La paz llegará, el amor siempre vivirá—No me ames, mas quedate otro dia

[candor1]

WHO: Jyn Erso, Cassian Andor, Bodhi Rook, Finnick Odair (independent threads)
WHERE: Cabin 56, the woods, the spring, wherever else happens
WHEN: Feb 6 through now. "Ten days in the [new] life".
OPEN TO: Jyn, Cassian, Bodhi and Finnick
Quick apology for what a first-love middleschooler I've been being IC and OOC, with me neglecting and Cassian unable to gear shift at all away from Jyn! (Turns out we're super OTP, quelle surprise) Thanks for forebearance, and sorry, guys…!
This might help with moving back into the rest of the game from that first obsessed flush of her arrival. Mainly prompts for kestreldawn and I to multithread several CR developments in a single post, rather than a slew of logs.
WARNINGS: PTSD (both helping and triggering one another—and worrying about that), exchanging war/life/traumatic stories, issues they haven't thought about in decades resurfacing 'cause this is so new and everything's getting unlocked, smut (though surprisingly happy/healthy), treating physical injury (possible self-harm convo), reproductive choices, panic attacks
STATUS: Open

1. the next moment (Jyn and Cassian in their cabin)

2. that night (same)

3. in the next few days (Finnick and Cassian at the spring)

4. in days following (Bodhi, Jyn and Cassian TBD)

5. today (Jyn and Cassian, cabin and forest)

Comments

[kestreldawn]

Jyn allows herself to laugh - a bright, clear bell of sound that echoes off of and around and amidst the trees surrounding them. Brushes the hair from her hair lazily, lets herself roll over onto her side, loosely hang her arm across his torso. She folds her other arm and rests it under her head, eyes hiking the slope of his nose and the mountains of his lips. Allows herself to exist - purely, solely - in this singular moment, corralling the shadows that followed them here. Just for now.

She clears her throat quietly, steadies herself, inhales and whispers (in her first attempt in his presence):

"Te amo." Her Basic accent leaves perhaps a little to be desired in her pronunciation, but the gravity of it is there - the weight of it is there.

[candor1]

…The effect of her speaking Yaval to him, perfectly or not, is… immediately obvious. (Winter clothes notwithstanding.) He looks at her, snow-bedraggled and -reddened, with eyes that clearly find her the sexiest and most adorable creature they've ever seen. Rolling over, half onto her, he kisses her. And murmurs in a moment of their lips parting, this time deliberately balancing with Basic, "I love you too."

The words could come so naturally, so frequently, after a lifetime of no practice saying them at all.

ugh my heart that icon

[kestreldawn]

Perhaps it's making up for lost time, she thinks. The way the words constantly seem to be swirling on her tongue, always at the ready, always aching to be freed. The way something in her chest aches in the most delightful way - it isn't heartache, it isn't sadness - it's something like bursting, explosions, starlight. A heart feeling so incredibly full that it has no choice but to erupt inside of her chest, in a brilliant display of spark and ember and flame. She takes his hand in hers, gathers it to her heart with her own. Lips smile against his, the side of her thigh feeling the effect her words have had on him. She squeezes his hand, kisses him again.

"Apparently I should say that more often," she murmurs teasingly against his mouth.

[candor1]

He smiles against her lips; then grazes his own across her cheek, around the shell of her ear, along her hair, down her jaw, her neck—just as teasingly, using breath and soundwaves to tingle her skin, whispering a full paragraph he doesn't remember how he knows and doesn't expect her to understand. Podrá nublarse el sol eternamente; podrá secarse en un instante el mar; podrá romperse el eje de la tierra como un débil cristal. ¡Todo sucederá! Podrá la muerte cubrirme con su fúnebre crespón; pero jamás en mí podrá apagarse la llama de tu amor.*

Almost as lightly, his hands smooth in time along her ribs and breasts and back, though leaving more tangible trails in clothes and snowdust in their wake.

[kestreldawn]

The trail of his lips leave embers, flames in their wake - her skin positively aflame with each pass, each graze. She inhales a sharp breath as the words come tumbling out of his mouth like nectar. The words are cloaked, disguised - and yet, her own heart calls out to him, to those words - somehow knowing, feeling what it is they mean. She feels the fluttering of her stomach, eyes flickering closed as the pinkness of her cheeks intensifies. She murmurs approving, hungry sounds.

Her back arches up against his touch, hands tangling and threading themselves in his dark strands of hair, clutching and tugging as they move. She can feel the warmth radiating out from the center of her body, the heat that only he seems to be able to produce inside of her. She exhales a soft sigh, content to exist like this - forgetting about the fear that's always gnawing at the back of her mind, forgetting everything they'd left behind them -

She comes alive under his touch, like a creature who sloughs off their rigid exterior - reborn, renewed.

[candor1]

He centers his body on hers, pushing them together as she arcs; like finding like—mouth and pulse and core—which assert their spacious tide.

Such abandon out in the open… they could be on Ttaz. Nothing else alive on the surface of the world. The difference is, he knows, here, they're not. And doesn't care. The emptiness of that world had created safety. Here, their safety in each other empties the world.

surrounds us and penetrates us and binds us together… He's never placed his faith in anything to protect him. Barely even things he could actually wield. Something he couldn't was exponentially useless. But if the Force is made by living things… why not feel as if they were forging it now, pushing out to surround them, generating a field where nothing could cause them harm.

Why not. They've become one with the Force before.

The white light that breaks his nightmares, every cyclic flashback to Scarif, doesn't jar him as it expands him now. It feels… transcendent, not to destroy but to fill, dissolving his form so his molecules can contain the whole of existence. Merging them utterly with the whole, and together.

The snow around them has become a basin, holding them even as it melts beneath them, especially where they've parted their clothes—careful to keep a barrier between her back and the cold ground—to fuse themselves together.

[kestreldawn]

Jyn wishes she knew more in his mother tongue to pour onto him the way he does for her, wishes she could conform and twist and curl her tongue the way he does to create such beauty. He sculpts and forms and breathes life into the world around them - the worlds inside of them - the heat of his breath enough to melt the snow of the eternal winter inside of her, the warmth of his gaze enough to force shoots of grass and colorful leaves through the barren, hardened earth of her core. The stars of her universe align with his, their lights both sources and reflections, both moons and suns, powerful on their own - more complete together.

She inhales sharply at being filled, though it doesn't surprise her the way it had the first time. Then, it had been an expression of the unknown, of the uncertain - now, it's release of the anticipation, the excitement. The exquisite bridging between two bodies so they can melt into one, even if more in theory than in physicality - the delight of friction and warmth and pleasure.

One palm presses to his back, the other lost in the fields of his hair as lip drags under teeth to contain the sounds within. There's only a vague part of her that's alert enough - separate enough - to remember their publicity. But it's enough to keep her stifled sighs and blissful murmurs prisoner in her mouth -

"Por favor," she whispers, lips brushing against the curl of his ear, voice heady as her scrambled mind tries to remember the words he's taught her, "Te quiero."

[candor1]

He lets out a sound—a gasp or a groan or her name; lowers his face into her neck. He works in her and feels the sky resting above them, the planet traveling below them, trees bowing around them; trees like he used to gaze across the canopy of for hours, sitting with his back against the sun-warmed stones of the Massassi temple, his face in the breeze, the Rebellion somewhere buried deep below, the Empire spinning somewhere far above, whatever he'd done last or would have to do next as far remote as whoever had built this place eons ago; nothing like the rockiness of Fest or artifice of Carida or scorches of the Fringe or angles of cities or overflow of space; just murmur and waves of an ocean of leaves, air, life, and light. The snow could be cloud cover. And Jyn… could be absolutely no one else.

Nothing in the universe but herself.

Kissing her throat, holding her tight, moving up-in-against her, he again murmurs her name.

[kestreldawn]

She remembers the others.

The lives of the women she'd claimed to be, the crimes they'd committed, the things they'd done.

She remembers the spark at the back of her mind at the genesis of a new one - fabricated details and a life never lived congealing together into something cohesive. Another charade, another story that was no more hers than it was anyone else's. She'd take elements from her own life, pepper them in for realism and believability, fill the rest with things she'd wanted, or things she'd hoped to have happened.

She'd cling to those names until it was time to dispose of them, release them into the void to be buried with her list of crimes.

When she sat in her cell on Wobani, she had had a somber realization that she would never again live her life as Jyn Erso. The name her parents chose, the only gift from them she carried with her, the only thing she had left of them both (aside from cells and bones and likeness) - lost.

Discarded.

She'd been ready to die as Liana Hallik.

But now, hearing her name - her true name - released under layers of breath and grunts and groans, being painted with the stunning aroma of Cassian's tongue, ignites something within her. She breathes his name in reply, her mouth hung up on the peaks of the s-es in the middle, until the rest comes tumbling out after. She raises her hips to meet his, urging his movements with her muffled moans and arcing back. Feels the tension rising in her center, feels the tang of the cold air in her lungs circulating faster and faster as she breathes.

She thinks to herself that, with Cassian, she never wants to be anyone else again.

[candor1]

They pitch together, crest and trough… the gentle roll of cosmic tides… this is not the frantic excruciating need (to reclaim, to feel, to believe) of their first night, nor has it been as long as that had since any previous time for him. They don't need to fight to thrust themselves back into one whole. This is… part of… everything.

He wants to stay in her, move her, be moved by her, as long as she wants him. He's not going to be the one to end it this time.

…So, helpfully, the mental navdrive helps pace the course by rattling off technical definitions in the background.

sway/oscillation around a horizontal axis perpendicular to the direction of motion
highest swell / lowest curve of a wave (hydro or gravitational)
the force that attracts a body to the center of mass
the degree of its intensity measured by acceleration

… You're not helping the wryer brain commented to the tactical one.

He buries a laugh into her shoulder. Turns it into a kiss. It won't seem like he's laughing at her. Even if it manages to stand out from the rest of his breathing and sounds. …Stars and skies, it feels good to feel… light. She's here. He's with her. Neither are going anywhere. Not right now.
They're one in the Force and the Force is in them.
He runs his hands inside her clothes, holding under her thighs, lifting and releasing her about him.

Part of him wants to gather her up and roll them both over, take his turn against the snow and hers against the sky. The rest of him is in thrall to what she feels like right now, just... there… and would stay that way forever.

[kestreldawn]

Jyn can feel the melted snow, the muddy ground underneath - the way their bodies slide and dig into the softened earth with each movement of his hips against hers. She realizes, somewhere in the still-conscious piece of her brain, that her skin should feel cold; it should be chilled and kissed by the powder she's melted. But her body feels like the sun, it feels like a star about to born. Temperatures in the thousands, millions - illuminated by their matching breaths and complementary cries.

The familiar (yet still foreign) sensation of wanting to weep at the beauty of it all bubbles in her stomach. She wants to bathe him in the saccharine syrup of her words - words of love, and light, and connection, and -

Each other.

Her legs curl, hook around his torso as he lifts her, the shift enough to make the back of her hand press against her parted lips to contain the sound. She shifts him - needs to see him - needs to find his eyes.

Needs the confirmation that, yes - they're here - he's here - with her, in her, around her.

The warmth at her center has almost reached the boiling point, a volcano threatening to erupt -

"Almost," she breathes before crushing his lips against hers, letting the taste of him flood her mouth.

[candor1]

He kisses her like it's how he needs to breathe. His hands move up her to frame her face; calloused fingers combing back her hair; warm palms filling the hollows of her cheeks, scar-padded thumbs tracing her earlobes, jawline, running down her throat. His heart thuds against her, so closely pressed it seems to beat inside her, against her own, between her lungs, a rhythm the rest of them follows—breath, bodies, lips.

One hand digs into her hair to hold the back of her head. The other strokes down her neck, between shoulderblades, along the dip and curve of her spine, to the small of her back. Where it presses up against her, pooling with warm. And his arm abruptly flexes beneath her, to pull her against him (impossibly) tighter. He's so deep in her… there could be no point in their lives they hadn't been bound. This ley line was too strong, anchored so fast, pulling them together all along.

And, managing arduously to catch his breath, his eyes fix on hers. And she can see galaxies in his. Fathomless churning stars gliding in the velvet black. Shining and dancing for her to come, go with them, and call them home.

[kestreldawn]

There's no doubt about it now, she thinks, knows, realizes - for all of the breaths she's taken, for all of the lives she's claimed as her own - she has been nothing more than tendrils of smoke, a translucent apparition with no substance, no vibrancy - as clear as the crystal she'd worn at her neck, with an exterior just as rigid -

Until now.

Until the celestial mammoths of the universe inside of her called out to the churning stars gliding in the velvet black of his - heard their songs returned, felt their foundations fortified.

Until Cassian.

If only she could birth a manifestation of all the things swirling, foaming, frothing at the core of her existence -

If only she could pry him open, reach inside, galvanize the beating miracle within - tear open her chest and break her ribs to imprint him there -

It all comes spilling out in a flurry of sounds (his name hisses out, punctuated with gasps and moans), and arcing backs, and curled up toes, and eyes squeezed shut in a stunning, precipitous explosion - different than the first he'd created with his mouth, but no less intense, no less important.

[candor1]

Her muscles grip him, a rippling spasm, magnified by her brilliant light
(her voice her hands her face)
She pulls it out of him too.
A hoarse, groaning cry
a jolting thrust
panting with parted lips against her throat
("Jyn… Jyn.")
Both pushed so hard into each other they've arched clear off the ground.
The ambrosial pain of him pouring into her.

He holds her, strong and close and still, as braced by her body as she may be by his, not releasing her until she moves for him to.

His chest rises and falls against her. The throbbing fades, melting all strength with it away; it leaves a soft trembling in its wake. Under muscles and flesh, clear to his bones. The vibration of quantum strings. The dance of molecules or stars. For a moment he had seen the universe as if inside of it.

The only part of him to move first: his hand gently closes on, warmly gripping, her shoulder.
He turns his face into her breast.
Just breathes.

[kestreldawn]

The collapse of exhausted muscles and laborious organs into a pile of limbs, and bones, and bodies - chest-to-chest and hip-to-hip - the slow descent from the solar flares they've created with each other - no faster than a feather, no heavier than a petal spiraling like a ship shot down by enemy fire (only there are no enemies here, for once).

The very fabric of her skull buzzes, vibrates down into her molars, a small pond of their mutual efforts in the form of perspiration collects where clavicle meets sternum. The tingle spreads from skull to teeth to spine to hair - from crown to sole.

She instinctively, without thinking, spasms around him - drawing out whatever might still be lingering -

Allowing, asking for, receiving all that he can give her.

One hand rakes up along the back of his head, up from his neck, towards the tip of his scalp - treks the bluff with fervor and adoration. Holds him close, cradles.

She's yet to open her eyes, lips still parted as the breath rushes like the tide, the bulbs of her cheeks painted pink with effort and heat. Her other hand moves up, brushes the matted fringe from her forehead, then falls lazily to his back. A leap of her heart inside of her chest, threatening to burst out through its calcium cage.

"I would die with you on the beaches of Scarif a thousand times over, if it meant we'd end up here together," she whispers, stretching her toes within her shoes to ease some of the ache they'd created at her explosion. She slides the tip of her tongue along the ridges of its roof, itching to say more. "I can't imagine this," she continues, voice still breathless and hoarse, "Any of this, without you."

[candor1]

His breath hitches at that last contraction, his face and fingers momentarily digging into her flesh. Then all tension unlocks and they sink formless into the snowbank and one another.

He feels submerged in her. Her hand in his hair, her chest pillowing his head, her legs, her warmth around him. Bacta was never more healing. Sunlight never more life-giving. He can't remember ever feeling so… accepted. Protected. …Loved.

His hand moves without his awareness, touching a finger to his own cheek, reflexively pushing away… It had realized before his brain, and calls its attention now, that silent tears were running down his face.

Oh karking hell, man. She's going to think you cry every time you have sex…

Which so far seemed unarguable. But hadn't been most of his life, so what was different…

This isn't a panic attack like last time. He feels calm, at peace in her, with no desire to fight or flee or shift away.

But alongside it all, underneath, there is a deep, aching grief in his core.

…

…At how nearly, how easily, he could have lost her.

Not just at Scarif. Nor if the fountain had withheld its mercy.

Three times before.

When he could not only have lost her but never really known what he had lost.

"On Eadu," he whispered, eyes still closed and breath still close against her skin. "On Jedha. …I was supposed to leave you. I was under no obligation to bring you out. It would have been a betrayal of Mon Mothma's promise. But it wasn't actually my orders—to protect you. Not after you'd done what we needed. Everyone is expendible when the mission has control. We wanted to honor your contribution if expedient. But not if it endangered what had to be done. …Twice you'd become a liability. It would have sacrificed everything—your part included—if I'd let myself be killed to save you—letting the information only we had die, too. On Jedha, I had Bodhi. I should have left with him. But instead I took the extra time, let the planet burn, risked confronting Saw, to find you. I should have prioritized getting out Bodhi out alive to pass the information on. On Eadu, I should have cut you loose rather than risk your turning against me. …Both times, I couldn't leave you. I jeopardized everything, all the lives we were meant to serve, to keep you with me. I'd betrayed my orders, my training, before we ever saw your father. I'd left the Rebellion before we last left Yavin Four. From the moment I saw you. My loyalty… my mission… had become you.

"…You didn't ask for it… but you deserved it. You let me join you again on Yavin and took me with you back to the cause I believed in. It had become you… but it and you were the same.

"…Maybe I'd been waiting for you all along."

[kestreldawn]

She feels the added moisture against her skin - unable to differentiate sweat from tears, both saline and organic, but knows that he's the font - wants to ask about their source, about their cause - but doesn't want to draw attention to something he is trying to hide.

Her hand seeks his out on touch and instinct alone -

Thumb to his cheek, lapping up and discarding the tears in silence.

The other hand evacuates the forest of his hair to rest at the base of his neck, presses - pulls.

She listens, eyes fluttering open to lose themselves in the cerulean sky, images flashing across her mind's eyes like a silent holodrama -

Jedha
The little girl, screaming in the marketplace
Using her body as a shield for his
The remnants of Saw's broken body - his accusation of assassination and deception
Her father - Oh, Papa - his hollowed face and enervated eyes
The pang of pain in her knees as she collapsed to the ground, emptied and as hollow as his face
Cassian - urging, pleading, tugging - rescuing
"Save the dream!"

Eadu
"Does he look like a killer?
Her father - again - only flesh and blood and bone -
The Man in White
Broken fingernails and torn up flesh as she refused to fall from the platform
Her father - for the third time - crumpled and fading and penitent
"It must be destroyed."
Cassian - urging, pleading, tugging - rescuing

Again.

By the time he's finished speaking, by the time the hologram has finished playing and she once again hears the static of her breathing and the throbbing of her heart -

It's her turn to reflexively reach up - touch her face - find the tributaries forging their way out of the corners of her eyes, dampening the hair at her temples.

Her hand won't stop shaking.

"I didn't deserve anything," she whispers, the words floating out of her mouth without the permission of her tongue - and once they leave, she wants nothing more than to reel them back in, swallow them down back into her gut where they've lived, and breathed, and grown stronger. She knows she can't - she hopes he hasn't heard them. "Would you do it again?"

[candor1]

A third time, he turns his face to press it into her. Hiding his face. His tears on her skin: a libation. Kissing the base of her breastbone right over her heart, to hold on to her (urging, pleading, rescuing). (Himself)

He can't say it aloud.

He can't.

He can't.

He has to.

Not moving the rest of him, keeping breath and heart and muscles and body calm… nonetheless he so carefully shifts, gently, silently pulling himself out of her. It would feel like such… violation… desecration… of her body and her choice, to say this of the man she'd just let inside her… and to forestall the dreaded but understandable possibility that she might in a moment push him violently away.

Not for the first time. You shouldn't have started but worse now to stop.

"I'd done the opposite every time before. I killed the man who told me about Galen. About Bodhi, about the planet killer. His name was Tivik. He set you and me, all of it, in motion. He was a man I'd recruited. I'd trained him. He'd sacrificed so much for our cause. He was on our side. I was holding his shoulder telling him it would all be okay when I shot him in the back. I did it so one of us… so I, could escape. So I wouldn't be caught. …No. That's wrong. I could have saved myself anyway. But I couldn't have saved him. Leaving him alive would leave him to Empire. Who'd kill him anyway but first get him to tell them everything he'd told me. I could have stayed to die with him. That would have been right. It would also make all his sacrifices worth nothing. There had to be a messenger. So what he gave would matter for anyone else.

"The tactics always made sense. Every time. It was the right move. When I killed others. When I deserted more. Every time it was for the big ideal. Every time it was breaking the smaller ones. Trying to build a better world by making it impossible for myself to ever belong in it.

"Yes. You were right. I followed orders knowing they were wrong. I did things without needing orders even though they were wrong. They were the right move for the cause. They were wrong under the cause—exactly what the cause was trying to fight against.

"Would I do which again…? Kill or desert an ally? I had so many. I'm a war criminal, Jyn. If we'd lived, if the Rebellion won, I'd never get to live in the world we'd fought for. I wouldn't be allowed to. I wouldn't try to."

Several dimensions and universes away, there's a file marked with his codename in the archives of Temple Base. His history and training and roster of missions and actions and certifications and a death report signed by Draven himself—who'd written by hand a final rank: de facto Commander/First officer of Rogue One.

[There's an identical designation for Jyn Erso. Since no one would ever know, and people would argue forever after, which had been which: which one commander, which one first officer. Some like Draven would never be able to prove but would privately know that both had been both. To/for/with each other.]

And there's a medical file. Of preexisting conditions treated and excised and cured on his first joining the Rebel Alliance, on injuries sustained and procedures performed over the course of his career with them. And two redacted lines about a series of self-inflicted damages and a near-fatal palliative overdose.

"Would I do it again."

His hand, still warm, still gentle, but a little more apprehensive, on her shoulder, still with the stitches and new scars from ripping itself over rocks. Not on Dantooine or Yavin or Scarif. Here in the canyon.

"No. Never again.

"Would I kill the man I'd been to serve with you again."

These next words will haunt him later. Tonight. Over the weeks to come. It's too much pressure to put on another human soul. To be not just another human but to be one's salvation. And she isn't… he doesn't need her to try to be… she doesn't do the work for him… he doesn't want her to be some Jedi or Saint. He wants her to be exactly another human. …But she was salvation, because she's what happened to him to make it change before even he realized or chose it.

But she may realize that.

What will back up on him later

is whether that can possibly be enough. Possibly resemble justice. Cosmically, in the nonexistant "balance". To consider one self-sacrificial act, giving his own singular life, could possibly equal the many lives he took on the way. His doesn't count for more just because it's his own. If just because he gave his life now means he can possibly be allowed to live a new one as if he is somehow reborn, as if he gets to just start over. As if he can ever be allowed to forget. To be happy.

But that's all for the head and the universe. Right now he can only say what's for her in his heart.

"Saving you saved me. Who I was had to die. On Scarif or anywhere. He wouldn't deserve to be here with you. With anyone.

"If I'd be lucky enough. If you'd give me the chance.

"Over and over. Siempre y para siempre. Always."

* * *

And after another moment, he shifted to move himself up, put his face nearer to hers, move his arm—a bit tentatively, with palpable fear, in case everything he just told her makes her not want to be held by him now… but without quite lighting upon her, the arm hovers, waiting, another offering: after taking so much from her, asking for her comfort and acceptance and protection… now offering his comfort and strength if she needs some back. If she touches to pull it toward her, he'll hold her. If not—you just told her you're a war criminal and murderer, she may kriffing well want some space—he'll leave her free.

(He doesn't pull away, doesn't leave her, but won't try to keep her with him. Give her more choice.)

But he keeps the panic that he may have just ruined everything at bay. Don't compound, this time. He keeps his breath and heart and body calm.

And his voice, when he murmurs; calm if quietly shaking: "I'm sorry. I'm making a pattern. I'm stopping it. I don't want us to associate sex with terrible revelation. New rule for the list. Applies only to me. If I feel compelled to pour my heart out to you after making love—if you can ever possibly want it from me again—it has to be a nice story."

(Even if not one of his own. Because cosmos-willing they're going to have many more wonderful moments together than either had had in their previous life. If, once again, he hadn't just ruined everything.)

[kestreldawn]

The touch of his lips over her heart feels like a warning - it feels like an apology, like contrition for something he hasn't yet done (or, perhaps, an event long since passed, she's yet to determine which). It's like he's at her feet, ashamed and repentant, once again at the alter of her body -

Hadn't they preyed to each other's back on Scarif?

Hadn't they sought forgiveness from each other then?

Then again, in the cabin - first to worship the delicate topography of each other's uncharted lands, to explore and discover the valleys and mountains and ghosts of war that still claimed asylum on those lands.

And then - in the darkness, cowered in the corner - a frightened child in disguise at his anger, the violence lurking just beneath the surface -kneeling before each other, with each other - again.

No sound leaves her while he speaks - but not because any part of her has abandoned him. She knows his words demand, deserve the respect of undivided attention, this string he seems to be pulling out of his mouth, through the tunnel of his throat, from somewhere deep within. The string is bloodied, frayed at parts, nearly severed at others. "You're no better than a stormtrooper," she remembers, compounded with the recalled inferno at the mere sight of him.

How she'd hated him then.

How she'd loathed his very existence - wished to steal his breath and cursed, beating heart to give to her lifeless father. How she'd sobbed, in the privacy of the cargo hold, until the wetness of her tears had all but washed away Eadu - her mother - her father - everything.

She'd never wanted any of this. Mon Mothma had known - "I'll never forget what we did to you," she'd said, though the weight of such a statement had been lost on her then, mind still buzzing, still pulsating with the thunderous words of the council. Her failed attempt at inspiration.

Cassian, waiting - his rallied troops behind him - calling to her to be his beacon, his Savior - how she hadn't wanted it then, either, but had no other choice.

When he finishes, hovers his arm across her torso - she doesn't flinch. Doesn't move to pull or push - allows herself to exist, suspended. Replaces the clothes she'd shed from her body, a shudder running through her at their cold, damp chill.

Eventually - turns on her side, facing him. Props her head onto her angled arm, reaches out - touches his skin with her fingertips. Studies his face and measures his pain.

"I want to hear the bad stories," she begins, voice as tentative as her hand. "And the good ones. I want the stories of your life, want to share mine with you." Her tone isn't overly warm - it's been chilled by his revelations, the haunting image she's created of Tivik floating in the back of her mind - but it isn't so far that she's unable to reach him, or the other way around. "I don't think it'd be right of me to judge us against each other; our lives and circumstances were different," she hears the little girl on Jedha screaming in her ears, "But I won't say that learning this, about you makes me feel anything less than - apprehensive. I know you had your missions - you had your orders, you had the Rebellion - that the messages needed to be delivered. I understand the calculations and the risks and the odds. You can justify what you did any way you want, with any amount of statistical data you can find. But - it doesn't undo what you've done. It doesn't suddenly negate the lives you took. Innocent lives." Something in her eyes goes bitter and bleak them as she withdraws her hand pre-emptively, asks, "Why didn't you leave me behind when you could have? On Jedha, on Eadu? I'd done my part; I'd made the introduction to Saw. Why did you come back?"

[candor1]

He withdraws his arm when she moves to do up her clothes. Stays still and silent, to wait and see what will happen next. What she'll choose. It's not for him to make all the decisions anymore. Never again.

Even though all he wants to do is cut his chest out. Cut his eyes and tear ducts out. Grab her and press his face into her and beg her to hold him as she had moments before; make it somehow true that he hadn't said a word but had stayed in the warmth she'd opened to him. —or far better, that the words didn't exist. That nothing had happened to give them meaning at all.

But it had. So they did. Both of them were right. It doesn't undo what you did. You don't get to forget.

When she turns to face him, he stays still, stays quiet, patient and impassive. But for something in his eyes reflecting the torment of relief. She wasn't leaving; she wasn't even turning away. He keeps his hands, arms, body, everything, apart from her. Keeps his eyes open, unfliching, to meet hers, even when he wants to close them—and turns his head microscopically to meet them—at her fingers on his face.

At her choice right now being to stay. To look at him. To touch him even momentarily. To allow his words, consider them, acknowledge them, and judge them dispassionately. Neither to dismiss or devalue with proclamation of insupportable forgiveness because of comfort, lust or love. Nor to condemn or recoil from them out of fear or hatred or disgust or vindication or superior righteousness. She is thoughtful and honest, with her own knowledge and experience and code. She is no one else's mouthpiece and no fool… she is issuing no ultimatums… passing no judgment… only assessing facts and both their grasps on them. In that moment he worships her. Not as a goddess or a savior or a saint or a conduit for his own salvation. Not for anything she could or couldn't do for him, anything she makes him feel. It has nothing to do with him. It's exactly who she is. In of herself. No more or less. It would be whether he had ever known of it or not. Whether she knew of it or ever had the opportunity to manifest it. Just as she didn't need to embody anything other than what she said and knew, to have been their rally, their beacon. There is nothing I'm hoping you can be, or give, than exactly what you are. I know what that sounds like. But…

It's what normal people have always capable of. What every sentient creature in existence, he'd always been certain, might be able to try.

What they were more likely to be able to be in the better kind of world he'd wanted to make.

But which, in circumstances like theirs, they usually failed to be.

What almost everyone he'd ever met has failed to be.

He respected everything she said. And he's acutely grateful to trust and believe it, as he wouldn't have if it had been anything else, good or bad.

But he so badly misses holding her, he has to move slightly away. His muscles clenching in on themselves, as if he's contracting around a stomach injury, trying to keep from burning or bleeding out. His breath is as strained as when he'd been kissing her. Why do pleasure and injury sound so damn similar. It was like cutting the barbed wireshaft out of his side again.

…It was right to feel this way. It was right to have said it.

It's not right just to take such ecstacy in her without her full consent. And how can she give full consent without being given all the information of to whom she gave it. …He shouldn't have ever touched her before saying it. And he doesn't get to simply lose himself in it.

…That's why he wept. He hadn't waited. Hadn't remembered. Had been so swept away by this unexpected gift. He'd taken her willingness as if it was enough. But it couldn't have been… he hadn't given her all the information she deserved, and was necessary to make any choice fully hers.

He's done another thing he'd sworn he'd never do.

Defiling… polluting… violating—

Twice.

…None of which is what she asked.

He needs to answer what she asked.

…Help me, skies and gods, it's the same damn answer as the last time.

"I don't know."

…I'm never touching her again if this is going to happen every time. He realizes now it hadn't been for her sake, the new proposed rule, but his own. Twice doesn't make a pattern… but it's already too much. He wanted her too badly, he wants her so much, but this was too painful because it wasn't right.

If you don't do things in the right order, the balance will get you anyway.

"You learn to make decisions when there's no time. The same ones you'd make if there was time to think and analyze, to choose the best. You just learn to do that in an instant. And then you learn how not to look back. Because once it's done… it's not just too late to choose otherwise. It's also too late to analyze it right. Any analysis will be tainted by the outcome. Justification or recrimination or whatever you feel about what happens after. All objectivity is lost.

"I couldn't leave without you. I couldn't leave not knowing what had happened to you. I couldn't watch anyone bomb or shoot you. It doesn't matter that you could have saved yourself if you'd wanted to, and perhaps you didn't want to… so perhaps I was doing it against your will as well as my own. I just… couldn't. Whatever time I had to think about it, I was thinking no, this isn't what you're supposed to be doing while I was already too busy doing it.

"It felt wrong to betray you. But it had always felt wrong to betray anybody. Even the Imperials I worked with undercover and earned their trust. Even them, I didn't want to betray. What I would want had never mattered. I didn't want any of it. But I didn't want it for anybody, so I took it on myself.

"This time I just… couldn't fight it. No matter how I still believed there was such a thing as a more important cause and greater good than my own private wants and righteousness.

"I just… kept trying to stay with you."

I hurt, Kay. Knock me out.

His face remains calm, not trying to justify to her, seek her pity, beg for comfort; his eyes are open and focused. But from the neck down… Unable to fold around her, his arms are pressed to his own stomach and sides.

He doesn't want to. He doesn't want to try to manipulate her. Doesn't want to provoke mercy or pity. But neither does he ever want to lie to her. Never again. So he doesn't use all his powers to hide it as he could have. He looks as sick and hurting, as from the fall, internal injury, as when his legs had failed him on the beach.

[kestreldawn]

As Cassian implodes upon himself, withdraws himself from her physically, she finds herself mirroring his actions - if only slightly. The fingers that had glided across the lake of his face recoil more - now feeling unsure if he wants them there at all. She can't know how he's feeling, can't know that it's his drive and need and want to touch her that's forcing him to demur - she assumes it's the opposite. Something about the dangers of assuming floats through her mind like a dust cloud, but she pays it no attention.

She won't make him touch her - won't make him hold her - if he'd rather not. She won't make him burn herself in her pyre, won't burn away his skin and hair and lips if he'd rather self-protect. It's too much to ask, she thinks. It's too much to ask of one person.

Crippling Darkness breathes, hisses at the back of her mind - elated to once again be awoken and allowed to conquer. How it loves the decimation. It wonders on her behalf, in the silent moments when she sees the thoughts rampaging behind his eyes -

He came back for you because he felt pity.

Even now, he can barely stand to touch you outside of his consuming, carnal needs.

Look at how he reels away from you - the strenuous force of his breathing; he's disgusted by you.

How could a person so willingly tossed aside by everything and all in her life demand that someone like him stay?

Darkness quiets long enough for her to hear his words - a long tendril of smoke that slips into her ears, fogs up her skull. It's like she can see it at the backs of her eyes, from within. Something about it is acrid, forces them to sting and flood to remove some of its acidity and grit.

She has no idea why she's crying.

Her eyes close (if she were to think about it more, she'd realize the trust that this invokes), reabsorbing some of the excessive moisture that's collected in them. That incessant, infuriating lump wedged into her throat. Exhales, voice quivering and unsteady.

Every piece of her wants to wrap itself around him - let him sheathe and swaddle her. She wants to feel and remember the tranquility of his arms, the protection of his heart thudding against hers, the light he forces her to remember. She wants him to solder the cracks inside of her with the way he looks at her - the way he holds her in his gaze as no one has before (and no one will again, she knows).

She seeks mercy from him, as much as he does from her.

For different things, different sins and transgressions.

But does it matter what the crime may be if the path to forgiveness is the same?

Does it make her any better for demanding of him what he's demanded of her? She has no consent, no verbalization of willingness on his part. She's simply assumed (the dangerous thing about assuming .. - yes, yes, I know) that he'd give it. That he has be giving it all along. Has never verified, has never confirmed.

And you wonder why people have left you?

-- But isn't that the thing?, Light asks. He hadn't left you - on Jedha, on Eadu - when he could have. He'd come back for you when all you wanted to do was stay - allow yourself to be consumed by your grief, and your loss - be swallowed whole by a darkness more permanent than Sleep. He'd saved you - both times - at the feet of your father.

He stayed.

And has stayed now.

Her eyes open - find him - see his crumpled form and the haunting images of the shriveled sight of her father transpose over him until she blinks. In an instant -

Arms reach out.

Enfold.

Pull him close, forehead to forehead.

Desperate, needing. Relaxing only at the reunification of them again.

"Please stay with me," she murmurs, pleas, begs. "Please."

[candor1]

It may not be justice. He definitely doesn't deserve it. But he can't fight it. Not her. Couldn't from the first. And will never try.

At her lightest touch he instantly undoubles and turns to her. Doesn't try not to crash. Doesn't try to pull out of the nosedive. Just lets gravity take him back into her arms.

Puts his arms around her in turn, enveloping her, wrapping her so tightly. Turning the touch of a forehead to kiss on her face to burying his face in her neck and shoulder and cradling hers into his. He's shaking so hard, too hard to cry, he's afraid of bruising their bones. But every part of him is pressed to her, nothing held apart, nothing held back. Every part of him…

"I'm yours," he whispers back. "Always."

[kestreldawn]

If only she could take his words - thread them together, strand by strand, syllable by syllable - drape it over her shoulders to warm her, shield her from the elements, from the world, from the galaxy around them. If only she could use them as kindling, walk through the flames they produce, come out the other side unscathed - whole, complete.

If only she could cradle his words - carry their manifestation with her at all times, a constant warmth at her side, there for whenever the glacial ghosts of her past begin to stir, begin to migrate once again.

The solidity of him against her draws out an elated sigh, a breath of the fear, relief, acceptance, forgiveness, love, protection, vulnerability she feels. Her arms cling to him just as tightly - wishing they could crawl into each other.

"I'm yours," she echoes, voice shaking with the fervor behind the words. "I'm yours, too."

[candor1]

He runs a hand through her hair, soothing her against him, to soften her taut muscles and ease the trembling in his hand. They're coming back, again… back from that place that keeps pulling them away from here, where they're safe, and together…

…And he can suddenly remember, with a twinge of scornful self-rebuke, that even his self-hatred and self-reproach is… well, about himself. Deciding he's too compromised for her, doesn't deserve her, that his mere presence must be polluting her… is not the same as respecting her. It's still prioritizing himself, trying to make unilateral decisions, putting himself in a positition that doesn't exist unless it's equally shared.

If there's anything she wants to share with him… that they want for each other and together…

He takes a deep breath. His first full, steady one in a while. And another. Places his palm flat against her back, pressing her close, so they can steady themselves and breathe together.

His tension at last relaxes enough that a few final tears fall into her hair and onto her shoulder.

He turns his face to kiss her cheek, smoothing the dampness away. (…not they aren't both now sodden from the ground and snow, but the symbolism feels tangible: pushing away his traitorous emotions.)

He feels her holding him back. …Clinging, with as much stricken relief as his own.

…And it hits him with such obvious force. Neither wants to ever leave the other. Not ever. Each is terrified the other is going to leave. He's so busy assuming she must hate him… while when he withdraws, she must think he's not judging himself but judging her. He may feel like he needs to back away to not force her to send him away… but all it can seem like to her is that he wants to go away. From her.

No… no. Don't kriffing hurt her. Not ever.

He takes another, more sudden, more resolute, breath, and cranes back his head, cups her face in his hand, to look her in the eyes.

"I'm sorry," he says. "This is the wrong pattern. I've put you through it twice but that's no proper way to follow making love. —We're trying this again."

And with sudden vigor, the same unviolent swiftness he'd used playing in the snow, he levers himself up on one knee, regathers her into his arms, and lifts them both bodily to their feet. And doesn't halt the momentum there. He hoists her off the ground, kisses her, and sets her gently on the half-hanging branch he hadn't managed to pull by force off the tree. It'll support her now. Putting his hands low on her waist, keeping her secure, he plants his feet firmly between where hers swing free, leans her gently and firmly back against the tree trunk, and kisses her.

Nothing you don't want. Not. Ever. Any slightest move to the contrary from her would stop him at once. But as long as she reciprocates, so will he.

[kestreldawn]

She allows every piece of her to melt against him - mend into him, onto him. She's still her own, free-standing structure - still capable and able and willing to carry it all on her own shoulders, spine still strong and able to endure the weight - but the strangeness of it all is that she wants to let herself go soft.

Just a little.

Just enough.

She's learnt to be fiercely self-reliant out of necessity. She's learnt to depend upon no others because there were no others of which to speak.

But now -

There's Cassian.

She's beginning to understand the complementary nature of the most precious, most successful, most rare kinds of connections like these - the ability to be two separate pieces, who willingly come together to enhance, support, empower the other - working with each other instead of simply near each other. Still themselves, still autonomous - but together.

It's as she's floating in these thoughts, these strange realizations that she comes back to herself, notices the slowed pace and consistency of his breath - feels his hands around her face, finds the beautiful darkness of his eyes and meets it with the jade in hers.

She lets herself be moved - willingly and wholeheartedly giving herself over to him in all the ways that she can - letting out a bright trill of laughter at being placed on the branch. She murmurs contented sounds against his mouth, resting both wrists atop his shoulders, one hand tangling itself in the hair at the back fo his head.