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

[kestreldawn]

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

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

She's nothing if not adaptable, after all.

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

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

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

She swings the door open.

Empty.

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

"Hello? Is someone in there?"

Comments

warning: suicidal ideation

[candor1]

The dream won't lift. Hard as he might, the puzzle won't unlock. Or even reveal itself to him.

Perhaps lingering shock or med aftereffects or something in this new atmosphere or having to heal the slow way in a world without bacta or because this is what happens when you aren't given stress-trauma electroreconditioning proving yes you did need it after all.

Or because he was dead, or dying; all perceptions and sensations were just misfiring neurons as his atoms flew apart, an instant dragged out to feel like a life; or because the kyber radiation caught you in a bubble universe of your own mind; or those were the same thing; and apparently his personal hell was tedium, aimlessness, and confusion…?

Either way. He couldn't find her. Couldn't verify whether or not she was really here. And the attempt had nearly pushed him back into the hospital bed. Which he couldn't allow. He needed to get out. One thing at a time. Couldn't find a way offplanet if he couldn't find a way out of this organization's eyes. Couldn't get out from under their eyes while he was still in hospital. So step one: get out of hospital. Wait. Agonizing as it is. Wait.

Either try to die or wait for clearance to go and live.

He'd tried the first… but if there was any chance of her at all… that option would always be there. It, too, could wait. While first he exhausted the second. He hadn't yet committed to how he would choose to use it.

So he'd gotten his medical clearance and relocation to De Chima.

It shouldn't be hard to find someone. He was an Intelligence operative for Ackbar's sake. Even without his network and unfamiliar tech and unfamiliar land, he knew how to start from scratch. Even with the government working against him. Even from inside it not wanting them to know what he was doing.

But… so far, from Heropa, he hadn't found her.

If she was really there to be found.

Now he was in De Chima. He'd start properly.

But first… might as well establish his own personal base.

He'd been assigned to #003. For now, best to conform to what he was given. The nanites were in his blood regardless, if they wanted to monitor his vitals, they probably could. He may even choose to join them later (as unappealing as any prospect currently was—any thought of future still too much. One step at a time. Can't get off planet without getting out of bed.) If he ended up severing that tie, acquiescing until he chose not to, still the best way to stay under the radar.

He found the place. Took it in vaguely as he entered. He knew he would be sharing the lodging. Whoever it was either hadn't spent much time here yet, or lived as sparsely and impersonally as he did. There was little to be gleaned… and for the moment, he didn't try. He went upstairs to find the vacant room and take personal inventory. The supplies he'd been given (another duffle to live out of: just like home), and his physical condition. He'd been reminded repeatedly, past the point of appreciation (if he'd ever been at that point in the first place), that just because he'd been medically cleared didn't mean he was fully recuperated. He should still mind himself. That point was proved when he slid the pack off his back onto the bed and couldn't refrain a grunt of pain. He'd sat to strip off his jacket, open his shirt, to check the state of some stitches. When he heard the door. And then the knock.

And the voice.

No. Of course not. Not possible.

Cassian instinctively reached for the nearest weaponizable object—before remembering he had no intention of doing that anymore. (…Which, again, was the "leaving planet" level of deciding whether or not to declare a new… oh god alliance with any cause or organization now. After he'd cleared the bed-leaving levels of 'what do they actual do/stand for can they be trusted who do they work against what would my function be' etc.)

…No. Not necessary. Only do that again if necessary. And here maybe counterproductive to getting off on the right (or at least inconspicuous option-preserving) foot.

(And/or, perhaps he still wanted to die.)

Slowly, instead, Cassian stood, shirt still half-open, and went to the door.

And opened it.

[kestreldawn]

She thinks to leave whoever might be on the other side of the door alone. There's a pause, she can hear the stagnation of their movements, can hear the hesitation exploding like - no, don't think of Scarif.

Maybe they're sleeping, she rationalizes. Maybe she's interrupted some pleasant dream of some far off land with some far off people and some far off family. Maybe she's caught them after a shower, bare and naked and exposed.

Maybe.

She can rattle off a thousand of them and still be none the wiser. So, she thinks, best to leave them alone. Best to let them do whatever it is they're doing, try again later - if at all. Her lips part, her tongue readies itself to add on a non-committal statement, something to let the other being know -

If you're a house mate, I'll be in the room at the end of the hall if you need me or want to introduce yourself.

Or

If you're an intruder, I'll be in the room at the end of the hall and will promptly kick your teeth in if you don't get the kriff out of the house immediately.

She inhales the breath she'll need, tilts her head towards the door again when she hears the shuffling of movement, the approach of footsteps, the click and twist of latch and knob and -

Her eyes flicker up, expecting a stranger.

She thinks, for a moment, that she's seeing a ghost -

- that perhaps she's somehow still at work, wandering the desolate fields of her memory during yet another mind-numbing spell of data entry and organizational techniques;
- that maybe she's slipped and smashed her head onto the tile of her bathroom;
- that maybe these strange new powers have somehow leaked and altered and confused her cognition and she's seeing memories of

"Cassian." His name slips out like a sudden breath, a sudden exhalation she can't control. Eyes scan every minutiae of his face, flick to the scene behind him - the bed, the pack - then back to him again. She reaches out and latches onto the doorframe to keep herself standing. "Cassian?"

[candor1]

Dark-haired crown, half a head below his… the set of the shoulders, the posture, the frame…

then that flash

(kyber-beam bright)

of brilliant eyes…

He finds his hand is also gripping the doorframe, directly on the other side of it from hers. He must have braced against it without realizing before his mind could catch up to his autonomic nervous system, screaming in overloaded shock…

was it joy at seeing her terror that this can't be real pain at having lost her only able to feel it because he only can feel anything again being back near her it can't be her it can't be oh yavá please let it

His name in her voice makes his knees buckle and he sags a bit against the doorframe… reaching out a shaking hand, hardly daring to touch her in case his hand should pass right through or she recoiled or it caused him to wake up… hardly knowing whether to reach for her shoulder or arm or hair or face or wait for her to grip his wrist back so they could pull each other through to where the other waited…

He couldn't speak in turn but his mouth voicelessly formed, Jyn

ooc: if cassian absorbs her powers, he might get hit w/ all of these memories from her perspective

[kestreldawn]

Without severing the tether from her eyes to his, she reaches up for his outstretched hand - skin easily glides against skin like wind against ice, like sunlight against the dirt of the earth -

Heat and friction and electricity all wrapped into one, racing into hyperdrive up her arm and up her shoulder and into her brain, scattering and reforming and transmogrifying.

The solidity of the calcium lurking underneath his skin calls out to her, reminds her, proves to her, that this is real - how? how could he be here? how could they be here together? how? how? how? - and in what could be as quick as a blink or as endless as infinity, as expansive as the universe itself - this one or the other one or one not yet known - she pulls him in, lessens the damnable gap that separates their rib cages and echoing hearts.

Feels the dull thud of body colliding with body and suddenly remembers -

Their last embrace, the light, the accommodating sand under bent knees. Finds herself gripping at his shirt, his shoulders the way she had then. Feels the same stinging in her eyes - though there is no acceptance of death here. There is no silent prayer for those final breaths, those last moments.

Instead, it is an explosion of hearts and abundance of frothing gratitude for whatever has reunited, has transcended death and finality and The End to bring them here -

Together.

OOC: he won't recognize that's what's happening until the drugs are out of his system, but ^_^ ^_^

[candor1]

His fingers slip between hers, tighten to press their palms together.

And, following her lead or in perfect simultaneity, let bodies do what hands do, he's clasping all of her to him, too.

Yes, the light, the sand, her… The flashback could have as easily come from either of them… he's never really left… some part of him stayed there with her when whichever one of them had been ripped away… he clings to her now as if to stop the rifts, trying to pull the pieces back, push them into one whole.

Hopefully it's just emotional, not actually the freshly-set bones re-snapping: the feeling of breakage, collapse in his chest. He doesn't sag against her—even while literally dying, in the walk from the tower citadel to the shore, he'd worked not to put all of his weight on her. (No matter that she could have taken it, no matter that his total mass wasn't all that much greater than hers. It was an issue of not fully abdicating his own part. Not trying to make her solely responsible for him or anyone else.)

But all breath leaves him all at once, in a shuddered rush. And he closes his eyes into the curve of her neck, pressing his hurting head to her cool skin, listening for the blood moving through her veins, her pulse, her hair tingling the side of his face, the fabric of her clothes against his hands, her fingers cutting painfully through his shirt into his muscles and bones (a good pain, make this tangible, keep going), where their skin may touch where his shirt was open, drinking in every detail that no one ever remembered to include in a dream, make sure this was real, make this real…

He may have been in an early phase of hyperventilation. But his voice belatedly returned. Lips moving against her skin, this time he spoke (prayed) her name aloud.

[kestreldawn]

Sounds and images of bones - fractured, snapping, mending, healing - float somewhere in her consciousness;
hushed worries of repeated and exacerbated wounds;
the walk from the tower to where the tide ate at the sand, hesitation, holding back, responsibility.

There is some lucid part of her that realizes, that connects - his memories, his thoughts, the transference, her powers. It had felt despicably intrusive when she'd realized she'd been reading K2's mind only days before, when she could've and would've sworn he'd been speaking as clear as the sun overhead. She'd tried to control it, tried to slip it into a vice to no avail. It was only that he had shut down his auxiliary thought processes that she'd found silence again and realized she'd been hearing his thoughts.

She wants to pull away - wants to separate body from body, limb from limb, to preserve the privacy of his being, his essence. She wants the exploration of his mind and his memory to be organic, to be because he wills it, because he willingly opens and invites her in -

Not like this.

But no matter how hard she might try to pry herself away, might try to untangle her bones from his, she can't - no ability to tell where one ends and the other begins, no desire to know. Her name leaks from his lips like an oil spill, coating her and every molecule of her being in its slippery viscosity, slips into her joints and eases their tension, removes and repairs cracks and creaks and groans from every part of her, from crown to sole.

"I can't believe it's you," she manages to breathe, quickly using a fingertip to brush away a trickling tear from her face. "I can't believe you're here."

[candor1]

At her back and in her hair, his hands tremble.

Last time (was meant to be) he'd held her… he'd felt utter peace. Everything had led to a moment he never would have dared to hope for himself, he couldn't possibly deserve, but somehow, had been granted. —because it wasn't just for himself. He'd finally become truly part of something—someone—else.

From which there could be no going back.

All he'd felt, since being hijacked into continued life, was the pain of being torn from that moment—being forced back into… just… him. From finally connecting, belonging, being forgiven… being (whatever it meant) loved, taking as much as he gave and giving as much as he took… not having to live with himself, because he wasn't the end in of himself, he could just be there for Jyn.

…But all facilitated by being about to die.

A dying moment is not meant—cannot be—a predictor of what may happen next. Nothing's supposed to happen next.

It is certainly not a contract.

He holds and is held by her now… and feels terror.

Because this time… something has to happen next.

He suddenly realizes how little they know each other. How briefly. How different their next wants and needs might be.

How every step of his short relationship with her was about turning away from everything else he was and had done… toward the new cause and goal she'd opened to him… which they'd accomplished… which left…

…only her.

…How could he ever ask… how could she possibly want to… but he would never try to force… and if she didn't, how could he live without…

…either way… he realized suddenly that he'd longed for her embrace again on many levels… but among them… that feeling again of finality. Closure. Finish.

Let me rest. Let me…

But they were alive, now.

There was no ending.

This was… a beginning.

No longer alliance, no longer an asset, no longer soldiers and generals and mythic heroes and martyrs and…

Just people.

And he'd never put all his faith, all his drive, all his need, into something so unpredictable and chaotic and easily damaged by himself as another person…

But at some point this embrace is going to have to end, they will step back and face each other…

…and he is terrified.

The strategic brain tries to help.

He could fall to his knees before her.

He could break away first and step back.

He could—

(The dream of making love to her reasserted itself suddenly in his mind)

No. I couldn't. Of all the things impossible to initiate that's the clearest.

Flying off planet before getting out of bed. And right now, he couldn't even…

Everything requires a next step. And he doesn't know how to do any of it.

And leaving it to her… isn't that the most selfish, brutal… it hadn't only been about them as individuals, none of it at any point…

…and yet none of it could have been accomplished—faceable—bearable—without them at one another's side…

…how could his pitiless singular life be a comparable cause, worthy of that?


There is a hall of mirrors in his mind; his memories of the man in white shooting him off the datacore and his injuries on the way down, being reflected in Jyn's mind, being (unbeknownst to him) shared and reflected back in Cassian's… it doesn't register as anything, consciously… only part of the confusion and vortex of his brain. But it causes the physical sensations to echo more loudly too.

Though he doesn't release her—ending this embrace something he couldn't begin to know how to do—and he doesn't double over—that would hurt her or force the moment in some declarative direction—

—against her, his breath seizes and his muscles contract in obvious pain.

[kestreldawn]

No, turn it off - tune out - stop - !

She feels every flash and twist and turn of his mind as they trickle in, one after the next after the next - Scarif, connectedness, them as one and as two, separation, isolation, fear and realization and rationalization (or its attempts to corral and tame the ever furious kindling and flint of emotion and thought), terror and apprehension, and -

Bodies, intertwined, twisted together like an adder in a nest - the echo of grunts and groans she'd never be able to create in her own mind - the generation of heat due to friction and the joining of flesh-and-bone pieces and breaths. Feels the heat rise in her face as she begins to understand, begins to realize where his mind has gone - what he pictures, what he considers - feels the residual pulsing in her neck when that thought fades to black. Feels the leap of heart and breath at the sudden (albeit subconscious) realization that she wants it, too.

Krennic blaster bolts datacore bone-against-beam sickening thud blackness

Pain. The physical sensation fails to set her nerve endings alight, but she feels it somewhere in the grey mass rattling and heaving in her skull. She contracts with him, almost in sync, almost immediate - forces herself to breathe, breathe for the both of them, let her anchor him and keep him here -

She supports him easily, without hesitation, without even noticing. Finds her center of gravity, sits into it, evicts any tension not used to hold and uplift and bolster from the fibers of her muscles. Releases a series of sounds meant to soothe, furiously exhuming some long-buried memory of what Mama had once done, what Papa had once done. Leads them down slowly and surely and steadily to the ground, to their knees - the parallel and echo of the sands of Scarif not lost on her.

[candor1]

As if it had been only locked in by the stiffness of his joints, the dam buckles; knees hit ground and he—and it—breaks.

Kay had found him, on Jenoport, staring at his blaster with tears on his face. K-2 had volunteered for a memory wipe in case Cassian's "continued dignity and service demanded it."

No such safety nets here. Dignity long since gone. Service… to what?

As he had fallen from her on the beach… finally, unable to bear waiting for the inevitable a moment longer, Cassian slipped from Jyn's embrace and turned away, covering his face as his broken, useless traitor body wracked with grief.

At the loss he hadn't allowed himself to feel… until it was filled again.

…But he scarcely knew what she…

…he could lose her again…

only able to truly feel the loss of her with the strength and safety her being back. Emotions make no kriffing sense.

And the others… the others were still gone.

And the one thing he'd wanted to lose—

the reckoning.

Himself.

—remained.

[kestreldawn]

"Cassian .." Jyn murmurs, his name a moth escaping the cavernous chamber of her mouth, fluttering its wings around and between them - a proverbial tether from him to her, from her to him, from one heart to another. An echo trying to find its source, a moon trying to find its sun.

She waits for the onslaught, braces herself against the hurricane winds that uproot brainstem and temporal lobe and limbic system with no regard, no consideration for the rest - feels the voltage engulfing grey mass, grouting gyri and sulci until smooth and elliptical.

Emptiness. It drinks the wind out of her in an instant, lungs instinctively, reactively extracting oxygen to keep her cognizant. A searing hot blaster bolt to the chest without warning, a deflation of lungs like a withering balloon. She sees herself as he does - only for a moment, only for breath - and feels the loss that surrounds her in his mind's eye.

Swallows back a sob - not borne of her her own body, but rather - as always - an echo of his.

"I'm right here," she whispers, inching herself closer, ignoring friction and heat of skin against fiber. "I'm here. I haven't left."

[candor1]

Her voice echoed down to him as from somewhere far above… throwing him a lifeline.

I'm right here. I'm here. I haven't left.

…Yes, the man in white had shot him off the tower. He'd come to broken to find her gone.

So what had he done then.

No one else was coming. So what. Lie there and flood his organs with blood, or see it done. See if she's somewhere up there and can possibly need him.

It's not a choice.

It's all he wanted to do with literally the rest of his life.
Help Jyn.

Climb.

He lowered his hands from his face to his knees. Eyes still closed. And breathed.

Forced air and sense and life back into his chest and brain and skin, forced it to even and slow.

Claw up twelve stories, army crawl to the data core, drag self up to prop upright against it, take aim…

That climb was what had made his injuries fatal. This one… as if bones knitted and tissue grew, constructing him atom by fiber, straightening up, taking form from the ground.

Until, with another long breath, he raised his head and opened his eyes. Took in the room once more. Looked for details he would never have made up. That scuff on the floor. That crease of bedcover. That color. No. This isn't my mind.

Then turned once more to her.

Her green eyes, looking at him now not unlike the way they had in the elevator… so open to him… so present and… sharp and… caring… the crease of her forehead, the apprehensive set of her slightly parted lips…

He'd missed her so much.

…He'd missed her before he'd met her.

Heart thudding again, but breath successfully slow, at last, Cassian turned. Raised his hand to her face. The pads of his fingers calloused from years of firing weapons and flying ships and grabbing rocks to climb or crawl or throw, softer than they had any right to be on her skin.

Thought I'd lost you but yes, you're here, I'm here, we're…

His voice still somewhere far away. That lifepod hadn't been retrieved yet. But his eyes… sometimes full of universes of their own, somethings frighteningly empty… right now they reflected her and he was behind them again. Looking into hers like she was the universe he'd sought. And impulsively, but so gently, he leaned in and pressed his lips to her cheek.

[kestreldawn]

Datacore tower. Trickling of blood out of punctures and tears, pooling in incorrect places. The howling of wind and rhythmic clinching of metaphorical metal jaws somewhere overhead. Tearing and burning and failure of muscle. Gasping of breath. Hairline fractures fissuring into canyons with each stretch, with each defiance of gravitational pull, center of the planet.

She feels the need for confirmation - the need for solidification and reassurance. Remembers in her own mind's eye -

After gaining approval to enter through the forcefield around Scarif. The tingling of her kyber crystal around her neck, how she'd muttered nonsensical words that seemed, felt like the right ones to say to whatever might've been listening - The Force? Mama? Papa? Guardians? Jedi? How her gaze had so naturally sought out his - found it, bathed in it, reflected the curl of his lips with her own. How beautiful he'd looked then - radiant, brilliant, joyful in a way she'd never seen, never imagined. Rushing towards him - reaching out, skin to skin, hand to arm. The need for her own confirmation, solidification, reassurance. The spark that leapt from her skin to his or from his skin to hers, the meeting of eyes, the unspoken meaning - forcing herself away and down to let the others know of their success. The lingering heat his touch left in its wake.

She sees herself again through his eyes - almost doesn't recognize the woman looking back at her. Instead of the hysterical child, instead of the bruised and bloodied student, instead of the dirtied and hardened soldier, instead of the broken daughter - she sees the emerald of her eyes, the expanse of her skin like the surface of an undiscovered planet (not uninhabited, but perhaps untouched by the universe at large), the fullness and rouge of lips. Her lips.

Is this what he sees, whenever those fields - dark and velvet as night - settle across her? Claim the untouched expanse of skin for their own?

Against years of training and reflex and protection, no part of her flinches when she catches sight of the movement of his hand. No part of her thinks of blocking or evading, knowing there is no part of him that would strike her and cause her harm - not if the image she'd seen of herself is any indication of ..

How he feels.

How he feels about her.

She reaches up, presses the mirrored callouses of her palm to the back of his hand, curls fingers around to secure it in place. Allows herself to see him the way he'd seen her, the way she'd felt him see her only breaths before -

Galaxies and universes held in his gaze
Stars of the utmost intensity (as easily stoked into destructive flame as coaxed into lapping warmth)
Slopes and angles of bridges and jaws and lips
Peppered skin seemingly forever shadowed
The face of a friend, she thinks.

She inhales a sudden breath, but still, no part of her hesitates. No part of her defends or parries his movements - instead moves in time with them, letting herself lean into the soft press of lips against cheek and sandpaper against silk. Her eyes flutter close, a steady wind rushing from her parted lips -

Jyn knows not of love or of the world it inhabits but, she wonders - at the tickle of breath and feather-touch of his mouth, at the tightness of chest and tremble of stomach - if this could be close.

[candor1]

…He doesn't know why that moment over Scarif would come to mind.

(Because why on any world would it occur to him that it leapt to his mind from hers? Even if there had still been Jedhi when they lived.)

But yes… there… Bodhi victorious, punching the air. Kay giving Bodhi one of his extremely rare compliments. Cassian releasing a held breath, adjusting his grip on the shuttle's grab bar to let his shoulders relax, and glance up to smile at… Jyn… pale and taut but shining, who'd smiled back… then suddenly pushed herself out of her seat to close the space between them and grab and squeeze his arm… He'd started a bit, looking from the touch to her face, still smiling but caught flat footed… not just at the gesture (the likes of which, spontaneously… friendly? intimate? …he never would have expected from her, not someone so fiercely self-sufficient [like himself], not after he'd betrayed her) but at how being so physically close to her—even after two days in cramped quarters and frequent, repeated invasions of one another's space—more of her body had been against his when she'd saved him from a grenade for skies' sake—though of course that had been, you know, saving him from a grenade—but now, abruptly felt completely different.

That thrill of breath and skin, vibrant singing of quantum strings in their bodies and thoughts and the space around them… it makes him abruptly decide that even if this is a hallucination or a dream and even if they're still doomed someday to part and die,

he doesn't care.

He never would have expected it even once. And now it's theirs again.

One doesn't refuse such gifts.

He disconnects the kiss, softly, the lower part of his face angling slightly back, with his forehead remaining barely touching the side of her face; his hand cupping her opposite cheek, the warmth tingling from it down his wrist and arm and into chest and stomach and everywhere, that her hand is holding his in turn…

Slowly, as if it's difficult to pull away, to move against such gravity, he leans slightly back so he can again meet her eyes.

(His thumb moving slightly to brush her cheek.)

He should say something. …What could he say.

"You're all right?" it was at last.

The least of all possible things. …But he wanted to know. Desperately. Had she arrived hurt… did she remember death… was she glad to be alive… was it all right, him being here now too…

But also the gratitude underneath it of: you're alive

[kestreldawn]

She sees his determination - his acceptance. It isn't resignation, not in a manner of defeat or of blind obligation (due to no better choice) - a relief, she thinks, though there's no part of her that expected this to be truth. Rather, it's wholehearted, consensual, empowered deliberation of choice and of options, coming to a conclusion, and deciding to lean into it with force and might and assurance.

Acceptance of whatever generosity might have seen it fit to bring them not only here in the larger realm of things (as in, not dead), but even more specifically and more incredibly - the same kriffing house. It's hard to think it could be anything other than Fate, even if Jyn's never been a believer in such fantastical concepts.

She and Cassian finding their way through darkness and death to be separated only by a hallway seems to be too damning to think otherwise.

Her throat rumbles a silent whimper at the rescinding of his body, her skin suddenly chilled and bare and barren at the loss. Exhales a soft, fluttering sigh at thumb against cheek, reflexively tightens fingers around hand.

A light of adoration and bemusement radiate onto him, wanting to warm his face like the kiss of sunlight.

"A little surprised," she lightly teases, "But yes, I'm all right. Are - Are you? Did your - did the - injuries carry over?" She suddenly remembers his bed - her bed - wonders, somewhere in her mind, whether they'll be spending the night separately; follows it up with a quiet plea for unity instead.

[candor1]

(Will this mutual mental sharing feel as seamless and natural if/when he becomes aware of it…?)

In instant response to the picked-up question—not needing to recognize it as such because the thought has already been there in him: He wants to lie in bed with her. Sex or not; he wants to fall asleep in her arms, and her in his. Right now, he feels he could do nothing else for years.

Except perhaps kiss her. …But he's initiated as far as he can bear. Not because he doesn't trust her to draw her own lines, or because he wouldn't instantly accept refusal, but because… he cannot ever, ever, be in doubt as to whether he… pressured or… forced…

She's capable of fighting him off or telling him no. He doesn't want her to ever have to.

But all that is relieved for a moment, it can wait, because it's good to see her smile. In her eyes if not on her face… the lightness, the gentle humor. Yes, it's ludicrous that they should wind up in the same house. (…Are they roommates? He hasn't even thought through… But he doesn't care to yet. For the first time, not just in their acquaintance but all his life, possibly most of hers: they have the luxury of later. …No, that's not quite right. He's had it before; but only since Scarif, can he find himself able to take it.)

"Yes," he said, "I arrived… weeks ago. I was hospitalized. …If I'd known you were here…" He suddenly has to move to her and pull her, almost convulsively, against him again, one arm tightening around her back, his head ducked to her neck.

"I'm sorry," he says, muffled, into her shoulder. He relaxes his hold on her, shaking his head. "I'm sorry," he says again, unblocked this time. "I came right from… When did you?" Had to ask first; as her departure point couldn't possibly be later than his. (She knew he'd been injured, so had to be close… but every breath of those last minutes contained worlds of difference.)

[kestreldawn]

She thinks of his lips - a reflection and echo of his thoughts about hers, of their softness and wetness against the skin of her cheek, their tension and pull when he solders them closed (out of necessity, out of habit, out of inability to do otherwise ..).

She wonders at their imagined feeling against hers, wonders if they'd meld and sync like hearts and breath and now thoughts.

Hesitation. Rigidity. Holding back. The twitch of muscle when intent forces, demands movement and reaction, but the brain will not allow the impulse to reach its destination. Second-guessing and talking one's self out of action. In her own mind, her own consciousness, she finds disappointment at stagnation.

"You couldn't have known," she begins to reply, words and lips and tongue slackening at the sudden pull into his gravitational orbit, the heat of his forehead against the throbbing pulse in her neck. Her hands lift slowly, unsure and unsteady, to eventually find his shoulders, the space between them, the back of his neck.

She can't know the motivation behind the apology; wonders what's drawn it from his lips.

"Right after .." she starts, inhaling suddenly and deeply, needing the bravery to finish, "The light swallowed us, on Scarif."

[candor1]

He nods, fractionally, against her. Hurting all over again that that had happened to her. (In relation to that, he barely minds that it happened to him.) Yet also… in a way… relieved. They're together in it. They're still… aligned. Side by side. All the way.

With the arm still around her, his hand squeezes her shoulder.

Whispered, "Yes. Me too."

He'd been apologizing for grabbing onto her again. Needing another embrace only moments after releasing the last one.

But it seems to have been unnecessary.

Given leave by her hands doing the same to him, he moves his hand across her back, gently sculpting in the muscles between her shoulder blades at the base of her neck, closing his eyes into the resulting shift of fabric at her shoulder… his other hand drifting to brush her long loose hairs back from her throat, turning his face again, barely touching his profile to the side of her neck, feeling her warmth, the tingle of almost-touch, breathing her… a second embrace in as many minutes, but panic subsided, this one not desperate, not trying to patch a hemorrhaging hole; this one he can feel… the electricity of… reinvigoration and… dawning reinvestment and… joy, even, at being alive… as they had been so much stronger together at their mission than they'd ever been working apart, he feels his body and mind finally come all the way into this dimension. Into this state of being. Into living. In combination with her, more than he had managed (or even tried) alone.

And, now that what he's feeling isn't terrible, he wants to give her, if he can, any of what he's feeling back.

He moves imperceptibly closer. Taking a longer, slower breath. Taking her scent, her molecules, her existence, as deeply into him as he can. The hand at her back gently presses downward. The one at her neck slips down to her bicep. Unable not to, he turns his head again to brush his lips to her hair.

Then, again, he sits back. But this time… his expression may not be a smile, but the way he raises his eyes to her… he'd come home before; now he's also turned on a light.

"I… don't understand any of this… I probably should…?" With an amused gesture at the room behind them, the house around them… and… "…and… we don't have to stay kneeling in a doorway."

The prospect hurts of moving away from her, even if only to get to his feet and offer her a hand… but it's not the gaping, falling, dying pain of the past weeks… it just hopes against hope that he can be as close to her again soon… but even that is an acceptance of… something comes next.

And if there's any chance it can be… any aspect of… what he hopes… then he's ready to get on with it and find out.

And if it isn't… it's all right. This is already more than he could have dreamt.

He wants her. To have his living existence be entwined in hers in every way, for as far as his mind can go. As they'd been burned together, atoms intersplicing, in the kyber radiation… it feels unnatural, an amputation, hurting to be separated by even centimeters now… feels so unnatural not to reintwine and rejoin their skins and breaths… but there is also her voice, there are also her eyes, there is wanting to hear her thoughts and learn her experiences in the time they'd been too apart, and he will take with abject gratitude and relief that he gets to see her, experience anything with her again at all.

[kestreldawn]

There isn't a nerve in Jyn's body that isn't alight, aflame, electric with the sensation of his touch. Ignoring physics and impossibilities, his fingers burn into her, clothing and barriers be damned, singeing and branding her with the invisible patterns he traces along the topography of shoulder blade and undulating spinal mountain range.

She barely breathes, stealing only tiny gasps of air as lungs demand and require, deafened and overwhelmed with the violent thudding of her heartbeat in her ears.

Like a sun rising at dawn, there is something at the core of her that warms - bathed in and enveloped by his body, his breath, his touch - the intimacy that's suddenly theirs, without warning, without expectation.

She hears his celebration of renewed life, of altered purpose, of second chances .. the subtle shift towards a different kind of acceptance, one of commitment, and promise, and passion, and dedication. One that allows itself to shed whatever exoskeleton it might've worn before, discarding it with determination and the promise of tomorrow.

Another day. Another sunrise.

Another chance.

She feels the now alarmingly familiar shattering of separation and distance - breaths transform into galaxies, an inch becomes a universe - and is unable to know whether her thought or his or some hybrid of both. Wonders, momentarily, at the inability to untangle and separate one's thoughts from the other's.

"I've only barely begun to understand myself," she replies, subconsciously reaching for his hand as she uncoils her legs from underneath her with a cracking of joints and quiet grunt of tightness. Wanders towards the bed, perches on its edge - doesn't settle in (it's his, after all, somewhere in the back of her mind - she's had no invitation to be in it, or on it, or near it), shifts only to ensure her placement there so as to avoid falling back to the ground. "First thing is you should know that -" A pause, a consideration, a weighing glance. "When you arrived, did they give you a file with information in it?" It's only right that he knows, she thinks, the exposed, fleshy parts of her already preparing their defenses, galvanizing their walls should he react the way she fears, once he learns of her invasion.

[candor1]

Their feelings are so in accord, that picking up one another's is less revelation as… amplification… and strong as they were to begin with… still nothing to catch (his, at least) attention.

He automatically keeps hold of her hand as she moves into the room, following her there. He would have, of course, anyway. Still just… happy… to be near her. Like anything else is unnatural and labored and only being at her side is effortless.

(Had he ever been able just to feel that way? Happy to be near her, yes, more than once in their too short time, but never before free of other factors and conditions and obstacles and contexts. it's still hard to believe… but irresistible not to. When was the last time he'd felt this way at all… but how surprisingly right… like not having felt this way was what had been the state of imbalance and strain… which of course it had been… He wondered if this would back up on him later, have a crash… No, no need to anticipate. Stop, brain. Take a break. Easy, again, easier than he would have imagined, to just fill his focus and senses with her.)

It doesn't occur to him to think twice about her sitting on the bed. Many of the rooms he's spent his life traveling between, a bunk was the only piece of furniture for anything at all. To converse or use as a table or…

He shoves his duffle off it to make room, to sit beside her.

And though he'd been unable or unwilling to push other physical boundaries… it's without hesitation, possibly without thought at all, that he lays his hand on the mattress between them to touch her hand.

"Yes," he said. "I had nothing to do except read the files. I didn't process them as well as I should. Still resistant about… being forced back from retirement." A faint note of humor at his own choice of phrasing. "Which part?"

[kestreldawn]

Her fingers flinch under the weight of his touch, but not in recoil - not, in any way down to the molecular structure of his being, in withdrawal. It's a spark, a collision of stars, an explosion of electricity and light whenever they touch. It's like being brought back to life, over and over again, and it's only in allowing her lungs to once again fill with air, allowing her blood to trickle through her body, that she realizes, remembers how lifeless she'd been before.

Jyn's eyes crinkle and soften at his choice of words as she considers him for a few quiet moments. Chews the inside of her cheek to figure out how best to breach the topic.

"One second," she says, forcefully, painfully tearing herself away from him in order to pad down the hallway to her room. She returns only seconds later (an urgency in her movements to bring herself back to him, the unbearable absence of him like a cracking in her chest) with her own file in hand. She enters the room, settles back in beside him, and hands the file out to him. "This one's mine. There's a section - it's about -" She pauses. "We .. we seem to have acquired powers."

[candor1]

His fingers hover and hesitate at the jerk of hers, but as she doesn't move away, and both settle again, his thumb dares to brush over the back of her hand. The electricity between them… it's not something he's felt before. He doesn't know which variable to credit. He's not sure he has the wherewithal to break it down. Just let it suffuse him.

He forces himself, rather than to grab her in panic before either of them can disappear again, to deliberately press his palms against the mattress behind him and lean back on his braced arms. It takes him too long to feel—anything beside his thudding heart, shallow breath, screaming nerve endings, gaping chasm of chest cavity, at her distance (you spent most of your life without her, or anyone; this is ridiculous…)—the cool air on his bare chest before glancing down and realizing his shirt is still undone. He sits up to refasten it, but lets his hands drop at her sudden return, leaving the job unfinished.

He can't help touching her fingers with his as he takes the file. Needing the reinfusion of warmth, the reminder of solidity and reality and life. But also in some hesitant… humility. Knowledge is power, keeping their personal information locked away had been so important; last file he'd read on her had been done before meeting her, obviously without her consent. Perhaps it wouldn't be such a weighty gesture between other people, but them—the intelligence operative whose secrets were rarely only his own; the multi-aliased wanted criminal/woman everyone wanted to use as a playing piece in their own games—it seemed… more willingly vulnerable, more trusting, more intimate even than other things from the past few minutes.

He looked at the file in his hand for a moment. It felt wrong to open it without…

"Oh…" Holding up his hand to her in a nonverbal echo—one second—he set the file carefully (almost reverantly) beside him and twisted and leaned over to grab his discarded duffle.

(He almost successfully suppressed a groan of pain at the maneuver. But he kept moving too quickly to encourage her asking about it.)

Grabbing up the bag, he dug inside for his own file. Then handed it to her, in turn.

"I don't quite understand it myself," he said. "But perhaps comparing will help."

He doesn't pick up her file again until his file was in her hands.

Synchronicity. Mutuality. He never wants to try and take disproportionate, or unilateral, control again. Especially not with her.




The relevant line of his file read: • power mimicry • energy field generation

He hadn't a clue what it meant, (and could mean too many possible things if he had thought of it,) and he hadn't committed enough to being alive, let alone in this new world and/or line of work, yet to narrow down/find out.

[kestreldawn]

She feels a jolt of heat rise into her cheeks at the brushing of his fingers against hers, feels and hears and knows the intimacy this exchanging of information signifies, listens to his trickling thoughts as they begin to again flood her consciousness -

Humility. Gravity. Power. Closeness.

It seems to Jyn so second nature (though the reasoning is one she can't yet explain) to share this with him, to abandon all hesitation from their previous life, and to start to let him in. She doesn't know how, not entirely, not completely, but in the ways that she can discern, uncover - she will. She wants to. She might even need to, much to her alarm.

When he twists to grab the duffel behind them, it's then that she notices the gaping exposure of his chest, eyes lingering longer than she could admit, and feels the burst of heat reach the tips of her ears. Reaches up to gently brush the hair framing her face to covertly hide their reddened state, hearing in her mind's eyes the grunt of pain. Mouth opens as hands begin to reach out, but both stop at the sight of his file.

She nods, taking it as reverently and as carefully as he had. Showing the same respect, showing the same acknowledgement of its weight, its meaning.

In unison with his movements, she opens his file and lets her eyes skim - there isn't much to be read, but it isn't information she feels like she can claim - not yet, not until he's said so - and so she forces her eyes down to the relevant information at hand: powers. She reads them out loud, the slowness of their sound indicative of her mental processing.

"Power mimicry. Energy field generation." Her own would read, telepathy, memory reading, shape-shifting. She compares the two sets in her mind for a few moments, then glances towards her file in his hand. "I've - I've discovered the first two already." She pauses, lets the underlying explanation sink in. "The third, I haven't experienced yet." There's a hesitance in her gaze as she lifts it to his face, a silent apology and pre-emptive wincing for alluding to her admittance of having already read his mind, without his consent and without her control.

[candor1]

He feels the rising heat too and doesn't know why… it's in a moment when he's turned away from her… but his body is reacting strangely in all sorts of ways and he knows very well how to push such things aside. (If it takes on more significance later…?)

As she reads his file, his eyes are fixed on hers. He can't quite form the words aloud. Telepathy, memory reading. He's heard of such things associated with the Jedi, had mainly dismissed them as embellishment or superstition. But it doesn't quite connect viscerally yet to think about how it may manifest—may already have.

But shape shifting…?

It's too fantastic. Such things simply don't exist.

Like spontaneous cross dimensional transference? Like time travel?

Her words catch up to him belatedly. …Discovered the first two already.

He momentarily puts aside all the things he doesn't understand (his own powers) or can't begin to approach yet (shape shifting, screaming skies…) for the most immediate apparent concern. As something in her voice tells him this is.

He raises his eyes to read her expression.

The fear, the apology… her face mirroring how he felt when he worried about kissing her.

He lifts his eyebrows, seeming…

…concerned for her.

"Just now?" he said. "With me?"

Not worried about his own privacy. Not angry, defensive, or scared—doesn't seem to feel violated. Just not wanting her to feel… worried about him. Doesn't want her to feel that she'd done anything wrong.

Granted, all that in the context of… he still wasn't sure he…

believed it?

No, that's not it. He wouldn't take this organization's word on anything yet. And how what they pitch aligns with reality has yet to be verified.

But he believes her. Always. She said she's discovered it. Knowing her, may well have tested it. So he knows it's true.

…But believing and understanding remain a bit different.

He believed her. He just didn't really understand. Or… …wanted to make sure what he assumed wasn't going to blind him to whatever this actually was. (It seems like a straightforward definition—telepathy—but minds aren't straightforward, so how could it be?)

On impulse—in invitation, in support—again held out his hand to her. "Can you show me?"

[kestreldawn]

Her head nods - barely perceptible, barely noticeable - and probably completely untraceable if she'd done it with anyone other than Cassian. Even without the mental invasion, she knows that he's able to read her, know her, understand her - unlike anyone has, unlike anyone ever will, she thinks.

While it had terrified her for the majority of the time they'd been together, there had always been - and still is - something overwhelmingly relieving about it. Not having to put on airs, pretend and assume false identities. Of course, it also means being exposed, being vulnerable - being splayed open and left for him to tinker with internal organs and entrails as he wishes. Though, there's something in her now - in the worry that she can see in his dark eyes and the echo of such sentiments she can read in his mind - that doesn't mind that exposure. At least, not as much as before.

There's no twinge of anger or resentment that she can ascertain, visually or mentally. There's no hardening of his eyes, no coldness in his stare, no micro-tension around his lips. There's - worry, it would seem. Worry about - her? There's hesitation and apprehension. There's curiosity somewhere in there, too.

His hand draws her gaze to it before she peers up at him through her lashes. Exhales a tiny breath. Reaches her hand up to slide against his, tectonic plates in the planet of their galaxy - the one they've created together - shifting and creating seismic activity she can feel into the marrow of her bones.

"I can't - I haven't figure out how to control it, not yet, but - if you think of something very clearly, I can hear it." She taps her temple with her free hand. "In here. So .. think of something. Anything. It could be - a sentence, or a feeling, or a memory. I haven't figure out the difference between - between the telepathy and the memory reading quite yet, but - I think the memory reading is less frequent? It seems to only happen when the other person is - triggered, or very strongly reminded of a particular memory, and then I can see it the way I guess they see it, or the way they remember it. But the telepathy seems to -" She exhales a quiet laugh, shaking her head at her own rambling. "Just - think of something. I'll tell you what I hear in my head."

[candor1]

Triggered… that's worrisome… though, again, probably not in the way she fears.

But first things first. No use worrying about things that are unverified.

Smoothing his thumb along the back of her hand again, pressing the other four fingers around hers with gentle security, he quickly rifles through his own memories as if through cards, or files. Awful ones are always the quickest to come to mind but he's adept at rejecting them quickly for his own needs; all the swifter and more efficient to so for the sake of someone else.

A good control would be something she had not been present for. Wouldn't have overheard with her own senses. Could only get through his. Even better if it wasn't something that could be guessed at (unlike the exchange with Chirrut that briefly passed through his mind, and was too near to unhappier things). Something simple, but vivid, nothing too revelatory, but ideally… pleasant…?

All right. This would amuse her.

He raised his eyes to her again—amused, expectant, but with a touch of uncertainty. Only as to whether he should be making eye contact or closing them, regarding would work best; but it came across… endearingly.