Saga - OT Of No Tone (MMM Muppetational Quote Challenge; Young Jyn Erso, Saw Gerrera)

Author: Findswoman
Title: Of No Tone
Era: Saga–OT, about 13–12 BBY
Genre: Mush with some drama
Characters: Jyn Erso (age about 8 or 9), Saw Gerrera; mentions of Steela Gerrera, Lyra Erso, Orson Krennic, Anakin Skywalker, Ahsoka Tano
Summary: On her first night at the Partisan base after escaping from her home on Lah’mu, a young Jyn Erso has trouble sleeping, and Saw does what he can to help her.
Notes: Written for @Raissa Baiard ’s Most Sensational, Inspirational, Muppetational Quote Challenge, challenge #14 in the Monday Mush Mania thread. I love the quote I received: “There will be motion in the stillness, as there is music in the silence.” —Cantus the Minstrel, Fraggle Rock, “The Bells of Fraggle Rock”

The title is from a line from John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn”: “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; / Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd, / Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone.”

I thank @Raissa Baiard not only for the awesome prompt quote but also for beta reading.

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“I can’t sleep.”

“Still?”

“Yeah, still.”

Saw Gerrera turned his head and took another breath from his respirator—partly because he had to, partly so that the waifish brown-haired child standing in the common-room doorway couldn’t see him frown. He supposed he wasn’t surprised that young Jyn Erso was having trouble sleeping. Only yesterday she had narrowly escaped from her family’s home on Lah’mu after seeing her mother shot and her father taken prisoner by Orson Krennic’s troopers. Trauma, Saw knew, could do that to a person, and even a hardened guerrilla fighter like himself knew there was no trauma like seeing your own parents killed or taken before your eyes.

Still, had thought things might improve for the kid somewhat once they’d gotten her settled in at the base on Wrea. But they hadn’t. (And he sure as Hells wished they would, because he needed his sleep too.)

“What’s going on?” he finally said.

“Well… there’s this weird sound.”

“Weird sound?” That sounded dubious. Between being encased in meters of duracrete and being submerged several klicks below the surface of the ocean that covered this hemisphere of Wrea, the Partisan base had to be one of the quietest places Saw had ever been to in his life— and he had been to a lot of places. “What kind of weird sound?”

“I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. It’s just… a sound.”

“Hmm.” Saw knit his brow in thought. “Think it could be a bad dream or something?” (At least he sure hoped it was that. Bad dreams he could deal with. Steela used to get them all the time.)

“No!” Jyn retorted, stamping one foot. “It’s real! I know it’s real!”

Saw didn’t like that at all, but there wasn’t much he could say besides, “Okay… want me to come check it out?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Right, let’s go.” Saw got up— a slow, painstaking process with his heavy life-support armor and cybernetic leg— and followed Jyn back to the storage room at the far end of the hallway that he had been letting her use as sleeping quarters. He and the others had cleared out much of the junk when she’d arrived, but it was still far from empty, and far from tidy. As he walked with her down the corridor, he made a mental catalog of the remaining contents of the room, particularly those that could make some kind of noise. Had one of the old droid parts or power converters somehow activated or shorted out or something? Was one of the lighting tubes wearing out? Or, stars forbid, had a mynock gotten in there and decided to have a snack? Or— worse yet— were they dealing with some kind of intruder? Saw’s hand traveled, near-involuntarily, to the blaster he always kept at his side.

In the storage room, metal lockers and cabinets alternated with shelves crammed with old droid components, starship parts, energy packs, and an assortment of old electronic equipment in various states of repair lined the walls, though a few from the far wall had been removed to accommodate a mattress for Jyn. Beside it sat a small table and chair that had been moved in for her to use, and on the chair sat a small duffel of clothing and other necessities that the other Partisans had put together for her.

Saw looked around— and listened. He certainly couldn’t hear anything that sounded out of the ordinary. A quick scan of the shelves, and quick peeks inside a few of the lockers, confirmed that none of the old parts or components was behaving in an unexpected way. The two old-model lighting tubes that ran the length of the ceiling, while no longer new, had not yet reached the buzzing stage.

In short, everything was quiet— quiet with the usual eerie, profound quietness characteristic of a clandestine submarine installation. And for his own part, Saw had always kind of liked it that way, but there was no accounting for taste, of course…

Meanwhile, Jyn stood half beside him, half behind him, her questioning green eyes turned upward. “Well?”

“Sorry, I’m not hearing a thing,” Saw replied.

“But there was something! I know there was!”

Saw shrugged. “Hey, I didn’t say I didn’t believe ya. Just that I’m not hearing nothing. Maybe whatever it was just… left?” (At least, he certainly hoped it had.)

“Maybe, but… could you just check?”

“Check?”

“Yeah, like, just check around the room to make sure? In case something… weird is still there?”

“Jyn—”

“’Cause if it comes back I’m not gonna be able to get to sleep.”

Saw sighed. Apparently I’m not gonna be able to get back to sleep either, so… “All right. Tell you what. Why don’t we each take one side of the room and look around and see if we hear anything that way?”

“Okay.”

So Jyn went to one side— the side farthest from the door, near her mattress— and Saw went to the other, near the largest bank of storage shelves. He made his way alongside them, moving slowly (as he always did these days), listening closely, but still not hearing anything but the usual underground silence. So much of it, in fact, that he found his mind wandering: Y’know, I really gotta do something about the clutter in this place in case the Imps ever take it. Wouldn’t want them finding those old BlasTech power packs or that K2 droid module…

“There it is! It’s back!!”

Saw spun around. Jyn was standing beside the chair with the duffel bag, gape-eyed and petrified. He lumbered over as fast as he could, hoping his blaster was properly energized.

“Where is it? What is it?”

“Right here! Listen!”

So Saw listened. And—

“Yeah… I hear it now.”

Perhaps “hear” was not the right word. It was a sensation halfway between sound and touch, part both, part neither, as if something metallic— or maybe made of glass?— was scratching or sparkling or tingling the edge of his consciousness, barely perceptible yet somehow intensely... harmonious? And kind of eerie— but also kind of… pretty?

He still didn’t trust it, though. After a fortifying breath from the respirator, he approached the chair with the duffel carefully, one hand on his blaster. As he did, the sound— or sensation, or whatever it was— increased, sparking even more brightly in his ears and head.

“Huh. Sounds like it’s coming from in here,” he said, pointing to the duffel.

“In there? But how—“

“Dunno. Could be a tracker or something.” He really didn’t like that idea, because that would mean there was a traitor among the Partisans— but he kept that thought to himself. No point in scaring the kid even more. “Now you just stand back while I check this out, all right? I don’t wantcha to get hurt.”

“Okay…”

Slowly and carefully, Saw began to comb through the contents of the duffel. With each motion, with each item pulled out or moved aside, the strange scritching-scratching-sparkling-tingling sensation grew in volume and in pitch. No longer a single, sustained sound, it began to pulse, first slowly and then faster and faster, as if resonating with something. Saw took that to mean it was near.

“Let’s see here…” Ting. Ting. Ting. “Think we’re getting close now…” Tingting. Tingting. Tingting. Tingting. “Almost there…” Tingtingtingting. Tingtingtingtingting. Tingtingtingtingtingting…

“And… THERE! GOT IT!”

NGEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

He pulled an object from the bag and held it up. Just as he did, a new sound cut through the eerie, ethereal metallic pulsing— Jyn’s voice.

“It was that?!”

“Er… I think so.” Saw looked at the object he was holding up— a small, unassuming piece of translucent gray-white crystal hanging from a leather cord. “What is it?”

“That’s— that’s—” Jyn’s voice wavered as she continued. “The kyber necklace from Mum. She gave it to me when she told me to… run away, you know. She told me not to take it off, but… I had to earlier, when I took a sanisteam, and… I guess I forgot to put it back on.”

“Here, you do that.” Saw handed the necklace back to Jyn, feeling no small relief as its high-pitched tingling began to recede at last. He had questions galore about this necklace, which had made more noise than any piece of jewelry had any right to make— but now didn’t seem like the right time. If it had been a gift from the kid’s poor murdered mother, she needed it back.

“Thanks.” Jyn held the necklace up to her ear for a few moments. “I didn’t know it did that. But I guess Mum used to say that if you listened to kyber crystals, you could hear the Force singing to you, something like that. Maybe… that’s what it was.”

Saw took a breath from his respirator, unsure that he was up for a conversation about this apparently musical crystal necklace and how it might actually be the sound of the Force. He vividly remembered Generals Skywalker and Tano talking that way back in the Clone Wars days, and as a practical man he’d always been a bit dubious— especially given the way things had ended up. But ignoring the poor kid didn’t seem like the right thing to do, either, so he offered a simple “Yeah, sure, maybe.”

“It’s kind of… pretty, kind of. Kind of like… little tiny bells far away or something. Don’t you think so?”

“Yeah, kind of.”

And it wasn’t a lie: now that it was no longer right next to him, Saw couldn’t help but agree that there was something soothing and engaging— and yes, even “kind of pretty”— in the crystal’s mysterious and barely perceptible chiming sounds-that-were-also-sensations. Soothing, in particular, might not be a bad thing for this kid given all she had been through in the past rotation and a half.

With that in mind, he added, “Hey, think you'll be all right now?”

“Yeah, I think so. Good night.”

“’Night, kiddo.” Saw gave Jyn a pat on the shoulder and left the room.

As he limped down the duracrete hallway back to his own quarters, the nocturnal, underwater silence of the Partisan base seemed even more silent than usual. Again the stillness set his mind wandering— this time to all the things he could have said to Jyn to try to comfort her, things he hadn’t thought of at the time because he wasn’t used to having a kid to look after. He could have told her that the strange sounds of the crystal might be a way she could remember her mother. That maybe she hadn’t heard them before because things had been so rough and stressful in the last day and a half, and she hadn’t had a chance to simply rest and relax yet. Or that if she was ever feeling scared or sad or alone, maybe the sound of the crystal would give her comfort and strength— that kind of thing.

Saw stopped for a moment, wondering if he should go back and try saying some of these things to Jyn. He decided not to.

For one thing, the kid needed her sleep. And for another, he was sure she’d figure it out on her own soon enough.

fin

Spoiler: Notes

Lah’mu (the planet on which Rogue One opens)
Wrea outpost
Partisans