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

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

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.

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Jyn makes no other sound - at least not towards Bodhi - as she begins to trail behind him, arms tugged tightly around her torso, eyes digging through the ground with each step. She's still muttering to herself - more apparently nonsense to the voice only she can hear - though the murmurs aren't quite loud enough for anyone whose ears aren't pressed against her lips to hear.

"Why did you defect from the Empire?" she finally asks, eyes and attention still to the dirt passing beneath their feet, though the rise in volume and the specificity of the question indicate she's asking the man leading her, not the ground below.

Murmuring a bit is a completely acceptable activity by Bodhi's standards, and he goes very carefully and quietly anyway, not wanting to risk making her resist his help again. He's happy to exist as unobtrusively as possible as long as it's doing some good. And maybe shielding him from a few more painfully perceptive barbs on Jyn's part.

He jumps a little at the question and pauses for a moment, debating his answer. There's one big answer, one with cool, deep eyes that were tired and hunted and wise and saw right to the core of him, one with a soft voice just as often turned to minutiae about crystallography as the ethics of rebellion and the possibilities therein. That's an answer that might get him punched, and one he doesn't want to risk again, for his own sake as well as Jyn's. So that leaves a lot of little things. He can't sort them out and also pick the ones he thinks will work best to keep her calm, not in the moment.

"Little things, one after another," he says softly. "They... they built up, once I left the Academy, especially. You can forget things there. I--I think that's part of how it's made. You don't think about home, or what's outside, and then..." Well, that's not going anywhere. "The most ordinary things turn into, um, into horrors. You realize a cargo you flew of specialized fuel cells is--is powering a prison camp." A deep breath. "A graduate from your year disappears off her route, and no one wants to talk about it." His voice raises in pitch a bit, even as it falls in volume, and the words come faster. "An arrest turns... turns into a summary execution. Right in front of you, and-and-and the troopers don't even look at you even though you were in--you were in the same place and just as suspicious, because there's the right patch on your flight suit, and--" He cuts off suddenly, unable to bear his own voice anymore, half forgetting Jyn's trouble as memories threaten to creep back in.

Her eyes flit over to the back of his head every so often while his voice drowns out all other sound: crunching of leaves, dull thud of earth, snapping of twigs. For all of its interruptions, and stutters, and staccato delivery, the continuity of it is oddly comforting for Jyn. Something consistent to cling to while her mind worked so furiously to keep the voices and holograms of days long gone at bay. It's almost like she's clinging to the last drop of lucidity the fever's allowed her, and something in Bodhi's voice keeps her there - something is familiar, in the voice and in the man himself. She isn't why or what or how, but it feels a bit like reuniting with a friend after many years.

Not that she's had friends. But she imagines this is what such an event would feel like.

Prison camp. Gaze snaps up as her feet refuse to move further.

"Prison camp," she murmurs, now resuming her pattern of pacing and mumbling to herself. "Prison camp. Prison. Prison. Prison camp." It's like she's stretching over an impossible crevasse, one foot precariously balanced at the edge, arm extended to its limit, fingers gliding across the surface of what she's meant to grab onto. "Arrest. Arrest. Prison camp. Vallt. Separtist prison." Closer, closer she edges. "Prison camp. Labor camp. Twenty years. Twenty years in a labor camp." Fingers tap dully against her temple, eyes squeezed shut - almost. "Wobani. Liliana Hallik. Tanith Pontha. Jyn Erso. Erso. Alliance." Eyes snap open, find Bodhi - something like recognition is in her eyes for the first time since he'd found her. "B-Bodhi?"

It takes him a moment to realize he's left her behind, caught up (dangerously, painfully) in the trap of his own memories with no need for a psychedelic bug bite. The rise of her muttering to distinct (if somewhat odd) words catches his attention and he turns, keeping an eye on her as unobtrusively as he can. There's no immediate indication that she's changed for the better, but this is definitely a change, and he watches her pacing nervously. How's he going to get her to walk with him again? Some of the words are familiar, some are not, but if she's getting lost in some new way...

And then he hears his name and makes himself turn his eyes to hers. He only holds it for a moment. Long enough. Caught on the edge of his worry over her and the looming menace of things he can't let himself remember too vividly, the sudden turn for the better feels discordant. He almost doesn't believe it, and a rare, nervous quirk to his lips is something like a smile, but not quite. "Jyn."

"Bodhi, how did I get here?" Her voice feels like an echo, reverberates like the way it does in her dreams and nightmares when she's small and alone, calling out and wishing for her Mama and Papa. She remembers the dream in the cargo hold after Eadu:

Jyn lay on her back, dead, in their Coruscant apartment while Lyra diligently packed gear for some one-woman planetary survey mission. Lyra nearly stepped on Jyn as she grabbed a portable scanner off the dessert table.

"Oh, for--" Lyra shook her head, reached down, and pulled Jyn upright ...

"Mama?" she said.

Lyra laughed and poked Jyn on the forehead with one finger. "You need to not lie down in the middle of the floor. I'm going to trip and fall and land on you, and your father's going to blame me when you bruise."

She went back to packing. Jyn watched her. "Mama," Jyn whispered again, "I don't know what to do."

Lyra held up a hand for silence. She reviewed the contents of her duffel, nodded with satisfaction, then walked slowly to Jyn's side. She smiled gently, sadly. "I know, sweetheart," she said. "But you're a big girl. You have to decide for yourself."

--

"You're your father's daughter," she said. "But you're not just that."

--

Lyra whispered in her ear, so soft Jyn had to strain to hear it: "The strongest stars have hearts of kyber."*

"Bodhi, where are we?" And then, as quickly as the lucidity begins to coagulate, it begins to disintegrate. "Why aren't we on Onderon? Where's Saw? Where's Maia, and Staven, and Codo? Did they leave me?" There's something like need in her eyes, something like desperation and sorrow. "Did they leave me, Bodhi?"

* taken from the Rogue One novel by Alexander Freed.

He's hopeful, for just a moment, on the point of explaining the little bit he can and rushing her along home to safety. The hope only last a few seconds before she makes it clear that while she might be a bit more present, she's not quite with him. But if she's asking him for help, then maybe he still has a chance of helping her. The names don't mean anything to him, but without the hostility, maybe he can rely on being vague and quiet and nudge her the right way.

"You're not alone, are you?" he says softly, liking the sound of that, though he doesn't know if it would work on him, and he's just regular paranoid. "Come on, I'll take you home." He regrets that one as soon as it's out of his mouth. He doesn't really know much about Jyn--more than he did, but not much--but he's pretty sure home isn't a concept that works for her any more than for him. Probably less. He tries to look reassuring, but he does it without eye contact or getting anywhere near her, so it's not all that effective.

"I'm not?" Jyn asks, brows gathered and eyes burning with fever and confusion. A terrible combination. The electricity of her mind is slowed significantly, so much of her energy going to defeating whatever is plaguing the rest of her - but after a few moments, she understands. She isn't alone, not technically, not with Bodhi nearby. Of course, the bigger kind of alone, the existential kind, is a different beast all together, and is a beast she's spent much of her life attempting to out-run.

There's no running here, and it's only a matter of time before it finds her again. Sniffs out the scent of her fear, her pain, her sadness. Hunts her down, sinks its teeth into her neck.

Jyn stops walking, eyes glowing with incredulity and suspicion.

"Home?" Even the sound of the word feels like a language she's never heard. "Where are you taking me?"

Does he dare bring up Cassian? She knows who Bodhi is, but this has been such a strange, piecemeal thing, little bits of the Jyn he knows (and many of the Jyn he doesn't know at all, which is probably most of her, realistically) surfacing at random. "Someplace safer than wandering around alone when you don't feel well." Leaving aside what's going on in her head, she doesn't look well. He's always been prone to getting sick himself, and recently, well, he's got encyclopedic knowledge of various ways bodies fail their owners. It's a solid argument.

She murmurs something like an agreement, though it's more out of exhaustion and lack of other options than complete compliance with his plan. Her feet drag lazily through the dirt, sometimes hitching in the patches of mud that litter the ground. She curls her arms around her torso, hunching over as though stabbed in the gut.

"How did we get here, Bodhi?" She might as well be a child, spent and wanting nothing more than the comfort of a familiar toy, the embrace of a parent, trailing behind an adult who seems to know better.

In the broader sense or more specifically? Which would give her more comfort? He suspects the one with a better answer. Or at least an answer that isn't just a shrug. "I found you walking out here. That's--I think you're sick, that's all, and you'll remember, um, when... When you're better." He hopes. He even thinks it's true, because he knows something about missing memories, and while they may not all slot in right where they came out (his head feels full of jagged broken edges on the best days), brains are complicated and full of information, and inertia alone seems like enough to correct the worst of it.

"Sick? I got sick?" Jyn pouts a bit, disgruntled at this new revelation. Jyn Erso doesn't get sick. She gets injured, wounded, bruised, beaten, and battered - but she doesn't get sick. She angles her head back up, looking at the back of Bodhi's head silently for a few moments as she continues to follow him as the weak hold on lucidity begins to slip away even more. "Where's Papa?"

Not the part he expected her to argue with. Bodhi knows he gets sick more than most (something to do with the lack of sleep, stim dependence, terrible diet, or constant and relentless stress, possibly), but everyone gets it sometimes, right? He wouldn't have been thrown by protests that she could deal with it, but the simple observation? That just seems like irrefutable fact.

At least he doesn't have to defend it. Unfortunately, he has to do worse. He brought this on himself, trying to play a trump card that turned out to be a joker. His jaw sets for a moment before he says, without much inflection, "Not... I wish he was here, but he isn't. You, um, you've just go me for now. Sorry." It's a heartfelt apology.

"The Man in White visited us," she murmurs, eyes dragging back on the ground with her feet, arms tightening. "I heard him talking to Mama, talking about things I wasn't supposed to hear. She laughed, but it wasn't a real laugh. It was the kind of laugh she makes when she doesn't think something's really funny but knows she has pretend like it is." She imitates it - an empty, hollow sound that, to someone perhaps not in-tune or uninterested, would sound like a genuine burst of amusement. "Papa saw me watching through the open doorway. I asked him why people fight. He said he thinks it's because people are unhappy, and they don't agree how to make things better. I told him they might agree if they stopped fighting." Her voice, which was small and childish, transforms into something older - more adult, more lucid. "Why do you think people fight, Bodhi?"

Bodhi knows next to nothing about Krennic--the man's way above his pay grade, and it was in Galen's interests that Bodhi keep himself very clear of official notice up until his actual defecting. And not much more about Lyra, though he has heard a little. It's probably not important, but there've been clues in Jyn's babbling, hints as to how he might best proceed, and he hates to think what he's missing. He can't ignore her question, but he has no idea what'd be the best answer to give. He can't just go with a true one, since he's never been in charge of inquisitive children and as such has never learned the trick of answers to their oddly perceptive questions. He has nothing. And he doesn't want to contradict Galen, even here and now. "He's probably right." Doesn't sound right to him. Animals fight. Every species he's ever heard of fights. But that's hardly important.

"But how can you agree if you're fighting? How can you be happy if you're fighting? I think that's the sort of thing that makes someone unhappy." There's a finality to her tone in the way children often say something with the utmost seriousness and gravity to something open-ended, to something that can't be finalized at all. But Jyn think she's right on this topic, and there's no arguing with her about it. "I don't much like the Man in White. He talks about things that make my Mama and Papa uncomfortable. He smells funny, too. But Papa calls him his friend, so I guess I have to be nice to him, too."

Well, they're entirely back in nonsense land, but on the plus side, he doesn't have to attempt a coherent philosophy of war and human nature. He thinks he prefers this, though it's no easier to know what she wants him to say and what will keep her reasonably pacified, though at least this peaceful interlude has let them make a bit of progress. "I'm sure he knows what he's doing," he says lamely, the words just filler, there to keep silence from settling over them while he unsteadily herds her toward what he hopes is safety.

"I think he does most of the time. But no one can know what they're doing all of the time," Jyn comments, staring up at the sky thoughtfully, as though the answers might be just above her head. She blinks and squints, letting the brightness seep into her eyes. When she looks back at Bodhi, she sees the ghosts of stars and galaxies laid over him like a hologram. It makes her giggle and think of the far-off space battles she'd create with her toys. The thought of them, however, make her frown. "Have you ever left a friend behind, Bodhi? When you didn't mean to?"

He's increasingly uncomfortable, but there's nothing to be done for it but carry on the conversation. There's no way she'll keep following him if he doesn't keep talking, if he tries to refuse or even steer her toward some other topic (not that that seems likely to work). And they're so close. It'll be over soon. Bodhi is a fine liar if he wants to be, but he's too unsettled to come up with anything better than the truth, and what if Jyn remembers some of this later? "I... do a lot of leaving. Pilot, remember? But, I... I guess it's usually been my call. Leaving or staying."

"No, that's not what I meant," Jyn replies, rather annoyed. She humphs a little as she drags her feet to keep following him, now blissfully unaware of whatever might have been stealing her away before. She's fully reverted back to being a child, caught somewhere between the ages of perhaps five and seven. "You're not really leaving someone if you're just dropping them off somewhere. I mean have you ever really left someone when you didn't mean to?" A pause. "I left behind my best friend on Coruscant," she mumbles. "He has to be so mad at me."

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

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sorry bodhi