CHAPTER EIGHT
( ORPHAN. )

ORPHAN. Kitra hated the word and, even worse, the title that came with it.

The first time Kit had been orphaned was fifteen years ago on a farm on a small planet called Lah'mu. She had watched, or rather heard, for Jyn had been covering her eyes, her mother shot by Death Troopers and watched her father abandon her for the man who had executed the order.

The second time had been fifteen years later on the backwater moon of Jedha, when she watched the weight of an imploding mountain crush the man who'd raised her, the man who had changed the course of her life just by opening the hatch that had concealed her from the Empire.

Kitra Erso was alone again.

But then again, maybe she wasn't. Maybe she had never been an orphan to begin with. Galen Erso was alive. Not the Galen who had taught her how to sew seeds on Lah'mu, and not the Galen who has abandoned her to collaborate with the Empire. But a new Galen. The Galen that whispered to her in a cave in flickering blue light; my love for them has never faded. It was the same man who logic had told her didn't exist, couldn't exist, beneath the appearance of the Imperial slave he was presented as.

Gently, Kitra curled her arms around her knees and tucked them into her chest. Her position in the pilot's seat made the task difficult, but she hardly had enough care to register the hard metal digging into her back over the sound of her own thoughts. She knew that she should have gone back to the main hold, contacted the Rebellion, spoken to Jyn, anything but sit here and wallow in the drowning black-hole of her own subconscious. But every time she thought she had the strength to stand her limbs wouldn't fulfil the task.

"Hey," a soft hand touched her shoulder. Kit didn't have to look up to know it was Cassian behind her, his touch delicate and light, like he was sure she would crumble if he held her too tight.

"Hey," she whispered back, resting her chin on her knees.

Cassian shifted his stance to kneel in front of her, his dark eyes searching hers. But they weren't filled with pity like she had expected them to be, which she was grateful to him for.

"We're setting course for Eadu," he told her instead as he took a seat in the co-pilot's position and began to flick through the controls.

Kit knew the answer to her question before she'd thought of it, but asked it anyway. "Is my father there?" She wanted to flinch at the sound of her own cracked voice. She hated this gaping anxiety that had opened up in her chest like the hole on Jedha's surface.

Cassian nodded quietly and turned his chair to face her. He didn't say anything. He didn't have to. Three years of companionship taught him enough to know that Kit only talked when she had something to say. And even if she had nothing to say now, his presence was enough to comfort her.

She wanted to speak to him. Wanted to tell him every word her father had said to her. The Death Star, the planet-killer, had a weakness. Her father had instilled the weakness. It was the voice of the four year old girl; before the Rebellion and Saw and the Empire. It was the girl who trusted her father with every cell in her body, filled with hope and trust and light. There was a chance to defeat the Empire.

But there was another voice, the sixteen year old Kitra who was trapped underneath a collapsed building, that told her that trusting him was a mistake. That there was no hope, no Galen Erso, no Rebellion.

The problem was she didn't know which voice to trust.

And then, from the silence, she spoke. "Do you trust me?" She asked in a small tone, the kind of tone that told Cassian she already knew the answer.

"With my life."

"I don't know who I trust."

It was the kind of statement that should have insulted him, but didn't. Cassian knew when he befriended Kitra that her trust was damaged, and that no matter how much she loved him or worked with him that Kitra Erso had been broken beyond repair. But it didn't bother him, because he knew when it came down to it that she would give her life without hesitation, the same as he would do for her. Kit continued to speak through the silence, "Everyone I ever trusted left me; my father, Saw, Jyn. I don't want to lose you too." Her lips quivered on her last words, and she blinked hard against the tears pooling in her eyes. "I can't."

"Hey," Cassian reached out and grabbed her hand from her knees. Her skin should have been soft and unblemished, like a regular nineteen-year-old girls. But instead it was calloused and cold, burn marks scarring her palms and knife wounds winding up her wrists from years of rebellion. She had seen to much, trusted too much, and lost too much. The though of ever losing her make Cassian's chest ache, "You will never lose me, Kit. I promise."

Kit shook her head and looked down. "Promises don't mean a lot when they're broken so often." She whispered softly.

Cassian moved off his chair to take the smaller girl in his arms. She complied without hesitation, her knees melting away so that she could wrap her arms around his neck. The two of them sank onto the ground, still wrapped firmly in the others embrace. She fit so perfectly into his side, her face buried into his jacket, the carbon-scored scent on the leather comfortingly familiar. She could hear his heavy heart beating through his chest and shifted to look up at him, her quivering lips a few tedious inches from his.

There was the four year old Kit in the back of her head, screaming at her to tell him that Galen Erso had a plan. And there was the Kitra who had lost everything. She wanted them both to shut up, but every time she closed her eyes all she saw was the flickering blue Galen Erso in the cave on Jedha.

So she fixated her open eyes over Cassian instead, and drowned out the voices listening to his gentle breath whispering past his lips and beard. She could feel his chest rising and falling beneath her hand, his muscles shifting beneath her fingertips as he adjusted to take her weight.

He was deliriously close. For so long Cassian had been the only thing saving her from the dark that pressed in around her. He had been the one to take the shattered sixteen year old girl with nothing and rebuild her.

She felt herself leaning forward subconsciously, her gentle lips barely grazing his. His were smaller than she had imagined, and dry and cracked from the cold Jedha atmosphere.

"Kit ..." the older man began, his warm breath brushing across her cheeks and her nose as he pulled back.

"Just kiss me ..." she pleaded softly, her fingers winding around the back of his neck. Cassian complied wordlessly, his chest leaning against hers. The voices were gone now, replaced by the rapid beat of her heart in her ears. Cassian tilted his head so that his lips would find every inch of hers, one of his hands moving from her back to her stomach, igniting a plethora of butterflies in her chest.

But then he seemed to come to his senses again, a sharp breath passing his lips as he pulled away from her. "I can't ..." he told her breathlessly.

"What?" She whispered, "Why?"

"You're hurt, Kit," Cassian told her softly. "You're grieving and if we do this now then you might wake up tomorrow and wish you hadn't. I don't want you to regret this."

"I won't." She insisted.

"You don't know that." Cassian sighed quietly, his hand moving to grasp her wrists, unwinding them from his neck. He held her hands in front of her, his warm and calloused and hers cold.

Kit clenched her jaw, a spark of anger burning out the butterflies that had resided there. She wrenched her wrists out of his grip and clambered to her feet. "If you didn't want this you could have just told me."

Cassian grabbed her arm before she could leave, pulling her back to meet his eyes. "It's not that," he said quickly. "I just don't know if I could live with myself if I knew that I'd taken advantage of you."

Kit rolled her dark eyes, "Always the noble man, Andor." She quipped. But her anger was already beginning to ebb. She hated the way he could control her like that.

Cassian smiled and pulled her back against his chest, planting a chaste kiss into her hairline. "Someone's got to be."

• • •

You didn't think that she'd get the guy that easy did you? Don't worry though, there'll be plenty more Kit and Cassian to come ;)