Mi corazón te abrí, desde entonces llevo el cielo dentro de mí [closed]

[candor1]

WHO: Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor; with cameo by Finnick Odair!
WHERE: Cabin 56
WHEN: February 6, later that night, directly out of this.
OPEN TO: Jyn, Cassian, not enough o' Finnick [Thank you again, JK, for letting us rope him in!]
WARNINGS: …we're not planning in advance where this will go, but we're also not ruling anything out…? Update: Nope, yep, smutalert.
STATUS: CLOSED. /collapses in happy tears/ Sequel coming soon!!!

He didn't think he would. He'd tried a few times to reject it.

But obviously, some part of him had decided to survive.

Which, among other requirements… meant he couldn't keep hanging on to the hope.

Rebellions are—
(Shh. I know. That's the point. Here, the only thing you're rebelling against, now…

is that you survived.


You have to stop.)

A hope he could fight for had been his whole life. He'd been willing to die for it. He'd also been willing, which was far harder, to live for it. This hope, which he could no more have controlled but been helpless even to serve, had only made him want to die.

When almost everything else he swore he'd never do had ended up done, all other beliefs compromised or sacrificed or betrayed, the one he'd held onto was that he would only give himself so wholly to a cause that was worth it.

This wasn't worth it.


She had been worth it.

But hoping for her to miraculously appear here, not necessarily because she'd want it, only for his own self-serving sake… that wasn't worthy of either of them. Even if his dying for it would actually serve it in any way. Which, it wouldn't.

So stop.

..
So. Despite time after time finding himself near the fountain, sprinting to it every time someone arrived, forcing down his renewed grief and self-disgust so he could help them even when they weren't her, and thus being there to greet almost every new arrival since his own…

…he wasn't there now.

He didn't know it when she did arrive.

..
He had finally—after a month of resisting it, of choosing instead to bivouac despite the conditions making that insane—set foot in one of the empty, small cabins. Compared to the only spaces he'd had entirely to himself in twenty years—a ship's cockpit or cabin, most personnel-free holds, a barracks bunk, the officer's quarters he'd been given at Massassi Base that he so rarely had stayed in—the cabin was… capacious. He could have comfortably shared it with Kay. Or a few team members. …He couldn't (shouldn't) quite imagine anything more domestic.

But… his head was still bandaged. His hand moreso. His arm still in sling. If he wanted a chance of regaining full function of his hand—which wasn't a prerequisite but would be a good barometer of intent that he did want to be of use to others again—he would follow his "doctor"'s orders.

Return to basics. Secure shelter.

Survive.


And someone agreed with him. In the otherwise unfurnished space, there were two boxes on the table, labeled with his name.

He wasn't sure what he felt. It wasn't quite surprise.

More to respect Rory's work than preventing pain, he kept his bandaged right hand out of it, and managed to open the boxes only with his left. In shorter order, he'd methodically set out a pocketknife, and flint and steel. They were more primitive than the most basic survival tools he'd typically have on him at all times, hidden in a pocket or his boot. They were the most valuable gifts he'd probably ever received.

It would have been easier with his right hand, but (not strictly for situations like this) he'd learned to use the left well enough; to pick up the knife, one-handedly flick open several of its blades, do a toss, a flip, and several flashes of quick moves and maneuvers. Shutting it again, he secreted it into his (newly washed—thank you again, hospital and inn—) clothes. The flint and steel were harder. Still, there were already a few logs in the fireplace (leftovers from a previous inhabitant, or another housewarming gift). And the boxes the gifts had come in were of a material that would be nontoxic for kindling. So, to make sure he could, and as a declaration of claim on this place to anyone outside and to himself, he opened the flue and lit a fire.

Cassian stood before it for a while, watching it claim a foothold on existence, spread to more vibrant life, and send its smoke up into the world.

This is real.

I wanted to die with Jyn on Scarif.

Kay did.

I'm here.

And I'm staying.





Goodbye, Jyn.

* * *
So when he hears the front door open, and turns to see a fully alive Jyn Erso standing in it…

Cassian naturally assumes he's hallucinating.

Comments

[kestreldawn]

They searched the cabins. They started in the west, the area closest to the fountain. Jyn started shivering after the second one, the heat from the ember of hope she'd been so desperately clutching beginning to fade. Finnick assured her that Cassian was here - he'd seen him, he'd talked to him - and yet, the self-protective part of Jyn, the one that hardened like armor and deflected like a lightsaber, was digging its claws into her heart. What if they couldn't find him? What if he'd somehow disappeared? Surely, it would've been just as easy to have vanished as it was to have arrived here, no explanation, no logic?

What if Finnick had been lying?

No, that much she knew to be untrue. She had seen it in his eyes - the unmistakable flicker of recognition, mixed with that darker shadow she hadn't been able to place. It looked like regret, like fear. But what that meant in the context of Jyn, and of Cassian, she was unsure.

Her body is uncontrollably shaking now, both from the tidal wave of adrenaline that keeps pushing her forward, combined with the clothes stuck to her skin, still wet from her exit from the fountain. She can feel tightness in her chest, the weight as something unwanted develops in the lungs and in the airways. She knows she will probably fall ill, if not the next day that perhaps the day after. She knows she should have heeded Finnick's advice to change into the dry clothes on her back, still shoved into the tiny pack that'd mysteriously appeared, but the threat of illness means nothing if there's the promise of Cassian.

When she reaches the next door, she reaches her hand out, then withdraws. What if this is another empty cabin? Or one filled with a life that isn't his? What if it's missing his scent, his voice, his beating heart? Each disappointment has chipped away her, her spirit. And yet ..

The door flings open. She cares not for manners and protocol.

Eyes blink, blink, blink, adjusting to the dimness. Dark hair, a body that resembles him. The dull thud of her heart echoes in her ears, her head. She can feel the vibrations against her breast as he turns, as though slowed by fear and time.

His eyes.

She sees them - she knows them - in the breath of an instant. A sound escapes her; it sounds like grief and joy and love and death entwined together like a bouquet. Her hand to her mouth, her vision blurred by tears.

"Cassian?" She isn't sure if the words, the sound even leaves her mouth. If he can hear them, they're nothing more than a whisper, drenched in fear that this, like every other vision she's had of him, will shatter when she wakes.

[candor1]

(Finnick might be metres behind Jyn, directly behind her, looking in the window, standing smack dab between them, or rappelling down from the ceiling. All of Cassian's exhaustively immaculate situational awareness, detail orientation, and motion-sensitivity is blasted six ways to hell. He can only see her.)

For a few moments, he stands shock still. Like a droid switched off, or a man who'd been hiding behind a rock and didn't notice when the rock picked itself up and rolled away, or…

At last, a movement: voicelessly, his mouth forming the question— Jyn?

He couldn't tell which of them, first or at all, moved. Or if space-/time- itself selectively folded. To instantaneously eliminate the distance between them.

[kestreldawn]

"Cassian," Jyn echoes, repeats. She can't stop saying it, can't stop feeling the way her tongue slips around its curves, can't stop relishing in the way it makes her feel. It'd been a prayer, for her. A mantra. Something to keep her moving, keep her breathing. She'd repeated it, over and over and over, as they searched the cabins, they searched the woods, they searched what felt like the whole damn town.

But now -

Now it was more than a combination of sounds, of letters. It was more than the prayer she carried in her heart, on her tongue. It was more than all of that.

It was him, standing there - there - in front of her. The man she'd surrendered herself over to, the man she'd dreamt of those last moments on Scarif. He was the future she'd seen, the future that had been taken.

"Cassian," she says again, this time her voice cracking by the time it's climbed the peak of it, the burn of tears oozing down her face like lava. Her arms curl around him, clutch onto him, finding comfort in the familiarity of it all. The sounds escaping her now are unadulterated sobs, and to someone who was not the man pressed against her, it would sound like sorrow. But to him, he would know the truth. "You're here," she whimpers, burying her face in the crook of his neck, allowing her lungs to breathe in the scent of him.

[candor1]

Some vital parts of him had stayed with her when whichever one of them had been ripped away.

Maybe she'd felt the same way…

Because they hold on so tight right now, like they're trying to pull the other inside—put themselves back together.

don't go don't go again don't ever go

His breathing is ragged too, but he doesn't cry… with whatever consciousness he still has, he matches her breaths to be an anchor; see if he can slow their breathing for them both.

He's forgotten his bandages until, through them, he can't feel her back against his palm. Which also makes him realize that somewhere in there, to throw his arm around her, he must have snapped the sling. He doesn't care.

He manages to think outside this moment enough to not rip the bandages off his hand.

Just uses the unbandaged one to hold the back of her head, slip four fingers in her hair, trace his thumb along her face.

"I'm here," he whispers back, not sure which of them that's to reassure; more to hear himself speak aloud… because his own voice always sounds different to his ears when he dreams; while hers has always been the same…

[kestreldawn]

The fabric against his body feels different than she remembers - it's such a minor thing to think of, to realize, but it's something to pull her own of the maelstrom wreaking beautiful havoc inside of her. There's something here that feels like those last moments, watching the sky, the earth burn brighter than any sun she'd seen. The desperation in their muscles, the tears on her face, the syncing of heartbeats.

Something in her hears him breathing, matches the speed, though her breaths are still punctuated with staccato sobs and even laughs, so absurd is everything around them.

Her skin feels like fire underneath his touch. It singes her hair, her lips, her body. There is no part of her that's left unscathed. It feels like rebirth and rejuvenation, found in the gentle skimming of skin against skin. She wonders if this is what it feels like, to be born.

She pulls away from him, loosens her arms around his body with a regretful groan, but she needs to see him. She needs his eyes - those dark, dark pools she could've died in, happily. She hadn't time to explore them - explore him - like she'd wanted. There hadn't been time for them.

A hand reaches up, barely skates across his cheek. There's still a fear that if she moves too quickly, grips too hard, he will crumble like dust in her hand. She comes out of herself enough to see the bandage on his head, and her brows fall, stitching together at the sight of it.

"You're hurt," she whispers, as though revealing a secret meant for the two of them.

[candor1]

His hand slips through her hair as she moves, not trying to hold her in place; hovers a moment in the air, then gently cups her face when given the permission of her hand doing the same to him.

"You're not," he says, grateful for it, wondering at it… and a bit afraid of it.

This can't be real. How is this…?

His eyes move rapidly over every part of her, looking for the tell, for the detail that doesn't fit.

And so focused, Cassian finally catches sight of Finnick.

[fishermansweater]

He doesn't really have a place here. This is for Jyn, and Cassian. But he also suspects that his presence will barely matter to either of them. If he'd read Cassian right, if he feels what Jyn feels, Finnick will be irrelevant to them the instant they see each other. He knows that, in his own way. Because he knows what it's like when he returns from the Capitol, pride shattered and ground away to nothing, self stripped away until he's no more than Snow's orders made him, an empty plaything for the Capitol to use as it wishes. When there's nothing left but the desperate need to find Annie, to hold her, curl himself around her until he can remember who he is.

He knows how, in those moods, once he's found her, there is nothing else in the world but Annie and him and his misery and the way she's the only thing that can ever soothe it away. He knows the need that gnaws at him until he's with her, not a need for anything, just a need to be there, with her.

He doesn't expect Cassian or Jyn to see him once they've seen each other. But. He wants to see this. To know that he'd been right about them. To know this, at least, is true, and can add to what Annie had told him, what they'd seen that day out by the waterfall. He needs to know if this is real to know if Cassian can be trusted.

(It's so real. That much is obvious the moment Cassian sees her. He knows that embrace, clinging on so hard that the world doesn't matter.)

He needs to see it. To know that, somehow, this happened, that they could be brought together like this, no matter how impossible they thought it was.

So he stays, and he's still there when Cassian starts looking at the world around him again. When those dark eyes find Finnick, standing back in the green-lit night. Finnick only meets his eyes for a moment before he looks away, unsure he trusts himself to look any longer.

"She turned up."

Cassian had asked him, when they'd first met, if there were any chance the person he'd been with could be here. There's a chance, Finnick had told him. A chance she could turn up, and he's so glad that she did that it's almost enough to override the instincts that have made him avoid Cassian whenever he could since then.

Almost.

[candor1]

That was enough to dispel Cassian's questions. —Not the everpresent important ones, of course—how they'd arrived, why the discrepancy in times, possible dimensional complications, relationship to their original space—but at least the ones that had most threatened the internal logic of this setting—How did you find me, how did you know to look…?

It may really not be a dream.

And though Finnick looks away, Cassian's black eyes have enough of a chance to search those seadeep green ones—also recalling that conversation—

Finnick was a man who would show mercy in respect for, defense of, the forces of—

—that possible future consequence be kriffed, Cassian would accept this as real for as long as he damn well could.

In other circumstances, Cassian would (and might later) cross to the door, to give Finnick… maybe not a hug, but perhaps a touch on the shoulder… something more than the look in his eyes from over the top of Jyn's head.

But he knows Finnick will understand that Cassian can't remove himself from her just yet.

And the look is more than Cassian thinks. Night sky revering the ocean. Both reflecting each other.

His arms tightening briefly around Jyn, Cassian says quietly to Finnick, "Thank you."

[kestreldawn]

There's a part of Jyn that runs cold, shivers when the embers behind Cassian's eyes leave her, his gaze so warm and inviting. She twists her neck to see what's taken his attention. She hadn't forgotten about Finnick, not really, but the world around them, this innocent bystander included, had certainly vanished the moment Cassian appeared. Her gaze softens, then, at the sight of the young man who'd gone great lengths to help her - without knowing her, without even being able to trust in her words. The man who did everything he could have done in those panicked moments to earn her trust, who gave her hope.

She can feel the hesitation in Cassian's grip, the underlying desire to impart some kind of affection on the man. Jyn's fingers twitch with the same desire, but instead of releasing, they find themselves curling tighter around Cassian's arm. She can't let go - not after what happened. She fears, somewhere in her mind, that she may never be able to again.

Surely, there were worse things in the world.

Later, when the shock and the exhaustion and the joy has had a chance to settle, when the winds inside of their cavernous ribs have begun to quiet themselves down, when she's within the safety of his arms again - the safest place she's ever known - perhaps they can talk about him. Talk about how to thank him, how to repay the kindness he bestowed upon Jyn (if not Cassian, too, though she can't know those details yet).

The words of thanks never leave her mouth - though they ought to, in this instance. It's like speaking a foreign tongue, movements that she cannot quite comprehend nor force her tongue to make. Her lips twitch, wanting to echo what Cassian has said. Instead, she lets her eyes burn into his face, wait until she can capture his gaze - and nods, slowly, her eyes full of light for the first time that evening.

[fishermansweater]

Finnick nods, because it's all he really needs to say to them. He's not the important thing here and he knows it. And he hopes he's done some part to ease the worn-out desolation that he'd recognized in Cassian.

Not that he expects it to be that simple. It isn't for him: even with Annie, he's still had so many times when he just wanted everything to stop that he knows even love doesn't fix despair, though it can be enough to keep it at bay.

He'd seen the look in Cassian's eyes before he'd looked away, that brightness that could as well as anything be a mirror to Finnick's own feelings for Annie. And there's something fierce, defiant, there too, something that Finnick only recognizes because he knows what it is to love against the will of the world, though everything turns against it. He knows the cost of that sort of love, but he also knows it's worth it.

Everything he'd done was worth it just for the look in Jyn's eyes when she turns her head, following Cassian's gaze towards Finnick. All the anger and fear and misery that had been in her expression are gone, washed clean by Cassian's presence.

So Finnick knows that there's nothing more either of them can say, or do, for now. And it doesn't matter. He hadn't helped Jyn for any thought of gratitude or benefit for himself. He'd helped her because he had to, because he can't stand in the way of a love that defies death, defies even this place where they're all imprisoned.

He just nods, gives a brief twitch of a smile, and heads away, in the opposite direction to his and Annie's house, which is so very close to where he'd found Cassian. He'll circle around later, but, that habit of caution still stands.

[candor1]

As the door swings closed behind Finnick…

…opposite to what should happen—you would think a closed door would bring security, solitude…

…instead, somehow, the worlds come rushing back.

Kafrene Yavin Jedha Eadu Yavin Scarif Canyon

The whole of his relationship with Jyn floods Cassian's senses, with such vividness it overwhelms his awareness of now.

Jyn monumentally self-possessed, a bit defiant, at the tactical deck, turning her glare from Draven to Mon Mothma to himself
Jyn looking up at him unreadably in the Y-wing cabin, utterly disarming his protocols and self-preservation and command with four words of utmost simplicity: trust goes both ways
Jyn not just defying but ignoring him to run out into the middle of a firefight to catch a screaming child into her arms
Jyn taking out a whole squadron of stormtroopers with a close-quarters analog weapon—and, in more striking still, actually looking horrified when she shoots a droid that looks like Kay
Jyn shoving him to the ground and shielding him with her body from an exploding bomb
Jyn shouting over the insurgents' blows and collection of languages: Anyone who kills me or my friends will answer to Saw Gerrera! —and despite having just been struck to his knees from behind, Cassian realizing wryly that he'd just told her we're not here to make friends, and, simultaneously, how long it's been since he's been included in such a verbalization
Jyn on the floor, face a mask of tears and abject shock, body bowed as he couldn't have imagined until that moment, looking so young and small, kneeling in the shuddering doom of Gerrera's fort, looking up when Cassian grabs her arm, finally—after Gerrera yelled at her to—letting Cassian take her hand, to run from the shattering planet…
Jyn kneeling again, not tears this time but rain, not shock but screaming rebellion of this outcome, resisting Cassian as he tried to pull her off Galen Erso's body but finally stumbling into his arms
Jyn, half a head shorter than him, somehow nevertheless staring him down with her eyes and face like ice and her words colder still— you lied to me you went up there to kill my father i'll bet you have you might as well be a stormtrooper
Jyn taking on the entire Allied Council, centered and calm but made of shaking quantum strings with the force of her rightness though Cassian left before he had to watch them betray themselves by falling short of her power and truth
The way Jyn looked at him when he stood before her with every agent he'd gathered behind him to lay at her feet and spoke words he'd never allowed himself even to think and irrevocably turned away from everything else in his life
Jyn's eyes when he said welcome home
Jyn's eyes when he screamed Kay's name for the last time
Jyn's voice when he fell from the datacore
Jyn's eyes when he shot the man in white
Jyn's wiretaut, furytrembling form when he held her back from wasting her last moments on the man in white
Jyn's eyes in the elevator
Jyn's arms holding him until he couldn't any more
Jyn's eyes when he said what were supposed to have been his last words
Jyn's hand in his
Jyn's body against him

the white light

And the progression releases him with a gasp, to return to himself… to feel Jyn again in his arms.

Wet and cold and shivering.

He instantly takes a step back, for the briefest of unnecessary visual confirmations—while silently and graphically cursing himself in six languages. Of course, she just arrived through the water…—
and drew her with him, his hands on her upper arms, toward the crackling fireplace. "You're freezing. Here… you should have a pack with dry clothes…"

He hadn't even been to any of the other rooms in this house yet to see if it came furnished with such a thing as blankets. Between the fire, her dry clothes and his spare ones… or perhaps he should take her to the hospital or inn…

[kestreldawn]

Jyn's breathing has slowed considerably, calmed in the presence and the arms of Cassian, a mystic of the tempests that had been raging, burning, destroying inside of her. Her arms find their way around his torso again, her nose and lips tapping lightly against the front of his shoulder. Her eyes close, she breathes him in. She can feel the siren song of their heartbeats, calling out to one another, exuberant in having found their match again. The fragments and slivers of what had remained of her heart are finding their way back together, with his to help it along.

There's stillness beneath the paper of his skin, the blanket of his clothing - she wonders what he might be thinking. She wonders if it's the same as what's vibrating in her own skull.

She thinks, remembers the first time she'd seen him. The defiance in his eyes, the way he looked at her with suspicion bordering on disgust. The way she'd reflected it back to him, unmoved and unimpressed by the man everyone called Captain. She remembers the fury in her soul when she'd discovered his plan to kill her father, but how - on Jedha, on Eadu - he'd been there to save her. To pull her away and out of her grief as she mourned the only two men she could've ever called father. The touch of his fingers against her wrist, her arm. The urgency in his pull.

It feels like too much - too much to process, too much to understand, too much to think that, despite everything - despite death, and Scarif, and the Death Star - despite all of that, they were here.

Together.

The familiar whisper attached to shadow begins to creep into her mind like smoke. Fear wanting to encase itself in a fortress of walls as high as the atmosphere, as thick as a planet's outer crust. The need to pull away, the need to keep herself safe from the heartache she'd felt when she'd crawled out of the fountain.

But the release of his arms stirs her from her thoughts, her memories, her eyes like a light that's been switched on. She's slow to come back to her body, allowing him to lead her wherever he wishes.

The pack.

She begins to attempt to remove it from her shoulders, but the ache of her muscles is making it difficult to do. They're adrenaline withdrawn, oxygen deprived from her mad search around the village, sapped of their heat thanks to the cold of her clothes.

[candor1]

He takes over instantly, sliding his hands (bandaged or not) inside the straps to free her of them… but he sees in her movement, the way her muscles are reacting, the dilation of her eyes, the blue of her lips, that hypothermia has already set in. The fact that her heartbeat and respiration have slowed, paired with that sluggishness, might actually be a bad thing. Not that she's calmed down, but that the condition is progressing to severe.

He recalibrates all his concerns to the immediacy of getting her warm.

Positioning her, as he pulls off her pack, as close as possible to the fire, he proceeds (with impersonal military efficiency—and excruciating care) to strip off her wet clothes.

[kestreldawn]

Jyn's trying, honestly and truly, to do what she thinks she needs to. Although she knows it - and she - are safe with Cassian, there's still the need to at least appear strong. Capable. In a hidden way, worthy. There's a part of her that fears that if she fumbles, if she appears or is weak and unable, Cassian will rethink everything. Why be stuck with someone who can barely manage to carry her own weight? Why stick around? (Welcome home, she thinks, wondering if the offer extends past supposed death).

So she struggles to take the pack off, even shirking him away a little to try and prove to herself - and to him - that she can do it. That she isn't nearly as pathetic as she might appear or feel. But her body won't respond the way she wants it to. Her hands fumble, unsure and unsteady, unable to be wrangled in to do their task. Such a simple task, she thinks.

Ultimately, she's defeated. She doesn't have the strength or the mental fortitude to do any of what she thinks she should. She thinks to herself that she might as well enjoy the kindness and the compassion while it's there, while Cassian still feels compelled enough to give it. She wonders how long it might be until he tires of her and decides she isn't worth the trouble.

She doesn't even notice, not right away, that the clothes are being peeled away like an extra set of skin. Her own skin doesn't feel it, it's so numbed and chilled. Her eyes, gaze get lost in the glow of the fire.

[candor1]

At her moment of faint resistance, he may have made a soothing sound. She hasn't repeated it, though. For all he has to concentrate on the practical urgency and dealing with the logistics of it largely one-handed, he is also keeping part of his attention fixedly on her reactions. He knows she could fight him off, possibly even in her current state, if she really wanted to.

He doesn't want to make her. Ever.

He almost… resents? dreads? …this… cheat. Skipping to a level of physical intimacy that hasn't been built or earned. On the other hand, if she were any other team-mate, he'd have done the same without that fear. With a lifetime of sharing small spaces in all conditions with teammates of all persuasions, there is nothing inherently sexualized for him in nakedness.

Still, it's a convenient dovetail of necessity and trying not to take advantage of her current compromised-functionality, her vulnerability, to move as fast as possible.

As soon as he'd rid her of the wet clothes, and moving her just that little bit more closely to the fire, he upends both their packs with his foot and kneels to empty all their contents onto the floor.

Another dovetail: spending the time searching the house for blankets would cancel out their possible benefit by leaving her longer exposed.

And part of him is afraid that if he relinquishes sight of her for any moment, one of them will vanish again.

He grabs a dry shirt (doesn't care whether it's from his pack or hers) and kneels next to her again to rapidly (still gently) dry her off with it.

That done, he tosses it onto the pile of the rest of the wet things, and proceeds to wrap her in as many of the other nonabrasive clothing articles from either pack that are large enough. Most of them his, despite that, small as she is, his body mass isn't much greater than hers.

Whatever's left that isn't useful for warmth, he pushes into another (dry) small pile and encourages her to lie down on her side, facing the fire, to use for a pillow.

That much done… mentally apologizing to Rory (and his future self for the heightened probability of having to really train himself to be more left-handed), Cassian didn't bother avoiding further shredding of his bandage to pull off his own jacket and shirt.

Carefully, he lowered himself to the floor beside her, draping the last heavy layers over them both; and, repressing any audible reaction to the pain from his right one, slipped his arms under all her wrappings to put around her. Moving them both so gently until he's covering as much of her as possible; his chest to her back.

It was such an old, awful, barracks joke. But it was still true. Lacking core-temperature altering technologies (bacta, injections, transfusions), body heat was the most effective method of warming another human. And optimally implemented with flesh-to-flesh contact.

He closed his eyes into the back of her head, trying to shut up his own pounding heart so that it would stop distracting him from monitoring hers; feeling every part of her against every part of him so acutely he couldn't tell if it thrilled or hurt; hoping when she returned more to herself, she wouldn't hurt either of them for this.

Perhaps as much to test her state of consciousness as his state of conscience, he spoke into her hair, "I'm sorry. I know we don't know each other well enough yet. Just stay alive and we'll work on that." And, perhaps from the same need to fill space with intent as when she'd repeated his name, (mantra or prayer,) he murmured in Yaval: "Quédate conmigo. Siempre viviras."

[kestreldawn]

Jyn feels a sudden wave of self-consciousness at finally feeling and realizing that she's more or less naked now, her clothes in a sopping heap on the floor. She has the alertness, however sluggish and delayed it might be, to question how and when and who - when Cassian stands from the ground after rummaging through the dry clothing in their packs. Her eyes search his face for - what? Ulterior motives? Answers? Purpose? Perhaps a mix of all three.

The last person she'd been naked in front of had died, she remembers somewhere in the fog of her mind. Not with her, but after she'd left Saw at sixteen - or rather, after she'd been deserted by Saw - at age sixteen. Codo, the boy who tried to kiss her that night they swam naked in the grotto. Codo, the boy she'd turned her face from, unwilling and unable to give him what it was that he wanted. Codo, the boy who refused to talk to her, to look at her, every day until Saw led her to the bunker, gave her a blaster, and closed up the hatch.

It feels strange, but somehow fitting, that Cassian would be the next to see her this way. She'd already made herself vulnerable in all other ways; it was only a matter of time.

Part of her mind realizes that she's shivering, somewhat uncontrollably, and that her teeth are clattering against one another because of it. She wraps her arms around herself, both out of the shame of now being naked in front of Cassian but also for survival, trying to keep up with the rapidity of his movements. She feels the drying cloth - shirt? trousers? - against her, followed by the blanketing of item after item. She feels the intensity of the shudder running through her body that feels as though it's settled comfortably in her bones, turning it all to ice.

The floor feels hard underneath her, even through the layers of clothing, but it's a welcomed embrace. It allows her muscles, agonizing as they are, to breathe again - though they aren't allowed too much relaxation, vibrating to bring warmth back to her body. But then there's a feeling with which she isn't familiar - it feels like arms, like intimacy in an embrace. And yet, she doesn't push him away. She doesn't resist or shrug his body away from hers. Nor does she want to.

The shivering begins to lose its intensity almost immediately, her eyes heavy-lidded as they wander amongst the flames.

She wonders if there's a well inside of him, full of how much he's willing to give her. She wonders how much of it she's already used, already spent, in the minutes she's been here. She wonders how long it will take to run the well dry.

"I don't want to go," she whispers back, though the latter words don't quite process properly in her brain. She knows it's his native tongue, the one that flavors his words with the accent she loves. She thinks to herself that she'll have to learn it. "I don't want to -" be without you, she wants to say, but her breath hitches in her throat, the words refusing their departure. Instead, she simply repeats, "I don't want to leave."

[candor1]

She'd probably never ask. And he'd probably never find the words to tell. But his heart thuds behind hers for a moment with the answer anyway: Yes, there's a well. But you don't drain it, Jyn. You filled it.

His good hand tightens a moment where he's rested it on the back of hers. Not trying to touch any other part of her, as well as to warm her fingers.

The return of her shivering is a good sign. The abatement of shock. Her heartbeat seems less faltering already. He tightens his arms around her to shift himself still closer, bending his knees to fit behind hers.

Her speaking is a better sign still.

What she says, best of all.

He won't try to kiss her. Not now. Not like this.

But for a moment he closes his eyes and touches his forehead against her head.

"Good," he whispered back. "We'll both stay."

Hours later ..

[kestreldawn]

He's gone again.

She's back in the blackness of the water in the fountain, she's back in the light of Scarif. She's somehow both places at once, both hot and cold, both floating and sinking, but one thing is the same for both: she's drowning.

And there's no one to save her. No tug of Cassian's hand against her wrist or her hand to pull her out of the darkness. No Cassian to lure her with his words, his warmth.

There's nothing.

She's alone.

Her limbs scatter, scramble, try to grab onto something - anything - but there's nothing. The sound of blaster bolts, the smell of ozone, her mother's lifeless body as the man in white observes with nothing but passivity in his face. The rain on Eadu, her father's broken, dying body in her lap - the penitence in his eyes - the sound of the Alliance echoing in the distance. Watching Cassian being ripped away from her hands, a silent scream wailing from her mouth --

Jyn wakes with a start, bolting up from her makeshift bed on the ground in front of the fire, her heart thudding loudly in her heart, her skull. She can feel her pulse jumping in her neck. She's floating between the worlds of dreams and reality, unable to tell which side she's on.

Where is she?

[candor1]

Only when her pulse and breath and skin temperature had all stabilized had he let himself follow her to sleep. No matter that holding her as he never thought he would—…again? at all—made his muscles so relaxed, his mind so still, all of him so incredibly at peace… if someone had tried breaking down the door, he wondered if he'd have been able to even get up for it.

He did sleep, at last; and unlike almost every other night he'd spent in this place… it had been dreamless.

Her jolt upright woke him with a stab of pain through his right arm. He failed to stifle a gasped groan.

[kestreldawn]

The sound of someone shouting incites a primal, defensive reaction on her part. She immediately bolts to her feet, hands already in fists to protect her against whatever might be after her. She instinctively reaches for the blaster on her thigh, but it isn't there. Has she been drugged? Weapons removed from her unconscious body? Whose clothes are these? She thinks of the man in white - no, he died on Scarif - but wasn't I supposed to, too? - or the insurgents or a stormtrooper or --

She sees the sight of a man on the ground, his face contorted with pain and discomfort. Misfires and electrical pulses that don't quite reach their destinations make her take an embarrassingly long time to realize, remember. Cassian.

She immediately drops to her knees, touches his face, panic stricken.

"Cassian!" she shouts, both to get his attention and as a verbal reminder of his being here. "Did I hurt you?" And then, words that have only rummaged in her brain but never leave her mouth make their presence known: "I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"

[candor1]

Not now. Not like this.

…He wouldn't have try it now or like this either… without her—

But seeing the dread in her eyes, feeling her hand on his cheek, all he can think—no, actually, thinking still offline, all he can feel—is that he wants to break her free of the panic.

Pushing himself up on his good arm, he stops her apology by kissing her.

No—
everything in your life has been about how to affect things to your own specifications, hijack causality, take instant unilateral control
do not want that now, anymore, not with her

Just as quickly he breaks away, sinking back on his elbow, ducking his head and shaking it sharply.

(Still bare-chested, scars from blaster burns, shrapnel, bacta-less surgery, inexpert bone reset, projectile extraction, and… quite possibly self-infliction… write a history across him.)

Not an excuse. Perhaps an illustration. As, still shaking his head, he unwittingly echoes: "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have—"

[kestreldawn]

What? It's the only word that's flashing across her mind like a neon-sign. A symbol of confusion, of mixed up time frames and periods, of hearts beating like a drum, of lips against lips and the tickling of hair against her skin. She's grateful the chill from earlier seems to have dissipated, but if it hadn't already, it would've melted with a single kiss.

Their kiss.

Her eyes barely had time to close, it had been so fleeting. Her tongue darts out, searches for any remaining taste of him that might be on her lips. Her fingers brush her mouth before she shifts herself closer, sliding along on her knees. Tips trace the story of his life speckled and spattered across his chest, a thrill running through her at the forbidden intrigue of it all.

And then - they reach up, skate across the delicate strength of his jawline, up towards his ears. They tangle themselves in his hair at the nape of his neck, beckoning her closer - and closer - until finally -

She kisses him again, the panic and fear and confusion burned away by the intensity of the churning in her chest. She's here - they're here - and it all comes rushing back to her, suffocating her like a tidal wave. It's a beautiful way to die, she thinks, though she certainly doesn't mean it literally. If her breath must leave her lungs, if her blood must leave her veins as she's swept away by the current of his breathing and his heartbeat, so be it.

She will learn how to swim beyond the furious kicking of her feet that drove her out of the fountain.

[candor1]

…




He wasn't haunted by Galen Erso.


Cassian had killed too many people to know that Galen's death really hadn't been his fault.

Likewise… he wasn't haunted by that lie of omission to Jyn.

He hadn't known her. His loyalty was with the Alliance. Loyalty earned over a lifetime of learning with acute cause that anyone he didn't know (and some he did) could always betray him, and with so much at stake beyond his own life, he mustn't give them everything all at once. She had known that. They had both known that. Some might expect something different, but Cassian wouldn't of another.

He regretted all of it. He wished badly could have known then what he would come to understand, and done every one of those things differently. Wished he'd told her everything at once, wished he'd argued with Draven, wished he'd been able to save Galen, get him and Jyn back out alive, let them really meet again; even if it wouldn't have affected any of the rest (it probably wouldn't have), no matter how briefly, but as an end in itself.

But he wasn't haunted. In that he understand that, with only the information and lifetime of conditioning he'd had at that moment… he'd made the best choices he knew, they in of themselves weren't the entire situation, and he couldn't have done differently. Not without living through those very situations to the learn the lessons that would have been needed to apply to the situations.

The cost may not have been worth it. But it was not something he could have changed on his own.



Contrastingly, he would have been haunted by kissing her like that.

Without first asking or being invited. Without being certain it was a decision rather than reflex of need or expedience or shock.

Without being certain it wasn't a betrayal of his determination to…



…well, she didn't need anyone to "keep her safe". She could do that for herself.

But he was determined to be safe.

For her to always know that she was safe with him. For all he'd done in the past, all he'd been trained to the point of reflex to do. He would never lie to or betray her. He would never use or manipulate her. He had been trapped inside the person she'd rightly railed at and never intended to be that again.


She saves him from that by kissing him.


He still considered his a wrong decision. But, truly, Jyn didn't need everyone else to do perfectly around her. She wasn't subject to his weakness. She could take what she was given and do what she would with it. He needn't necessarily fear his skills, as long as they never overpowered her ability to take her own share of control on reality. That was an easier proposition—one he could better trust and relax into. Because, though he hoped it would be unnecessary, he did trust her to handle it.

As he'd never heard Chirrut say of Jyn's presence in the Force, She shines.


Her fingers run across his skin, lift up his face, and he turns again to her and cranes himself upward to meet her lips on his.

She tastes… she feels…


His right arm still throbs. He doesn't want to use it. Not because he fears the pain, but because he doesn't want the distraction. He leaves it at his side. Instead he tenses his abdominal muscles to keep himself angled upright, against Jyn; while he unbraces his left arm from the floor, bringing it around to run his fingers up the back of her head, and hold her there.

It might be muscle strain, it might not, the trembling in his core; either way, carefully controlled, he lowers himself to lie back on the floor, and with a pressure so gentle, easily broken, only invitation, he uses the arm around her to move her down with him.

[kestreldawn]

"Why won't you kiss me?" he'd asked, that pleading look in his eyes that Jyn hated. She hated the way it made her feel, like it'd somehow been her fault for infecting him with the illness of feelings.

"I don't want to," she'd replied, simply and curtly, her face angled away from his. Anything to avoid the fall out of her words, her actions. She knew where it was all headed.

His hand fell from her shoulder, the distinct clarity of it breaking the surface of the water ringing out in the grotto. Enveloping them. Reminding her of what she'd done, how she'd wounded him. There was silence, then, until she felt the ripples of the water dully beating against her as he swam away, until she heard the sound of him hoisting himself up and out of the watering hole.

She'd never brought it up again, and neither did he. He looked past her as though she were nothing more than an apparition. The shadow that followed and cursed him, that, if he ignored hard enough, would eventually fade away.

His refusal to acknowledge her had almost gotten her killed, once. A row against Imperial forces under Saw. The intel had been bad, there were more Stormtroopers than were expected. Jyn found herself surrounded, unable to break her cover from behind a merchant stall without certain death. She commed Codo, requesting backup, requesting his location.

He never answered. She had no choice but to run, to shoot until her hand throbbed, use everything in her to try and survive.

She never was able to forget the disappointment in her eyes when she came back alive.

Jyn wants to be more steady, wants to be more knowledgeable and certain. She wants to be able to predict every beat of his heart and every twitch of his muscle. She wants to be able to run through the list of what comes next like a status report, something clean and sterile.

But when had this ever been pragmatic? When had their knowing, wanting gazes ever been less than fire, than earthquakes? When had their stolen whispers ever been less than hurricane winds?

The hand not pressed against him rises to his shoulder, feeling the tension underneath his skin. He feels hot, warm, inviting as the last remnants of cold evaporate from her body. His urging touch against her back is all the invitation she needs to follow him - I'll follow you, no matter where you go, she thinks, wondering if he'll hear her, if he'll read her thoughts - and lets herself press against him, on top of him, gently. She remembers the bandage of his head, wonders if there are other injuries; she hadn't had the wherewithal to notice or ask. There's a tremble in her lips as they catch, explore his. She wonders if they'll ever stop shaking.

[candor1]

The movement of her lips makes him involuntarily arch, press himself up against her.

Slow, no, control yourse…

Or not? Wasn't the point at least in part to surrender, to trust her to…?

He clasps the back of her head once more and throws himself into kissing her, completely.

Every technique Farir had ever taught him, for the first time—too late but still wouldn't have been organic with Xilo, too early to know how to enjoy even if the dynamic hadn't been for him only to serve d'Djiera—happened without him forcing it, without thought. And, even less expected, gave him something too; not just employed to provoke a behavioral or chemical reaction from the other.

His left hand ran through her hair. His right, in whatever was left of its bandage, useless but at least present, rested in the small of her back, staying with every curve and motion of her spine and hips, providing the merest counterweight to the rest of him moving up against her…

Breathing raggedly, he broke the kiss again. This time he didn't pull the rest of himself away, but his fingers slid from behind her head to the side of her face, thumb brushing against her lips, in a gesture of wait… a moment, wait.

"Tell me something I could never know about you," he breathes. "I need to know this is real."