maskormenacelogs | what's left to protect [personal prompts + OTA]

He folded her into him, himself around her, to press a kiss to her hair. "Te amo," he murmured back.

(If it was sometimes hard for him to say in Basic, it wasn't because the emotion was uncertain or hard to admit. He just never thought it sounded right in his voice—coming from him. He'd trained himself too well to never plan on saying it. But it helped, when he did say it, that it wasn't about him. It was about her.)

And he'd always get there. "I love you."

Threading his fingers gently through her hair, he urged her ever so slightly out from hiding.

With eyes smiling: "I should update you before I stop caring about anything else in the world?"

She unearths herself enough to allow her eyes to peek up at him, keeping the rest of her face hidden. She can't see them herself, of course, but she knows the swirl of stardust in her eyes is on fire, shifting and changing and morphing like a brilliant explosion of color and light. Even more than the usual shift whenever she might catch sight of him. She feels very much like the fluttering, floating butterflies they'd seen only weeks before.

Face still partially buried, she nods against him.

"Please do."

He runs his thumb along the bit of her face peeking out at him, beside the whirling galaxy in her eye, then let his hand get lost in her hair.

"I was thinking for a while," he murmured. "You, Kay, me… we were made in war. We're trying to remake ourselves for peace. The things we're best at, that few people can do like we can, we don't want to do anymore. But trying to do other things is kind of… You and Kay hate your jobs. I couldn't do mine for even an hour. But it also feels like… a waste. We could do more—be more valuable to others. If we weren't using our time and energy to box away everything we're good at. I was trying to think if the skills we actually have could serve purposes they weren't meant for—made for war but translate them to… well, like things we learned to do as child soldiers. Could they be used to protect other children against being made into soldiers?"

Somewhere in there, he'd shifted away from her just enough to turn toward her, prop himself on his elbow, seeking her eyes. The only outward indication of how strongly he feels about this.

She tilts her head into the direction of his touch, but continues to stay relatively hidden while he speaks, observant gaze flittering across his face with intrigue and interest.

But the content of his words draws the last bit of her out of hiding, exposing her mouth, which is loosely curled into a curious, lopsided sort of smile. Her mind processes the concept he's started to lay out at her feet - taking the skills the three of them had never really wanted but that had become so deeply ingrained in them that it is impossible to separate them completely, and use it to ..

Train others?

Prevent the same mistakes from being made all over again.

She shifts back to allow them both to visually soak the other up completely. Eyes squint slightly as she chews the thought of her in her mind with concentration.

"You're saying, train them? But for purposes other than war?"

He walked in the many colors of her eyes, thinking over how to formulate it. How to invoke lofty references without getting too high above his actual (simpler, cruder) idea.

"Think of the Guardians of the Whills," he said. "Warrior-monks. …The Jedi. Fighting others was a last resort. It wasn't the reason… they'd have practiced the same skills in peacetime too. Self-control. Learn how to fight to become more able not to. Keep others from having to."

His eyes flickered down to his own hand, which he'd moved to brush across the exposed skin at her collar, come to rest gently on her sternum.

"I could never be one of those," he said drily. "But maybe I don't have to be. To… try to make just a little of that reality for someone else.

"I found a place in Maurtia Falls. Closed, left vacant. Used to be a training center for that sort of thing. The local idiom is martial arts. Includes self-defense, meditation. The neighbors told me it used to draw a lot of kids in the area. Ones with poor families, or no families… the ones others look at first to use for the drug trade or the flesh trade or as cannon fodder… Nobody would say having the training center to go to had solved their problems, but…" His eyes flickered to hers again. Seeming… a little self-conscious, but beneath that… a gleam of the old conviction he'd had in the Alliance. (Before it deserted him. …Though had come back, a bit, when the fleet followed them to Scarif.)

"…but apparently it helped. Them keep more of their own choices. See they had some even when it wasn't obvious. …Gave some hope."

Edited 2017-06-10 13:32 (UTC)

She instantaneously remembers Baze, remembers Chirrut. She remembers Chirrut's voice echoing in her skull as though it were nothing more than a cavern, drawing her closer to where he'd been seated like a moth to a flame. How quickly he got her to reveal things she'd never discussed with anyone. The last parting look she'd given as she, as she'd come to do many times after, followed Cassian by a gentle touch at her wrist.

Her expression softens at the memory of them, though there's something somber swirling in her galaxies, too. She feels their loss again, and she realizes somewhere that it's a topic she and Cassian have yet to really breach.

But now's not the time for that. So with a few blinks, she comes back to the conversation and, once he's finished, reaches her fingertips to graze across the prickly desert of his cheek, leaning in to find his lips and capture them gently. Just for a moment. Not to silence him or alter the topic of conversation or shift gears, but because she's grateful of his presence, of the fact that she can still float gently in the waves of his speech, of his wanting and determination to be the person now that both of them could have used when they were young.

"It sounds like a wonderful idea," she whispers, though there's a fiery strength and conviction in her voice. "It's giving them the choices we never had. The strength they can choose to find and tap into, because they want to - not because they have to." Bright eyes flick open and up to meet his completely.

She smiles.

"What can I do to help?"

He tilts his head deeper into her touch; meets her halfway to kiss her too.

Though he appreciates that she wants to stay the course… for just a moment, he unlocks a memory he's been meaning to share with her.

Frowning at Chirrut in their Partisan prison cell. In Jyn's absence, trying to figure out how to get back to her, Cassian demanding, "Why did you save us?"
Chirrut's beatific smile, Baze's snorted laugh. "Maybe I only saved her."

He opens his eyes, and to see that particular fire back in hers… feeds his own where he thought nothing could be added. Feeling the heat of it in his chest, he claimed her lips for another moment.

Then made himself move back, focus too, and gave a different smile, now scrutinizing her face because he wanted every nuance of her reaction. "I was hoping you could also teach."

Edited 2017-06-10 20:12 (UTC)

Hearing Baze and Chirrut's voices mixing in her thoughts after what feels like eons of separation makes her heart swell immediately, and she inhales a quick, quiet breath in reflex of surprise and onslaught of emotion. There's a softness around the ridges of her eyes, the corners of her lips - a silent thank you, conveyed without words, for offering something so meaningful to her.

She can see the shift in his expression, can almost feel the dilation of his pupils (unable to see for certain in the sun-speckling dance of shadow and light) as he hones in on her, adapting himself into a scope. She doesn't mind it, though; she might - did - before, but she doesn't shrivel under the intensity of his gaze anymore.

If anything, she grows.

Her eyes remain steady and stagnant on his face for a few nanoseconds, mind processing and synapses firing to make the connections, attempting to wrap itself around, calculate, decipher, understand. Equation solved and understanding solid, both brows lift with delighted surprise at the degree to which he wants her to be involved with the project. She'd assumed, in the milliseconds it's taken to reach this point, that she would have worked more behind the scenes - taking care of records, databases, certifications. That he wants her to teach is ..

Thought-provoking.

Eyes, still soft and intent, narrow with her own concentration.

"Teach," she echoes, feeling the word out on her tongue. A tiny burst of color fires in both apples of her cheeks as she admits, "I've not really ever been around children; I might not be good at working with them or relating to them."

"In my limited experience," Cassian murmured back, (focusing on the softer impulses re: Jyn, Dyv, Linat, rather than the more jagged edge of his own lack of childhood), "children prefer being treated like sentients in their own right, rather than uncommunicative handling. But I think it more likely we'd serve adolescents."

"Of course," she replies with a furrowing of her brow in thought, trying to recall what it was like for her as a child. Not that there's much to grasp outside of the way it had been stolen, but - she remembers hating when her parents or the other adults would talk around her as though she couldn't understand. Her parents had learnt quickly that those sorts of tactics didn't work, and though they modified some of what they talked about (certainly they didn't talk about all that was plaguing them around their young daughter), they generally spoke around and with her as though she were .. well, the human being that she was. Quick-witted, intelligent, observant. She imagines that most children would want to feel similarly, so she nods slowly in agreement. "So, a bit older, then? Teenagers?"

He nods—gently, to avoid cracking their heads together. And to pause to appreciate the tickle of some of her stray hair against his face. "That's who was most attracted to the old place. Though we'd take anyone who came."

It's so nice (a) to talk about this aloud at last and (b) do so using the word we.

He hesitated. But Jyn wasn't someone from whom he had to withhold his thoughts before they were plans or certainties—even if he could. "I'm getting ahead of things… but I also thought… if any of them ever needed somewhere safe. For more than the duration of a class. Somewhere to stay or to hide or to find their feet or use as staging area before moving away. There's a back room. I thought it would be nice for you and I to have some amenities there so we wouldn't have to come home for a rest or a shower or if we ever needed to stay overnight. But if the rest works out, might be able to buy more footage from the nextdoor property, knock out a wall… make that part bigger."

A halfway house, or shelter. Not primarily… but securely.

…Which was directly related to… led him to the next point. Which… for several reasons, was a slight tonal shift. "…and I'd like to ask Kay to work there with us, too."

"Of course; doubt we'd want to turn anyone away unless they posed a very blatant risk to all involved," she says softly, corner of her lip pursing with concentrated thought. Her gaze falls somewhere by his lips as she lets the idea of what this all means slowly slip into the cracks of her mind, watching the way they move as he speaks again before lifting her eyes to meet his.

"Sounds like the kids there could use it." There's a sorrow in her voice; children are vulnerable and victimized no matter the galaxy, no matter the universe. She was foolish to think or hope it might be different here. "Do you think we'd have to keep that bit more hidden? If - the kid or kids who are there are trying to stay hidden from someone?"

Mention of Kay doesn't freeze any of Jyn's features; in fact, she might look a bit softer at the idea.

"I never told you, did I?" she asks, her lips tugging into a playful smirk. "He and I are getting on much better. I think you'd be proud. We openly admitted we don't outright hate each other - not anymore, anyway," she adds with a laugh.

"Yes," he said, "that aspect would be hidden. Word of mouth only. Codeword… something like 'haven'."

(Or just like 'Haven'.)

His smile is meant to seem playful but is obviously genuine. "What?"

Cooling it, though still smiling, he adds, "He could be a great practice adversary in training, get to fulfill his combat functions without harming anyone." (More than he really got to with the Rebellion. Cassian wouldn't let Kay make a strike for him.)

A little more somberly, "And if we did need to activate Haven protocol, he could fulfill his security function too."

"Fitting term. We might have to change it every so often, to help weed out potential threats who could catch wind of the term." Just like changing aliases or identities, though the longest one she'd ever used was Liana Hallik - mostly because she couldn't change it, not once she'd been thrown into Wobani under it. It was her least favorite, too.

"Mm. Thought it might surprise you," Jyn replies with a warm smile. "We aren't, you know - writing ballads about each other or anything, but it's a step in a better direction." She nods in response to suggestion of both roles for Kay. "Hopefully it never comes to the latter."

She pictures Kay, standing in the middle of a room, with a collection of children all screaming and kicking at his ankles. It makes her laugh.

"Think he'd agree to it?"

"I think he might," said Cassian. Thinking back to that conversation. "It should be more satisfying to his core programming than the Alliance ever was. And definitely more than his current daily existence. Laser tag excepted."

Edited 2017-06-20 02:08 (UTC)

what's left to protect [personal prompts + OTA]

Our goal to give these two some nicer experiences than they got to have in canonical life = CHECK

all the things. i demand all the things.

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