maskormenacelogs | jannat al-ma'wa [OTA]

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jannat al-ma'wa [OTA]

WHO: Cassian, Jyn, K-2SO, Revan, OTA
WHERE: Neojedha in Maurtia Falls
WHEN: huh? continuity? (your choice)
WHAT: The dojo opens (multithreads welcome)
WARNINGS: facepalmingly pompous mun!wish-fulfillment re: community service and indie start-ups; any of the reasons someone might need a shelter situation; PTSD sublimation; TL;DRing up the tauntaun. 1 and 2 are kinda infodumps. 3 (knowing us) ~~could~~ did get smutty. 4's accessibly friendly!

P.S. on taking cultural references from karking everywhere (title: Arabic, passcode: Sanskrit, setting: Americanization of Japanese, characters: none of these…) Cassian's trying to avoid cultural appropriation without even knowing the term; I'm stomping carelessly through the tulips. Hopefully not to conflate any of the cultures or schools of thought. Thinking more of The Cloisters: a museum Frankensteined from many different religious sites and relics, exploring the differences and finding underlying agreements, resulting in a space that feels secularly holy.

1. Neojedha: the dojo (attn. Jyn Erso, K-2SO, Revan, OTAnyone who wants to stop in while the place is active)
2. Haven: the safehouse (closed to Jyn, Kay, Revan)
3. The Bridge: between them (closed to Jyn Erso)
4. Outside: the street, the back alley, the fire escape, the roof, etc (OTA - WHAT a proper prompt)
5. The world: NPC neighbors and friends (if you ever come while they're closed and ask the neighbors about the dojo's staff, this is the info you'll get)

[+ image references: Colleen Wing's Chikara Dojo from "Iron Fist" …babeh]

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"You say you can't always be in control and that not everything you do is a plan, but - but that's exactly what you're doing now. That's exactly what you've done. You made my choice for me by simply .. assuming that I want a child, by assuming that this is somehow a - deal breaker between us. That your worth and your value and your importance to me lies solely in what you can give me - in terms of reproduction and elsewhere. You've pigeonholed me into a box of what you expect of me and what you think I'll feel, or say, or do, or think.

Cassian, I'm - I'm just a human. I'm nothing more or less than anyone else. I've done things I'm not proud of. I've had things done to me that shouldn't have happened. But I'm still only human. I'm not anything more than that.

If I were to answer your question now, given that I don't have an answer for it based on who I used to be, I would say that no - I don't think I would've been better off with Hadder. I don't think that I would have wanted to .. settle down, have a family. How could I live with myself for bringing a life into the galaxy we lived in? War-torn and constantly full of death and destruction. I probably would've been doomed to repeat my parents' mistakes. The Empire would've figured out my identity eventually; they would've made the link between me and my father. They would've tracked me down, hunted me. I would've had to have put a child through what I was put through - never staying on the same planet for more than a year, never having friends outside of inanimate toys, never feeling secure, never knowing stability, never having any idea of consistency.

Even if Hadder could have - and would have - done his best to try and protect me and our hypothetical child, it wouldn't have been enough. Just as what my father had done hadn't been enough. There's no "enough" when it comes to the Empire. You know that as well as I do. I probably would've met the same fate as my mother, staring down the barrel of a blaster and the mask behind it." She pauses to catch her breath, aware of the fact that she's no longer shaking. She takes a step forward.

"I choose you, yesterday and today and tomorrow. I'll always choose you. You mean so much more to me than your ability to give me a child that I don't think I'd want to begin with. You - you make me feel safe. Safe in a way I've never felt before in my life. You give me hope. You ground me when I feel like I'm going to vaporize into thin air." Her shoulders shrug, heavily, matched with the sigh that escapes her. "You told me 'welcome home' once, and I knew that I was. For the first time. I knew that I was. It wasn't on Yavin, it wasn't in the temple.

I knew I was home because my home was - is - you."

There's an odd sensation of the manifestation of the physicality of this memory, though - it isn't as intense as it would be if it were really happening, if they were really climbing up the ziggurat. But her chest feels tight and light and heavy all at once; her breath feels thick in her lungs yet as thin as smoke; her skin scrapes against phantom precipices until raw and red. Or, at least there's the phantom sensation of it, much like wind sweeping over a field - invisible, intangible, yet felt.

She nestles in against him as she's done so many times (still not enough times) and leans herself back to press against his chest, eyes sweeping out over the beauty in which he's suspended them.

It's a breath-taking sight, and to be able to see it through Cassian's eyes, tinted and bathed in nostalgia and warmth, is incredible.

She turns towards him, then taps her forehead against the side of his face.

"Thank you for bringing me here and for allowing me to come."

It was the first time in this world that they fundamenally hadn't understood each other.

…It was so strange that… that came with… a fragment of… relief.

Another 'what if', not consciously recognized but long unaddressed: her new power and his ability to share it. Dying together… somehow not the issue. Somehow still part of them. But sometimes gnawing at the back of his mind: could they have been together like this without the intervention, independent of themselves, of telepathy?

His back had been to her for his torrent. Rigid and brittle. He slowly faces her as she speaks. Still drawn in on himself. But attending.

"Actually," he said, so quietly the ambient sounds of the room and the world came back with it, "I assumed you wouldn't want kids. Strategically, this works out. It's a mismatch we'll never have to overcome. Even if you did, I know that's not my worth to you, and there are options beyond biology… and given the opportunity, the full reality, I might not actually choose it either.

"Let me just…"

Words… which…

He violently shook his head.

It's not a test. It's not an assumption. It's not about you. I just kriffing hurt all right… and… nanites or telepathy or dying or you… this is a reaction I've never allowed myself to try before… and perhaps it's wrong, perhaps there's middle ground I need to learn about between suppressing and letting it just unleash on you… and perhaps you're right that there is one ulterior plan of just… seeing what happens when…

He shook his head more slowly.

Out of words, now. Out of thoughts. No idea what he'd even want to happen next.

Lifepod ejected into void. At some point it could be collected. It didn't have its own steering or propulsion abilities, so it would have to be.

He tries to imagine the people whose names are on these walls. How they'd punch him. Baze outright, Chirrut unexpectedly, Bodhi with big eyes.

Maybe he'd just needed to feel this for a moment. He'd never let himself acknowledge or grieve.

Maybe he'd just done something unfair and wrong to Jyn for no good reason. And he knew it wasn't a deal-breaker but he would still have to face it when he stopped spinning.

Maybe they could both be right.

Maybe she could hit him in the head and make it stop. How these feelings didn't go away even though things were good.

"You assumed that I wouldn't? Then why -" Her voice trails off, strangled by the swirling head and bubbling, frothing confusion just beneath her forehead. Her brows gather with concentration, with perplexity, with frustration. She puffs out a jet of air as she shrugs vaguely and glances down to the visor in her hand. She's ripped apart a bit of the back where it fastens together, but nothing to make it less structurally sound.

She wonders if Eun-Ji is pressing her ear to the wall, trying to listen to as much as she can.

"I just wanted a quiet life. One where I didn't have to keep running. One where I could be a part of a family that didn't get themselves killed, that didn't .. ignore me to lose themselves in theorems and equations and missions and warfare and death tolls. I just .. I just wanted someone - someone - to stick around. Just once. Not for a year, not for seven, not for eight." Hadder and Akshaya, Galen and Lyra, Saw.

Jyn exhales and lets her body fold along with it to her knees, eyes still glued to the visor which she's been futilely trying to repair with the heat and strength of her fingers.

Maybe this is what they both needed - exclamation and vibrating vocal chords about all of the things they'd lost, all of the things they'd had taken, everyone who'd died. Far too many. Maybe they each needed to feel the very things they'd been ignoring, shoving down further and further into their gut with no thought of consequence or the fact that seams aren't meant to be under so much pressure. But now, she feels this volcanic rupture in her gut - one full of sulfur and bubbling lava. Hot, searing, nauseating.

Her eyes close, and the next time they open, she's no longer looking through her own cosmic gaze but rather, that of a large, dark creature.

He jolts slightly at the transformation. But is steady when he meets the creature's eyes.

He knows he's capable of following her, sharing this as well… but doesn't.

Instead, he moves forward
and kneels in front of her.
Bowing his head to expose his neck, his spine,
to her.

He pressed a kiss into the hinge of her neck and shoulder. His arms and chest curved to enfold her.

"I'd put you into every good moment in my life," he said. "But that's not taking advance of how we get to move forward."

Move forward… justify… make it worth it…

No, that's not doing it either. But that was the why behind both these places—Neojedha, the Massassi temple. Give people a moment to be safe, and to breathe, and be defended.

God it's been a long time since her body was pressed to his.

The creature's ears flicker with every minute sound it picks up, like the galaxy's strongest comm tower. Its gaze flickers from ceiling (it hears the birds landing and chirping on the roof and fire escape), the wall shared with the Lees (it hears them arguing in a language Jyn doesn't understand), then to the dark-haired man exposing his spine to it.

Sign of submission.

It starts with a rumbling, rhythmic growl - mostly as a result of coming to terms with its existence in this small room. It paces while it thunders, from left to right, mouth slightly agape to assist in the absorption of smell, multi-hued eyes honed in the man. Its thick, heavy paws thud against the wooden floor with each step, small scuff marks left with each scrape of its claws. Its long tail hangs loosely from the base of its own spine as it slowly approaches.

It circles around the man's back once, then again - this time coming to inspect with heightened olfactory senses. It can smell the sweat coating the man's skin, can memorize the molecular signature of his scent. It circumnavigates around him half way, this time coming to sit in front of him. A few high-pitched chirps echo next, sounds of recognition and beckoning, as it lays itself down on the ground, paws neatly resting in front of its chest, the tip of its tail gently twitching.

She hums happily at the feel of his lips and his body wrapping itself around her like a cocoon. Her head tilts to the side to lean against his before barely nodding.

"I'll appreciate and exist in this for now, for however long you'll let me stay. I'll repay the favor," she whispers, voice melting into and losing itself in the gentle blowing of the wind and rustling of the breathing trees down below. Her arms come to rest over his, eyes making grand sweeping gestures across the honey horizon, before she turns to face him again to plant a kiss to the edge of his jaw. "We're always moving forward in one aspect or another; even if it doesn't feel like we are," she murmurs, kissing his jaw a second time.

Cassian watched it in silence. Wondering again at this… perfect cheat. A way out of the moment that wasn't either of them deserting the other.

But why draw the lines at powers. None of this is anything you had in the last life. If you're grateful for any of it, be grateful for all of it.

The beast lies down, and Cassian closes his eyes.

His hands which he'd laid empty palms up, he turned over at last to grip his knees.

It's hard to sit with himself. But in this place, with this creature, he tries.

…The thread distant and delicate in his mind. I am one with… the Force is with…

It can't be his mantra but he uses the memory of Chirrut's chant as a focus, to push everything else at bay.

They're still sitting there as the sunlight fades, and the only light now with them is an insufficient but silver outlining of the next building's electricity.

It inches forward, little by little, towards the man's hands. It can read the heat signature of his body, spot every working organ within the fleshy boulder the man has turned himself into. Hears the beating of his heart, the sound of his rushing air, the micromovements of his tongue against the roof of his mouth as he begins to say something before seeming to decide better of it and stops.

As the light fades, the creature blends more and more in with the shadows of the room. The only clear indications of its presence are the huffs of air through its nostrils, the sweeping sound of its tail against the ground, and the subtle glow of its eyes.

Once close enough, it nudges at one of the man's hands with its snout, then dips its head down and forward, rubbing its forehead against his knee. Another rumbling vibrates the air, but this time, it's obvious it isn't one of aggression. It would be recognizable as a much louder version of the purring they'd shared while transformed into the smaller feline creatures weeks before.

After a few rubs, it flops down on its side, resting its heavy head on the top of the man's thigh, the one connected to the knee it had rubbed - glowing, incandescent peering up at him curiously.

Edited 2017-06-26 01:33 (UTC)

…It didn't feel strange as he feared it would… he'd winced at the thought of Jyn turning herself into… a different species than him… trying to wrap his mind around how the way he thought and felt about her, especially sexually, could possibly be compatibly translated to… a completely different power dynamic and…

But this… Maybe because she's more powerful than him now. Jyn in person could always hold her own against Cassian. In this form, she's now risen from Cassian's level to Kay's: could kill him with instant ease.

He ignores all the whispers of what it says about him that that makes him feel… safer.

Because it was never the threat of the other person that tortured him. It was his potential threat to them.

He couldn't quite bring himself to pet her the way he would an animal that… didn't have the woman he loved inside it. Even though he's runs his fingers and nails over her in human form in a not dissimilar way. There's a lot of grey area (isn't there kriffing always) between infantilizing and sexualizing, which he is actually very adept at navigating with other sentients, but… this in-between with this creature who's also Jyn, it's just… safer, for him, to remain still. Be the one acted upon, not the one who acts.

Except… the body language she gave him now. The trusting pose, the physical contact, the luminous eyes.

Slowly, he extended his open hand where she could see it coming, moving it to hover near her face. Available for her to guide him as she liked.

He kissed her back on the temple above the forest
He moved against her in the bed in their haven
hands sliding to loosen her clothes
hands sliding to gather her close
his body calling to hers
asking if it wanted to slip into each other again
not caring about its own arousal or release, just wanting to be with her
in true restored state
as they'd evaporated together in the white light
but this time without oblivion
this time minds staying together too

Fragments of thoughts - inner turmoil, conflicted reactions - flutter their way through the mind's eye that still belongs to Jyn, but they're muted, muffled by the greater and more powerful instinct of the creature she inhabits. She might chirp or bark at some of the thoughts he has, the animal mind fully expecting him to simply understand what it is that it's trying to convey, but the human part of her knowing full well he won't. Not entirely.

The creatures cranes its neck to sniff at the hand with interest, the cold mucous covering its nose a stark contrast to the heat radiating off of his palm. It can smell the fabric of his clothes on it, the various things he's touched throughout the day, and - interestingly - the lingering scent of .. Jyn.

Another beckoning chirp pierces the silence (though, like this, silence can never really exist so long as there were other lifeforms outside and inside of the walls) before it presses its forehead against his palm again, grunting in what would easily be interpreted as joy or happiness. It lifts itself off of the ground again and knocks its body into and against the man, first with one side of its body then the other, before coming back in front of him and flopping down again, half-laying on the man's legs now, belly up. A large, weighty paw stretches up in the air before relaxing back down in a bent pose, the other reaching to tap his hand.

She melts into him - here and there and every space in between - with melodic murmurs and floating sighs. Hands trailing up his exposed abdomen, chest, shoulders, drawing herself closer with a push of her hips towards his own. An answer floats in somewhere in the ether around their heads and in the galaxies overhead - "always" - somehow Jyn's voice and somehow something else, something larger and more ethereal than she could ever hope to be. Fingers untucking the towel from around his waist and flicking the dampened fabric away from him with careful precision, greedily exploring the exposed flesh and dark forests underneath, flesh already rigid in her grasp.

Soon both temple and dojo will seamlessly fall away, both places and none, when all he knows is her.

He unfastened her bra under her clothes, gently opening and peeling away everything and down off of her, kissing her skin as it was bared, as his hips rolled softly against her, moving himself in long strokes in her circling hand.

He would always obey her, in any form. He ran his hand slowly over her soft skull, down her neck, brushing the velvet she presented him for actual touch, not necessarily the belly that was feline language for safe, acceptance not so pet this too. But the muscles of her forelegs joining her chest, her sternum and vibrating throat.

And was unaware of the tears slipping easily down his face until one dropped onto her dark fur.

It hasn't been an excruciatingly long time since the nerve fibers her body sang underneath his touch they way they are now - and certainly, she'd gone through a much longer period of time after escaping Skuhl, and yet - it feels like eternities, like gliding timelines and universes that have been birthed and transformed and withered. Her body swells beneath his hands, his adept fingers like a wave crashing against a bluff, as though it's never known the feeling of them before. Or like it's forgotten the silk and velvet sensation of it and hungrily devours all it can do in order to remember.

She uses the tug and pull of her feet against the legs of her trousers to inch them down her legs, toeing off one boot, then the other, and shedding the fabric of first trouser than undergarment like sloughed skin. She takes one of his hands and guides it down below, teeth grazing over the plump flesh of his lip.

The creature stagnates quite happily underneath his touch, leaning and craning its head and neck into his hand. Its purring grows so loud that it seems to vibrate the walls of the room, rattling the windows by the door. Eyes half-close in contentment and tranquility, but then it flinches under the droplet, though it's more Jyn's doing than the animal itself. It lands at the carpus, and the creature lifts its wrist to its snout to groom away the moisture with a swipe of its barbed tongue.

It watches him with careful curiosity, eyes almost unblinking and practically alight of their own volition. It stays this way for a second or two before it rolls itself away from the man and onto its belly, shifting into her normal, human form.

She always forgets that her clothes melt off when she transforms, but she doesn't seem to care - even with the threat of a voyeur somewhere across the street. Or, worse, the Lees peering into see what all the strange noises have been. She crawls her way back over to him, before kneeling and stretching her arms out towards him as though needing to understand their mechanics instead of paws, and wraps them around him.

His hands move up her back, fingers curling around her shoulders from below, pressing into the interplaying muscles and sinews, feeling them flex and flow under his hands; bowing his face to them as he held on and let it all bleed down his face.

"I'm sorry," he says in a thick voice. Not for all of it… he needed… possibly they needed… some of it recognized, some of it let out… acknowledged, remembered. But— "I shouldn't have brought him into it." That had just been… weak. It was good that Jyn hadn't had to die before experiencing love.

His thumb moves over her hand as she guides it. Then drifts from her hand to where it's placed.

The feel of her. From the coursest scars to this softest flesh. He follows every ripple of terrain, as if what she feels like against his fingers could be just as enthralling as anything he might be giving her. Continuing to part and trace and work in her with painstaking care, as far as his fingers could reach and bend, while his thumb comes to kiss its rough texture to its chosen anchor and begins building warmth, stimulating her, there.

Higher up, his arm has slipped under hers, circling her ribs and up her back, so his other hand can slide in her raven hair, hold her head. His face is tilted down, in pure concentration of both their hands. Their breaths cross, chests moving as one, even following one another when their hands make breathing catch.

The sun warmed stones against his skin. That's what he tries to make his hand feel like to her.
The ocean above the trees. That's what her hand is doing to him.
He doesn't need to bring her to it. She brings it back to him.

"No," she replies, agreeing with the better choice of having left ghosts lie amongst the stardust and interstellar atoms where they float. But her tone isn't harsh or reprimanding; it's soft, and delicate. It smooths over them both the way her hands do through the fabric of his shirt, holding him close to her beating heart. "I loved Hadder, and I don't think I would've gotten through that year without he and Akshaya. I never even told him how I felt about him; not once. I just assumed he knew; maybe he didn't. I don't know. But he isn't here with me now. He isn't the one I think of first thing in the morning, or last thing at night.

But .. that being said, I don't - I don't want you to not tell me things, out of fear of hurting me. Getting angry, getting upset, they're .. they're okay. They're normal, I think. If we're going to make it, if we're going to last, we have to be able to talk about all of the things we'd rather not." She turns her head to brush her lips against the crook of his neck with affection. "Even if it's hard."

Her gentleness with justice, neither punishing him nor letting him off the hook in a way he couldn't have stood, makes him press a kiss to the skin at her neck too: agreement and gratitude. Yes. There were worse crimes than being wrong.

He could misstep and they would… survive.

A new life indeed.

He didn't think about it; no mind to psychology or power moves or implications as such a gesture would always carry in his past, with anyone else. Just feeling the chill of the night on his own face and her bare skin and instinctively wanting to counteract it. He sat back and pulled off the light sweatshirt he'd put on over his undershirt after class. He put it around her, instead. His arms returning to encircle her, with it.

"Thank you," he said quietly. To all of it. To letting him be wrong. To having that be all right. To everything else.

He hoped not to repeat this often. (Ideally not at all. But he didn't need Kay to tell him the probabilities on that.) He would still try, perhaps more than he should, not to let such pain come out at her where she would inevitably feel it too. But being able to do so, both with her blessing and in his own capability… was… remarkable. Far beyond what had been possible last life.

He kissed her again, closer to her shoulder this time, before smoothing the cotton sleeve properly up her arm and holding her in it, against him.

"And I don't know what animal you were," he murmured again after a moment. "But thank you for not eating me."

She shouts into the cavern of his mouth at the contact of his hand to her, the ease in which it explores and charts every ounce of territory she so willingly presents to him. It's no longer unknown, no longer foreign in the way it had been the first time - yet his hands, like wanderers, plant gardens as they move - sprouting buds and leaves and flora, even in the darkness.

The hand not curled around him like an equator slips itself between his neck and the bed underneath, hair and skin still lingeringly damp from his shower, made worse by the rising temperatures of their polarities, both separately and together.

Pelvic anchors twitch and flourish underneath, around the sun rays of his hand, his fingers; lungs expel and vibrate all thoracic corridors towards her mouth, where lips part for breath and sound and urgent murmurs.

She smiles into the warmth of his sweatshirt - both for the fabric itself immediately blocking out the breath of the nighttime and for the lingering heat of his body still trapped and woven in its fibers. She'd .. sort of forgotten, about her exposure. There's no part of her Cassian has yet to discover, touch, taste, know - but it's more than that. It's the willingness, the comfortableness of being made vulnerable around him. No hesitation, no second-thought.

Still, chasing away the chill is nice, and it draws up a hushed giggle out of her.

She hums a response to his gratitude, as if to say she knows. She understands. She's with him (all the way).

"I'm not entirely sure myself," she replies with a bright chirp of laughter, in earnest this time. "It's strange, having to share a brain with a creature you don't even know. But if it helps, the thought of turning you into food was never even a possibility." She pauses. "Was I that large? I couldn't really tell."

He groans in need of her. And moved. His head ducking for his mouth to have her throat. His hips thrusting his hard on through and past her hold on it. His whole body arching to align them… find the river in the valley charted by his hand. And slick and frictionless, through and against every rippling grip and nerve, surging through.

None of which broke for a moment the rhythm of his thumb against her own hard flesh. It worked at her, light and ceaseless like water, even as their stomachs pressed abruptly together, forcing the rest of his hand flat between them. His other fingers moved aside for the greater mass of him to enter her. And as he'd wanted to do so badly before, he worked her now from both sides: cock within, thumb without, driving her with all he could to starlines and relief, shaking in his core with the intensity of her throes and swells around him.

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jannat al-ma'wa [OTA]

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