In another life, you get a medal, a commendation, and a few weeks of vacation you won’t take. Princess Leia does the honors, every inch of her at war with itself, the upward quirk of her lips almost overwhelming the ceremony’s sedateness. This isn’t a celebration. There’s still a Death Star to destroy, but you’re alive, Jyn is at your side, and your team is intact. Your team. To you, it might as well be.
You’ve never had a team before despite leading so many into battle, and now you know why.
This is what you were always meant for.
-
In another life, you succeed at killing Galen Erso with a shot to the back of the head, a shot that cuts clean through his skull and strikes Director Orson Krennic, too. A lucky shot. Lady Physics is on your side tonight, a rare thing for you, who have thought yourself cursed sometimes with unclean kills and misery. You’ve done your job, but it’s not a win and you’re sick as Jyn climbs onto the landing pad and scurries toward her father, unheeding of the firestorm blazing around her, red green red bolts striking and striking the ground around her.
-
In another life, Jyn retrieves the hologram with her father’s message and convinces the Council that it’s worth their time to attack the Citadel Tower on Scarif. When you are rescued and K-2 is not, you find it hard to breathe. When Jyn’s hand wraps around yours on the bridge of the Tantive IV, only the two of you left, you pull away. The ship escapes just ahead of a Star Destroyer that bears a striking similarity to the Executor.
When you reach Yavin, you take the first mission Dodonna will give to you and the next and the next.
-
In another life, there is no first Death Star and Galen Erso never studies kyber crystals. He homeschools Jyn and when she is old enough, she comes to the Rebellion with his blessing and a skill with weapons that might match yours one day. She sits with you in the commissary because she’s alone and you’re alone and she needs no better reason to barge into your life. You kiss her while the carcass of the Empire’s great hope burns in Endor’s atmosphere six years after that first night. It’s over, so you hold her close; you never let go.
-
In this life, you fall heavily into the sand of one of Scarif’s beaches even with Jyn a steady presence at your side, her hands never straying. You never imagined destruction could be this beautiful. But you know this is the last time this weapon will be used and so you allow yourself a moment’s morbid comfort in that before facing something more genuinely beautiful, more worthy of your regard. You turn toward Jyn, the light of that destruction reflecting in her eyes, unafraid in these final moments, and—
—you wouldn’t have it any other way. Not now.
You’ve won.