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Fulcrum ([personal profile] fulcrum3) wrote2025-05-04 03:01 pm

The City posts

[To be linked to the game comm]
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[personal profile] nextchance 2025-05-07 09:01 pm (UTC)(link)
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.
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[personal profile] nextchance 2025-05-07 09:54 pm (UTC)(link)
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."
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[personal profile] nextchance 2025-05-07 11:51 pm (UTC)(link)
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."
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[personal profile] nextchance 2025-05-08 01:04 am (UTC)(link)
"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.

"Thanks for doing all this."
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[personal profile] nextchance 2025-05-08 01:45 am (UTC)(link)
"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.

"You sleep all right?"
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[personal profile] nextchance 2025-05-08 07:07 pm (UTC)(link)
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.

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[personal profile] nextchance 2025-06-01 04:53 am (UTC)(link)
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."
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[personal profile] nextchance 2025-06-01 05:36 am (UTC)(link)
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."
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[personal profile] nextchance 2025-06-01 06:07 am (UTC)(link)
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."
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[personal profile] nextchance 2025-06-01 06:49 am (UTC)(link)
"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."
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[personal profile] nextchance 2025-06-01 07:19 am (UTC)(link)
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."
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[personal profile] nextchance 2025-06-01 08:00 am (UTC)(link)
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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