Page Summary
nextchance - (no subject)
fulcrum3 - (no subject)
nextchance - (no subject)
fulcrum3 - (no subject)
nextchance - (no subject)
fulcrum3 - (no subject)
nextchance - (no subject)
fulcrum3 - (no subject)
nextchance - (no subject)
fulcrum3 - (no subject)
nextchance - (no subject)
fulcrum3 - (no subject)
nextchance - (no subject)
fulcrum3 - (no subject)
nextchance - (no subject)
fulcrum3 - (no subject)
nextchance - (no subject)
fulcrum3 - (no subject)
nextchance - (no subject)
fulcrum3 - (no subject)
nextchance - (no subject)
fulcrum3 - (no subject)
nextchance - (no subject)
fulcrum3 - (no subject)
nextchance - (no subject)
Active Entries
- 1: The City posts
- 2: Musebox
Style Credit
- Style: Neutral Good for Practicality by
Expand Cut Tags
No cut tags
no subject
Date: 2025-05-11 05:29 am (UTC)"Which I guess makes it my turn." Mentally, she searched for a moment for a suitable fact. "I don't actually remember when I started living on the ship. At some point, I was just the only person left to take care of it."
no subject
Date: 2025-05-11 05:42 am (UTC)Time for him to say the things he never said.
“I don’t remember my birth parents. All the adults of my colony were killed in a, quote, ‘Natural Disaster’, that was really a Republic mining disaster, when I was six. The children had been evacuated and we survived on our own for three years.”
no subject
Date: 2025-05-11 06:06 am (UTC)"Cassian," she murmured, voice soft with sympathy and lilting like she meant to say more, though she bit it back. A fact for a fact, and she still had so many to tell him. "So... It gets stranger. People disappearing. And they really do just disappear." She paused, and bit her lower lip hard. "Like, for example. Here I was, living on the Falcon. Rey'd been gone for... probably a year or two by then. One day she shows up again. Like she'd never been here before. You talked about time and space being broken... and they are really, really broken."
no subject
Date: 2025-05-11 04:03 pm (UTC)Again, he wanted to ask more. Should he, now? Or was this working?
This revelation was so chilling, his heart pounded in his throat. Again, Jyn would be able to feel it.
Okay. A deal was a deal. He forced himself to keep up his end of it: "I had a sister. I didn't mean to leave her. But doing so is probably the biggest regret of my life. I was taken offplanet when I was nine and I've never seen her again."
He couldn't move on from this one. "…'Like she'd never been here before'?"
no subject
Date: 2025-05-11 05:04 pm (UTC)This fact was one entirely new, and yet, in a strange way, it made a sort of sense, pieces unexpectedly slotting together. Throughout their brief acquaintance, he had come back for her time and time again, on Jedha, on Eadu, on Scarif. Until he disappeared from here, he'd been the only person never to leave her behind. Knowing he'd left someone so important to him, however inadvertently... It at least seemed like it might explain a little of that determination.
Again, her heart ached for him. Idly, she thought that he'd come back for her once more — just very late this time.
"I don't think we're very good at this a fact for a fact thing," she said, quietly wry, still tucked against his side. "There's too much I want to ask." She had too much left to tell him, too. She was almost there, her stomach turning with the weight of what she was trying to work up to. "And, yeah. Like she'd never been here before. Fresh from... wherever she'd been, showing up again like new. It happens, sometimes. I'd heard about it, but never actually seen it before that."
no subject
Date: 2025-05-11 06:55 pm (UTC)He could tell she was building to something. He could no longer tell if the trading structure was helping that or hurting. He decided to go with her words. Too much I want to ask. "Me, too," he said quietly. A fresh chill went down his spine. "Like she'd been… reset?"
no subject
Date: 2025-05-11 07:22 pm (UTC)She huffed out a quiet breath. She really was not the right person for this job, and yet there was no one else she would have wanted to tell him what she was still clumsily trying to work up to. "If you think about this place as its own world, or universe, or something," she settled on. "Completely separate from anything. And then over here you have this massive jumble of everything else. Every world, every time. And every once in a while, someone gets pulled out of that giant heap of possibilities and dropped here. The odds of it being the same person more than once are low, but it's bound to happen from time to time."
no subject
Date: 2025-05-11 07:30 pm (UTC)Kaytoo had tried to explain a multiverse theory to him once. Cassian had dismissed it at the time, with I have enough to do in this universe. He was grateful for it, now. What Jyn just said actually, in some wordless way, landed.
That didn't mean Cassian had a clue as to how to respond.
At last, still holding her hands, Cassian said, "My childhood name was 'Kassa'."
no subject
Date: 2025-05-11 08:12 pm (UTC)Besides, more than that, what she really wanted to say was I love you. A fact for a fact.
There was still something bigger, though, and she was so close, she couldn't back away from it now. Odds were, this would all be ruined in a moment's time, but he deserved to know, needed to know. She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, her hands still clasping his.
"I've seen it happen one other time," she said, her pulse quickening with worry. "When you walked up to the ship earlier today."
no subject
Date: 2025-05-11 08:26 pm (UTC)…
…
…
If Cassian had ever really believed in the Force, he would curse it.
I make my own choices.
I thought that was what we were fighting for.
Every time I walked away from something I wanted to forget…
I'm not used to people sticking around.
Oh god…
"I've been here before," he said at last, dumbly. Things said in the last hours, the looks on her face, the way she touched him, all fell into place. It went like thunder through his eyes, if not on his frozen face. "With you."
He didn't let go of her hands.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-11 08:45 pm (UTC)She didn't know what she wanted. That had been a constant of the last few hours. What she did know was that having been so long without him, she didn't want to lose him again, no matter what that entailed, no matter what a bad idea that was. Again, it had been a day for those.
"When I said the first thing I did when I got here was look for you..." Her vision had gone blurry, and when she blinked, hot tears rolled down her cheeks, a slight tremble in her jaw conveying just how hard this was. "I found you. We'd shown up at the same time. A couple years later, you were gone."
no subject
Date: 2025-05-11 09:21 pm (UTC)That would be later. This moment wasn't about him at all. It was about tremor in her and the pain in her stardust eyes, pouring down her cheeks.
That wasn't him… but it also was. However this worked, he had done to her what everyone else had.
He wasn't in his body and didn't know what to do with it.
He wanted to kneel before her and bury his face in her stomach. But that made it about him, asking her to comfort him. Abhorrent.
He wanted to take her in his arms and hold her close, but that was presuming consent that had been granted to someone else.
At last, Cassian moved his hands. He let go of hers but never removed their contact. They ran up her arms to gently hold her biceps, inviting her to step in to him, maintaining her freedom to move away. He bowed his head so their eyes completely met. The twin infinities sank into one another as they had in the elevator. He couldn't know what she'd been through, but his had their own… abject… grief.
"I'm sorry," he said hoarsely, with his whole body. "Jyn. I'm so, so sorry."
no subject
Date: 2025-05-11 10:09 pm (UTC)With him in front of her now, it was as if the last few years caught up to her all at once. The grief she'd so long held at bay bloomed wild and untameable; equally huge was her relief that he was here, her confusion about how to feel, how truly sorry she was that he'd wound up in the middle of a situation so far beyond either of their control. Being angry was easier, yes, but she couldn't be angry when he was here in front of her, looking at her like that.
Only a few seconds passed before she had to look away. She hated crying almost as much as she hated being seen crying, and even if it was only temporary, she wanted the comfort of his implicit offer. Ducking her chin, she leaned into him, inching close enough to rest her head against his collarbone. "I didn't think I'd ever see you again," she said, her voice quiet and tremulous, an echo of one of the first things she'd said to him earlier today. She thought now it would make a little more sense.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-11 11:06 pm (UTC)Yes, she'd said that. Yes, suddenly, the depth of it that he'd sensed but also missed was laid bare.
He felt both like an intruder and like the inflictor. There were questions he thought to ask but that was too much, yet; things he thought to say but they were imaginings, offers, promises, he was in no position yet to make. It was too soon for anything to have foundation.
So he just held her, defending her against… himself… and against the cruel or, worse, indifferent powers of this place (no one is listening), and keeping them both from falling off the planet. He rested his face in her hair and held her.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-11 11:57 pm (UTC)"Sorry," she mumbled against his shirt. Her own arms came up in turn, fingers clutching at the fabric over his back. Whether she was apologizing for her emotional state, or for what she'd just told him, or for not having told him sooner — well, it seemed like the best way to encompass all of it. There wasn't really much else to say, not least when her voice was still so unsteady, intermittent sniffles serving as proof that she hadn't yet manged to stop the tears from coming.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-12 12:18 am (UTC)Then it was gone and it was just them. This new city, world, universe, was nothing. There was only them.
Cassian helder her closer like he was staunching a wound. (Both of theirs.) His lips at her temple, his words stirred her hair as he breathed, "Never be. For this. Not ever."
no subject
Date: 2025-05-12 12:42 am (UTC)That whatever else she felt, she had never once, in all this time, stopped loving him.
It was too much, all of this was. While she stood here with him like this, she didn't have to deal with any of it yet, and she didn't particularly want to. "I am anyway," she murmured instead, huffing out a mirthless, watery laugh. "Can't help it."
no subject
Date: 2025-05-12 01:15 am (UTC)After another long, long while, Cassian pulled back. He still kept contact of hands and arms, and craned his head until their eyes met. "I think we should have that bonfire. And you tell me absolutely anything you want to say without worrying if I'm going to leave. Because as long as I have any choice about it, I'm not going anywhere."
He heard himself a second later and could have bit his tongue off. That's the point, you don't have a choice…
no subject
Date: 2025-05-12 01:41 am (UTC)Back before Scarif, she remembered having told him that she wasn't used to anyone staying when things got difficult, mostly because the accompanying memory of him saying welcome home was so indelibly seared into her. Even in doing so, though, she'd barely scratched the surface of how true that was and the effect it had on her. He still seemed to know what she was thinking now. It was horrible and wonderful.
"Burning things definitely sounds good right now," she agreed with another soft laugh. Her eyes, when they met his, were still red and watery, but at least there weren't actively tears falling anymore, even if she was sure she must have looked a mess. "I'll tell you anything you want to know. And you tell me, too. If anything is too... much. I know you didn't ask for this."
no subject
Date: 2025-05-12 01:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-12 02:13 am (UTC)"I'm glad you're here now," she offered, and meant it entirely. In that regard, it didn't matter what happened next. He was alive. That ranked well above anything else in terms of importance. "Let's get those clothes. And... maybe you can keep telling me things, too. A fact for a fact?"
no subject
Date: 2025-05-12 02:22 am (UTC)"Thank you for telling me."
He ran his hands now the other way, down from her shoulders to her hands again; gave a quick squeeze, then reluctantly let go. He turned to the ship to take her suggestion. "Yeah. Let's burn some shavit."
no subject
Date: 2025-05-12 02:39 am (UTC)Still, it wouldn't help to keep turning over the fact of that. Making her way into the ship, already missing the closeness of a few moments before, she headed toward the kitchen, both where he'd left his clothes and where she was pretty sure she had a lighter somewhere.
"You don't have to thank me," she said on the way. "Thank you. For listening." For not leaving.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-12 02:53 am (UTC)If he could have kept holding her hand during this prep, he would have. One more reason to hasten through it. He picked up the pile of clothes where he'd left it and gathered some of the emptied food containers for kindling. For real fuel… "Can we gather branches somewhere nearby, or shall I temporarily steal the heating coils from the oven?" Stick that in a stack of rocks and you could heat anything enough to burn. A blaster could approximate the effect, but he'd ditched his on the data tower. Good riddance.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-12 03:04 am (UTC)"There ought to be some sort of fuel around here, too. Something flammable to help it along." If she'd been thinking earlier, she would have bought a canister of gasoline when she went out. Now, though, it didn't seem worth making a trip over.