Rarely did Cassian Andor dream. As a developed response, sleeping in too many unsecured conditions, he was a light sleeper who couldn't make noises.
This time, he dreamed.
He dreamed of Luthen, Draven, and Mothma approaching him with knives, saying they'd do him the service of dissecting him themselves. He dreamed of Galen Erso opening his chest and connecting up his veins to wires until Jyn could get there and detonate him. He dreamed of Bix burning them both down. He dreamed of screaming for Kaytoo not to go.
But mostly he dreamed of Jyn of the elevator not going down but up and them stepping out into the Yavin jungle where they walked for endless hours until they found the perfect place and lay each other down and it wasn't making love it was in their eyes hers green like an ocean, his dark like a sky infinities finding each other stars sieving together into each other's spaces connecting so deeply, so endless, it was fathomless falling forever without vertigo seeing the universe from being inside it, a part of it, deathless a sleep within a sleep, something that could never be described upon
waking.
Cassian woke and couldn't sit up. Something was on his chest. He looked down and the orange tookacat was lying on him, thrumming like a motor. Apparently cats were like tookas in that they purred. "Thank you," he murmured down to it. He probably owed it for some of the good sleep.
And the dreams…
Regretfully, he shifted the cat, who simply flopped over onto the bunk (very good), and Cassian sat up. He called, "Jyn?"
Jyn had every intention of keeping her promise. She wasn't typically one to balk at the thought of dishonesty, but it was different — so much was different, had been since she first met him — with Cassian. Especially under the circumstances, knowing what he'd just been through, she didn't want to leave him alone if he didn't want to be. Neither did she want to be too far from him, needing the reassurance that he was here, that this was real. She may have been a lost and clueless mess, an emotional wreck under barely-maintained composure, but one thing she could be certain of was that she wanted him here. It was infinitely better than the alternative. He deserved this chance, probably a hell of a lot more than she did.
She also didn't want him to worry — to think she'd left, something she promised herself a long time ago she would never do to him. There was, of course, a part of her that was painfully tempted anyway just to run, start over somewhere, pretend this never happened, but it wouldn't have worked. She never could stay away from him, and there wasn't anywhere to go.
So, before leaving, she scrawled a quick note, which she left on the small table beside the bunk so he couldn't miss it: If I'm not here — I'm sorry. Had to go do some things but I'll be back as soon as I can. Make yourself (and here, a small scribble suggested that she might have started to write something else, then changed her mind) comfortable. Jyn.
By the time she got back from Spike's, she didn't think she had been gone too long, but there was no way of knowing for sure until she went inside. The trouble was actually bringing herself to do so. She needed a moment to steel herself, regain her composure; the moment turned into several. Soon, she would go in, just not quite yet.
Panic rose at the lack of response. Amazingly, it subsided as soon as he found the note. He would dread finding her dead or hurt. He knew she wouldn't go like Bix. And the idea of her simply disappearing was just—even for a man so trained by life to envision everything—unimaginable.
Start catching these thoughts. How did he "know"? He'd only known her for five days. This was infatuation. This was trauma-bonding. This was…
Except it wasn't. Take it one day, one moment, at a time. But also don't dismiss or pretend it away. That would be playing a game, too, and he wouldn't do that with Jyn. No anticipation, no manipulation, nothing but openness.
In order to keep that panic away (and make sure she wasn't somewhere here dead or hurt) (and make the most of the time once she returned) Cassian pulled himself out of the bunk one leg at a time. First giving the cat a careful scratch between the ears, which seemed to be well-received.
As soon as he opened the door, the baby Wookiee'dog' leapt forward to greet him. Ingratiating himself here was a little more nerve-wracking, not because it was hard, but because he almost feared the animal would explode if he stopped scratching its cheeks. Eventually, the dog calmed down, tongue lolling, and followed Cassian around the ship.
It didn't take too long to explore the whole ship—including some of its hidden compartments. Cassian knew these YT freighters were favored among smugglers, so he was able to find a good deal of them. It was reassuring to know they had these at their disposal in the event of—
'They'? What was that about not anticipating? Calm down. —These compartments could be good, though, should… someone need to hide. Or even just a more secure place to sleep.
He was determined to familiarize himself with everything that didn't intrude on Jyn's personal effects. He wasn't surprised to find she had almost none. Again: only what you can carry. As he knew from her file, she'd spent time homeless and time incarcerated. They shared both experiences. (Technically, he'd never been homeless, but he hadn't always had the means to get back to the roof that waited for him across the Galaxy.)
The tour ended back in the kitchen. His stomach had settled and he should probably have another meal. Maybe this one, he could share with her. Given the above, he didn't expect her to keep very much more food around than she did other personal belongings; but he was able to scrounge together an assortment of frozen and shelf-stable components. By the time she returned (because she would! return) he'd have figured out what to do with them and prepared them a small feast.
This was stupid. She was being stupid. There wasn't any other word for it. Throughout her life, she'd been in battles and prisons and a number of unsavory situations in between, and she'd typically approached them without hesitation. Now, she was trying to work up the nerve to walk into her own ship, a place she'd lived in longer than she could say of anywhere else. Jyn couldn't tell how long had passed — minutes, sure, but how many? — when she huffed out a breath, frustrated with herself, and set the ramp to open, not knowing what to expect when she stepped inside. Ideally, Cassian would still be asleep, so she stayed quiet; a quick glance into the bedroom, its door now open, proved that he wasn't. Shit. Less than a day he'd been here, and she was already screwing this up.
His absence might well have made her worry, were it not for noises she could hear coming from the kitchen as she continued around the corridor. He was here, at least. No one else would be cooking inside her ship, though the idea of him doing so was surreal too. Now she just had to hope he would forgive her for being gone longer than she intended.
"Sorry," she said without preamble as she appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, heart twisting at the sight of him there. The words came out awkward and a little rushed, but entirely earnest. "I'm sorry. I didn't think I'd be out so long."
The sight of her made his heart twist, too. Something about her apology made him set down what he was working on and cross to her, gently touching her arm. He knew she intended the boot to be on the other foot, but intensely, he more wanted to reassure her. "It's okay. I'm okay." This time, he dared to squeeze, so gently.
Not letting the moment get too laden, he half-turned back to the food and said, "I made us something. Hope you don't mind, I used up a lot of what you had stored up. I'll replace it when I go to get clothes." (He'd used time while the food was defrosting to read the welcome packet. There was much he'd want confirmed by observation, and a lot by her, but basics made sense.)
Stubbornly, Jyn wanted to insist that it wasn't okay, that she'd made a promise and she should have followed through. There wouldn't have been any real point, though, and there were much more important matters at hand. That he was okay — here, alive — superseded everything else. Instead, she nodded, mouth still twisted ruefully to the side. She didn't know why it mattered so much, except, on second thought, she kind of did. Cassian, as he was standing here before her now, had only known her for a matter of days. There was trust between them, but there wasn't time, and for all she knew, he might have expected her to take off running when the first opportunity presented itself. With anyone else, she might well have. With him, that was never on the table.
At least he seemed to mean what he said. For that matter, she doubted he would be standing here cooking in her kitchen if he thought she had left or something had happened to her. It hit hard, in that same way that was nice but painful, familiar but new, causing her to bite down hard on the inside of her cheek to prevent herself from having a seriously overblown reaction. She probably could have played it off if she did — she still wasn't used to home-cooked meals — but she didn't want to risk it. One crack in her composure was too likely to cause the whole of it to shatter, barely held together as it was.
"You don't have to do that," she said instead as she followed him into the small kitchen. She had a feeling he might insist, probably because she would have done so, never wanting to be in someone's debt, but she meant it. "Honestly, you probably did me a favor. I wouldn't have made anything half as good."
"We'll see if it's any good," he said wryly, picking up the plates to set out. He hadn't been very good, the last two years, at keeping himself fed enough, but he knew, after a big battle like Scarif, it was essential. (Ironic since it was exactly when it was hardest to stomach anything.
Melshi, Sefla, Jav, Pao, Chirrut, Bodhi, Baze…
Stop. Eat for them. Especially if he was the only one now alive who knew that list.
With Jyn across the way, it was easier.
Kay. Wouldn't eat anyway. Would say something dry about it. Like…)
"Should I have made something for Sprinkles and Beany?"
"Absolutely not," Jyn said, grateful for a subject that allowed a little levity. "Start spoiling them now, and they'll expect it all the time." It was true, but she made no secret of the fact that she spoiled the hell out of her animals. If she'd ever bothered to count, she wouldn't be surprised if the two of them had more belongings around the ship than she did. While she fed them well, though, she hadn't been lying when she said she wasn't much of a cook. She didn't want to get them too used to something she wouldn't be able to provide.
Or maybe she was speaking more for her own sake. She didn't want to let herself get too accustomed to his presence and anything that might have come with it. If this was all she got, though, then she wanted to hold onto it, to keep every detail about him that she could.
Sitting down, he shook his head. “Too early for me to have done much. Things are still sinking in. I’ll ask for your help again soon.”
With the present, for certain; maybe with the immediate past, if he’d grown enough to be so brave and so forgiving of himself—
She carried him with her, and he could tell she was trying to shield him from the dead on the beach, because they were his dead; could he accept so much, could he ever ask
—and the future was not yet to be thought of. Not beyond get supplies, confirm facts of City.
And, looming currently as large as any dangerous mission: foreseeable living arrangements. She’d said to stay as long as he needed, but he knew what he was like after events like (no events were alike) Scarif, and counter to the usual lack of dreams, there might be some night terrors in the immediate future.
"Anytime," Jyn said as she took a seat as well, trying to find a comfortable middle ground between sounding earnest and not overly serious. Whatever help he needed, she would give him, and she wanted him to know that — to be able to trust her that much. With the emotional wringer she was currently going through, though, she didn't want to bring the mood down too much. There would no doubt be plenty of that in due time.
For now, they were alive, they were safe, they had food. In a lot of ways, Jyn had gotten used to her life here, but she still could never take those things for granted. Having him here only added to that, regardless of the conflict in her for which she knew there would be no easy resolution.
The story was both unexpected and new. Jyn reacted without thinking, leaning forward a little with interest, mouth curled in amusement. At least in her experience — and how much could that really be relied upon now? She didn't know, couldn't try to make sense of those logistics now — details given about Cassian's life tended to come sparsely, which made her savor them all the more when she got them. Then again, with as long as it had been since she'd been around him at all, the same might well have gone for anything he had to say.
"Worse ways to spend a mission than under a pile of sleeping Loth-cats," she said, well aware that that was a massive understatement. "I didn't know you were on Lothal then. I spent a while on Garel right around the same time."
She'd left soon after that, sensing things getting too risky, always waging the internal battle between protecting herself and doing as much harm to any Imps as she could. Still, not for the first time, she wondered how many times they had been in relatively close proximity, and what might have happened if their paths had crossed sooner.
The open-air market reminded him a little of Ferrix. The aisle between parallel booths was just slightly too narrow for all the foot traffic, with people stopped to look at tables. It was wonderful.
Cassian hadn't found what he was looking for in shops, but found it almost immediately at a table. It was ridiculously overpriced, but the vendor obviously wasn't prepared for someone like Cassian, who could take apart a piece of machinery with a look, and he was able to talk it down. He proceeded to browse tables for spare parts to add to the device, to make alterations. In his rucksack, he also stuffed a new sheet and blanket large enough ("Queen size", he learned) to cover both himself and Jyn. (Not that he couldn't imagine them pressed together under an army blanket or a shared jacket…)
There was one table where Cassian stopped, involuntarily, dead. It was spread out with mostly sporting equipment, but had several of what looked like blasters. Looking more closely, he saw, aside from the guns themselves, an array of what had to be analog, projectile ammunition. Cassian had never fired a projectile weapon. He could have bought one of these and learned how. For the barest moment, he thought it might be a good idea.
It isn't 'what have I done', but 'how did you become what I had to do next'
He was overwhelmed with revulsion. He turned away from the table and put distance from it fast as he could without running. If he could possibly avoid it, he was never going to pick up a weapon again.
He tackled him, barreling straight into his stomach. The other was caught right off his feet. They both rolled on the floor. One raised his head sooner. He reached for the blaster he'd dropped. The first recovered in time and grabbed the other's head, slamming it to the floor. He scrambled and straddled him, grabbing his shoulders to slam him backwards again. Both grabbed at the other's face, covering their mouths, fingers seeking eyes, anything, 'til the one on top started to choke the one on the bottom. That one's hands left his face to try and break the first's grip. He couldn't. He scrambled, and found something on the floor. He grabbed it and smashed it over his assailant's head. Again, they fell apart. Again, one went for the blaster. This time the man slammed his opponent with a chair. He bounced off the wall, where the man grabbed and again tried to wrestle him down, but they got turned around and the one being grappled slamed the man backward into the wall, himself. He broke the other's grip, jabbed an elbow to his face, and broke free, throwing whatever was nearest to hand backward to blind him. Then they were just brawling, punch for punch, block for block, trying to get the other against the wall, until the one brutally struck his opponent down. He knelt and again grabbed him by the throat.
"Don't you do it!" he shouted. "Don't you dare! Don't you leave her!"
A shot rang out. The man on the floor had gotten the blaster and fired it into the other's stomach.
But as his opponent fell away from him to the floor, Cassian let out a wail of disbelief and utmost despair. Because his opponent was no longer who it had been all along: it was no longer himself.
The body that fell dead to the floor, with a smoking blaster hole, was Jyn.
Jyn had always been a light sleeper. At least, that was true for as far back as she could remember, all the way to her isolated childhood on Lah'mu. There, they'd needed to be ready to go at any time, sometimes practiced in the middle of the night the drills meant to get them to safety, and what was even the point if she was going to be the only one following that plan?
Necessity taught her how to wake easily even back then, though, and even before she'd wound up in the care of Saw, who preached often about the need for vigilance. All these years later, she could still hear him in the back of her head: You never know when an enemy will strike. The only way they won't catch you at your most vulnerable is if you do not allow yourself that vulnerability. She'd carried that with her as a teenager on her own, keeping company mostly with criminals and other unsavory types who'd betray a cohort without a second thought if it meant some advantage for them. And after that, well, it was impossible to get any kind of decent sleep in a prison.
So, even now, it was too instilled in her for there to be any undoing it. A movement, a sound, anything outside of the ordinary would bring her to wakefulness. And a body thrashing and panting beside her definitely counted as outside of the ordinary.
Jyn opened her eyes with a sharp inhale, attention quickly turning to Cassian beside her. (If she'd been dreaming herself, she didn't remember it. This was probably a good thing.) Bleary-eyed, her brow creased with concern as she took just a moment to orient herself, at least as far as cataloging the important things: they were safe, and he was in distress. Waking someone from a nightmare could be a delicate business, and she knew him well enough to guess that he might not forgive himself if she startled him and he lashed out at her without meaning to, but she didn't want to leave him in it. Before she could whisper his name and try to wake him as unobtrusively as she could, though, he cried out, a gut-wrenching, devastating sound, and that changed her mind for her.
"Cassian. Cassian," she said, voice hushed but insistent, as she rested a gentle hand on his shoulder to shake him. "Hey, it's all right."
Cassian sat bolt upright with a hoarse scream. His hands were fists, body half-turned in the direction of the touch and sound. Of Jyn.
He came to himself, came back to her, and recognized what he could have done. And he recoiled, pushing himself clear of her with a look of such horror. He tried to stumble to his feet and failed, his back thudding to the bulkhead, and he sat there against the wall staring at his hands. His voice came out in a rasp: "I'm sorry, I'm sorry… Jyn… oh god…"
For a split second, Jyn held her breath as he sat up, aware of his posture and curled fists, but she didn't move away. She'd known that she was running the risk of provoking an unintended response, and more importantly, she knew with bone-deep certainty that he would never consciously harm her. The only worry she had was for him, even more so when she saw his reaction. Under other circumstances — had they both been awake, at least — she wouldn't have hesitated to go to him. Right now, though, that seemed more likely to make things worse rather than better.
So, instead, she stayed where she was, pulling her legs under her so she was kneeling on the mattress and facing him, her hands not fully raised but still held palm out. Although he wasn't looking at her, the position was meant to be one of both safety and vulnerability: demonstrating herself as not a threat, and showing him that she didn't see him as one, either. She didn't know and wouldn't try to guess what had him so shaken, but with any sort of awakening like this, that seemed like the best place to start.
"Don't be sorry," she murmured, trying to keep her expression at least somewhat schooled. It broke her heart a little to see him like this, for him to have lurched away from her the way he did, but that couldn't have been further from the point right now. "It's all right," she said again. "You're all right."
He covered his face with one hand, scrubbed his eyes, and raised them more clearly to her.
He didn't matter. What mattered was—
"Are you all right?" Fast but with more grace than he'd left it, Cassian knelt back on the bed and touched her ribs and face, as if searching her for wounds. No; no smoking blasterburn, no bruise.
His touch as ever was so, so gentle on her, but there was still a wildness in his eyes—along with tears.
Jyn stayed very, very still as he touched her. Even though she still didn't know what had happened to have him in this state now, it was clear enough that, whatever the reason, it was something he needed to do. This more than anything else unsettled her, though — not because of him or his hands on her, but the fear and desperation she saw in his eyes, her own widening a little as she studied his face as best she could in the dark of their bedroom.
"I'm fine, Cassian," she promised, her voice soft and even. She knew he'd had nightmares about something happening to her before, and she could only assume this was more of that same, but it seemed a far cry even from the state he'd been in that first night, telling her that he'd dreamed about the data tower.
So slowly and carefully, she lifted a hand to his cheek, hoping he wouldn't pull away from her. "Whatever you saw... It was only a dream. I'm all right. I promise."
So far from pulling away, he leaned in and kissed her, tasting like salt.
The dream had been terrible, but much worse was that was he couldn't be sure how close he'd come—
He sat back, shaking his head like it was heavy. "I should… I nearly hurt you… I shouldn't sleep here…" Even as he wanted to lie down and hold her again so much it hurt.
"You didn't, though," Jyn replied, trying as hard as she could to keep the worry out of her hushed voice. It didn't seem like her place to say that she didn't want him to sleep elsewhere, that she didn't care and wouldn't have cared if he'd hurt her. She knew he would care, even if it was (and it would have been) inadvertent, something she had been entirely aware could happen in waking someone from such a brutal nightmare.
"If you're really worried, I'll... I'll move one of the mattresses back up or something, but..."
She suppressed the urge to cringe at her own words, the sound of her voice. Stupid, to be so close to asking him not to go, to hate the idea so much, but she had only just woken up too, and the moments since then had been so fraught. Still not wanting to say it, she thought back instead to something he'd said the first night they woke from nightmares together, and took a deep breath to steel herself and say what she really meant.
"I'm here. You can talk to me. Let me help. Please."
Jyn let out an unsteady breath of her own then, relief accompanying her growing concern and how much it hurt to see him like this. As he leaned against her, she wrapped her arms around him, one hand at his back, the other gently stroking his hair. She wasn't, or didn't think she was, much good at comfort, but for him, it came easily, awkward yet instinctive.
"If I needed to," she echoed, her voice sounding far away to her own ears. If it did happen, she knew it would be accidental, something that would hurt him more than it hurt her, but she could make this promise if it would help him relax now. If it would let him stay.
It wasn't a lie, either. She may have been away from war for a long time now, but she'd still kept herself in shape and her instincts as sharp as she could. If it truly did come down to that, she wouldn't be helpless. "I know how to protect myself." At least physically. "I would stop you."
He let out another miserable sound, but he didn’t have it in him to move away. It wasn’t right… not the right solution… was it identifying the right problem?
But she held him. And she’d said to talk.
“I was fighting a copy of myself not to leave you,” he said, muffled. “But defeating him, I killed you.”
Hearing himself aloud, he managed, “I wouldn’t pay a psych doc to analyze it.”
Another quick, audible inhale accompanied his words, but this time, Jyn's reaction was entirely for his sake. It sounded horrific, of course, but she was no stranger to horrific dreams. That he was left so ill at ease by it wasn't surprising. Had their positions been reversed and she been the one to have a nightmare like that, she was sure she would be an absolute wreck. As it was, though, hearing about it in the simplest of terms, she felt more for him than anything else.
She'd had countless dreams of him leaving her, countless dreams of one or both of them dying. They always hit hard. This one seemed particularly cruel, though, and irrational as it may have been, she felt suddenly guilty for it. He wouldn't have had that notion in his head if she hadn't told him about before. Not telling him had never seemed like an option, but maybe she should have just gotten him settled in and then kept a distance rather than burdening him with—
No, she couldn't go down that road, not so soon after such an abrupt awakening, especially not with him here in her arms. "I'm sorry," she murmured anyway. "Stars, Cassian."
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we are the next time 'round (for Jyn)
This time, he dreamed.
He dreamed of Luthen, Draven, and Mothma approaching him with knives, saying they'd do him the service of dissecting him themselves.
He dreamed of Galen Erso opening his chest and connecting up his veins to wires until Jyn could get there and detonate him.
He dreamed of Bix burning them both down.
He dreamed of screaming for Kaytoo not to go.
But mostly he dreamed of Jyn
of the elevator not going down but up and them stepping out into the Yavin jungle
where they walked for endless hours
until they found the perfect place and lay each other down
and it wasn't making love
it was in their eyes
hers green like an ocean, his dark like a sky
infinities finding each other
stars sieving together into each other's spaces
connecting so deeply, so endless,
it was fathomless
falling forever without vertigo
seeing the universe from being inside it, a part of it, deathless
a sleep within a sleep, something that could never be described upon
waking.
Cassian woke and couldn't sit up. Something was on his chest. He looked down and the orange
tookacat was lying on him, thrumming like a motor. Apparently cats were like tookas in that they purred. "Thank you," he murmured down to it. He probably owed it for some of the good sleep.And the dreams…
Regretfully, he shifted the cat, who simply flopped over onto the bunk (very good), and Cassian sat up. He called, "Jyn?"
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She also didn't want him to worry — to think she'd left, something she promised herself a long time ago she would never do to him. There was, of course, a part of her that was painfully tempted anyway just to run, start over somewhere, pretend this never happened, but it wouldn't have worked. She never could stay away from him, and there wasn't anywhere to go.
So, before leaving, she scrawled a quick note, which she left on the small table beside the bunk so he couldn't miss it: If I'm not here — I'm sorry. Had to go do some things but I'll be back as soon as I can. Make yourself (and here, a small scribble suggested that she might have started to write something else, then changed her mind) comfortable. Jyn.
By the time she got back from Spike's, she didn't think she had been gone too long, but there was no way of knowing for sure until she went inside. The trouble was actually bringing herself to do so. She needed a moment to steel herself, regain her composure; the moment turned into several. Soon, she would go in, just not quite yet.
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Start catching these thoughts. How did he "know"? He'd only known her for five days. This was infatuation. This was trauma-bonding. This was…
Except it wasn't. Take it one day, one moment, at a time. But also don't dismiss or pretend it away. That would be playing a game, too, and he wouldn't do that with Jyn. No anticipation, no manipulation, nothing but openness.
In order to keep that panic away (and make sure she wasn't somewhere here dead or hurt) (and make the most of the time once she returned) Cassian pulled himself out of the bunk one leg at a time. First giving the cat a careful scratch between the ears, which seemed to be well-received.
As soon as he opened the door, the
baby Wookiee'dog' leapt forward to greet him. Ingratiating himself here was a little more nerve-wracking, not because it was hard, but because he almost feared the animal would explode if he stopped scratching its cheeks. Eventually, the dog calmed down, tongue lolling, and followed Cassian around the ship.It didn't take too long to explore the whole ship—including some of its hidden compartments. Cassian knew these YT freighters were favored among smugglers, so he was able to find a good deal of them. It was reassuring to know they had these at their disposal in the event of—
'They'? What was that about not anticipating? Calm down. —These compartments could be good, though, should… someone need to hide. Or even just a more secure place to sleep.
He was determined to familiarize himself with everything that didn't intrude on Jyn's personal effects. He wasn't surprised to find she had almost none. Again: only what you can carry. As he knew from her file, she'd spent time homeless and time incarcerated. They shared both experiences. (Technically, he'd never been homeless, but he hadn't always had the means to get back to the roof that waited for him across the Galaxy.)
The tour ended back in the kitchen. His stomach had settled and he should probably have another meal. Maybe this one, he could share with her. Given the above, he didn't expect her to keep very much more food around than she did other personal belongings; but he was able to scrounge together an assortment of frozen and shelf-stable components. By the time she returned (because she would! return) he'd have figured out what to do with them and prepared them a small feast.
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His absence might well have made her worry, were it not for noises she could hear coming from the kitchen as she continued around the corridor. He was here, at least. No one else would be cooking inside her ship, though the idea of him doing so was surreal too. Now she just had to hope he would forgive her for being gone longer than she intended.
"Sorry," she said without preamble as she appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, heart twisting at the sight of him there. The words came out awkward and a little rushed, but entirely earnest. "I'm sorry. I didn't think I'd be out so long."
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Not letting the moment get too laden, he half-turned back to the food and said, "I made us something. Hope you don't mind, I used up a lot of what you had stored up. I'll replace it when I go to get clothes." (He'd used time while the food was defrosting to read the welcome packet. There was much he'd want confirmed by observation, and a lot by her, but basics made sense.)
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At least he seemed to mean what he said. For that matter, she doubted he would be standing here cooking in her kitchen if he thought she had left or something had happened to her. It hit hard, in that same way that was nice but painful, familiar but new, causing her to bite down hard on the inside of her cheek to prevent herself from having a seriously overblown reaction. She probably could have played it off if she did — she still wasn't used to home-cooked meals — but she didn't want to risk it. One crack in her composure was too likely to cause the whole of it to shatter, barely held together as it was.
"You don't have to do that," she said instead as she followed him into the small kitchen. She had a feeling he might insist, probably because she would have done so, never wanting to be in someone's debt, but she meant it. "Honestly, you probably did me a favor. I wouldn't have made anything half as good."
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Melshi, Sefla, Jav, Pao, Chirrut, Bodhi, Baze…
Stop. Eat for them. Especially if he was the only one now alive who knew that list.
With Jyn across the way, it was easier.
Kay. Wouldn't eat anyway. Would say something dry about it. Like…)
"Should I have made something for Sprinkles and Beany?"
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Or maybe she was speaking more for her own sake. She didn't want to let herself get too accustomed to his presence and anything that might have come with it. If this was all she got, though, then she wanted to hold onto it, to keep every detail about him that she could.
"Thanks for doing all this."
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With the present, for certain; maybe with the immediate past, if he’d grown enough to be so brave and so forgiving of himself—
She carried him with her, and he could tell she was trying to shield him from the dead on the beach, because they were his dead;
could he accept so much, could he ever ask
—and the future was not yet to be thought of. Not beyond get supplies, confirm facts of City.
And, looming currently as large as any dangerous mission: foreseeable living arrangements. She’d said to stay as long as he needed, but he knew what he was like after events like (no events were alike) Scarif, and counter to the usual lack of dreams, there might be some night terrors in the immediate future.
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For now, they were alive, they were safe, they had food. In a lot of ways, Jyn had gotten used to her life here, but she still could never take those things for granted. Having him here only added to that, regardless of the conflict in her for which she knew there would be no easy resolution.
"You sleep all right?"
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He set her plate before her. "I think I have Beany to thank for some of that." He told Jyn how he'd woken with Beany on his chest; then, on impulse—
(when was the last time he'd done anything impulsively? …whichever it was, it had to do with Jyn.)
—told her the Loth-cat story.
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"Worse ways to spend a mission than under a pile of sleeping Loth-cats," she said, well aware that that was a massive understatement. "I didn't know you were on Lothal then. I spent a while on Garel right around the same time."
She'd left soon after that, sensing things getting too risky, always waging the internal battle between protecting herself and doing as much harm to any Imps as she could. Still, not for the first time, she wondered how many times they had been in relatively close proximity, and what might have happened if their paths had crossed sooner.
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draft, to post in June
Cassian hadn't found what he was looking for in shops, but found it almost immediately at a table. It was ridiculously overpriced, but the vendor obviously wasn't prepared for someone like Cassian, who could take apart a piece of machinery with a look, and he was able to talk it down. He proceeded to browse tables for spare parts to add to the device, to make alterations. In his rucksack, he also stuffed a new sheet and blanket large enough ("Queen size", he learned) to cover both himself and Jyn. (Not that he couldn't imagine them pressed together under an army blanket or a shared jacket…)
There was one table where Cassian stopped, involuntarily, dead. It was spread out with mostly sporting equipment, but had several of what looked like blasters. Looking more closely, he saw, aside from the guns themselves, an array of what had to be analog, projectile ammunition. Cassian had never fired a projectile weapon. He could have bought one of these and learned how. For the barest moment, he thought it might be a good idea.
It isn't 'what have I done', but 'how did you become what I had to do next'
He was overwhelmed with revulsion. He turned away from the table and put distance from it fast as he could without running. If he could possibly avoid it, he was never going to pick up a weapon again.
the sacred simplicity of you at my side
The other was caught right off his feet. They both rolled on the floor.
One raised his head sooner. He reached for the blaster he'd dropped.
The first recovered in time and grabbed the other's head, slamming it to the floor.
He scrambled and straddled him, grabbing his shoulders to slam him backwards again.
Both grabbed at the other's face, covering their mouths, fingers seeking eyes, anything,
'til the one on top started to choke the one on the bottom.
That one's hands left his face to try and break the first's grip.
He couldn't. He scrambled, and found something on the floor. He grabbed it and smashed it over his assailant's head.
Again, they fell apart.
Again, one went for the blaster.
This time the man slammed his opponent with a chair. He bounced off the wall, where the man grabbed and again tried to wrestle him down, but they got turned around and the one being grappled slamed the man backward into the wall, himself. He broke the other's grip, jabbed an elbow to his face, and broke free, throwing whatever was nearest to hand backward to blind him.
Then they were just brawling, punch for punch, block for block, trying to get the other against the wall, until the one brutally struck his opponent down.
He knelt and again grabbed him by the throat.
"Don't you do it!" he shouted. "Don't you dare! Don't you leave her!"
A shot rang out. The man on the floor had gotten the blaster and fired it into the other's stomach.
But as his opponent fell away from him to the floor, Cassian let out a wail of disbelief and utmost despair.
Because his opponent was no longer who it had been all along: it was no longer
himself.
The body that fell dead to the floor, with a smoking blaster hole, was
Jyn.
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Necessity taught her how to wake easily even back then, though, and even before she'd wound up in the care of Saw, who preached often about the need for vigilance. All these years later, she could still hear him in the back of her head: You never know when an enemy will strike. The only way they won't catch you at your most vulnerable is if you do not allow yourself that vulnerability. She'd carried that with her as a teenager on her own, keeping company mostly with criminals and other unsavory types who'd betray a cohort without a second thought if it meant some advantage for them. And after that, well, it was impossible to get any kind of decent sleep in a prison.
So, even now, it was too instilled in her for there to be any undoing it. A movement, a sound, anything outside of the ordinary would bring her to wakefulness. And a body thrashing and panting beside her definitely counted as outside of the ordinary.
Jyn opened her eyes with a sharp inhale, attention quickly turning to Cassian beside her. (If she'd been dreaming herself, she didn't remember it. This was probably a good thing.) Bleary-eyed, her brow creased with concern as she took just a moment to orient herself, at least as far as cataloging the important things: they were safe, and he was in distress. Waking someone from a nightmare could be a delicate business, and she knew him well enough to guess that he might not forgive himself if she startled him and he lashed out at her without meaning to, but she didn't want to leave him in it. Before she could whisper his name and try to wake him as unobtrusively as she could, though, he cried out, a gut-wrenching, devastating sound, and that changed her mind for her.
"Cassian. Cassian," she said, voice hushed but insistent, as she rested a gentle hand on his shoulder to shake him. "Hey, it's all right."
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He came to himself, came back to her, and recognized what he could have done. And he recoiled, pushing himself clear of her with a look of such horror. He tried to stumble to his feet and failed, his back thudding to the bulkhead, and he sat there against the wall staring at his hands. His voice came out in a rasp: "I'm sorry, I'm sorry… Jyn… oh god…"
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So, instead, she stayed where she was, pulling her legs under her so she was kneeling on the mattress and facing him, her hands not fully raised but still held palm out. Although he wasn't looking at her, the position was meant to be one of both safety and vulnerability: demonstrating herself as not a threat, and showing him that she didn't see him as one, either. She didn't know and wouldn't try to guess what had him so shaken, but with any sort of awakening like this, that seemed like the best place to start.
"Don't be sorry," she murmured, trying to keep her expression at least somewhat schooled. It broke her heart a little to see him like this, for him to have lurched away from her the way he did, but that couldn't have been further from the point right now. "It's all right," she said again. "You're all right."
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He didn't matter. What mattered was—
"Are you all right?" Fast but with more grace than he'd left it, Cassian knelt back on the bed and touched her ribs and face, as if searching her for wounds. No; no smoking blasterburn, no bruise.
His touch as ever was so, so gentle on her, but there was still a wildness in his eyes—along with tears.
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"I'm fine, Cassian," she promised, her voice soft and even. She knew he'd had nightmares about something happening to her before, and she could only assume this was more of that same, but it seemed a far cry even from the state he'd been in that first night, telling her that he'd dreamed about the data tower.
So slowly and carefully, she lifted a hand to his cheek, hoping he wouldn't pull away from her. "Whatever you saw... It was only a dream. I'm all right. I promise."
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The dream had been terrible, but much worse was that was he couldn't be sure how close he'd come—
He sat back, shaking his head like it was heavy. "I should… I nearly hurt you… I shouldn't sleep here…" Even as he wanted to lie down and hold her again so much it hurt.
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"If you're really worried, I'll... I'll move one of the mattresses back up or something, but..."
She suppressed the urge to cringe at her own words, the sound of her voice. Stupid, to be so close to asking him not to go, to hate the idea so much, but she had only just woken up too, and the moments since then had been so fraught. Still not wanting to say it, she thought back instead to something he'd said the first night they woke from nightmares together, and took a deep breath to steel herself and say what she really meant.
"I'm here. You can talk to me. Let me help. Please."
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You promised…
He took a shaky breath, exhaled a defeated groan. Hypocrite—he doubled forward, closing his eyes against her skin.
“You shouldn’t have to,” he said, “but you’d stop me? If I was about to hurt you—hurt me first if you needed to?”
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"If I needed to," she echoed, her voice sounding far away to her own ears. If it did happen, she knew it would be accidental, something that would hurt him more than it hurt her, but she could make this promise if it would help him relax now. If it would let him stay.
It wasn't a lie, either. She may have been away from war for a long time now, but she'd still kept herself in shape and her instincts as sharp as she could. If it truly did come down to that, she wouldn't be helpless. "I know how to protect myself." At least physically. "I would stop you."
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But she held him. And she’d said to talk.
“I was fighting a copy of myself not to leave you,” he said, muffled. “But defeating him, I killed you.”
Hearing himself aloud, he managed, “I wouldn’t pay a psych doc to analyze it.”
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She'd had countless dreams of him leaving her, countless dreams of one or both of them dying. They always hit hard. This one seemed particularly cruel, though, and irrational as it may have been, she felt suddenly guilty for it. He wouldn't have had that notion in his head if she hadn't told him about before. Not telling him had never seemed like an option, but maybe she should have just gotten him settled in and then kept a distance rather than burdening him with—
No, she couldn't go down that road, not so soon after such an abrupt awakening, especially not with him here in her arms. "I'm sorry," she murmured anyway. "Stars, Cassian."
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