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cassian andor

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Though Jyn doesn't think, at first, that she'll be able to sleep at all, after what was apparently days of it, it turns out that that part comes easily enough. It's what comes after that that doesn't. When she sleeps, she dreams, and when she dreams, she's back on Scarif, Cassian growing weaker beside her, the bodies on the ground now those of their comrades, their friends. In person, she never actually saw them die to get confirmation of it, but their silence over the comms had spoken for itself. She sees them now, Bodhi and Chirrut and Baze, bloody and burned and broken because they were stupid enough to follow her, because her father built a monstrosity for the Empire, because all those years ago, he tried to run and they found him again.

She's sitting in a bunker, waiting and waiting, but light shines through the hatch, splits it into pieces, and she knows it's the Death Star, that they've found her, too. This time, there's no peace in it, no warm body against hers, because Cassian is already dead. All of them, gone because of her. Everyone she's ever cared about and plenty more besides. Galen Erso built a planet killer, but what is she?

Her father's creation swallows her whole, and this time, every inch of her is on fire, burning her to ashes. My Stardust, she hears in her head. It's me, she'd told Cassian, the two things her father made inextricably intertwined, she and the Death Star both causing nothing but destruction.

She wakes with a start, remembering that she isn't alone before she's even processed where she is. In one swift, sudden movement, she tugs the pillow out from under her head and presses it to her face instead, using it to muffle the gasps of air she has to force into her lungs. The instinct is an old childhood one, going back to her days with Saw and not wanting to admit to the weakness of nightmares among his company of soldiers.

Only when her breathing levels out and her pulse slows does she move the pillow again, letting it rest against her abdomen as she lies flat on her back on the thin mattress, staring up at the ceiling and taking everything in all over again. The room is still dark, the hallway outside nearly silent. If she had to guess, she'd say it's still probably the middle of the night, no light coming in from behind the re-closed shades. It's a relief and it isn't. She doesn't want to face any doctors or nurses, but the dark and the quiet are about as oppressive as her own thoughts, and she can't stop trembling. There won't be any getting back to sleep tonight, not for her. Even if she thought she could manage it, she'd be too afraid of what she would see this time.

When she speaks, it's on a whim, the impulse acted on before she can try to talk herself out of it, which she too easily could. Even then, she's cautious, her voice not rising above a whisper so she doesn't wake him up, in case he is asleep. If he can get the rest she couldn't, he deserves it. "Cassian?" she asks, still staring straight up, not sparing so much as a glance in his direction. "Are you awake?"

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Cassian tries to recall if he's heard Jyn laugh before this and realizes he doesn't think he has. Certainly, he's never heard a startled, unfettered laugh like this one from her before. It's a good, clear sound and lacks the weight of her usual hurts and sarcasm. He thinks that if he closes his eyes, he might actually be able to forget the reality of who they are for just a second and just be.

Jyn's hand is light on his chest, folded between them, and his arm still lays across her bodies. They face each other and keep their backs to the world, to outsiders who cannot possibly comprehend what it means to be them. But she's here and she understands and that means enough for the time being.

In the background, he hears the patient go into cardiac arrest, presumably because the doctors' passions have gotten the best of them and they are consummating their love on top of the poor fellow's unconscious body. "Those don't seem like good doctors."

"Even worse than ours," Jyn says, only half a joke. She's been less than impressed so far, but she would have been by anyone, probably. The fact remains that they kept Cassian alive against what must have been all possible odds, and for that, she can spare them a little appreciation. Had she woken up and learned the worst, that he'd gotten here with her but he hadn't made it, she would never have kept still or quiet about it, would have tracked down anyone who'd had a hand in failing to save him and made them pay for it. A small, not fully awake part of her nearly says something to that effect, but she has enough sense not to. Already this seems so fragile, something warm and safe that could vanish with any slight wrong word or movement, just like everything else good she's ever had, and she doesn't want to be the one to drive that spike into it. Not yet, at least.

What she does say is nearly lost, anyway, with her head tucked against his chest, words spoken all of an inch from his skin, her hand not moving when he doesn't seem to mind its presence. There's a part of her that wants to do more, to find and run her fingers over every bruise and line of stitches that she knows he must wear, unseen in the dark, just to prove to herself that he's alive, that he survived, even if somewhere else, he didn't. The pain, the injuries, they make this real; the ache in her leg and shoulders keeps her centered somehow. She hadn't minded the thought of dying, but it's hard not to question everything about this, save for that one fact. "Very unprofessional. That poor third doctor."

"If it's to be believed," he agrees. Whatever system or planet they're on, it's clearly centuries behind even the most basic kit at Yavin. Cassian's a little in awe of how they've kept him so neatly alive despite it all but it's just another incredulous fact of his survival at all. At least they'd kept Jyn alive too. Seeing her in the hall had felt like a miracle. Cassian hugs her a little tighter without meaning to and hopes he hasn't jarred her i nthe process.

"But I'm alive," he says to her half-mumbled threat. Or...what he thinks is a half-mumbled threat to the hospital staff. Better not to think on it too much.

When he looks back to the screen, it's cut to another pair of doctors in a board room, coping with...some issue or another. The man is crying into his arms and the woman, he thinks, is supposed to look sympathetic but she mostly looks bewildered. "I hate to tell you this," he says, deliberately stepping away from her words, "but I don't think we found the quality programming."

But he's alive. Everything, it seems, comes down to that, for reasons Jyn can't and doesn't want to put a name to, due in part to all of the bodies left in their wake, the members of their team who weren't half as lucky as they were and whom they wouldn't be here without, and in part — maybe that much more so — because behind her eyelids, he never, ever is. He hits the railings and doesn't get back up, or falls against her before they can make it out to the shore together, a million what ifs playing out in her imagination, distorted into something even more horrific than what they actually endured. She's awake now, not dreaming anymore, but she still can hardly stand to close her eyes for what she might see behind them.

So she keeps them open, studies the line of his jaw and his throat instead, the thin sliver of a view that the position she's tucked herself into allows, and nods, forehead brushing his chin. She doesn't need to look at the screen to know what's happening, or that he's right about it. The sound alone is practically atrocious, and perfect for it.

She would watch nothing else for the rest of her life, no matter how long or short her borrowed time might prove to be, if it meant him staying alive. She'd die herself, probably, before saying so, when there's no rational explanation for such a thought.

"Don't tell me you're surprised," she replies, wry. "You're the one who said there'd be nothing good." She almost leaves it at that, almost lets herself be lulled into a sort of half-sleep by the sound of the ridiculous dramatics in the background, but she can still feel his heart beating under her hand, still picture him dead in her dream and nearly dead on Scarif, and the rest spills out of her before she can try to stop it. "I'm glad, you know," she says, shifting a little after letting him hold her closer, because apparent as it might have been, she's not sure that she ever actually put it into words earlier. "That you're alright."

The thought occurs to him then that he could kiss her. They're curled up together, her head resting against his chest and shoulder. It's a pose of shared tenderness, love maybe, or it would be on two people not them. It's hard not to think about the closeness, the possibility of it. All it would take is for her to tilt up her head or him to tip down his chin. That's all. So simple but not for them.

The music turns dramatic, someone on the screen gasps, and there's the sound of fighting and a table breaking and Cassian is grateful for the sudden change in mood, the reminder of where they are. He chuckles at the absurdity and turns his head just a little, so he can watch the show over the crown of Jyn's head.

"So I did," he says, realizing he's making small talk for the sake of it rather than as some intelligence officer's ploy, trying to make the mark comfortable. The banality is a strange and nearly foreign thing and he's almost so lost in it that he misses what Jyn says. Heart tightening, he nods against her hair.

"When I saw you in the hallway, I thought I must be dreaming."

Jyn tips her head up a little at that, surprised, though she doesn't know why. Seeing him had too clearly prompted a reaction in her that she couldn't have hidden then or attempted to deny now if she wanted to. She might be a good liar, has had to learn to be, but being this close now, it would be useless to try. She'd give herself away before she even started to speak. The fact that she's here at all probably does, anyway, when it isn't as if she just climbed into his bed because she had nowhere better to be. Just as there was earlier, there's a strange, welcome comfort in being close to him, and in the dark, with the faint noise of whatever show they've stumbled upon in the background, she can almost, almost shut out everything else, the world narrowed down to the two of them.

They're the only survivors, now, and they weren't meant to be. At least, it seems like it would be foolishly naïve to let herself believe otherwise, all the evidence pointing to the contrary, and she's already being foolish enough for one night just in being here beside him.

"So did I," she says, what doesn't seem like too much to admit given what he's just said. It makes sense, anyway. All of this is so surreal, so unpredictable, and she hates that about it, not being able to get a read on the situation at all, but at least for the first time in a long time, she isn't alone. "I wasn't sure — I knew I had to try to find you, but I didn't know if you were even here, or..." She still can't say dead, but it seems to hang heavy in the air anyway, the closest she's come to the subject in words yet. Instead, she shrugs, not much of a movement with the way she's curled against him, but clear enough even so. "And then you were right there." It had seemed almost too good to be true. It still does.

Edited 2017-02-27 07:18 (UTC)

"I didn't want to be alone, not in this place," he says, giving her the simplest and most obvious truths because he's certain they share them, as well as the reasons he can't give a voice to. There have been missions where Cassian is the sole survivor–Kafrene comes to mind–and he knows firsthand the way it can were a person down. And those are the more ordinary missions. To be the only one left in a mission like theirs? Survival would be a curse instead of a gift.

But not being alone, having Jyn here who's seen him through to the end? That helps.

"I don't want to think of what you'd do to this place if you were the only one here." He's seen Jyn desperate, that burning need in her eyes. It's as compelling as it is terrifying and he has little pity for the poor doctors.

Flexing a hand eases a cramp out of his fingers and Cassian shifts his arm. This time it curls around her, hand at the base of her neck and fingers lightly in her hair. It hasn't been washed since Yavin and they could both use a chance to freshen up but he doesn't care. It just makes Jyn more real and believable.

It's nice, the way he touches her, and though it occurs to Jyn briefly that she probably ought to apologize for the fact that she can't remember the last time she washed her hair or how long it's been, she lets it go. She didn't make him put his hand there, and she's too unaccustomed to this — to simple, easy affection, even if she can't understand his directing it at her now — to want to give him a reason to change his mind. Instead, she closes her eyes for a moment, breathing in deep, trying to commit this to memory. She can still feel his arms around her on the beach on Scarif, still picture with sickening clarity the way his body looked as it fell down the vault. This, she wants to remember just as vividly, something to remember after it's gone, to counter what her imagination can conjure up.

"I hadn't really thought that far yet," she says, though there's a certainty in her voice that suggests that she would have come up with something suitable. If nothing else, she'd have fought every possible doctor and nurse and whoever else to get herself out of here, though after that, it's a blank. "I didn't want to be, either."

For years now, she's been alone — or she was, before Cassian told her welcome home and gave her one for the first time since she was with Saw, a gravitational pull in the words that she's not sure even she could have fought against — but this is different. Being the only one to survive the mission and the reason all of them were there in the first place is more than she can bear the thought of shouldering. Dying, she was fine with, but living with all of that on her conscience?

Again, she thinks that she and the Death Star might just be more alike than not, both with kyber at their hearts, both destroying everything in their paths, designed for nothing more.

Head ducked again, unable to bring herself to meet his gaze for this, she falls silent for a few seconds, working up the will to ask what she already knows the answer to. She needs confirmation, though, and he's the only one who can give it. "It's just us, isn't it?" she asks, her voice a little softer. "None of the others... They couldn't have made it."

Edited 2017-02-27 08:06 (UTC)

Even if she had, Cassian's not much better. Clearly, he'd been scrubbed with antiseptic where his injuries were concerned, but no one had thought to douse him while he was out. His beard, likely, is verging on disastrous and he hopes he'll get a razor for the next time he has to look himself in a mirror. They're both tired and dirty and not at their best but at least they don't have to suffer the indignities alone.

He can hear the soft exhale of Jyn's breath and count the seconds until the next one, as if she's trying to take all of this in and Cassian breathes too. Inhaling so deeply expands his lungs and chest and pulls at some sore spots on his bodybut it's a dull, manageable ache. It reminds him that he's alive and Jyn can hear his heart under her ear just as he can hear her breath and feel her warmth. They're alive. They're hopelessly lost and uncertain but damn it they're alive and they're here together.

Welcome home, he'd told her. He wants to say it again but he's not sure right now what that means for either of them.

"No," he says, taking a long time to acknowledge the truth. There's no way any of the Rebel forces had the time to evacuate. The ships in orbit must have escaped but Baze? Chirrut? Bodhi? The two dozen or so brave men and women they'd gathered? K2SO? They're gone as surely as they should be. Their presence here is a miracle and Cassian knows better than to hope for more miracles.

"We're the only ones, I think."

She hadn't expected anything else, really, and Jyn nods again, a slight little movement, still not yet able to look up at him again. Of course they're the only ones. She didn't see it or hear it, but the silence over their comms spoke volumes, and she'd have been surprised if Cassian had suggested any alternatives. There was never going to be any rescue. Try as she might to remind herself that they all knew the risks when they came along, though, and that there was always every chance that they'd be walking into their own deaths, it's hard to reconcile. As a girl, she lost her parents, and a few years later, she lost Saw, and now, despite having only known Bodhi and Chirrut and Baze for a matter of days, if that, it's hard not to feel like she's lost another family all over again.

Stupid, she thinks. This is where caring about people gets her. This is always what happens, in one way or another. Anything important to her gets snatched away.

Cassian is still here, though, and she curls her fingers slightly in his hospital gown where her hand is splayed out in lieu of clutching at the necklace that hasn't yet been returned to her. "I thought so," she mumbles. "I saw them. Before I woke up just now, I mean." She doesn't add that she'd seen him, too, and doesn't stop to consider that a few minutes ago, she'd said only that she couldn't sleep, not that she had already tried it. There was probably never any way he was going to believe that, anyway.

"They don't go away," Cassian says, meaning the good and the bad. Saying May the Force be with us as a token sort of salute is the closest he's ever come to believing in unseen powers but after days of listening to Chirrut's quiet chanting and absolute surety of belief, it hurts a little less to tell himself that they really are one with something larger. It's better than just being dust without meaning on a broken world that none of them called home.

But he also means the nightmares, something he thinks Jyn already knows. The losses of that day are just new fodder for his brain to grind out behind his eyes when he tries to sleep, reminders of the ways he failed and the people he's hurt. He wishes he didn't care. He'd regret getting Jyn to care if not for the way it had lit her up for what seemed like the first in a long time.

It will be a long time before he sleeps easily. A long time that might turn into forever.

It's a relief when he doesn't say much or ask about it, though not entirely surprising that he seems to be speaking from experience of his own. Jyn still remembers, as much as she tries not to, what he'd looked like on the shuttle back from Eadu when she confronted him. She'd been too angry, at the time, to make much sense of it or even care, but that haunted, hollow look is burned into her memory now as much as anything else, and the words that later followed. After nearly all of his life in this fight, she can only imagine how many orders he didn't disobey, how many people like her father he followed through with pulling the trigger on.

Somewhere in the back of her head, she thinks that she should still hate him for what he almost did, but it's something else, something that she refuses to classify as need but is probably close to it, that sparks in her chest when she turns her face up towards him. If she doesn't have him, she has no one, and she's used to that, but he'd said it himself — she doesn't want to be alone here, not after what they've been through. Besides, she can't abandon the one person who's never abandoned her, even if it's bound to be only a matter of time before he leaves her like all the rest.

"I didn't think they would," she says ruefully, and she means both, too, the memories of the friends they've lost and the nightmares that leave her gasping for air upon waking. "That would be too easy, wouldn't it?"

There are things he could say that, in another situation, might be comforting. You'll get used to it. You'll figure out how to cope. In the lives they've led, it's just a fact and it's probably one that Jyn has already heard and told herself as many times as Cassian has. By now, it wouldn't be advice or help, just harsh reality, and despite living that for twenty years, Cassian finds he doesn't have the stomach to follow through on it now.

"I don't think we've ever had anything easy," he says, not thinking until he says it that maybe they aren't still a 'we,' no matter how much he'd meant it when he'd told her welcome home. There had never been time to discover what that could mean, how there were places and people in the Alliance that took care of their own. He doesn't think she'd have believed it.

Not for the first time, Jyn reminds herself that she barely knows anything about him. It's an uncomfortable disadvantage to be at, when there's no telling how much information the Alliance might have gotten on her before extracting her from Wobani. For all she can tell, he might well know more about her life than she does herself, while she's only got the barest few facts to work with in trying to piece a clear picture together of his. Still, in this regard, they speak for themselves. To have joined the fight as young as he did — barely younger than she was when Saw took her, and she wonders if he knows that, too, or if all they ever found out about was that connection itself — and to all but tell her that he lost everything too, no, of course he's never had anything easy, either.

She wants to ask, a question on the tip of her tongue that almost escapes her, but this isn't the time, and anyway, it isn't her business. He'll tell her whatever he wants to tell her. She isn't going to ruin a rare moment of peace by trying to push her way through one of his many walls.

"Good point," she agrees, voice soft and wry. It's the understatement of the millennium, more like, but she doesn't need to tell him that, least of all now. Besides, it seems inherently wrong, somehow, when this is easier than it has any right to be. Later, maybe, she'll stop and question it and curse herself for thinking it was a good idea to climb into his bed in the first place. Right now, lying here against him, his heart beating under her hand and his fingers in her hair, even still reeling from a nightmare, she thinks she feels better than she has in years. Safe. Home.

Later, too, she'll blame such a ridiculous thought on exhaustion.

"I'm not sure I'd even know what easy looked like, or what to do with it," she adds, thoughtful. "And Saw would say not to trust anything that seemed it."

Edited 2017-02-28 09:23 (UTC)

It had been a lie, if only because you had to have something to lose everything. Cassian's childhood had been nothing, just a bunch of separatist lies in a fabricated war that claimed his father's life before Cassian was old enough to remember much of him. His mother? He had no idea. As a child, all he'd known was fighting, it was just a matter of finding a real cause that had taken him a long time.

When she agrees, it allows him to continue thinking of them as a unit, a 'we.' It doesn't do much for their numbers but it's better than fighting through this alone.

Jyn looks small in his arms. Not delicate or fragile, just small enough to be precious, something he wants to protect. It's a big change from only a few days ago when it had seemed perfectly reasonable to leave her in a crumbling temple outside of Jedha City. Practical but not acceptable. It had been a new and difficult perspective for someone who didn't allow himself to form attachments because he might have to kill them later.

"Saw didn't trust much of anything," Cassian says, thinking of the bags over their heads. He isn't sure, at the end, if he'd entirely trusted Jyn.

Jyn wants to tell him that Saw hadn't always been the man they saw at the end on Jedha, with more pieces of him missing than not and falling apart under the weight of his own paranoia, but she bites the words back. Defending Saw Gerrera isn't a hobby of hers, least of all since he cut her loose, and while maybe their last meeting rekindled some of the affection she once felt for him — or, at least, put out some of the resentful fire — that doesn't mean she's about to take up his cause again, start speaking like she's one of his soldiers. Cassian isn't wrong, anyway. Even before Saw was the sad, worn-down man she'd seen and pitied what must have been only a matter of days ago, he was never exactly trusting.

He'd trusted her, though, she thinks. All these years later, and he said she'd been the best soldier he had, and she never knew him to be one to throw around hollow untruths. If anything, he was more of a father to her than Galen Erso ever was, but that, she keeps carefully guarded, close to her chest, not in the habit of giving away more of herself than is strictly necessary. Just being here in Cassian's arms breaks that rule; it's all the more reason why she needs to continue following it where she can.

She thinks again that Saw would be so, so disappointed in her for all of this, maybe even more so than he must have been when she collapsed watching the hologram, for all that she barely remembers doing so now.

"No, he didn't," she allows, smiling faintly at the thought as if recalling a rare fond memory, turning her head enough that the expression is hidden in Cassian's shoulder. "But especially not anything that seemed like it might be a good thing. There's always a catch." The same must be true of this, being here. She won't let herself believe otherwise. She can, though, let herself put off dealing with it for a little while longer.

It is, Cassian thinks, the consequence of a hard life. Kindness is rare and therefor untrustworthy. The woman in his arms is a perfect example of what that can do to a person, the toll it takes...

Cassian turns his head and looks at the television. Thinking about what kind of person Jyn might have become if life had been a little kinder to her is not a good path to take. It leaves Cassian envisioning a woman who is softer, happier and it's a disservice to the person next to him now. Whatever Jyn might have had–deserved even–she didn't get it, nor did Cassian. imagining otherwise was a cruel game.

"He trusted you more than the rest, at least," he says. It's a fact that they had abused to try and get a message that Cassian had almost been willing to disregard.

He isn't wrong. As a child, still reeling from the loss of her parents, she'd burned with pride over the fact of that, that no matter how hard he pushed her, he felt an affection for her that he didn't for the others, protected her even while throwing her out into the midst of danger. Of course, she hadn't known then how short-lived that would be. No matter how much he might have cared for her, it wasn't enough to stop him from cutting her loose without any sort of an explanation. And maybe, deep down, she knows that the reason he gave for it when she finally saw him again was a good one, but that doesn't change the past or how abandoned she's spent all these years feeling.

"He raised me," she says with a shrug, as if it's as simple as that, as if there weren't plenty of others her own age or close to it among his cadre. Still, it's a far cry from the last time she said those words, a defense to what might as well have been his accusation regarding her connection to Saw. So much has changed, she thinks, in such a short time. Certainly, when she first met Cassian, she could never have imagined that she would be climbing into his bed in the middle of the night the way she has, or that she would take such comfort from his presence.

With that in mind, she supposes she can add just a little more than she did then, surrounded by people she had no reason to trust. She has one — several, really — now with him. "Saw's the one who got us off Coruscant when I was young. Then he came for me when my parents... after I lost them." It's still just facts, none of the feelings, and it still doesn't touch on how much she'd come to see him as a father or the way he abandoned her, but it's more than she's told anyone in a long time, maybe ever. Lying in the dark like this, it's easier than it might otherwise be, especially when it's in lieu of speaking about more painful truths, like her dream or what happened to them. Being swallowed by the Death Star's blast again seems safer than talking about it. Besides, there's a strange satisfaction in the idea of telling Cassian something he doesn't already know, details about her that the Alliance might not have learned, a way of regaining the upper hand even this long after the fact.

Edited 2017-03-01 09:08 (UTC)

It's more than he can say. Cassian's not sure who raised him, if there's anyone at all. Ahsoka Tano? Davits Draven? In the end, Cassian thinks it's the Rebellion itself that raised him. There had been no individual parents and he had not been an individual to be raised. He was one of many hopeless children and teenagers who'd joined up, cultivated like unruly plants into something useful.

It's hard to say if that makes Jyn luckier than him. More loved, perhaps, if the way Galen had looked at her is anything to go by, but he doubts that Jyn Erso grew up any happier or safer than he had. War, no matter what side you're on, is a devourer of childhoods.

"I was born on Fest," he says, because it seems like he ought to tell her something of himself too. It's not a particularly remarkable planet by any stretch of the imagination, cold and mountainous and densely populated. Or it had been. Cassian avoided going back if he could, despite its proximity to Yavin. It never seemed worth it.

Jyn smiles, just a little, to hear that, tipping up her chin to look at him without lifting her head off his shoulder. It isn't much, but she thinks it might well be the first concrete fact she's learned about him aside from his rank and how old he was when he joined the fight, and that's worth something, making her feel a little less laid bare with all the Alliance managed to find out about her. Her aliases, her record, her father, her connection to Saw... Even without some of the finer points, it's more of herself than she's accustomed to giving away. Of course she'd been nothing but defensive and closed-off having that thrown at her.

This is different, though, truths offered willingly, slowly, in whatever fragments they can manage. She doesn't need to know more than she already does to get the sense that he keeps himself about as carefully guarded as she does. It makes it easier that way. At least he's probably not expecting her to just open up and tell him everything that wasn't in whatever dossier they compiled on her now that they have the time and the opportunity for it.

There are a few things, though, that she can still give without crossing the lines she's set for herself, like a trade of sorts, a fact for a fact. "I don't know where I was born," she admits. "I think we might've lived somewhere else for a while, but I don't remember it, and we never talked about it."

He feels her shift. Spy training tells him to read her body language and simple logic tells him that if Jyn is lying in his bed, arms around him, then a simple shift of her head is far less indicative than it might usually be. When he dials those instincts out, he hears her properly and frowns a little at that. Where a person is born isn't the end all be all of one's identity but in a galaxy as easily traversed as theirs, it still means something.

"Is Coruscant the first place you remember?" he asks. Is it the first place she thought of as home? He knows that at some point, they came to Lah'mu, where the Empire sent Krennic to extract Galen. The details on her file are fuzzier after that. Time spent with Saw Gerrera obviously, various aliases, and then Wobani prison camp. It's an unfair advantage for two people who live by secrecy and survival.

"Mmhmm," Jyn hums in response, nodding as best she can without pulling away. It should bother her more than it does, she thinks, that those first few years are a blank, something she didn't know her parents long enough for them to tell her about. Given everything, though, including the reasons why that's the case, it doesn't really faze her. Obviously it hasn't made any kind of difference. Besides, it would just give her more to remember of her parents, and more ways for her having lost them to hurt. That, she'll never admit to, something that would have to be torn out of her, but it's true all the same. "Not very well, but I do. Bits and pieces."

The droid who took care of her, her favorite holodrama, the toys she had to abandon, the conversations her parents would have with the man in white that she never understood but was often upset by, those are things seared into her memory, that she would see in her sleep even if she tried to shut them out. Before that, though, it's a blur, and then a blank.

Still looking up at him, she asks, "Do you remember Fest? Did you live there long?"

Edited 2017-03-02 06:46 (UTC)

"It was cold and there were mountains. Nothing worth remembering," he says and he knows that what he doesn't tell her is just as revealing as what he does. The memories of throwing trash and harassing clone troopers are clear in his might, hyper colorful with a child's memory. Some of the Anti-Jedi slogans still go off in his head at times, unwanted reminders of his indoctrination. It's not worth remembering.

"After I joined the Alliance, I lived on their bases." As Draven had dragged him up the ranks, Cassian had shifted through so many Rebel bases, moving with the Alliance and dispatched hither and yon to gather information. If he thinks about how young he was when he first killed someone he might need to grab that bedpan from the side table.

"I wandered a lot. Made it easy to adjust when I was sent somewhere new."

"I wandered, too," Jyn says, soft, without looking away from him. There's no way he doesn't know that already, but it seems right to say it, for him to hear it from her. For one, it's common ground, one small, shared thing they have in common. More than that, though, she doesn't want to be just the contents of her file to him, the daughter of an Imperial scientist, one of Saw's Partisans, a petty criminal. She doesn't want to be Liana Hallik or Kestrel Dawn or Tanith Pontha, or any of the charges on her record. She can't tell yet who that person is, what's left of her now that the Death Star has burned away so much else, but she thinks, after years of trying to stay invisible, drifting under every radar possible, that for once, she wants to be seen. "After Saw."

She doesn't lie and say she left him. She doesn't tell the truth of it, either, that Saw cast her aside without so much as a word. That much is still too raw, especially after having seen him again and leaving him to die as Jedha collapsed. For all her secrets, she's not sure there's any she keeps such tight hold of as the way she's been abandoned time and time again. She'd rather just be the one to leave before she can be left by someone else. Easy as it would be, though, to get up and go back over to her own bed and pretend like she never let herself be this openly vulnerable, she stays put.

"Guess there's nowhere to wander now."

"I guess not." And isn't that just as terrifying. What is he going to do without missions and enemies to flee? Who is he without those things. The Alliance had made Cassian into what he was and without them...that's twenty years of an identity to reconfigure. His vision goes black around the edges with the weight of it and Cassian looks down again, forcing himself to look Jyn in the eye, to focus on her.

"I wonder what it'll be like. Having a home in one place." He's trying to spin it into something positive but he thinks Jyn is smart enough to recognize what it is. There's no polishing up a terrible situation, not with even the warmest and brightest belief, and Cassian lacks that on a good day.

He may as well adopt an alias. Say he's someone else. It's better than figuring out who Cassian Andor is now.