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



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

But he's about to.

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

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

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

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

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

teleporters make no sense… they're nonsense…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…what were they…

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

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

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

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

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

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