Chapter Text
The signal comes over the old radio during her midday break, and Cinta is torn. (Not about taking the mission - never about taking a mission, and she flexes her hands to break the rusty, restless feeling she gets when she is inactive too long.)
But worried because she knows that Vel will be worried and unhappy about this, but she settles for a compromise.
She’ll talk to her face to face before leaving. She knows Vel will take her own midday break and meal soon once she sifts through the current roster of new recruits.
She has time. Some time.
XxX
“You’re going?”
Cinta nods. “They wouldn’t have messaged over this channel if it wasn’t urgent and….”
“And Cassian isn’t back yet…” Vel finishes for her while her eyes gaze through her for a moment.
“Ghorman is a mess.”
“I know.”
“You’ll be careful? And you’ll be back?”
Cinta makes it a rule to no longer make promises she can’t keep. At least not to Vel, who… has been through enough, so she nods. “I’ll try my best, but-“
“The mission comes almost first.” Vel smiles sadly at her. “I know, but I’ll take it.”
They kiss, foreheads pressing, hands linked palm to palm, and Cinta heads off to request permission to use a small easy-to-miss transport. She lies about the reason of course and knows Vel will do her best to cover for her.
XxX
The meeting spot is new and old at the same time. Cinta does not remember the last time she was needed in Coruscant, but she waits until dusk before approaching the noisy underpass after spending three hours observing from a hidden spot for any cameras or suspicious onlookers.
“Kami.”
She knows it’s bad when both Luthen and Kleya appear as if from thin air within seconds of her own arrival. The fact that she can see the subtle tension in Kleya’s face and posture is telling, and Luthen is restless.
She nods without saying either of their names even as Kleya equally silently hands over a false ID, the info packet containing the details of her identity, and a press pass.
For the Senate.
Immediately, her warning bells go off.
“We need you for an extraction early tomorrow morning. The person you’re getting must make it out - by any means necessary.”
Cinta already has an inkling of which Senator it will be, and she had already tacked on the any means qualifier herself.
She never wants to see that broken, empty void in Vel’s eyes again.
“Any other details I should know?”
“Only that if you fail, it… it all comes down.” Kleya was always the master of quiet understatement, and Cinta appreciates that.
She has seen Yavin, and she had been with Luthen long before. For the first time in a while, she feels the rush of adrenaline steadily churning through her. She’s all too aware of the stakes already.
“Unfortunately, we’re short on specifics. It’s hardly ideal, but all we can do is try. We don’t know if she’s speaking, or what she’ll say, or how they’ll react. All we know for sure is that there is something wrong with Bail Organa’s team… However, knowing her, she will likely make that speech tomorrow, exit plan cemented in place or not. After which, she’ll need to be grabbed as quickly as possible. We have one person who knows the building well who may be able to assist you, and of course, Mothma knows the building.”
Luthen looks like he wants to interject with his concerns, but Cinta nods and immediately turns away to begin making other preparations. She will not fail here. She cannot - for more than one reason.
It will be good to pay off the debt, even if the other party never considered it a debt.
XxX
Cinta is ensuring her blades are well-hidden and forcing herself to put the blaster away - after checking it twice and cleaning it herself once when she finally allows her mind to drift back - when Vel had taken her back to Coruscant in desperation. The first time she met Vel’s cousin, the Senator.
(Not to her doorstep of course, but to the slum-level clinic staffed with a sympathetic physician who was quietly supported by one of the Senator’s many charitable foundations.)
1 year ago, 3 BBY
It had been a close call. TOO close. The twice-cursed son of a Bantha hadn’t followed orders, and Cinta almost dies as a consequence, and wouldn’t that have been unfortunate, after it took her so long to be honest to Vel?
Vel’s barely restrained rage is more terrifying than if she had immediately beaten the boy. Instead, they pull the rest of the run a person short after shuffling Cinta immediately into the getaway truck.
The rest of the heist goes smoothly, thankfully, and after a tongue lashing to last a lifetime, Vel’s complete attention shifts to Cinta. Cinta finds that she tolerates that change in focus – that distraction better now. Accepts it more fully in her heart that Vel truly cares and counts her blessing that she hasn’t ruined it all with her previous foolish callousness.
They forego the original plan to check in at the local hotel, and after cleaning and bandaging the wound in her gut… they finally pause.
Vel’s hands are shaking. “I can’t find the source of bleeding, but it’s slow, and I’m not sure how long the clotting solution I poured in will hold.”
Normally, the blaster wounds cauterize on entry, so this is unfamiliar ground for both of them.
Cinta reaches out - despite the pain from stretching her abdominal muscles - to still her hands. “It’s ok. You did good.”
Vel meets her gaze before glancing back down at their clasped hands and squeezes back tightly. She bites her lip, and Cinta knows she’s thinking hard.
“You need better though.”
She locks eyes with Cinta again and nods once as if she has decided something.
“We need to get you into some civilian clothes, and then… we head to Coruscant.”
Cinta’s eyes widen despite herself. She knows she’s looking at Vel as if she’s lost her mind (and can she be blamed for that?).
“Do you trust me?”
Cinta doesn’t hesitate. “With my life.”
“Then I have someone who can help us. Out of network… sort of.”
It’s later, when Cinta’s pain tolerance is tested anew on the transport carrying them to Coruscant, that she gets to truly take the time to think. In a person prone to descriptive language, maybe they may have called the entire experience torture, but she feels anchored - in ways she hasn’t since the Empire stripped her of everything except her life and name - between the pain and Vel’s hand which has not let go since she first grabbed hold after getting Cinta upright.
Vel’s leg has been bouncing against hers, and she settles their clasped hands on her knee to get her to stop.
Vel turns to look at her before shifting her gaze to their hands again. “It’s my cousin.” Another decision made.
“You trust her.”
Vel smiles with a soft certainty then - with love. “With my life, and more importantly... with yours."
Cinta nods, because how else can she respond to that confession? They fall back into a tense but shared silence.
Once they land, Vel sends a quick message via their encrypted comm link - even though it is quickly approaching the middle of the night, and Cinta almost jumps with surprise when the response comes almost instantly. (She blames the pain and fatigue - even if the meds have taken the edge off, or maybe it is because of the morpha that things feel so fuzzy.)
Vel seems to sense her startling and rolls her eyes for Cinta’s benefit. “Suffering from insomnia as ever - although I am thankful for it tonight. Come on.” The fondness in her tone says everything her words do not. Cinta perks up at attention. Clearly, this is a family member that Vel cares a lot about, and Cinta is unable to deny her curiosity. Vel rarely discusses her family, and all Cinta knows is that she is privileged enough to make her own choices with relative freedom, and that she finds Chandrilan customs suffocating. At least focusing on this distracts her from the growing gnawing, burning pain in her gut.
They head down into the bowels of the city until Vel turns down an alley not dissimilar to all the others they’ve previously passed by. She’s moving with confidence while referring every so often to her comm link but altering their pace based on Cinta’s condition.
Suddenly, they arrive at a door. It is impossible to look inside the building as there are no windows, but the dim lights above the door reveal partial writing that’s been mostly scratched off. Vel nods at what she sees and immediately begins pounding at the door. Three long loud knocks with her fist, a pause, and then two softer taps, and repeating until there is groan of rusting hinges that open, and a pale, ghastly face appears.
Vel gives pause before venturing hesitantly… “What is… 12 raised to the 9th power?”
The Givin on the other side of the door chuckles before answering, “Hmm… the good senator has finally gotten us into exponentials… I believe that should be 5.15978… with 10 to the 9th power…”
While he is spouting what seems to be gibberish to them, Vel has Cinta through the door. Cinta clocks the mention of a senator however and immediately begins connecting the dots, and the anxiety churning in her gut spikes up by several levels.
“They are going to kill us if we put… her at risk for this.”
Vel’s eyes burn into her own. “No, these are choices we are constantly making, and I”ll be damned if I let them dictate what level of ris-…” but her eyes widen mid-statement.
“Is she your injured pet bird?”
Cinta twists to catch the source of the soft, melodic voice – her hand reaching for her missing blaster, and regrets it immediately as she gasps and tilts forward as the fatigue and pain finally overwhelms her threshold of tolerance (and… she suspects that the morpha has finally worn off fully).
Skeletal hands catch her immediately. “Come, we must bring her to the surgery. I need to see what I’m working with.”
She feels Vel’s familiar and comforting grip and support on her other side… and then the world fades.
XxX
She has never quite gotten the full story from Vel about what happened afterwards, as she would start chuckling, shake her head, and walk away each time.
She knows that she’s part of the reason she and Vel ends up on Yavin when she recovered enough to leave the clinic - playing different roles but still fighting for the rebellion.
It has been… an adjustment, but Cinta has always been adaptable. It is why she has always been such a good agent – and that is not her pride speaking. She can appreciate that what they had with Luthen: a guerilla force of disparate agents and spontaneous militias that were necessary and important as the resistance has been building… igniting, but here… On Yavin, they are building a legitimate naval and military counterforce. Still too small by far, but a start.
All she knows is that she owes that woman her life, and that the rebellion owes more to her than anyone will ever know or fully appreciate. That she’s the last of Vel’s family (that she cares about at least - that she loves).
Any one of those things would have made her willing to sacrifice everything to make sure she’s safe. But altogether, Cinta knows that she would lay down her life first before she would allow herself to fail. She sets a timer for pre-dawn the next day to give her plenty of time to travel from safe house to the Senate.