a rogue fam thanksgiving

Whatever Thanksgiving is, Jyn doesn't actually have a clue. For that matter, if anyone were to ask her, she'd say it's a stupid name for a holiday, more than a little self-explanatory and unrelated to everything she's actually seen and heard about it thus far. Darrow as a whole doesn't seem to celebrate it, but there are plenty of people who do, and sales in stores and something called Black Friday don't seem to have anything to do with some sort of gathering over a meal or whatever else is supposed to be going on here.

Still, like more than a few traditions in Darrow, she's decided to try to embrace it. She may not be much of a cook, but Cassian is, and any occasion that revolves around food is one she can't say she's not interested in giving a try. If there's something that, even now, feels a little strange about it, when a good deal else of what she's heard seems to revolve around family and togetherness and whatever other nonsense like that — it's no wonder, really, that she'd never heard of it before showing up here — then she's fully intent on ignoring that.

She called this place home, and she meant it. As frightening as the very idea of it may be, Jyn is tired of running from that, of keeping it at arm's length so she won't lose it. Cassian and Bodhi, they're her family now, and the apartment she shares with the former, that's the first home she's had since she was a child.

Which makes it, perhaps, somewhat counterintuitive that, in her spare time, when no one else is around, she's started idly searching her laptop for houses to rent. On one hand, there's no way in hell they could really need more space than they have now, as sparse as her own possessions are. On the other, Bodhi spends enough time here that there's really no reason he shouldn't just live with them, too, and pragmatically speaking, it would save a lot of trouble. A lot of the properties she's come across are out by the university campus, and therefore close to where Cassian works. Sprinkles — who's presently darting around her ankles while she tries to piece together some haphazard dessert that she's read about — would have more room.

And frightening or not, maybe she likes it, the idea of actually being settled somewhere — not some small apartment to which one of them was assigned, but a house of their own choosing, a real home.

Mostly, though, she hasn't meant for it to be much more than a simple fantasy, if only because she doubts she would ever actually work up the nerve to say something about it to them. There's no reason to change what they have now; she wouldn't want to risk getting shot down.

None of that is very much on her mind, though, as they attempt — or, well, mostly Cassian attempts — to put dinner together, some baking competition show left on TV in the background. She has, in fact, entirely forgotten about the several tabs of possible houses she's left open in her internet browser when she tells Cassian just to use her computer to check something he needs to for one of the dishes, already having it on hand from when she'd looked up her own recipe, barely glancing up as she pushes it across the counter in his direction.

She couldn't ever actually need any more than this — the three of them together, the smell of food in the air, everything warm and peaceful and nice. It's already more than she's had in so many years.

it's beginning to look a lot like—

When Jyn first heard about Christmas from Rey a long time ago, a memory she only half-remembers for how much she'd had to drink at the time anyway, she hadn't expected it would be like this. Even before the month begins, there are signs and decorations going up, stores advertising the holiday like their very livelihood depends on it, seasonal drinks and candies and other such things to be found nearly everywhere. Part of her wants to think it's silly, indulgent. Rey compared it to Life Day, and that may not have been entirely wrong, but it all seems like so much more, too. She'd never have so much as taken part in anything like this before she got here, at least not before her family left Coruscant and her whole world turned upside down. For all that she would like to write it off, though, there's a part of her that can't help but be charmed by the whole thing — the lights, the scents in the air, the words to the stupid cheery songs that seem to be playing in every damned store that she doesn't understand most of the references in.

She still doesn't think she has much of a grasp on what the holiday is supposed to be. That won't stop her from wanting to take full advantage of it. She can, after all, for the first time in such a long time, and she's tried to start thinking of such instances as something to take advantage of rather than something to keep at a distance. Maybe she deserves this. Even if she doesn't, Cassian and Bodhi do, and if she's going to call a place her home, she may as well act like that's actually the case.

As such, she's on something of a mission when she texts Lincoln and asks if he wants to meet her, sitting on a bench on the corner of a block of shops near what she's heard called a Christmas tree lot. Trees are just one more piece of an increasingly unclear puzzle, but some of the decorated ones she's seen really are lovely, and she thinks, well — she could do that. She just might need some help, and she can't go to Cassian or Bodhi for that when she wants to surprise them. Besides, she can't buy them any gifts if they're around, either, and that's another thing that she could use some input on. She already has some ideas, but she's mostly going into this blind, and she expects the same is true for Lincoln, too.

Her gloved hands are wrapped around a warm cup of coffee, something too sweet but fragrant with peppermint and delicious all the same, as she waits, a cookie in a paper bag in her lap that she's been taking small bites of, savoring its sugary taste. As with any occasion, the food is one of the most important parts, and she isn't letting any of this go to waste.