nextchance | (no subject)

In the dark, Jyn waits.

She isn't sure how long she's been doing so, or how much longer she'll need to. Her thoughts have been a jumble since she first found herself here, in the small underground cave she knows so well, until eventually she's stopped trying to comprehend them. The pieces just don't fit. But she waits, because she knows she's supposed to wait for someone to come for her, everything just like it was before. For all she knows, it isn't even real. She's had so many nightmares set here, buried so much of her life here, left a part of herself behind that she could never get back. It doesn't make sense that she should be back here now, when she knows how this story ended — that her father left with the men who killed her mother, that Saw came and took her away until he left her, too — but even with a ladder and a hatch to the outside, memory overrides everything else. They practiced this. She never quite believed it was the game her parents tried to say it was. She knows her part, and that she's supposed to stay hidden until it's safe.

Down here, there's no light, the lantern she once clutched no longer working. Her hand wraps around her mother's crystal instead, an instinct she's had since she was given the necklace in the first place, that same day everything ended. The men who did it might still be there, except they aren't, because that was so many years ago. Part of her knows that. Part of her is right back where she was that day, unable to separate the past from the present, sitting and staring and waiting because it's what she did then and has to be what she'll do now.

At one point, her eyes close; it could be for seconds or minutes or hours, though it feels like little more than just blinking. Her head aches, and her mouth feels dry, and very, very distantly, she's aware that there's something that she's not getting, that she should be able to piece together. Soon that thought is lost to her too, though. She's here but she's not, a little girl who was pulled from a cave but who never really got out. For all she knows right now, this is all that's left, the small, dark space seeming smaller and darker, like it's closing in around her.

Threaded | Flat

The day before, Jyn missed work.

After working with both groups of kids on his own, not wanting to disappoint them, Lincoln had called Jyn's phone with a dark feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach, expecting it to go to that awful pre-recorded message that would tell him his friend's phone was no longer in service. Such an innocuous recording that says so much.

But the call had connected and he'd listened to the ringing until it went to Jyn's voicemail, where he had left a message, asking her to call him back. With that done, he'd called Cassian, and it's because his call to Jyn had connected that hearing that recorded message after dialing Cassian's number hits him so hard. He calls Jyn twice more, then decides to give her space until the next day, and when she still doesn't answer, he goes to her house.

Whether or not she wants to see him doesn't matter. He's not leaving her alone in this.

What he expects to find is Jyn sitting in the dark of her home, possibly drinking, but what he finds instead is her little dog barking furiously at what looks like a rock in the yard. He crosses the yard, looking at the rock, knowing it wasn't there the last time he was out here and he stares at it for a long moment before he realizes what it is.

Lifting, his arms straining a little, Lincoln pushes up the hatch. The hinges move easily, too easily he worries, and he peers down into the dark below. Sprinkles is finally quiet beside him, sniffing the air that comes out of the cave below and Lincoln drops into a crouch so he can get a better look inside.

"Jyn?"