sixthiterationlogs | I've Got a Bad Feeling About This

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I've Got a Bad Feeling About This - OTA

WHO: Jyn Erso
WHERE: At the fountain.
WHEN: February 6, night.
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: Grief, mention of death, depression, implied self-harm.
STATUS: CLOSED

Arrival
Blinding light.

That's the last thing that Jyn can remember. No, there's more: the wetness of tears, the feel of cloth and muscle and bone, the inevitable resignation at the end of her short life, and the reverberation of Cassian's heartbeat against her chest.

Cassian.

The name sears across her mind's eye like wildfire, a dagger in her gut, a sharp, hot pain that makes her body ache and her heart shatter. But before she can weep the way she wants to, before she can mourn the loss of him, of them, of the future ripped violently out of their grasp, she realizes she's in water. Her eyes open as widely as they can manage, but there isn't much to see, except the faint light overhead. Go up, she tells herself, her legs forcefully kicking with all of the residual strength she can muster. There's a way out, she can see it. Faint as it is, it's there.

When she finally breaks the surface, she's gasping and clamoring, the rush of the frigid air like needles in her lungs and in her throat. It almost makes her feel like she's suffocating, and the only thing she wants to do is get out of this -- thing. She thinks for a moment that perhaps it's a pond, or a lake, but as she stumbles out and off of it, she realizes that it's a fountain. A fountain? Her mind attempts to make sense of it all, but the chill of the air prevents her from doing so. All she can think now is to survive, that thing she's done so well her entire life, the thing she's so tired of doing. As she scrambles to her feet, it's then that she notices something strapped to her back. She pats the pockets of her drenched trousers, looking for her comm - not that she even imagines it might work in this place - but it's her first instinct to search for it. Only .. her pockets are empty. She's so disoriented that it takes her an embarrassingly long time to even realize that the clothes on her body are different. She considers plunging back into the fountain to see if her old ones are lost in the water, but even disoriented Jyn knows it's a bad idea. Who would she call, if she could find the comm? Who would hear her pleas and cries? There's no one left. She has nothing, not even the blaster she'd had those last moments on the beach.

Oh, the beach, she thinks, feeling her footing slip as she stumbles back into the darkness of her mind's eye. No, Jyn. Focus. You have to focus. She rummages through the pack and finds, much to her delight, a set of clothing for her to change into.

Change into dry clothes, she thinks, starting to create her checklist. Figure out where you are, find some food, find some shelter, check the area for danger, get some sleep.

There's a dull pain in her chest, squarely over what she thinks is her heart. It reminds her of what she's lost, it reminds her of what she might have had. It reminds her of her comrades, of Scarif, of Krennic, of Stardust. It reminds her of their mission. She presses palm to bone, willing the pain, the sorrow to leave. The ache pulsates with each beat of her heart, braying its despair. Emptiness, loneliness, it sings.

But there's no time to weep, the threat of tears beginning to sting the backs of her eyes. No, for now, she needs to survive.

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Underneath the lifeless surface Jyn's presenting, there's concern for this man opposite her. She doesn't know what he's seen, what's he been through, but she knows that look. She knows the look of someone who's lost more than he should have, the look of someone who's said goodbye far too many times in his life. And, given the intensity of the quiver in his fingers and the way he can't seem to muster the courage to look at her (is the pain in her eyes too familiar? too close?), it must've been recent. The parting words must have only just left his tongue.

She reminds herself that she's not the only one who's lost what feels like everything. She's not the first to grasp onto sand with desperation, only to have it trickle out of those damned gaps in between her fingers, no matter how tight her fist.

She isn't sure if this comforts her or not. She wishes he weren't wallowing in despair. She wishes that he'd smile, just a little. Just a twitch of the corner of his mouth, a light in his eyes - something to remind her that there's purpose. That there's hope. That there's a reason for anything.

But she won't find it in his eyes, or on his lips. She knows this now. And it makes her avert her eyes, a selfish shame flooding her heart.

"They don't," she replies flatly. They don't mean a damn thing, but what does, anyway? The lift of his pointed finger makes her eyes raise, but only to the destination - not to his face. She can't deal with that just yet. The mention of food makes her stomach growl and gurgle and bray, as if on cue, and the familiar tsunami of shame floods her again. Why is he being so kind? After what he must have gone through? But she'll accept his offer, his kindness, his compassion. It's all she has right now.

She nods, shuffling her way to the area he singled out. Once there, she begins to peel away the dripping fabric from her skin, which feels like cold rubber. It feels lifeless. It feels like a corpse. She can feel her breath go shallow, the threat of a sob on its heels. She wants to break down, she wants to crumple under the weight of what's happened. But there's food - there's kindness out there. She bites onto her lip, hard enough to draw blood, and she savors the iron taste flooding her mouth. It reminds her of life. And of death.

She comes back out, soaked clothing in a ball in her hand, dry clothes on, which she outstretches towards him. She should thank him, she knows this, but she can't force herself to say anything. Instead she nods, quickly wiping at her face in a pathetic attempt to hide the stray tears that've fallen onto her cheeks, rubbing her hands up and down her arms to warm herself from the bone-deep chill.

The door closed and they both did what they could with a moment of solitude: he had stood at the sink and stared at his hands, waited to be able to see the edges of his own fingers, to still the shaking, to pick the splinters and torn edges of his skin. Run his hands under the water and splashed it on his face, so neither of them was entirely dry-eyed when she emerged.

Her scrubs are red, balled up in his grip. He tries to remember the last time he saw the color--was it Graves, did it mean something? Did it mark her as dangerous? Ren and Cassian wore black, but so did he, and he'd never imagined himself as such.

It's the kind of thought that didn't matter, sprung up because he was grasping at anything right now. He whips the articles out flat with a pinch at the corners before laying them over the back of a chair, and sets it close to the stove. "You can sit by it too," he says, nodding at it. It's no easier to look at her, but it feels necessary, and there's no reaction to the tears he sees. He'd come out of the fountain cursing, shaking, in pain. He'd barked at Mark not to touch him, and been lucky the man had anyway. It only makes him wonder why he isn't crying, why he hasn't once today. It isn't that he wants to, only that he thinks he should.

When he drops his gaze from her eyes, it finds the spot of red on her lip. It feels like he should do that too. Maybe he's owed a debt of blood since he got off that helicopter in Manhattan. "Do they have tea, where you're from?"

Jyn realizes, now that her mind no longer has to fight against the chill of wet garments, that their colors are different. She doesn't like the color red. It reminds her of the Empire, it reminds her of death, it reminds her of blaster bolts and warfare. It makes her stand out, it makes her noticeable. It makes her uneasy. She thinks to ask about the colors, and the pack in general (how had it gotten there?), but there's no energy to waste on something so arbitrary.

A loll of her head that's something like a nod before she drags her feet over to a chair by the stove. The warmth radiates out, prickling her skin, enveloping her in the warmest embrace she'd ever felt. No, not the warmest - that belonged to Cassian, in those final moments. But this - this is nice, all the same. It makes her blood flow again, chases away some of the numbness in her fingers, her toes. She glances down at her hands, palms up and limp in her lap, attempts to wiggle her fingers just a little. Just to make sure they're still there, they still work.

"Tea?" she asks, her eyes unmoving. "Yes, we have tea." She's speaking present tense, and she doesn't notice. "People on Alderaan like it the most."

"Alderaan," he echoes, the shape of the word in his mouth, a meaning to it that he can't grasp. He doesn't think he's ever said the name before, and it isn't a country he's aware of, it isn't--he doesn't know what it is, except that it's something he's heard. He doesn't know it the way he doesn't know the force, or how to explain what the stuffed wookiee up in his room is.

Ravi might be the person to ask. He seems to be from the closest iteration of normal, everyday earth that Kira's met, and he might know what these things are, or he might corroborate the strange gap in knowledge.

"Is that where you're from," he asks, instead of pursuing the loss, his hands busying with the kettle. It has a solid weight, and a flash on its edges when it reflects the lights of the room, that keep him in the present with her. The internal echo of the water hitting metal, the smaller sound of it sloshing around when its full. You could string the small rituals of things together until they got you from sunrise to sunset. Maybe that's why cultures had so many for the dead: distractions until living felt like a thing your body and mind could do.

The name sounds strange, coming from his mouth. Like he is feeling it out with his tongue, unsure of what to do with it, unsure of what it is. It's like when one says a word, over and over again, until it loses all semblance of meaning and order, until it becomes a mess of sounds and gargles and grunts. That's what the name sounds like now. Nothing seems to have any of its meaning anymore. Everything feels like a shell, like emptiness, like a void.

But the promise of nourishment, the promise of a warm beverage inside of her aching, growling belly - it's a strange form of hope. And it's enough to keep her present, enough to keep her conscious. When she looks at the stove, she's almost tempted to touch it. Like that dull ache after the door slammed into her shoulder when she arrived, she wants to feel something, anything, other than what she's feeling now. Which feels a lot like nothing, or everything at the same time.

She isn't sure which.

"No," she hears herself responding, though it doesn't feel like her brain making her tongue form the words. "I was born on Vallt," she continues, "Spent time on Coruscant, Lah'mu, Jedha. Eventually Yavin, and Scarif." The last planet's name slithers out of her mouth like poison. "I don't really know where I'm from, so much." She had a home, once. Shared with her Mama, and her Papa. Watching holodramas about trying to find home. She can see Galen's face, if she tries hard enough. She aches to realize she can no longer remember what her mother looked like, what she sounded like. She knows she was pretty, she knows she was gentle and soft. But there's no definition to her outline. It's just a mess of smoke and ash. "When did you arrive here?" she asks, voice punctuated by her accent, but otherwise void of life.

Vallt: he hears it like vault, imagines the door closing. Imagines shutting his own door, and being at peace with it. The only decent end to today might be to sit as an empty shell next to another empty shell, and drink tea, and be warm. None of the names register the way Alderaan had, but he nods, her voice touching syllables like a stone skipping over water.

Even with the bite at the end, the surface closed around the disturbance and the silence was placid until--ripples. Dark fish swimming low enough to hardly make a change.

He sets the kettle on the stove and looks at her briefly, a touch of eyes to keep them connected while he finds a reply. It's somewhere in the three remaining bags of tea, crisp edged and pressed at the bottom of the tin. Tomorrow will be the last mug of Earl Grey, and while he wasn't a fan before, having his own supply was the smallest good thing, the smallest guarantee of something normal at the end of a day.

"Long enough to get to the end of this," he says, shaking the tin for her benefit. Just to set proper expectations for the likelihood of another cup. "I keep a tally, I think it was--forty-seven. Almost seven weeks." Saying it aloud, he's glad he's just empty, a kettle already poured and left to cool.

Jyn hears the shaking of the something and forces her gaze towards it. A periodic gleam of metal, flashing here and there. It takes her a few moments to realize that it's a tin he's holding, shaking. Seven weeks. Seven. There's a faint crackling inside of her chest as she realizes she may never make it out of here. And there's no explanation, no logical reason as to why she's here in the first place. Maybe it's to suffer, to pay back for all of the sins she committed in her (past) life? You don't defy the Empire and not expect to pay.

"If you'd rather not waste the tea, save it for the next couple of days," she says quietly, offering him an out. She's a woman who hasn't felt guilt all that often in her life, but taking something as small and simple as a tea bag from this stranger - who seems more like a wisp of a man than an actual human being - feels wrong. Selfish. Then again, that's what she is, isn't she? A selfish girl who led a group of people to their deaths, using her voice to rouse them to rebellion with nothing but her gut and instinct to go on.

"The only waste would be not drinking it," he says in reassurance, and he knows he's still alive, he's still a thinking and feeling thing that will carry on from today, because he musters a flicker of horror at how like his own mother he sounds.

Vault, Alderaan--she sounds European, and he clings to the fact of the tea to dig them out of their own silence. It falls like new layers of snow, compacting those below it--not a bad thing, not an awkward thing, but something to lift out of a moment at a time to stop ice from skinning the top. "There's a little sugar and honey, if you want to cut it with something."

"If you're sure, then," Jyn says, offering a silent nod in his direction. She knows to be gracious enough to accept something if it's given, but to at least protest once, in case it's being given out of obligation instead of generosity. No need to keep going in circles denying each other the ability to take and give, if that's what they truly want to do. The smile she offers him, small as it is, is a quiet thank you, without the utterance of a word.

"I'll take it as it is," she replies softly. She's never been one for indulging in sweets - not out of preference, really, but out of lack of choice. She scrounged for food, and for drink, and could only complain when she had neither. Even something like having tea feels a bit like an undeserved luxury. "I'm Jyn," she adds on as an afterthought, eyes falling back towards the stove, her hands absentmindedly rubbing against one another to generate heat.

She might later learn that Kira's name can be hard-won, but today he is scraped away inside, all guard set aside. As if he has no memory of himself, is completely occupied from maintaining that idea of a person, and just is. "Kira," he says, reaching to stop the ugly whistle of the boiled water, to heft the kettle and pour them a pair of bitter drinks.

He settles into the chair beside her, not minding her wet clothes against his back, the fire to his front, and hands the second drink over. "There are rooms upstairs, but I'm not sure if any are empty." Of what he is sure, is that he doesn't want to go hunting through them or finding Kate. He wants to drink his tea and go be horizontal until he passes out. "There's an unclaimed bed in my room, you can use it until you find something better."

The offer sits, simple and pragmatic enough between them, as he sips at the too-hot tea just to feel his tongue in his mouth. Mindless of himself doesn't let him be mindless of others: he is never mindless of others, never allowed to be separate from them, to have only his own feelings or point of view. She's a fairly slight woman in a strange place, full of strange faces, and whatever threat he doesn't pose might not be enough. Sighing, he aims it across the surface, blowing steam. "I share the other with a very quiet young man," he admits, for all that it's an admission of very little. "You don't really need to worry about either of us."

"Kira," Jyn replies, letting the name slosh around her mouth and mind. The rhyme of her mother's name with his isn't lost on Jyn, and the sadness she feels over the faint connection - and that's what it is, faint - settles on her chest and in her bones. She'll come back to it later, in the silence of night and solitude, to mourn the weight of what she no longer has. She knows, now, that this is not unique to her and her arrival here, in this strange place. She knows it's selfish to think that she's the only one who has mourned, or sat like a lifeless cage of what she was once. Still, this is her reality now - and it's hard to remember others when you're staring out from inside a glass body, trapped, yet tempted with the world around you.

She takes the drink, lets the warmth seep into her skin. It feels like a kiss, like the ones her father used to press against her forehead when he thought she was sleeping. She listens to his words, considers her options. Her mind is vague, empty and buzzing simultaneously, wanting to explode but wanting to collapse. The mention of a bed nearby is enticing, but even in her almost-catatonic state, she knows the risk of what that offer entails.

Her expression doesn't betray her inner conversation about it, though. Her eyes glaze over as they lose themselves to the quivering air above the stove, lips pressed against the heat of the mug in her hands. The steam licks her skin and leaves a trail of moisture in its wake. In any other circumstance, she would protest - she would barrel her way out the door. But, as it is, she isn't sure she even has the energy or the mental wherewithal to shove the tea down the length of her throat. A bed sounds good. Especially one that's close.

"That'd be fine," she finally replies, voice monotone and vacant. She's felt this exhaustion before; she knows that, if it's ever needed, she can fight off whoever might be foolish enough to attempt to hurt her.

Edited 2017-02-11 02:10 (UTC)

Sitting was a mistake: he remembers an intent to feed her and stares at his hands on the mug, his feet on the ground, the fire crackling behind its grate. He's in a warm trap, no will to gnaw his leg off to escape it, but who knows when she last ate before coming through. He hadn't eaten since they brought Ty back with a hole in his side, then picked at everything until Kate scolded him the morning after.

Back then he would have performed any level of normalcy to avoid talking about it. Now he just doesn't talk, nodding into the mug and sinking with her for long moments. When the silence closes, they're under its surface, and if he does not kick himself up and out of the chair, they might both drown. Its a rougher, louder sigh: he gets up like he's forty years older, a puttering old man dragging himself back to the counters and cupboards. He doesn't know what he'd do without Kate, without her weird Australian bread that baked out of nothing, and nothing for him to do with it but break off a piece and walk it back over to her. "Here," he says, putting it in her hand until the fingers close.

"There might be an egg, I'll fry it, the protein might keep you til tomorrow."

Jyn's already forgotten about the promise of food, so deep is her exhaustion and sorrow. She knows this is how someone breaks, how someone loses their footing on the world. She'd seen it before, under Saw: insurgents who attached to someone, got too close, then had them snatched away - often before their eyes or at their feet. The need to survive, slowly crumbling away, bit by bit, pound by pound, until there was nothing left to be lost.

How is it that she could feel so full by being so empty?

The shuffling next to her stirs her from her thoughts, from her vacancy. She doesn't let her eyes wander over towards him or the path he makes. She's trying to remember the survival list she'd made when she'd come out of the fountain. What was it again?

The feeling of something rough against her palm finally reels her in from where she'd lost herself just then. It's unlike anything she's seen before, but even she can determine that it's something to eat. The feel of it suddenly wakens her stomach, which sends a sharp, stabbing pain, reminding her that it's as empty as she feels.

"Are you sure?" she asks, eyes still tracing the hills and valleys of the food in her hand.

"No," he says, some of his self returning, like he exists in whatever chemical his muscles release to tell him that they hurt. "I gave you bread so I could snatch it out of your hands when you go to eat it, because I really want to teach you a lesson about being selfish to survive."

There's no bite behind the words, just a weariness that won't even let him roll his eyes, all of his energy going toward holding himself up on his two feet long enough to cook an egg. He should eat as well, if he's cooking, if he's going to fall into the bed and not know when next he'll get up, but he has no appetite. He remembers the inky quality of Ren's fingers, how they laid idly against the shell of his wrist when he fit a grip to the man's arms, and he tries not to think about dead men's eyes and hard boiled eggs, and how he might never eat again.

"We make a meal for everyone at least once a day, anything beyond that you usually have to catch and prepare yourself. I can't hunt, so I cook," he explains, wandering into the room he motioned her toward to check if anything remained in the basket. Just the one, this late in the day, but he carries it back to crack into the pan that never quite stops being greased, setting it to sizzle on the stove.

Jyn quietly takes the verbal beating, knowing that she brought it upon herself. Why did she find the need to question everything? Every kind word, or soft gaze, or helping hand? Why was the ability to trust so absent from her being?

She remembers the sound of her the blaster bolts from their guns, destined for her mother's body; the burning in her lungs as she made her way over mountain and valley to find the cave; the way she stopped learning the names of her fellow insurgents, knowing it'd be easier to exhale the loss like a breath. She remembers Codo, that night in the grotto, their naked bodies mingling in the tepid water, the look on his face when she refused his lips. The hurt in his eyes, the walls he began to construct to forever protect himself from girls like Jyn Erso. His silence, his refusal to let his eyes seek her out in the crowd, until Saw left her in a bunker with a blaster and food, and never came back.

Perhaps it isn't so strange, then, for Jyn to wait for the other face to appear, the one that takes and laughs as it leaves you a little bit emptier than before.

So instead of arguing or protesting, she brings the bread to her mouth and forces her teeth to sink into it, tear a piece of it off like an animal tears off flesh. Her jaw moves slowly, lethargically, but the taste of food on her tongue sends a spark through her body - waking her, slightly.

"What is there to catch here?" she asks, now switching off between the burning tea that's made her tongue go numb with its heat and the texture of doughy bread.

"Smaller things," he answers, only really knowing from what he's been handed to put in soups and stews. "Birds, rabbits, squirrels. There's a river with fish, but I grew up in a city, I've never learned to catch either." It seems the better thing to say than I've never killed anything, never knowing what that might mean to the person he's meeting. He still wonders if he disappointed Credence, unable to absolve him of that, even if he forgave.

It could be a dangerous thing as well, a weakness someone might exploit. He knows what nearly happened in that alley, and what would have happened in his apartment, if Ty hadn't intervened. There were good people here, providers, protectors, but he's lost two in as many months, and he's not going to invite the good or the bad, with that kind of vulnerability.

The egg sizzles up in the grease, bubbles at its edges, the clear fluid going white before he breaks the yolk into it and flips it over. In a compromise with himself, he gets another piece of bread instead of a plate, and cuts it in half: laying the egg over one, he hands it to her in full, and keeps the other, returning to his seat while the pan cools enough to put in the water. "We're planting things too, there are a lot of people arriving lately." The gifts in December had largely added to the food stores, but that had only been for the people they'd had: he's lost count of the arrivals since.

Jyn hadn't ever been taught to properly hunt or fish or seek the earth to fill her belly. She'd been forced to learn, out of necessity, though much of her survival was based on the purloining of items belonging to others. It's been a very long time, she thinks, since she's last slipped a handful of credits out of someone's pocket or stolen a glass mushroom to feed herself. Six years, somewhere around. It's not a life she wishes to return to, so she makes a promise with herself in her hazy state that she'll learn, properly, to live off the land.

"There are people who hunt and fish? Do you think they'd be willing to share the skill?" Might as well ask out right. She wouldn't be above simply following someone and observing for herself, but she knows it's more valuable to get instruction directly.

The second piece of bread surprises her, but she takes it all the same. A tiny nod of appreciation as she cradles it in her hands like a precious jewel. The smell wafts up, curling itself in her nostrils, drawing her mouth to the bread half before she can even process the movement. There's heat coming off the egg, but it doesn't matter - her hunger has taken over, and all she can think about is satiating the pain in her gut. She hopes it's one that can be filled, at least temporarily, with food.

"Really? More than in previous weeks?" she asks after she's had a chance to chew and swallow her bite.

"Someone will be," he assures her: it's a point brought up rather often, of late--who inherits a job when someone disappears, can everyone be trained to contribute. There was a young man who'd given him snares and fishing lines in the boxes of gifts, days after his own arrival, but he'd yet to find a teacher in their use.

It almost makes him laugh, now: he'd just dragged the body of a friend to await burial, and he's been afraid to find a wounded animal in a trap. Ren would despair for him, so unwilling to deal in death that he'd live on Kate's bread alone if he had to.

Maybe he'll give the snares to her, if she takes up the task. She might just to supplement her own diet, tearing into the food like this isn't the first day she's gone without it. He can only nibble at his own piece, chasing it with scalding sips of tea to soften the bread, spare him the energy of chewing. He has to conserve it for answering her questions, settling her in. "I was told when I arrived, there was a large group at first. More than one person in the fountain at a time, but I haven't heard of that since. There's no pattern to it we've caught, and you never--no one ever sees people coming out, we all just remember waking up at the bottom."

That's answer enough for her, which is signaled with another nod of the head. In a breath of a moment, the egg and bread have been devoured, their residual warmth still evaporating off her hands. It's left her somewhere between insatiably hungry and content, like her stomach can't be satisfied. She hasn't known hunger this deep since ..

The information makes Jyn retreat into her a mind for a few moments, needing to unwrap, examine, and inspect it. Large groups initially, multiple people in the fountain. No patterns to speak of. No one's seen anyone coming out of the fountain, so there's no explanation of how anyone ends up in it in the first place. She imagines there have been people staked out around it, waiting to capture the elusive moment of an arrival, but it's safe to assume there hasn't been success if it's been done. She imagines that Kira would've already told her if there had been.

"Does anyone ever leave?" she asks, eyes lost in the glow of the stove. "Alive?"

He's sitting forward in the chair, arms braced on thighs, mug held in front of him once his other hand is free of the bread. Chewing his way through the last bite, he looks down into the mug, his silhouette reflected in miniature against the fire's light.

"I don't really know," he admits, lifting the mug to drink, to wash the crumbs from his mouth and give himself another moment to consider the answer. There's nothing he wants to withhold from her, just--he has to talk about Ren. He doesn't know how to talk about Ren.

"We've had two deaths," is the easiest way to put it. "One from a creature, the other--the lightning storms. There were earthquakes that broke some of the buildings, and when I arrived it was so cold I almost froze. It's dangerous here, but, I don't think killing us is the point."

Which begs the question: what does he think is the point?

"Someone who died, he disappeared and came back. Others have disappeared but, we haven't seen them again. He didn't remember coming here or going home, so I can't say what happens to the people we lose. I don't--"

He licks his lips, quieting. He's afraid to speak too much of it, to voice an opinion that might somehow be heard and used against them later. "I don't think we arrive through the fountain. The bottom is solid, and the water doesn't heal injuries. I think they do something to us--drug us maybe, to keep us asleep, while they put us in clothes and heal us. Then they put us in the fountain when no one is around, and we wake up."

But I don't think killing us is the point.

Jyn's mind latches onto the sentiment, excavating it and exploring all of its curves and slopes for the deeper meaning, the clue she's missing. Surely, if simply bringing about their demise was the end-game, it would've happened already - but if death itself isn't the goal, then - is it the torment? The long, drawn-out game? Invisible overlords, pulling the strings to see how it all catastrophically, perhaps beautifully, collides, explodes on impact ..

When he falls silent, her eyes flick over to his face, the ghost of the flames transposed over his features. For a moment, he looks like a body on fire.

"Who's 'they'?" is all she can manage to ask. She can't let herself begin to unravel his other implications - how they could be hostages in a twisted version of house. She thinks back to the games she'd play on the fields on Lah'mu with her toys, now wondering if they'd felt the same sinking feeling in her stomach that she does when she determined their fates and destroyed their hypothetical lives. The strength of the realization is almost enough to force the egg and bread back up through her throat, but she swallows - breathes - manages to keep it down.

"Hey," he gentles, a steadying hand breaking from his form to hover at her elbow. The echo of nauseous fear would only grow stronger if he took hold, and he doesn't want to vomit for a third time today. The firelight dances shadows of his fingers up her sleeve, the intent of his touch reaching further than his physical hand. "You're alright," he murmurs, slowly closing his fingers as she steadies, drawing back into the space of his own perch, on his own chair.

He has another sip of his tea, trying to focus on the heat, the flavor, and give her a moment of her own in which to recover.

"We've found places in the canyon, equipment, ruins. New supplies appear for people in boxes, buildings were here before everyone arrived. No one's met any kind of overseer, but it kind of implies someone's doing this to us. Whatever it really is."

Jyn quickly waves a dismissive hand, not wanting to draw further attention - even if it's only from Kira. A moment of weakness, a moment of vulnerability. She can't spare those, not even for someone she barely knows. She attempts a nod, confirming his observation, though she knows it's mostly for her own sake than for the truth of it - "all right" is a fairly relative term now, and she's nowhere near it. But she latches onto the sentiment all the same, if it'll ground her. Even just a little.

She clears her throat, swallows the thick saliva pooled at the back of her tongue. Covers her mouth with her hand as the corners of her lips tug back into a strange sort of smile - a tactic to counteract the gag reflex. When had she learned such a ridiculous thing?, she wonders briefly.

"To what end? For the kriff of it?" The words shoot out of her mouth like venom, not directed at Kira, of course, but for whoever - whatever - might be listening.

"If by kriff you mean fuck, then--hopefully, I guess." Manhattan had been someone's ant farm, the outbreak introduced to watch everyone scatter and die in a grid of streets and subway tunnels. Someone had made the virus on purpose, panted it, planned for it. And it had something to do with the shop, with his mother's building, and he wondered if it wouldn't be stolen from her entirely in the aftermath. If it would even still be standing.

There had been entire branches of family trees living in that building--other psychics, other immigrants, students who had left everything for the sake of a better education. She could have done anything with that building, charged outrageously for the location, but she had only ever built and maintained her own community. Only ever wished her son could live to maintain it as she aged.

Someone had taken it from her, and someone else had taken her son, and he could only hope it was for the fuck of it and not some darker purpose. "At least if it's for entertainment, it's a lot less work on my part."

"Not sure what 'fuck' means, but - it sounds like the sentiment is the same, yes," Jyn replies, tucking this new word into the back of her mind. She lets them both stew in mutually respected silence, her eyes wandering between the gentle glow of the fire. It feels nice, she thinks - despite everything, despite all that's happened - to be able to sit here in the company of another person, existing in quiet. Parallel lines, travelling along beside one another with no intention or need to intersect - able to acknowledge and respect each other's paths for what they are, expect no more or less of them.

It's the one thing that's made her feel a bit warmer, amidst the cold.

"What do you mean?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I've Got a Bad Feeling About This - OTA

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idk why i didn't get a notif for this???? SORRY

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