The joke could have been bluster, but he didn't think so. He got from the way she held herself and moved that she was a fighter, from her microsignals that his potential physical abilities didn't concern her in the least, and from her agreement that she was also up for possible cooperation. Wonderful. They were on the same page. He confirmed by craning his body submissively away as she worked the locks. When one clicked open, he grasped the chain of the other to relieve its tension. The second clicked, and he was free.
Immediately—more signals for her—he backed away and set about rubbing his wrists, keeping his hands away from her. "Thank you." And hazarded, "What can I call you?" (Not what's your name? unless she wanted to be free with that.)
The phrasing of the question might have been deliberate, or it might not. Jyn wasn't about to try to guess one way or the other. Her answer would be the same regardless: "Tanith," rolling off her tongue as easily as if it was the name she'd been born with. As a teenager on her own in the galaxy, she'd learned the hard way that she needed to have answers ahead of time, to be able to talk about herself without actually talking about herself.
Tanith Ponta was Alderaanian, comfortably middle-class until her parents died in a speeder crash. After that, she'd been shuttled between disinterested relatives, eventually setting out on her own. There were no roots put down anywhere and no one close enough to turn to if she was in trouble.
She and Jyn Erso had that last part in common.
Jyn, as Tanith, watched him, the way he leaned away from her, movements telegraphed as if to reassure her. She still didn't trust him, but it wasn't personal. She didn't make a habit of trusting anyone.
"Will," he answered. J'din Willix was the name on his intake—if any of them out there had bothered writing up papers, which he doubted. Willix was a petty smuggler, not terribly good at it, who'd been busted for his cargo. The actual mission was to be arrested to get into the base where he was about to be transferred. This time, he'd be given help with extraction. He knew Tanith wasn't that help, but she'd been helpful anyway.
And very engaging.
What? Stop.
Equally possible she was a plant set to rout him out—though that would require them suspecting him, which seemed unlikely. Be cagey anyway. As, at this point in his life, came naturally.
"This is a first for me," he said, his hands moving as if nervous. "What do you think comes next?"
He seemed nervous, fidgety. If this really was a first for him, as he said, then that made sense. She'd been nervous the first time, too, sixteen and newly alone in the galaxy. Now it was mostly just a matter of biding her time until she could find a way out, although she wasn't about to say that to a stranger about whom she knew nothing. There was every chance he'd yell for the stormtroopers and tell them in the hopes of it leading to some sort of leniency.
They would both be out of luck, in that case. Imperials and leniency weren't concepts that generally went together.
"If experience is anything to go by?" That trace of wry amusement, barely there but audible, was back in her voice. "They keep us waiting as long as possible. The Imperial wheels of justice—" This veered more sarcastic, accompanied by an eye roll. Justice was something Imperials seemed less interested in than leniency. "—turn very, very slowly. Then a transfer or two. Somewhere in there, you'll be sentenced. If you're here, they've already decided you're guilty."
Yes, yes, and yes. Even an outfit as far-flung and sloppy as this was part of the pipeline to places like Narkina and Wobani. It wasn't about justice, it was about labor. Anyone potentially useful could and would be targeted.
Cassian found himself disappointed that he'd decided to play naïve. He found himself wanting to commiserate with his cellmate. Why? You just met, you have nothing to go on… But everything about her just… clicked. Except that he couldn't tell if… if it was his finely-honed sense of when someone might be a candidate for recruitment, or if his analytics were getting fouled up because she was… well… cute. That had never happened before, but he couldn't rule it out.
At least Cassian could use that to swallow and shoot an anxious look out the door. "Dammit. Dammit." He tore his eyes back to her. "You seem awfully calm about it."
"Yeah, well. Like I said, experience," Jyn said, her shoulders lifting in a far more relaxed shrug than the situation called for. More relaxed than she actually felt, for that matter. It wasn't that she worried about what was going to happen to her or what came next. Confinement had always made her uneasy, though, small, cramped, dark spaces bringing memories to the surface that she preferred to keep buried. She didn't want to be stuck waiting; she wanted out.
But as before, that was a potential weakness she wasn't going to show. Besides, it wasn't dishonest, though it wouldn't have bothered her if it was. This was practically a routine by now. One of them might as well stay calm, and it might as well be her, even if underneath that was a familiar roil of tension and anger that had become a constant and a comfort over the last few years. Anger was good. Anger was safer than fear or hurt.
"Nothing to do about it from here, anyway." She chose her words deliberately. He could read into it what he wanted to, and she'd have plausible deniability if he turned on her.
Either she really was that calm, or she had a beautiful Sabacc face without identifiable tells.
"No," agreed Cassian, slumping. He hadn't counted on having anything to do right now except wait. This person's presence, though, offered a side mission—because he always needed one, right?—and his default one: assess for recruitment. If he failed, he could probably keep them from coming to blows; he just had to be careful in case, contrary to the perfect things she'd just said, she was there to betray him. "Sorry if I'm… I'm sorry. I just… You mean you have experience with this already? And you got out?"
That, Jyn knew better than to answer outright, with words. Instead, she arched an eyebrow, lifted a shoulder again, as if to say, Sounds that way, doesn't it? She'd known him for a matter of moments — didn't know him, really — and even if he'd been an old acquaintance, she wouldn't be inclined to openly discuss such things in an Imperial holding cell. With his question hanging in the air, though, she felt for the first time that maybe they were on the same page, both engaging in the careful dance of discerning what to make of someone new.
If he were for some reason a plant, or an Imperial sympathizer looking for something to use against her, she doubts he would ask something like that so blatantly. It wouldn't be the smart play. First time for him though this might have been, she got the impression that he was smarter than the circumstances suggested.
"Plenty of things can happen in transit," she settled on, what still seemed vague enough. "And bucketheads don't make the best wardens."
And there was more or less his current plan in a khadi-shell, one stop shy. Maybe she was planning something similar. Maybe he shouldn't be trying to make friends lest she successfully break out and take him along and he never made it to the base. This and other scenarios flashed fast through his mind and he shelved them as not yet relevant. An unusual amount of projections, though. There was something about her.
"Well." Cassian—no, Will—settled back against the wall and sat down, draping his elbow over his knee, as if her answer had helped him relax somewhat. "What do you do in the meantime?"
As he sat, so did Jyn, a semi-conscious mirror and a way of keeping them on an even playing field. She didn't need him to trust her when she didn't trust him, but it was as she'd thought before: an ally would be better than an enemy. Maybe having someone else working with her would help. Or maybe he'd turn on her the first chance he got, but that was seeming less likely for reasons she couldn't quite put her finger on. Probably it was just that he hadn't done it already, or tried to push her to say something regrettable.
"Wait," she answered, and this time, she actually smiled, slight but real. "Imagine all the different things I'd do to those 'troopers if they hadn't taken all my weapons." That was a lie — there was still a small knife in her boot that she'd managed to conceal — but she didn't need to go broadcasting that.
Cassian returned her slight smile; Willix turned it into a grimace. "That sounds… incredibly stressful. What do you do when there's someone else with you?" (As if it were a matter of course that there would be.)
"Have a slumber party and braid each other's hair," Jyn deadpanned, not missing a beat. It was something she'd only ever seen in various holos, young girls on wealthy planets doing things like painting their nails and playing stupid games. Her life had never had room for that sort of frivolity. Where they got party games, she got war stories; where they got fancy hairdos and nail lacquer, she got sharpened knives and cleaned blasters. She didn't regret that. Maybe it was because this life was the only one she'd ever known, but the thought of that sort of sheltered, oblivious upbringing made her stomach turn.
"I don't know. Usually everyone keeps to themselves." She couldn't tell why, but at least so far, she wasn't minding him being an exception to that.
"Is that what we should be doing?" He (Willix) added immediately, "Please say no. I was going crazy in here. Which I'm sure is doing most of their work for them."
"In that case, definitely not," Jyn replied. Her brittle edges and general distrust seemed unlikely to contribute to anyone's sanity in a positive way, but if they did, then it had to be better than the alternative. "We wouldn't want to give them what they want."
With possibly breaking out no longer the subject at hand, plausible deniability didn't seem necessary anymore. Instead, she was being cautious in a different way, trying to gauge where he stood without revealing too much about herself.
"You mean besides stormtroopers' aim?" Jyn asked, unable to help herself. Thinking of an actual joke took her a few moments longer, but she didn't want to just say no and shut it down. This was better than just sitting in silence, minding their own business.
Straight-faced, she asked, "How do you open doors on Kashyyyk?"
"That's it," Jyn replied, biting back a laugh. She wondered if she should have been disappointed or frustrated that he'd guessed the punchline. Instead, she found herself oddly pleased. "And all I've got for jokes. What about you?"
Jyn frowned thoughtfully, giving what was bound to be a stupid pun more consideration than was probably called for. It was a surprisingly good distraction, though, without requiring her to let her guard down. There were definitely worse ways of passing the time here.
Before she could react, like to groan or hit him or anything between, he added, “Part two. What do you say when you see a cart full of jogan fruit wearing visors?”
Jyn huffed out a quiet laugh, amused and disbelieving. "Wow," she said dryly. "And I don't know. 'Look, there's a cart full of jogan fruit wearing visors?'"
She had a feeling there was going to be an even more ridiculous punchline coming.
When she laughed again, a little fuller this time, Jyn almost didn't recognize the sound of her own voice. It was the laugh of someone younger, less burdened and beaten down by life, definitely not currently sitting in an Imperial prison cell. Strange as it all may have been, she found herself quietly grateful for this stranger, this Will. She still didn't trust him, but she wasn't sitting here feeling like the walls were closing in, and that went a long way.
"Well, now I know how you got yourself locked up in here," she quipped. "Criminally bad jokes."
That laugh upended something in him. —made him want to do nothing else but inspire more. The smile it drew from him was a true mirror: he too looked suddenly younger, less furrowed, less worn, lightened, with a crinkling to his eyes showing how genuine…
“I have a friend who’s a droid,” said Cassian. “He’s interested by organic humor.”
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2025-05-03 09:10 pm (UTC)Immediately—more signals for her—he backed away and set about rubbing his wrists, keeping his hands away from her. "Thank you." And hazarded, "What can I call you?" (Not what's your name? unless she wanted to be free with that.)
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Date: 2025-05-03 09:53 pm (UTC)The phrasing of the question might have been deliberate, or it might not. Jyn wasn't about to try to guess one way or the other. Her answer would be the same regardless: "Tanith," rolling off her tongue as easily as if it was the name she'd been born with. As a teenager on her own in the galaxy, she'd learned the hard way that she needed to have answers ahead of time, to be able to talk about herself without actually talking about herself.
Tanith Ponta was Alderaanian, comfortably middle-class until her parents died in a speeder crash. After that, she'd been shuttled between disinterested relatives, eventually setting out on her own. There were no roots put down anywhere and no one close enough to turn to if she was in trouble.
She and Jyn Erso had that last part in common.
Jyn, as Tanith, watched him, the way he leaned away from her, movements telegraphed as if to reassure her. She still didn't trust him, but it wasn't personal. She didn't make a habit of trusting anyone.
"You?"
no subject
Date: 2025-05-03 10:08 pm (UTC)And very engaging.
What? Stop.
Equally possible she was a plant set to rout him out—though that would require them suspecting him, which seemed unlikely. Be cagey anyway. As, at this point in his life, came naturally.
"This is a first for me," he said, his hands moving as if nervous. "What do you think comes next?"
no subject
Date: 2025-05-03 10:42 pm (UTC)They would both be out of luck, in that case. Imperials and leniency weren't concepts that generally went together.
"If experience is anything to go by?" That trace of wry amusement, barely there but audible, was back in her voice. "They keep us waiting as long as possible. The Imperial wheels of justice—" This veered more sarcastic, accompanied by an eye roll. Justice was something Imperials seemed less interested in than leniency. "—turn very, very slowly. Then a transfer or two. Somewhere in there, you'll be sentenced. If you're here, they've already decided you're guilty."
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Date: 2025-05-03 11:40 pm (UTC)Cassian found himself disappointed that he'd decided to play naïve. He found himself wanting to commiserate with his cellmate. Why? You just met, you have nothing to go on… But everything about her just… clicked. Except that he couldn't tell if… if it was his finely-honed sense of when someone might be a candidate for recruitment, or if his analytics were getting fouled up because she was… well… cute. That had never happened before, but he couldn't rule it out.
At least Cassian could use that to swallow and shoot an anxious look out the door. "Dammit. Dammit." He tore his eyes back to her. "You seem awfully calm about it."
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Date: 2025-05-04 12:06 am (UTC)But as before, that was a potential weakness she wasn't going to show. Besides, it wasn't dishonest, though it wouldn't have bothered her if it was. This was practically a routine by now. One of them might as well stay calm, and it might as well be her, even if underneath that was a familiar roil of tension and anger that had become a constant and a comfort over the last few years. Anger was good. Anger was safer than fear or hurt.
"Nothing to do about it from here, anyway." She chose her words deliberately. He could read into it what he wanted to, and she'd have plausible deniability if he turned on her.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-04 12:25 am (UTC)"No," agreed Cassian, slumping. He hadn't counted on having anything to do right now except wait. This person's presence, though, offered a side mission—because he always needed one, right?—and his default one: assess for recruitment. If he failed, he could probably keep them from coming to blows; he just had to be careful in case, contrary to the perfect things she'd just said, she was there to betray him. "Sorry if I'm… I'm sorry. I just… You mean you have experience with this already? And you got out?"
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Date: 2025-05-04 12:48 am (UTC)If he were for some reason a plant, or an Imperial sympathizer looking for something to use against her, she doubts he would ask something like that so blatantly. It wouldn't be the smart play. First time for him though this might have been, she got the impression that he was smarter than the circumstances suggested.
"Plenty of things can happen in transit," she settled on, what still seemed vague enough. "And bucketheads don't make the best wardens."
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Date: 2025-05-04 12:55 am (UTC)"Well." Cassian—no, Will—settled back against the wall and sat down, draping his elbow over his knee, as if her answer had helped him relax somewhat. "What do you do in the meantime?"
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Date: 2025-05-04 01:07 am (UTC)"Wait," she answered, and this time, she actually smiled, slight but real. "Imagine all the different things I'd do to those 'troopers if they hadn't taken all my weapons." That was a lie — there was still a small knife in her boot that she'd managed to conceal — but she didn't need to go broadcasting that.
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Date: 2025-05-04 01:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-04 01:42 am (UTC)"I don't know. Usually everyone keeps to themselves." She couldn't tell why, but at least so far, she wasn't minding him being an exception to that.
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Date: 2025-05-04 01:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-04 02:03 am (UTC)With possibly breaking out no longer the subject at hand, plausible deniability didn't seem necessary anymore. Instead, she was being cautious in a different way, trying to gauge where he stood without revealing too much about herself.
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Date: 2025-05-04 02:19 am (UTC)(It could tell a surprising amount about a person. And even if they hated jokes, it tended to form some kind of bond.)
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Date: 2025-05-04 02:28 am (UTC)Straight-faced, she asked, "How do you open doors on Kashyyyk?"
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Date: 2025-05-04 02:36 am (UTC)He thought for a moment, then said, "With a Woo-key?"
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Date: 2025-05-04 02:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-04 02:58 am (UTC)"What do you say when you see a cart full of jogan fruit?"
(Not to be traced, a fruit found abundantly throughout the Galaxy.)
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Date: 2025-05-04 03:15 am (UTC)"I don't know, what?"
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Date: 2025-05-04 03:19 am (UTC)Before she could react, like to groan or hit him or anything between, he added, “Part two. What do you say when you see a cart full of jogan fruit wearing visors?”
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Date: 2025-05-04 03:24 am (UTC)She had a feeling there was going to be an even more ridiculous punchline coming.
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Date: 2025-05-04 03:31 am (UTC)“Nothing. You don’t recognize them.”
He made a show of holding up his hands in surrender.
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Date: 2025-05-04 03:41 am (UTC)"Well, now I know how you got yourself locked up in here," she quipped. "Criminally bad jokes."
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Date: 2025-05-04 11:10 am (UTC)“I have a friend who’s a droid,” said Cassian. “He’s interested by organic humor.”
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