"Yeah," Jyn breathed, looking up at him with wide, apologetic eyes. Pleading, really, although she didn't know for what. Maybe just for him not to hate her. It wasn't as if she'd had any more control over this than he did — he would never have been gone, otherwise — or as if there had been a good way for her to tell him sooner, but still, she couldn't have blamed him if this was too much, too awkward, if he never wanted to look at her again. That he was still holding her hands was a small reassurance, albeit one that could have simply been the result of shock. He wasn't otherwise moving, after all.
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."
What did we do? What did we build? How did we grow? He wanted everything… at the same time, he wanted to know nothing. Whoever that was wasn't him and he wanted to learn with her anew. But he also wanted her to tell him anything she needed to.
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."
For a moment, Jyn was frozen, too overwhelmed by everything that had happened in the last day — the last few years — to know how to move or to hold onto a coherent thought. After she'd first found him gone, so long ago, she had never really let herself feel it. Being angry was easier, and when she couldn't manage that, she told herself, as insistently as she could, that it didn't matter. That it was her mistake for opening herself up to that kind of connection, and that she should have seen it coming. Everyone left. It had been stupid to let herself believe that he would be different, especially in a place like this.
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.
Careful and gentle, he closed his arms around her, resting them together.
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.
Jyn didn't know how long she stood there, just letting him hold her. It couldn't have been fair of her and she knew it, seeking comfort from him for something he hadn't chosen to do or had any control over. In that moment, though, she felt more vulnerable than she had allowed herself to be in a long time, and safer in being so. That part, she couldn't explain, when everything about this was dangerous. Feeling the way she did about him, letting herself act on it in any way, was a liability, bound to only get her hurt again. It wouldn't have hurt any less to try to push him away, though, so if that was what she was facing either way, then she would rather hurt like this, remembering what it felt like to have his arms around her.
"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.
For a flash, they were back on the beach, holding each other against the light.
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."
The closeness of his words and the warmth of his breath sent a shiver down Jyn's spine, although it bore no real distinction from the way she trembled anyway. She probably should have been moving back, trying to pull herself together, figuring out what to do next. At the very least, there were things she ought to have been saying — that she didn't expect anything from him, that she knew that wasn't him, except in the ways in which it was.
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."
He ducked his head to her shoulder, one palm on her back, and exhaled, not exactly a laugh but understanding. "Okay. It's all okay." Or nothing was… as Kay would say, The proportions are the same.
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…
It was a terrifying thing, feeling so known, all of her defenses stripped away. Practically from the first moment they met, she'd felt like that with Cassian, like he was somehow able to see right through her, but there was so much more to that now. Jyn couldn't have known, then, what they would become to each other or how much she would come to care about him. That she'd wound up losing him too was, perhaps, more predictable, but even now that she was facing Cassian without that history between them, he seemed to know exactly what she was thinking.
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."
"I did, though," said Cassian, feeling it so deep. "I wished you would live. Secondarily, I wished I could be with you." The corners of his eyes crinkled with an attempted smile. "I should have made some specifications."
Jyn didn't know whether she should laugh or cry again. Still a part of her wanted to kiss him, too, but she at least had the sense to know that that would only have added yet another complication to an already difficult situation. For all that she could be reckless, and always found it easier to act than try to talk about her feelings, he deserved better than what would have been the product of confusion and emotions running high.
"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?"
The smile found its way to his face, if an aching one. "A fact for a fact. On that beach, in the moments before… I imagined a whole life with you.
"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."
Jyn gave him a tiny smile at that, too, albeit one still laden with emotion. Hearing him say that — I imagined a whole life with you — hit like a punch in the gut, but there was a sweetness to the way it hurt. She'd imagined that, too, and they'd almost had it. Never once in all her life had she encountered anything fair about life or the universe or whatever forces might be at play there, but that fact struck her as especially unfair now.
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.
"Always." Head inclined— "I mean it." —obvious on his face, in his voice: he did.
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.
"We should be able to find some branches," Jyn said. The ship wasn't terribly far from the woods, and there was usually something lying around somewhere. As much as she trusted him to know what he was doing with the oven, she didn't have the first idea how to take it apart and put it back together like that, and she suspected that, once they were finished burning the clothes, they were both likely to be exhausted.
"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.
Cassian made another survey of the kitchen and came up with a bottle of cooking oil. "This should do it." He stacked everything into his arms and followed her back outside.
Together, they stacked stones into a circle, arranged branches into a pyramid, and placed the kindling. It took a while to catch since the branches were still damp from the rain, but the oil helped that along.
As the fire was growing, Cassian took two more objects from his pockets: two sharp knives from the kitchen. He used one, with great and precise ardor, to cut the Imperial uniform trousers down the middle. He began to cut it into strips. He stopped, picked up the other knife and other half of the trousers, and offered them to Jyn.
"Your turn," he said as he held them out. "For a fact."
Even if it hadn't been for the purpose of burning part of an Imperial uniform, Jyn thought there would have been something calming about the fire. Maybe it was just the familiar, methodical means of starting it, or the crisp scent of burning wood. Maybe it was just the welcome stillness of it all, the way the growing flame seemed to let everything else rest, or the fact of it being both a sort of creation and destruction at the same time.
Or else it was just because it had been a really long day and she was emotionally wrung out.
She hadn't seen Cassian take the knives from the kitchen, but as soon as she saw them, blades glinting in the firelight, she smiled, knowing what they must have been for. Sure enough, as he began cutting the trousers, her smile only grew a little. That it was more symbolic than anything else didn't stop it from feeling damn good.
"Right, it is my turn, isn't it?" she said as she took the knife and the half of the trousers, contemplating her options. At least with the biggest, heaviest truth out of the way, she was freer in what she could say. And he'd told her anything, although now that she was somewhat more composed, it felt harder to trudge back into those weightier subjects. "Before I wound up with the ship, I lived in a house," she said as she began cutting, still not quite able to bring herself to replace that I with we. It wouldn't have been entirely accurate anyway, since it wasn't them, at least not as he was here with her now. "Burned it down... a while back."
His brow lifted. "Burned it down?" But follow-up questions were still not part of the game. That was the point of it: facts eased the way for more of them.
Cassian struck open a seam with the knife, and finished ripping it all the way open with his hands. The resistance, the sound, were fantastically satisfying. "I've lived in… five? I guess probably six houses in my life. Presumably there was a first I don't remember. Then there was a treehouse with my sister. Then on Ferrix with my mother. Adoptive. Then technically on Mina-Rau, but I was hardly there, between missions. Then an apartment on Coruscant that was an Alliance safehouse. Then finally a hut on Yavin 4. …I know it's stupid, having lost Alderaan, but I'm so glad we saved Yavin 4. I'm glad we saved that forest."
Gesturing toward the fire in front of them, Jyn said, "Hey, sometimes it's all you can do."
It wasn't entirely the same, but it wasn't not, either. In both instances, the symbolism and the satisfaction went a long way. Even after she'd abandoned the house, just the fact of its continued presence felt too much like an open wound — one that was better cauterized than left to fester. There was more she wanted to tell him about it now, how she'd lived there with him and, for a while, with Bodhi, the first place she'd ever been able to call home since her childhood on Lah'mu, but she didn't feel ready to venture into those details and the questions they might prompt yet.
She had questions of her own, too, about all of these facts she hadn't managed to learn before, but they'd said a fact for a fact, not a fact for a slew of questions. She made mental note of what to ask later instead. As complicated and confusing as everything might have been, it was strangely nice, getting to know him all over again, finding out things that were wholly new to her.
"I wish I'd seen more of that forest," she added, glancing over at him before turning her attention back to the fabric, which was quickly becoming no longer recognizable as a pant leg. "That's not my fact. I named Beany after a toy I had when I was young. That Beany didn't make it off Coruscant with us, when we left."
Sometimes it's all you can do. Cassian ripped the final pieces into strips and looked up at her, somberly nodding. A crinkle of a laugh for 'Beany'—mentally confirming the embedded fact: when we left Coruscant.
He threw the strips into a pile and doused them with oil. Unceremoniously, only with enough care not to smother the fire, Cassian threw the strips one at a time into the flames. They flared and changed color as the strips caught, crackling and curling. Flames in his eyes, Cassian wanted to reach for Jyn's hand… but what had become the only fact in his mind stayed his own.
"…I didn't live on Yavin alone," he said at last. Fair was fair. "I was sort of married. We were on-and-off-again for years. At last, she left me. That was for the best."
So far, everything he'd told her had been new information, or at least filling out context for the odd shred of background she had managed to coax from him before. She hadn't done anything like this fact-trading with him then. There wouldn't have been much of a point, when he already knew the details of her life and she hadn't wanted to press for his. Out of all she had learned over this past little while, though, this was the first thing to bring Jyn up short, leaving her suddenly grateful for the distance between them and the crackle of the fire masking the slight catch in her breath.
Why hadn't she known this? Why did it matter? It didn't change anything that had happened between them here, and it wasn't as if she cared that he'd had previous relationships. Something about it, I was sort of married, left her feeling unsteady anyway, even less sure of where they stood than she had been moments ago.
As usual, it was her instinct to mask vulnerability with a sharp retort. She had to physically bite her tongue to hold back the response that threatened to follow: You were married here, too. It wouldn't have been fair to take this out on him, for him to find out something so big in such a flippant way, when she hadn't even actually told him that they had been together.
"'Bout a year and a half ago, a train derailed out at the edge of the city," she said instead. "I was stuck inside. Piece of metal debris through my shoulder." She gestured toward the once-injured shoulder in question, then began adding her own scraps of fabric to the fire. "I still feel it sometimes, when it's damp like it was today."
The feeling of new distance between them at his fact made him wish, stabbingly, that he hadn't said it. But, again, fair was fair; all the more reason he had to. Get such things out of the way. If they were going to go anywhere he wanted to go, and hope she did too, it had to be honest and transparent. They were being very ambitious, though, doing this so fast. It was so hard not to.
He decided to step it back, be more of a mirror to her pace. This one was easy, even as he winced at the thought of her being so hurt—nightmare fuel, at how easily, again, she could have died.
"I was shot in the shoulder," he said, commiserating. "I also still feel it sometimes. It didn't heal on its own… a Force-healer helped me. Which drove me crazy because…" So much for mirroring, here came the real fact: "I was raised not to trust Force users. Or really believe in the Force. Not that it cared or took sides."
Jyn thought she remembered having seen a scar there, though it had been so long now that she wasn't sure if that was a product of her imagination and this new fact she had been given. That, too, made her somewhat uneasy, though less so than a moment before. She just didn't like not being certain of or able to trust her own memory. After years, though, of course some details were bound to have blurred around the edges, while others were as vivid as if they'd never been separated.
The important thing now was that, whether she actually recalled having seen any sign of that wound or not, the accompanying story was a new one. It was a tidy segue into a fact she could give, too, one that she knew wouldn't have been included in any Alliance dossier on her.
"The last words my mother said to me were 'Trust the Force,'" she replied, fingers idly brushing the cord at her neck. The kyber crystal that hung from it sat below her shirt; tied beside it was the ring she had been given the day she got married, as was custom here. "She believed in all of that. I never really did. Right after she said it, she went and got herself killed for no good reason, so."
Again, so much he wanted to ask, suspecting she wouldn't have even said this much without knowing he wouldn't.
One thing that fact did show was how even more heroic it had been for Jyn to tell the others, May the Force be with us. Cassian looked at her with a fire that wasn't reflection.
He thought he wouldn't mirror this time. A fact about Maarva might seem to be competing. But of course, now all he could think about was…
"My father—adopted father—was lynched by Stormtroopers," he said. "Also for no good reason. He'd been trying to calm down rioters, instead they blamed him for their actions. They hanged him in the town square. In my dreams, I keep him from getting involved. I keep him on the side street with me."
This fact, once again, stole the breath from Jyn, made her stomach lurch uneasily, though for entirely different reasons now. Maybe it was selfish, to hear something as weighty as that and think of herself. She knew from experience that an argument was nothing next to such a loss. She still didn't believe she was entirely wrong in the point she'd been making. That didn't change the fact that, wounded, she'd wanted to wound him too, turning words into a weapon and stabbing with them, not knowing exactly what she would be striking but that it would be likely to do a good amount of damage.
She hadn't known this, then. She hadn't even known it when they talked about it before. That conversation, like so, so many they'd had, was faded in her mind now, something that she remembered happening but in no detail. It didn't matter anyway when it wasn't one she'd had with him.
"I'm sorry," she said, fully turning toward him, her eyes glassy in the firelight. Saying so like this may have been a departure from the format of the game, but it was still true, a fact of a different sort. "For what I said to you. After Eadu. I didn't even really... I wanted to say the worst thing I could think of. I didn't know. About that."
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timeasmymeasure
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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."
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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."
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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."
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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."
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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…
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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."
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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?"
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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."
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Date: 2025-05-12 03:18 am (UTC)Together, they stacked stones into a circle, arranged branches into a pyramid, and placed the kindling. It took a while to catch since the branches were still damp from the rain, but the oil helped that along.
As the fire was growing, Cassian took two more objects from his pockets: two sharp knives from the kitchen. He used one, with great and precise ardor, to cut the Imperial uniform trousers down the middle. He began to cut it into strips. He stopped, picked up the other knife and other half of the trousers, and offered them to Jyn.
"Your turn," he said as he held them out. "For a fact."
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Date: 2025-05-12 03:43 am (UTC)Or else it was just because it had been a really long day and she was emotionally wrung out.
She hadn't seen Cassian take the knives from the kitchen, but as soon as she saw them, blades glinting in the firelight, she smiled, knowing what they must have been for. Sure enough, as he began cutting the trousers, her smile only grew a little. That it was more symbolic than anything else didn't stop it from feeling damn good.
"Right, it is my turn, isn't it?" she said as she took the knife and the half of the trousers, contemplating her options. At least with the biggest, heaviest truth out of the way, she was freer in what she could say. And he'd told her anything, although now that she was somewhat more composed, it felt harder to trudge back into those weightier subjects. "Before I wound up with the ship, I lived in a house," she said as she began cutting, still not quite able to bring herself to replace that I with we. It wouldn't have been entirely accurate anyway, since it wasn't them, at least not as he was here with her now. "Burned it down... a while back."
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Date: 2025-05-12 04:00 am (UTC)Cassian struck open a seam with the knife, and finished ripping it all the way open with his hands. The resistance, the sound, were fantastically satisfying. "I've lived in… five? I guess probably six houses in my life. Presumably there was a first I don't remember. Then there was a treehouse with my sister. Then on Ferrix with my mother. Adoptive. Then technically on Mina-Rau, but I was hardly there, between missions. Then an apartment on Coruscant that was an Alliance safehouse. Then finally a hut on Yavin 4. …I know it's stupid, having lost Alderaan, but I'm so glad we saved Yavin 4. I'm glad we saved that forest."
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Date: 2025-05-12 04:18 am (UTC)It wasn't entirely the same, but it wasn't not, either. In both instances, the symbolism and the satisfaction went a long way. Even after she'd abandoned the house, just the fact of its continued presence felt too much like an open wound — one that was better cauterized than left to fester. There was more she wanted to tell him about it now, how she'd lived there with him and, for a while, with Bodhi, the first place she'd ever been able to call home since her childhood on Lah'mu, but she didn't feel ready to venture into those details and the questions they might prompt yet.
She had questions of her own, too, about all of these facts she hadn't managed to learn before, but they'd said a fact for a fact, not a fact for a slew of questions. She made mental note of what to ask later instead. As complicated and confusing as everything might have been, it was strangely nice, getting to know him all over again, finding out things that were wholly new to her.
"I wish I'd seen more of that forest," she added, glancing over at him before turning her attention back to the fabric, which was quickly becoming no longer recognizable as a pant leg. "That's not my fact. I named Beany after a toy I had when I was young. That Beany didn't make it off Coruscant with us, when we left."
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Date: 2025-05-12 11:17 am (UTC)He threw the strips into a pile and doused them with oil. Unceremoniously, only with enough care not to smother the fire, Cassian threw the strips one at a time into the flames. They flared and changed color as the strips caught, crackling and curling. Flames in his eyes, Cassian wanted to reach for Jyn's hand… but what had become the only fact in his mind stayed his own.
"…I didn't live on Yavin alone," he said at last. Fair was fair. "I was sort of married. We were on-and-off-again for years. At last, she left me. That was for the best."
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Date: 2025-05-12 04:42 pm (UTC)Why hadn't she known this? Why did it matter? It didn't change anything that had happened between them here, and it wasn't as if she cared that he'd had previous relationships. Something about it, I was sort of married, left her feeling unsteady anyway, even less sure of where they stood than she had been moments ago.
As usual, it was her instinct to mask vulnerability with a sharp retort. She had to physically bite her tongue to hold back the response that threatened to follow: You were married here, too. It wouldn't have been fair to take this out on him, for him to find out something so big in such a flippant way, when she hadn't even actually told him that they had been together.
"'Bout a year and a half ago, a train derailed out at the edge of the city," she said instead. "I was stuck inside. Piece of metal debris through my shoulder." She gestured toward the once-injured shoulder in question, then began adding her own scraps of fabric to the fire. "I still feel it sometimes, when it's damp like it was today."
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Date: 2025-05-12 04:52 pm (UTC)He decided to step it back, be more of a mirror to her pace. This one was easy, even as he winced at the thought of her being so hurt—nightmare fuel, at how easily, again, she could have died.
"I was shot in the shoulder," he said, commiserating. "I also still feel it sometimes. It didn't heal on its own… a Force-healer helped me. Which drove me crazy because…" So much for mirroring, here came the real fact: "I was raised not to trust Force users. Or really believe in the Force. Not that it cared or took sides."
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Date: 2025-05-12 05:15 pm (UTC)The important thing now was that, whether she actually recalled having seen any sign of that wound or not, the accompanying story was a new one. It was a tidy segue into a fact she could give, too, one that she knew wouldn't have been included in any Alliance dossier on her.
"The last words my mother said to me were 'Trust the Force,'" she replied, fingers idly brushing the cord at her neck. The kyber crystal that hung from it sat below her shirt; tied beside it was the ring she had been given the day she got married, as was custom here. "She believed in all of that. I never really did. Right after she said it, she went and got herself killed for no good reason, so."
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Date: 2025-05-12 05:28 pm (UTC)One thing that fact did show was how even more heroic it had been for Jyn to tell the others, May the Force be with us. Cassian looked at her with a fire that wasn't reflection.
He thought he wouldn't mirror this time. A fact about Maarva might seem to be competing. But of course, now all he could think about was…
"My father—adopted father—was lynched by Stormtroopers," he said. "Also for no good reason. He'd been trying to calm down rioters, instead they blamed him for their actions. They hanged him in the town square. In my dreams, I keep him from getting involved. I keep him on the side street with me."
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Date: 2025-05-12 05:49 pm (UTC)She hadn't known this, then. She hadn't even known it when they talked about it before. That conversation, like so, so many they'd had, was faded in her mind now, something that she remembered happening but in no detail. It didn't matter anyway when it wasn't one she'd had with him.
"I'm sorry," she said, fully turning toward him, her eyes glassy in the firelight. Saying so like this may have been a departure from the format of the game, but it was still true, a fact of a different sort. "For what I said to you. After Eadu. I didn't even really... I wanted to say the worst thing I could think of. I didn't know. About that."
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