Jyn watched the fire crackle in the cool mountain air, its heat more than enough to keep him warm. Night had fallen and he now found himself alone with his thoughts. The last week had been difficult. While Reya now spent more time out of her room, she didn’t respond much to anybody except for Adrian. There was a certain tiredness about her that hadn’t been present for quite some time.

  He and the rest of the team first thought things would be alright soon and that Reya would go back to spending her days how she pleased, even if that meant spending an exorbitant amount of time around Adrian. Unfortunately, when she did manage to leave her room, all she did was either stare into space or blankly watch dramas on the holoscreen.

  Not the improvement they’d been hoping for.

  Now privy to what might be causing such an extreme reaction in Reya, Jyn did his best to avoid thinking about it too much. He hadn’t slept the night he’d first witnessed Adrian be subject to the purple chemical and he’d hardly slept since. Exhaustion was weighing on him just as much as it was Reya by that point.

  The back door opened, but he didn’t bother turning around to see who it was that was coming to join him. He figured it might be Rann, once again ready to rebuke him over his recent behaviour. As the sound of footsteps approached, he silently wondered how his life had come to be where it was now at.

  The figure paused behind him for a moment before speaking. “So you know,” Adrian said. There was no accusation or hostility in his voice as he spoke. Instead, simply a factual recounting of what he knew to be true. He took a seat in the chair next to Jyn’s.

  Jyn didn’t need to think too long about what Adrian was referring to. It was a topic he’d been studiously avoiding bringing up with his charge since he’d learned of it, but there was no point in hiding that he knew. “Yes,” he said simply. He cast a sidelong glance to gauge Adrian’s reaction but saw that there was none.

  “I thought your General wanted that information to be restricted to those who absolutely needed to know,” Adrian said. “Last I checked that person was only Tassie.” Adrian was aware that Jyn was in hot water with High Command and figured that might be the reason. “How come you learned of it?” he asked.

  “I pushed,” Jyn replied. “A little too hard. It’s why I couldn’t do much to overturn the orders about Reya’s next interview. They come directly from the Tribunal. Not even the General can casually change them, let alone a mere Captain.”

  “I’m not blaming you for the fact that Reya has to do another interview,” Adrian said truthfully. He knew that there was little Jyn could truly do in the face of his military’s command structure when his mission was being directly overseen by the Tribunal. Rather than be upset with him, he was impressed that Jyn would go so far to even try to influence the new orders to shield Reya from further harm.

  “Seems like everybody’s blaming me these days,” Jyn said bitterly. He turned to look at Adrian fully. “I’m truly sorry that my actions hurt Reya.” He knew an apology would never be enough to undo the hurt he’d caused her with his words even if he’d had no way of knowing what their impact would be, but that didn’t change that one was owed.

  Adrian’s gaze softened slightly. “You might be responsible for much of the tension and drama going on right now, but I don’t blame you in the slightest for this. You truly had no way of knowing what Reya’s trigger was. It’s true that you might have been the one to make her break down because you couldn’t control your temper, but that could have easily been anybody else, at any other point in time. It’s not your fault.”

  “It’s hard not to feel that way,” Jyn said glumly.

  “I know it is. Tell me, how were you able to learn about what truly caused her breakdown?” Adrian asked.

  “I made my case to the General, who pushed the matter on to the Tribunal directly,” Jyn replied. “Evidently, they agreed with it, although I feel they would rather I remain in the dark.”

  Adrian thought for a moment, thinking back on how Jyn had acted when around him the past week. Although he knew why the man was acting so off, it was still unsettling that he didn’t know what exactly Jyn had learned. “What did they tell you?” Adrian asked.

  Jyn’s expression faltered. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know now that I shouldn’t have pushed as much as I did, but how could anybody be prepared for what those chemicals do?”

  Understanding dawned on Adrian. “You saw my video,” he stated. Inwardly, he was fuming that the military would so casually release a video of him in such pain and suffering during that moment of vulnerability. His privacy had once again been massively violated. He was used to it by now, having had none whatsoever while being a test subject, but it still stung to know that it was an ongoing issue.

  “I did,” Jyn said quietly, his voice a whisper. “And I shouldn’t have. I will never unhear that. I will never unsee that. I did not know such a level of pain could exist.”

  Both men went silent, each one lost in their own thoughts.

  It was Adrian who broke it. “I can’t say I’m happy you saw,” he said. “I don’t want others seeing that. Seeing what they did to me. The gru’ul did terrible things to me. That was only a part of it.” Time and again, he’d been used as an experiment to refine and study the purple chemical. Being subject to it once was already one time too many, but he’d been exposed to it countless times as the gru’ul honed their cruelty to unprecedented levels.

  Jyn gave Adrian a long, searching look. “I need to know,” he started. “Is there any chance that those chemicals could be used against us? Against my team?” The thought of the chemicals being weaponized and used against his team — or anyone else — terrified him.

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  “Hell if I know. All the gru’ul from the facility are dead now,” Adrian replied. He chuckled humourlessly. Jyn chose to remain silent on the one, single prisoner they’d captured alive from the facility, knowing that its existence was top secret. Even to Adrian. “I just wish they’d suffered more for what they did, but I’m not complaining that the fuckers all croaked.”

  “What kind of suffering do you envision when you think of them?” Jyn couldn’t help but ask. The twisted, fervent look in Adrian’s eyes paired with his terrifying, toothless smile, sent alarm bells ringing in Jyn’s mind. There was something hidden beneath the expression that he couldn’t place but that startled him, nonetheless.

  “That the purple chemical had been used on all of them. Repeatedly. Amongst other things,” Adrian said. Jyn shuddered, unnerved that somebody could desire such suffering in another being. Yet, he couldn’t find it in himself to blame Adrian given how horrendous just a single video of it was.

  “You would truly subject another being to such pain?” Jyn asked, horrified.

  Adrian levelled Jyn a flat look. “They created it. On purpose. They knew what they were doing.”

  “It must be hard,” Jyn said sympathetically, “having gone through that, but I don’t think perpetuating the cycle is what —”

  “How dare you act like you know what that experience was like!” Adrian said, cutting Jyn off as his anger mounted. “You heard the allegories of pain Reya used to describe the feeling. Those were but a pale shadow to what it actually felt like.”

  Jyn gulped. “Her comparisons were disturbing, but surely they had some accuracy to them,” he said.

  “They were entirely accurate,” Adrian huffed. “Yet they left out so much.” His earlier anger deflated as he was once again reminded of his experiences. “There isn’t a word strong enough in any language that will ever capture such a feeling. The best Reya and I can do is make shallow comparisons and hope that the other person understands. But we both know nobody ever will.”

  Jyn watched Adrian undergo a gamut of emotions in the span of a few seconds before ultimately settling on a deep-seated sadness and well-hidden pain. But no matter how hard the man before him tried to bury it, he couldn’t keep it from being reflected in his eyes. They hinted at suffering beyond pale. Beyond anything Jyn knew even his worst nightmares would fall short of.

  “I have nothing to say to that,” Jyn said, slowly shaking his head. “I can’t claim to know what that was like. I never will. But I will never agree with your desire to inflict such suffering upon another.”

  “Then that’s something we’ll forever be in disagreement on,” Adrian replied, his eyes hardening.

  An uncomfortable beat of silence passed.

  Jyn hesitated, hating that he needed to ask his next question while knowing it was necessary. His mind flashed to when he asked Reya the same, so long ago. His words sickened him, but he spoke the anyway. “I need to know, Adrian. Can you tell me what happened to you?” he asked.

  “No,” came Adrian’s instant, firm reply.

  “This is bigger than just you!” Jyn argued. “What happened to you could be used against the team. Against Reya. We need to know if we want to keep everyone safe.”

  Adrian snorted, unable to help himself. “You’ve never cared about keeping us safe. I know you have your orders. You’re just trying to take advantage of the situation to squeeze something out of me that will be used against me later. As it was before and will remain in the future, the answer is no.”

  “Why?” Jyn asked, frustrated. Couldn’t Adrian see that the problem was bigger than just him? Everything they learned about the true nature of the facility would prevent it from happening again to another innocent person. “What is it that you’re so afraid of?”

  “That it’ll happen again!” Adrian shouted. “I’ve been used as a living experiment by two different species already! I don’t need to be used and studied a third time.”

  “We wouldn’t do that to you,” Jyn said defensively, angered by the implication that the a’vaare were no better than the gru’ul. That Adrian would even dare to compare them to those monsters enraged him. They would never perpetuate such pain and suffering. They weren’t animals.

  “You’ve done nothing,” Adrian snapped back. “Nothing to prove to me that you won’t use this knowledge against me. I can’t, Jyn,” he said, fear creeping into his voice as he spoke. “I can’t go back to being an experiment. Not again. Not when I’m finally free.”

  Even Jyn had the sensibility not to press any further. He knew forcing the issue would forever sour his ability to extract more information from the alien sitting beside him. He sighed. “I get it. Hopefully one day you’ll realize that we’re only trying to help you. We’re not the bad guys.”

  “You might not be,” Adrian acquiesced, “but to me, all of you are strangers. I don’t trust them. Not anymore.” After all that had been done to him, trust was something Adrian was short on. He didn’t know the Tribunal or Jyn’s General, but he didn’t need to in order to know they all had their own agendas.

  The two men lapsed into yet another uncomfortable silence, both of them content to simply stare at the fire for a moment. A thought occurred to Jyn, one that had been bugging him since the beginning of their conversation. “How did you know I found out about the chemicals?” he asked. “I’ve only told Tassie about it. The others aren’t allowed to know.”

  “Call it an educated guess,” Adrian said dismissively, unwilling to divulge just how good his hearing was. It would only lead to more uncomfortable questions that he would refuse to answer, upsetting both of them.

  “One hell of a guess,” Jyn grunted. “Was I that obvious?”

  “I could tell just how uncomfortable you were around me since you’ve learned,” Adrian replied. “You wouldn’t look me in the eyes, and when our gazes did cross, all I saw was a deep-seated pity. The exact same kind Tassie had when she first learned.”

  Jyn grimaced. “I thought I was being more subtle, but I guess I wasn’t.” He sighed. “Is there anything I can do?” Not even he could remain unaffected after having witnessed such cruelty inflicted upon another. Jyn might not like Adrian and what he represented, but that didn’t stop him from having basic decency and empathy in the face of such suffering.

  “There isn’t,” Adrian said softly. “What’s done is done. Nothing you do will ever make what happened better.” He regarded Jyn carefully and for the first time, uttered the words he never thought he’d say to the man. “Thank you for asking.” Adrian flashed a wan smile. “It’s good to know you’re not the man I thought you were.”

  Jyn frowned. “What kind of man do you think I am? I can’t sweep such immense suffering under the rug and pretend it didn’t happen.” He didn’t know whether he should feel insulted at the implications of Adrian’s statement. It seemed a given for any person to ask after someone’s wellbeing in such circumstances.

  “That you can even feel that way speaks volumes as to the kind of person you are,” Adrian said. “The ones who did it to me took pleasure in it. They wanted me to feel that pain. You don’t, even after the shit you’ve pulled.” Adrian knew that Jyn didn’t like him. It wasn’t his problem the man had issues, and there was little he could do to fix them. That Jyn was capable of empathy through his jealousy and scorn for Adrian after having learned of the chemicals was enough for him. All he could do was hope that Jyn would be more reasonable in the future with regards to his secrets.

  Adrian decided he’d had enough of the topic of conversation and got up from his chair. He left Jyn sitting by the fire as he’d found him, alone and in his thoughts once again. As he entered the house, he gave one last glance behind his shoulder to check on Jyn, but the man’s mind was far away, haunted by Adrian’s nightmares.

  Because now that he knew, there would be no going back.