like a row of captured ghosts over old, dead grass

[nextchance]

It was raining. Had been, on and off, all day, thunderstorms the night before tapering into intermittent drizzle throughout the afternoon. Jyn hated that it left her slightly uneasy. It was only weather, after all. Maybe it was just the familiar restlessness that had been building in her for she wasn't even sure how long now, the sort that felt like an itch under her skin that was impossible to scratch. The Falcon was a decent-sized ship, but as rain pattered against the viewports, its rooms and corridors felt minuscule, like prison cells. She just needed air. Needed to do something, really. The weather ruled out working in her small-but-growing garden, and the way the dampness made her shoulder ache meant taking her feelings out on a punching bag would probably wind up being regrettable. She could be reckless, but she wasn't stupid.

That left her with going for a run, as good an option as any. It would at least be likely to help her shake that skin-crawling feeling. Her hair in a messy ponytail, overlarge T-shirt hanging off her small frame, she bent to scritch behind Sprinkles's ears and promise she'd be back soon. On another day, she might have taken the dog with her, but today, now, she needed the space not to be worrying about another being.

The dog, it seemed, had other ideas. As soon as she began lowering the exit ramp, Sprinkles made a run for it, yapping — well, really, howling — enthusiastically at the approaching figure. For half a second, Jyn held back an exasperated sigh, unsure why one of her few regular visitors would be worth such a fuss.

Then she realized that it wasn't one of those regular visitors. It was, in fact, someone she knew very well, someone she never expected to see again.

Jyn hadn't kept track of the time, hadn't counted the days as they turned into weeks, months, years. She knew from experience that to do so would only make her miserable, and she'd already been in Darrow for a hell of a lot longer than she had anywhere before. So she didn't, off the top of her head, know how long it had been since she'd seen Cassian Andor, and yet he was unmistakable. He probably would have been even if she hadn't spent two years sharing his bed, eventually sharing his name. Darrow being Darrow, she had assumed if she ever did see his face again, it would belong to someone else, the way sometimes tended to happen here. Even if she'd wanted to, though, she wouldn't have been able to even entertain the possibility of that being the case now. She knew him, but she knew those clothes, too, the remnants of a stolen Imperial uniform that helped get them onto the base at Scarif. There was simply no one else who would look like that, wear that, and show up at her metaphorical doorstep.

She was staring, she realized, frozen at the top of the ramp, the color drained from her cheeks, as if she was looking at a ghost. In a way, it truly felt like she was. Her voice came out smaller, shakier than she'd have liked, traitorously betraying a torrent of emotion that she didn't have the first idea how to begin sorting through.

"Cassian?"

Comments

[fulcrum3]

In the middle of this City, a YT-1300 freighter should stick out like an electronic thumb. Instead, irrationally, it seemed like a shred of normalcy.

…Except, no, it didn't. It was the woman on the ramp. Ever since seeing her, the lack of her in the rest of his life had seemed aberrant. The way starvation might be how you live every day, but you never feel normal and well and complete until you've had food. Except Jyn wasn't just how she made him feel; she… …she…

The gaping of internal bleeding had gone away, as had all the pain, suggesting… He daren't think what it suggested, because his imagination didn't go to healed before it went to death. But he couldn't be dead, because then she would be, and surely death wouldn't have her wearing that adorable oversized shirt.

Also, why would death have this miniature Wookiee hopping at his ankles? He tore his eyes from Jyn long enough to attempt a greeting in Shyriiwook. The animal sat on its haunches and stared. Good enough. Cassian looked back up at Jyn.

He couldn't restrain himself more than that. He all-but ran to the bottom of the ramp, one hand closing on the bar.

He stopped. He wanted more than anything to take her in his arms. But even after he'd become a killer, he dreaded more than anything doing something like that unwanted. And the way she was looking at him…

"Jyn," was at last all he insufficiently could say. No, no, do better… "I don't know… anything."

[nextchance]

Of course he didn't. More likely than not, he didn't even know how true that was. If he was fresh from Scarif, then it stood to reason that he didn't know anything that happened here before, or even that there was a before. The way he responded to Sprinkles confirmed it, the Shyriiwook greeting at once both endearing and devastating. It was him, but it wasn't him as he'd once been here.

Jyn didn't know what to do, how to feel. She wanted to scream, to hit him, to hide. To cry, either out of grief or relief or both. To pull him to her and hold on so tight he'd never be able to leave her again. He'd taken a part of her with him when he disappeared, leaving an empty, gaping hole in its place. Try as she might to ignore it, that wound was one that would never fully mend. Even now, she wasn't sure if it had reopened or taken the tiniest step toward healing with his presence. All she could be sure of was that, just as he had back on Yavin IV, when he brought her an army and gave her a home, he'd just thrown her entire world off-kilter again.

Just the sound of her name on his lips again, once so familiar, left her feeling broken open. As if to compensate, she remained still, summoning up whatever stoicism she could. She sort of doubted it would work. He'd been able to see through her practically from the moment they met.

"You should— You should come inside," she said, her intended run entirely forgotten now. "Come sit. Or something." Stars, but this distance felt as wrong as it felt impossible to breach. "Are you hurt?"

[fulcrum3]

"No, but I should be… I was…" His brow furrowed, trying to figure things out… or trying to try to figure things out. In truth, all his senses and thoughts were on her. Only her.

Because she'd asked him. He stepped up the ramp, closing most of the space between them. He stopped lower than her, with their eyes almost on a level; that stardusted green. It felt like there were more pertinent questions he should be asking—if only he knew them!—even than, "Are we dead?"

[nextchance]

He should have been. He was. Even now, all this time later, Jyn still had dreams sometimes about the data tower, the way his body fell, the sickening thud against the durasteel beam, landing at odd angles below. That he was standing here seemed like proof that he wasn't injured now, but she still felt an awful urge to find out for sure, guarantee that there were no lingering wounds. Or maybe it was just that she wanted to touch him, old instincts at war with the guard she felt she had to maintain and that he'd always had a way of cutting through.

"No," she said, shaking her head slightly. "Not here." She didn't dare look away from him, like he might vanish if she did. "Not anymore."

How to tell him that it had been years since Scarif, and since she'd last seen him? The idea was overwhelming. All of this was.

"Has anyone told you yet, about this place?"

[fulcrum3]

He breathed.

"Some. Enough to find you. But—" say it aloud "I needed to hear it from you."

He took a step closer. He held out his hand, close to her arm, but stopped before actually touching her. His eyes searched hers, worried as they'd been on the data tower.

It was possibly the stupidest thing in the Galaxy to say… and he said it anyway. "Are you okay?"

[nextchance]

Once, there would have been no hesitation in that touch; it wouldn't have stopped short of her, the nearby warmth of his hand counterintuitively sending a chill through her. Once, she'd have flung herself at him the second she first caught sight of him there in front of her. Part of her still wanted to. Another part wanted to turn away and close the ramp and pretend this never happened. She'd been wrong before, letting herself care so much, falling for him the way she had. Despite her best efforts, she always had been too soft-hearted. She didn't want to put herself through that again. Becoming attached like that only led to her getting hurt, a lesson she'd learned too many times throughout her life.

In his absence, she'd hated him, then hated herself for hating him. Anger was just always easier, safer, a dam holding back a flood of messier, more dangerous feelings. That dam was fragile, though, and the look in his eyes seared past it, at least for the moment.

She stepped forward, wrapped her arms around him, buried her face in the curve of his neck, a mirror of how she'd embraced him on the beach, at the end. He still smelled like salt and sand and smoke, but underneath that, like himself, too. With everything she had in her, she willed herself not to cry.

"Yeah," she lied, muffled against his shoulder. "I'm okay."

[fulcrum3]

He instantly wrapped his arms around her, back. He wouldn't kiss her, but pressed his whole face in her hair, her neck, as his hands smoothed her shirt and he hung on and held her up close with his whole body, everything he had. His knees almost buckled as they had on the beach, but this time he wasn't doomed by injury; he was able to stay standing.

I wish you'll live

Likewise into her hair, he said softly, "I take it you've been here… longer?"

[nextchance]

That was the understatement of the kriffing century, though he'd have had no way of knowing that. Still, Jyn couldn't hold back the breath she let out, somewhere between a laugh and a sob, hoping he wouldn't hear the latter in it, knowing he probably would. She had a feeling she would regret all of this later, but that was later's problem. The man in front of her now didn't know all that she knew, hadn't lived it. Even through her impossible tangle of emotions, she had just enough sense to know that it wasn't fair to hold it against him in his moment.

But, stars, the familiar warmth of his embrace was enough to break her heart all over again. She'd missed him. No matter how much she tried to deny that to herself, it was undoubtedly true.

"Long time," she said by way of explanation. "S'just been me."

[fulcrum3]

He said, "I'm sorry." He knew she could take care of herself, and people didn't necessarily need company to be all right, but…

…but instinctively, or from all the microsignals, or from their recognition of each other going back to first meeting, he leaned back, sought her eyes, and said again, "I'm so sorry…"

[nextchance]

Jyn wanted to tell him not to be. It wasn't his fault, and even if it had been, it was hardly the first time she'd been left on her own. Somehow, she'd managed all right, even on the days when it felt like she was a little girl in a hole underground again, not a soul left for her in the galaxy. She had people. She just hadn't had him. Even without having kept track of the time specifically, she knew that she'd been without him for far longer than she'd even known him.

It shouldn't have mattered so much. He shouldn't have mattered so much. Practically from the moment they first met, though, he did.

"Not your fault," she said, trying not to look away when his eyes met hers, which she knew had to be red-rimmed and glassy. Deciding that felt insufficient, she offered a truth. "I didn't think I'd ever see you again."

[fulcrum3]

She must have meant: from Scarif. He sensed and read on her maybe an even heavier weight. But he couldn't begin to conceive what that could mean; so, yes, from Scarif. He'd barely been able to withstand an hour of that feeling, so, if he dared think she felt the way he did, he couldn't imagine…

A dying moment is not a contract —and yet…

"I'm here now," he managed. "…I couldn't imagine if you weren't…"

Damn. Good thing he wasn't undercover. He couldn't have hidden from her his pulse pounding in his throat, his wrists; his chest still so close to hers, and on either side, his shoulders caving inward around her, to relieve the ache in his chest of not fully understanding the feelings from her, dying to help with them, and wanting more than anything to just lie down holding her.

He didn't ask for that. And he didn't touch her face. But he couldn't not stare into her eyes with all the depth of his own—infinities finding each other, as they had in that elevator. "Can we sit after all?"

[nextchance]

The question was good. It was something actionable, something she could do, and which necessitated a bit of distance. Standing this close, with him looking at her like that, was dangerous, too liable to lead her to do something she shouldn't. All of this was complicated enough, in ways she wouldn't have the first idea how to begin to explain, without her muddying the waters further. She could barely sort out what was in her own head, never mind how to articulate any of it. Words had never been her strong suit, and this was unprecedented and unpredictable.

"Of course," Jyn said, soft. Even that wasn't as simple as it sounded, but she was the one who'd suggested it, invited him in, regardless of whether or not it was wise to do so. She knew what he'd just been through, after all. She'd been through it, too. Maybe she had a hell of a lot more distance from it now than he did, but she had carried Scarif with her every day since. Some part of her, she felt, might always be there.

She cleared her throat, made herself take a step back, although her fingers, unbidden, found his as she did and curled around them, seeking the reassurance that he was still there and this was real. "Come on. Come in."

[fulcrum3]

Her fingers curling with his didn't feel titillating or surprising. It was a relief; wholly natural. If they had died, they'd atomized into one another and he could never be apart from her agai—

No. No. He didn't have any right to expect—to need that. Have no presumptions and no expectations. Take every moment only in of itself. …That being the case, he was beyond grateful for her hand. It occurred to him that just because she had been here longer didn't make her less vulnerable than him right now, so for the merest moment, he squeezed lightly back.

As they entered the ship, he nearly asked what this ship was doing here… but he had so many questions jostling in his mind… "I don't even know what to ask. There's so much."

Was that less intrusive or unfair, to insist she guide him? He tried to order his mind. "What's the last thing you remember? Before here?"

[nextchance]

Jyn led him through the ship's corridors entirely on instinct, sparing a moment to be quietly grateful that it had become so familiar to her now. Not home — she wouldn't go that far, wouldn't allow herself that again — but some approximation of it. The Falcon had been in Darrow even longer than she had, and passed through she wasn't even sure how many hands before it wound up in hers. She had grown fond of it, though, enough to call it her own.

Now, when she could barely think straight, it helped to know it so well, to have one task she could relegate to autopilot while she continued to wonder what the hell she was doing and what the hell she should do.

"The end," she answered. What she meant was, you. With the world ending and their deaths on the horizon, racing toward them, everything had come down to him. There'd been peace in that, a feeling that couldn't have been farther from her in that moment. "Same as you, right?"

[fulcrum3]

Your father would have been proud of you, Jyn
Not that he could or had any right to speak for her father
Not that he wanted to seem to be trying to make up for the past
He just needed something… loving to say to her

And her answer
Her support
Her embrace

"Yes," he said, face pale, voice changed. "Same."

He hadn't considered himself surviving. Everything had been about Jyn.

When he pleaded her back to him from the Man in White
Leave it - that's it - let's go
knowing what he was asking her to simply give up
but for whatever time he had left, he was done wasting a single moment more of them on war
which rendered him null

He didn't matter. He shouldn't. Facing a far better death than he could ever have achieved on his own.

But who cares. He only mattered insofar as he affected Jyn.

He looked at her sitting there, the miracle he'd wished for, and couldn't contain the feeling silently. He took her hands again and said with his whole being: "I'm so glad you're alive."

[nextchance]

Jyn clasped his hands back without thinking, without meaning to, her body yet again some of the emotion she was trying so desperately to keep at bay. With him, she'd never really been able to. And maybe, in that moment, that was all that mattered. They were here, they were alive, finding themselves with a second chance that the galaxy never gave them. For so long, that had felt like a cruelty. Left alone here, she had been unable to help thinking that maybe she was meant to have died there on the beach with him, and that should have been the end of her. Her survival always having been such a hard-won thing, she never went so far as to wish it had stayed that way, but the notion had been there all the same. It was a lonely thing, being the only survivor of a mission like that, knowing the others were dead in part because they'd followed her. Knowing that all that was waiting for him was, well, nothing.

There, perhaps, was the root of her anger. The alternative was to grieve the man she loved as being dead, and she didn't want to know how much harder the last years would have been in that case. Again, it was a matter of survival, as it had been with all the others who'd left her over the years. Sadness left her weak. Anger could be a weapon.

But he was here now, alive, and that was more important than her own mess of feelings. He deserved that. She told him once that he was the best man she'd ever known, and that still held true.

"Me too," she breathed, then swallowed hard around the lump forming in her throat. "That you are."

[fulcrum3]

For a while, he just sat there, drinking her in. He could have done that for hours.

He sensed her grief. He wondered if he should ask about it, or let her tell him in her own time. He wondered what it had been like for her to be here so long alone.

"Anything you can say aloud, I want to hear," he said at last. "But you also don't have to."

[nextchance]

What could she say? Jyn had no idea. It was impossible to find any kind of order in the chaos of her thoughts, never mind try to convey them to someone else. He'd always understood her, she thought, some innate recognition between them that always seemed to leave her feeling both too exposed and unusually safe, but this was different. How could she tell him about a life she'd lived that, from where he was sitting now, he hadn't? Was it even fair to?

That, she pushed aside. None of this was anything even close to fair in any possible way. Fairness had never played much of a role in her life anyway. It seemed silly to fall back on that or to rail against it now.

And of course he offered her an out. Somehow that seemed just like him, telling her that she didn't have to say anything. It only made her want that much more to do so.

"I don't know where to start," she admitted, which was true. "You're sure you aren't hurt?"

[fulcrum3]

"I'm not hurt," he assured.

He felt no bodily needs, being suffused with her; but he knew intellectually that he hadn't hydrated since they passed something ritualistically around in the shuttle, and that was dangerously insufficient. "I should probably drink something."

The corners of his eyes gently crinkled in the kind of smile he didn't do for a purpose; only for her. "And maybe shower. I feel like I've been spit out by a mynock." He looked down with open disgust at the Imperial trousers. "Can one get clothes, here?"

[nextchance]

Silently, Jyn cursed herself for not thinking of any of that sooner. It was hard to think, though, when there was him, the rest of the world having fallen away just like it had as they clung to each other on that beach. But there were practical things to take care of, far more important than her own messy, indefinable feelings, and that was a relief, too. Just like bringing him inside to sit down, it was something she could do. Besides, if he was anything like her, and she knew he was, then he probably couldn't wait to no longer be dressed like an Imperial.

"I can help with the first two," she said, smiling a little in return before she realized she was doing so. "There's a shower on board, down that way. And I have water. Some food, if you think you could eat. Clothes..." She held back the instinct to make a joke about how hers probably wouldn't fit him. That was too close to too many other truths. "I don't know, I might be able to find something lying around. Ship's passed through a lot of hands. I know there's a whole closet full of capes, but those don't really seem like your style."

[fulcrum3]

He sputtered. "Capes? Like that Baron from Socorro? No thanks."

Looking at her, his face broke into a full smile. "I probably shouldn't wait any longer to hydrate. Then maybe a shower, then maybe I'll have remembered how to have an appetite."

He stood and looked down at himself again: starting with the tunic he'd been living in for five days, now scorched where Krennic shot him and bloodied where he'd hit the durasteel, not to mention stained with sweat and full of sand. "If there's a laundry function on board, I can clean these and make do. If you find anything else," he indicated the hateful trousers, "maybe we can have a bonfire."

[nextchance]

It was too kriffing cute, the way he sputtered and smiled. Jyn turned her face toward her shoulder as if to hide a smile of her own, but mostly failed. The last minutes may have been a confusing, world-altering mess, but the one thing she could say for certain — that she probably should have said out loud, but didn't trust herself not to fall apart if she did so — was that she'd missed him. Despite her best efforts not to, and then to convince herself that she didn't, she'd missed him so, so much, down to the littlest details.

"You think I know any barons?" she asked, teasingly incredulous. Difficult as everything else might have been, finding that familiar banter was too easy.

Moving away from him was not easy, but she made herself do so, standing so she could get him some water. A little distance would be good, anyway, help her get her head on straight, at least enough to deal with whatever happened next. "Right. Water, shower, food," she said. The first was easy; the bar in the common area wasn't really something she used as such, but it did mean there was water without her having to leave for the kitchen. Filling a glass, she added, "There is laundry, but I like the bonfire idea. I think those've earned it."

[fulcrum3]

He followed her to the bar. Ridiculous, the distance was negligible and she'd be bringing the glass right back… but it was automatic—no, autonomic. Where you go, I go.

Trying to cover, he closed his fingers, alternating with hers, on the glass, and took a step back. "Good." There was supposed to be more banter there, but all he had was another— "Good."

Stepping further back, he took a sip. Which turned into an overlong swig. He forced himself to slow down lest he vomit it back up. So he could feel things like thirst, and now that he allowed it, he was parched. How had he even been speaking?

Because he needed to be with her and speaking was a kind of connection

A little out of breath, he finished drinking and handed her back the glass. "Check, one."

[nextchance]

She watched him, because what else could she do? He was here, and so close, and still none of this felt quite real, like any moment now, she would wake up alone in bed. While he did feature prominently in her dreams, though, even all this time later, they were never like this. The kinder ones were of Scarif, dreams after which she usually felt ill upon waking but changed nothing. The truly torturous ones were the dreams where they were together and happy. Those were worse than any nightmare. She knew all of the awful things she'd experienced in her life; that was fine, a simple fact of being, something she'd long since come to terms with. Being reminded of the happiness she'd once had and lost was agonizing.

Besides, no matter how well she knew him, she didn't think memory or imagination or any of that could really do him justice. However difficult to believe, it had to be real, which meant she had to figure out what the hell to do about it.

"You sure that's enough?" she asked, brow raising with some combination of concern and amusement at the way he'd all but chugged the water down. "Shower's that way. I'll see if I can find something for you that's not a cape."

[fulcrum3]

"Yes, I think so." More would probably come back up. Hell, better make sure what he already had wouldn't do so.

Very, very slowly, alert for the merest sign from her that he shouldn't, he reached out and, this time, so gently touched her arm. What came to mind was You'll be here when I get out? but what he said, from some deep instinct that the shoe was on the other foot, was, "See you when I get out."