Jyn Erso (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kestreldawn) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
sixthiterationlogs2017-03-02 03:55 pm
kestreldawn) wrote in sixthiterationlogs2017-03-02 03:55 pm
Entry tags:
i can barely breathe when you're here loving me
WHO: Jyn Erso
WHERE: Jyn/Cassian's Cabin
WHEN: March 2
OPEN TO: Cassian Andor
WARNINGS: Mention of self-harm, mention of depression
STATUS: CLOSED
Jyn's not used to gifts, in any shape or form. There's something about them that makes her feel uneasy (if she were to examine more closely, it'd be linked to a deep feeling of "undeserving," but she's yet to make that connection). Galen used to bring her presents, when she was small - he'd come home with a new toy for her almost every week, slip it under her tiny arm while she slept so that it would be there with her when she woke. A poor substitute for Papa, but better than nothing, she always thought.
But that was different.
That was the least that he could do, even though his presence would've been the best sort of gift for young Jyn.
This - waking up to find boxes on the table with her name scrawled across in unrecognizable penmanship - feels intrusive, violating. She stares at them for a long while before she even reaches out a hand, letting her fingers skim the outside of it as though searching for a trap - searching for the wire that will electrocute her if she tries to pry it open, or the sharp end of a needle covered in poison.
Once she deems them to be innocuous, she opens the smaller one first.
Inside, she finds a small toothbrush and toothpaste - not enough to last more than a couple of months, if she's particularly careful of how much she squeezes at a time - and a black multi-tool. The former items get laid on the table while she spends a few minutes examining the latter, pulling and swiveling and discovering all of its parts, before slipping it into her pocket.
She lifts the lid off of the second to discover an assortment of useful items, pulling each item out one after the other, setting them aside on the table. When she reaches the bottom, it's then that she sees it - the necklace. Her fingers instinctively reach up to her throat, where the one her mother had given her had hung for so many years. It hadn't survived the fountain (or was it that it hadn't survived Scarif?), and she'd ached for the weight of it against her throat, the affirmation of it - even if she didn't necessarily believe in its power.
Jyn can see upon visual inspection that it isn't exactly the same - the crystal is a different shape, a different size - but it's hauntingly similar. Her eyes dart around, half expecting to see a mysterious figure pop out from behind a door, the giver of the boxes, wanting to capture her reaction. Of course, there's no such person - but it doesn't stop the tremor in her fingers, the percussion of her heartbeat inside of her skull, against her chest - as she reaches out, lets her fingertips skate the clear, hard surface of the thing. She removes it from its now-empty cradle, lets it rest against the flesh of her palm.
Trust the Force, she can hear her mother say - or at least she think it's her mother. She's forgotten the sound of Lyra's voice, and had long ago. She can see her face, see the pain and ferocity behind her eyes, see the silent agonizing goodbye in them. Her fingers curl around the pendant - eyes closing, breathing labored - knowing there's only one thing to do with a gift like this.
WHERE: Jyn/Cassian's Cabin
WHEN: March 2
OPEN TO: Cassian Andor
WARNINGS: Mention of self-harm, mention of depression
STATUS: CLOSED
Jyn's not used to gifts, in any shape or form. There's something about them that makes her feel uneasy (if she were to examine more closely, it'd be linked to a deep feeling of "undeserving," but she's yet to make that connection). Galen used to bring her presents, when she was small - he'd come home with a new toy for her almost every week, slip it under her tiny arm while she slept so that it would be there with her when she woke. A poor substitute for Papa, but better than nothing, she always thought.
But that was different.
That was the least that he could do, even though his presence would've been the best sort of gift for young Jyn.
This - waking up to find boxes on the table with her name scrawled across in unrecognizable penmanship - feels intrusive, violating. She stares at them for a long while before she even reaches out a hand, letting her fingers skim the outside of it as though searching for a trap - searching for the wire that will electrocute her if she tries to pry it open, or the sharp end of a needle covered in poison.
Once she deems them to be innocuous, she opens the smaller one first.
Inside, she finds a small toothbrush and toothpaste - not enough to last more than a couple of months, if she's particularly careful of how much she squeezes at a time - and a black multi-tool. The former items get laid on the table while she spends a few minutes examining the latter, pulling and swiveling and discovering all of its parts, before slipping it into her pocket.
She lifts the lid off of the second to discover an assortment of useful items, pulling each item out one after the other, setting them aside on the table. When she reaches the bottom, it's then that she sees it - the necklace. Her fingers instinctively reach up to her throat, where the one her mother had given her had hung for so many years. It hadn't survived the fountain (or was it that it hadn't survived Scarif?), and she'd ached for the weight of it against her throat, the affirmation of it - even if she didn't necessarily believe in its power.
Jyn can see upon visual inspection that it isn't exactly the same - the crystal is a different shape, a different size - but it's hauntingly similar. Her eyes dart around, half expecting to see a mysterious figure pop out from behind a door, the giver of the boxes, wanting to capture her reaction. Of course, there's no such person - but it doesn't stop the tremor in her fingers, the percussion of her heartbeat inside of her skull, against her chest - as she reaches out, lets her fingertips skate the clear, hard surface of the thing. She removes it from its now-empty cradle, lets it rest against the flesh of her palm.
Trust the Force, she can hear her mother say - or at least she think it's her mother. She's forgotten the sound of Lyra's voice, and had long ago. She can see her face, see the pain and ferocity behind her eyes, see the silent agonizing goodbye in them. Her fingers curl around the pendant - eyes closing, breathing labored - knowing there's only one thing to do with a gift like this.
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To the very fabric of her existence, as it ripples in the wind of whatever benevolent universe decided to give them this - this life, this chance, this future. When she feels it tearing, when the frayed ends and shoddy patchwork begins to go threadbare, he's there - needle in hand, ready to sew her back together.
Her brow lifts at his suggestion as a laugh escapes her disguised as staccato puffs of air.
"I don't have any of my own, but please - do continue," she manages to blurt out, voice quivering with the laugh she's trying to tamp down. But it comes out on the heels of a sharp gasp at sudden and sharp pull of her body towards his, and she thinks she may end up nothing more than a puddle of Jyn-like ooze on the ground. The crystal is there - she feels it, but it doesn't hurt; it feels solid, it feels real. A grounding token, of sorts.
One hand to his cheek, the other on his shoulder. She dares a tiny nip of his bottom lip as she separates them, taps their forehead together. Keeps the beautiful humor of the moment by adding,
"Stars, you stink."
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a barracksamenities, his personal upkeep tended to be inspection-impeccable… but this past week he'd admittedly fallen into will be on stakeout camping in these clothes for two weeks mustn't think about it shutdown. He should do something about that.—But first.
"Another moment." He sat back—though keeping his hand lightly at her waist—and reached down with his free hand to pick up the second box. From inside, he scooped a small pouch into his palm and showed it to her.
"It felt like I was being offered a choice," he said. "I think I was putting too much symbolism on that." The universe doesn't really do things so personally. Everyone was too small for that. "But… it would be nice to… learn how to… help something live. But I don't know anything about this. You lived on a farm once…?"
The pouch was full of gardening seeds.
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They track his movements as he rummages through the box at his feet, quickly scanning over the pouch once it's produced. They linger there while he speaks, her mind beginning to fabricate a thousand different possibilities of what could be contained inside. The mention of a farm makes her seek him out again, eyes narrowing slightly with concentration and slight confusion.
With quick, nimble fingers, she unties and loosens the pouch to see the seeds inside. She takes a couple in between her fingers, feels the familiar firmness of them. Different plants, she imagines, but enough similarities to transport her back to Lah'mu. There's a distant, lazy smile on her face as she remembers.
"My father was actually not nearly as good a farmer as he was a scientist," she recalls, her tone light. "Many of the plants died our first few months there. He'd spend more time trying to theorize about moss and bacteria than trying to cultivate the plants themselves. But he eventually got better at it - er, sort of. I'd sometimes end up ruining the plants while I'd play in the fields with my dolls. Inadvertently, of course. The agricultural droids would have to roll in after, repair all the damage." She blinks herself back to the porch, to her place opposite him, eyes coming back into focus. Smiles at the sight of him. "I don't know how much I remember, but we're relatively intelligent; I think we can figure out between the two of us."
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But on the verge of standing, hesitated once more. Then nodded and held out his hand… for the multitool. "…I'll take that back."
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"They had some other things, aside from the multi-tool and necklace," she explains. Her gaze lingers - eyeing them as though a bomb, ticking and blinking, set to explode at any moment. "Do - do you know where they come from?"
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"I get the feeling," he said, "we're either an experiment or pets. Maybe both. Maybe it's as simple as… them wanting to see how our kind survives without much tech. What we seek and build for ourselves when nothing is provided. I don't know. Since whatever had the power to bring us here must be at a technological level so far beyond ours…" He shrugged slightly, seeming simultaneously uncomfortable with the admission of willing defeat (he, an intelligence agent) yet also the slight relief of having been decommissioned. "They saved our lives," he said, "and brought us back together. And waited to do so until there was nothing else we would be able to contribute or experience where we came from. I consider that fair trade. I'll be their specimen to be so with you. In the absence of further facts… I'm choosing to assume benevolence." Choosing hope.
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His conclusion brings her focus back to him, her feet padding towards him to allow her hands to take his affectionately. She raises them, brings his palms to her waist and rests her forearms on his shoulders. Wades in the dark pools of his eyes while lighting his face with hers.
"Hard to complain when it's brought me to you," she murmurs quietly. "And to think, there's no rebellion here to build." Rebellions are built on hope, she remembers. "Of all the strange sort of cages I've found myself in, this is by far the best - though having you in any of the others would've made it better."
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"It could be deluding myself," he said. "But I don't know the last time I felt more free."
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No, home is here.
Home is wherever Cassian happens to be. It wasn't confined to physicality and structures and architectural feats.
"It's a bit scary," she whispers, "But I'm less afraid with you at my side."
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And yet, at the end - she had been afraid.
"I didn't want to die," she blurts out before she can wrangle her tongue in to behave. "Back on Scarif." Eyes close, remembering - searing heat, blinding light. Muscle and bone and heartbeats. "Because you'd finally given me something to care about. Something to want to live for, and with. I'd never had that before."
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It's surprisingly easy (almost funny) to say. Considering how the reality behind the flippant words still recurrently blinded his dreams.
"And…" fairness, evenness, reciprocity: "I was ready to go for myself… you were giving me a better death in every way than I could have ever had alone. But I did wish… that you could have… other… moments… in a life… was sorry you couldn't… and sorry that I couldn't help give any of them to you."
…With a surging impulse he would have attributed to Chirrut and other (though, because of Chirrut, now thought more affectionately than in the past) religious nutjobs, Cassian was suddenly tempted to run out into the snow, run out to the waterfall, let the elements batter him and shout his thanks to the Beings of this place. For providing exactly that.
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"You'd made me believe in a cause," she adds softly, "Something I'd never had before. When - Back on Jedha, when we found Saw - before you came to pull me away, he asked if I could stand to see the Imperial flag across the galaxy." She pauses, the strain of his withered voice echoing in her ears, even now. "I told him it wasn't a problem if you never looked up." A quiet laugh of incredulity at her own stupidity. "And I'd meant it. At least then I did." She pulls away to search for his eyes, fingertips trailing the delicate skin at the cliff of his jaw. "But you changed that."
And it was because of him that, for the first time, she'd wanted to live. Wanted to pursue a life not shadowed and dictated by war, and death, and destruction. Wanted the quiet life her father had teasingly taunted her with in his hologram. Wanted it with Cassian.
"It's hard to ever feel anger towards this place, even if there are .. overseers or watchers, when we're both here together."
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…No, the Empire did that. They'd taken back some of her own.
He hoped.
…He knew. He wasn't getting this guilt or doubt from her. Only himself.
It had been years since he'd allowed himself to indulge either such feeling.
Progress…? turning to humanity again…?
He tilted his face closer into her fingers, letting the shiver become more at her touch. Met her eyes, hoped his own weren't being too …emotive? …transparent.
"Sometimes I'd wonder," he said quietly. "If we weren't just doing the same work as the Empire. If the reason we fought was because life is precious and every being deserves to have the best they can… but we were just ruining lives too… "
He shook his head. No. The long view. Sacrificing the present for the future was sometimes the best resort.
"I sometimes think true freedom is only being able to be able to pick your own fights," he murmured. "There's always going to be something. If you're lucky, you make your own. Rather than give yourself to…"
He sighed. "I don't know what I'm saying. …Ignore me. I don't think I can keep thinking about it now."
He snugged his arms around her tighter and inhaled the scent of her hair. "Since we get to have a now. …I thank whoever they are for that too."
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Had they really been no better?
No. They hadn't created a planet killer to demand fealty. They hadn't destroyed cities and planets with a singular beam under the falsehood of order and obedience. Perhaps they'd done things they should have gone about differently, but they were nothing like the Empire.
Perhaps a conversation for another time - if and when they'd felt up to it.
"Are you giving me permission to ignore you?" she teases, latching onto something lighter - something happier - rather than the darkness that always seemed to be lingering and lurking at their backs. "Is that an outstanding offer, or only applicable now?"
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It's just that… the result for the individual lives might be the same. Whatever leads up to it, whatever the cause, the motives, death is still death…
…the Alliance was different… maybe it's just me that…
No. I can't. I can't.
He appreciates what she's doing. Choosing lightness. Choosing banter. For his sake as well as (maybe at the cost of) her own. He wants to thank her for it and honor it, go along with it.
He just… can't remember, right now, how.
Perhaps he does manage to follow her example, if onto a completely different train of thought. But managing to have one at all and latch onto it.
"What would we have called each other?" he whispered. "If we'd never been soldiers. If there wasn't war. If we just… met. Would I have a nickname for you…?"
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And yet -
Here they are.
No blasters to speak of. No wars. No Alliance, no Empire. Cleansed, forgiven (?), redeemed, by something or someone or the Force or something else entirely. If this was the life she had led from the start - if she'd grown up in this village, had been sung to sleep by the lullabyes of her mother, had been encouraged by the brilliant light in her father's eyes - who would she have been?
"It would depend if we even liked each other," she quips, tongue still curling and curving around the sarcasm she shares only with those closest to her. "But we'd just met .. knew each other outside of Captain and Rebel and all." She murmurs a pensive note. "If I didn't like you, I'd probably call you Cass Trash. Or Trashy Cassy." She does her best to stay dead-pan and even-faced as she says this (a twitch of her lips betrays her). "If I did like you .. I don't know; what sorts of nicknames do friends give each other?" Her frame of reference is unfortunately narrow for things like this. "What would you call me?"
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"I said if we weren't soldiers!" he protested, pressing his hand to his ribcage to stop the laughter. "Those nicknames are lethal."
Would they have liked each other… maybe the same pattern would hold. No at first but yes eventually, both for the same reasons. The ways they mirrored one another. And the ways they didn't.
That covers literally everything, pointed out a mental Kay.
Refocusing… All right. He has had to play at endearments. Tries to remember patterns. …But his model is Admiral Grendreef's family and they weren't purely civilians nor anyone he wants intruding even mentally into their home…
"Jynnie," he says, giving into it. "Possibly."
And then embarrassed, "…Or Princesa if we were kids trying to annoy each other." For some reason, he had a feeling being called "princess" would annoy mini-Jyn tremendously.
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"Jynnie." It sounds and feels strange on her tongue, but not too foreign or unknown to settle down at the back of it, curl up like a pet in front of a fire. "You're better at this than I am." At the use of what she can only assume translates to 'Princess' in Basic, the doe-eyes of moments earlier grow spikes, flicking to his face with indignation. "Yes. That would have annoyed me. A lot." She pokes his ribs lightly. "Do you have a middle name?"
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And yet they both seem to like 'Jynnie'. Hearing her say it only makes it nicer. He wondered if and how his name could possibly break down into something like that, since direct equivalence didn't have the same effect. Adding versus subtracting syllables…? it wasn't something he'd ever really analyzed before. Analysis probably not the point.
The nearest he could think of was when Grendreef's daughter and son had called him "Jorah". Started as a mispronounciation of "Joreth" which had then been deliberately adopted. It had been more about how they said it. Like he was someone they were so delighted to see, whose appearance heralded good things (like presents, messages, story- or playtime) rather than dread or doom.
Maybe his real name couldn't allow that possibility.
…No. Demonstrably false. When Jyn said it, unaltered and sincere, it transformed his entire existence.
The only nickname he needed was his real name in her voice. Maybe he could tell her somehow.
But thank goodness he doesn't have to figure out how, yet, because she's moved on. Thank you.
Back to a(n almost playful) grimace, Cassian answers, "Jeron." (Pronounced almost like the Alderaanian [and, coincidentally, Earth] bird, but with the slightest throaty catch to the aspiration, a flip to the 'r', and a long 'o'. cHEH-ːroʊn.) "After my father."
Echoes abounding. Jeron Andor had been from the Yavin System. Hence the childhood foundation in Yaval that remained in Cassian's natural speech, that any Fringe insurgent of the same cultural background (a fair lot; Yavin was a big system whose native civilizations were more ancient, and so their cultural and linguistic descendents had spread far) had maintained in child Cassian's language acquisition. Hence the feeling of eeriness when the Alliance moved its base to Yavin IV, the odd feeling of belonging he'd had there, that he'd never felt on Carida—or when, as a teenager, he'd finally set foot (again?) on Fest. He had to assume Fest had been his mother's world. But he'd felt no familial resonance there.
The name of the world I come from means 'rock'. And it deserves it.
He tended to say he was "from" Fest when asked, to maintain Yavin IV's security, and in utter rejection of Carida as any such thing. But for all it was the last Alliance base he'd been to (first he'd been brought to was Dantooine), and the most continuous time he ever spent there tended to be in med bay (which looked the same no matter which planet it had been plunked down on), it had felt more 'home'-like than any place he could be said to have 'lived'.
"How about you?"
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The trill of his tongue at the peak of his middle name makes something in her stomach flutter. She wonders, then, about the name Jeron - it's clear linkage to his father, the little she knows of the man through the stories Cassian's shared. She wonders, listens for the inflection in his voice of anger, or hatred, or love, or sadness. She wonders, for a brief moment, what her own voice sounds like when she mentions Galen - if there's a flicker in her eyes to betray the neutrality she so often clings to at the mention of him.
"Jeron." Her attempt falls flat, right onto its face. There's no delicacy, no rolling r's, no throaty catch to start it. She tries again, with a moderate amount of success. "Jeh-ron." The r's still undulate the way she wants, but it's closer. "Maybe there's a nickname to be found between your first and middle name. And .. no, no middle name for Jyn Erso," she replies, "Though I often wonder why. Or what my parents might've chosen if they'd given me one. I think it'd have to be two syllables, to sound right with my last name."
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(not because he hates his father; he doesn't remember the man well enough to feel anything so strong; he just thinks Cassian Jeron Andor sounds terrible. Ungainly. Who repeats that many similar syllables on purpose…?)
—into something… rather… …attractive.
(The way she wraps her mouth around it… and the way she's interested enough in something about him to take the time.)
"Try making it closer to a 'd'," Cassian offers re: pronounciation, feeling warmed as he touches a finger to the side of her mouth.
"Shall we make one for you?" He propped himself back against the nearest piece of furniture, gathering her close to his chest, her back pressed to him, so he could rest his cheek to hers. "What was your mother's name?"
Lyra he knew from reading the file they'd amassed on her before extracting her from Wobani. He never tried to call it to mind but it was there. Still. He didn't want to assume how to pronounce it—not did he want to take it from her. He wanted to hear how she said it, learn it from her the way she did Jeron from him, only if she was willing to give it.
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"Jeh-rrrron." She winces, hoping she hasn't just decimated the name with her second verbal attempt. She spent too long on the rolling of the r's, but she's at least made them move and flutter with her tongue. That's an improvement of some kind. Small, perhaps, but there's a radiance in her eyes at having accomplished the sound. As though to excuse herself from ruining the name, she adds, "I'll work on it."
She lets her head find the front of his shoulder, body melting against his. Mention of her mother takes her by surprise, and her throat swallows in preparation. She inhales, exhales her mother's name like a breath.
"Lyra." Leer-ah. "I don't think she had a middle name, either, come to think of it. My father did, though." She pauses, letting the image of his face float through her mind like an apparition. "Galen Walton Erso. All two syllables, which I always thought sounded strange."
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He'd hoped asking after her mother again wouldn't be painful. His arms tighten again around her, apologetically, protectively. But with the crystal nestled painlessly under her arm and against his chest, it seems… perhaps she's already been invited to join them…? and he can try to help her stay. In a way that's welcome. Reinforcing her memory, not her loss.
"All right," he said. "Give me a minute." He starts running iterations through his mind. It's the worst way to come up with an alias if you get to prepare in advance; but it can be handy if you need to think of something on the fly that will then stick. The best lies are the ones based on truth, that you don't have to reach for to recall.
Component parts—building blocks. Lee. Ra. Gae. Len. Wall. Ton.
"Jyn Gaera?" he suggests. Avoids the double two-syllable trap with Erso by sounding like three in his mouth: GUY-air-lah.
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The fading rumbles begin to quell in her belly as she settles back comfortably against him, tucking his arms a bit tighter around her torso, pressing forehead to neck. Exists with the echoes of his heartbeat against her skull, against her spine and lets them envelop her while his mind busies itself with coming up with another name for her.
Only this one, she'll cherish. This one will be made out of affection and frivolity, rather than necessity and death. A beautiful juxtaposition, she thinks, that he'd not only been the one to make her proud of her name, the one she'd been running from all her life, but that he'd also be the one to create her next "alias," in this new life they've created together.
"Oh," she breathes, tilting her head back to gaze up at him with suns in her eyes. "I - I love that," she murmurs, twisting herself to bring up a hand to the side of his face, trails her fingers lightly. "Though I don't think I'll ever be able to do it justice the way you do."