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]

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."

[fulcrum3]

Like amenities, take luxuries when you can. Self-denial to toughen you up was for training. Otherwise, it was better to remember what you fought for. He took cream, no sugar, and slid into the seat opposite her.

"'Know your own ground'," he said, taking a swig of juice. "I explored a bit when you were out. Do you know how many hidden compartments this ship has? I found six."

[nextchance]

"Six? Guess you'll have to keep looking, then," Jyn said, smiling at him over the rim of her cup as she sipped her caf (both cream and sugar in hers). In truth, she didn't have an exact number, and suspected there were some even she hadn't found yet. That was no reason not to have a little fun with it. Some levity was welcome, anyway, after everything in the last day had felt so emotionally fraught and almost certainly would again before very long.

"Not bad for a day's work, though."

[fulcrum3]

"You mean Beany hasn't found them all?" He finished the juice and took some food before switching to caf. "And how's Sprinkles? I was thinking I should spend some time with her, since…"

[nextchance]

"Beany, you will learn quickly, is not the brightest," Jyn replied, all wry fondness. She'd tried so hard, the day she first found a scraggly, palm-sized cat under a shrub, not to let herself get attached to the animal, unsure at the time if it would even survive. As if a recurring theme, though, she hadn't been able to help it. Now there was no hiding the fact that she adored both pets she'd come to care for.

"Sprinkles... She'd probably like that, but don't feel like you have to." No expectations, she'd said. No asking him to pick up where he, in a different lifetime, had left off. "She's a little terror."

This, too, was said with nothing but affection.

[fulcrum3]

"I guess we'll take it as it goes." To his surprise, Cassian's plate was already nearly empty. There hadn't been so much food to play around with. He didn't mind; he hoped Jyn would be satisfied. If not—"I'm determined to actually make it into the city today. You'll still come with me?"

[nextchance]

"Of course," Jyn said easily, between bites of food. She was far from a picky eater anyway, even with as long as she had now been consistently well-fed here, but there was a big difference between whatever she could easily throw together for herself or order for takeout and something home-cooked. Given the sparseness of her groceries, it was a wonder that he'd managed to put together something that could make not one but two meals and tasted this good.

"I'll show you around some, and we'll get you some clothes that weren't left here by persons unknown."

[fulcrum3]

Cassian threw her another lopsided smile. "Sounds great."

Hard to believe how little he'd smiled the first days of their acquaintance. What a difference it made, toward the end of it all, when he began. Now for real, again, was the possibility of him that had nearly been killed by war: the person he should have been if he'd been born in peace. Warm, funny, loving. The remnants of that person always lived under the apparently cold, downcast soldier, which was what made him a commander people followed, even to a suicide mission.

Now, he swept up his empty plate, took a final swig of caf, and impulsively pressed a lightning-fast kiss to the top of her head before turning to bring the dishes to the sink. How many of his fellow soldiers or spies ever got to see him like this?

The person he'd been forced to be would descend again, of course; not just in sleep but in waking nightmares and ingrained behaviors. But right now, for a beautiful moment, with her, he got to be that peaceful self.

[nextchance]

Jyn watched him. It was becoming a habit, her doing so, and one she was powerless to stop. In part, it was disbelief at his being here at all, needing to see him to convince herself that he was here and this was real. Beyond that, though, it was so good to see him at ease like this, especially here in this space that had become her own. She was trying, for her own sake as much as his, not to contrast the past and the present. All of that was so long ago for her now anyway. But the occasional thought still slipped through, and this one didn't seem too unfair: that she'd always gone to him before, letting herself into his apartment, crawling into his bed. For him to be here now, slotting neatly into the life she'd cobbled back together for herself—

Well. It was nice, was all, to see him relaxed and content. It would have been regardless of the circumstances.

"You can leave the dishes, I'll take care of them later," she said. "Least I can do, since you cooked. Thanks for that."

[fulcrum3]

Agreeably, he left the dishes.

It was time to get going. Cassian slipped on the Imperial boots, pulling the hand-me-down trousers over them rather than tucking them in, and found he was steeling himself. He was preparing to scope out the city, gather information and compare to what was in the welcome packet; but oh was he hoping it checked out. He was hoping so hard that this really could be a place to just… retire? with Jyn.

Gotta put hope aside, though, and be objective. Compare your own observations to what was said, and to hers. Mainly, he was going to be looking for people who didn't fit into the life he'd been given. He expected the packet to be accurate to his situation, but maybe at others' expense. The Empire didn't fundamentally effect the upper-class citizens of Coruscant, after all.

Ready to go, Cassian fell into place with Jyn. "Okay."

[nextchance]

Jyn pulled on her own boots, well-worn and mud-stained from years of consistent use. She would keep using them until she couldn't anymore, not inclined to discard anything useful, something she suspected they had in common. Hell, the fact that she even had a second pair of shoes here — running sneakers — was something previously unheard of for her. For the most part, though, while the circumstances of her life had changed, the way she lived it didn't. She would keep only what she could bring with her, buy food only as she would be able to eat it. She was accustomed to living here, but she didn't think she would ever be truly, fully settled.

Whether that was inherent to her or something instilled in her earlier than she could even know was impossible to tell. She had adapted well — a crucial element in surviving — but whether by nature or nurture or both, she was who she'd always been. She sort of wanted to tell him that, that things had changed so immeasurably but she was still the person he'd known for those last days, but she couldn't find the words. Anyway, she didn't want to get them sidetracked again before venturing out.

"Okay," she echoed, lowering the ramp to let them out of the ship. "And we're actually going to make it into the city this time."

[fulcrum3]

They did. They got Cassian several changes of clothes and a pair of sturdy boots. Seeing Cassian's distaste for his old pair, the shopkeeper offered to throw them away, but Cassian opted to keep them. Never waste a pair of good shoes. "We'll give them away to someone the Empire would hate," he murmured to Jyn. He kept an eye out for the rest of the day, but didn't see anyone unhoused. Which he found… either highly suspect (were they wrangled and kept off the streets?) or hopeful (was everyone actually taken care of here?). All right. He'd keep the boots as a reminder to himself, unless/until someone like another new arrival might need them.

They went food shopping and Cassian convinced Jyn to actually get perishable items, because he promised to use them.

In between clothes and food, they explored the city at large. There did seem to be some divide between the 'locals' and the 'imports', but no real animosity, and by and large, the welcome packet held up. It was hard for Cassian to shake his wariness… but he wasn't finding anything to hang it on; anything that rang any bells.

Their only specific stop was, as had been on his intake paperwork welcome packet, Candlewood Apartments, number 10C. The door lock was thoroughly analog, which raised Cassian's hackles: having to actually turn a key and knob kept your hands occupied as it opened, thus vulnerable to ambush. Of course, he didn't have a blaster anyway… still, old habits.

He opened the door.

[nextchance]

Jyn wasn't sure if it was easier, being out and keeping busy, discussing simpler facts of the city itself, or more difficult, with more time left in her own head. There was so much still to think about, so much she couldn't begin to make sense of yet. She tried to focus just on the tasks at hand to keep herself from getting too bogged down by it all — the clothes, useful, the shoes, even more so, the food, ingredients she was trusting him to be able to use. The first gave her a chance, too, to make a purchase of her own while he was occupied, written off as supplies for the animals, but really something she would give to him later. All of this was... well, normal, or something like it, and normal was good.

The apartment was in a building she wasn't as familiar with as some of the others. That seemed like a good thing, too, even if she hoped neither of them would need to come back here. It would still be for the best for him to see it and decide what he wanted to do with it.

Inside was fairly nondescript, much like other apartments she had seen before they were thoroughly lived in here, and like her own had been the entire time she'd had (and never really used) it. She followed him in, surveying the space more carefully than she might have if she were with anyone else. "Well, here it is."