i'm pinned down by the dark; makes my head pirouette

[kestreldawn]

WHO: Jyn Erso
WHERE: By the fountain/Jyn and Cassian's Cabin
WHEN: Future-dated to March 16, late afternoon/evening
OPEN TO: OTA/Cassian (Separate thread posted for Kira)
WARNINGS: Mention of war, blood (sort of self-harmy?), violence (Will update as needed)
STATUS: Open

---

// OTA - By the Fountain //

It had been a mistake, realized too late: attempting to climb the precipice in the northern part of town. She hadn't been doing it for any reason other than pure curiosity - wanting to know first-hand whether the stories she'd been told held any truth ("no one can leave," "everyone who tries is struck down," "the only way out is by death").

Even more foolish had been her attempting to do it alone.

She'd reached about ten feet up when the first floating orb wafted by. She hadn't thought much of it until another one showed, then another, then another - until they practically congealed around her in a brilliant, blinding burst of light - and for a moment she thought, the air sucked out of her lungs -

Scarif. The Death Star. It's happening again.

And in her panic, she'd begun to flail her arms while trying to maintain her grip on the rock's surface, not realizing that this would agitate the insects - or that they would retaliate against her.

It had been one sting - a little zap of pain on the side of her neck. She swatted, bringing palm to skin with a resounding slap. Then it was another, on her left arm - then four more through the fabric of her shirt on the expanse of her back. She leapt down from the crag, covering the back of her neck as she tried to run away, tried to escape the incessant daggers masquerading as flying insects.

It's when she reaches the fountain that the hallucinations and paranoia begin to set in.

She is back at war, back in the jungles of Onderon. She reaches for the blaster at her thigh only to discover it's been lost - or worse, taken. She ducks for cover in a small patch of trees, heartbeat thudding loudly in her ears, breathing short and furious. She trembles, petrified of an unknown enemy, wondering where the kriff her comrades have gone off to; have they left her behind?

// Cassian - The Cabin //

She hadn't told anyone where she was going that morning - not even Cassian. Part of it was because she didn't wholeheartedly believe in the danger, despite the warnings she'd received. Part of it was because she knew the reprimanding sort of look he would give her if she had told him - the silent worry glittering like a galaxy behind the blackness of his eyes. She couldn't stand to see it. So, she'd ventured out alone - didn't lie or come up with an alternative excuse, just said she would be back later.

After the attack, she eventually finds her way back to the cabin - some dull, weak part of her brain remembers it - knows it's familiar. She still sees the jungle, still feels the oppressive heat and the stink of rotting vegetation, but there's something in her, underneath the layers of fever and projected surroundings, that knows this place is safe. Or safer than the rest.

She's crouching, hiding underneath their porch - taking cover from imagined enemy fire that feels more real than the dirt pressing against her belly. Mutters and curses to herself that she's lost her weapon and has been left defenseless, not realizing the volume at which she speaks.

Comments

. for kira .

[kestreldawn]

by the fountain

She needs to find cover, needs to keep moving. Stagnation is a sure path to being found, being captured, being killed. Eyes survey madly to find the next location - and as she goes to move, putting her full weight behind the lunge forward, her toes catches on a rock she hadn't seen, sending her crashing to the ground. She puts her hands out to break her fall, palms scraping against the rocky dirt, face angled to the side and caked in earth. She groans at the electricity of pain jolting through her body, the wind sucked out of her lungs.

[3ofswords]

Yesterday's encounter should have him warier of the outdoors, but the armed prison inmates rioting in the streets hadn't kept him from going where he'd wanted in New York, and he'd traveled the village and woods in the fog unmolested up to the point he'd found the canyon's edge. Raleigh had mentioned it, his first night here--insects and creatures, chasing them away from the walls, deterring exploration above.

And he had a ritual to demand it. He's following the path back to Ren's grave, a portion of breakfast in-hand, when he sees Jyn scurry and take an ugly dive between him and the fountain. For a moment, he just squints the distance, her edges blurry enough he knows her by more than sight.

She's always had a heat in her presence, a clear and gaseous flame, flaring with color at times like a beer can tossed in its center. There's a pale cream at its tips today, sickly and consuming, different even from the way she threw herself into the task of Ren's grave. Setting the plate of simple bread down, he continues down the path toward where she's fallen prone, wondering if she's worn herself to exhaustion in some other fashion, or if--

He turns away to scan the trees behind her, gaze relaxed, waiting for any hint of light in the fog, ears listening for the blurry sound of too many wings. If she's been chased, they've already turned back for the walls, and he considers her again. There's a hesitance, aching in his hands, not to touch her--but her scrapes and groans are real, and her breath is only just settling. "Jyn, what happened," he asks, compromising with himself to only reach down and tuck the hair away from her face, to see if she was with him enough to listen. With only his finger grazing her cheek, the prickle of her sweating fear feels normal enough for a race through the trees.

[kestreldawn]

She's slow to move, bones possibly fractured and attempting to mend to prevent further damage, skin and blood vessels torn and broken. She can feel the discoloration beginning to form, even before it shows - hands, knees, hips, face. The pain that lingers pulses like a dying heartbeat, heat rising a the blood races to save its fallen comrades. She's distracted by the task of trying to gather as much oxygen into her lungs as she can, the force of the ground against her diaphragm making it difficult to do so. She feels empty, on fire - fumes, burning off of an accelerant that shouldn't be there.

The touch of something foreign against her face snaps her back like a band - hand immediately rising to swat it away with force, thinking it may be another one of those insects that had stabbed her earlier. She scrambles, collecting herself enough to her knees and hands, scurrying backwards away from -

A man.

Eyes squint in a failed attempt at recognition. He knows her name.

She crouches, eyes feral - like a woman raised by animals. Her left cheek is already turning shades of purple, squarely on her cheek bone - the rest of her skin dusted with dry earth. By her hairline, her temples, the sweat collected there begins to curdle the dirt into paste.

"GET AWAY!" she screams, hopping backwards while remaining crouched, hands ready to transform into weapons. "GET AWAY FROM ME!"

[3ofswords]

Ren hadn't gotten very many chances to train him, but Kira had done his best to absorb the lessons--not to rely on his stuttering, too-subtle prescience, but not to ignore it either. To move with a blow if it struck, to fall correctly, where to strike that might incapacitate without doing lasting harm.

That had been an argument below the surface of their sessions, a stubbornness behind their wrapped hands. It was pointless to trade points the other couldn't accept--Ren could hurt him, would press the point up to the instance of actually doing it, and Kira would grin against the bruising of his cheek and remind him: but you don't want to.

His hand is limp before she catches it on the edge of her own, as much warning as that sense provides before he's overwhelmed with the present, the volume and urgency of her voice. He likely won't get another, just the dirt-wild state of her, sweating in the cold. Hands up, his right stinging but not badly, he takes two steps back. "Was it the fireflies," he asks, remembering his own reckless flight through the trees, "They've already turned back, it's fine now. I'm certainly not going to hurt you."

Were she anyone else, he might have taken her word for it, turned on a heel and run back to the inn for assistance. He still might, if she doesn't calm down, or can't get up after her fall. "Jyn," he repeats, feeling a need to ground her with the name, or just see if she seems to respond to it, "It's just me. It's Kira."

[kestreldawn]

"Fireflies," she repeats, over and over again. "Fireflies. Fireflies. Was it the fireflies? Was it the fireflies?" Her lips continue moving long after the sound's been subdued, whispering the spirits of words prisoner in her throat, taking cover beneath the posts of her teeth. If he'd heard the words, they wouldn't make sense out of context. Kyber. Coruscant. Lah'mu. Stardust. Saw. Onderon. Maia. Blaster. Krennic. Over and over, she repeats them in a murmur, fingers quaking like the vibration of her skull.

Underneath the purpling of her cheek is a field of pinks and reds, skin flushed by the fever now wracking her body - boiling her blood, disintegrating her synapses.

Eyes maniacally oscillate between all that's around her -
Rock
Tree
Man
Sky
Hands
Dirt
Until finally - man, again.

"Kira?"

Electrical charges unable to cross the gap between outstretched tendrils in her mind. No such name found.

"How do you know me? How do you know my name? WHAT DO YOU WANT?"

[3ofswords]

He shouldn't let it get to him--her fear, her fire. He should be a depth of calm, a placid pool absorbing and not returning, no matter how many of their feelings glaze over him like a tide. Kira hadn't agreed with Graves' assessment, bend or break, but there were cracks in his edges. Cracks with names and faces, cracks that followed the cuts on his arms, the lightning scars on Credence's side and Veronica's arm. Cracks that whistled with the stutter of Casey sounding out the written word.

He can't bend for them. He can't bend for things that aren't even his to feel. Even now his voice doesn't raise to match her own, but there's a firmness he doesn't often use, an edge he learned from is father, before his father stopped speaking to him at all. "I want you to to stop shouting at me," he admits, regret boiling in his guts as it leaves his mouth. She doesn't remember him, she clearly isn't well--

But he also isn't threatening her, a few feet away and his palms up. He sighs: "I'm sorry, it's alright. We met here before, when you first came out of the water. I don't know why you don't remember, but I'm going to find help. Just stay here."

Pushing his foot back, he half-turns from her, starting slowly for the inn at an angle he might still catch some movement.

[kestreldawn]

Shouting? Had she been shouting? She can't seem to remember. Time seems to pitch forward and back or stop all together, and she's unable to determine the boundary between what's taken place and what she's imagined. Or worse, what she's conjured up from years past.

"No, no, no, no," she repeats, tongue unable to conform and twist itself to make any other sound. Hand to her forehead, skin on fire - though relative to herself, she's unable to feel the inferno blazing behind it. "No, no, no," she continues, now resorting to pacing back and forth - three steps left, three steps right. Eyes drag on the ground with each thud of her foot against the ground. "This isn't right, this isn't right, it doesn't make sense, none of it makes sense." Hands wringing onto one another, thumbnail to the opposite palm, digging into the flesh hard enough to draw blood. "Onderon. I should be on Onderon."

The sound of his moving away from her diverts her rabid, chaotic attention towards him.

"No, this isn't right," she mutters again, driving herself forward to push past him.

[candor1]

He woke with a jolt and a sense of something wrong.

Fractured fragments of a dream…

Pero aquellas que el vuelo refrenaban
Aquellas que aprendieron nuestros nombres...

Las palabras ardientes a sonar;

mudo y absorto y de rodillas,
Como yo te he querido...

Tal vez despertara—

His fingers spread to seek her and clenched on the empty bed.

mi dicha a contemplar,
¡Tu no volveran!

He sat stark upright, stomach churning.

And realized he was fully dressed.

He paused. Squinting, blinking out the window.

Sunlight…

It was still the same day.

He'd fallen asleep in daylight. No. He'd never… Not that his circadians rhythms weren't long shot to hell, with time not existing at lightspeed (—thank you, astrophysics joke—) nor in space. But whenever he had the mercy of sunlight, he'd never unknowingly wasted…

…she had said goodbye. It was still the same day. She'd woken him on leaving. He'd gotten up shortly after her. But still exhausted from strenuous dreaming that had made sleep unrestful, he'd not gotten far in his day before he… surrendered and lay back down.

All right. All right.

So it was all right that she wasn't here.

…And yet… it wasn't.

Perhaps on a level of frequency even his trained ears couldn't consciously hear, but through some subliminal quantum vibration, she had managed to call to him. Perhaps it was the not waiting to detoxify his autonomic nervous sytem. Perhaps it was the Force.

Whatever it was. He found himself pulling on his boots and going downstairs… going to the door. As if pulled by the crystal pendant against his chest. (Or the muscle and blood behind it.)

Then he heard her. Sounding so unlike herself his hand convulsed (as it still did sometimes against his will going for an absent blaster). Perhaps it wasn't her at all but another waking dream…

But his senses checked everything—the light, the smells, the air—and he was awake and this was real and the voice persisted. Sounding as if it were right beside him… but there was no one…

Frowning, he shunted the autonomic and reactivated the agent brain.

Sound doesn't travel through space. It does through air. Through water. Flesh. Through…

wood.

Honing in on her signal, he stepped from the porch to the ground, his boots digging into earth, and knelt to look under.

"Jyn!" he called—though instinct kept the cry half-whispered. He instantly ducked and made his way under the porch toward her.

He stopped much shorter than he meant to. Much further away.

He wondered what had reined him in. He'd meant to go to… touch her.

And realized it was the autonomic brain once more—saving him this time. Recognizing in her body language—his muscles before his mind—that if he got too close she might flee or… strike.

…What? …Him? Her?

…And belatedly processed what she was saying.

His eyes widened. Heart behind the crystal stalled.

…He doesn't know what's happened. To make her dissociate. Take her away.

…this is how she feels whenever I…

…But he knows how to speak to a soldier mid-crisis, in this state.

"Erso," he intoned, low and gentle. A frequency pitched to soothe, opposite spectral end from blasterfire or warcry. Yet still clear enough to reach her. …And if that didn't work, more gently: "Stardust." Reasserting order in the universe: "Report."

[kestreldawn]

Her breathing runs wild like a stallion at the sound of boots overhead. She's been found, she's been careless - she's been muttering to herself without having realized it, and she's drawn the enemy to her location. Her first thought:

Saw would be disappointed.

The second:

I'm unarmed and need to fight with my fists.

At the sight of Cassian's face she freezes, eyes wide and glowing like a moon, tendrils of sweat like a crown around her head. It makes a paste with the dirt, creating phantom strands of hair where there aren't any. Her fingertips instinctively grip underneath her, body poised and tense and ready to lunge if necessary.

Something in her reminds her, No, for stars' sake, you know him! But the fever, the delusion set forth from the toxins of the lightning bugs acts like a hand, pressed against the origin of those words, willing them to be silent. Stealing the air from those lungs and letting the body fall limp to the ground.

She shimmies herself further back, unfortunately not able to go as far as she'd like, hitting the foundation of the cabin with her foot. She silently curses herself, but doesn't vocalize - it'd be giving away too much, showing her weakness.

The use of "Stardust" immediately snaps her attention - that's something she knows, something she recognizes. How could he know it? Unless -

"Who are you? Did you work with my father? How did you know my name?" Her words are razor-edged, practically spit from her mouth as she begins to slide herself sideways - slowly, naturally - to get her close enough to the edge to escape.

[candor1]

The breath he lets out is what happens when you get stabbed.


Reactions, again. Body first or mind. Autonomic nervous system versus intellect. How they communicate with and influence one another.

When you see a terrible sight, it's not the intellect that reacts first. It's the body. Heart starts to pump, adrenaline surges, respiration shallows, stomach churns. These rather than the provoking stimuli are what make the brain go something wrong is happening what—? and search for the explanation. Then it will see and process the terrible sight.

(This is also what happens when there's no sight to be had. No injury, no event, nothing external that's happened at all. It's why sometimes you think of a painful memory from years ago that you haven't thought of in so long, yet it suddenly torments you. You're not tortured because you thought of the memory. You thought of the memory because you're tormented. The autonomic nervous system glitches and goes haywire and the intellect seeks for an explanation. Even if it has to dig pretty deep into no-longer-relevance to find one.)

But it's a conversation. Not in one direction or the either. Intellect and body… neither gets to dictate. There's feedback and impact. Sometimes, in reverse.

Back to stabbing.

When the blade first goes in, the body goes into shock. It turns off pain receptors. Tries to keep you calm. The less your adrenaline, respiration, and heartbeat surge, the less quickly you'll bleed out. The better you can try to react to the situation and get yourself to help.

But even if you don't necessarily feel it as pain, you feel the blade. It's hard. It's cold. And above all… it… is… wrong. It doesn't belong where it's been put. It's the kind of alien no nonhuman being has ever truly been. It's invaded and interrupted and is being a dam.

At first your muscles contract around it. Trying to process and contain the foreign body. Trying to keep everything that belongs from spilling out.

Those plus the concept of its wrongness, the dread of life changing or ending, are what cause pain. The horror of steel perforating and blocking your flesh.

And if/when you pull the blade out (sometimes the correct move, sometimes emphatically not—hopefully you get to it either way eventually, if you get to wait for it to be the right move), it's the resistance of contracted muscles that may hurt most.

When you're stabbed in the back, you also get all the air forced out of your lungs.



Cassian looks at Jyn with contracted muscles and no air in his lungs.

No. Unbounded Yava, no.

Don't do this.

Don't leave.

Don't—not to me…


Pain receptors shut down. Adreline drops. Heartbeat, respiration slow. Everything goes calm and cold.


"I'm a friend," said Cassian, keeping his voice gentle, quiet. But inside and behind, with a core of intensity. Believe me it's true believe me don't leave. "We're on the same side. I want to help. Tell me what happened…? let me help."

[kestreldawn]

Friend.

Friend.

Jyn doesn't have friends. Has she ever? She thinks of her toys, left behind on Coruscant and in the dirt on Lah'mu. Thinks of the characters in the holodramas she'd loved. Her Mama, her Papa. They'd been her friends.

And they'd all been taken.

No, she had no friends. She had her comrades in arms, the men and women she'd been forced to rely on to keep her alive as they had with her. She had Saw, a terrible surrogate to Galen but a surrogate all the same. He'd started losing his grip on reality long ago - more and more distant as the years wore on. She'd seen the looks, heard the whispers, knew the beliefs about her that circulated around the camp.

They'd started to figure it out. Figure her out.

Friends. What a ludicrous idea.

"How could you be a friend? I don't know you," she seethes, each word accented acutely with the click of tongues and teeth. She's managed to slide herself close to the outer edge of the porch, and with a considering glance towards the man (why does he look so terribly sad?), she rolls her body to the right and springs up as soon as there's no cover over her head. Doesn't take the time to dust herself or spit the grains of dirt and sand in her mouth, feels them against her teeth and under her tongue. Something about sand gnaws at the back of her mind; sand .. beach .. planet ..

But is quickly shut down by the fever.

Hands come up, balled and ready - knowing now he won't let her leave without a fight.

"The same side," she scoffs, snorting her incredulity. "You aren't on my side. You aren't on my side!"

[candor1]

Cassian grabbed the cord around his throat and yanked it free.

He held it out to her. The crystal pendant winked with light.

"You gave this to me," he said. "It's like the kyber crystal your mother gave to you before she died. No one saw that happen. That information isn't out there for anyone to steal. How would I know unless you'd told me?"

[kestreldawn]

The crystal feels like an open-palmed slap to the face, like a blaster bolt to the center of her chest. Muscles tense and lungs pause, heartbeat struggling to continue its rhythm deprived of oxygen. Verdant eyes oscillate back and forth between the sparkling gem and the look on his face -

So determined, so fervent, so .. devastated.

Her hands begin to lower, fingers starting to relax. She remembers the necklace. She remembers her mother. She remembers the weight of the crystal against her neck.

"She gave it to me, on Lah'mu," she confirms, voice helplessly small.

[onlyeverdoubted]

Bodhi tends to avoid the fountain. No good associations with his near drowning, after all. But he does do a lot of meandering and hasn't steered himself away again before furtive movement catches his eye. He doesn't even recognize Jyn immediately, just the kind of motion that means a threat. He freezes for a moment, heart thudding in his ears, fighting the urge to cringe behind a tree himself, and makes himself stride forward with effort.

He's rewarded for the struggle when he does realize who he's following. He can't see what the problem is, but his first impulse is to assume she can, not that bug bites are causing hallucinations now. Trying clumsily to not be visible either, something he utterly fails at, he keeps a careful distance and pitches his voice low, vaguely remembering someone telling him that a whisper carries further. "Jyn?"

[kestreldawn]

The sound of approaching footsteps somehow penetrates the wild heat and fury of her mind. She snaps her head around, almost with enough force to twist the thing clean off her shoulders, eyes feral and animalistic. The jade in them burns brightly, incandescent - yet marred and dirtied by the panic underneath. Fingers twitch for the blaster she no longer has, chest heaves with the breath her lungs can't seem to catch.

They rake over the man in front of her. She knows one thing: he isn't a fighter. His movements, his breathing, his eyes are far too unsteady for that. She knows another thing: he isn't one of Saw's insurgents. Though she didn't know all of their names, especially the newer recruits, she knew their faces, knew their aliases. He wasn't one of them.

It could only mean one thing.

"Here to kill me?" she hisses, body slightly crouched and fingers in loose fists. "Come on, then; give it a try."

[onlyeverdoubted]

There's not much she could have said to better demonstrate she's not in her right mind. Hostility and fear could be reasonable reactions to a lot of things, but she knows him too well to think he's in any way capable of trying to kill her. It's not even a morality thing, though he'd like to think she knows that, too. She just has a lot more direct experience with his clumsy cowardice than any particular virtue. He couldn't if he wanted to.

But if there's one thing he understands, it's a mind misfiring. He keeps his hands visible and empty and takes a small but firm step backward. No threat posed, and given Bodhi's total disinterest in his own appearance, he's just in scrubs and not even carrying his backpack at the moment. It should be obvious he's not armed. "I wouldn't dare if I wanted to. Did something happen?"

[kestreldawn]

"Good try," she continues to chide, "At making yourself seem weak, incapable. Don't think I don't see through it. The best of fighters can make themselves seem less than a threat. I know what you're doing." The hair normally framing her face has plastered itself to her skin, her forehead haphazardly. In a word, she looks deranged - the constant twitch in her fingers as they search for a blaster that won't ever manifest, the incessant darting of her eyes from the man opposite her to their surroundings (as though waiting for the others in the ambush to appear), the ragged and labored strain of her breathing.

"Did something happen?" she mocks. "You should know! You flushed us out here, made us lose our cover, seized our weapons! So, what are you? Another piece of Empire scum? Or are you with the Alliance?" She knew there were tensions beginning to come to a head between Saw and the Rebels; he'd started going too far, becoming too radical. "Kill me, and you'll still never find him, you know."

[onlyeverdoubted]

Lost. She's lost, and while he understands (and hopes nothing as terrible happened to her as did him to wind up that way) he's not the anchor she needs. But the captain isn't here. He does his best to dredge out meaning from the disconnected questions. He doesn't know who "us" would be, or if it's anyone real, and not just pieces of things her brain's stringing together in order to navigate. But if both the Empire and the Rebels scare her, he can't imagine what would calm her down.

Well, he can, but the thought stops his tongue. It's the same idea that brought him out of the trap inside his head, but it's also an idea he's aggressively shied away from whenever Jyn was anywhere near, let alone bringing it up directly. No, he's not that desperate yet. If he can get her to someplace safe, he can find Cassian and put her in good hands.

The captain would know how to do that.

"I defected," he says softly, half to himself. "Let me try... try to get you to cover..." He doubts that'll do any good.

i'm so sorry bodhi

[kestreldawn]

"Defected? Defected?" A snide, sarcastic laugh breaks through Jyn's teeth before the scowl returns, nearly twisted into a sneer. "No wonder you defected, if this is your tactical approach." She holds her arms out to either side of her, begging the invisible enemies to dare an attack, the weakest parts of her bodies exposed. She beckons them out from wherever they might be hiding with the swooping motions of her hands.

"C'mon, then!" she shouts, addressing the unseen hostiles. "This defector certainly isn't gonna do much good here. Might as well take the kriffing shot while you've got the chance." The fire of her eyes, glossy and unfocused with fever, seek Bodhi out again.

"Let me guess, defector - trying to find me cover's just a terrible offer of capturing me, eh? Throwing me into a prison? Who do you really work for? Is it Krennic? I would've thought he'd try harder to find me, send one of his best."

3/20/17 | The Spring

[3ofswords]

Every day, he would wake up, notch his bedpost at the inn, and slot the new number into his mind. There's a semblance of control in keeping track of the days, in knowing how long he's been here, even if it's not entirely accurate.

Their second day in the forest, he'd found and peeled the twigs from a decent branch, something to hold onto in the fog, something to test the path ahead with, pretend he might use to fend some one or some thing off. He should have taken the bat, should have taken the time for a lot of things--a note for Credence, a second search for Jyn--but his face had been throbbing, his throat aching, and Casey had been afraid.

Even after the fireflies, he'd only nodded and packed the rest of his things up from their room at the inn. If there was some delusional fever going around, he wasn't equipped to deal with it, and he knew holing up away from people was the only way to wait it out. At least with Casey and the dog, he felt safer out in the trees.

The branch is behind him, within easy reach, four notches at the top to add to the rest when they go back. And they will go back, he thinks, if things don't seem to be getting worse. It's too damp out, too cold at night, and the spring is a poor replacement for indoor plumbing.

It's also a bit strange, spending so much time with Casey. Every day, every night, feeling the double edged blade of his anxiety and relief. The forest seems to make sense to him, the edge of fear a familiar blanket he draws around them both. Kira's indulging it, glad to at least narrow his focus to one person, but he's stolen a bit of time for himself this morning, slipping south to the spring from their last camp. He takes the time to wash his face and sit for a bit, acclimating to a sense of the space, before he strips down to his underwear to get in. The heat of it helps combat the damp chill of sleep in a foggy wood, and getting in is the only relief for the lingering ache of his jaw, the bruising gone deep purple with green edges by now.

Touching it gingerly, after he's slid into the water and swum out from the shallow edge, he hopes wherever Jyn found to hide, she's alright. That the fever didn't burn her out, that she didn't lose her memories or sense permanently. There's guilt in staying away, but his ego isn't great enough to imagine he'd contribute much to the recovery. If she's gone or going, right now, he'd rather stay ignorant of it for as long as he's able.

[kestreldawn]

Fog. She remembers fog. She remembers the crag, the scrape of her fingertips against its jagged face, the strain of bone and muscle as she hoisted herself up the side of it. She remembers the curiosity driving her forward - or rather, driving her up. She remembers jolts of pain, like tiny needles pinpricking her skin from all different sides, the way the pelting rain on Eadu had bruised her flesh. Only sharper, localized. She remembers the twinkle of lightning bugs, streaks of light spelling out unknown glyphs in front of her face and on her body as they'd swallowed her whole.

And then - running. Sprinting. Sprinting the way she had on Lah'mu, trying to get to the bunker before the Man in White's soldiers had found her. The same misery in her lungs, lungs now larger but no more capable of taking in the air she needed to force her feet onward. Then -

Nothing.

Waking up in her bed.

She attempted to shift herself to slide out of the blankets and almost let out a scream at the agony in her body, like she'd been turned into shattered glass, all jagged edges and piercing shards. But she'd managed. The cabin was empty. She'd had no recollection of Cassian waking her to tell her he was leaving (a promise they'd made soon after she arrived), but - in the heavy mist of her brain, it didn't mean much. He probably had, she probably even mumbled something in reply.

The air felt stagnant and stale, the cabin like a hermetically sealed container never once opened. Suffocating. She'd fumbled her way towards the door, stopping to somewhat erratically scribble a note that she'd only gone to the spring to the south of town and would be back shortly, before letting herself shuffle outside - body moving, behaving like a newly reanimated corpse, lethargic limbs trying to remember how to move.

The trip there reveals bits and pieces of what she thinks are memories. Can't be certain. The sight of the fountain makes her instinctively glance down to her hand, still swollen and purpled and sore. She recognizes the injury, knows it's because of forceful contact. But against what? What did she do?

She comes through the clearing rather ungracefully, feet shuffling loudly against the mossy undergrowth, twigs snapping under her clumsy gait. She's only half alive, and therefore half alert, not noticing there's already someone in the water.

[3ofswords]

Ears and eyes still above water, ears still trained for a change in the ambient noise--cracking brush, birds going silent, the crackle of a cloud of fireflies--he hears the scrape of her feet and the swat of her arm against a branch. Swimming immediately to the other side of the rocky pool, he dips until he's just a pair of dark eyes watching from beside a mossy stone, wet hair trailing its uncut tips in the water.

They narrow to see her, assessing her clumsiness and exhaustion for similarities to four days prior--when she'd been stumbling, weaving, a raving thing with ragged edges that set fire to whatever they touched. And she'd touched his jaw rather forcefully, when he'd tried to reach for her.

That was his mistake: he'd accepted it at the time, continued to accept it even as Casey lit up with fear for the threat of violence and sickness both.

Pretending their escape is placating on his part let him swim above the guilt of leaving people behind to deal with everything. He could have stayed, herding the sick to the safety of the inn, making cold compresses and stretching broth from the meat stores to see people through it. Seeing her here, alive, defied his helplessness, his own familiar blanket to pull around his shoulders, and tell himself someone else would come along and do it better.

When her intent seems entirely on the stream, not the searching alertness of before, and her movements seem more tired than desperate, Kira lifts himself with an arm slung over the stone, moss rubbing green to his arm, water splashing away louder than before. The livid bruise is neither displayed nor hidden, just a feature of his cheek and throat, everything from his shoulders up exposed with droplets forming in the wake of his movement. "Jyn," is all he says, voice hoarse with the early hour and days of little use.

[kestreldawn]

For a moment, she thinks the sound of breaking water is a creature. A fish? A serpent? Uncertain as to whether it's friend or foe, ally or enemy - muscles somehow remember to freeze. The tingle at the back of her skull curses her brash, obnoxious shuffling - she's drawn too much attention to herself. She's blown her cover. The hallucinations of the days prior still linger, like phantom images projected onto the landscape around her. The waves of heat rising from the surface of the water remind her of the grotto on Onderon. The lush, verdant vegetation reminds her of its jungles, though the scent of it all is different - that much is obvious.

The sight of a man in the spring begins to dissipate those translucent images, eyes blinking rapidly to try to focus on where she is, rather than where she was. Sputtering, misfiring electrical charges in the brain move at glacial speeds, trying their hardest to make the leap of faith from one end to the other, clinging on the way she had on the platform at Eadu -

No, focus. Who is -

"Kira," she finally manages, the name tumbling out of her mouth like a stone. Vision comes into focus, trails the exhaustion in his face - the dark circles sleeping beneath his eyes, the dark of his gaze blacker and bleaker than she's seen, a nebula splattered across the side of his jaw. As if finding its missing piece, her hand reminds her of its existence with a throb. She raises it, finds it with her gaze, stretches and clenches her aching fingers. "Did -" she begins, the green of her eyes glittering and trembling with horror and fear, "Did I -?" Her other hand gestures vaguely towards his jaw, then reaches to touch her own.

[3ofswords]

She remembers him, at least, even if she doesn't seem to remember the last few days. He can't blame her--he's had fevers like that, dreams of demons on his chest, much heavier than the blankets his mother had piled there while he slept. Dreams that didn't even come true, fevers that burned him closer to normal, where the mind could be a thing that just held you down for no reason, raked leaves and mulch over, left you choking in the dark.

He hasn't had the kind of dream that came true since the morning Ty left, and he hopes he never does again. If he could just stop sensing people, get some kind of shield back, he'd mind this place much less.

Lifting his other hand from the water, he touches the tip of a nail to the bruise's edge, as if remembering it's there. Her reaction says she remembers something, the feeling running down in her shadow and spilling into the water from her feet. "You didn't remember who I was," he says, excusing her even as he confirms. "You were in some kind of panic, you only did it once." The nail becomes the tip of his finger, testing once before he drops it back under the water. "Don't do it again and we're square?"

[kestreldawn]

Jyn crumbles like a rotting tower, body tumbling down onto the plush moss underfoot with a dull thud. Her gaze lingers not on Kira but on the would at his jaw - the gentle swelling of it, the hues of damage and healing, the epicenter where her fist had been and its radiating shockwaves.

"You aren't going to hurt me, Jyn," she encouraged, placated. "I'm much larger than you, and I'm much faster than you. When I'm an enemy who's looking to end your life, you can't hold back. You know what happens if you do?"

Jyn knew. But stubborn tongues refuse to move. She stayed silent. A disgruntled sigh at lack of cooperation and response.

"You die, that's what happens. And do you want to die?"

She managed to at least shake her head, more out of obligation than out of self-conviction.

"Right. So, let's try it again. Attack me."

It'd taken Jyn months to be able to spar properly, consistently held back by the shadow at her elbow with each raised fist. They were comrades, they were family (or the closest she'd had, at least). But even the most resilient of minds and hearts can be reprogrammed, can be desensitized. Then, there were few who willingly volunteered to spar with her - her hands too nimble, her footing too steady. Still, the night of her first successful match, she'd promised herself - never a civilian.

And now, muted eyes soaking in the sight of a man who'd shown her nothing but kindness and generosity, she knows she's betrayed everything that had kept her human all those years. The one thing that kept her from being what she'd accused Cassian of being, after Eadu (you're no better than a Stormtrooper). She'd done the very thing she'd promised she'd never do.

She feels something in her shatter - even as he absolves her of her sins, even as he forgives her before she needs to ask - the damage for Jyn is irreparable. She scrambles back away from the edge of the water, fumbling to get back to her feet. Traces the shape at the cliff of his jaw and wilts under his gaze. Turns on her heel and flounders on the unsteadiness of her gait as she attempts to move forward - away from Kira, away from the spring, away from what she's done.

An apology is needed, she knows - she demands it of herself, even if he won't - but how could two words exonerate her from what she's done? Not just the punch, not just the delirious result of the fever - but all of it, all the back back to that night on Onderon, promising herself - never a civilian.