Jyn Erso (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kestreldawn) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
maskormenacelogs2017-04-10 06:28 pm
kestreldawn) wrote in maskormenacelogs2017-04-10 06:28 pm
Entry tags:
[but if the silence takes you, then i hope it takes me, too.] - CLOSED
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?"
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?"
no subject
The answering refrain in his mind. What he'd spoken to her in nine languages before. Though he can't speak now.
Soon.
Gradually, in less time than it seems to him, the wracking stops. He's been voiceless, but his breathing quiets. His fingers ease on her shoulder. Against her neck, against all of her, the tremor-taut muscles relax. He unclasps her. Doesn't move away. Just lets them touch, lets them be close, rather than seeming to fight the universe to allow it.
Respira. Breathe.
His thumb at last moves gently on her shoulder.
He turns his face to staunch its remaining dampness on the bed rather than on her.
And his physicalization of it is barely a change in breath… but his mind suddenly…
laughs.
…
This was not what he'd anticipated—what probably either of them had in mind—when they'd come up here.
…It had followed a not dissimilar arc, though, hadn't it…?
And maybe this was what they'd really needed. …Really wanted?
…Well, no. The original prospect could also… he still wants to share it with her. And everything else. Wants to make or help or witness her feeling every pleasurable thing life has to offer, if never before to them. But it doesn't have to be now. Nothing feels urgent anymore.
Who knows. Maybe if they'd tried the physical way first, it would have been...
It could have helped, lacking this other capability. It could also have diverted or warped. It could have gone either way. Because nothing previously known—sex or speech or external shared experience—could have gotten so directly and deeply and instantly to...
Not the first time this has run through his mind… What they'd needed... what had brought them together... what they'd found in one another before worlds literally exploded and the universe shifted to allow them to remotely consider romantic or sexual attraction... all of it, still: recognition connection trust acceptance knowing
hope
Suddenly it only seems logical that they'd had to die to get it.
How many beings throughout eternity dreamed of and wanted this kind of effortless understanding, but who in any universe got to actually have it?
He can't possibly have earned it. But (and fine allow the superstitious delusion for a moment) maybe for being the right puzzle piece, he's here as her reward. And if so is the luckiest undeserving bastard in infinity. Because if it could possibly be for her, justice or not, he won't fight it.
Still feeling the gentle tendrils of her mind interwoven with his, for his first time in utter earnest, he thanks the Force.
Yes. Whatever their minds can do now is stunning. Exploring more physical connection should definitely (well, hopefully) happen too. But… if the looseness of her muscles matching his reflects also matching states, then… for the first time, he can allow himself to believe… that they have… time.
Nothing is urgent.
....except, suddenly hunger.
With all other tension drained away, no other discomfort to mask what he habitually ignores, Cassian's ravenous. And belatedly remembers his promise to Kay.
And with Jyn, with his mind quiet and stilled for the first time he can remember... he can actually imagine doing something so procedural and not-distracting-enough-from-introspection and self-caring and in service of living.
With an effort, not now against any storm, but against relaxation, Cassian shifts to pull back his head enough to look, low-lidded, at her.
"How are you?" he murmured.
With the undercurrent: what do you want to do?
If she wants more, of anything, he's not going anywhere.
On the other hand, he had interrupted her dinner.
no subject
But not the kind set free into the air like a whimsical melody, thanks to the expulsion of lungs and quivering of diaphragm, sending invisible vibrations into the air until it sails the open air and collides into plaster and furniture and, if it's lucky, the delicate curves of a listening ear - echoed back by the wearer of such an ear, sounds and vibrations and alterations of breath and sound mingling completely in the atmosphere.
No, this is different.
This still reaches some atmospheric level, but the kind that climbs no further than the tip of someone's skull, or perhaps the stray hair standing at attention at the crown of someone's head - a keratin antenna to both transmit and receive.
She hears it so acutely, so distinctly in the cavern of her mind. It piques her curiosity, wondering at its origin and its purpose and its reason, but her own mouth allows her response to physically manifest in the spreading and widening of lips to each side of her face.
The whole of their story to this point is rather bizarre, rather laughable in its own ironic, twisted, non-sensical way. And she's certain that her own mind is laughing along with his, even if the sound never passes by the ridges of her teeth.
She hears talk of rewards, and then something in her violently reminds: No, that's not what I get. I don't get normal. I don't deserve good. Everything good dies, but for as quickly as the thought slithers in, she attempts to excise it from the marrow of her bones and the fibers of her muscle - allowing herself instead to focus on the subtle sound of his breathing, listens to his gratitude towards the Force or whatever else it might have been to bring them together.
Time.
Focus on time.
Focus on -
Hunger. As if on cue, her own (empty) stomach makes its presence known, and she presses a palm to it as though trying to quiet a disgruntled beast. She meets his gaze with her own, expression a tad sheepish.
"It would seem that I'm hungry, too," she says softly.
no subject
Another planet-shiftingly awe-some prospect.
He moves his hand from her shoulder to stomach to take her hand. Then, with a regretful grunt, starts his share of the process of getting them both upright, on their feet, and back downstairs.