Rogue One- Alternate Ending

Chapter 4

~Cassian~

My eyes flicker open expecting to see day light and instead are met with the dull glow of the electrical light on the ceiling of our cell.

I register a light pressure on my arm and roll over to see Jyn still sleeping peacefully, using my shoulder as a pillow; her features bearing none of the pain they where subjected to earlier.

Jyn looks younger asleep, her face seems to soften and her features become less sharp- something in the hard set of her jaw has relaxed.

She looks like a girl asleep, not a warrior or unstoppable rebel, just a person. There's nothing delicate about her but at the same time she seems so broken.

Stirring slightly, Jyn mutters something in her sleep and rolls over away from me. I push myself up on my arms and notice an try of food and to metal cups of water.

Jyn starts thrashing, it's all I can do to leap of the two bunks we pushed together last night before she flings out her arms violently and jolts awake with a scream.

I'm by her side in seconds and clutching g her shoulder as she retches against the bed, coughing up nothing after the lack of food we've been given.
That reminds me of the tray sitting by the cell door and I grab one of the water glasses and pass it to her. She just shakes her head and curls in on herself clutching her knees to her chest as I'd she might throw up.

"Promise you won't leave me," she says after a pause- looking at me with a strange look in her eyes.

"I'm not going anywhere," I say, with a small smile for her. "I promise."

Jyn smiles weekly and throws herself on me, wrapping her arms and nearly strangling me with a hug.

I have to guess what her nightmare what about because I know she won't tell me; she probably dreamed of Skarif or her parents dying.

My thoughts are cut short by Jyn releasing me and looking at me with bloodshot eyes.

"I dreamt that we where on Skarif again and... it started of well, we'd just got the plans but you where unconscious- somehow I knew you where alive though. I'd transmitted them but Krennic came up and you shot him but in the dream you missed."

Surprise at her telling me this must register on my face because I'm not used to her starring anything; she likes to shoulder problems on her own even if she knows the might break her.

An image flashes into my mind of a beaten and bloody Jyn with Conan standing above her with a whip. All I remember is screaming for them to hurt me instead and Jyn may not know this but it was my form of torture.

July continues; "You missed the shot but that gave me time to draw my blaster when Krennic..." she pauses and inhales as if she's trying not to cry.

"Krennic shot you, and you left me like everyone else. You left me."
She finished with a sharp intake of breath.

I move my shackled hand to stroke a string of hair from her face and try to reassure her.

"I'll never leave you, not like the others," I say, hoping just can keep my promise.

I was captured and retrained by the rebels, I was taken away from everything I knew. It was a better life and I'm glad I was taken, k-2SO was one of my only friends in the alliance but the empire was never home. The rebellion was a cause I believed in.

Jyn just nods at my promise and I realise she doesn't believe me.
Why would she? When people have made these promises before and then left her to be strong and forced her to endure things someone ten times her age and experience would have never been able to face.