CHAPTER NINE
( TRUST ME. )

TIME seemed to lose itself in the blankness of hyperspace. Minutes trickled into hours and before Kit could fight it her own exhaustion caught up with her, and she'd fallen asleep in the pilot's chair.

She didn't dream, her own exhaustion made sure of that. A fact which Kit was eternally grateful for. When she finally woke only a few hours had passed, and Kit found herself alone in the cockpit. Cassian was gone, and the rest of their crew — if it could even be called a crew — was in the main hold.

She drifted absently out the door to find the group of stowaways lounging in the hold. Jyn was curled up in the back corner, a distant look in her eyes that Kitra knew herself. Chirrut and Baze were also leaning against the back wall, and Cassian was hovering over the comm-system. But the person that caught her eye first was the Imperial pilot huddled in a heap against the shadowed wall.

He looked almost as bad as Kit felt, his swollen eyes searching the hold like he expected an attack at any second. She knew that Saw had a tendency to torture captives with his creature, Bor Gullet. At one point or another Kit had watched the interrogations, and she recognised the outcome well. Bodhi, the name drifted absently through her mind from the many wanted holo's strung up around Jedha.

He looked at her suddenly, his eyes gaining some clarity when he fixed them on her face. "You're Galen's daughter?" His voice was barely a breath of air, his wild eyes flickering once between the bulkhead behind her and back to her face.

Something caught in Kit's throat at the mention of her father, an old instinct rising up to warn her of his crimes. "You know him?" She asked.

"Yes." The pilot nodded once, shifting and inch closer to her, like he had some big secret to share.

Kit looked over to Cassian, who was too busy working over the comm's with K-2 to notice her or Bodhi, and then lowered herself so she was sitting beside the pilot, who flinched and scooted back into the shadows. She ignored the fear and leaned closer. "I'm listening."

"He said—" Bodhi's eyes seemed to glow with a reminiscent sense of fear as he ducked in a sharp breath. "He said I could get right by myself. He said I could make it right if I was brave enough and listened to my heart. Do something about it." The Imperial pilot's lips quivered like he wanted to stay more and went still, the final words barely breathing past his lips. "I guess I was too late."

Kit almost wanted to flinch at the words he'd told her. Her father sounded more like a hopeful fool than a Rebel infiltrator.

From across the cabin Jyn spoke up in a small voice, trying to reassure the pilot. "It wasn't too late."

"Seems pretty late to me," Baze grumbled, then went back to caressing his blaster.

Kit wanted to comfort the pilot as he hung his head in shame. But she was awful at comforting people. Her specialty had been in making them suffer. Probably a side-effect of Saw's training, she thought, and then flinched again at the thought of her adoptive guardian.

"No," Jyn's voice rose from the other side of the room, commanding the attention of even Cassian as he worked over the controls. "We can still beat the people who did this. We can still stop them."

Jyn's eyes went to Kit's for support, and Kit felt her own dark gaze harden under the scrutiny. "Our father's message," Jyn went on. "I've seen it. They call it the Death Star. But there's a way to destroy it."

Cassian's expression melted into a hardened look as he left his work, all emotion wiped from his features in a blink. Kit knew what the look meant; Cassian Andor didn't trust Galen at all. And Kit couldn't blame him. Apparently Jyn recognised the look on his face too. "You're wrong about my father," the older Erso told him. "You think he's still working for he Empire."

"Well he did build it," Cassian pointed out like it was the most incriminating piece of evidence against him. Which, Kitra conceded, it probably was.

"Only because he knew they'd do it without him." Kit spoke up and got to her feet. Cassian gave her a surprised look, like he couldn't believe she was actually going to side with Jyn on this. Kit ignored the surprise and locked eyes with her sister, giving her a small nod. Maybe it was wrong to trust the message. Maybe it was wrong to trust Galen. But right now it she saw no other options. "He sacrificed himself for the Rebellion. He set a trap inside the Death Star, and sent the pilot to warn us."

"Then where is it?" Cassian asked in an accusatory tone. All eyes went to Kit. "Where's the message?"

"It was a hologram." She responded dully, surprised by the hostility in Cassian's voice, which seemed miles away from the tone he was using only a few hours ago in the cockpit.

"You have the message, right?" Cassian continued without acknowledging the surprise in her eyes.

"Cassian," Kit warned him in a testy tone. "You don't have to trust Galen. But you told me you trusted me. And I know what I saw."

Cassian shook his head and swallowed deeply. "I do trust you, Kit. But I think that right now your judgement might be a little—" he looked at the others in the hold for a moment, "—biased."

"Because he's my father?" Kit demanded, ignoring the fact that they had an audience. When Cassian didn't say anything her irritation only expanded, and the younger pilot threw up her hands in irritation. Kit had spent years working past her family history, working to make a name for herself other than the 'daughter of Galen Erso.' And here was Cassian, the person she trusted most, rubbing the fact in her face. "So much for trust, right?"

"It's not about your father, Kit." Cassian told her gently, trying to ebb her growing anger.

"You're right, it's not about him. It's about me." She went on, refusing to let her anger subside. "You don't trust me!"

"It's not about whether I believe you or not!" Cassian blew up, his voice rising to challenge even her own temperament. Kit didn't shy away as he stalked towards her, his face hovering a few inches off of hers. The tension that burned between them was white hot, neither of the Rebel's backing down in the face of the other. The hold went silent, holding its breath as the two glared daggers into the others eyes.

"Dammit, Kitra, you think this entire operation revolves around you!" Cassian went on. "Well it doesn't! I can't authorise an attack against a super-weapon because it might have a weakness, because you thought you heard your father say it. Don't you get it, Kit? This is bigger than you and me. This is about the fate of the Rebellion."

Kit's eyes flared defiantly at the accusations, her hands curling into fists at her side. "If you don't think that I'm doing this for the Rebellion then you don't know a damn thing about me, Cassian."

"Well that's where you're wrong," Cassian said in a poisonous tone, "Because I know exactly who you are, Kitra. You spend so much time trying to make yourself something other than an Erso that you're blind to the fact that you let it define you."

"That's rich," Kit seethed back. "Coming from the Captain who's so deluded by his noble cause that he doesn't even realise that he's nothing more than a puppet on Draven's stings! You're parents are dead, Cassian, and no matter how many people you kill, or how many missions you survive, they are never coming back."

"Next time you want to call me a puppet take a good long look in the mirror, Erso. Because the only one who's being controlled by their past here is you." Cassian hissed, his voice reverberating through the entire hold. As soon as he'd finished the older Rebel clenched his jaw and spun on his heel, stalking deliberately from the room and into the cockpit.

"There's a 67 per-cent chance that he'll break something if he is left alone," K-2 said, followed by the audibly muffled sound of something blunt thumping against metal. "I should monitor him," K-2 continued and then left the room.

Kit's chest ached at the realisation that she'd probably destroyed one of the only good relationships she had left, the anger in her chest shattering and digging painfully into her ribs. There you go again, Kit, letting your anger ruin the only good thing you had left.

She wanted to scream, desperation clawing at her lungs, making it hard to breath. She felt herself sink back against and wall and slide down to her butt, burying her face in her hands. Bile rose up in the back of her throat, the acid sitting on her tongue and burning with every breath she took in.

Cassian might never forgive her. And for what reason? Because she chose to trust a man she hadn't seen in fifteen years over the better judgement of her best friend. Because every word he told her was the truth, even if she didn't want to hear it.

"Well, I believe you," Chirrut piped up from the other side of the room.

"I'll be sure to mention that to the Council when they ask me why they should take my opinion over the word of the entire Rebllion." Kit snapped back, ignoring the fact that the guardian had done nothing to deserve her anger.

• • •

I'M SORRY!

I didn't intend on turning this chapter into an argument but then I was writing it and it took its own twist, and then I couldn't see Kit reacting any other way ...