The City posts

[fulcrum3]

[To be linked to the game comm]

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[nextchance]

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.

[fulcrum3]

I didn't know you were on Lothal… The trained ear picked that up as odd.

People reported the deviation from their expectations, not the expected. A Human wouldn't bother describing another Human as having two legs, but they would report if they only had one. If you were speaking to someone you'd never met, over a comm, you could guess things about their species based on how they described others. If someone bothered to say that a Human had hair, they themselves were likelier to be Twi'lek or Togruta, whose normal was none. If they bothered to say a Besalisk had four arms, they were likelier to be Human who took two arms for granted.

Jyn knew next to nothing about Cassian. Why would she comment on one particular unknown?

"Should you have known?" he asked; not as if he'd caught her out, but genuinely puzzled.

[nextchance]

Stupid. Stupid. Jyn hoped her internal self-admonishment, which also included a long string of the most vicious swear words she knew in an assortment of languages, wasn't evident on her face. This was the problem — at least, it was one of many. She let her guard down around him too easily, got drawn into his orbit even when she knew it was the last thing she should do. Even before she'd had a life with him, that was the case; the time they'd had together only added to it. It just figured, really, that with as careful as she had tried to be thus far, it would be such a silly, thoughtless slip that gave her away.

There was probably no good way to backtrack here, or to try to play off what she'd meant. It would be too obvious. She didn't think it would be a good idea just to launch into the truth of it, though, knowing full well it would make her sound insane and probably make him want to leave. Selfishly, idiotically, she wasn't ready for that yet, even as she knew it would be the best thing for her, giving her a chance to build back up the walls that had come crashing down at the first glimpse of him.

"No," she answered simply, sheepishly, deciding that was at least true enough. Of course there was no reason for her to have known anything he hadn't told her. "Just seemed funny. Being in almost the same place at the same time."

[fulcrum3]

There was something here. He looked silently a long moment. Then he nodded and let it lie. If she didn’t want to talk about it, they wouldn’t.

That tether between them, though, couldn’t let it go completely. Cassian wouldn’t push her… so instead, he pushed himself. He set down his food and laid out his hand, palm up, near hers.

“I know about Garel. …I know a lot about your life. I’m sure we missed a lot, but I know everything Rebel Intelligence knew, which includes everything the Empire knew. I read your file before we met. I wish to hell I hadn’t. I wish now I could just learn what you wanted to share. I’m sorry.

“Of course, a data point on a page is nothing to hearing you talk. Whatever you might choose to share, I’m greedy for it. I just wanted to warn you.”

[nextchance]

Jyn felt immediate relief that he didn't push it, and then guilt for feeling that relief at all. As she told herself, though, it wasn't like she meant to keep it a secret. That would be both impossible and too unfair. She would tell him, just not right now, not in this moment. She would work up to it, sooner rather than later, and just hope he wouldn't hate her for the delay. Until then, she'd just have to be careful not to slip up like that again.

Even that task was one easier said than done in the face of what he said next. He was patient with her in a way that took her by surprise, although she wouldn't have expected otherwise from him if she'd stopped to think about it. Knowing something and actually being on the receiving end of it were different, and there had never, not before and not since, been anyone in her life like him.

Resting her hand, feather-light, over his, she nodded slowly as she took that in. "Sort of figured you lot had done your homework," she replied, quietly wry. For a while, after the Alliance had first hauled her in, effectively just transferring her from one prison to another, she'd been furious about that. Being known was what she'd spent the majority of her life avoiding, and despite all her caution, they'd somehow managed to connect all the dots and hurl her identity back in her face. None of that was Cassian's fault, though, no matter how vulnerable it left her. "I don't mind. That you know... whatever you know. Can't say the same about your Alliance bosses, but—" She gave a little shrug, as if to say, what can you do? "It's been a long time since then for me anyway."

[fulcrum3]

His fingers curled to hers. Not claiming or confining. Just brushing.

"I'll have to get used to that," he said. "The 'long time' of it for you. I can't imagine. I could hardly stand an hour here not knowing—" where you were… No, don't swallow it, say it: "—where you were. Or anyone."

He tried to let that stand alone, but he couldn't. He had to ask: "I know what the welcome packet says. But have you been able to find out anything from home?" If they heard us? If they won?

[nextchance]

Jyn couldn't imagine it either. Strange, probably, after spending so long without him, but it would have been different if she'd shown up here alone. She didn't want to consider where she might be now, what her life would be like.

"The first thing I did was look for you," she admitted, glancing down at where their fingers were curled together. She didn't need to add — not now, not yet — that she'd soon found him. For now, this truth would be enough, and it was true. The first words out of her mouth were asking after him. Not anyone. Just him.

Finding out anything else had come much later. Complicated and fucked up as all of this may have been, at least he wouldn't have to wait to have some of that weight lifted off his shoulders. "I have. The way people show up here... like you did, like I did, out of nowhere... There's not always order to it." She could use this, maybe, but there were more pressing things first. "There are a few people here from before us, and there've been a few from after us." Bright-eyed, she gave him a tremulous smile, an expression not altogether unlike the way she'd looked at him as they sent the transmission. "It worked. They got the message."

[fulcrum3]

For a moment, he stared at her, frozen.

Then he exhaled into an incredulous, sun-blinding, world-moving smile.

Then his fingers closed with hers, he put his face into their joined hands, and wrackingly wept.

[nextchance]

"Oh, hey," Jyn breathed, concerned even though the reaction was damn well warranted. It still made her heart ache, made her want to pull her hands away so she could go hold him instead, terrible idea though it might have been. Just watching him made it that much harder for her to maintain her careful composure, and she had a feeling that if she started crying now, she might not stop. The jumbled mess that was her current mental and emotional state needed some sort of outlet, threatening to burst out of her at any moment, that all it would have taken was the slightest provocation.

She couldn't do that now. This moment was his, earned so, so many times over in ways she'd only ever garnered bits and pieces of. So, instead, she clutched his hands tightly, what she hoped in her own awkward way would be reassuring. "I know. I know."

[fulcrum3]

He'd never let go like this with Bix. He'd rarely done so with Maarva. But what was "this" when no such thing had ever happened before… or with someone like this beside him…

Okay. Okay. He let it run its course. Better now than twist eternally or explode. And though it wasn't a thought he'd fully conceived, not a determination he'd consciously made, he was going to try, with Jyn, to say things, not swallow them. That had started over Eadu, and he'd never stop making up for that; and led to something far more critical on Yavin, and then an unprecedented level of interreliance and seamless interreaction on Scarif… He didn't want to sabotage that now that he knew they could have it. And find out if they could have it in peace, not just in war.

So, as his breathing slowed from swallowed gasps, she might be able to make out the words in it:

"Melshi. Sefla. Jav. Arro. Calfor. Casrich. Farsin. Pao. Rostok. Stordan. Baze. Chirrut. Bodhi." And the clearest, tremoring through his body, "Kay."

He used the names to school his breath and finally raise his head. Tears stopped but his eyes still shone with them as he met hers and squeezed her hands. The look in his eyes was… something… From a life fractured, this look was just a quick spark of… whole.

(People weren't so quickly unfractured, but they'd found good help in one another to remember or imagine an alternative)

He knew he kept saying it, but it was the only possible thing. He murmured, "Thank you."

[nextchance]

It didn't take Jyn long, just a few names into the list, for her to realize what he was doing. A good deal of her childhood and adolescence had been spent in the company of soldiers, and even the members of Saw's weathered, battle-hardened company took the time to remember their dead. At first, she hadn't quite understood that, her own losses too great at too early an age to wrap her head around the idea of commemorating longer and longer lists of people who'd known what they were getting themselves into. Later, she'd come to close herself off so much that it didn't matter, because she didn't have people to remember. Eventually, perhaps cynically, she'd landed on it making sense for others, just not for her.

In so many ways, though, Scarif was different. Most of the people Cassian named were his dead, not hers, and yet she felt some of that weight all the same — them, and any others who'd died on Scarif's beaches or in its skies. The people in Jedha City, and on Alderaan, something she couldn't bear to tell him about yet. Everyone who'd followed her into battle, or been killed by her father's weapon, the brutal legacy she'd spent most of her life trying to outrun.

By the time he got to the ones she did know — Baze, who'd called her little sister, Chirrut, who'd called out for her across a crowded Jedha square like they were old friends, Bodhi, who'd been here and gone and become her kriffing family, Kay, who'd sacrificed himself for them and the mission in the end too — her own breathing had gone shaky and shallow, her eyes glassy despite her best efforts. Most days, she could hold it all at a distance, having grown as accustomed to living with and being the only survivor of it as anyone could. With Cassian here, though, freshly arrived from the beach where they'd died together, it was all too close to the surface again, as was so much else.

"You don't have to thank me," she said, grateful that her voice wavered only a little. "I get it. And I'm here."

[fulcrum3]

Again, the impulse to kiss her hands; again, he touched his forehead to them instead. Then stayed there a moment too long and exhaled a laugh. "Kriff. I could go back to bed."

With a will, he squeezed her hands and sat back up. He'd barely touched his food. He should get down a little more. After that— "I don't know where to start. I want to hear everything about it. I also would like to hear your take on—" He nodded to the welcome packet still lying open nearby "—all this. I'm not going to just take their word for it. And I should probably go out and get supplies—more clothes, more food. Check out this apartment they've given me. Which there's no way I'm staying at." He caught himself. "I don't mean I have to stay here forever if that's… not… best. I just… you know."

[ooc: Handwave whatever exposition you want?]

[nextchance]

In that moment, given everything, Jyn didn't trust herself to know what was best. Or, maybe more accurately, she was of two minds about it. Best was giving herself distance and time, a chance to get her head on straight and reinforce her crumbling walls. Best was having him here with her, as close as she could get. It was impossible to make sense of, and she had a feeling that if she tried to play it off again by reminding him that he could stay as long as he needed, he might, rightly, point out that that wasn't what he'd said.

"Don't want to stay in a place that some unknown magical city entity assigned to you, because that has trap written all over it," she finished for him instead, guessing that that was at least part of it. Was she also part? Reason suggested that she must have been, and yet it felt too hard to believe, too selfish to want when she didn't know what she wanted. "There is plenty of room here. Plus—" She gestured to the food, which she had resumed eating. Not only was it quite good, considering what little he'd had to work with, but she could always eat, regardless of any emotional turmoil. "—You cook a hell of a lot better than I do."

As for the rest, she shrugged. "I don't really know where to start either, except, I guess, with... It is pretty much all exactly what it looks like. Weird, but safe."

[fulcrum3]

He gave another exhalation-laugh, just air and eyes. First: Thank the stars, yes, he wanted to stay with her. Second: That sounded like the Jyn Erso he'd first met (It's not a problem if you don't look up), content with a level of examination and functioning that, at the time, wouldn't have been enough for him. At the moment, though, 'Weird, but safe' was perfectly good enough. He trusted her judgment that if there were more to examine, she wouldn't leave it there. For right now: one world—one Galaxy—at a time.

"Then please tell me everything about… what happened. At home." All it took was a second universe to finally make the first 'home'.

[nextchance]

Jyn nodded, unsurprised that that was his priority. After leaving behind a galaxy at war and a rebellion on a tipping point between surviving and falling apart, of course finding out more took precedence over these strange new circumstances. The cause they'd fought and died for was his far more so than it was hers, anyway. She was an interloper in it, a soldier whose personal war briefly aligned with the larger one, never having the chance to find out if it could have been more than that.

Had she lived, she never would have stopped fighting the Empire. She didn't so much have an allegiance to the Alliance, though, as she did to him. If she'd stayed, as she felt sure she would have, it would have been on Cassian's account as much as anything else.

"I only know bits and pieces," she told him, expression turning apologetic for a moment before she paused for another bite of food, buying herself just another moment. "That they got the message, the plans. Found the flaw." Just like her father said. Even now, that anger — at not being believed, at the knowledge that the attack on Scarif might have gone differently if the Alliance had acted, the council as cowardly as Saw ever said they were — still simmered under the surface, kept at bay now by the harder truth she had to tell him. Her eyes went a little darker, almost vacant. "Destroyed the Death Star. Not... before the Empire used it again."

[fulcrum3]

He blanched. His mouth reset into its habitual downturn. His shoulders squared. If he'd been standing, he would be at attention. The last rather than the first rolled preemptively through his eyes, but it barely helped. He said only, "Tell me."

[nextchance]

She couldn't look at him with this hanging overhead. Not because she was afraid of what she might see in his expression — she knew, or at least felt reasonably sure, that there wouldn't be blame or disappointment directed at her — but simply because the weight of it still bore down on her too heavily. Jyn knew that she wasn't truly responsible for her father's crimes. Whatever else she thought of Galen Erso, she understood now, to an extent, why he'd done what he did. But knowing a thing and feeling it were very different, and she felt as if that blood was on her hands.

He'd built a planet killer and named it after her. The worst part was that it felt like it fit.

Eyes cast toward the table, her voice small and almost apologetic, she answered, "Alderaan."

[fulcrum3]

Alderaan?!

Core planet. 'Planet of Beauty'. Starblossoms and snow owls.

Bail and Leia Organa.

Cassian had gone there once undercover to deliver a message to Bail and encountered Leia in the gardens. She was playing with her aunt's pet pittins: Fluffy, Winky, Taffy, and AT-AV (All-Terrain Attack Vehicle). Guess which one Leia had been allowed to name.

The pittins were gone, too.

The one thing Cassian didn't feel was disbelief that the Empire would do it. Of course they would for a powerless world like Jedha; but a beloved place like Alderaan… Yes, he knew they would. He'd known that even before Ghorman.

The only thing that kept him from tearing this ship apart with his bare hands, the way he'd tried the Republic ship when he was nine, was that it was Jyn's. But he didn't really want to. He didn't want to scream or pick a fight with something that would hurt him. His shoulders slumped and he went limp in his chair, a fresh tear rolling down his cheek. He was numb… he was nothing.

(It didn't occur to him to link this to her, nor even Galen. For him, their mission had swept that account clean. His reaction was solely for the Empire. Hopefully, he would have the wherewithal to tell her.)

"Any survivors?" he said at last.

[nextchance]

Jyn shook her head, mouth pressed into a thin frown. "No one on world," she replied. As far as she could tell, there was no world anymore, Alderaan thoroughly destroyed. Even having witnessed firsthand the effect her father's weapon had on Jedha, it was difficult to imagine — not that the Empire would have done such a thing, because of course they would, but that it could happen at all, a planet obliterated in just a flash of light. Not for the first time, a litany of if onlys rolled through her head — if only she'd taken her father's message, if only the Alliance had believed her, if only they'd saved a few minutes somewhere in there — but they were all useless now. The only thing left to do was remember, and carry some of the weight of those innumerable dead.

"The princess wasn't," she offered, not so much an afterthought as a clarification that felt important. It didn't change the scope of the tragedy, but at least there was someone to speak for the Alderaanian people, to make sure that the Empire couldn't just write it off or spin it in their favor as they had done with so many other atrocities. "There, I mean. She's actually the one who wound up with the plans, somehow."

Beyond that, Jyn was unclear of the details. All the knowledge she did have was pieced together from what scraps of information she'd acquired over the last few years, a vague composite both tragic and relieving. The latter didn't make up for the former, but it did help some, knowing that what they'd done made a difference.

[fulcrum3]

[ooc: I shoulda saved it XD]

There was a strange phenomenon, looking out at space: it looked flat. The human mind cannot process infinity. One most impose limits to perceive vastness.

It was like that now. Trying to process the grief of a whole planet's worth of people… he had to seize on something smaller.

As Cassian had said the names of the Rogue One unit, he finally found something to say.

"I went to Alderaan once, undercover, to deliver a message to Bail Organa. I met Princess Leia in the Palace Gardens. She was playing with her aunt's pet pittins." He glanced back at the bunk, where Beany still slept. "They were named Fluffy, Winky, Taffy, and All-Terrain Attack Vehicle. Guess which one she'd been allowed to name.

"It does count, that she survived. Offworld survivors will need her. As will the Rebellion."

His mouth tightened, looking at nothing. What he hadn't been able to say for himself, he said for Jyn. "Instead of being a first, it was the last. Thanks to your father, and us: the thing's destroyed."

[nextchance]

Listening to his story, Jyn couldn't help but crack a smile — bittersweet, still, with the weight of the subject at hand, but at least it was one small bit of levity in the face of everything else. That sounded exactly like what she remembered of Leia, too. She'd always looked so proper during their brief childhood meetings, especially in contrast to Jyn herself, with her straggly braids and ill-fitting hand-me-down soldier's attire, but it was clear that underneath her pristine white clothing was someone as impassioned as her father. And while Saw had never had anything kind to say about members of the Rebel council, Jyn had at least respected Senator Organa, even before he became one of the few who voiced support of her pleas to go to Scarif for the plans.

His was just one more senseless loss. Cassian was right that it was infinitely better for Alderaan to be the last use of the Death Star than the first, and there was comfort in that, but she doubted it would ever stop hurting. She didn't think it should.

"And thanks to them," she added, in reference to Cassian's earlier list of names. She let that hang in the air for a moment, then took a deep breath. "I actually met Leia a few times, when we were younger. Saw used to bring me to meetings with him. But I guess that must have been in my file, too."

[fulcrum3]

"It wasn't, actually. But it makes sense. You've had contact with the Rebellion longer than I have."

Cassian sat hunched for a moment, looking down at nothing. Abruptly he sat up, then stood up, pushing his plate away. "I need…" …something… 

He'd had more than his usual fullness of sleep yet still felt like he'd just been in combat. Some of that was hearing this news. Where did he go when feeling like this, in the past? Always, he'd be trying to get 'home'. Or if he didn't have one, at least somewhere secure. Well, he was there now: definitely secure, and in spite of knowing it was premature, and trying not to, being with Jyn did feel like home.

But he couldn't keep sitting here. The low hang of the freighter felt suddenly stifling. And he couldn't go back to bed. And he couldn't go to the cockpit and wrap himself in an army blanket in the pilot's chair blasting mindless radio chatter until he fell asleep. And he couldn't crawl into one of the smuggling holds and pull the hatch behind him. Technically, he could, but he wouldn't; not with Jyn, and not without knowing Kay was there to potentially pull him out.

So, it was doing the next thing.

"…Does this thing fly?" He'd be surprised if it did. "If not… I think I need to go for a walk. Something. Do things. Get out in the sky." If she was right that this place was safe, and he believed her. He would always believe her. "Will you come with me?"

[nextchance]

"Of course," Jyn said. The urge was one that she understood well — that she'd been about to act on when she lowered the ramp and saw him there, that was part of what kept her away when she'd promised to be here. As comfortable as she had come to be living on the ship, there were times it was just too stifling not to get out. The product of a life spent on the run, she supposed, or else a long-held discomfort in small, enclosed spaces. She had no way of knowing what he was thinking, but somehow it didn't surprise her that he felt a similar impulse now.

And wherever he was right now, she wanted to be. She ached with the fact of it, his seeming so close and yet so far. Over and over again, she tried to tell herself that the most sensible thing would be to give herself some distance, enough to let all of this sink in, if nothing else, but she couldn't quite make herself listen. If he wanted her with him, that was where she would be. Regardless of what may have changed between them in the time he'd been here before, the bond between them predated any of that, and she had already learned that trying to deny it was futile.

"Ship's grounded, and not for lack of trying. Come on, let's go get some air."

[fulcrum3]

Grateful, he managed a slight smile, just the corner of his mouth. He picked up their plates to store both in the conservator. (He'd familiarized himself with the kitchen thoroughly.) He shut its door with his bare foot, then went to put on the Imperial boots.

Just having this much of a plan was already helping him. He was able to call to her in a more normal voice, as he pulled on the boots, "Maybe first thing we'll replace are these. …And I'm still serious about a bonfire."

[nextchance]

"Oh, so am I," Jyn was quick to respond. "I take bonfires very seriously." It wouldn't change where the clothes had come from or the battle they'd been through, but it might at least feel good, a minor catharsis after the horror of Scarif. Even for her, years removed from it now, it never felt very far behind her, was still there waiting as often as not when she slept. With Cassian's arrival having unearthed so many emotions around it, she suspected they would be back in full force over the coming nights.

It was a price she was more than willing to pay to have him here and safe.

"And, yeah, we'll definitely replace the shoes."