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

[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."

[nextchance]

Jyn let her eyes fall closed, drawing in a deep breath, as his hand brushed her arm. She didn't pull away; even if she'd wanted to, she wouldn't have been able to when it was taking all of her strength to suppress a shiver. And anyway, she didn't want to. She was far more inclined to grab his hand and ask him not to go, or to listen to the small voice in the back of her head that said he might not turn her away if she followed him. It would have been a catastrophically bad idea, though, and she knew it. All of this was complicated enough without her further muddying those waters.

"I'll be here," she said instead, as solemn as any vow. There were things she needed to do, and it was probably for the best that she had a moment to clear her head. She just had to keep herself busy to make sure she didn't fall apart in the meantime. "There— There should be towels. Just shout if you need anything."

[fulcrum3]

Impulse was… too many things at once. Kiss her cheek, embrace her, kneel before her and weep… All he did was lightly squeeze her arm, give a nod, and turn where she'd pointed. He resisted looking over his shoulder on his way because that was ludicrous.

That's just love

The freighter was… rustic (he really had to ask Jyn about it, at some point when the issue cracked the top ten) but the lav facilities were adequate and familiar. If he were thinking strategically, he'd wash his skivs in the sink before showering himself… but he couldn't stand being like this a moment longer. He tore off everything. Where normally he'd stack his things at regulation angles, instead he left it all in a heap; and stepped into the shower under a scouring hot stream.

Take it all away. The sand of Scarif. The blood of everyone he'd taken there. —No, no, that should stay with him forever. His own blood, then, at least. The sweat and stink of combat, not that that ever really left either. The damnable sand. He would have stayed there until his skin was raw, except he was so anxious to get back to Jyn.

He drip-dried while he did what he should have done first and washed his skivs in the sink. Of everything he was wearing, they stood the only chance of being salvageable. They were military-grade and made to be lived in, so they were antibacterial, stain resistant, fast-drying—just not that fast. (Why he should have done it first.) He wrung them out and left them hanging on the grab bar.

His old tunic might have been saved if not for the scorch marks. Thanks, Man in White. Come to think of it… Cassian wasn't the best fan of his own reflection, but now he wiped away some of the steam and leaned over the sink to examine his shoulder. —Yes, in the hollow of shoulder and breast, a new shining blaster scar. He'd healed, but not without a mark. Well, that was nothing to what the man had done to Jyn. Cassian was glad he'd given some back to the mudcrutch. He shuddered to imagine if he'd arrived at the top of the tower just seconds too late.

Jyn's alive. She's alive. Go to her.

Cassian wiped out his reflection again and turned to find the towels. He wrapped one around his waist and draped another around his shoulders. At the moment, it was as covered as he could get. He didn't think Jyn would be shocked by anything he had—anatomy being the least of it; they could compare scars some other time—but he didn't want to impose anything on her. Not ever.

The door opening released an embarrassing amount of steam. So much for military quickness. Cassian poked out his damp tousled head and called, "Jyn?"

[nextchance]

As soon as he was gone down the hall, the sound of the door confirming that she was alone for the moment, Jyn let out a heavy breath, feeling like she'd been holding it in since she first glimpsed him there. She stayed like that for what must have been an embarrassingly long time, hands curled into fists so tight that her blunt nails left impressions on her palms, shoulders shaking with the effort of keeping her composure. Now that she had a few moments of privacy, that shouldn't have been so much of a concern, but she knew that if she let herself fall apart now, she probably wouldn't stop. Whatever she had to tell him, and there was so much, too much, she didn't want that to be the how or the why of it. For his sake more so than anything else, she had to keep it together now.

When she did finally let herself move, she let instinct carry her. One step, then the next. Keep going, keep moving. For so long, that had been just about the only thing that kept her alive. Somehow, although this was hardly a matter of life and death, the stakes here felt just as high. All the while, she listened to the distant sound of the water running, relieved when she heard it shut off, as if that served as confirmation that he was still here.

In the meantime, she scrounged up clothes. The T-shirt was hers, but it was large and it was clean, and he didn't need to know that it was hers. Rifling through a few drawers in compartments she hadn't been using ultimately paid off, yielding trousers and a pair of boxers. They might have been Poe's, or Han's, or even Rey's boyfriend's, so many people who'd been here and gone, but these, too, were clean, and most importantly, they weren't part of an Imperial uniform.

At the sound of her name, of his voice, she jumped, then internally chided herself for it. "Be right there," she called, hurrying back to the shower, pile of clothes in hand. There was one small mercy: Whatever part of her might have been flustered by the knowledge that he'd just used her shower, that he was wearing only towels, it was overridden by the fact that she'd grown up in a cadre of soldiers without much in the way of privacy. Bodies were just bodies. His just happened to be a very familiar one.

"Bonfire's on," she said, careful to look only at his face as she held the clothes out to him. "I found some things you can wear. Not sure about the size, but hopefully they'll do for now."

[fulcrum3]

He wouldn't have minded knowing it was her shirt. He'd worn a lot of genders' clothes for work.

"Thank you." Their fingers brushed again as he took the clothes. His thumb momentarily smoothed over hers—something maybe he should resist, or maybe the reassurance was something they both needed.

He ducked back into the lav to change and reemerged shortly, barefoot but otherwise clothed, holding the Imp trousers by one finger.

"Everything fits," he said, making a show of twisting around to show her. Some things were just a little tight, but the effect… wasn't unpleasant. "I hope whoever left without their pants isn't missing them."

[nextchance]

Every touch felt like electricity, sparks under her skin, somehow even more so the lighter or more fleeting they were. Already the fact of his appearance made it difficult to think straight, but that only added to it. At the same time, Jyn found herself grateful. For all that she didn't know, a list too long to try to think through, what she did know was that she needed any sign that she could get that this was real.

She breathed as she waited, leaning back against the wall and trying to slow her racing heart. It didn't really work, but she gave him a small smile all the same when he emerged again. "Like I said, ship's passed through a lot of hands," she said. "A lot of things've been left behind in the process."

For that matter, there were probably more belongings of other people's than of her own throughout the ship. Despite how long she had been here, Jyn still wasn't prone to accumulating belongings, too used to having to throw everything in a bag and run at a moment's notice. The important thing now was that he wouldn't have to worry about cleaning and reusing the Imperial uniform trousers, which she nodded toward. "You can just leave those for now. Once the rain stops, we can burn them."

[fulcrum3]

Cassian understood that—how ‘what you owned’ was only ever what you could carry. He understood having lived it and understood that Jyn had lived it.

When have you known such understanding, recognition… Much as he’d… (cared about, feared for, wanted to protect) Bix, there hadn’t really been that. Not that one had anything to do with the other. Just being back in such cramped quarters, imagining…

“I’ll have to hear the story of this ship sometime.” As he gladly obeyed her suggestion and tossed the trousers over his shoulder back into the lav.

“I guess step three was food?” Though he didn’t want any. What he wanted, more like hunger than hunger, was to lie down on the ship’s cot beside her, take her in his arms, and sleep. Sleeping without her seemed unimaginable. How else could he possibly find any rest but holding her, and how else could they make sure they weren’t parted again?

It was too much to ask, so he stuck to the plan. Food.

[nextchance]

"Honestly, I don't know that much of it," Jyn told him. Aside from a few anecdotes, most of what she knew was that it had been in the care of several people here, until none of them were left but her. Then, somewhere down the line, she stopped just minding it and started living in it. The ship may have been grounded, and not one with which she'd had any experience prior to Darrow, but there was still something comfortably familiar about it, a feeling like she could have been anywhere, gone anywhere.

Whatever she could tell him of it, that ranked lowest of the things she should probably share. All of that was still too overwhelming to touch, though, and easy to delay when it hadn't sunk in that they might well have time now. If all she had was this, a few brief moments, she didn't want to spend them trying to make sense of the logistics of past lives and nonlinear time.

"And yes, food," she agreed. Whether or not he was hungry, she knew that it had to have been some time since he'd eaten. She would hazard a guess that he needed it more than he knew. Gesturing down the corridor, she started toward the kitchen, stealing a glance at him to make sure he was still there. "I don't have too much here, but I'll figure something out. Sorry, I'm not much of a cook."

The few things she could cook decently, she'd learned from him. As was becoming a pattern, Jyn couldn't discern whether that made her want to laugh or cry.

[fulcrum3]

“I think the plainer the better right now,” said Cassian, following her (of course). He stopped and flushed, shaking his head. “I’m sorry… I appear and just make demands of you…”

[nextchance]

"Stop," Jyn cut in, turning to face him. There was too much damned tenderness in her voice, a gentle sort of exasperation along with it. "You haven't demanded anything. I offered." All things considered, it was the least she could do, and she felt certain that it was no less than he'd have done for her if their positions were reversed. "So let me do this, all right? I insist."

At least it was one thing she could do. When so much felt like it was wildly out of control right now, including and especially her own heart and mind, there was some welcome reassurance in that.