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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Where are the pods located?" Jyn's been tucking all the information away in the vault at the back of her mind, the one once used to house the anger and hatred she'd felt for various people throughout her life. The one used to contain the few happy memories of her childhood. Now, it seems, it'd be better suited to information about the town - possible escape - possible explanation. She'd evacuated the remnants of anger and hatred long ago, anyway.

Her eyes squint slightly in consideration.

"Anything I could help with?"

"The one best accessed would likely be in the canyons," she says, though she'll need to equip themselves with weapons for that one, given the troubles that had occurred with regards to the monster that had been lurking out there. As to the 'personal matter', Peggy grimaces mildly. "I'm afraid that unless you know a way to stop a person from actively freezing the immediate area around her as if by magic, we're out of luck when it comes to helping."

"Is there any sort of map? Has anyone tracked what they've discovered?" If not, she thinks, she can simply start mapping out the basics herself; it wouldn't be all that difficult, though it's more the complication of where to find - whatever it is they might use her for cartography. She has a feeling that the data pads she's used to won't magically appear here.

"- Freezing? What do you mean? Ice coming out of your fingers?"

"There are maps drawn," Peggy can confirm, not only because she had contributed to one herself, but Jo and some of the others had been fastidious about doing that when they had arrived. "Actually, I had someone quite familiar with mapmaking help me in creating mine. His name is Killian, he did a fine job," Peggy praises.

"And yes, unfortunately, I appear to have contracted a strange ability to freeze at the touch," she notes with displeasure. "One hopes it will pass, as would a cold."

"Is this Killian person still here?" Jyn asks, realizing after the fact that it might be a sore subject to bring up in such a simplistic fashion, in case he .. isn't. "Are they readily available? I'd like to have the opportunity to study them, in preparation for whenever we end up going out together to do our own expedition." She doesn't mean to hurl so many questions at Peggy, but having this - having something proactive to focus on keeps the demons, the shadows at bay. At least for now, at least for a little while. It's a nice reprieve.

Her eyebrows stitch together, glancing back down towards the woman's gloved hands.

"No explanation as to how?" She pauses, thinking. "It could be something you could harness to your advantage - quite a powerful weapon, I would think."

"He is, yes," Peggy confirms, having seen him in passing. "I can lend you the maps," she says, because while they had been done for her personally, she's added to them enough that she doesn't mind them becoming a communal resource provided no one decides to up and run away with them under her nose.

"Unless my enemies were rather weak against the cold, I would have to freeze them to death. It seems a slow death," she says, a troubled furrow on her brow, "not to mention that as far as enemies go, whatever ones that might be here never reveal themselves. I'd very much like to show them my displeasure, but they never give me the opportunity."

"That'd be - helpful," Jyn replies, voice soft and appreciative. "It'll ensure that I'm well-versed and well-studied when we set out. Planning in advance is a luxury that isn't always afforded, but - if it can be done, it helps a great deal. I will be sure to return them, once I've had some time with them - of course, you can always come retrieve them should you need them some time before that."

"Cold is always underestimated in the damage it can do; it doesn't contain the same ferocity or brilliance as fire, say, but it can cause great destruction if given the opportunity." Not that Jyn's into taking things out on innocent bystanders, of course. "Do you think you have any here? Or - oh, you mean, whoever - or whatever - brought you here."

"I've made my own notes on them, so if you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them." Perhaps Peggy needs to be sourcing information more frequently than she currently is, but she'd always tried to keep other people out of it, primarily because after what happened with Colleen, she's not sure she could bear to be the cause of someone else's death. Even now, she bears guilt for poor Mrs. Jarvis' state, because Mr. Jarvis was right - everyone around her does seem to die.

"I've my fair share of enemies no matter where I go," Peggy says with a sigh. "Unfortunately, I spent the war fighting against people who had a view of the world that was very different from others. It was one that couldn't be tolerated."

"I'll be sure to come with you should I require any sort of clarification," Jyn responds, words purposeful and succinct, as she nods her head in appreciation and acknowledgement. While she doesn't wish for anyone to stay in this place against their will, there's a tiny part of her that's grateful that she's met someone like Peggy - someone who's been here longer, who's learnt the proverbial ropes. Someone who can guide and instruct, mentor.

"Sounds hauntingly and unfortunately similar to the war I was in," she replies somberly. "The Empire wanted to maintain and demand order - through terror and intimidation. Execution, destruction."

"Yes," Peggy agrees quietly. "They were Hydra, or the Reich, but they had similar goals," she says, wondering if there's any way to actually defeat that sort of enemy or if Hydra had it right, in that you could only cut one head off and expect another three to rise. Perhaps there will be no defeating that evil because it lingers in the hearts of greedy, selfish people.

"I'm happy to report there isn't anything like that here," she allows, "but what we face is an unseen menace that seeks to control our lives, restrict us from escaping."

"There will always be small men at the heart of something destructive like that," Jyn seethes quietly, images of the Man in White flashing through her mind. She couldn't know whether or not the Death Star plans had reached their destination outside of the receiver of the transmission. She couldn't know whether it had been destroyed, but she could hope - deeply, purely - that it had been. She falls quiet for a few moments, consider the woman, her gloved hands, the glass in her own. "Where would you go, if you could escape?"

"Home," she says, "rather, the home I had only been starting to cultivate." Home with the Jarvises and with Howard lurking at the periphery. Sousa and her, working whatever cases she could with the respect of a man who believed in her convictions. Perhaps it wouldn't be forever (LA did have an obnoxious heat), but at the same time, it had been kind and welcoming to her.

"And you? If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?" Peggy wonders. "I don't think my map will show you that way, but perhaps we might look for it."

Jyn nods minutely at the woman's answer; it's what she had been expecting. Of course, isn't that where the average person would want to return to, if they'd found themselves here? Family, a network of friends, a house that was theirs, full of meaningful mementos and memories. Her eyes are lost in the residual liquid of her glass when the question she'd been expecting leaves Peggy's mouth; it makes her flinch all the same.

She doesn't answer right away, unsure of how - unsure of how to convey all that it is that's swirling, storming inside of her. How does one return home if there's no home to be had?

"I'm not sure," she replies, voice barely above a whisper. "I've no family left, where I come from. No home planet." The only place she'd even managed to find a glimpse of what home could have been like hadn't been a physical location at all - it had been in a person, in Cassian. And he was supposed to have perished with her on the beach. She supposes she could return to the Alliance, continue to fight for them and in their name against the Empire (though she hopes there's no Empire to speak of, if the Death Star had been destroyed). She supposes she could return to life as a criminal, though it wouldn't be her ideal. Come up with another name, another story - start over entirely. But how? How could she forget what she'd found in Cassian? Pretend as though it hadn't existed, as though he hadn't existed?

She glances up, offers a twitch of a smile as though to soothe whatever concerns Peggy might have had.

"I'm open to suggestions."

"When in doubt, I always enjoyed the privacy of a stiff drink and utter privacy in which to enjoy it and reflect," she admits, thinking of the many times she had found herself on a fork in the woods, deciding what path to take into her future. "Are there any friends?" she suggests, because Peggy had left her own family behind and hadn't looked back, not able to bear their presence after Michael's death.

"Perhaps someone romantic in your life that you're interested in?" It's not the first thing she would ever suggest, but when thinking about home, now, she can't imagine that she would ever feel settled and done until she had someone she could trust to fight at her side, or back to back.

OOC: Of course, Jyn and Cassian have since been reunited, but at this point, Jyn doesn't know he's here ;)

"That doesn't sound half bad," Jyn replies somewhat bitterly, snorting lightly. The bitterness is, of course, not directed at Peggy - who has shown her nothing but kindness and generosity - but rather herself. Her life. Or what it had been. She knows the hands she'd been dealt had not been her fault - there was no way to control all of the events that happened after Lah'mu - but still, she can't help but feel some residual anger towards it all. Just a little.

"Friends?" Her voice is full of genuine surprise, gaze lifting to Peggy's face. Her eyes flinch again before she offers a shake of her head. "My life was not very .. conducive, to the art of making friends." Even the Rogue One team, the ones she'd trusted with her very life, hadn't really known each other for longer than a matter of days. She'd known vague, basic information on them all - Bodhi was a defector from the Empire, brilliantly smart and endlessly anxious; Chirrut and Baze had been Guardians of the Whills, until there was nothing left to protect; K2 had been an Imperial droid reprogrammed by Cassian, impossibly irritating at first but beautifully self-sacrificing in the end; and Cassian .. Well, she couldn't let herself think of Cassian. Not yet. It's when the image of his face floats into her mind's eye that Peggy asks about romance, almost on cue. It snaps Jyn's attention to Peggy's face - this time, alight with the hint of fear. Could Peggy read her mind somehow?

She abruptly stands from the chair, placing the glass down on the seat of it.

"No, there's - no," she says, making a motion to leave.

"Perhaps not friends, then. Allies?" Peggy has her fair share of people that she hadn't called friends for some time, but trusted them with her life until they could become friends. There was also always that fear that in a war, making friends would only inevitably lead to loss and grief, which is why Peggy had distanced herself from allowing those deep connections, for a time.

She arches her brow and watches the way she tries to leave, somehow caught off guard by the sudden need to run. "Have I touched a nerve?" she asks, not teasing or cruel, but simply a question that she hopes to get an answer to.

"There were some, but -" Jyn stops herself, setting her jaw, clenching her fists to keep herself collected. Or, at least, as collected as she can manage. "They died, with me. When I was supposed to have died. I don't know if - if the light took them all the way it took me, but - they died with me." She pauses, eyes closing for a moment to gather herself, before she utters, "Because of me."

Jyn's hand steadies herself on the back of her chair, her head spinning and buzzing like a faltering engine. It's obvious enough that Peggy has touched upon a subject Jyn would rather not speak of - and the forlorn look in her eyes when she seeks out the woman's face conveys that.

"You've - you've been very hospitable, very generous," she starts, unable to finish her sentence. If she could, it would have been, but please don't make me talk about him.

Peggy isn't entirely sure that she understands why she's apparently been lucky enough to be one of the few who hadn't died before she'd come here. There had been times, on the Whitney Frost case, but she'd come here at a time of peace. So either she had died before that and been in heaven and now she's been shuttled to hell (or purgatory, rather), or a person's state of life doesn't actually matter.

"I won't intrude any longer, if you'd like to settle in," Peggy says, offering Jyn an out, trying not to be rude by prodding too hard at open wounds.

Jyn's fingers grip tightly onto the back of the chair, her skin turning white at the pressure. Her lips follow suit, flattening themselves into a purse line, jaw flexing underneath the thin canvas of her skin. She stays quiet for a few moments, studying Peggy's face - looking for hints of deception, for hints of pity, for hints of anything that might convince Jyn to stop herself from speaking.

But she finds none of those things.

Only concern, only genuine sympathy.

She isn't sure if that's better or worse.

"You aren't -" She exhales a huff. "It's - He was there, before I ended up here. We - we died together."

Sometimes, Peggy wonders if she shouldn't have been on the Valkyrie with Steve, in order to do better or to prevent it from going down. Sometimes, she wonders if the pain would have been easier, but then she never would have allowed herself to feel all new things with Daniel, so she knows that while it's hard to see past the pain, it's worth it.

"I'm sorry to hear that," she says. "I lost someone like that, as well." She's lost plenty more people, but only one so far that she'd been in love with. She doesn't tell Jyn that it gets better, only because Peggy knows how poorly that will be taken.

"And you're still in one piece," Jyn murmurs in reply, before her eyes float down to the woman's gloved hands. "And even got some new abilities." Her voice is weaker than it has been since they've been talking, the exhaustion of trying to tamp down her emotions at the thought of Cassian now starting to take over. It'd be easier, she knows, to just let it all out; just talk about it, air out her grievances, mourn him the way she wants to. But she can't - not yet, and not in front of a stranger. Even if she has been kind. "I guess that has to count for something."

"I assure you, if I could somehow abandon these abilities," Peggy says, because her inability to get warm has been one of the more frustrating aspects of her life recently. She would happily take the lie detection over this, is something that she's learning. "It's not all bad, but it's certainly not the place I would want to stay in and make my home. I'm sure you'll feel similar, eventually."

Then again, perhaps the girl has nowhere else to go. Peggy supposes that might make things somewhat different.

"That's the thing," Jyn replies quietly, removing the glass from the seat of the chair and plopping herself back down, gaze at her hands and the glass as she twirls it in her fingers. "When you don't have a home to go back to, this place feels sort of -" She pauses, biting her lip lightly. "Too good to be true." She exhales a puff of bitter air and rises and lifts her shoulders lazily. "Even if everything's being controlled by a group of omniscient, kriffed up beings somewhere - it's still more peaceful here than it ever was where I came from."

Peggy hasn't thought about it like that, which is her own failing. She wishes that she'd not put her foot in her mouth so much, but she knows she can prevent things from becoming worse. "I don't want to ruin it for you, if you do like it. Honestly, it's the choice of the matter. Us being stuck here," she says, "it's not our choice. If you want to stay, then I would never force anything else. It's not something I'd want, though."

"Of course - choice is what it all comes down to, in the end." The choice to survive, the choice to surrender, the choice to retreat, the choice to push forward, the choice to sacrifice one's self to a suicide mission. It's all life was, she supposes - a matter of choices, one after the next, and the consequences of those decisions. She isn't sure if being here is a punishment or a reward. Part of her is inclined to lean towards the latter, but even that thinking is a little too hopeful for Jyn's liking.

"Understandable. It sounds like you've a life - a good life - to return to. What's the first thing you'll do? When you return?"

I've Got a Bad Feeling About This - OTA

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