[but if the silence takes you, then i hope it takes me, too.] - CLOSED

[kestreldawn]

WHO: Jyn Erso/Cassian Andor
WHERE: De Chima #003
WHEN: Following Cassian's release from the hospital/medbay
WHAT: Jyn comes home to find Cassian there, to her surprise. Many feelings and emotions explode.
WARNINGS: It's Jyn and Cassian, so there'll be lots of mentions of death and war, probably. Will update as needed. ETA: And finally, a smut alert.

This strange, new life leaves something to be desired. There's a monotony to it, with Jyn waking to the obnoxious wailing of an alarm, going about her robotic morning routine, then going to work - a concept so entirely foreign she'd nearly opted not to go all together on the first day. Still, she forced herself - mostly out of lack of a better option, and partially out of proving to herself that she could do it.

She's nothing if not adaptable, after all.

Within a matter of days, she's already learned the ins and outs of the electronic system required for her position - Data Files Manager - and it's already begun to eat away at her proverbial Life Force. She often catches herself remembering, sometimes even wistfully, for her previous life. It hadn't been easy, and while she'd been in it, she'd wanted nothing but to get out of the damn thing, but now that it's gone - it seems that there's a piece of her that got left behind with it, back somewhere in the sands of Scarif.

Thoughts of Cassian sometimes trickle into her consciousness as though through a pinhole in a basin. It's often so unnoticeable and so natural that it's only when she remembers the warmth of his body against hers or the gravitation pull of his eyes, coagulated into the blasted image of his face somewhere in her mind's eye, that she has to forcibly shake her head, mumble words of discouragement, and demand he leave her alone. There's luckily no one around to hear these hushed ramblings, but if there were, they'd most certainly think she was mad.

This particular day, she's contemplating whether to stick with the job she's been given, absently scratching at the place where her glowing tattoo lurks beneath the surface of her skin. It's pink and lightly scabbed from how often she does this when her mind is distracted. She finds herself tracing her steps back to her house - a bizarre concept in itself - and wonders if the supposed room mates she has will already be there this time. She's yet to meet them and isn't even entirely sure they exist, but every time she's walked through the door she's prepared herself to see a stranger walking around.

She swings the door open.

Empty.

Or so she thinks. It's when she's walking up the stairs and towards her room that she hears movement - shuffling, a bit of grunting. She vaguely wonders whether it's a room mate or an intruder and how she could possibly know the difference between the two. She quietly approaches the room from which the noise seems to be originating, getting her face close enough to the door before bringing a loosely clasped fist up to rap her knuckles against the wooden surface.

"Hello? Is someone in there?"

Comments

[candor1]

[OOC note for posterity ^_^ per our plurk conversation: the activation trigger for Cassian absorbing Jyn's telepathy is when she wants it: not consciously choosing to give her power, but just the desire to be understood/not alone in whatever she's experiencing. What he picks up in here also plotted via plurk]



Her additional touch causes his breath to hitch—perhaps feeling the shared, mutually amplifying agreement in what they both want but aren't ready to say… Not that he's realizing what that is even yet…

But he's about to.

He raises his eyes to hers, tempted to give her a reassuring smile (not sure to what), finding himself just searching those eyes instead (still not sure what for…)

When the sudden rush of images hits him behind the eyes.

The Death Star was pulsing with emerald light… She wasn't afraid of what would happen, but she didn't want to suffer… Jyn tightened her grip on Cassian… the cave below the broken hatch was illuminated with the strength of a sun, and then the walls turned to dust and there was no longer a cave but only her spirit and heart and everything she had ever been: the daughter of Galen and Lyra and Saw, the angry fighter and the shattered prisoner and the champion and the friend

but then none of that, transporting not dying, but still feeling—surely—like dying…

they were trying to explain, the speech, the pamphlet, but what did she care? what did that matter? there was only one important thing and they wouldn't or couldn't tell her:
where were the others?…where was he?

teleporters make no sense… they're nonsense…

(is this Jyn's thought or Cassian's?) what bantha-excreting nerf-herding bullshit to have such a thing here but not where and when they would have mattered… when they would saved all of them…

"Whoa…" His hands spasm away from hers, palms suddenly flat on the mattress, like he's trying to stop it spinning out from under him.

finally acceding to all this to introduce herself on the network, getting response, but finding all she really wanted, what she needed to prioritize, was shooting something
because there were too many feelings inside her and she'd never been trained to do anything else with them but siphon them, focus and redirect them, into violence…

lying in bed staring at the ceiling. Not nothingness. Nothingness would have been nicer. Inescapable, profound sadness
feels like a hole no don't think his name

an unknown face talking about familiar things…
I am Count Dooku, of the planet Serenno. Leader of the Confederacy of Independent Systems
I was born in a Separatist prison
Madness, sheer madness — It goes too far, much too far… a vile act, contrary to every principle the Separatist movement was founded upon

one he knows now—giving the same future history he'd give Cassian too… skies no, Alderaan…? but then the less sympathetic Would've been nice to have a warning…!

and being stuck in her assigned job doing the work of a droid, reorganizing the entire system on her first day, then waiting, waiting, to find out what the point of it is, why this drudgery, and all the time the gaping hole of sadness and loneliness and wondering why she made it when not the others, when not him…?

and the sudden injection of the shockingly familiar:
I think they have as much competence assigning me a job as I have in lying convincingly.

One of Cassian's hands left the mattress to press his head.

I didn't. Get away, that is. I experienced total shutdown three seconds after that.
(wondering whether to ask if he's seen Cassian but the mere thought of his name makes her want to scream)
At least there's a 2% chance of hope

Cassian gasped at being suddenly blinded. He pressed his hand over his eyes until they readjusted… to what he realized was just the ambient light of the room reasserting itself through the…

…what were they…

…his and Jyn's thoughts swirling in and out of each other…

He was no longer propped up one on arm, just lying on his side on the bed, shaking a bit as he tried to come back to himself.

Oh Yavá… if that was what it was like for her… if he could have wrapped her in his arms and protected her from it, he would have. But right now he was trying to get his head to stop spinning and not fall off the face of the world.

"Yes," he gasped belatedly, "I seem to inherit someone else's powers."

…And one other power, besides. The reason it had stopped—how he'd stopped it on pure instinct, without realizing. A sudden burst of forceful energy that had sprung around him like a shield, nearly pushing Jyn back—but, as if unwilling to harm her, dissipating the moment it touched her.

But it had broken the other power, at least while it lasted. And which, for the moment, in the forcefield's wake, remained quiet.

[kestreldawn]

He leaves her.

She can see it the moment the light seems to fade from his eyes, and in her abject terror, she panics. Blood drains from her face, leaving her pale like the sands of Scarif, hands and fingers trembling like the ship coming down onto Eadu. She snatches her hand away from his side, thinking, wondering, terrified that perhaps -

Perhaps she'd hurt him.

Perhaps she'd underestimated the severity of his injuries.

Had she touched too hard? Had she been careless enough - consumed, engulfed, swallowed by her need to feel him, touch him, know him the way the light had consumed them both before they'd arrived?

"Cassian?" Her voice drips out of her mouth like a leaking faucet - no strength, no conviction. He isn't there - but then, he is - and there's a furrowing of brows, and a pressing of palms to mattress. She shifts herself onto her knees and kneels at his side, the significance of the sight of her praying at his form not lost on her, though it has no place in her consciousness - not while he spirals, further and further from her.

Please, no - please. I can't lose you again.

Her hands hover somewhere in the middle ground between them, unsure of whether her touch had been the catalyst to bring about whatever this might've been, yet wanting nothing more than to feel him, assess his status with the nerves in her fingers.

At his sudden inhalation, she slides herself closer to him, now ebbed forward to place a hand on his shoulder - away from the ribs, away from his side. Feels something like a gentle gust of wind slide over her body, sways with it like the breeze, focuses on him again. Please, come back to me. She begins to count - what Maia had taught her so many years ago - matches her breathing to a pre-determined set of numbers; in for five, out for ten. You're no good to him if you collapse. Regulate. Calm. Steady the heart, control the breath.

When his voice floods the air, she exhales the longest burst of air from her lungs, letting it empty her, taking with it the panic she'd felt surging, electrifying her veins.

"Did you .. ?" she begins to ask, studying his face, searching his eyes. "What happened?"

[candor1]

He would have pulled himself fully upright, but her face is close to him already, so he just turns to meet it better. It'll be another moment before he fully regulates his pulse and catches his breath. But the new tension—perhaps dread—albeit mercifully fading—in her face and eyes, causes him, without the overthinking of before, to put his arms around her again. Keeping them face to face. But making their arms, their hands on one another's shoulders, to take the place of the defensive shield; containing them to this present moment and one another. Anchoring, reassuring.

Breathlessly or mentally, the echo: I'm right here. I'm here. I haven't left. I'm with you.

How have they covered so much in one hour…

…it was Jyn. He'd been waiting for her. And she, apparently, for him. How could they not. How could they wait to spill over into one another's borders again.

If this is true, that he can see her mind as much as she his…

No, focus. Where his mind started to go was too… transcendent… awe-ful… in some ways could be taken as potentially… erm… what's the spiritual equivalent of filthy…?

But it barely registers even in his own mind. Just as he can take in a room at a glance and call up the details later; that no sooner enters his brain as it's automatically stored away.

Later.

Now: now. Confirmation. Reassurance. This.

"They put you to work in… some sort of data library," he murmured. That and the rest of what he said put forth with the quick dispassionate flow of a technical report. But also with the air of a question—requesting confirmation. "Your first transmission on the net was to find a firing range. Han Solo told you about Alderaan and Luke Skywalker destroying the Death Star. Wasn't glad when you discovered your power. You spoke to someone—" That Cassian obviously has to meet but can't really be bothered with just now. That's the old life. Jyn trumps it. "—who took credit for the Confederacy. And…"

His face tilts a little, so his eyes can meet hers all the clearer—with a new light in them. Report tone broken, to ask: "Kay-tu?"

[kestreldawn]

Power mimicry. It seems to work, she thinks, based on the summations he spills forth. It's - strange, in a way, to hear one's own thoughts, experiences laid out in such a casual fashion from someone who hadn't gone through the motions, seen with their own eyes.

And, had it been anyone else, anyone other than Cassian, it would have felt intrusive. It would have felt like betrayal and invasion and removal of autonomous power. It would have felt like having the very essence of her stripped away, reduced to nothing more than a pile of data.

But - perhaps because it is him - it feels like her mother's arms after she'd had a nightmare, soft and strong and warm. It feels like the embrace of a bed when muscles are screaming and agonizing. It feels like the first breath after a dive underwater - skull vibrating, mind spinning, heart racing.

The touch of his hand on her shoulder only intensifies the feeling, and she finds herself ripping her gaze away to allow for time to gather herself again. She nods, though - to confirm what he's said, what he's seen, what he knows now.

But the pause in his voice lifts her eyes, and she meets them with a bright determination - and then - explosive supernova, as though every event of her previous life colliding at once. Her lips twitch, spread, curl - a smile breaks loose on her face.

"YES!" as though suddenly remembering how to speak. "He's here! He's -!" She glances out the window, looks to the structures visible from where they're sitting. "There!" She points in the direction. "He lives next door, Cassian! Should - We should - No, you should - you should go, and find him, and talk to him. He would want to know you were here and safe."

[candor1]

His mouth drops open—he closes it again. Caught between equally powerful forces… Yes of course he wants to see Kay again—overwrite that last awful moment (Climb… Goodbye…) and let him know Cassian's all right too.

But he also… the thought of leaving Jyn again so soon after finding her…

…no, it's all right. All right.

Probably best, actually, for them both to take a moment.

Make sure whatever happens next isn't just a result of adrenaline, heightened… anything…

It's still with great reluctance that he moves back from her. But yes, though he isn't quite smiling, there's a new brightness and clarity to his face, too.

—But before he leaves, he pauses and turns back to her… slips an arm around her one more time to pull her in for a quick hug.

"You'll be here when I get back?" he says quietly into her hair. An undercurrent of pain, of lingering fear, beneath the warmth.

[kestreldawn]

The now-familiar trickle of thoughts begins to fill her skull again, and though she could reach out - rest a hand on the side of his face, let the warmth of her skin seep into his, she wants to let him process the thoughts himself. Let him come to his own conclusion, his own decision. She realizes, somewhere in the back of her mind, how dangerous this power could be - how it could so easily strip another person of their free-will, of their autonomy.

So, instead of saying or moving or reacting, she listens. And she waits.

She lets herself easily fold into his embrace, eyes fluttering closed as she inhales deeply, lets the scent of him fill her and make her whole again. She nods against his shoulder, reaching up to place her palm at his back. Reassurance.

"I will. I'm going to go into my room to change, shower - but I'll be here, in the house. I promise."

[candor1]

It's when their thoughts and feelings align that he seems to feel the mental sharing most… reinforcing and feeding and heightening both… it's not even thoughts, as one might subdivide them, but almost sensation… as if he can feel her hand on his back, on his face, from both their perspectives…

He forces himself to let her go before he loses the will to leave. (Though if it were for anything or anyone other than Kay… he might not have tried.)

For the same reason, he doesn't try to kiss her cheek again. Just gives her a smile unlike any she's probably seen on his face before. (For all the warmth and openness, lack of self-consciousness, only pride and attention to her, that had been in his smiles when smiles finally broke open, on the tower citadel, in the lift, on the beach; the surprise and stripping away of anything controlled or contained or half-concealed in the shuttle, on Yavin IV after she accepted his volunteering; the open astonishment of fulfilled interreliance any of the times she'd saved his life or he had hers; most definitely not the affect he could put on as an implement that seemed so friendly and welcoming but was entirely false. This one could almost be called shy.)

…and he ducked out.




[ooc: Shall we time-jump to after he gets back? :-) I don't think I'm ready to leave this first day yet…]

[later]

[kestreldawn]

True to her word, Jyn didn't leave the house. She had thought to go to the store to purchase various food items she thought Cassian might enjoy, but on the off-chance that he returned while she was away, she decided against it. After he'd left, she'd made her way back down to her room and collapsed on top of her bed for a little while, simply staring at the ceiling - staring at nothing and everything - insides like a maelstrom of emotion she couldn't quite quell.

When her mind had exhausted itself, she'd hoisted herself up and showered, spending longer than normal underneath the steady stream of hot water - nothing in particular floating through her mind or stealing her attention, but numbed by the tidal wave she'd been (happily) swept away by.

After dressing herself in clothes apparently typical of this world but all together strange for theirs (a t-shirt, a zip-up hoodie, and a pair of lounging pants), she pads her way down to the kitchen, stomach now rumbling its dissatisfaction at being left empty for so long. It's a familiar feeling, having spent many nights nursing an aching gut from lack of food and too much movement, and it feels like a decadent luxury to be able to open up a refrigerator door, find all manner of food stuffs inside, and eat whatever she preferred. She stands in the cold air from the fridge for a few moments, one hand curled around the handle of the door, the other at her waist, deciding what to eat.

[candor1]

Seeing Jyn again—talking to her, touching her, having his mind… go through whatever it gone through with hers—had been like fully waking from a half-effective palliative haze (where it had induced stasis without full relief, slowing and dimming the mind without granting oblivion); or rehabilitation from neural damage; or when the migraine and disorientation finally lifted after a STERC treatment; or, less dismally, setting foot on Yavin IV and being able to climb the ziggurat over the trees again after months underground or in flight. The dizzyingly upward spike of relief, energy, euphoria, after prolonged pain or confinement or depression. …Or even just… remembering what it meant to be alive after too long soldiering through being half- [the internal one] -dead.

Seeing Kay again was like settling back down into equilibrium. Not high, not low, just able to exist and function. A palate-cleansing clarity—the good kind of emptiness. Not tangibly hollow, just lacking the inner chaos. Not worrying about taking care of anyone else or having to be taken care of. Able just to be.

As calm and quiet (less eventful and preoccupied than their norm; usually they'd be talking while doing several other things—crunching data, flying, exercise or maintenance or physical therapy or repairs) as the visit with Kay was, Cassian felt himself crashing into exhaustion on the short walk back to…

his… and Jyn's…

…what did he call it? Quarters? Rooms? …House? (He had literally never had one before. Not ever. To himself or otherwise.)

He hoped the crash wouldn't take him all the way back down into the crushing horror of… depression or… disinterest.

But he doubted it.

Different as the impact of Jyn's and Kay's restoration to him was, each in their own way, being with both… made it almost feel as if the last weeks, months, hadn't happened. The separation had been the strangeness, the injury, the hard work. Having them alive and reunited restored natural balance and ease, felt too natural not to have been true all along.

…Which was ridiculous because Cassian's full acquaintance with Jyn in their last life had been…

…forty-eight hours?

But even if he hadn't died, that would have been the end of his old life regardless. The new one…

…was hard to anticipate but…

…was about to start…?

Which…

Relatively calm as his mind was now, and the underlying currents being positive now (instead of dreadful as they'd been for the past weeks), that might be why he'd… snuck in.

And lingered just outside the archway to the kitchen, looking at Jyn's back—whom he shouldn't have recognized at once in those clothes, but he had, and not just because he was trained to see through disguises.

He felt so…

…dreading.

…to care about someone.

It had been easy to be alone. So many years.

Cold, somehow. But easy.

Kay had been an acceptable exception. Not because the potential of losing him wasn't painful to Cassian… but at least because Cassian knew his own thoughts and behaviors and need of Kay wasn't going to adversely affect the droid, ever. Kay couldn't be frightened or offended or overburdened by Cassian needing him. It was his function. Nor would Kay ever take Cassian losing his composure personally. And Cassian couldn't accidentally injure or kill Kay if any of his worst nightmares about himself somehow came true.

All in all: Cassian could not hurt Kay. It would simply require too large a convergence of too many intensely narrow and implausible possibilities to worry about.

The need Cassian felt for Jyn…

…was like the need he'd seen in her eyes, felt in her gravitational orbit, that had made it impossible for him to ever…

…not try to see it filled.

She had ended up having that need crushed. Repeatedly. Yet had come out the other side. She had started with her sights being relatively small—survival, continuance—and had grown vast.

He…

…his world had become…

…he couldn't even think this way. Not because she might overhear but because he couldn't risk…

…feeling that way? Risking himself?

No.

…doing that to her. They'd known each other forty-eight hours. How on any world could it be reasonable or realistic or fair to have any hopes or expectations whatsoever. He didn't even know himself what exactly… was needed.

Except that reality, and especially other organic beings, were too frail, too tenuous, to want that much…

Her need had been with much greater foundation than his.

How he could he put all of his own… life… onto her like…

…Too early to worry about any of this. Thoughts and feelings… maybe should have mattered all along more than he'd let them, but they are not the same as actions.

One moment at a time.

This is a new life. He retired. He died. Which means… he should find out what it's like not to try and plan everything ten steps ahead.

And certainly not all by himself. As concerned others.

…Which, like being with Jyn and Kay again… somehow is so easy to slip into. Is this further fallout from Scarif? Or was his entire life been spent in the effort to resist this? And now it wasn't so much changing gears as just… letting it? Stop fighting it?

For a change, just see what happens.

He doesn't know if he can. But the possibility is…

Oh, kriff it, he literally can't think about it.

—And if he had managed to come in without her hearing him, versus her just letting him think so, she could probably pick up on all that crashing mental wave about now. (If probably too incoherent and tangled to make sense of.) But just in case, Cassian deliberately stepped heavily on the floor to make a sound, to alert her, as he came properly into the room.

Whether or not she picked up on any of that, his entire affect would probably seem… new. He looked around, and at her, smiling but… not shyly, exactly, but lacking of his customary air of absolutely self-assured, self-contained control. Like he was… trespassing or… for the first time since they'd met… didn't know what he was doing.

…Because he wasn't doing… anything.

And that… he definitely didn't know how to do.

"Still here," he said, with a smile that said he knew what an inane greeting it was. But it had to be celebrated nonetheless. They were both still here. It hadn't proved a hallucination just yet.

[kestreldawn]

Jyn isn't much of a cook ... she isn't one at all, if she was to be honest with herself. Her mother hadn't really been much of one either, too interested and drawn into and distracted by the skies overheard, Galen's research (which Lyra only partially understood to begin with), their family. She could cook some basic meals, ones that tasted good enough and filled the belly, but she preferred her time spent thirsting for adventure and studying kyber crystals - not slaving in a kitchen. (For their time on Coruscant, Mac-Vee had done most of the cooking for them, anyway. He always remembered to make Jyn's favorite meal at her birthday, and she'd lacked the adult foresight to ask him how he made it).

Her eyes scan the items collected and stocked in the fridge, as though she could view them all and somehow calculate portions and measurements and come up with something relatively appetizing. It's after a few minutes that she realizes how utterly foolish she's being, and it's when she's about to shut the door to the thing and head back upstairs that the thoughts come in like thunder.

Gaze loses focus, falls somewhere by the (strangely white) milk. It's Cassian's voice she hears in her head, but the words and sounds all overlap and twist and intermingle and tangle that she's unable to make heads or tails of what he's thinking. She captures something about K2, something about his old life, something about her and the fear of burdening (?) her ..

The sound of his foot hitting the floor snaps her back, brings the light back to her eyes with a little jolt of surprise as she closes the fridge door with a light slam. Whirls on her heel to see that it's him (explains the sudden deluge of thought, she thinks). Blinks to bring him back into focus, back into her consciousness, back into -

Well, being.

Matches his smile with one of her own - something like shyness coloring hers.

"As promised," she replies. "I, uh - I was trying to figure out what to eat. For dinner. But then I realized I'm a terrible cook."

[candor1]

His gaze drifts from her to the cabinets… and shakes his head in slow wonder. All the rooms… the size of them… and all these provisions… "How many others are we sharing this place with?"

[kestreldawn]

"I'm not sure. There are five bedrooms in the place, in total. But - I've yet to see or run into any of the others. I'm not sure if there even is anyone else here," she replies, leaving out the 'but us' that she feels like using to end that statement. She goes to tuck her fingers into the pockets of her trousers to realize - there are no pockets. She instead loosely clasps her hands in front of her as she meanders towards him, seeing the look in his eye. "It's almost too much space, isn't it?"

[candor1]

He shakes his head again, though in agreement, moving instinctively closer to her, as well. "The only space I've ever had wholly to myself was a cockpit."

…He finds himself starting to think something else… and, since he's already determined not to adapt to her telepathy by trying to block his own thoughts, he tries instead speaking them. (Which is… less natural to him than suppression. But again… when he makes up his mind to do something, he does it. And the determination now is to stop being a spy.

Which… is so many levels of his life of functioning… possibly all of them…?

But. As he has to keep reminding himself. As he was reminded by doctors and medics and nurses over and over, and only now is caring to accept. One thing at a time.)

"—That's not true. I was given private officer's quarters at the Temple Base. —Yavin IV." She probably hadn't heard it called that. It was an unofficial name. "I just spent as little time in them as possible. I always wanted either a task to do or people nearby to keep me focused. While planet-bound I don't like sleeping alone."

…That he hadn't thought through before saying it aloud. If she hadn't grown to know him shockingly well over so little time, she mightn't have caught the slight new tension in his stance and face. I didn't mean…

[kestreldawn]

There's a quiet inhale of breath as he steps closer. He feels like a magnet as he draws closer - she can feel the pull, push, pull of his being, his essence whenever he's in the same room. She hasn't failed to notice that the pull seems to be overwhelmingly stronger than the push, though she isn't quite sure what to do with this realization.

She listens to him speak, lets the sound of his voice and the melodic nature of it fill the space around them, scurry into every nook and cranny of this too-large-of-a-space, trickle in like rain water into all the cracks and crevices until it wrapped them up, swallowed them whole. It's a nice place to exist, she thinks to herself wondering if his mimicry would've picked up on that.

A lump lodges itself in her throat at mention of bed, sleeping, alone .. But it isn't out of offense or insult. It's more - the recognition of the voice inside of herself, hearing its inner most thoughts being echoed by another - by Cassian, by the voice inside of him, lodged at his core. With a steeling breath, she takes another step forward - sees the tension poured over his features - and gently reaches for his hand.

If he were to pick up the frequency of her thoughts just then, he'd hear: It's okay; I don't want to sleep alone, either. You don't have to if you don't want to. I'm here. But instead of verbalizing those thoughts, she instead squeezes his hand - reassurance, understanding. She can feel the heat of her cheeks betraying the collected persona she's trying to project.

"Unfortunate that we're planet-bound now, I guess," she tries to tease, her fingers giving his hand another squeeze.

[candor1]

The warmth of her hand in his…

It's the same hand he grabbed on Jedha, where, in the square, it had felt like steel; in Saw's fortress, like glass. The same as on Eadu where it had felt like a live wire. And on the beach, where it had felt… like…

He's not sure he can hold it in his mind, now. Not quite. But it was different. It had set all of him on fire and burned him away.

Now… it just feels…

…still warm… a warmth that still spreads…

…but…

alive. …Human.

He stays steady. …Mostly. As his fingers slip between hers, there may be a slight tremor.

He knows he won't be able to sleep without her. He'll be more comfortable on the floor of her room than in his bed alone.

He hears her thought. Feels… what both of them are feeling. It sings between them, putting everything on the same frequency.

…But thinking… feeling… is still not the same as…

…are feelings enough to…?

They're back in it. He thought there might be more… transition, but… again. Being so linked is their natural state. Trying to stay out of it… is difficult, and he's so tired…

"I don't know how to do this," he says quietly. "Any of this. Be on one planet. Be in a house. Not have a mission. Not have a war. …Have a tomorrow.

"Be…"

Don't think it. Thinking is not enough. Feeling is not enough. Make a decision. Speak.

"…with you."

Whatever that means. I'm not in charge anymore.

…Though he hadn't been, with her. …Ever.

[kestreldawn]

"I don't either," Jyn readily admits, hushing her voice as though sharing a secret meant only for the two of them - and, she supposes, it is. It isn't meant for whatever ears or eyes or beings might be lurking somewhere in the shadows - supposed house mates or ghosts of their pasts, apparitions of their futures.

Another step closer, separated only by a breath -

Might as well be a mile, she thinks. Might as well be a lightyear.

"But - maybe that's the whole of it," she continues, voice soft like morning sunlight and warm like the afternoon haze. "Maybe that's the point. That - we don't know how to do these things, but - we can learn. If we want to, if we decide to." She isn't necessarily conscious of the fact that she's automatically grouped them together into the heavily significant 'we,' but it feels right -

It doesn't feel contrived or forced or wrong.

It's 'us.' It's 'we.' There's no part of her that doesn't feel it.

"So, what do you want?" Open-ended, purposefully - give him the space, the freedom, the option to answer as he will, travel down whatever road he might.

No fighting for control, no fighting for dominance.

Not anymore.

Never again.

I know I just repeated a same thing across 2 diff. threads, but… it's the crux really…

[candor1]

To hold you. Forever.

To kiss you.



…He should say it. She's asked him. …She hasn't recoiled from the thoughts… and now she's asked.

…

He tries.

Please believe that he tries.

But suddenly the dread is so strong, it reopens all the hurts in his chest. The split ribs, the ruptured lung, the bleeding, the black hole…

The cascade, again. The vortex.

Not now. Not yet. We haven't had enough time to…

It doesn't matter. The thoughts are all there. Dams don't break selectively.

He's had sex with more people than he'd wanted to. …He's not sure with any of them he'd actually wanted to. Not… oh god. …because of them. Voluntarily, yes… some. Others… yielding to… needs—his or theirs. And others still…
…
…in the line of duty.

(That's not how people… That's not how it should… How could she ever want to…)

But even where he'd acted as a free agent… it had been a different kind of need that drove it. Not for the other individual person. Not necessarily. For some kind of connection, diversion, release, where none other was available… seeking comfort and life in desperation… everything fleeting, everything doomed… All, even when it had been about the other person, had been taking advantage of the moment lest they were about to die. And they were always about to die.

There'd been no one he'd wanted to live with.

And that was sex. Sleeping—actually going to sleep—with… which in some ways felt more intimate… requiring more trust…

Only two. Ever.

And that still out of similar need. For warmth, for safety, for solace, for companionship. Not…



The need he feels now is… for all of those things, certainly, but not as ends in of themselves. As byproducts of wanting to be with, singularly, uniquely, irreplaceably, her.

The only other thing he's ever felt this need for—to live or die for, to make him want to get through the next minute and to the next one, want to know what will happen, want to help it happen—was…

…the Rebellion.

And for the Rebellion, he'd done…

…he can't need Jyn like that. He can't. Because that level of need… he'd been made too good at manipulating events and beings, do anything necessary, to fulfill such needs. She cannot be a goal. He can not… fall into… those behaviors. The only ways he'd learned how to achieve goals. Never. Not with her. He can't.

He tries to remember that he hadn't been able to with Jyn even when he'd wanted to. He'd never been able to dominate or manipulate her. When he thought he had to. She'd seen through it, pushed back against it, or simply ignored it. The only effortless way was when they'd worked together—no, indeed, no fighting for control or dominance, no competing, just seamlessly unifed.

They'd gotten there from being in opposition.

Surely now that he doesn't want anything else, knows there's no other way, it should be easier…?

But the thought of making her… have to… she could stand up to him, could fight him off, but…

…could he bear it…

He lets out a breath like a groan of pain and shakes his head, his fingers going slack in hers, as he tries to pull away.

And some part of his brain—maybe the strategic brain, that's been subdivided to operate almost independently of the rest, always running its subroutines in the background until it's needed to counteract shock or panic—when the rest is currently eating itself alive—reaches out to her.

Jyn. I'm sorry. Please help me.

I'll never trust it if it comes from me.

[kestreldawn]

Another tidal wave.

This one dark, brackish, unrelenting. Hurricane winds and monsoon floods - rampaging, tearing, pillaging, destroying. It feels like a colliding of stars and celestial bodies they could no longer travel to behind her eyes, in the bone of her forehead. Eyes lose focus - settle somewhere by his collarbone - unseeing and unknowing except for what surges behind them.

Sex
Coercion
Unwilling agreements
Seeking security
Needing connection and reminders of humanity
Desperation
Fear

She sees herself, sees the reverence with which he treats her, thinks of her, regards her. A piece of her somewhere inside curls away and feels humbly undeserving of such accolades. Some still-cognizant nerve endings feel the recoiling of skin, of finger, of hand - screams out, begs for it to stay, tries to clutch it in a desperate flailing the way one would try to capture tendrils of smoke.

A quiet inhalation - sudden gasp at the sonic boom of feeling and emotion and dread and need -

An ocean - invading the shore, stealing the sand (yet never destroying it in its entirety) - drowning - sinking -

And finally, his voice again - a bell in the chaotic symphony currently stretching skull plates and grey mass to their limits. Sorry. Please. Help. Trust.

She comes back to herself and waits for the world around her to come back into focus. Limbs suddenly remember how to move, lungs remember how to breathe, heart remembers how to beat. The burst of blood and oxygen to her system make her head spin like the rotation of a planet, of this planet, of all the planets. She feels his gravitational orbit again - feels herself being drawn in closer -

Closer still -

Until her arms have circumnavigated his being, slipped underneath his and around to his back, pressing her cheek to his chest, lips grazing the skin of his neck, eyes half-lidded and groggy from the effort of staying afloat in the tidal wave. Exhales a warm breath, letting the air slink through her parted lips. Heartbeat finds heartbeat, falls in time with its counterpart.

"You don't have to sleep alone, if you don't want to."

[candor1]

His heart pounds under her ear. But it hears hers, too, and begins to sync.

His neck curves, arching into her touch, his head coming to rest atop hers.

His arms go around her, too. In trying to provide shelter from the storm for her, becoming them for himself.

It's dying down inside him… her words the…

…droid analogy unwelcome because the slicerspeak would be "kill code"

But his mind grasps at her words, more fumblingly, but no less gently than his hands finding the curve of her back and the nape of her neck. Resting there, welcoming her, thanking her.

It's a cheat… normal people wouldn't be able to—?

—Oh hush. "Normal" people, as if there were such a thing, might not need as much—have as much to overcome.

…It's just a slice. Minds able to circumvent bodily or verbal defenses. …Defenses that no longer have anything to defend and so have turned on themselves. Need to be cut through.

A slice may be considered a cheat, by some. But the Alliance knows how those can save the day.

In an echo of a voice—(yes, hers)—he murmured back to her, "…I'm not used to people sticking around…"

[kestreldawn]

A sound like a laugh rushes through her mouth, but it isn't quite so in a traditional sense. It's more the sound of an influx of emotion - joy and sadness and amusement and a myriad of others all at once, having no other escape except through the indescribable, vague spasm of diaphragm and vibration of vocal chord.

She wonders whether he'll understand its meaning - realizes that's no longer an issue, not with these .. powers they've been given. Not that it had even been all that much of a challenge before. How he'd been able to see into the very essence of her, how he'd seen the best of her - the parts she'd all but forgotten.

"Welcome home," she whispers in return, daring herself to inch up onto the balls of her feet, body trembling despite its best efforts, to press her lips to the side of his neck.

[candor1]

The words. Her kiss. He arches again into… all of it. Closing his eyes. Feeling every thread of it… contact, welcome pressure, warmth, tingle, life… … …everywhere…

It's not really a decision… not really a thought.

It hadn't felt right before. Fearing it would just be out of adrenaline rush, release from grief, euphoria at the impossible. He'd wanted to be more certain it was a decision.

But… now… as her lips disconnect from his skin, he turns his face to hers.
Holding back just shy of… so close to…
His eyes had been lowered. For a barest instant they flicker up.

[kestreldawn]

For a moment, she fears that she's overstepped - broken some invisible, unspoken boundary that neither had necessarily created on their own, but rather built as a result of necessity and the need to self-preserve, self-protect.

But then she feels the tilt of his muscles into her, somehow hears before seeing the descending of his lids. Feels the flinching of muscle beneath as they work together in perfect unison to move the bones and limbs underneath.

Her skin basks itself in the warmth of his breath and the heat of his gaze, a lizard under the desert sun - suddenly renewed and rejuvenated and brought back to life. Her tongue pulls itself backward as she forces a dry swallow, pushing it through the tightness of her throat.

Raises her eyes to meet his for the breath of a moment -

Inhales a quiet gasp through parted lips, tongue darting out to wet them in preparation of -

A destruction of space, a narrowing of seas and galaxies and mountains until lips press against lips and she thinks her limbs, her legs may have melted from underneath her.

[candor1]

Let them melt. He's holding her and she can never fall. Just as much as he feels like she's the only thing holding him up.

Again. And again. Stronger together than either alone.

He has fallen… against her, into her; lost all awareness of his body apart from hers; just the warmth… the empty spaces and alternating molecules gliding effortlessly between and inside each other; merged into one as they'd been in the kyber light. He sees the light behind his eyes. But this time it isn't a flashback. Isn't a nightmare. Doesn't make him recoil. Because it isn't encroaching. It's not death. It's from within. It's her.

Somewhere, he has hands. One moves across the curve of her waist, her spine, pressing her gently, holding her into him, following, moulding to her every shift. One finding the flowing landscape of her cheek, fingers trailing up her jaw, through her hair, thumb alighting in her cheek's hollow, riding its motions, other fingers tracing her ear and cupping her head…
as his mouth…

How can a first kiss feel so… …

How can they each feel so…


…like they are known

like this, of course; like this

And welcomed back

[kestreldawn]

She feels like every cell of her body is vibrating against his - here, and elsewhere, on some other plane, in some other life. She knows that the muscles underneath her lips are trembling, quivering with the unbearable fear of you're doing it wrong, you don't - shh, won't you be quiet? as one hand finds the bone at his hip, clutches on with desperation and fear of collapsing to the ground -

The other rises and sails across the seas of his body, charting the unknown territory of his back, the rise and fall of his mountainous shoulder blades, the valley between. Even in those last final moments, she'd clutched at the fabric at his neck and had never once dared to explore what lie beneath - though the thought had crossed her mind as the light grew closer, tangled and lost in the thousands of memories thoughts dreams futures she'd imagined.

Her hand seeks out the hair at the back of his head, endless fields like dark wheat she wants nothing more than to run between, feel in the webbing of her fingers, explore and know and memorize - a quiet, breath of a whispered moan leaping from the cavern of her mouth to his at the exploration of her body -

Willing, open, ready, receiving.

[candor1]

Like each part of him she's touched, he moves into her, against her, readily meeting her; hips pressing gently forward, into her hand, against…

Her moanlike breath draws one out of him, too. Their lips part to breathe.

He seizes the moment to try and remember… where they are.

…Planetside.

New life.

De Chima.

House.

Which room…

He slides one foot slightly.

Hard floor.

…Right. Kitchen.

All of which takes barely a moment. The next fraction in decision: stay in this moment (yes kriff please) or find the will to break it long enough to ask…

…what…

…no. Lying down with her would be… but not going to rush… not going to risk seeming to expect… This is an end in itself. No need to worry about next.

…But standing unaided is too difficult. Easiest available compromise…

Strategic brain finishes all this in the remainder of the second. Shuts up so he can focus on kissing her again.

It feels like breathing. The closeness. Not urgent. But essential. His jaw is rough but his mouth is not. It creates with hers… a place like the sea at Scarif but definitely not there. Someplace of rest and safety and gentle waves lapping them into everconcaving sand… Just as the way they were moving with and against each other, a kind of tide…

Both his hands slide across her back, now; behind her shoulders. She could lean back into them and be fully supported. He shifts his weight and angles himself. Not pushing her by force but suggesting a move. Backing her gently until the solid support, the cool marble, of the counter touched her back.