Chapter Text
Faith
Jyn is only dimly aware of her surroundings. She knows she’s on a ship, travelling through space, and that the man to whom she’s pressed close in the cargo hold is her mother’s friend, Saw. His head is tilted back against the bulkhead, mouth open slightly so that his breath rasps in his throat as he sleeps. The light in the hold is dull and she feels like she’s holding her head underwater, sounds around her both muted and deafening.
Her young mind can’t quite focus on the present. It keeps skipping over the last day - over and over, sometimes in the right order, sometimes jumbled. Playing on the beach. The ships overhead. I love you, Stardust. The man in white. Trust the Force. Her mother falling to the ground. The hatch.
Trust the Force, Lyra had said.
Lyra had spoken so often of the Force, and Galen would smile fondly at her in the same way he did when Jyn told stories about Stormie’s adventures on the beach.
Jyn had never quite understood it, the way her mother explained it. She tried following Lyra’s guidance of sitting quietly, focusing on only what she could hear and smell and feel. It never worked, her young mind too energetic to focus.
She starts to tremble, and fresh tears burn her eyes. She feels achingly lonely, with Saw, on this strange ship in the middle of space. Trust the Force. Panic grips her chest as she tries to swallow down a sob before it can escape. How could she trust in something she had never understood? Her mother may as well have said nothing for all the comfort Jyn has in those words.
But Lyra had explained the kyber crystal she wore - where it came from, what it was used for, how it worked with the Force in Jedi’s lightsabers - and so Jyn squeezes it tightly. She squeezes and concentrates as hard as she can, her knuckles turning white. The crystal feels warm in her hand and just as she is about to give up there’s the slightest shift in the air around her, as if there was a sudden draft. Saw jumps awake as if he has been prodded, and he wraps his arm around her and pulls her close to his comforting warmth. “It’s alright, child,” he mumbles as he falls quickly back into sleep, “You are not alone.”
Jyn instantly feels exhausted, and loses any shyness about resting her head against him. He is a stranger, but one her mother trusted, and that has to be enough. The kyber feels cool again as she loosens her grip. She thinks she feels her mother’s kiss on her temple as she slips into sleep.