her down - but there's no time for tears, or anything other than the mission. She swears, and draws in a ragged breath, and comes to a rough halt as a man steps out in front of them.
A Guardian of the Whills. The first one she's seen in Jedha all day.
"Safe harbour for a sight of that crystal you wear around your neck, little sister," he says, smiling.
Jyn's hand flies to her chest. Her crystal is hidden, and this smiling man is - by the milky film over his eyes, he's blind.
"Fucking move , sunshine," she snarls, at the same time as Bana whimpers: "Chirrut!"
"Go with him," Bana's dad babbles. "Go with him, we have to go with him!"
Jyn can hear heavy trooper boots, and there are people pushing past them and running in terror. None of them seem to have stopped to beg aid of the Guardian, which says… something. A Devaronian nearly tramples Bana's dad shoving past.
Ahsoka , Jyn thinks, casting a desperate glance back. White plastoid is visible at the other end of the alleyway. There's no other way out.
"Fine!" she snaps. "Let's go!"
Chapter 18: Jyn iiiChapter TextThe Guardian of the Whills - or Chirrut, if that's his name - leads them quickly through a shopfront, closing it up behind them with deft hands, and then down into a cellar. Jyn bites her lip so hard she draws blood as the cellar door closes behind them, and then as she has to hand Bana down a ladder through (of course) a concealed trap door, down below into an unlit tunnel.
Jyn wishes she could reach Ahsoka from here, or that she'd brought a torch, or that she'd hung up on Willix when he called, or that none of this had happened. She grits her teeth and climbs down, and is no more reassured when the Guardian of the Whills pulls a torch from his robes and hands it to her.
"The Force guides my footsteps," he says cheerfully. "But others, I believe, need to see with their eyes."
"First things first," Jyn says, pointing the torch directly at him like it's a weapon. "Who the fuck are you?"
"I am Chirrut Îmwe," he says. "The last Guardian of the Whills in the Holy City."
"The last ," Jyn says involuntarily. It's more of a punch in the stomach than she wants to admit. Master Îmwe certainly looks the part of one of the brothers, in his black robes, worn and mended but perfectly neat; he leans on one of their trademark staves, he keeps his hair close-cropped the way most of the monks did. Jyn has no trouble believing that he's a Guardian of the Whills, but - the last of them?
It's been a long time, she thinks again, since she was in Jedha City.
"He teaches me," says Bana. She's clinging to her father with a death grip; he seems scarcely more desperate to hold onto her. "About centring myself. And the Force. Things."
She's much less eloquent, Jyn notices, about the Force than she is about birds. But from everything Jyn has understood from Ahsoka, from everything she has glimpsed herself, the Force is too great for words. Perhaps Bana has the right of it.
Jyn huffs. "Where are we?"
"Under the city," Bana's father says. She supposes eventually she should learn his name. "But I thought the old tunnels were legends."
"Oh, not all of them," Chirrut says, smiling. "Not all of them."
Jyn looks down at her feet, flashing the torch around herself to get a better idea of their surroundings. The tunnel is bored roughly through the sandstone; a thick layer of sand carpets it. Cryptic marks carved into the walls suggest a sort of wayfinder, or signposts. "We need to move on," she says at last. "To somewhere we can lie low until tonight, or maybe tomorrow morning. I need to get Bana and her dad out of the city."
"What about Sonera?" Bana's father says. He's picked up his daughter now and is cradling her against his chest. "I thought… Sonera was supposed to get us off planet."
The roar of Ahsoka's name in her ears has dulled to the pulse of her blood, but it still takes Jyn a moment to remember the fake name Ahsoka gave. She stares at Bana's father and says: "We work together. Always." She swallows, and her eyes drift to Bana's eggshell head, pressed tightly into her father's shoulder. "If I can't reach Sonera… I will still get you to your final destination."
Saying that aloud tears like hell. It feels like giving up on Ahsoka. It rips something in Jyn's chest clean in half, ragged ends flaking like scraped flesh. But she breathes in and round it, and knows it's the right promise to make. It's what Ahsoka would want her to do. It's the right thing to do. Whatever else has happened here, whoever has made bad choices, the right thing to do is to keep Bana out of the hands of an Empire that would torture her for a chance of birth, by any means necessary.
She looks at Master Îmwe. "I'm guessing you didn't pull us off the street for nothing."
"No," he says tranquilly. "The Force called me here. I do have somewhere safe I can take you, and you can stay there until you are able to leave. You have a ship, I assume?"
Jyn nods jerkily. She thinks about the speeder. They hid it well, but will the Imps be looking for unclaimed speeders with non-Jedhan registrations?
"Good," Master Îmwe says. "Come with me."
Jyn follows Master Îmwe reluctantly down the tunnel. She has no sense of direction underground, and she doesn't know the city to guess where they are or where they're going. The tunnel slopes down and then up again; the sand whispers underfoot. They twist and turn, and Jyn knows she will never be able to find her way out unaided. She can't tell how Master Îmwe's finding his way; from the way he looked to but not at her when he spoke to her, she's confident he is blind, but he doesn't seem to be using the staff. Maybe he just knows this labyrinth by heart. Some of the monks, Jyn remembers, are dedicated to the Temple as young children - or they were, back when there was more than one Guardian of the Whills. Perhaps he's always walked down here.
Jyn thinks of the great gates of the Temple creaking open. "Are there entrances to these tunnels in the Temple?" she asks. "Do the troopers have any reason to know we're here?"
"There are entrances, yes," Master Îmwe says, without looking round. "But they are concealed. We never spoke of the tunnels to outsiders. The Empire have not come here yet."
"We saw them take a Sith into the Temple."
"Not a Sith, I think," Master Îmwe says, cryptically. "Hm. No."
Fucking theology, Jyn thinks, remembering Ahsoka wittering pointlessly about the rule of two like it's a stab in her back. "A Darksider. She recognised Sonera. Or he. They."
"I don't know what has become of your friend," Master Îmwe says calmly. "Not yet. But I can tell you what the child in black was looking for."
Child? Jyn thinks. Zabraks gain their adult height early and bulk out over time, but still, the figure Jyn saw was very tall for a child. "Not now," she says, thinking of Bana, who will have nightmares enough. Jyn doesn't know why Orson Krennic wanted her as well as her father, and she has nightmares enough.
Master Îmwe inclines his head. He keeps that slight smile on his lips like it's just his resting expression. "We are now more than a mile from the Temple," he says. "As the swallows fly. And there are many, many twists and turns and false paths. Do not worry. You are safe here."
Ahsoka isn't safe, Jyn thinks. Ahsoka up above. Her mouth tastes like blood; she swallows hard.
After another ten minutes' walking, Master Îmwe leads them up a rope ladder into another cellar with a concealed trapdoor. (Jyn deeply and sincerely hates everything about this hideous day she's living.) Here it is dark too, but a small bed made up with blankets and the necessities for basic comfort attest to the fact that this isn't the first time they've brought someone here. A small solar lamp is burning on a low table. Metal safes and crates may not be instantly recognisable to Bana and her father, but they are to Jyn; someone is storing weapons and ammunition here. And there's a little shrine. Jyn recognises a version of the great altars the Guardians of the Whills set up in the Temple of the Kyber - miniaturised, but not without dignity.
"Stay here," Jyn says to Bana and her father, and follows Master Îmwe through the door.
The cellar is a sort of sub-basement. Through the (surprisingly solid) door and up a tightly winding staircase is a basement with thin high horizontal windows onto a garden, overgrown by scrub grass so the light that filters through is beige. They've been opened for ventilation, and probably help supply the vents down below, which is why it's not so stuffy as it could be. The basement looks very similar to the cellar. Not particularly lived-in. It doesn't look like this is Master Îmwe's full-time home. But it does show more recent signs of regular occupation.
Jyn looks at Master Îmwe. "What is this? A safehouse?"
"We use it as such, sometimes," Master Îmwe says composedly.
"Who's we?" Jyn demands. She doesn't want to hurt Master Îmwe - she won't do so if she can avoid it; even as one of Saw's fighters she picked up the instinctive respect Jedhans paid towards Guardians, and Saw himself didn't neglect it - but she has a responsibility towards Bana.
"Myself and my partner," Master Îmwe answers, and clarifies: "Like yourself and your partner, we work together."
Jyn's hand falls automatically to her holstered blaster. Îmwe never saw her with Ahsoka. So unless -
"If Shresth spoke correctly in referring to Sonera," Master Îmwe adds.
Jyn pauses, lets her hand rest. "Yeah," she says at last. "Yeah."
"I can tell you are afraid," Master Îmwe says. "I will not tell you not to be. But I hope Baze will return soon, with news of Sonera."
"He was in the crowd, was he?" Jyn snaps.
Master Îmwe smiles. "He likes to hear the news," he says irrelevantly. "We are not with the Rebellion, and we don't work for Saw Gerrera." Jyn doesn't think she's imagining disapproval in his voice; what has Saw done to turn against the Guardians he used to respect? "But we love the Light, and we serve its purposes. You and Shresth and the child are safe here. The Imperials don't know of this place. And we can feed you for at least a couple of days."
Jyn stares up at the little windows like they can tell her where she is, and forebears to mention the protein bars and fruit leather zipped into unobtrusive pockets. Jyn doesn't like to be without food. "Access to the city outskirts?"
"Easily. At sundown there is always a rush of people leaving the city for lodgings or to travel elsewhere, and the same just before dawn - night worshippers, like the Order of the Esoteric Pulsar." Master Îmwe taps his staff lightly on the ground. "I thought to hide you in one or the other."
Jyn nods jerkily. It's a reasonable plan. "They will be watching for us," she says. "If the Inquisitor was here for the kid."
"She is not," Master Îmwe says. "But you may wish to reassure Shresth and Bana before we discuss this further." He moves towards a small kitchen area, and sets a kettle on a battered hot plate.
Jyn returns to the cellar. "It's clear," she says to Shresth and Bana, still standing in the middle of the room. "We can stay here for a while. Probably until nightfall, so get comfortable." Her eyes stray to the bed. "You must be tired. Get some sleep. I'll be upstairs with Master Îmwe: if you need anything, come and get me."
"Thank you," Shresth says, sitting Bana down on the bed, and pulling off some of his layers. "Thank you, Kestrel. Bana, what do we say?"
Unconcerned with saying anything, Bana gets up and shuffles over to Jyn before throwing her arms around Jyn again. It seems to be a habit, Jyn thinks, and ruffles the top of her curly head. Her cap has already been taken off.
Bana mumbles something into Jyn's hip.
"What?" Jyn says.
"She's coming back," Bana says. The kid seems tired, which is unsurprising, since she woke before dawn and then tried to flee a city. Some sleep will be good for her.
Jyn stares at Bana. "What do you mean?"
"What I said ," Bana says stubbornly. "She's coming back."
Jyn wants to believe Bana means Ahsoka; wants to believe she knows the truth; wants to believe the Force works that way.
"I'm looking forward to it, kid," she says instead, and detaches Bana gently from her waist.
Back up in the basement, Master Îmwe is making tea. At least, he waits until Jyn gets upstairs to start, and he makes sure every step of the process is visible to her, and that she chooses her cup first and sees him drink before she takes her first sip. Jyn's almost embarrassed to think that a Guardian of the Whills clearly expects her not to trust him, some old reflex pinching her in a way she didn't expect, but she holds her tongue. She can't trust anyone; the safety of the family in the cellar, hopefully sleeping, is her responsibility, and she needs to consider that Ahsoka's survival may be in her hands too. The thought twists at her heart so hard the first sip of tea doesn't taste of anything but her scalded tongue; she lets out a deep breath and sets the cup gently down on the low table between them.
"A long road home to the Holy City," Master Îmwe observes, very gently.
"I'm not from here."
"You are a child of its stone nonetheless," Master Îmwe tells her. It feels like a blessing, and Jyn chafes under it more because she's accustomed to than because she truly dislikes the kindness. "If I would guess, you lived here some time ago - when there were more of us."
Jyn lets her head tip from side to side. She spent maybe a year on Jedha, possibly less: it was so long ago she doesn't remember. Saw held it in high regard for reasons she doesn't know. She was then too young to stand in his strategy briefings. "What happened?"
Master Îmwe sets his cup down. "The Empire," he says lightly. "As so often. At first, we didn't know what was happening. The disappearance of some of those of our brothers and sisters who could move the Force within them was a clue; we were able to hide the rest, as well as some few young Jedi who found their way to us."
Jyn grits her teeth. "It's not safe for you to tell me this."
"You are wearing a crystal around your neck that sings in tune with your heart, little sister," Master Îmwe says. "You need all the information I can give you."
Ahsoka has often talked about Jyn's crystal singing before; she's made it plain, even in the face of Jyn's determined scepticism, that it's a lovely sound, and she likes to listen to it. Jyn has her doubts, but not as many as she used to. There have been too many times she thought or hoped she heard a faint melody on the edge of hearing, something that whistles like a knife blade on a steel. Not since she got too angry to meditate with Ahsoka, but -
What's around her neck is none of Master Îmwe's business and it's got nothing to do with her affairs in the city.
"My respects, honoured brother," she says, trying to keep it from sounding sarcastic, and failing.
Irritatingly, Master Îmwe smiles. "Well. We had little money. The Empire came for what we had, and we gave it up, for it was not important. They discouraged novices from joining us, and that was concerning, but Jedha remains our home, and our people know us. They took many of our treasures, and placed them in a museum - on Coruscant, I'm told. Many of us died in so-called accidents, when we tended to our people. Some fell sick. Others were declared collaborators, and arrested." He picks up his tea and sips at it, meditatively.
"And now you're all that's left," Jyn says. "You and your partner."
"Baze has renounced the Whills," Master Îmwe says, with that same lightness he seems to bring to everything. "He has seen too much, he considers, to keep his faith. And yet he was once the most devout of us all."
Jyn looks down at her tea, and cups it in her hands. The words feel somehow uncomfortable, in the sense that they hit too close, regardless of who they're referring to. She certainly isn't implicated - Master Îmwe has never met her before - but this is more than she bargained for, regardless.
"I have known Bana since she was a baby," Master Îmwe says. "Her mother, Minabe, was a pilgrim; she came to spend a month's contemplation, and she met Shresth and stayed. She returned to Mirial not long after Bana was born, to care for her sister, who was very sick. She never came back." Master Îmwe finishes his tea. "We are not sure what happened to Minabe."
Every word, it seems, touches off a raw nerve. This day has peeled Jyn's skin off and left all her tenderest places open to scalding. She swallows, and does not think about parents who don't come back. Anything could have happened to her, and the odds that Shresth or Bana will ever find out are not good.
"So you've been teaching Bana?"
"Teaching her what I can," Master Îmwe says peaceably. "If she is meant for the life of the Guardians - well, who knows? The Force will guide her either way. She feels it strongly. She dreamed of your coming, and told me about it."
Jyn blinks. "You mean she dreamed of Sonera."
"She dreamed of a cloaked woman, all in white, and another who is made of kyber," Master Îmwe says, which has to be in the top ten most cryptic things Jyn has ever heard. The other nine she teased Ahsoka for acting like an obscure mystic.
"Sounds like a dream to me," Jyn says stubbornly. "Did she dream we'd get her out of here safe? Because that would be good to know."
Master Îmwe's smile only spreads. "If she did, she didn't tell me."
"What about the Inquisitor, then?" Jyn says. "You called her the child in black."
"From what I have heard," Master Îmwe says, "she is a child. She did not come here to steal Bana."
"We had intel," Jyn says, thinks begrudgingly of the trouble Willix went to to get them a message and save a kid's life and adjusts, " good intel that the Inquisitorius were here for Bana."
"Are you sure they did not assume the Empire's purpose from too little information?"
No, Jyn is not sure, but she's not going to say so out loud.
Master Îmwe sighs, and rocks back in his low seat. "When there were but five Guardians left, the Empire sent curators to the Temple. They said we could no longer care for it - diminished as we were. Our conservation procedures," he adds with a deceptive sweetness, "were not adequate to the modern day."
Jyn bites her tongue in instinctive rage, and keeps a respectful silence.
"We were permitted to remain, if we wished," Master Îmwe says. "I did not wish. With our sacred places in the hands of the Empire, there was no refusing entry to the Imperial officers and those in their favour, and they came to view us as… a curiosity." A pause. Jyn feels the weight of Master Îmwe's anger and his decision not to spend it in useless rage in the air. "I chose to depart into the city. My brothers and sisters remained. They were elderly then, and tired; some required medical care, and the Empire was so good as to provide it."
Jyn bites down on her cheek, and this time, draws blood. There are harmonics in Master Îmwe's voice that she knows: the irony of the occupied.
"The last survived until a year ago. It was she who told me that all the kyber easily removed from the Temple had been taken." Master Îmwe's voice reveals his anger now; cold and deep as the winter moon rivers in the mountains, where Saw left more than one corpse. "There are great chambers and halls within the Temple that are made of kyber, and mines of it, cut deep into the rock."
"Linked to the tunnels?"
"No. They are a different kind of secret." Master Îmwe sets the kettle to boil again, and Jyn sips at the last of her cooling tea. "The Force-sensitive have a particular relationship to kyber. The child hostage, I suspect, has been brought here for use as a sort of sentient dowsing rod, to allow the Empire to map the sacred kyber mines, strip them with maximum efficiency, and identify untouched veins which they can then desecrate."
Jyn stares. She's heard a few theories about what the Emperor's up to, but none of them mentioned kyber. She wonders uneasily if this is the sort of thing that Bail Organa should have heard of. If there's something, waiting in the wings, ready to strike.
What can you do with kyber that's so important? Ahsoka uses it for her lightsabers, which are powerful weapons, but you need to be much better trained than the average stormtrooper to use those, and to use them to their full potential you need to be Force-sensitive. There aren't so many Force-sensitives out there for the Empire to need to strip Jedha to supply them. Even if there were, all the Alliance would need to take out even a regiment of stormtroopers with lightsabers would be a few automated slugthrowers. They're rare, but they're far from impossible to get hold of or build.
"So," she says slowly, "you think they're here for the kyber - not Bana at all."
"The child landed yesterday," Master Îmwe says, "and spent the night with the garrison. She was given some food, in her room. She ate alone while the head of her security detail ate with the garrison commander. They dined formally. While no words were exchanged about the nature of their mission, it was plain the child wasn't leading it. Nor did the head of the security detail anticipate leaving with another passenger."
"That could just mean he intended to kill Bana," Jyn points out. "You're well-informed."
"Why bring another child to kill a child?" Master Îmwe counters, without answering Jyn's point about his information. Jyn guesses that whoever the Imperials have serving the drinks in the garrison isn't quite as loyal as they think. Either that, or much more talkative than they know. "It would be a waste of time and resources. Jedi are not so hard to kill as all that - especially when they are six and three quarters."
Jyn's stomach turns. "Fine," she says, setting down her empty cup harder than she meant to. "You've made your point."
Master Îmwe inclines his head. The kettle boils.
"Allow me to help," Jyn says, because any movement might ease the seething in her heart. She gets up without waiting for a response, and fetches the kettle and re-brews the tea. It's not right - she does it clumsily, and as a guest not known to the house, it's a breach of manners for her to do it at all - but at least she can move, at least she can swear when she slops boiling water over her hand and use the physical pain as cover for it.
"Be careful, little sister," Master Îmwe says. Jyn grits her teeth as she sits back down.
"It'll be fine," she says. Ahsoka will take care of it - if Ahsoka ever makes it back to the ship. Jyn's heart beats hard against her sternum.
There's a long silence as Master Îmwe pours the tea.
"I asked you about the crystal around your neck," he says.
Jyn's hand goes to her chest again. Safe harbour for a sight of that crystal you wear around your neck, little sister . "What crystal?"
"I can hear it," he says patiently. "Have no fear. I'm not going to take it from you."
Jyn eyes him. He doesn't look old, or weak; there's a strength in him. But she's still pretty confident she could kick his arse and hustle Bana and Shresth out of here if she had to.
"I would like to touch it. I see little true crystal, these days, and it sings in the Force like nothing else."
Jyn hesitates.
"I know it is precious to you," Master Îmwe says, gently, when the pause has stretched too long. "Its song is one of value."
Jyn could have sold her crystal a thousand times over. She's been knifed for it, beaten for it, and once almost drowned for it. She has starved to keep it. "I don't care how much it's worth," she snaps.
"I know," Master Îmwe says. "That is not the kind of value I was referring to."
Jyn struggles with herself. Master Îmwe drinks tea.
"Give me your hand," she says eventually, and his trust shames her when he offers her his outstretched palm. She tugs her necklace from around her neck, draws his hand a little closer, and leans forward enough to lay the crystal on his open palm. True to his promise, he doesn't so much as close his fingers.
After a second or two, Jyn pulls away and sits back, hides her necklace again. She studies Master Îmwe's face. There's a strange brightness to his eyes, a wistfulness to his smile.
"It is loved," he says. "As its owner is."
Jyn has nothing at all to say to that.
Chapter 19: Jyn ivChapter TextWhen they've finished their second cups of tea, Jyn hears noise; heavy booted footsteps. She's on her feet with her blaster drawn before she knows where she is, and recognises only belatedly that the footsteps don't have the distinctive tramp of stormtrooper boots. The footsteps are also the steps of one person alone, not a squad. But that doesn't rule out the peacekeepers.
She looks to Master Îmwe. "Sound like the local bully boys?"
Master Îmwe shakes his head. "Those are Baze's steps. I would be most obliged if you would not shoot him."
Jyn lowers her blaster, but doesn't holster it. The door creaks audibly as someone punches in the safety code and it slides open, and on the other side is - Jyn's initial impression is of a great hulk of a man, defined by his scowl. He's not carrying heavy weaponry, though he has the stance of someone accustomed to it, but he is visibly armed. He seems to be carrying a package of food under one arm, at least from the scent, and when he sees Jyn, he draws a blaster.
"Kestrel is our guest," Master Îmwe says reproachfully.
Baze lowers his blaster. Now she's got a better look at him she can see he's more than a scowl, but still, her overwhelming impression is of suspicion. He's seen hard times, and, she suspects, inflicted them on others. He moves like a mercenary, and he's dressed like one too.
Jyn's reaction is relief. She knows where she is with this.
"Sorry to drop in," she says. "I'm supposed to be getting a couple of clients off-planet. Master Îmwe offered us sanctuary."
"He's got a soft heart," Baze growls. "Messy kind of exfiltration, if you're responsible for all the trouble in town."
Jyn's heart swoops sickly. "We didn't start it," is all she says in reply.
"Kestrel and her partner came here to take Bana and her father to safety," Master Îmwe says.
Baze holsters his blaster. Jyn does likewise, and as he closes the door behind him and walks over to dump the package on the table she sits down, slowly. So does he, but not until after removing a number of weapons. The size of the weapons stores downstairs makes sense now.
"You said we'd have guests," Baze says to Master Îmwe. "Where are the rest of them?"
"Sleeping, I hope," Master Îmwe says, unwrapping the package. It seems to be mostly hot soup dumplings, rich and savoury - at least, if Jyn's nose and memories aren't cheating her. Jyn hopes her stomach isn't rumbling audibly. "They had a nasty fright."
"Caught up in that mess outside the Temple?"
Jyn abruptly has no appetite at all. "We had to make a detour," she forces out.
Baze gives her a curiously dispassionate look. Measuring. Jyn meets his eyes and holds them.
"Baze, I am dying of curiosity," Master Îmwe complains. "What happened?"
Baze glances away. "You're a nosy old man, is what you are."
Master Îmwe's smile gleams.
"I've heard it said curiosity killed the tooka cat," Baze threatens.
"But satisfaction brought it back," Master Îmwe points out, sweetly. Jyn can appreciate, distantly, how annoying he must be to live with when he feels like it.
Baze sighs like an avalanche rolling downhill. "Those Imperial bastards took their puppet to the Temple," he says. "At the gates, someone or something caught the puppet's attention in the crowd. Stormtroopers went into the crowd, people broke and ran, stampede, shots fired." He snorts. "They didn't catch whoever it was. They're taking Clan of Toribota off the streets, though."
Jyn's throat feels like it's turned to concrete. But if they're pulling people off the streets for being dressed like Ahsoka, then they haven't got Ahsoka, and the first thing she will have done is ditch the disguise.
"Why Clan of Toribota?" Master Îmwe says, frowning.
"Suspicion over harbouring Jedi malcontents," Baze says, a deep frown lowering heavy brows.
There's lead in Jyn's stomach.
"How curious," Master Îmwe says, light as ever. But there are layers in his voice when he adds: "Everyone knows there are no longer any living Jedi."
"The troopers don't seem all that impressed, either," Baze says. He's watching Jyn now, still frowning. "No-one saw anything special. They're working off the reaction from their little black-clad puppet. Apparently it's drawn to Force-sensitives - or reacts to them. Don't ask me. Superstitious banthashit."
"Poor child," Master Îmwe says, returning to the table with bowls and cutlery.
"You haven't heard what that poor child is supposed to be capable of."
"They are too young to know anything but the Empire," Master Îmwe says, calmly. His eyes meet Baze's when he adds: "We are all capable of terrible things. Let us count ourselves fortunate that Kestrel here came to retrieve Bana before the Empire could teach her to know nothing but terror."
"I made a good call leaving the kid downstairs, the way you talk," Jyn says, an uneasy shiver rippling down her spine. "With respect, Master Îmwe."
Baze lets out a sinus-clearing snort. "You have this child calling you master?"
Jyn bristles instinctively.
"Kestrel is very polite," Master Îmwe says. "Kestrel, you are welcome to call me Chirrut - most people do."
"Thank you," Jyn says, and adds with a pointed look at Baze - "honoured brother."
Baze rolls his eyes so hard Jyn thinks they'll roll out of his head, and Chirrut cackles. He sets out a bowl before her. "Help yourself to dumplings, little sister. You have had a long day."
"Thank you," Jyn repeats, and helps herself to dumplings. These, at least, are just like she remembers - except that there's no meat in the filling, only in the broth, and the broth is not as rich as she recalls. Which is either childhood memories playing tricks on her, or another sign of Jedha's poverty.
"Bana, Shresth, Kestrel," Baze says. "Who else, Chirrut? You told me to bring enough for six. Even with myself, that only makes five."
"We are waiting for Kestrel's partner," Chirrut says. "Sonera. She may arrive here, or she may already have left for the city. Bana's visions did not predict that they would become separated in the stampede."
"Separated, huh," Baze says. His eyes are on Jyn again, and less friendly. "How does she know how to find us here?"
"I don't expect her to find us here," Jyn says levelly. Her blaster is close to hand. Baze is quick, but she would bet good credits she's quicker. "Unless she finds friends of yours who can tell her where to come." She eats a dumpling. "If I had to guess, she's left the city."
They have rendez-vous plans - of course they do. Ahsoka will have returned to the ship, if she's made it out of the stampede, and the fact that they are pulling in people dressed in her disguise suggests she did. Harbouring traitors is a serious charge, but they don't arrest an entire religious sect for it, not unless they have some other reason: they don't have a bottomless jail here, and the garrison is too small to engage in a mass campaign of terror unless supported by a full regiment. Especially with Saw's Partisans in the hills. Searching for the traitor, however, is an excellent reason to arrest a lot of people.
Which means they haven't found Ahsoka. Yet.
"Hmm," Baze says. "And what the fuck possessed you, to bring a Jedi into a city under occupation, and walk right up to a barricade of stormtroopers?"
"Heart of my heart, soul of my soul, you are being unreasonable," Chirrut objects, helping himself to a dumpling. Baze's bowl is still empty.
Jyn meets Baze's eyes squarely. "Everyone knows there are no longer any living Jedi."
Baze's hand on the table clenches into a fist. "Do you have any idea what you've wrought on this city?"
"I have a great idea, thanks," Jyn snaps. "And I didn't choose to do it." The moment freezes cold in the air between them. "This was a rush job, to get a kid out of danger. We agreed to it last-minute, burned coaxium getting here. We didn't know the Inquisitor was already in the city. If we'd known, I would have come alone."
It is one of the ideas they had tossed up, while changing course for Jedha. Ahsoka didn't like the plan any more than Jyn did, and they both knew that the Alliance's plans were all predicated on Ahsoka taking point, which had implications both for securing Bana and for any exfiltration the Alliance could offer, so they'd discarded it. Now Jyn wishes they hadn't. The Inquisitor glanced at her, but only briefly - driven by the kyber crystal around her neck, maybe, if they're being used as a dowsing rod the way Chirrut suggests. Alone, Jyn could have got the kid out of the city by now.
There's another long, tense second, and then Baze's hand slowly uncurls.
"I'm sorry," he says. "We've seen too much, in this city. And I don't know if you think you're passing yourself off as neutral, but you've got a Gerrera look to you."
Jyn stiffens.
"Not that a trooper would know it," Baze adds. "Troopers don't get anywhere near Gerrera's boys and girls and walk away alive. But I've seen enough of them, me. And they don't care about collateral. Not enough."
It stings because it's not unfamiliar. Jyn says nothing for a second, just eats another dumpling. Meat or not, they taste good.
"I'm an independent actor now," she says at last. "Shipping. Bacta, mainly. I'm in business with my partner. Sometimes we take passengers."
"Huh," Baze says. "Well, I hope you get her back. If she got out of that crowd alive, she's probably wily enough to come home."
He helps himself to a dumpling.
The rest of the day seems to last forever. Chirrut goes out in the mid-afternoon with a begging bowl; Baze stays in the cellar, cleaning and inventorying weapons that look well-cared for and valued, including a repeater cannon. He lets Jyn use his kit to clean the small arsenal she has on her person, and they exchange a few words of desultory conversation, comfortable in the silence. Shresth comes up looking for something to eat, and Baze heats up the leftover dumplings for the family downstairs. But Jyn catches his eye as he walks in, tentative and wary, and sees them for a moment through Shresth's eyes. They look like killers, focused and closed-off. She can see Shresth wondering who he's trusted his daughter to. She can see him wondering what he's done, if he and Bana wouldn't perhaps have been safer in that flat in a tenement building than here with Jyn, an unknown quantity.
Jyn bites the inside of her cheek and hopes like hell that he holds his nerve. She isn't persuasive enough to cajole him along, and she doesn't want to threaten him or to scare him with stories about what the Empire might do to him and Bana if they catch him. Which they will, if he stays here. It's only a matter of time, and probably not very long, at that.
She focuses on her work.
Bana, of course, gets the fidgets. She's young, and though she's mature for her age - she clearly hasn't had any other choice - being cooped up underground is not for her. Jyn has vague memories of the escape from Coruscant and her own restlessness: she understands, much as it's necessary to keep the kid quiet, and ready for a quick departure. Shresth does his best to keep her occupied, as does Baze, but she doesn't know Baze as well as she knows Chirrut and she's getting petulant with her father as he's forced to refuse her treats, or games she wants to play, or even just going outside. Jyn recognises the fretting of a child who has picked up on the grown-ups' nerves, but can't process them. Ahsoka can sense people's feelings, sometimes their thoughts, but although Bana's degree of power isn't known to Jyn and the amount of control she needs to pick up on real information is uncertain, there has to be at least a strong possibility that Bana knows Shresth is afraid, Jyn is tense, and Baze is watchful. Jyn thinks of what Ahsoka taught her, about letting thoughts slip away while meditating, and tries to treat the frequent worries about Ahsoka like clouds in a clear sky: tries to let them slip away. She wants to meditate, wants the peace it helped with, but she can't focus.
It doesn't help that Bana keeps gravitating towards her; whether because Jyn is new and Bana is curious and bored, or because she sees Jyn as her connection to Ahsoka, who she actually likes, or because she senses the kyber crystal around Jyn's neck, Jyn doesn't know. She wishes she had a better idea of what Lyra Erso strung around her throat before she died - but that, like so many things swallowed up by the Empire, will remain a mystery. She also wishes she understood kids better, but that one will probably also remain a mystery. Jyn doesn't see herself having kids of her own. Especially not while the war is still ongoing.
If Ahsoka took on a padawan, it might be different. There would be things she could teach a kid like Bana - like Bana, but older.
That sets Jyn thinking, and next time Bana sidles up to her, instead of ignoring her Jyn offers to teach her something. Shresth looks instantly wary, but all Jyn has in mind - and it's enough to keep Bana occupied for a while - is the stretches and strengthening tricks Ahsoka taught her, first all those years ago on Tamsye Prime, and then again, when they first inherited the Lady Luck . Jyn knows them better now, certainly well enough to teach, and she can see how the visualisations and mantras that accompany them are meant for a young Jedi. It works for a while to keep Bana busy, maybe half an hour, and then she sits up, pushes her hair back out of her face, and asks if they're going to meditate now.
"What?" Jyn says, caught off guard.
"Meditate," Bana says, "like Chirrut does!"
Jyn stares at her.
"If you don't know how, I'll teach you," Bana offers. Shresth smiles, and Baze rumbles his amusement.
"I know how," Jyn says, keeping to herself that she hasn't been able to meditate properly for more than a week now, because she keeps getting pissed off when she tries to sit still. It sounds pathetic, and she doesn't think explaining it to a kid is either smart or fair.
"Copy me," Bana instructs, clearly disbelieving, and shuffles round to sit cross-legged with her hands clasped in front of her heart. Jyn sits back against a wall with her legs stretched out, like she usually does, but Bana's eye cracks open and she looks reproachful enough that Jyn begrudgingly assumes the same seated position.
"You have to let your thoughts flow around you," Bana orders. Baze is sniggering.
"Can you do that and talk at the same time?" Jyn asks, resisting the temptation to swear at Baze.
"Yeah. Breathe in…"
Jyn, obediently, breathes. It doesn't work. Bana has the idea of guided meditation, but she doesn't quite get it; she's tracing round a pattern her hands are too unsteady to maintain. And while Jyn's mind doesn't dwell on Obi-Wan Kenobi's abandonment of Ahsoka, it does run on where Ahsoka is now, and if she is safe or not. Jedha has changed since Jyn last lived here, but her mind peoples familiar courtyards with stormtroopers, sets steel riot barriers in alleyways, blows open soft red sandstone.
"You're not trying ," Bana says, more in sorrow than in anger, but with a distant whine of frustration.
"I am trying," Jyn says. "It's not working." She sighs.
"You're supposed to let your thoughts flow away from you. Like a river in the mountains."
Jyn's thoughts are exactly like the rivers in the mountains. Their currents are unpredictable and they contain a lot of dead bodies. "I'm a grown-up," she says. "We have a lot of thoughts. It's harder."
Fortunately for Jyn, because Bana gets an incredibly stubborn look on her face and opens her mouth, it is at this point that Chirrut returns. His bowl is empty, but Jyn suspects any coin or trinkets he received have just been tucked into his pockets - and any food, she supposes, has already been eaten.
"You all look very cheerful!" he says.
"You're blind," Baze says.
"But I see so clearly with the eyes of the heart," Chirrut says reproachfully, and the piety on his face and the annoyance on Baze's makes Jyn want to laugh so much she has to duck her head and hide her face. She took the scarf down when they got into the tunnels, but she wishes for its covering now.
"Sure," she says. "We believe you. Right, Bana?"
"Kestrel won't meditate with me!" Bana pipes up. Jyn curses internally.
"Not everyone likes to meditate, little swallow," Chirrut says, though there's curiosity in the tilt of his head.
"She said she was trying but she wasn't!"
Jyn sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose. Hopefully Ahsoka never takes a padawan.
"Bana," Shresth says warningly.
"Dada, she didn't try !"
"We should work on some reading," Shresth says, scooping Bana up. "I brought the bird book."
He carries Bana downstairs. Her protests are audible until the door below clicks shut.
"Kids these days," Baze says. Jyn sighs.
"I didn't know you yourself followed the Force," Chirrut says.
"The Force is not real," Baze says, with emphasis.
"I don't," Jyn says, ignoring how false that rings. Ahsoka has said that the Force led them to each other, that the Force moves strangely around Jyn. Jyn doesn't believe in any of it. At least, she doesn't think she does. It is… strange, that she and Ahsoka ran into each other so often as drifters. It is… strange, how their luck turned when they worked together.
It's all strange, Jyn decides, but the galaxy is like that, and leaves it at that.
"Meditation is a very useful practice in many cultures," Chirrut observes.
Baze mumbles to himself. Chirrut ignores him with serenity, even when he ups the volume and adds several derogatory words in languages Jyn barely remembers. Jyn's beginning to see how they irritated each other into falling in love.
"How long have you two been married?" she says, in an effort to change the subject.
"Oh, we're not married," Baze says aloud, startled into words. "Not on paper. You think I would let this fool anywhere near the Imps managing our city? No, thank you. I know trouble when I hear it coming."
Jyn grins. She sits up against the wall, and draws her legs beneath her.
"My beloved, you say that as if you think I cannot take care of myself," Chirrut reproaches Baze. "You will give our guest a poor impression of me."
"Like I could improve on your handiwork," Baze snorts.
"Besides, I have news," Chirrut says, and the nascent smile falls off Jyn's face. She sits up straight.
"You've seen Sonera?" she says, more sharply than she meant to.
"Seen her, no," Chirrut says. "But the word on the street is that the Empire did not find what they were looking for." He smiles thinly. "The stormtroopers are most annoyed at having to go out of their way for a rumour, and the peacekeepers scarcely less so. They say if there were a Jedi in their city, they would know it."
They didn't know about Bana, Jyn thinks, but, well. Moving swiftly on.
"My sense," Chirrut says, sitting down with a theatrical groan and complaints about his joints, "is that she has left - many pilgrims fled the city entirely when the stampede began. If she moved quickly enough, and lost the Clan of Toribota disguise quickly enough, she may have hidden herself in the crowd. The wisest move would be for you to return to your ship."
Jyn nods. "That was my plan."
"And leave her?" Baze says. There's no judgement in his tone, but Jyn fires up anyway, and her voice is Coruscant crisp, harsh, and louder than she wants when she says:
"We came here to save the kid from the Empire. Sonera would never forgive me if I let Bana down."
"Relax, little sister," Baze says. Jyn sucks in a deep breath in the pause, and lets it out. Her fingers flex and knuckles click; she wants something to hit. The electric energy of guilt is still coiling under her skin, still searching for some way to act: her fears for Ahsoka are quiescent for long minutes and hours, but never dormant. "I understand."
Jyn looks directly at him in surprise, and finds he's looking back, a wry tilt to his mouth that suits him better than his scowl. He jerks his head at Chirrut. "You think I haven't bled and suffered to keep this idiot alive? Keeping up with idealists is a loser's game."
"I don't want to play a different one," Jyn snaps. "I could have made other choices. This one's mine."
An impenetrable look passes between Baze and Chirrut.
"I'm sure Sonera is glad," Chirrut says, more gently. "To have you at her side. As I am glad that this grumpy lump has not, as he regularly threatens, abandoned me to my own devices."
"Yeah. Well," Jyn mutters, and fidgets with a knife.
"I would recommend a departure tonight," Chirrut says. "For now, there is little belief at any level that the hostage truly sensed a Jedi, but the section governor may take their claims more seriously, and crack down on the city. It would be best if neither you nor Bana are present, if that happens."
"You're telling me," Jyn says, and sighs. It's a risk. There's only so long they'll be able to wait in the Lady Luck for Ahsoka to arrive. Equally, however, there's every chance Ahsoka is making for the ship, too. While it may be too risky to use the comm while Jyn is with Bana, that was their plan, in case of separation. Ahsoka may even be there now.
Jyn's heart double-thumps, and she wishes suddenly and violently for the undersized bunks in the Lady Luck , for Ahsoka's annoying tendency towards the cryptic, for getting tripped up and pinned in sparring matches she can't win because the Force is most definitely not her ally, for Ahsoka wandering in and out and falling asleep at random times just when Jyn wants to talk to her. She wants Ahsoka getting her hands stuck in tangled hair, pulling back because she's worried Jyn's going to catch her lip on a canine tooth, or apologising over and over again because Jyn has taken an unexpected detour into one of Ahsoka's nightmares - as if Jyn cares about that. She wants better things to be upset about than this - than waiting for nightfall in a sub-basement with a pair of strangers, hoping Ahsoka's still alive, wondering if she'd know if she wasn't.
She doesn't know if she wants to go back to the Lady Luck or not - it's the surest way to find out whether Ahsoka's free or not, and in that sense it frightens her - but there's no other choice. Her gut aches with the weight of that knowledge.
"We have some hours yet," Chirrut says. "If you wish to meditate and find it difficult… I would be happy to help."
Jyn's inhale catches and stops. Consciously, she lets it go.
"I know what the problem is," she says. Her hand strays to her chest, where the crystal hangs loose beneath her shirt and sports bra; she realises just in time and diverts to fidget with her jacket instead. "It's just figuring out how to fix it."
A pause. Dust swirls in the air, sinking down from the windows up above.
"Little sister," Baze says, returning to the contemplation of a truly vicious-looking vibroblade that seemed to have sand stuck in its components, "if you want help, you have to ask for it."
"I don't need help. I'm working on it."
Baze snorts. "Looks like it."
Jyn huffs, and plants one of her feet flat against the floor, looking across and away from Chirrut's blind and thoughtful eyes, away from Baze's too-blunt face. There's a worn printed hanging on the wall. It's not of anywhere on Jedha, that she knows of, or even the planet below, but it's handsome. It's been stained with blood at some point, but someone, probably the same someone who hammered nails into the wall to hold it, took great care to wash the stain out.
It takes her a while to decide, but when she does, the words come to her lips naturally - if not easily.
"Someone let Sonera down. Once. Before I knew her. Very badly." She halts, runs her tongue across her front teeth, scrapes her lower lip. "We found out, a few weeks ago, just how badly. It broke her heart. I watched." She halts again, and tips her head back against the wall. "Every time I try to meditate, I think about it, and I get angry for her sake."
"You love her very much," Chirrut says. It's not a question. Jyn feels her cheeks heat and curses internally, but says nothing.
She's not telling a cryptic stranger, even if they are a Guardian, before she tells Ahsoka.
"Does it help her?" he asks. "Your anger?"
"No," Jyn says reluctantly. "But she deserves someone to be angry for her. She deserves someone to care about what happened."
"And does the second of those things require the first? Do you think she needs your anger, to tell her you care?"
Jyn has spent her whole life showing she cares about things by getting angry about them. She's not sure she knows what to do otherwise. She swallows hard.
"Think about it," Chirrut says.
Jyn swallows again, opens her mouth, closes it, and says: "I really wish I hadn't run into you." It comes out like some kind of a croak.
"He has that effect on people," Baze says, without looking up.