Star Wars: Rebel Rising(13)

Saw struck quickly, jabbing Jyn in the side before she had a chance to defend herself. Jyn nodded, accepting the defeat, then raised her truncheons again.

“What would it take?” Jyn persisted when Saw didn’t answer her.

“For what?”

She wasn’t sure if Saw was genuinely confused or dodging her question. He often got so focused on the task at hand he forgot about everything else. Papa had been like that, too.

“For some sort of organized rebellion to form. Something that could take down the Empire.”

Saw put his hands up, calling a pause in their sparring. He leaned against his staff. “It’s not like that,” he told Jyn. “It doesn’t matter how many people stand up against the Empire. It doesn’t matter how big a group it is.”

“Then what matters?”

“The kind of people who fight.” Saw watched her with his deep brown eyes. “If there’s really going to be some anti-Imperial alliance, they need a…” He flicked his hand as he searched for the word.

“A leader?” Jyn supplied.

“Yes, but not just someone giving orders,” Saw countered. “Someone the people believe in.”

Jyn frowned at the truncheons in her hands. “I don’t understand,” she said.

“It’s like I was telling you, with the droids and the clone armor,” Saw said, indicating the mock battlefield he used for Jyn’s training. “I tell you millions died in the Clone Wars, what do you feel?”

Jyn opened her mouth to speak, but Saw cut her off.

“You feel nothing, because you didn’t know any of them, did you?”

Jyn shook her head.

“But I tell you that my sister died,” Saw continued, “I tell you that Steela was the best part of me, and that she was going to change the world. Make it a better place. Hell, not just the world. The whole damn galaxy. She was stronger than any Jedi, stronger than the ‘Force,’ but that didn’t matter.” He sighed heavily, his eyes distant and sad. “I tell you that she died a hero. She saved a king and fought the enemy. But she was on the side of a cliff, and a gunship was shot down and crashed into it.”

Jyn gasped, a tiny sound that Saw didn’t hear.

“I tell you that I saw her, hanging on that rocky edge, her fingers gripping the stone. And there was a Jedi there. Oh, look at you. You got all hopeful at that. Didn’t do a damn thing. The Jedi tried to save her, sure, but she didn’t. Steela fell anyway. Fell to the bottom of the cliff, onto solid rock. Ever see what happens to a body that falls that far down onto stone? Bones don’t just break, they shatter .”

Saw looked at Jyn, but she didn’t think he saw her.

“And I tell you that I was the one who shot down the ship that crashed into the cliff where she had been. I tell you that, and you feel something, yeah?”

Jyn couldn’t move. Saw leaned over and rubbed the pad of his thumb across her cheek. It came away wet. She hadn’t even known a tear had leaked out of her eye.

“And for what? They said her death was the price paid for the freedom of Onderon. Her body was barely cold before the Republic turned into the Empire. And it all started again. Another rebellion. More war. More death. I was smarter that time. I didn’t make the same mistakes as I had when Steela was alive. Didn’t matter. Didn’t work. Onderon is under the Empire. And I’m here.”

When Saw was speaking, for a moment Jyn saw him the way he used to be. A starry-eyed young man with a dream of justice and freedom. He must have been so brilliant then. But that young man died when Steela did, and in his place was this bitter, angry fighter.

“The resistance against the Empire needs Steela,” Saw said. He searched Jyn’s eyes, waiting to see if she understood.

“More fighters like her?” The idealistic, the heroes who stand up in the face of certain death.

“They need more fighters like her to die like she did,” he growled. “The resistance needs a martyr. A tragedy. Something so horrific that people can’t help but stand up and fight, too. You understand?”

“They need someone they can believe in,” Jyn said, looking into Saw’s eyes. He nodded like he was glad Jyn was understanding. “Like the Jedi, during the Clone Wars.” It was impossible to study the galaxy without hearing something of the Jedi, and considering how much the Empire loathed even a mention of the religious cult, Jyn had assumed Saw would love and admire all Jedi.

Instead, he snarled.

“Don’t give them another thought,” Saw said, glaring. “Jedi think they can do anything, but where are they now? All dead. And before that? Sure, they helped. But not enough.”

He stared down at his hand, and Jyn thought he was looking at the long jagged scar that cut through the thin skin between his thumb and first finger. But he made a fist.

“They talked about the Force, the Jedi did,” he said in a lower voice. “Never understood what it was, but I saw it. It was like magic. They could move things with a wave of their hand.” He swept his arm out.

Nothing in front of him moved.

“But they couldn’t hold on,” Saw continued. “For all their power, they couldn’t hold on, not when it mattered.”

Saw stood and started pacing down the gauntlet of droid bodies. He punched one, sending it swinging from its noose, the clanking of metal against metal reverberating across the island. “That’s something neither side’s figured out yet,” he told the ground. “All you need is one good, solid tragedy, and the people will flock. Nothing unites people like that. If Idryssa wants to really rally people behind her, she needs to do it while standing on some graves.”