I've Got a Bad Feeling About This - OTA

[kestreldawn]

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.

Comments

[kestreldawn]

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.

[3ofswords]

"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.

[kestreldawn]

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.

[3ofswords]

"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."

[kestreldawn]

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?"

[3ofswords]

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."

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

[kestreldawn]

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.

[3ofswords]

"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."

[kestreldawn]

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.

[3ofswords]

"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."

[kestreldawn]

"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?"