crash sites keep me up at night

[nextchance]

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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[nextchance]

"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."

[fulcrum3]

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."

[nextchance]

She'd always loved seeing him smile like that, the way it softened all of his features and made him look younger, less burdened. Through heavy-lidded eyes, Jyn watched him until she couldn't anymore, hand clasping his, her own words again echoing in her head, please stay please stay please stay.

The last conscious thought she had was hoping he would still be there in the morning. It had been a while since she'd really let herself hope for anything.

This time, as she slept, she didn't dream, or at least wasn't aware of doing so.

When, at last, she began to awaken again, it was a gradual thing, all sensation and no thought. She was warm all over — her head on a shoulder, an arm around her, curled beside another body, and, oh, she'd missed this so much. Home, the semi-aware part of her mind provided. She was finally, finally home. With a quiet, contented hum, she mindlessly shifted a little closer, not yet ready to open her eyes or be anywhere but here.

[fulcrum3]

If he dreamt, now, it was of her: holding her into a deeper, healing sleep.

He woke gently to light streaming in from the high, narrow windows.

And it wasn't a dream. Sometime in the night, Jyn had rolled in to him, curling into his arms. They lay softly together, unurgent, breathing together.

Cassian's arm had fallen asleep and he didn't care. He wouldn't disturb her for anything.

Usually, once Cassian woke up, he got up. Now, he closed his eyes back into her hair and matched his breath to hers.

They were back on the beach, but there was no sorrow now, no doom; no light coming for them; just themselves become oceanic.

[nextchance]

If this was another dream, it was one from which she didn't want to wake. Jyn felt too good for that, safe and content there in his arms; she wanted it to last just a little while longer, enough to give her something to hold onto. Dreams like this tended to be worse than any nightmares. Those, she was used to, having had them for most of her life. The good dreams, the ones she wanted to hold onto, were the ones that left her most rattled. Even with the high likelihood that she would regret it, though, she wasn't ready to move yet, wanting just for a little while longer to remember what this felt like.

"Feels good," she mumbled into his shoulder, not wholly aware of doing so. She couldn't even be sure exactly what she was referring to. It seemed instead to encompass the entire drawn-out moment. Usually, the best — and thus worst — of her dreams weren't this detailed or vivid. Was he real? She thought he was, hoped he was. There was that word again, still inextricably bound to him.

[fulcrum3]

Good. Yes. He couldn't remember the last time his body sank so into the floor, without tension or ache, without even awareness of anything else, yet with him actually present in it and… not minding… elated at the fact. When he could breathe so deeply without hollowness or strain… when he felt nothing but comfort and relief. Yes, also the electricity of attraction, but not while she was unconscious, and secondary to the feeling that… this was just right.

And more than any of that, the joy of her relaxation with him, that he might be giving any of that back.

He wouldn't pretend to be asleep if she wasn't. "Mmhmm," he agreed. For a heartbeat, his arms flexed; not enough to displace her, just enough to acknowledge. Lips half-brushing the top of her head, he murmured, "Good morning."

[nextchance]

Her breath caught at his words, felt more than heard with the way she was curled beside him. There was no lurch to it, no discomfort, just quiet surprise, pulling her a little further into consciousness. With that came memory — yes, he was here, yes, this was real, not dream or imagination. The nightmare she'd had, and falling asleep on the floor beside him, her hand in his. They hadn't been this close then. She must have done that in her sleep, a fact which made her face feel hot with embarrassment.

He wasn't pulling away or trying to dislodge her, though. Jyn wasn't yet nearly alert enough to decipher what that might have meant, but it did stop her from jerking back as she might otherwise have done in her self-consciousness. To do so would probably have given entirely the wrong impression anyway. She had her wits about her just enough to know that she wouldn't want him to think he'd done anything wrong here when she was the one who'd unknowingly encroached on his space.

"Morning," she echoed, her voice still rough with sleep. For just a few moments longer, she could savor this. There couldn't be any real harm in that — at least, not to anyone but herself.

[fulcrum3]

It was the very faintest of tensions that ran through her; would have been imperceptible if he hadn't melted into her body so completely.

Skies, he couldn't bear it… regardless of who initiated this (while asleep, it could hardly be held accountable; he'd made the waking invitation of pushing their mats together so it was really him) the idea that she didn't want it was terrible.

But if she didn't, she didn't. He wouldn't ask yet again Are you okay? because the burden shouldn't keep being on her.

For just a moment more, he closed his eyes against her hair and breathed.

Okay. She wasn't here to staunch a wound in his chest. Let her go.

He shifted and unwrapped his arm from around her—another thing that had happened in their sleep. He still couldn't bring himself to stand, but he'd released her. Thoroughly unsure if this was decency or dishonesty.

[nextchance]

Maybe there was more harm to be done after all.

Jyn felt her stomach drop uncomfortably when he let her go, like the swoop of unexpectedly leaving hyperspace, her face still flushed with what she realized now, to her horror, was something close to shame. She was so stupid. Sure, she hadn't rolled into his space intentionally or even consciously, but she had then stayed there, selfishly taking more of something that hadn't been offered to her. Just because they'd once shared that kind of easy intimacy didn't mean they would again. That hadn't been him, as he was now. Thank the stars she hadn't done anything more than curl up beside him, but it was still bad enough to have been nestling into his shoulder like that, soft and clingy in a way she normally would never let herself be.

She rolled to her back and looked up at the ship's ceiling for the span of one breath, then two; then, abruptly, she pulled herself to her feet, unable to bear looking at him. "I'm sorry," she said. He'd asked her last night to say what she was thinking — yes, that had really happened — and she did mean to try, but dragging these words from herself was painful. "I shouldn't have done that. I wasn't thinking. I'm sorry, Cassian."

[fulcrum3]

Stunned, Cassian stood with her. "I let go because I thought you didn't want…?"

Dishonesty. Being too careful. Mistrust.

Slowly, Cassian put his hand to her shoulderblade.

"I want whatever you do," he said quietly. "I don't expect anything. I'll go back to doing nothing if that's… But those last moments on the beach… holding you was… I can't imagine you doing anything I don't want.

"—But I don't want to push. Don't do anything just for me. I can't trust a 'yes' if I can't also trust a 'no'. Does that make sense?"

[nextchance]

Jyn let out a slow, shaky exhale as he rested his hand against her shoulderblade, trying to will some of the tension out of her limbs. It was too much — not anything he had done or was doing, but the back and forth of it all in her mind, from contentment to concern and back to confusion again, how things could feel so right and then so wrong in the span of a single breath. She had never felt so at ease with anyone as she did with him, and yet it seemed all she could do was misstep. Given the strangeness of their circumstances, it probably wasn't fair to blame herself for that entirely, but it was hard not to let that frustration well up.

She wanted to tell him everything and she wanted to tell him nothing. She wanted to rebuild what she'd lost years ago and she wanted not to risk opening herself up to that again. She didn't know what she wanted, except that all of this fraughtness and uncertainty wasn't it.

"It does," she said quietly, because the question, at least, was something simple enough to address. She knew what he meant, and she could even appreciate the reasoning behind it, despite their misreading each other a moment before. "Make sense. But I could say the same to you. I—" I love you. It was always right there, on the tip of her tongue; she couldn't allow it past her teeth, no matter what he'd said to her last night. "I don't expect anything of you. I know that, whatever happened before, that wasn't you, now. And I wouldn't ask that. Or push for it. But I also wouldn't do anything that I didn't want to do just for you."

[fulcrum3]

'Push for'… 'expect'… 'whatever happened before'?

All the electricity flooded him, especially in the nerve-endings contacting her.

He wanted to know. He didn't want to know. He wanted her to say everything she needed to. He wanted to have a real chance at something just between…

them.

Who was that? It seemed more important than ever to know if that had 'really' been… him.

…It wasn't. Our experiences make us as much if not more than anything else. He didn't have them.

But she did. No wonder. He wondered if he could be jealous of this other self. No. He just mourned. That he'd missed something so precious and then hurt her so heinously.

No wonder.

"I think we agree," he said softly, about more than they'd just been saying.

[nextchance]

Again, Jyn told herself that it made a certain kind of sense that he might feel something for her now. However things had developed here, Cassian had started from the same point, the end, and everything initially sprang from there. It diverged, of course, after. Somehow maintaining that difference in her mind was one of the easiest things about this. He was himself in the ways that counted, but he also wasn't the person she'd built a life with here, because he hadn't lived that. It shouldn't have made sense, but somehow, it did.

She couldn't say the same of anything else. Feeling like this again, ripped open and all of her deepest, darkest parts laid bare for him to see, wasn't something she thought would happen to her again, nor was it something she even wanted. For years now, she had been trying and often succeeding to convince herself that she had made a mistake before in letting herself seek and have that kind of connection. As usual, all it did was get her hurt.

Keeping those walls up was just so much harder when he was so close, all but telling her that he wanted... something.

"Do we?" she asked, equally soft, as she turned to look at him with wide eyes. This time, she tried not to hope, but he had woken up that part of her yet again, and it couldn't so easily be laid to rest.

[fulcrum3]

Her eyes caught him amidships. "I thought so…" His fingers spread to feel the fabric at her back, trying to ground him, perhaps to reassure her. His other hand came up to seek hers.

Are we both waiting for each other?

Cassian looked at her and realized they were now the same age. Like he'd said, she didn't need him to look out for her. Except maybe instead of him looking to her to set the pace, she needed him to. To her, it was too tangled.

He wasn't used to speaking so much, to anybody. But to Jyn, it was worth figuring out.

"Whatever happens to me next," he said, "I want to involve you. I can't go back to who I was before I knew you. I don't want to. If you don't want me, I'll walk away glad you're in the universe. But… if we can be together, in any way, that's what I want.

"What 'together' looks like… Like I said. I can't imagine anything with you I don't want. But I also know… I—this version of me—just got here. Like we said before… I haven't even met you outside of war." He gave a lopsided smile. "I'm pretty sure we're gonna get along. But I think it's worth building that foundation before… getting too far.

"I'm saying this 'cause… it seems like we're both waiting for each other to set the pace? If I'm wrong, hit me over the head with something. If I'm right… here's my pace. I would love to spend tonight the way we spent last night. And every foreseeable night holding you. But I'm not gonna rush into anything else. Let's know each other a few more days, at least.

"If we need more time, more space, well, they gave me an apartment. We can check it out. …Hell, we can go there together and just spend time in separate rooms. We can do whatever we need to.

"Just know… I wanna figure it out together."

[nextchance]

There was so, so much that Jyn didn't know, couldn't know, couldn't begin to make sense of. In all he said, though — and she tried, truly, to listen, to take in every word — one thing jumped out at her, a small certainty she could cling to. Maybe that was the best she could do for now. Rather than trying to make sense of everything at once, take the smallest pieces and try to build the rest around them. She thought he might, in a way, have been trying to say the same sort of thing, that they didn't need to know all of it yet.

What she did know was that, hearing him say if you don't want me, she was sure nothing could have been further from the truth. She wanted so, so much that she was dizzy with it. She didn't want to want so much, but she'd fought this battle with herself the first time, too, and lost pitifully. Apparently even the years she'd been without him, in any incarnation, weren't enough to fortify her resolve.

"I don't want to be without you," she said. It wasn't quite what she'd intended to say, but then, he had told her not to hold things back on his account. She would've preferred, though, if she could have kept her voice from wavering while she said them. Since she first met him, she'd never wanted to be without him, and she'd come to have every reason to believe that she would be for the rest of time.

She took a breath, willed herself to keep going. Difficult as this was for her, he was worth the effort. "There's... a lot I don't know, right now. What to say. What this means. What I want. But I do know that. So. Yes. To what you said."

[fulcrum3]

The smile that broke on his face was many things at once, not least relieved. And only briefly visible, before he moved a little forward and pressed his lips so lightly to her hair.

[nextchance]

Jyn held her breath as he leaned in, the gesture slotting into that same category of familiar-but-new that so many things had in the last day. He was himself, but they were starting over. She'd spent so damn long here, and so much had changed, but he — wanting him, missing him, loving him — had been a constant throughout, even in his absence.

For a moment, she stayed still, then figured to hell with it. They'd just decided this was going to be something. She didn't have to keep herself so contained. Stepping forward, she slipped her arms around him, half to apologize for having pulled away so abruptly before, half just because she wanted to.

[fulcrum3]

At once, his arms were around her, too. Without putting his weight on her, he was resting with her, melting together with gladness.

Several long, wonderful minutes later, without breaking the hug one bit, Cassian murmured into the top of her head, "So… leftovers for breakfast?"

[nextchance]

"Yes," Jyn agreed decisively, a bit of brightness creeping into her voice that she didn't think had been there in all of the last day. She wouldn't say that she missed his cooking, because there was still so much, too much, to sort out, and she didn't want to put too much of the past on him in the present. Not expecting or asking anything, like she'd said. But the fact remained that cooking was a skill that he possessed and she mostly didn't, and having a home-cooked meal still felt like a rare gift, something she hadn't experienced much of since childhood before this place.

"Definitely. And I can put caf on. Probably both need it."

[fulcrum3]

Another kiss seemed too much, so he just pressed his cheek momentarily to her temple before stepping away. "I'll use the lav and get dressed. Do you have a spare groomer, or a toothbrush?" The former could serve as both.

[nextchance]

"I might?" Jyn answered, brow furrowing as she looked up at him. She didn't often have company, and even if she had, she still probably wouldn't have been much of a host. Just keeping things stocked for herself was a relatively new possibility in her life; getting extra supplies in case of guests was practically insane.

As she had told him earlier, though, the Falcon had a lot of owners before it wound up in her possession, and she was often finding things she didn't know were there. "If I do, it'd be in there somewhere. Check the cabinet, anything you can find is yours."

He did, in essence, live here now. She still sort of felt that that must be insane of her, but she wouldn't have had it any other way.

[fulcrum3]

"Okay."

He hadn't smiled so much in a while. He couldn't help another at her, as if they were sharing a secret. …A strange comparison because secrets, in his life, were not pleasant things. But now, with her, everything was new.

Cassian brought his clothes with him into the lav. They would mostly still do from yesterday. Onto the pile, he set his own underwear that he'd washed and were now dried. The inherited ones he'd worn overnight, he hand-washed and set to dry. Not strictly necessary, but when you're lucky to have amenities, use them.

He searched the cabinet and came up with an analog toothbrush and what looked like dedicated tooth-cleaning paste. They were stored together, at least. The alphabet on them… it was the same as the secondary writing on his welcome packet, under the Aurebesh. He decided not to risk it but to check it with Jyn later. For now, he brushed dry and rinsed with a dilution of the 'fresher soap.

Again, taking advantage of what you have when you have it, he took a lightning-quick rinse in the 'fresher and blasted dry, then changed into the hand-me-down clothes. They really were a pretty good fit, but he looked forward to getting some things of his own. He assumed the money he'd been given would be good for it.

Some might find it strange, that he was dead set against using an apartment given to him by an unknown source, yet had no problem using money given by the same source. Well, he didn't believe hard (and untraceable) currency need bind you the way a stationary location did. Call it compensation for unwitting relocation.

He was again barefoot. He'd, of course, told Jyn the truth: it did make his eyes dart and heart pound harder, especially on a metallic floor. …But the sun shone in white, not red; and, most important, he was with her. Anyway, he wasn't going to put on those damn boots until he had to.

So Cassian emerged with his night clothes neatly folded, dressed for the day. He went to the cabin to put his (or their) mat(s) back onto the bunks, then his folded clothes onto the mat. Then he turned for the kitchen to turn yesterday's motley meal into today's motley breakfast.

[nextchance]

For a moment, when he left, Jyn just stood in the cabin, trying to understand even a little bit of what had just happened. She knew, but at the same time, everything was utterly dizzying. The whole last day was, even sleep not doing much to let it sink in, given the nightmares it had involved and the sweeter interruption in between. She could still hardly even believe he was real. But she was warm where his arms had just been wrapped around her, the ghost of his touch lingering, and soon after, noise from the lav proved that, yes, there was someone else here. It wasn't in her head.

Her imagination had never been that good anyway.

Finally, taking advantage of privacy that didn't involve awkwardly navigating around each other, she changed out of her sleep clothes into regular ones, then ventured out into the ship's corridor, where it didn't take long before she was accosted by the beasts, as she had come to affectionately refer to her pets. "Yes, yes, I know, neither of you have ever been fed ever in your life," she said with an exaggerated sigh, well aware that they didn't understand her and that that was very much not true. The fact that she had spent so much of her life hungry made the joke that much funnier to her. "Come on, breakfast."

This was routine, and a relief in being so. Each animal had food put in their dish, and once they were both too distracted by eating to pay her much mind, she headed to the kitchen to put on caf as promised. She really did need it, exhausted less from lack of sleep and more from the emotional turbulence of the last day. When Cassian came in, she was leaning against the counter waiting for it to finish brewing, and she gave him a small smile. "Anything I can do to help?"

[fulcrum3]

"You just did," he said, smiling at the caf maker. "Otherwise… not really, just going to reheat some things." He said as if he was going to put them into the microwave, not fire up the stovetop and start to toss and stir things in pans. Which he did with a casual fluency that didn't really leave room for assistance—and spoke of someone not bound by recipes or worried about getting singed.

In quick order, he'd slid the results onto plates and the plates onto the table and turned off the stove. He'd also found juice somewhere, reconstituted but he'd done something so it tasted almost real, with ice cubes he must have set last night.

[nextchance]

"I think you and I have very different ideas of what reheating means," Jyn replied wryly, giving him a look over her shoulder. At least getting mugs out and pouring caf gave her something to do, however much more simple. Instinctively, she almost started to prepare both of their cups, realizing just in time that that would have been too weird. Better just to leave it. She didn't want to be dishonest, but neither did she want to act on information that he hadn't given her.

"There's cream and sugar, if you want either," she said instead. "All of a day you've been here and you must already know this kitchen better than I do."