Jyn Erso (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kestreldawn) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
maskormenacelogs2017-05-24 10:37 pm
kestreldawn) wrote in maskormenacelogs2017-05-24 10:37 pm
Entry tags:
[somos un espejo, y tu así serías lo que yo de mi reflejo] - CLOSED
WHO: Jyn Erso & Cassian Andor
WHERE: Somewhere in the woods, probably in De Chima
WHEN: Following Kay's big ol' WHOOPS in revealing a lot of information.
WHAT: Jyn is having a little bit of a breakdown and wondering if she should just get tf out to protect everyone around her.
WARNINGS: None yet, but safe to anticipate depressing af things.
First, the message had come from Kay.
Jyn. I need to speak with you in person. It's serious.
She knew immediately that something had to be wrong and, on assumption alone, figured it had been something he had done. Otherwise, he wouldn't have reached out to her the way he did. He wouldn't have marked it as serious, either. So, she'd gone into the conversation expecting the worst.
But she hadn't exactly expected the truth of it.
Since that conversation, she'd been at the house sparingly, coming in and out only when she absolutely needed to (to sleep, to change clothes), otherwise, she spent the rest of the day and the bulk of the evening out. Part of this was to keep contact with the others limited and make it seem as though they weren't nearly as close as they were (Veronica included, who was the most innocent of bystanders in this entire situation); this motivation was particularly useful if Hux had any intention of going after her as a means to get to Cassian (or the other way around). The other part of it was to try and make it easier for when Jyn eventually had to leave (and for her, it was an eventuality, rather than an option). If they could learn to hate her, if they could learn to loathe the very thought of her, maybe it'd be easier for her to pack her things and go; maybe it'd be easier to pry herself away from Cassian's arms, adjust to sleeping alone again; maybe she could convince herself that this was the best course of action.
She'd had blood on her hands before. She couldn't bear the thought of it happening again.
And so for as much as it killed her - as much as the knives at her sides and the dagger in her chest ate away at her, chipped away at everything she'd come to cherish, she'd kept up the charade. She stayed away. She tried to protect them in the only way she knew how: by cutting herself out of their lives.
Of course, it could only go on for so long. It had only been a couple of days before Cassian had reached out through her comm:
if you need to be alone ok but respond 'still alive' or im attacking whole planet*
She tried to come up with an ill-defined excuse, something to make him regret even reaching out to her, thought very seriously about not responding at all and allowing him to think she'd been killed or sent back or taken, but she couldn't bear the thought of it. She thought of the sorrow in his eyes, the devastation that'd seep down to his very molecules, and couldn't stomach being the cause of either.
So, she'd agreed to meet up.
The woods, in De Chima. Where they'd run into each other on their way to the antique store. The moonlight cutting through the canopy is just enough to silhouette everything in silver. This could be a beautiful sight, she thinks, wondering if she'll ever be able to step back into the softness of the night ever again.
*OOC: text given by Cassian's writer specifically for this scenario.
WHERE: Somewhere in the woods, probably in De Chima
WHEN: Following Kay's big ol' WHOOPS in revealing a lot of information.
WHAT: Jyn is having a little bit of a breakdown and wondering if she should just get tf out to protect everyone around her.
WARNINGS: None yet, but safe to anticipate depressing af things.
First, the message had come from Kay.
Jyn. I need to speak with you in person. It's serious.
She knew immediately that something had to be wrong and, on assumption alone, figured it had been something he had done. Otherwise, he wouldn't have reached out to her the way he did. He wouldn't have marked it as serious, either. So, she'd gone into the conversation expecting the worst.
But she hadn't exactly expected the truth of it.
Since that conversation, she'd been at the house sparingly, coming in and out only when she absolutely needed to (to sleep, to change clothes), otherwise, she spent the rest of the day and the bulk of the evening out. Part of this was to keep contact with the others limited and make it seem as though they weren't nearly as close as they were (Veronica included, who was the most innocent of bystanders in this entire situation); this motivation was particularly useful if Hux had any intention of going after her as a means to get to Cassian (or the other way around). The other part of it was to try and make it easier for when Jyn eventually had to leave (and for her, it was an eventuality, rather than an option). If they could learn to hate her, if they could learn to loathe the very thought of her, maybe it'd be easier for her to pack her things and go; maybe it'd be easier to pry herself away from Cassian's arms, adjust to sleeping alone again; maybe she could convince herself that this was the best course of action.
She'd had blood on her hands before. She couldn't bear the thought of it happening again.
And so for as much as it killed her - as much as the knives at her sides and the dagger in her chest ate away at her, chipped away at everything she'd come to cherish, she'd kept up the charade. She stayed away. She tried to protect them in the only way she knew how: by cutting herself out of their lives.
Of course, it could only go on for so long. It had only been a couple of days before Cassian had reached out through her comm:
if you need to be alone ok but respond 'still alive' or im attacking whole planet*
She tried to come up with an ill-defined excuse, something to make him regret even reaching out to her, thought very seriously about not responding at all and allowing him to think she'd been killed or sent back or taken, but she couldn't bear the thought of it. She thought of the sorrow in his eyes, the devastation that'd seep down to his very molecules, and couldn't stomach being the cause of either.
So, she'd agreed to meet up.
The woods, in De Chima. Where they'd run into each other on their way to the antique store. The moonlight cutting through the canopy is just enough to silhouette everything in silver. This could be a beautiful sight, she thinks, wondering if she'll ever be able to step back into the softness of the night ever again.
*OOC: text given by Cassian's writer specifically for this scenario.
no subject
(Thank goodness or he might have been forced to wonder if this was still over their housemates hearing them that night. Which would have been no less understandable. His initial reaction to hers had been fury at himself for not anticipating that his experience of/resignation to insufficient privacy and barracks-society ritual would be extremely different from hers—a female child then teenager in a group like Saw's. This way, he just gets to feel a little less complicit.)
But he'd spoken to Kay. And was dealing with his own prolonged nervous breakdown/crisis about their universe following them here, too.
…Which was why he'd decided… or not decided but been able to make himself obey the knowledge: know his place in this. It wasn't his place to save her from anything, including her own reactions to this. Give her the chance to work through stuff herself. Especially not only knowing how it felt but being in a similar place, himself, and knowing they functioned similarly enough that a bit of flying solo could be… beneficial…? …well, had become hardwired.
So… yes, it… hurt, considerably, physically, even when he couldn't (or tried not to) pick up her thoughts; but didn't have to because he could read behavior and bodylanguage. Her withdrawing from him. It felt a bit like being shot off the datacore and breaking most of his ribs had done.
But he decided to see, for both of them, how she'd decide for herself. Including if/when she'd let him… maybe overoptimistic to assume he could help, but at least join her in the struggle.
He took the opportunity to try and do similar work in his own.
…But… eventually… in not nearly enough time… he could go longer without food, sleep, or water for kriff's sake… but he just couldn't. Especially since all he was coming up with regarding all his analyses and… lacking a more violent word: meditations, even on intended-to-be "higher"-impersonal levels, was the bottom line:
I NEED TO BE WITH JYN
So, kark everything else, he finally messaged her.
And thank everything, she responded, and provided a rendezvous point.
He was there long before the appointed time, pacing an actual ditch into the grass. He'd be literally climbing trees if he didn't fear he'd end up doing harm to them or himself by taking anything into his hands.
no subject
But as she nears, she slows. Suddenly frightful and anxious at the thought of what this conversation could turn into. What it will have to be, to some extent.
She doesn't know if she has the strength to walk away once she's lost herself in the skies of his eyes, or let herself be blanketed in the velvet of his voice. Inside, her Shadowed self works furiously to fortify her walls: it digs the foundation deep into the dirt below all the way to the magma core, tries to build up just as high. But something in her knows, something in her knows that the mere sound of her name from his lips will shatter it all.
How is she ever going to do this?
Jyn inhales a breath to armor herself, grateful for the cover of night to help shield her from some of his radiance. She can't imagine trying to attempt this in sunlight, where she could see the golden galaxies peering back out at her, the amber swirled in his hair, the softness of his lips.
"Cassian," she says quietly, barely loud enough for him to hear over the sound of his feet on the ground. It isn't a question; she knows it's him. There is no mistaking the love she feels for him in the way she practically sings his name, despite her best attempts at forgery. "You're going to walk yourself to the other side of the planet if you keep doing that."
no subject
…He probably shouldn't… even in shadow, clear in his eyes and shoulders and hands and face… seem to know the whole conversation before they've even had it.
Know everything she was thinking when she hadn't shared it.
But do you really think he doesn't know that bracing of her shoulders. As if her very skin is hurting her. Tearing it to the bone in forcing herself away. Inflicting wounds on him too in order to avoid killing him. Doing what you think is best when it pulls your insides out and leaves them behind with the other to do so. Not just right now. But for days.
Do you think he hasn't considered and should have and chosen and been forced and done it over and over and over again himself.
No. He didn't think she thought any of that. She understood all that, she knew… and if he were in her place, he wonders if he'd make himself to forget, as well.
Is he in her place, only choosing differently? …No. Because (damn it just like before) he chose involvement. Jyn had it forced on her. (Just like before)
He got to retain a sense of agency, even if as self-blame. She was forced into the place of reaction. Having to go on the defensive. And what's a better defense… especially if wanting to avoid collateral cost…
But remember what happened before…? Not all those other times. Before to, with, us.
We defied an Empire.
I'm not Hadder. I'm not Linnë. I'm of the war too.
I'm not Galen or Seidh. I chose to be in it.
And I'm not Khriou or Saw. I came back to you.
I outlasted them until they finally killed me.
Then I still came back.
I'm not any of them. I'm not anyone else.
The bulba, remember? Stronger together than apart. We do what we can do because we do it together.
You can't leave me safer or better defended by removing yourself when you leave me bleeding and broken behind. When you're my strength.
Remember who I am.
All he said aloud was,
"I will if you want to. We could go right now. A planet is a big place and we both know how to hide. You're just not going without me."
"Shhh." Cassian grasped Tivik's shoulder. Put their bodies together, to hold the other man up, ease and comfort his shaking. While slipping his blaster into line with Tivik's heart. "We'll be all right."
"Unless you kill me right now."
no subject
Before now.
Before it'd been destroyed.
She slowly becomes aware of her body again. Finds herself to be vaguely surprised she still has one. Unclenches the fists she didn't realize she was making; lets her tightened jaw go slack (only to fuse it again in an attempt to choke back the sob scratching wildly at the back of her throat); wiggles her toes to make sure she's still standing.
Even in the darkness, his thoughts cling to her like liquid mercury - flooding into her and attaching themselves to every cell in her blood, poisoning (though it's more like cleansing) every part of her as they race around like the blue-silver streak of a star in hyperdrive.
Liquifies and resolidifies every organ in her, dismantles and reforms her all over again, until she finds herself drawing in a very sharp breath, her lungs suddenly her own, full of him like sand. There's a tightness in her windpipe that she attempts to dislodge with a touch of her hand. It doesn't work.
Her lips part to try and let out the meager words pooled on her tongue, but no sound escapes. She steels her diaphragm, tries again.
"Don't you see? This is what he wants. This is why it would work. If he used me to get to you. I - I can't. I can't be a weakness. I won't. Too many people have died because of me."
We did, don't you remember? We died because you followed me into battle.
"There's no way I'd survive if you did, too. Again. After you've had a chance to .. make a new life. Start over. You did it once." Her voice sounds and feels like shattered glass. "You can do it again."
She'll carry this burden. She'll carry this bleeding, gaping wound. She'll live with the broken pieces of her, cradling the corpse of her happiness, if it means he has a chance to be safe.
c/w depressing canon predictions incl. suicide + awful Catalá translation standing in for Yaval
At last, he deliberately lowered himself to sit on the ground. He even lowered his eyes.
…He's avoiding doing all the things that would threaten to… manipulate her the most. Not saying her name. Not trying to touch her. Now he's putting himself at a disadvantage to go after her if she took off at a run.
Yes, he's doing it deliberately. Because of how badly he wants to do all of those things. …It's why he'd reprogrammed Kay not to have to follow Cassian's orders. Instead, be able to judge for himself, and choose.
Cassian never want to be obeyed for the sake of being obeyed. He only wanted to be cooperated with if he was actually right.
So if Kay was going to do what Cassian said—if Jyn was going to agree with him now—it had to be because… what he thought was real actually was. Which he could only be reassured of if they genuinely agreed. Kay had come to obey Cassian many times without doing his own analysis, partly from learning when to predict when and why Cassian would know the best course. Jyn's world, her life, are not subservient to Cassian's as Kay's had been…
…except for right now. Because she's placing her life, or at least her happiness, as less important than his. And based on that, trying to make a decision for his life.
"You just said" and thought "four things," he said slowly. "I'm responding to them out of order. It might take a few minutes. Please stay and listen until I'm done?"
He didn't need to shut his eyes to serve recall. But it was too painful not looking at her. So he did.
"One. 'It's what he wants.' There are a few people you could mean. I don't dismiss or take any of them lightly. I've been agonizing over what to do about all of them. I worry I'm doing the wrong thing, getting involved. I worry not getting involved would just mean having no control in their impact on us. I worry leaving or hiding might have impact on others. I wonder if I should give up any responsibility for that sort of thing anymore. I wonder if I could live with myself if I did.
"But in this regard… I don't give a fotut degoteig de moc caure d'un mynock en vol what Hux or anyone wants. I fear using this new life wrongly, letting myself slip back into what wasted my first one. But I don't fear him. He may confuse himself with the entire Empire but we should not. Consider… what if we may be more powerful than he is?
"…But even if I'm wildly wrong about that:
"Two. You don't want to be my weakness. Okay. I lived a life avoiding weaknesses. So others couldn't exploit them, and so I could keep doing what I was doing. It worked, and it wasn't worth living. I have an alternative now. I choose weakness. If I had the luxury of choosing what my weakness would be, I'd still choose you. …Including the fact that anyone trying to get at me through you would be in for a nasty surprise." He glanced up at her, with the faintest of smiles. "I know better than they would—and maybe you do—not to underestimate you."
Eyes back down.
"Even if I'm also wrong about that.
"Three. Yes. I've started over many times and outsurvived many things. And yes, I died with you in battle. What I learned from all that, just for myself, for my life, was: dying with you was better."
His eyes flickered to hers again. This time… in emphasis, or… unable to wholly contain their fire without letting some of it burn out at her.
"I'd choose it again."
He inhales slowly, nostrils flaring, chest rising, forcing back the flames.
But keeps his eyes lifted now.
"Four. Too many people have died… because of you? No. Too many people died because of the war. Surviving them doesn't make it your fault. Even if they died in your wake—" Hadder and Akshaya "—doesn't make it your fault. Inspiring or trying to help others try for something else, when it could go either way under those circumstances, doesn't make it your fault. —You've forgiven me for killings that I committed. I understand we may be fairer to others than on ourselves. But…
"Would you like me to tell you what would have happened to me, Kaytoo, Bodhi, Chirrut, Baze—" (it's the first time either of them has said any of their names aloud in this lifetime) "—Melshi, Pao, Sefla, Rostok, any of them—" (he knows all their names and may be the only person in either universe who does) "—if we hadn't died at Scarif?"
He's almost glaring at her now. Or glaring past her.
"The Council would have capitulated to the Empire. One of the Empire's first conditions of surrender would be handing over the traitor Rook. If he could have gotten away, it would only be a matter of time before he couldn't hold out against the bounty hunters. Bodhi would have been executed. Publicly and painfully.
"Chirrut and Baze might have been spared. It would depend on if any of the stormtroopers they'd fought had been able to transmit their faces back to the star destroyer before they were killed. If they had, they would also be wanted by the Empire. If caught, imprisoned, executed, or exiled. Either way, they were not part of the Alliance; they would not have considered it their surrender. Their home had been killed. They would have found a new way to fight. And without the larger support structure, would soon enough have died accomplishing much less.
"It would be similar for all the other agents. Those who had fought for a better world by making themselves completely unfit to ever live in it. If they weren't already wanted fugitives, either way, they would refuse to take any place under Imperial rule. Most wouldn't face life without the purpose of the Rebellion at all. By their own hands or in more futile fights, they would have found ways, as quickly as possible, to die."
His voice, if possible, gets even lower and hoarser.
"To avoid Kay being reacquired and reprogrammed, he could, if he didn't refuse, go into exile. But in that universe, he could never just disappear, he'd always be targeted by the Empire or others with the ability to fuse him out or wipe his mind or hack him or dismember him or stick on a restraining bolt or slave circuit or otherwise use him and/or restore to factory spec… all of which would mean, whether in direct service of the Empire or someone wanting something else from him, Kay would still be dead and the robot in his place would be…" Repurposed, cannabilized, destroyed, or remain functioning as something terrible. "To spare him, and not let that be his impact on the universe… I would have destroyed him myself."
The grim, muted anguish on Cassian's face…
When he'd offered a moment ago to run away with Jyn, he'd meant it. He means it still. He'll do it if she wants him to without comment or delay.
Even though betraying Kay like that would kill a part of him.
It's a hint of what having to physically destroy Kay, even in this alternate timestream, would do.
"It would be the last thing I did before joining the other agents."
In finding a way, as quickly as possible, to die.
"We didn't go to Scarif for you. We may have because of you… if not for you, it wouldn't have been an option. But thanks to you, it was, far superior to any others we had left. That was something you gave us. I never let myself hope I'd get as good a death as I did on Scarif. …Let alone as… peaceful and… connected a moment as I got to have right before it with you.
"If you understood what asking me to go back from that meant…"
His eyes finally fixed, empty of fire, empty also of galaxies; only him, gazing up at her.
"…except I know you do. You're not doing me any favors by forcing yourself to forget it. I understand your reasoning. I don't know if I agree with it in these conditions. I still respect it. But if you value my life—"
Not if you love me. He understands. That's a given. That's why she's trying to make this decision. But not what can decide it. If you value my life.
…He can't say this aloud. It's too similar to the universally deplorable kind of statement of if you leave me I'll kill myself. No matter that… in truth… even if (though he's far from convinced it is) her decision were the best thing for his survival… three direct suicide attempts. One succeeded suicide mission. Two electroreconditioning procedures. Voluntary sterilization as allegorical rejection of a personal future. More missions than, ironically, he could have survived if a desire to live for its own sake/for himself had influenced half his decisions and reactions.
Even this "new life" he'd started here… deliberately or not, he gives her a vivid glimpse of what that prospect had been to him before she and Kay had been restored.
Surely what his life was worth had to have some dependency on his choice, not anyone else's values or assessment. And mere survival had never been what drove or sustained him.
He doesn't say it. But with the weight of it, finishes, "—you changed my life for the better by making me realize I had more choices. Don't take this choice away from me, now."
no subject
She might offer a small nod at his question, but she doesn't verbalize agreement. She isn't sure if he's even seen the micromovement of her skull. But she makes no attempt to move or run, and hopes that's answer enough.
She's grateful for the shadows transposed over her like a holo as he speaks, as she listens. The majority of her brain is listening to what he's saying - absorbing, analyzing, dissecting, interpreting. But there is a small part of it that is simply .. memorizing. The drawn out vowels; the rumbling r's; the punctuated t's and the softness of the d's; the melody it all creates when put together. Like an angry swarm, they all buzz and encircle her, tangling her in their familiarity and allure. Some part of her is cognizant of the motive for the memorization. She already knows that if she walks away, or if she can manage to drive him away, she will wrap herself up in the knitted tapestry of his voice every night, every morning, every time she thinks herself too weak, every time she doubts her ability, every time she breathes. She'll carry it with her, the way she had carried him with her while waiting for the light to take them both.
Mention of the others makes her shift positions - draws her knees up into her chest, wraps her arms around them. Bodhi might be the worst to hear, to think about. Pure, sweet Bodhi; he'd deserved so much better than what he'd gotten - and she knows, remembering him now, that her Papa had made the right choice trusting him. She wonders what might've happened to him, before the planet killer had come and destroyed Scarif. She wonders if he'd been waiting at the controls of the ship, waiting for the signal, waiting for them to return. She wonders if troopers might've found him, captured him, threatened torture or worse.
But as quickly as the thoughts burst through her skull, she shakes them away. She can't think of him, can't think of the others and what their fates might've been. And even though she knows there's truth in what Cassian says: We may have because of you… if not for you, it wouldn't have been an option ..., she isn't sure she'll ever shirk herself of the feeling of responsibility for having roused all of those men and women to charge into their deaths.
The memory comes searing in - hotter than the light had been, burning more brightly than any star, any sun she'd ever seen. She feels tugging at her gut, as though twisted and turned and manipulated by some unseen hand that's dug itself into her flesh and between the beautiful billows of her rips, and she feels all at once like vomiting. It isn't just the dissociation and resulting disorientation that happens when she inherits other's memories and thoughts. It's the intensity of it, the violence of it that raises her hand to press firmly against the tight line of her lips to will whatever's threatening to explode to stay where it should.
Her hand muffles the sound that escapes her then - and to someone on the outside, someone who isn't so acutely aware of what's happening - it might sound like a dying animal, taking its last breath.
And isn't that fitting?
She's at some point during the flashback adjusted to kneeling on the ground, sitting back on her heels. She bends over, steadies herself by digging the heel of one palm into her thigh, the other stays at her mouth. The invisible hand has loosened its grip, but only moderately so. (There's some strange, sadistic part of her that's grateful she can still feel anything like this, with how vacant and void she feels inside).
What do two people do, when their choices lead them in different directions? When one clings to the other's leg, the way she'd sometimes done with her Papa when she didn't want him to leave or when they'd play a game in which he tried to pretend he didn't even notice the sudden weight on his foot and would limp around the apartment while Jyn squealed and giggled? When the other wants nothing more than to sink into that weight, allow for collapse and acceptance and the essence of stay, but feels every single instinct in her body telling her to run?
Her lids close, barriers to the searing tears collecting at their rims.
Isn't this what you've always done? she thinks, she asks herself. Haven't you always gone and ran? The first time had been to save yourself, protect yourself. You ran so hard that your lungs felt like ash and your legs had transformed into fire, until you reached the bunker. But then? You found yourself in another bunker, only you didn't fit into its tight space as well as you had before; you'd grown, nine years had passed. You knew there would be no Saw to come to save you, not again - not ever again. So you ran.
You ran, you found yourself a nameless pilot and convinced him to leave everything behind. You destroyed a part of his humanity in your need to survive. You saw the pain, the horror, the fury in his eyes when he told you that you could've saved others, could've taken then and hurried them onto the ship away from that dying planet. You ignored him. All you cared about was your own survival.
And when they came for you again, when they came because of Zosad or because your time had simply run out (a voice inside reminds: you'd gotten too happy, you'd been too peaceful - but she tries to ignore it), you ran. You separated yourself from Akshaya and Hadder, and you justified it by saying they'd never want to be apart from each other; but you could've stayed with them. You could've stayed together. But you ran. And as they exploded at your back, as their deaths gave you the push your ship needed, you ran.
Don't you see what happens when you run?
Don't you see the pattern?
And what happened when you stopped running (the other voice: we didn't have a choice; the Rebellion had taken it away from us)? Look what you achieved. Look what you did.
And it worked.
Finally: "I don't want to leave," said in more of a whimper or a breath than anything else. "I don't want to make you leave. I know what it would do to you, and I - I can't - won't make that choice for you." She finally opens her eyes again, the shrouding darkness of before now nothing more than shadows in the sun. She shifts her legs from underneath her, resting instead on her hip and the hand pressed against the earth. Finds his eyes. Lets the stardust in hers act as a beacon. "But what if he comes? What if -" She pauses, exhaling a trembling breath. "I'm so tired of fighting, Cassian. I don't want to fight anymore." There's a tremor of panic that races through her, somewhere in the back of her mind - one that asks, but what use are you if you're not going to fight?
no subject
Cassian didn't realize until he tried to move that he was shaking so hard. That the black hole was back in his ribs. That his legs wouldn't support his weight.
But he wasn't trying to stand, anyway. If he did, he wasn't sure he could stop himself closing the distance between them and trying to gather her into his arms.
He'd sat forward… forward more… until he was on his knees, too. So he could, like her, place a palm out onto the earth. And slide it toward her.
A plea or a lifeline. Should she take it.
"There are always what ifs," he said, it coming out whisperish from his dry throat. "No matter what. Kay could give us the odds. They're better here than you or I ever, ever had before. To not fear for our lives. To think about actually building something. To think of peace. But there are no guarantees. I just know… the only way to definitely bring back the war is if we bring it with us. The only way we definitely end up fighting is if we start doing it."
At the end of reasoning. At the end of rationality. Cassian's voice breaks. "At least start by… not fighting ourselves.
…And… who knows if the curse was finally lifted and he was able to produce any tears. But the moonlight, at least, momentarily looked like it.
Please. Jyn. Please.
no subject
What it is a question of is whether or not she'd ever be able to let go if she did.
So she doesn't move right away. Doesn't react or shift or answer, either in word or in motion. She listens. She closes her eyes, can practically see and smell the words coming out of his mouth - the sorrow in them, the fear, the desperation. And she realizes that leaving him, or forcing him to leave her, is more torturous than anything that could happen if she stays.
She'd lost the light on Wobani, had had it snatched away with every stormtrooper's insistence of using her number instead of her (false) name, every corpse she had to step over without mourning or even knowing who they might've been, every session of endless, mind-numbing, skull-shattering beatings that she endured and somehow survived. She'd found it again in Cassian, in the mission.
How selfish would it be for her to steal it away? (You're no better than a stormtrooper.)
Her fingers twitch. Crawl along the dirt and brush and twigs littered on the forest floor. Until they feel his hand. Like curious insects, they map out the location of his own fingers, the width of his palm, and decide to rest somewhere in between.
It's like being reborn, touching him again.
All at once, she feels the weight, the pull, the devastation of what she could have lost, had she walked away. And it nearly rips her lungs from out of her.
"I'm sorry," she chokes, "I'm sorry. Please don't leave me."
no subject
And he's right against her, has grabbed her into a fierce embrace, holding her head, ducking his face into her hair. Kneeling with her in the moonlight as they had before the oncoming wave.
Now possibly… wracking with silent grief… for both. What they did lose there. What they could have lost here.
Don't leave me.
Even if something happened that made him think as she had—that it might remotely be right—he didn't think he could.
But, the master strategist who'd seen more worlds and machinations unfold than most beings would in two lifetimes, couldn't summon a single simulation in which leaving her would be for the best.
Nothing more torturous than anything that could happen if together.
He holds her with all of him, and for the first time in seven years—the first time since Jelucan—the hollows behind his eyes finally unlock. Baptizing his face and her hair with tears.
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Sorry for what almost happened.
Sorry for doing the very thing she'd been trying to avoid with her absence.
Sorry for being broken and wounded.
Sorry for being a frightened child underneath the costume of a woman she wears.
Sorry for wanting to run, for wanting to leave, for pulling away.
Her arms ache with the ferocity and strength with which she grips onto him, clings desperately and wildly to the back of his shirt, buries her face in his shoulder and lets every part of him fill every sense in her body. Matches his tears with her own without being cognizant of the continued mirroring, smooths the hair down at the back of his head with every ounce of love and trust and affection she has within her.
That he brings out of her.
That he deserves to know.
"I love you," she whispers, voice thick and hoarse, "I love you so much, Cassian. I'm sorry."
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But his voice is unsustainable, and the pain in hers unendurable, so he stops them both with a kiss.
He can only think at her, again: I love you. I understand. I know.
With thought even more than in speech, behind every word is full depth of its meaning.
He loves her, understands, and knows.
She's not the only one. He's seen it in others. He's done and been in it himself.
It's all right. You listened. You're here. You stayed.
Thank Yavá and the Force and you.
With a wash of weakness and exhaustion, relief and structural failure, he beseechingly draws her down with him as he sinks onto his side in the grass. Folding his arms around her, holding her tight into his chest, completing the circuit with his head bent to hers. Letting his back be supported by the planet. His closed eyes to the stars. The rest of him fused, welded to her. His thudding heart under hers.
He might not have thought of it without that absurdity with Kay… but between crying and asphyxiation, he simply didn't have a voice. Even he could ever bring himself (of all the things in the universe to still scare or humiliate him) to try to sing. …Luckily, there's no need. They have the slicecode.
He conjures the last song he heard that had felt anything like peace, into his mind.
And replays it for both of them. In some unknown singer's voice rendered ghostly but angelic by distant memory.
Mirrorbright, shines the moon, its glow as soft as an ember
When the moon is mirrorbright, take this time to remember
The mirrorbright moon lets you see
Those who have ceased to be
Mirrorbright shines the moon, as fires die to their embers
Those you loved are with you still
The moon will help you remember*
Let it subsume their racing thoughts and guide their pulse and breath. If no one had sung either of them to calmness in too long, so be it; they've grown strong enough now to admit that loss and need; and learn to do it themselves.
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The smell of dirt and brush and whatever creatures might be scurrying about underneath the surface feels oddly familiar - strikes some vague sensory memory of the fields of Lah'mu, their fertility, the earth-drenched aroma that'd saturate the air whenever it was time for a new harvest and the agri-droids and her Papa would till the land. She remembers laying on her belly in the dirt with her toys, her Mama always tsking her for dirtying up her clothes but never discouraging her daughter's imagination and sense of adventure.
But she's drawn out of these memories by his rustling, the beginning chords of a song that sounds hauntingly familiar - like the smell of the dirt at her side.
It isn't her Mama's voice, but Jyn can easily remedy that in her mind - she can hear Lyra's gentle melodies, the way she'd often pause to let Jyn sing the last word of each line. She inhales a sharp breath, weighted with memory and love and remembrance. She clings all the tighter to Cassian, exhaling some sort of sound - it isn't quite a cry, nor is it completely a laugh; it's instead some strange hybrid of the two, and she finds herself humming the last two lines as the song heads towards its end.
Those you loved are with you still;
The moon will help you remember.
c/w self harm reference
The main difference in sensation, of course, is within. Instead of his body trying to rip itself in two. Everything so constricted and strangled… without release he'd have to fight or slam or scream. Even try to replace the absence of tears by making himself bleed—
No.
With an expelled breath, he let out an energy shield. It blossomed around them, not shutting them off from the sky, but making the sky wave like a starry ocean. Keeping anything that might come across them in the woods safely away.
And more pressing, right now, keeping his terrible thoughts from crashing onto Jyn.
Perhaps strangely, that safety lets him disengage from them, too. They may be there, but he doesn't have to experience them. Just let them hang, somewhere up there in the shield, wavering like the stars. It was okay. Thoughts could sit beside them. He could lie here with Jyn.
"Please promise me," he whispered. "If you ever needed to leave. Please please promise me you'd tell me. Not just so I could see if I could talk you out of it or try to come with you. If I couldn't, I wouldn't. I promise to take your word. But please promise to tell me."
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The dark thought that starts to scuttle in is quickly muted and removed by the dull whoosh of the forcefield being raised. It stokes some concern in the back of her mind that his mind had begun to wander into violently shadowed territory, and she flicks her eyes open to assess what sort of expression she might find across his face or, if his own eyes were opened, there. But instead of the pained look of sorrow she expects, she sees .. peace. Serenity.
And she thinks to herself that he
might beis the most extraordinarily beautiful thing she's ever seen in her life. She feels a bursting sensation in her chest as she lets her gaze linger across his features, once again mapping out its topography, marvelling at the magnificent coordination of it all. And how even more marvelous still, that she can reach out and touch it - feel his skin under the weight of her hand - and be allowed to have him in her life.She feels wholly undeserving, but tries to swallow the thought back as best she can.
"I promise," she whispers in reply, swiping her thumb gently over his cheek. "I promise that I'll tell you. I promise I won't up and leave and grow distant, leaving you to worry." She pauses, brushing strands of hair away from his eyes, his forehead. "But - I don't ever, ever want that to have to be an option. I don't want to run anymore. I don't want to leave you." She remembers Hadder, the look in his eyes when they'd broken through to the blackness of space. She echoes the thought she'd had then, only the feeling and veracity behind it has changed, grown stronger, felt down to the very atoms of her body. "I choose this, and this life, and you. I'd choose it over and over again, until I couldn't speak anymore. And even then, I'd still choose it. As long as you want me here, I'm here."
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Basic is… gone. He doesn't remember it. It never could embody meaning anyway.
In Yaval he breathes against her skin… not a song but ancient, deep, ritual, with its own cadence and melody:
"Ets el meu amor
Ets la meva vida
Déjame ser la teva terra
on viu i dorm
i els dos ens alegrem
vam crear la pau"
…it doesn't need telepathy to sound like… a vow.
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The words curl around her gently, embracing her the way his own arms do. She'd never had the opportunity or reason to learn Yaval, and for the first time in her life, she wishes she had. But even without understanding the words the way she would in Basic, there's an understanding below the surface, somewhere in the racing blood of her body and the thudding organ at the center of it.
Somehow, she knows.
If not the words exactly, then the sentiment behind them.
"I choose you," she echoes, wishing desperately she had something as meaningful, as poetic, as beautiful say in return. And then, as a firefly might suddenly alert others of its existence with its tiny light, she remembers something. She remembers seeing it written, scribbled and scrawled in her mother's handwriting on a ragged piece of paper, addressed to her father. She speaks slowly and carefully, trying to force her tongue to remember the words she's never once spoken out loud, only carried around with her inside.
She doesn't remember it all, only the end:
"I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way than this: where I do not exist, nor you, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep."
*
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yes, that was it
He's never had faith. Only in the Rebellion. Little there—in his part of it—could be called holy. Whatever there was could never be touched and wouldn't be for him to see achieved. He's been at religious ceremonies as an outsider. Sometimes pretending not to be outside looking in. But he always was. From behind his own eyes: somewhere outside.
Her words… the answering vow…
Later it would be hard to remember what further happened before they fell asleep, and what had been a dream. Perhaps they made love, perhaps they didn't even kiss; perhaps their atoms slipped between one another's as they had on that beach, this time not to dissipate but bind. All that mattered on either plane was they'd survived. They were here. It was restored. And now they could rest under the stars, in one another.
[some time later]
They'd mingled in the ether again. Jyn's come to expect it, relish in it as they're each taken to their separate landscapes, only to seek each other out amidst the melting trees and metaphysical boundaries of the mind. It hasn't always gone well - nightmares have been unfortunately common between the two of them - but never has she regretted the ability to stay together, to be at each other's sides, even in the world of Sleep.
Dreams are mostly elusive for Jyn, except in times of stress and heightened emotion. She'd dreamt often as a child - silly, fantastical places where trees were red and skies were green and all things of the sort - but then sleep transformed into something less about imaginative exploration and more about necessity, just the way food had done. She had nightmares sporadically on Wobani, almost always interrupted by the incessant dripping of water from the leaking ceiling, but she was often so bone-shatteringly exhausted that she hadn't the mental energy to dream. One of the first she can recall in recent times had been in the cargo hold after Eadu; she'd dreamt of the apartment on Coruscant, of the Man in White, of her Papa and his clove aftershave and the nauseating sterilization of his Imperial uniform, of her Mama stepping over her re-animated corpse as she lamented about being lost and confused.
But given the emotional stress of the previous day and the ones preceding, Jyn's circuitry is sparking and flicking like a faulty display - wiring corroded and weakened and sending signals to the wrong things, lighting the wrong buttons, setting off the wrong alarms. She dreams of Cassian.
She left. Instead of agreeing to meet Cassian in the woods, she hadn't replied. Or maybe it's that she hadn't gotten the message. Or maybe he'd never sent it.
It's all of those options and none of them at the same time, but the end result remains the same: she left.
She's in a town she doesn't recognize, some sort of strange hybrid between De Chima and perhaps Heropa, but there are things that remind her Wrea (empty stormtrooper armor, swinging from makeshift gallows; a broken comm tower atop a mountain in the distance; echoing sounds of voices and laughter and splashing water from a grotto she can't seem to locate) and of Wobani (looming factories vomitting their acrid, black smoke into the air; the distinctive sound of laser picks and impact hammer drills; the static-drenched sound of commands through a stormtrooper helmet; the unmistakable sound of blaster fire and the smell of ozone). She doesn't know where she is, or what it might be called, but none of it seems particularly out of the ordinary for her. They all carry some degree of familiarity, and she walks at a steady pace down a street with blackened factories on one side, mountains on the other, and water in the distance.
She hears the mechanical whirring she recognizes as Kay approaching, only it's moving at a steady jogging pace. She whirls on her heel, expecting to see the towering figure of Kay, only to be met with a squadron of Death Troopers, like the kind they'd seen on Scarif. Her hands fall to her thighs in search of her blaster, but find nothing. She reaches to the back waistband of her trousers for her truncheons to find the same. She curses under her breath, backing away as non-chalantly as she can manage.
One of them tells her to stop as the others cock their weapons, stare her down the barrels. Suddenly, she feels the cold press of durasteel in her palm and lifts, shooting them - only to find that her vision's been clouded by smoke or fog or some combination of the two. The blaster bolt illuminates the particles as it speeds forward, and she hears the familiar sound of a body collapsing to the ground.
She approaches, blaster now vaporized into nothing, to check to make sure the Death Trooper has fallen completely. But as she draws near, the smoke and fog begin to lift to find that she hasn't shot a Death Trooper. She hasn't shot an enemy.
Jyn lets out a blood-curdling scream at the sight - Cassian's body, crumpled and saturated as her Papa's had been on Eadu, withered like a leaf. Extinguished by her own hand.
Her blood, in the waking world, has turned to ice - and she wakes with a sudden start, imagining herself to be cloaked in a sheen of cold sweat. Instead, she finds - nothing of the sort. No skin to speak of, no .. arms or legs as she's known them, as she expects them. The dark of the night is oddly lighter than it should be, and she's able to hear the tiniest rustling of sound as though it is at her side. She glances down, expecting to see hands, but instead ..
Finds paws.
Two of them, connected to the rest of a body she has never been in before. She lets out a scream only to hear it bounce back as a shrill, screeching MROAW!
It would seem she's discovered how to shape-shift.
c/w just… idk pregnancy horror? just… hhhh
They moved one another to climax, thrown back at fruition. But something was new. He felt it… part of himself no longer walled off, restored and wanted, moving into her, being taken, being transformed. She put her hands on his arms to step them apart and make room for what was happening now… her body rounding and filling with energy and life, which felt like it was flowing from him through their hands to feed creation still… only her, sustaining and anchoring both… until she threw back her head as if in ecstasy again and he kissed and compressed her stomach as she sighed him on, to bring it out of her…
But it wasn't a child. It had no clear shape. It was blood, and viscera, blades and fire… it spilled over his hands binding him like shackles, even as it kept drawing from her, hooking back and tearing everything out… her face not losing its serenity, but going utterly white as she emptied, and he was fighting and screaming for her to fight to, but neither could find the ability to kill what they had made—
a blood-curdling scream - crumpled and saturated and withered - extinguished by his own hand—
And a new inhuman screech threw him fully out of sleep.
Landing in a position his body had never made before…
He had no time to sort out the three: no Jyn, being face to face with an animal, and his own body no longer anything of the sort.
"I'm still dreaming," he said aloud. …Only it came out… not as words.
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It's only at the sound of a wailing meow - though she instinctively understands what it is he's saying, somehow - that she turns back around with a bit of a surprised jolt.
He's .. Oh. Right. He absorbs her powers. It seems that .. Cassian has also had a nightmare, and has always gotten so distressed that he's turned himself into a .. cat. The coloring and facial structure suits him, thinks the still-humanoid part of her brain, and she pads over gently and apprehensively towards him.
When she speaks, it sounds like chirping or meowing to her human brain, but to the rest of her, it's absolutely normal.
"Not still dreaming. I've apparently discovered how to shape-shift." She moves closer to headbutt the side of his face. "You look nice as a cat." She wonders if good-natured humor is something cats can understand, if they're really humans underneath.
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But he would have had to have been prepared for it. Chosen it. …And probably not coming out of so visceral and body-hyperaware a dream as that one.
He's braced right now, claws digging into ground as if the planet would throw him off, spine tautly skyward, every hair trembling.
Knowing the creature before him is Jyn is… reassuring, in several ways…? she's all right, they're still together, and within the internal logic of this world, it explains what's happening… and here, too, he could see the appeal (especially when she rubs her cheek against his, engaging glands and fur and whiskers in a sense of profound mutual claim, acceptance, belonging, home) of spending time together like this too.
But right now… he's just shaking. Overwhelmed and only feeling… spinning… unable to center himself when himself is alien… and a kind of grieving panic not to be able to reassure himself with the sight and touch of the Jyn he knows.
Though it had happened naturally, instinctively, before, knowing now whatever comes out of his mouth won't be human language makes him unable to know how to speak at all.
These creatures must speak largely in body signals, though. His… is pretty clear. …kind of screaming.
None of the sensations right now are bad. But the concept…
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Then, something in the humanoid part of her brain takes over - reverses and undoes all of the feline language her body is silently speaking. The tail props itself up with a question-mark-top, ears flick back to standing at attention, and - even in the darkness - pupils adjust themselves to be as narrow as possible. She lowers herself to the ground, flopping a bit over onto her side to expose a great deal of her underside, and glances up at him with a methodically slow meeting of lids for a few seconds before rolling all the way onto her spine, stretching out a leg to tap him with her paw.
Openness.
Warmth.
Friendliness.
She knows that he recognizes her, even in this altered state, but she thinks - the human part of her, anyway - that if she can be relaxed around him, communicate in ways other than the chirps and clicks native to what she's transformed itno (and inadvertently transformed him into), then perhaps she can anchor them both.
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With a will, Cassian tries to apply his mental disciplines, that he'd mastered for one body, to this one. He hadn't tested and learned this one the way he had the other, but… give it a go. And picking up new languages, verbal or physical, was one thing about spycraft he could actually, morally unambiguously, like.
Slowly, vertebra by vertebra, he forces himself to… de-arch; trying to lay his… fur (oh Yavá) down into place as well. (Same principle as when he feels like he's crawling out of his skin and envisions it flowing to refit him like water head to toe.)
There's an aspect of this that's the same as when he can't accept being carried by Kay or pleasured by Jyn. It's the idea of it… the idea of himself being… compatible with it. This is… ludicrous.
…Well. He's done things that weren't him before. And this whole civilian life, to some extent, has been relearning skills designed for lying and self-denial, and learn that just because something is chosen or technical rather than spontaneous doesn't mean it can't also be genuine.
…What would Dyv Grendreef do.
Very slowly, every inch deliberation, the brown cat folded itself down onto its haunches. Sat in perfect loaf configuration, tense vibration still evident in its whiskers and the end of its tail, but keeping its body under control.
Wasn't quite able to reciprocate her playful behavior. But acknowledged and answered her with a slow blink.
If he could have clarified any thoughts at all, he might have tried to communicate mentally with her now. But he couldn't think about anything beyond the immediate moment. Be Dyv. Be d'Djiera. Just go with it.
His fur still ruffled, nervous electricity in his skin. Too worried to try and move. But subconsciously, in body language and unformed thought, begging her for grounding. For her touch.
CASSIAN CAT LOAF IS THE BEST IMAGE I WILL EVER HAVE
She keeps rolling and flops onto her other side. Carefully, she picks herself up and pads her way towards his side, somehow figuring out how to tap into whatever it is that makes her rumble and vibrate like an engine, purring as she nuzzles up against him. She swipes her cheek and body along one side of his in one direction, then the reverse - mutual marking, mutual ownership.
Eventually, she comes to rest alongside him, hooked tongue coming up to lick and groom the top of his head, right between the ears.
I'm here. It's okay. I won't leave you.
>^•^<
It was even harder to distinguish, in this form, if communication was happening through body language or telepathy. But he heard… he felt her.
And his faint, distant voice drifted back. This is the weirdest kriffing experience of both my lives.
this is when i realize i'll prob name my next cat cassian
She chirps a quiet, soothing sound, sending back something like, Make that all four of our lives. Or is it nine? (She's trying to lighten the mood). Could be fun to explore like this, though.
That's a pretty great cat name. —As is "Chirrut"! …Though the best is "AT-AV".
Cassian hadn't been able to focus much on subsentient life forms… but…
(Before Khriou taught him memory enhancement, before his brain was fully developed, how particularly bad Cassian's always been at summoning mental images of Jeron's rooms at Carida… but he can sometimes remember the objects meant for Cassian himself. In the rooms and in Academy childcare, all the toys would have been educational. True proto-Imperial and Caridan fashion: starting indoctrination before he could speak. There had been one toy not meant for any other purpose. Maybe a relic of his mother. It had been an animal. When he'd finally gone to Fest, he'd meant to find out which kind. But so many had been wiped out in the destruction, he hadn't pressed it.)
He didn't idealize animal existence. As a rule, their lives were brutal, bloody and painful. He still sometimes envied their straightforwardness. Suffering wasn't from broadscale and indirect machinations for a whirlpool of motives. Experience and response were direct, immediate.
His calmest memories are also nature-related. The singing, murmuring canopy-life surrounding him like an ocean from atop the ziggurat on Yavin IV. Pirating the signal of a probe droid on Lothal, to avoid being spotted by it, he had to sit so still for so long that a family of loth-cats climbed onto him and went to sleep. Watching Kay, and trying not to laugh at him, debating how to handle an avian trying to build a nest on his casement.
Plus, the beasts of his childhood—rockrenders, ash angels, ash rabbits: their names were used as ranking for the sentients, but it went deeper. He'd hated his child soldier designation of 'ash rabbit', but the way he'd conquered his fear climbing into the SoroSuub war machine that he'd successfully sabotaged and brought down—his first solo insurgent accomplishment—had been envisioning himself as the actual creature. The reason 'rockrender' was their rallying identity was doubtless also to armor themselves in the idea of it: taking on foes of metal that could crush their normal bodies, but for a rockrender, would be lunch. And the times he'd been dumped unceremoniously into an unknown environment without sufficient briefing, and figuring what to expect and what to do about it by studying the adaptations of the animals, and how to translate to himself.
So… yes. At another moment, he could be as interested in all this as she was.
But… not right now. With a shift of the breeze, a twitch of his nose, bringing her scent, not cat Jyn but human, washing over him… and he turned to discern their crumpled clothes.
And his last mental image of her as a human eviscerated and bleeding out in his hands.
He looks up at her again, eyes pleading.
Yes… really, yes, soon… but… can you change back? I need… to see… you… alive
Yeah, that definitely wins everything haha.
His memories, his thoughts are muted as the instinctual brain takes over, but his voice comes through as though it were from his usual mouth, forcing Jyn's eyes open completely. She offers a few more licks of his forehead before rubbing her cheek on him one last time - feline confirmation.
Not that she's .. all that sure of how to get them out of this state. She tries a series of things, including mentally stating, 'I want to be a human again' (this doesn't work), attempting to stand on her hind legs (neither does this), and imagining herself in her human form (this almost works, she can feel the tingling, but it doesn't quite come to fruition).
What ultimately turns her - and, thusly, Cassian - back to normal is -
Tranquility. Peace. Acceptance. Calmness.
Her vision changes from extraordinary to merely ordinary, and the sudden alteration makes her dry heave a couple of times, the front of her body already pressed into the damp earth below. But after she's collected herself and glances around, they're both back to having two legs, two arms - and naked.
She shifts to reach out to him, tap him as she'd done as a cat but with her fingers this time.
"I'm alive," she says quietly. "Utterly naked, but alive." She pauses. "What did you dream about?"
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Until it worked, with nauseating suddenness, and he contorted away to also clutch the earth and make sure he wasn't really about to throw up.
He'd been… hijacked, in a way he'd never actually experienced, but been trained and warned and mythologized against and thus dreaded, sickeningly, his whole life. Privately feared had already happened so he could never hope to truly control himself.
But… in no small part because it was Jyn, and it wasn't malicious but just… a new natural… and because facing a reality is often less horrific (if only for being finite) than imagining… all he felt now was relief.
Especially when his body regulated, renormalized, and he was able to turn at her touch and her voice, sweep her whole body at a glance (muddied but not bloodied) and grab her in an embrace, feeling an idiot for letting himself… experience disorientation? or not get out of it entirely on his own… but gratefully revelling in the fact that, with her, he didn't have to.
"Killing you," he muttered, muffled by her hair. "Not wanting to. But making it happen."
Analyses automatically swirled up from the deeps. Classic psychology wouldn't think twice, but it hadn't felt like…fear of killing her with childbirth, infecting or invading her with something of himself that proved too painful or deadly… the opposite of giving or imposing something. The dominant feeling had been… vacuum. Taking something away.
…Which made more sense when…
The analyses had been instantaneous and he just as quickly shoved them away. Nothing to do about it.
"What about you? Are you all right? Did something… trigger…?"
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Her own arms slowly but surely curl their way around his torso like vines, rooting him and trying to keep him grounded in the disorientation and the upheaval of being transformed back. Strange, that being in her normal form could feel so jarring and wrong after having spent so brief a time as a cat.
"You didn't," she confirms quietly, "You didn't do anything of the sort. I'm still here, and I'm all right. A tad nauseous but all right." She tugs herself away enough to rest her forehead to his, press her palm to the side of his face with all of the affection and lingering sadness she has in her. "I dreamt the same sort of thing, only I'd done the killing. Shot at what I thought was a trooper, like the ones we'd seen on Scarif. But when the fog cleared, it .. was you, lying on the ground." Her breath trembles as she closes her eyes, trying to force the thoughts away but unable to get the image out of her mind. "I've .. I've never experienced a feeling like that before. I would've torn my heart out of I could."
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He's had that dream, that she described. Fighting his way through troopers to get to a captured comrade. Coming out the other side to find nobody there. Turning back to see Kaytoo lifting one of the bodies he'd just killed. Stripping off its helmet to reveal the comrade he'd been trying to save. He'd had it over and over. The dead face being Draven's, Mon Mothma's, Narede's, Dorosz's, the time most haunting and panic-inducing when it was Admiral Grendreef's… (because surely he shouldn't be a shock reveal… it was Cassian's job to be betraying him… if possibly not in some unanticipated ways…)
There was too much roiling through his brain. Too many things to do or sort through. They were naked in the woods. They should get up and get dressed, go inside and wash off and warm up. They'd just been metamorphosed by Jyn's power into a kind of animal Cassian wasn't sure he'd accurately identified (felinoid but what kind?), and that was incredible with mind-blowing possibilities and potential and they should absolutely talk about that… And was this overcorrecting or the thing he'd been avoiding all his life by never allowing such introspection only sticking to the demands of duty or survival because right now choosing any direction which would shut down all the others was insurmountable, because it would set them irrevocably on a next course… maybe this was the result of not having the course already decided for him…
…and he'd left one out. Thinking about all his calmest moments.
The most calm moments of all. When he could finally let go and not worry and be cared for and relinquish control and responsbility and be all right with any outcome.
Whenever he'd just been wounded badly enough to require extraction by Kay.
When Kay had just carried him back to the ship, dragged his bedding pallet off a bunk and onto the floor, put Cassian down on it, and went to the cockpit to get them the hell offplanet.
And Cassian, unlike any other moment, could just rest. Knowing he'd done whatever he needed to, and if he died now it would be all right because at this point the results wouldn't be lost with him, Kay would be able to get them back to the Alliance, would finish the job… And even if Cassian lived, he was in too much pain or exhaustion to fight himself; he'd accept Kay taking care of him, not worrying about whether he'd earned it, not worried about not daring to get used to it.
A moment of transition in which he could close his eyes and let go.
It was only in flight, with Kay. Not once he was admitted to med bay. Then, the pressure would be on himself to recover and get out and get back to work.
Only in transition.
They were in a liminal space right now. …Hard to be more so when they got there by not knowing if they were about to abandon this whole life. Talking about anything else would be avoiding what he realized his dream was.
…But they were here because they hadn't known earlier in the evening if they were about to abandon this whole life.
It was too much for one night.
He was trying to learn when technique didn't mean lying. Maybe not giving voice to something when it felt like too much needn't necessarily be lying either.
"I want to talk about all of this more, later," he said, pressing another kiss to her shoulder. Then sitting back. "For now… there's too much to sort through." He wasn't even sure he wanted to go home yet—the calming boundary condition of the night and the field—but some question needed to be asked… go with first things first: "Clothes?"
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She tries to honor this glimpses of his life, of his history, of his memory the best that she can. But she readily returns with a blink and a rehoning of stardust at his voice.
"Clothes," she confirms softly. She rolls herself over onto her other side to grab at the pile of cloth and fabric behind her. She pushes herself up to a half-seated position, legs gently bent to the side, her weight on her hip. She separates her items from his and hands those that belong to him over with a glance over her shoulder. "We needn't talk about anything until we're ready," she says quietly, beginning to replace her clothes onto the various parts of her body.
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What people said when they had choices. And a future to make them.
Which simultaneously was miraculous. We're alive we're together you love me back you didn't leave.
And made his insides as abruptly tight as they'd been before she decided to stay. One choice they wouldn't have. Because he'd taken it away from both of them.
He needed a way out of this overwhelming moment. It really couldn't be talking or even fully thinking about it. Not because he didn't trust Jyn to be there for him and handle it. As much as the shockwaves have resumed at how close he'd come to losing her tonight, she'd made a decision, and he knows when she decides on something she does it. He's not afraid right now of her going away. He just, really… doesn't have another conversation in him.
But sleep is not necessarily rest or escape either. Their nightmares are too fresh to him to want to try going back.
And any of the available options—lying with her looking at the stars, walking through the darkened woods (a terrible idea strategically but that wasn't the dealbreaker), going back to their bed—left him too much to his thoughts. Even if she might be interested in getting more physical right now, the nightmare (and the ensuing thought he's keeping just out of both their reach) is too fresh for him.
But… conscious brain stalling… strategic brain suggests a solution. Suddenly offering up an older conversation, with her and Kay, with butterflies…
Cassian blinked down at the clothes in his hand, checking if it included his comm. It did.
And looked back up at Jyn. "I have a ridiculous idea."
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She peeks over the ridge of her shoulder at him as she slides on her underwear and dusts her thighs off of dirt and brush and grass, raising her eyebrows expectantly.
"And you're doing a good job of hiding it from me, because I have no idea what it is," she teases lightly, eyes sweeping over him to realize he's not put on any of his clothes. She lifts her gaze to his face again, this time with a furrow in her brow.
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"I can't sleep again yet. But I could do with… turning off my mind for a while. How would you feel about using one of our comms—" Old habit to call it that even though it's far more of a computer than communicators back (for lack of a better word) 'home', "—to finally look up what kind of children's vid programming they make on this planet?"
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His suggestion surprises her, but delights her all the same.
"Yes," is all she says in reply, eyes positively glittering through the darkness, lips unable to refuse the sudden urge and tug towards each ear. As she reaches for her trousers and slips both feet in, she pauses at the ankles. "Watch here? Or should we find somewhere else?"
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He starts to pull on his own clothes, purposefully—and a touch of mischief at the next. "Let's stay out here until we find one we want to show to Kaytoo."
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She glances around, looking for an adequate spot for them to sit and relax. There's a large boulder of sorts with a broad, flat side to it - seems almost perfect for the task at hand. She jabs in its direction with her thumb as she looks back to him.
"There seem good?"
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His conversation with Kay in the kitchen, over Cassian's bleeding foot, trickles back into his mind. The project he's started researching in light of it. Another thing he'll speak to Jyn about soon enough.
Right now, all he wants to do… he gets to do. Shrugging on the last of his clothes—including socks, though leaves off his shoes in the service of unimpeded contact with Jyn—he takes her hand to help both of them up and follow her suggestion. Settling against the flat of the rock to support himself, positioning his arm relative to the rest of him in invitation to support her.
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But she'd also seen betrayal. Reece had done it over something as petty as having lost some of his cadre to Saw, had seem him calculate a plan so inconspicuous that none of them had seen it coming when he'd eventually turned. She'd seen him gain Saw's trust, work alongside him, train as hard as the rest of them, only to stare Saw in the face with malice and contempt so consuming she'd been surprised he hadn't burst into flames.
With Kay and Cassian, however .. she's never doubted their reliance, their trust, their faith in one another. Jyn knows Cassian underestimates himself in that regard, but decides to not push it further - at least not vocally. Instead, she pads over to the rock and settles herself down and beside him, tilting her head to rest at the crook of his shoulder. She allows herself, in that moment, to feel the weight and extent of the gratitude squarely in her chest for having been given the opportunity to become a believer again.
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Then they watched cartoons until dawn.