The City posts

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[To be linked to the game comm]

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we are the next time 'round (for Jyn)

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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 tooka cat 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?"

draft, to post in June

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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.

the sacred simplicity of you at my side

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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.