The City posts

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[To be linked to the game comm]

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[fulcrum3]

He breathe-laughed, this one very nearly voiced. "You're right. I could never come up with the name 'Sprinkles'."

A hesitation. "For the rest… there could be some wish-fulfillment there. All I wanted on that beach was for you to live. If you've been happy."

[nextchance]

If you're happy, Jyn...

There was no way he could have known about that part of her father's message. His not having seen it had been a point of contention, all those years ago, one of those if onlys she'd rattled off in her head earlier. It was the part that most stuck with her, though, now twofold painful: first, because when she'd initially heard it, she had never once been happy, then, here, because she had found happiness for a little while and then lost it. The former, as it turned out, was infinitely preferable to the latter. At least then, she hadn't known what she was missing. At least she hadn't yet been foolish enough to let herself believe that was something a person like her could ever have.

It cut just as deeply now, not least because it was a statement that expected an answer rather than a recorded hologram. "You aim higher than I do," she settled on in response. She didn't know how to say if she had been happy or not. This, being true, seemed like the best way of handling it. "I'm here. I'm alive. And it's not a bad life. I never really thought I'd see what a world without war was like."

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Born in prison, early childhood on Lokori… (her file, again.) They'd both been in the war since first memories. Between the Clone Wars and the Rebellion there had supposedly been a period of peace, but those like Jyn and Cassian had lived the reality that unofficial actions never stopped and it was really all the same war.

"A city without war, at least," he said. They still didn't know why the city was cut off from everywhere else. To Cassian's mind, of course, the first suggestion would be planetary disaster. "I think I'm ready to see more of it now. If it's not too late to get started."

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"No, let's do that," Jyn agreed, letting go of one of his hands so she could start walking again, this time toward the path that led into the city proper. It was selfish, far too much so, to be drinking in whatever minor contact she could get. What was more, she would probably hate herself for it in short order. As she'd thought a few moments ago, having a thing and then losing it was infinitely harder than never having it at all, and she'd kept so many of these feelings buried for so long that she'd almost forgotten what they were like. She was only going to get herself hurt like this.

That still didn't stop her.

"You said to tell you something you couldn't make up," she added, mostly for the sake of not lapsing too much into silence. The last thing she needed right now was to be alone with her thoughts. "Want to hear a little about the ship? That's definitely couldn't make this up territory."

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"Yes, definitely." His fingers again curled with hers. It felt so natural to be touching her, health and reason restored, while not touching felt like the distraction, like too little air. They fell into easy pace with each other, joined hands gently in aid. "Why a YT-freighter, of all things?"

[nextchance]

"Well, there weren't exactly a lot of options," Jyn deadpanned, then shot him a wry smile. "As you may have noticed—" With her free hand, she gestured toward the empty sky above them. "—Not much air traffic here." That had been one of the strangest things about it, in her earliest days here. The resulting quiet was almost unnerving.

"So, the ship," she continued, "the Millennium Falcon, which is maybe the stupidest name for a ship I've ever heard. Apparently, some time after us, Leia got married, and the ship was her husband's? But that's still not how I wound up with it."

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"Leia was here?" Was this place predominantly populated with people from their Galaxy—people he knew? It was actually an alarming thought, because it went back to suggesting his own imagination or death. …Of course, someone from their Galaxy must have ridden the freighter in…

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"...Well, yes," Jyn said after a beat, brow furrowing slightly, as if surprised by the fact of it. She wasn't, of course. She'd been the one to find Leia when she first arrived; that was how she'd learned of Alderaan. It was just tangential to the story of the ship as she was telling it. But in the face of Cassian's reaction, she didn't want to move on too quickly, instead giving it a chance to sink in. "A while ago. And not for very long. Ship was already here by then."

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He wasn't sure if he needed to sit down or keep on walking. He decided anything else was negotiable as long as Jyn kept holding his hand. He kept walking but turned more to her as they went. "Please tell me everything."

[nextchance]

"I'm working on it," Jyn replied, the words meant as reassurance rather than a retort. With anyone else, it probably would have been the other way around. All of this was a lot to begin mentally sorting through even without adding her years of history into it. She was likely overcomplicating things by getting into it now, but having started, she couldn't very well back away. She would just have to push her way through it, however clumsily.

"The ship got here with a girl named Rey. From maybe... I don't know, thirty-some years ahead of us. Still not how I got it. When I told you it passed through a lot of hands, I wasn't kidding."

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He nodded, intently listening. When she paused like she needed his help to sort through the chaos, he said, "So it's not just us. Time is… not a factor. I suppose that only makes sense when space isn't. You can't break one without breaking the other. Rey have any relationship to Leia?"

[nextchance]

"Time is very much not a factor," Jyn agreed with an emphatic nod, grateful -- unsurprised -- that he'd managed to put it more succinctly than she could. "And... sort of? But not when she got the ship." Around here was where her knowledge of everything got fuzzy. Whatever information she'd managed to collect was all scattered, and nothing she ever expected she would have to recount to someone else. She especially wouldn't have expected to tell him.

"From there, it went to a few others. Leia's... future husband? He was here for a while, too. I didn't really know him. Back to Rey. When she disappeared, to her friend, Poe. And after him, to me."

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Jyn was speaking as if this was all so casual, but gigantic things peeked out from behind the short words. Things that made the hairs stand up on Cassian's neck.

"Hang on." This time, he stopped walking. He turned to her fully. Like her, he strove to seem calm, but Jyn would be able to feel the pulse quicken in his wrist. "'When she disappeared…'? And where was Rey while Leia's future husband had the ship?" It would be nice to think, in the interim, she'd just gotten an apartment in the city… but as someone, himself, who'd made a secret hideout in the ship that had kidnapped saved him, long after it was spaceworthy… you don't just give that away.

[nextchance]

Again, Jyn mentally swore. She was getting this all wrong, and while that, too, wasn't surprising in the slightest, she was still frustrated with herself for it. He deserved a proper explanation, someone to go over all of this with him in a way that made sense, at least as much as something like this could.

"It's... a thing," she said, mouth twisting into a frown, her expression apologetic as she looked up at him. "The way people show up here, seemingly out of nowhere? Sometimes... not very often, but sometimes... they vanish the same way, too. Nothing sinister, just..."

Just awful. There was no other word for it, really. And, still, never did it hurt as much as when it was him.

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"Nothing sinister?!" Something of the Rebel captain came back into his spine, his shoulders, his expression, as he faced her—but his grip on her hand didn't overtighten. Just held on. "Jyn… we're at the mercy of something here… something…"

Cassian had become an adult at the age of six, a stranger in a new world at nine, a soldier at eleven, a prisoner at thirteen, and the rest of his life just got more like that. After the Ghorman massacre, he'd gone straight to Coruscant to extract Senator Mothma and not eaten or slept until he got back to Yavin 4—and not right away for either. He didn't think there was anything left in any universe that would be too much for him.

This was too much. It was too big, too unknown, too all at once, too apparently supernatural, too utterly divorced from every shred of his whole life working and sacrificing to get a grip on anything, and coming too on the heels of the most world-overturning mission of his existence. He took a step backward and pressed his palm to his head.

"I can't risk that," he muttered. "I won't allow it. I'll start working on the ship. We'll make it fly again. If the Empire's really gone, we'll get back there. That's too high a price for this."

[nextchance]

"Cassian. I know," Jyn said, and this time, some steel did creep into her voice. It wasn't ill-tempered, though, so much as needing to make sure he heard her. She could hardly blame him for the reaction; it was one she'd shared, all those years ago when she first learned about it. However much she might have fucked this up, though, she couldn't help wanting to reassure him now. To make it a little easier, in any way she could, even if nothing she had to say would fit that description.

She reached for his other hand again, trying to stop him, or at least slow him down. This time, it wasn't about her and savoring the feeling. Selfish as she might have been, she could put that away for the moment.

"I know," she said again, softer this time. "Years, remember? If that would work, don't you think I would have done it by now?" Under everything else, the question was a quiet plea. Know that I would have come back to you. Know that I wouldn't have just taken the out.

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No one but her. He yielded to her, both hands in hers again, grateful for her strength. He heard everything she said and heavily nodded. There was no better option. But also: it was her.

Anyway, Maarva's voice came wryly into his thoughts, you dreamed for so long to find somewhere quiet and at peace. Now you want to get away from it back to where you started?

"I guess we never know how much time we have," he murmured. "It's just… one fights so hard to have a choice. Even if it's just a dream of one."

[nextchance]

"I know," Jyn repeated once more, quiet now, not much more than a whisper. This time, it was her own fault that the moment felt too close, too intimate, the words hanging in the air between them. It would have been too easy to close the distance, kiss him to take his mind off it, or at least help keep him grounded in the here and now. For all of half a second, she considered it; instead, she just bent her head toward his, still clasping his hands in her own.

She'd never, in all her life, had much of a choice in anything, only the desperate instinct to survive. All those years ago, she'd told him that, too. Now, she nearly did so again, the words poised on the tip of her tongue, then swallowed back. He probably already knew, or at least could guess as much.

"It's not kriffing fair. I'm sorry."

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Cassian shook his head over their clasped hands. "No. I'm sorry. I say, 'Tell me everything,' then I keep getting upset at what you tell me.

"It's all brand new. It's like…" He did one of his exhalation-laughs and raised his eyes to her. "I never talk about this. Well. It's like my first time going to a new planet, as a child. Then, I had no one I trusted or who spoke my language. I'm so glad, now, I'm with you."

Straightening up, he released one hand and readjusted his grip with the other. "Maybe the city will wait for tomorrow after all. When I can look around for myself and compare what I see with what you tell me." Which wasn't distrust of her, he considered it his due diligence.

"For now… I know, when I'm sitting down I want to be walking, when I'm walking I need to stop… Is there a good place to stop and talk out of doors? Best of both worlds."

[nextchance]

Selfishly, again, Jyn was grateful for it, too. Without a doubt, plenty of people here could have done a better job of explaining all of this to him than she could. The idea of him being here and her not knowing about it, though, was almost unbearable, especially when he was saying things like that. Glad hardly seemed like the right word for it. She was a dozen other things, not the least of which was confused. Still, she wouldn't have had it any other way. She just hoped she could salvage her awkward attempt at an explanation somehow.

"We can go back and sit by the garden, if you want," she suggested, lifting one shoulder. It wasn't much, but it was the best she could think of that didn't involve walking entirely into the city. Willing as she had been to show him around if that was what he wanted, she preferred this anyway -- the chance to keep this moment theirs, to tell him the things she needed to without other input. To take in the pieces of information he gave her, too, his statement of I never talk about this prompting a small smile from her.

"And it's okay if you keep getting upset. I get it. It still bothers me, too."

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The garden was in the shelter of the ship while still under the sky. "Yes, please. That sounds good."

It was something of a relief to hear her say it still bothered her. He was sorry it did, but it was also a kind of confirmation.

To mock himself for the shortness of this excursion, he turned aboutface and offered her his arm.

[nextchance]

Yet one more bad idea in a long list of them, Jyn took his arm when offered, the gesture causing her smile to pull just a little wider. He couldn't have known how torturous it was, being so close, reminded of so many instincts she'd long since buried. It was worth enduring, though, to have just a few moments of this, especially when she knew what else was still hanging overhead. There was every chance he wouldn't want to look at her, speak to her, never mind stay on her ship after she told him the rest of it. That was a risk she going to have to take, but until then, she would let herself just be grateful for his presence.

"I'll show you around for real tomorrow," she promised, leading them back toward the Falcon and her garden. In her head, she added, if you still want me to. "This, all of it's a lot to take in."

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Instinctively, naturally, he folded their arms to his side, so they walked closely touching.

“‘Know your own ground first’,” Cassian murmured aloud now. “I guess the talking is the ground I need to cover before I go anywhere else.”

[nextchance]

"We can do as much of that as you need," Jyn promised, easily falling into step beside him. The night was a warm enough one, spring having already arrived in full force, and yet there was comfort in the warmth of him at her side. She resisted the impulse to rest her head on his shoulder, instead lifting her chin to look up at him.

"I'm not very good at explaining it. All the time I've been here, and there's just... no good way to put it in words."

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“How about we trade?” said Cassian. “Take turns. A fact for a fact, or a memory for a memory.” It was a technique he’d used very sparingly with recruits, because he had to choose his turns carefully—not too autobiographical for himself, while making a point he wanted to prove about the Rebellion—but it was very good at easing communication as well as building rapport. It kept being worth remembering how little he and Jyn knew each other. Now, it turned out, even less than he’d supposed.