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"We seem to be alive."
Cassian's voice is thin and rasping. Hers, when she speaks, is worse.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes." Firmer, now. "We've been scalded with sea water, bashed with debris, and blasted with enough different kinds of radiation to keep us in bacta tanks for a month at least—but we're definitely not dead."
"Yet," she says. She listens to his breathing for a while; it keeps on going in and out, pained and rough but not stopping. Then she says, "So what do we do now?"
"I spotted what looked like settlements along the coast while we were coming in. If we can find one that's still there, maybe we can get help."
"That's a lot of maybe."
"Beats just sitting here."
She can't argue with that.
###
They walk . . . well, they stagger and stumble and, eventually, crawl . . . along the devastated shoreline for a day and a half before they come to a fishing village fortunate enough to have survivors. The boiling ocean sank the boats and killed all of the fish, and the wind from the blast knocked down most of the houses, but the comm center was built on high ground and its walls are reinforced concrete.
The acting mayor—previously the town clerk—has already put out a call for emergency aid, and rescue airspeeders are coming to take away the wounded. Jyn and Cassian get put into the long row of stretchers beside the landing pad. Nobody asks any questions.
"We've got more than one 'unknown female' and 'unknown male' on the list already," the clerk/mayor says. "Two more won't make a difference."
"Thank you," Cassian says.
"You might want to leave the gear behind, though," the clerk/mayor suggests. "It's kind of . . . distinctive."
By the time the rescue airspeeders come, Jyn and Cassian are Unknown Female #5 and Unknown Male #11, and most of their clothing and all of their weapons have gone away with the town's acting head of medical services—a skinny teenager who, like the clerk/mayor, attained the position by surviving when others didn't.
"Lot of that going around," Jyn mumbles—she's tired and hurting and glad to be lying down, even if it's on a stretcher waiting for evac. But she'd been a skinny teenager once herself, and pulls together enough energy to pass along some good advice. "Don't throw away the guns. You might want them someday. Or you can sell them, if you need the money."
"Yes'm," says the acting head of medical services. "Lots of stuff gets washed up on the beach here, and no telling where most of it comes from."
###
The rescue airspeeder takes them to the nearest Major Trauma Medical Facility along with the other injured survivors. The destruction of the Imperial data center by the Death Star had hit more than one small town along the coast; Jyn and Cassian aren't the only casualties showing up without ID.
They're loaded onto gurneys, and a harried-looking med-tech with a clipboard stands over them and asks, "Names?"
"Jorn Tomerod," says Cassian. If there's a hesitation, it's because the airspeeder flight didn't do anything good for his breathing. Jyn hopes that the Trauma Facility has enough bacta tanks for everyone—she doesn't think Cassian can wait. "And my friend there is Pel Monax."
The med-tech looks at Jyn. "Pel. Isn't that a boy's name?"
Jyn has no doubt that Cassian pulled both names off of some kind of Rebel Alliance Superspy List of emergency fake IDs. She swallows the urge to snarl, "What business of yours is it what kind of name it is?" and says, instead, "My father wanted a boy. Got me instead. So—"
The fit of coughing that ends her reply isn't faked at all—her breathing is worse than Cassian's, really. The med-tech writes their false names down on the clipboard and shoves it into the hands of the nearest orderly.
"Get them to the bacta tanks. Priority One."
###
They get out of the bacta tanks two months later. The social worker at the Trauma Facility presents them with temporary ID cards in the names of Jorn Tomerod and Pel Monax, and warns them that they have six months to provide either supporting documentation or sworn witnesses before the cards expire.
"In the meantime," the social worker says, "these'll put you onto the emergency food and housing list, so you won't starve to death while you're getting back on your feet."'
Six months, Jyn thinks, will be more than enough. The destruction of the Empire's planet-killer is still a prime topic of local conversation, and it sounds like the Rebel Alliance has finally gotten its act together and decided to actually fight for a change instead of sitting around and arguing about it.
She says as much to Cassian once they're safely free of the hospital and trying out the emergency food funds on their new ID cards. Two months in bacta, as it turns out, leave a person feeling adequately nourished, which isn't the same thing as not being hungry. The diner nearest the Trauma Facility advertises a Fast Meat Appetizer Platter (Serves Four); they order two.
"It's a tipping point," says Cassian, between mouthfuls of grilled sausage bits. "Before, they couldn't decide whether to go big or stay home—now they've got no choice."
"Good," she says. She's still pissed at the so-called Rebel leaders who'd rejected her father's hard-bought information in the name of caution.
"Maybe. We're going to lose some people over it, though."
"If they won't fight, we don't need them," she says. She thinks for a moment about what she's just said. "It sounds like the two of us are going back."
"It kind of does," agrees Cassian. He contemplates his appetizer platter for a moment before selecting a deep-fried winglet-of-something and swirling it in the accompanying dish of bitter-and-spicy sauce. "But we've got six months before these cards wear out, so we might as well take a little vacation first."
END