nextchance | like a row of captured ghosts over old, dead grass

Entry tags:

cassian andor

like a row of captured ghosts over old, dead grass

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?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only | Expand All

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."

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.

"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.

“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…”

"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.

Again, he could have just stood there staring at her face.

When he first stood on the tarmac beside Draven watching Kay and Melshi bring her back from Wobani, he'd nearly turned to his S.O. and said, No, not her. Assign me somewhere else. He'd sensed, one way or another, partnering with Jyn would be the end of his world.

He hadn't predicted how glad he would be that it was. Not only for the sake of the Rebellion, of the Galaxy, which he was, but for himself. He wouldn't go back to the version of himself he'd been before her, if he could.

Don't put any expectations, any needs…

He still wouldn't kiss her, but he reached out—again, alert for any sign he should stop—and, feather-soft, with fingertips, touched her ~~face~~ shoulder. "Thank you. Okay."

Withdrawing his hand, he said lamely, "Let me know if I can help."

If only it were that simple. If only anything were. Jyn knew he probably meant in the short term — getting food together, taking care of these small, basic necessities, although food and shower and shelter were things she would never be inclined to take for granted with how frequently she'd gone without them — because he didn't, couldn't know how much bigger this was. There was no help for that, which wasn't at all his fault. It just was.

At least it meant he was here, and alive. His presence was unquestionably a good thing, far better than the alternative. Selfish as Jyn might have known herself to be, she wasn't so hung up in her confusion as to have any doubts about that. If she hadn't been stupid enough to let herself fall for him — as if she'd had any choice in the matter — then that could have been the beginning and the end of it.

Instead, he touched her shoulder, and she tried to hide the way her breath caught. "Of course," she promised. "I will." She made herself turn and start walking again, though not without glancing over at him, a ghost of a smile in the curve of her mouth. "But I think I can handle getting some food together."

He smiled back in the corner of his mouth and in his eyes; all the more genuine for being small.

He'd clocked the catch of her breath. He tried to simply have the information without judgment or analysis—without… hope. It was so ingrained, he couldn't help reading people, but he wasn't going to operate that way with Jyn. He wasn't going to 'operate' any way. He would be present and pay attention, but not to any end, just to be available.

As she turned to the kitchen, he turned to the lav to make something better of his clothes and towels than a messy heap. He couldn't stop himself turning back. "Hey.

"I don't know what happens next. But wherever I go from here… however's okay… I hope you… have a say."

Jyn stopped when he called back out to her, turning partway down the corridor. Whatever she might have expected to hear, it wasn't that. Of course, that made sense, when all of this was already beyond unexpected. Being around Cassian had always been easy — too easy, probably — but that became now another complication, another liability. She didn't know how to hold back around him, and it had never been more important for her to do so.

Grateful for the safety in the vagueness of that statement, she nodded, the motion slight but earnest. She had no idea what would happen next either. What she did know was that no matter how much easier for her it might have been if she could, she would never be able to turn him away entirely. He was too much a part of her.

"Well, someone's got to show you the ropes around here, right?" she pointed out, masking the ache in her heart with levity. It was impossible not to think that she'd never had a say, that she would never have lost him if she had, but she knew too well that wasn't what he meant. "And last time I checked, I wasn't going anywhere."

I'm not used to people sticking around…

She was a brilliant masker. Still, the depth of whatever-it-was under the levity, once noticed, wasn't missed.

Okay. He wouldn't push. Not uninvited.

Right now, there was another reaction to go with, in him, and that was relief. Not surprise, but still: down his core, to his toes, abject relief. His smile filled in to both sides of his face, the fathoms of his eyes. In step with her, he let the depth tend to itself and only responded lightly, touching his temple with two fingers and saluting.

Turning, he went back into the lav and collected up the towels for the laundry and his clothes for the fire.

Maybe they'd yet get to
Welcome home.

Edited 2025-05-06 18:16 (UTC)

Jyn didn't believe for a moment that he wouldn't see through her. That had never really been an option with him, and she had no reason to suspect that now would be any different. Mostly, she just needed to buy herself some time. A chance to begin to make heads or tails of the dizzying surge of emotion he'd unknowingly brought with him, and to figure out what to say and how to say it. Simply not telling him wasn't an option, no matter how tempting it might have seemed. She couldn't keep a secret that big from him. But all of this was enough to take in without her adding all of that to it, and she knew too well what he'd just been through.

So, time. She gave him a nod before continuing back in the direction of the kitchen. As with the rest of her belongings, she kept the kitchen sparsely stocked, typically buying food only when and in whatever quantities she needed it. That suited her fine, given that she wasn't much of a cook. But there were a few things on hand, and after a moment of checking the cabinets, and keeping in mind what he'd said about plainer being better, she grabbed a plastic-wrapped packet of noodles, then a small pot in which she set water boiling. It wasn't much, but it was quick and easy, filling without being too rich, and that seemed like the best bet right now. Upon second thought, she also took an egg out of the refrigerator, figuring that might at least make it a little less ridiculous than just instant noodles.

Something fuzzy brushed against her ankles and she smiled. "There you are," she said, bending down to hoist the orange and white cat into her arms. "Yeah, you know there's food happening, don't you?"

Edited 2025-05-06 19:19 (UTC)

Cassian reemerged into the kitchen, setting the now-neat pile of un-neat clothing onto a reasonable surface, and the stolen Imperial boots onto the floor nearby. Those, he wouldn't burn. Never waste a good pair of boots. He'd look for an opportunity to give them away to someone the Empire would hate.

The sight of the second new little creature of the day made him stay bent over.

On Lothal during the Blockade, Cassian had had to monitor Imperial probe droids. To avoid getting shot, he'd had to lay in the tall grass so still, for so long, that wild loth-cats had come up to him, climbed on top of him, and fallen asleep.

This creature wasn't a loth-cat, but it might be in the tooka family. It more resembled—

"Is that a pittin?" He knelt, not quite courting it, just trying to get on its level.

[ooc: I'm trying to avoid headcanon, but sometimes a loth-cat slips in.
Pittins are from Barbara Hambly's Children of the Jedi—more on why Cassian knows about them, potentially, in subsequent tags.]

Where Sprinkles had been perhaps too enthusiastic in greeting this new arrival, Beany was far more reserved in reacting, sniffing at Cassian, then wandering toward the boots he'd set down to examine those as well. Jyn didn't need to look down from where she'd turned her attention to the water on the stove to guess at what the cat's face must have looked like, all big-eyed and vacant. Especially considering the rough state she'd first found him in, she was strangely appreciative of the fact that he had seemed to become increasingly stupid. It was a good thing he'd had a chance. Jyn felt a small amount of satisfaction that she had been able to help give him that.

"It's a cat," she answered. "They're sort of like tookas. One of the more common animals here. I found him half-dead outside some months back and he's been here ever since." That may have been understating how worried she'd been when she first spotted him and in the days that followed, when she couldn't be certain if he would make it or not, but that felt like something too soft, too vulnerable, to admit to now. There was enough of that already, Cassian's presence making the kitchen feel that much smaller and herself too unguarded.

Instead, she glanced back as she stirred the noodles into the boiling water, gesturing with her elbow toward the cat. "That's Beany. And the little dog you met outside earlier was Sprinkles. Had the name when I got her. She's... a lot." She was yours, she thought. It was no wonder that the little dog had taken off running at Cassian's approach, far less restrained in her reaction than Jyn.

Cats seemed to have enough in common with tookas behaviorally that Cassian didn't immediately blow it. He let Beany come to him and sniff his fingers, then leave of its own accord. That, as far as he could tell, was a positive beginning.

For a moment longer, Cassian stayed kneeling, elbow draped over knee, looking up at Jyn: stirring in a pot, having pets… looking very natural in a life he knew for a fact she'd never been able to have before.

He was struck with sudden disgust at himself that he'd read her file, even though it had been his job to do so; and deep, thundering regret at how much of her life he knew because of it. He wished he could have waited and only learned what she chose to share. Well, files could only tell someone so much. Indeed, he'd read the file because, pre-Wobani, he'd been tasked with building her profile. And though he was incredibly good at that job, in that moment he first saw her, he'd been struck by, somehow, how wrong he'd been.

"She's still outside," he realized, standing up. "Should I let her in?"

"She'll be all right for now," Jyn said, shrugging easily. It was true — especially if she was doing something outdoors, she was prone to leaving the ramp down so Sprinkles could go in and out as she pleased — but mostly, she just didn't want Cassian to leave. She may not have known what she did want, but she was sure of that. Like a heartbeat, steady and inexorable, it echoed in her head, pulsed through her veins: please stay please stay please stay. She didn't dare say it. For one, she couldn't ask for a promise that she couldn't make, and what was more, giving voice to it would mean allowing herself that attachment again, something that only ever got her hurt.

Really, she wasn't fooling herself. If there was any way to stop feeling the way she felt about him, she would have done so in her first weeks here, and she definitely would have done so when he disappeared all those years ago. It never was that easy to stop caring.

"I'll bring her in later. Besides, if she comes back in now, there's no way she'll let you eat in peace." Sprinkles was, quite frankly, an obnoxious little thing. Jyn couldn't have loved her more.

In peace

"In a secure location, nothing exploding, everybody stable, with someone I trust," he said. "I'm good."

Is this place at peace? But he couldn't muster interest in the City just yet. The welcome paperwork, moreso Jyn's manner, convinced him that there was nothing more urgent, yet, than this: Jyn herself.

And he had more or less just died in action. If he'd ever earned a night off. Hunger was finally hitting him, and exhaustion.

He hoped he wouldn't be too tired to go somewhere else, if he had to. Not too tired to make the trip, but too tired to… be without her. Right now he felt he'd rather sleep under the ship than go to the apartment waiting for him. To stay near her.

[ooc: "Stable" here meaning "in a physically stable condition" e.g. not bleeding]

Edited 2025-05-07 01:38 (UTC)

Jyn knew, of course, on some innate level, that he trusted her. Not just that he'd grown to do so in the time they once spent together here, but that it must have happened sooner than that. Before they left on the first part of their mission, she'd called him on it — that he would need to trust her if she was expected to trust him — and then by the time they wound up in the middle of a firefight not terribly long later, she thought something of the sort had to have grown between them, never mind by the end, on Scarif. All the same, hearing him say that now, so casually, someone I trust, made her chest ache and a warm feeling come over her.

"You might not be saying the same once you've tried my cooking," she joked, a lighter, easier joke than the other one she was tempted to make: that she wasn't sure if she could really be described as stable. She knew perfectly well what he meant, but she'd felt nothing but off-kilter since she first laid eyes on him. As for her culinary skills or lack thereof, it was something of an exaggeration. True, they were far from noteworthy, but not even she could ruin instant noodles.

To that end, she turned off the burner on the stove and poured everything — noodles, broth from a packet of powder, an egg stirred in — into a bowl. She didn't know why she was nervous, of all things. She'd put it down to her entire emotional state being a wreck. "All right, here. Sorry, I know it's not much."

"I shouldn't have too much at once," he said, taking the bowl from her gratefully. "It's perfect." (That wasn't what she meant but it was what he decided to say.)

He sat at the round table with a built-in dejarik board and took a sip, forcing himself to go slowly. It was hardly Clem's home cooking, or indeed his own, but right then it was the most delicious thing he'd ever tasted.

For a short while, he seemed entirely occupied with eating the egg and noodles and drinking the broth. But he didn't forget Jyn's presence: the safety of her there was what allowed him to get so absorbed.

At last, he set down the bowl, face flushed with the heat of the broth and with embarrassment. "Sorry. It just hit me all at once." He stood to bring the bowl to the kitchen to wash it himself. Standing made him suddenly lightheaded, as the other post-battle (, post-dying, post-flashhealing, post-worldshifting, post-Jynfinding) phase finally hit him: abject fatigue.

Edited 2025-05-07 03:00 (UTC)

Sitting at the empty, adjacent table, Jyn tried not to watch him too overtly. It was hard to do anything else, though — to study each line and angle and movement, all things that were once as familiar to her as air in her lungs. Now, instead, they made her feel like she couldn't breathe, though it wasn't a wholly unpleasant breathlessness. Whether it was because he sensed Jyn's turmoil or simply because he wanted attention (but probably the latter), Beany took pity on her and hopped up into her lap, giving her at least a partial distraction as she sat and watched and tried not to watch.

Soon enough, when Cassian stood, so did Jyn, picking up the cat and setting him down on the chair as she did so. "Don't be sorry," she said, shaking her head. "You sit. I've got it." She reached out to take the bowl from him, her voice gentle but insistent. He may have been healed now, a fact for which she was unspeakably grateful, but she still knew what the last few days, few hours had entailed for him. It was no wonder he was feeling some of that now.

Cassian nodded and ceded the bowl unresisting—something Maarva, Bix, any of Cassian's longer acquaintance wouldn't really need to tell Jyn was evidence of his condition.

By the time Jyn turned back to him, Cassian was sitting and leaning over both arms bent on the table, already half-asleep.

Although it took only a few moments for Jyn to return to the kitchen and deposit the bowl in the sink, she wasn't wholly surprised at the state she found Cassian in when she returned. Again, it was difficult not to just watch him, the sight an utterly endearing one. For all that she hated the idea of disturbing him now, though, she couldn't just leave him to sleep like that. She was sure he'd slept worse places and in less comfortable positions, but that didn't mean he should.

"Hey," she murmured, reaching out to rest her hand against his shoulder, a barely-there ghost of a touch. "Come on. You should come lie down, get some sleep."

For someone who'd never before heard of cats, the way he turned his head into her touch was very catlike.

"Is that okay?" he murmured, visibly gathering enough consciousness for comprehension. Or trying to. "I don't want to… I want to stay near you. But not if that's too…" He exhaled something that sounded like "Oh, Jyn."

For a moment, instinct or fondness or stupidity or some combination of the three won out. It stood to reason, really. She put so much effort into keeping herself so tightly contained, there were bound to be places that control couldn't quite reach. This was one of them: her fingers gently carding through his hair, all easy affection, accompanied by a soft, earnest smile.

"Of course it's okay," she said, as if it were the most logical thing in this or any world. Really, from a practical standpoint, it was all that made sense. She was hardly about to turn him loose to go wandering, half-asleep, through a city he barely knew the first thing about when she had more than enough space right here. More than that, she wanted him close, too. Well, first, she wanted to get the hell out of here, maybe go scream out in the woods somewhere, find a strong drink and one of the few remaining friends she had who'd known her while Cassian was still here, before. But then she wanted him close, needed to know that he was here and safe. "Stay. As long as you need."

Just stay. Please stay please stay please stay.

Her fingers in his hair… maybe he'd drifted off and was dreaming after all. Was the dampness on his face leftover from the shower or broth's steam?

"Thank you," he breathed. "I don't know what I would have… I'd sleep under the ship rather than leave." All shields down.

Almost all. I'd rather die. But if she was anything like him (she was) that was exactly the kind of leaving one most feared.

Plus, they'd done that enough for one day.

Backstep. Backstep. "Yeah," he managed an exhaled laugh. "I'm asleep." He pushed himself up from the table and gave her another crisp nod. "Where to?"

Edited 2025-05-07 04:56 (UTC)

"Not under the ship," Jyn responded wryly, any teasing bite in the words likely nullified by that stupid fond instinct winning out again. Before she could think twice or come to her kriffing senses about it, she slid her arm around him, not unlike the way she'd supported his weight as they staggered to the elevator and out onto the beach on Scarif. This time, mercifully, there were no broken bones or other internal injuries, and it probably wasn't strictly necessary, but he was tired and she was selfish, and more than likely the only person she would be hurting was herself, anyway.

"Sleeping quarters're this way."

like a row of captured ghosts over old, dead grass

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)