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]

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?"

[nextchance]

"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.

[fulcrum3]

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]

[nextchance]

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."

[fulcrum3]

"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.

[nextchance]

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.

[fulcrum3]

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.

[nextchance]

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."

[fulcrum3]

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."

[nextchance]

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.

[fulcrum3]

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?"

[nextchance]

"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."

[fulcrum3]

He went with her, able to hold his own weight this time, letting where they pressed together counterbalance seamlessly.

The freighter really was a piece of junk. Cassian wondered if it could fly. …Kark. If it could, could they leave this planet and get back to the war…? He couldn’t think of that now. For now, there was a bunk they were lowering him into.

As he started to lay back, Cassian took Jyn’s hand and said what he hadn’t before. “You’ll be here when I wake up?”

[nextchance]

The question ought to have been ridiculous. She was the one who lived here, after all. If there was one thing Jyn understood, though, it was not being able to assume or take for granted that someone else might be there. It made her heart ache all over again, but that was hardly new, something that applied to nearly everything that had happened in the time that had passed since she first saw him outside the ship.

So, rather than hiding behind some sharp-edged humor, she squeezed his hand and nodded. "I'll be here," she replied, her thumb brushing over his knuckles. "I promise. You rest now."

[fulcrum3]

He nodded heavily with relief. Then brought her hand to his face and pressed it to his forehead, his closed eyes. (Still not a kiss, not uninvited, but perhaps more.)

Gently, reluctantly, he released her hand, and folded his arm under his head. Here was a man accustomed to ship's bunks. Though often as not, when alone, he'd sleep in the pilot's seat in the cockpit, wrapped in an army blanket, with static blaring from the radio. Right now, his exhaustion was enough to overcome usual difficulties, and with Jyn's touch still resonant on his skin, he was out.