nextchance | crash sites keep me up at night

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cassian andor

crash sites keep me up at night

In the dream — and it was a dream, although she didn't know that —

Jyn was a little girl in the cave on Lah'mu, not knowing when it was or how long she had been there, only that she was waiting, always waiting, always left alone. The lantern was burned out, the small space dark and damp, somehow seeming to get smaller still, a grave and a prison cell and the only home she had. When, at last, the door swung open overhead, it was an unfamiliar figure overhead (a new variation on an old theme), a young boy with dark hair and eyes, and Jyn didn't really know him except that she felt like she did anyway. Wordless, he held out a hand, and she began to climb.

She climbed, and climbed, and climbed, until her bad shoulder ached and her hands slipped on the ladder's rungs, but she had to keep going, even as she got nowhere, the cave getting deeper now, except it wasn't a cave at all. It was the data tower, getting taller, not deeper, and no longer a little girl, she kept climbing, desperate to reach the top where no one was waiting for her anymore, because when she looked down — so far down, it hadn't really been that far, had it? — Cassian's body lay bent and broken at the bottom, and she knew he wasn't getting back up. Stupid, to think she could reach him, that she might be able to hold onto him this time.

Finally she stepped up and out of the cave that was also the data tower and onto the beach, alone again, except for all of the dead. It had been a while since she'd dreamed of Scarif, and somehow there were more bodies now, her father's weapon overhead, her inescapable legacy. Past the shoreline was forest, and she knew it to be Yavin 4's even though she had barely seen it while she was there, and knew that it held the house she'd once lived in. The house burned — the fire she'd set — and the forest burned with it. The world glowed green with the Death Star's kyber-light, only it wasn't coming from the sky above but from her. Surrounded by bodies, she sat on the sand and waited for a death that didn't come, one which would have been, she supposed, too kind. Hard as she'd always fought to survive, a death that meant something in the arms of someone who cared about her was worlds better than surviving alone, left to bear the weight of so much destruction.

She looked up at the weapon that shared her name, a grim mirror in the sky, and with the fire and the dead around her, she knew that they were one and the same, and this was always going to be where she wound up.

— With a sharp gasp, Jyn lurched awake in the dark, her limbs clammy with sweat and her face damp with tears. Nightmares were nothing new to her, but it had been a long time since one had rattled her this badly. In her addled state, trying and mostly failing to get air into her lungs, she couldn't think of what might have caused it... Until the sound of breath that wasn't her own reminded her that she wasn't alone in the room. Through the haze of everything else, the events of the last day began coming back to her.

It should have been reassuring to remember that Cassian was here and alive and safe. At any other time, it would have been. Instead, in the moment, her panic intensified, her chest painfully tight. It was a good thing, not being alone anymore, except that she still felt like she was and knew she would be again. Close as he was, he felt impossibly far away, and yet he was too close, too. The last thing she wanted was to be seen like this, a panic-stricken, crying mess, unable to calm herself down after just a stupid dream. All she could do — one of the only coherent thoughts she could hold onto — was try to stay as quiet as possible, pressing a fistful of blanket against her mouth to try to stifle any gasps or sobs, and hope she hadn't made enough noise to wake him. He needed the rest. She needed to pull herself together, shoulders shaking in the dark as she tried to breathe.

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Even odds if Cassian was woken by her or if he woke himself. Either way, he heard her. I’m here.

Gasping, Cassian lay paralyzed, mind racing, body not yet fully awake. It wasn’t something that usually happened to him: he couldn’t afford it. It felt terrifying. What’s more, his limbs felt aching and exhausted, like they’d really climbed. They must have contracted to the point of pain.

With an unlocking causing another convulsion, the sleep paralysis ended. Cassian rolled out of his bunk, panting for breath, flexing and releasing all of his muscles to try to rid himself of the awful feeling.

And though she’d told him not to, he saw Jyn’s open eyes gleaming in the dark, knew she was awake and seeing all of this, and he panted, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

For waking her, for this display, or for the dream of a reality where he didn’t make it.

She should get up, go to him, try to help. Once, Jyn would have done so without a second thought, least of all about her own emotional state. In a different lifetime, he'd seen her like this and worse. That wasn't now, though, something she had to forcibly remind herself again through the blurry mess of everything else. He hadn't seen this, and she didn't want him to; some part of her did still want to go hold him, but she had no idea now if that would be welcome or if it would only make things worse.

All of that was hypothetical, irrelevant, when she still could barely move or breathe. She watched him move, tear-filled vision adjusting to the dark, but she didn't really see, almost as if she wasn't in her own body at all. Wildly, almost desperately, she remembered something she'd learned from an older woman in Saw's cadre after having nightmares as a child, before she learned how to hide them. It seemed as worth a try as anything.

Five things you can see. Cassian. The opposite bunk. The closed door. Her own blanket, where it was held up to her face. Closet door.

Four things you can touch. Blanket. Bulkhead. The cord — her free hand found it — of her necklace. In the process, the racing pulse in her throat.

Three things you can hear. Her own shallow, rapid breathing. Cassian's equally rapid breathing. Soft footsteps on the bedroom floor.

Two things you can smell. Sweat. Him.

One thing you can taste. Salt, where tears had dampened her lips.

Jyn tried to breathe, still feeling as if that was a losing battle, and again took stock of what she knew. Cassian was awake, and had called her name. He was panting now and apologizing, and that was backwards. She should have been apologizing to him instead. The words wouldn't come, but she gave a short, sharp shake of her head that she hoped he would be able to see. "No, it's—" she tried, but that was wrong. "Me too."

Cassian had sat back on the edge of his bunk and was opening and closing his fist, over and over; working out a cramp or possibly running through a similar mental process. Hearing the quality of her voice, he looked up.

Whatever he'd just gone through, the question would always be deeply earnest. "Are you okay?"

If ever Jyn had pretended in her life — and she had, in fact, spent most of her life doing a lot of that — this was the moment to fall back on it. Dry her face, say she was fine, roll over and go back to sleep. Maybe whatever he was going through, her awareness becoming sharper that there clearly was something, would prevent him from detecting the lie in it or at least from caring enough to call her out.

The words were right there on the tip of her tongue, but didn't come out as she had meant them to, either in phrasing or in tone. "I'll be fine," she said, hollow and unconvincing. She didn't want to look away from him, but she couldn't look right at him, either, her gaze unfocused, trained somewhere in the distance. "Are you?"

Did you sleep well?
No.
Do you ever sleep well?

A laugh rattled at the back of his throat. "I'll be fine."

The difference was… What really hurt was…

He looked at her long and hard, eyes piercing the darkness. At last, all he could think of to say was, "Trust goes both ways."

Under other circumstances, having her own words repeated to her like that would likely have made her indignant. That reaction would have been disingenuous in its own right, but a far more comfortable defense mechanism than any she could manage right now. Sniffling, she stayed still and silent for a moment in turn, then finally shook her head, looking up at the ceiling as if it might hold some answers. It didn't, of course. There probably were none for something like this.

She was a little girl in a cave, alone in the dark again. Cassian was at the hatch holding a hand out to her, but she wasn't sure if she had it in her to claw her way out just to wind up back where she started.

"Just a bad dream," she said, trying, at least, to give him something without revealing too much of herself. She let the blanket drop, her face flushed and tear-streaked. "I was trying not to wake you."

Another I'm sorry died on his lips. Tipped askew, he moved his head somewhere between a nod and a shake. "Thank you," he said at last. "I hope, though, you get not to feel that way. That you know it's okay to wake me. …Force knows I would've just failed not to wake you."

The solution, of course, was his own apartment. But that was just pain.

He considered his bunk for a moment. Then with a quick, "May I?" he took hold of the mat and dragged it from the berth to the deck.

"Kay did this," he explained, sitting on the mat now on the floor. "Once when he had to carry me back to the ship and had a hard time laying me in the bunk. I dunno. It's stupid but I found it… a little less… like there was a little less pressure on my mind." He indicated the empty deck space between his mat and her bunk, where her mat could fit. "I can move over if you want to try it."

Kriff, what was even wrong with her? Here she was, hiding under blankets and crying like a child, while he was going through something just as bad or worse. Jyn still barely even felt present in her own body, repeating her earlier lists in her head to try to get herself to snap out of it, but it seemed suddenly unforgivably selfish of her just to lie here like this rather than trying to help him. Stiff-limbed and shaky, still not quite able to catch her breath, she forced herself to sit up, dragging the blanket with her like a cape around her shoulders, her apology held back only because she didn't want to interrupt him.

As she waited, watched, she turned those words over: I hope you get not to feel that way. She knew what he meant, and yet, in the dark and with so much weighing on her, there was something staggering about it all the same.

"Yeah," she said quietly, clearing her throat to try to at least sound a little less wrecked than she was. "Okay." Anything would be worth a try, even as it struck her as entirely too dangerous to sleep in even closer proximity than they already were. Careful, moving slowly, she got to her feet so she could start to pull her mat down beside his. "Sorry," she added, not looking at him. "I should've... Are you all right?"

Rolling his weight, he shifted his mat over to give hers more room.

"I knew I'd dream," he said by way of answer. "It was selfish to sleep in the same room as you, knowing that. I don't usually make noise. But I really will be fine. Or, you know. As fine as we get. …We did good. Like, truly good. Not everything I've done has been so… clear. That does help. A lot."

"It wasn't selfish," Jyn replied, risking a glance over at him. She was the one who'd just lain there, frozen and useless, while he pulled himself out of whatever dream he had been in. Besides, she figured it was equally as inevitable that, after the last day, with his arrival and everything it brought back up for her, she'd have had nightmares tonight too. Even though she still hated him seeing her like this, she had settled just enough back into her own skin to know that it was probably better that she didn't wake up alone.

Her mat now on the floor, she sat on top of it, knees drawn up to her chest. She didn't have the right to ask about whatever he'd dreamed, and yet: "Was it... You called out my name."

He had laid back down; now he turned to her, propping himself up to face her fully. "I dreamed I didn't get there in time. The Man in White shot us both."

Were it not for everything else, she might have smiled at the way he used the same nomenclature she had given her mother's killer as a child. Instead, she just bit her lip and nodded slowly. Not so different from her own dream, then, or at least part of it. The similarity wasn't altogether surprising; the fact that he would be so unsettled on her account was.

Trying to force a deeper breath into her lungs, she set one hand between them, the motion hesitant, an invitation and a reassurance.

"Usually when I dream about Scarif, you fall and don't get back up," she admitted. "All this time, and I can still see it."

All this time. The divide of time between them… yet no divide at all.

Softly, Cassian reached out and took her hand. His pounding heartbeat immediately slowed and gentled at the touch. Don't let yourself rely… but oh breathing was harder without her.

It was a moment of shared openness, like they'd had before… and he abruptly hurt so badly at the thought of it passing again, into veiled eyes and aborted sentences, the words just came.

"I feel like I don't know the right questions," he said quietly. "But even if I did, maybe I shouldn't ask them. I want to know more about our… my… time here. But maybe it's none of my business. If that was someone else. Or if it was me… I shouldn't try to… recreate, without building, or earning, or… Either way, I shouldn't put it on you. But then I see you bite so much back and I wish… I miss… I just don't know."

Maybe it was the shelter of darkness, making her feel a little less exposed despite the wretchedly vulnerable state she was in. Maybe it was just the sound of his voice, or the warmth of his hand in hers, or simply that her ability to fortify the walls meant to protect her was waning. Whatever the reason, as Jyn slowly lay down, staring up at the ceiling, she tried to find some words that she wouldn't have to keep herself from saying.

This was backwards, after all, in a way that she would have struggled to articulate. What to tell him and what not to, what she could even want from him, in her mind, those ought to have been her worries, not his. Not knowing how to say that, though, she started with something she could say, that she knew to be true.

"When we were on Jedha," she murmured, her breathing at least a little easier now. "You shot one of Saw's people to protect me. He was behind me with a grenade and I hadn't seen him. I think... that was when I first knew I could trust you. And then when we were on Yavin 4 and you came to volunteer... and you showed up on top of that tower and saved my life, again..."

She knew what she was trying to say, but not how to say it. Whatever they'd had here started back there. He wasn't the same person now, without the same history between them, but he was, too, in the ways that mattered most. She'd loved him, or started to, or something like it, before she ever wound up here at all, even if she would never have known to put that word to it.

Too tired and wrung out to be properly frustrated with herself, she exhaled slowly. "I guess all I mean is... Anything you want to know, I'd tell you. I just don't want you to think that... that I'd expect anything, or ask it, or... I don't know."

In the sheltering dark, he opened his mouth to speak… then closed it again. His hand held hers close.

"I've never trusted anyone the way I trust you," he said at last. "Not just how you'll speak and behave toward me, but at all; your judgment, your actions, your… everything. It makes me not worry about you because I know you can take care of yourself. That doesn't mean I don't want to help. I do. Just because you can go it alone doesn't mean you have to. But I know you can. Instead of making me feel like I have to help, it makes me grateful to.

"I've never really had that before. I can't think of anyone I didn't spend more time worried about. My ma, my friends, my… wife… I think our relationship was more built on worry than anything else. There were good reasons, but I think, now, that worry is a kind of distrust.

"I won't ask more tonight. It's not fair of me, when we're both… well, I can't speak for you. Thank you for listening.

"I guess I'm asking… next time you don't say something because you're worried how it'll affect me… go ahead and say it? As it is now… I know it wasn't for long, but I'm missing that friendship we had, with that trust."

Edited 2025-05-15 04:55 (UTC)

Jyn hardly knew what to say to that, or, at least, where to start. Even at the best of times, putting her feelings into words was not something that came naturally to her, and right now, with her heart still racing from the dream she'd had and Cassian's presence leaving her so thoroughly confused, was not the best of times. She wanted, on some instinctive level, not to say anything at all, just to roll closer to him and curl up against his side. That wouldn't have been fair, though. Nothing was clear enough for that, even after all he'd just said.

She focused instead on his hand in hers, grateful for that one small point of contact. There was some kind of metaphor to it, that maybe she couldn't have what she'd had before, but that wouldn't make her appreciate any less what she did have. And whatever else happened, there was something here. He'd just said it himself: that friendship, with that trust.

That, at least, gave her a thought, and reminded her that they were, in a way, starting over. There were things she'd said before that she would probably have to say again, which did actually give her a place to start.

"I'm not always... good at saying what I'm thinking or feeling," she told him. There was, of course, one constant, I love you still lurking somewhere, buried deep but too true to ignore, but that wasn't hers to offer now. "Not used to it, I guess. Even now. But." She bit her lip again. "I've never trusted anyone the way I trust you, either. And that goes back before this place. I've missed that, too. Anything I haven't said... It's not because I don't trust you."

He took a moment to process that. Then he nodded. Then he remembered they were in the dark and he squeezed her hand. "Okay."

"Okay," Jyn echoed, not much more than an exhale in the dark, and squeezed his hand in turn. At least, whatever else, no matter how confusing or complicated, there was this. That wasn't just enough; it was so much more than she ever thought she would have again. In the interest of the honesty he'd asked for, that she did want to try to give, she rolled onto her side, not moving any closer, but facing him in the dark.

"I really missed you. I'm really glad you're here."

"Me, too." Darkness or not, his eyes shone to her and crinkled how much they meant it. And how good it was to hear her say it.

They lay calm and quiet, heartbeats and breathing slowing and perhaps beginning to synchronize. Cassian murmured, "I might fall asleep again."

"You should," Jyn murmured in turn, and, oh, it was harder than it had been yet not to kiss his cheek or stroke his hair or anything else just as thoughtlessly intimate. She settled instead for brushing her thumb along the back of his hand again. "Rest, if you can."

She wasn't sure if she could, but she also wasn't sure it mattered. It reminded her of something else she probably ought to say, though, this one easier than anything that had preceded it. "What you said before... It's okay if you wake me, too. Always."

His thumb moved in answer to hers, and for an instant both played against each other, then linked.

“I hope I don’t,” he murmured back, “but thank you.” He rallied enough energy to crack a lopsided grin: “I really don’t want to go to that apartment.” Too much truth to really be a joke… well, the joke was in knowing she wouldn’t kick him out for dreaming.

Jyn smiled in turn, just a little, at the joke, sensing it for what it was. She doubted he would have said that if he thought there were any actual chance of her telling him to leave just because he had a loud nightmare. It wasn't as if he was the only one of them prone to bad dreams. Even if he had been—

"No, stay," she said, and she must have been more tired than she'd realized for how easily it came out and how little thought she gave it. "Please stay."

He was beginning to drift, but he held onto her hand and the importance of this response.

“Always. As long as you want me.”

"Always," Jyn echoed, too drowsy to know if she was just repeating what he'd said or giving an answer of her own. So much time she had spent without him, and she had never once stopped wanting him here with her, even when she'd tried to convince herself otherwise. These weren't things she was supposed to say — but then, he'd just told her to say them, hadn't he?

"Thank you."

It wasn't his place now to say Welcome home. Even though that's what he felt. Welcome home to inside his chest, inside his throat, inside his mind and heart and hands. Welcome to everything he could offer and everything she would take.

With another brightening smile, he said only, "Just a Fact."

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