closed ( ☄ ) the place where the sea kisses the sky is a beautiful beginning to a painful end

[realists]

WHO: Jyn & Cassian
WHERE: Casa de Rogue One
WHEN: February 1 & February 5
WHAT: Cassian returns from Oros to some bad news
WARNINGS: Rogue One spoilers fo' sho'

--

The hangar is full of noise and hustle as the Oros mission teams return and the Captain calls any and all pilots to arms to rescue the natives of the planet below. All available pilots willing to brave bombs and certain death. Jyn knows of one pilot who would be willing to undertake a(nother) suicide mission, a pilot who is brave and good and would care about the citizens below who need to be protected, who would want to follow his heart and make right by himself.

The Rogue One cargo ship stays docked in the hangar and Jyn stays curled up in the co-pilot's seat while so many people around her rush to do good and help, radio crackling with ships requesting to depart the hangar. There's no point for her to move.

She doesn't have a pilot.

The sound of Cassian's boots on the ladder into the cockpit makes her stir, barely. She aches to bury her sorrow in his arms, but she doesn't move more than flicking the radio off and leaving them in a heavy silence that Jyn is going to keep wrapped around her like a blanket until Cassian breaks it, worrying the elastic band of Bodhi's goggles between her fingers.

Comments

[realists]

Her eyes open and peer out wide and rimmed with a layer of smudged eyeliner that always seems to be there even if no one ever sees her apply it. Where do you get the eyeliner, Jyn? Where.

Her study of him is careful and not brief, eyes flickering from injuries she knows used to be there from Scarif, injuries she imagines remain from Oros, injuries she is fully aware of. Her keen eyes linger on his expression, trying to decide if his worry is about her or if she's going to run away again. She wonders if he knows that expression is semi-permanent when it comes to her. She does give him a lot to worry about, even when that is the opposite of her intention.

"Hey." She doesn't budge from her comfortable and warm spot, but that comfortable and warm spot already pressed up against the wall so there is plenty of room for Cassian. Her chin tips up from the pile of blankets, hair haloed out on the pillow. "Did you fix the lock?"

[ouzel]

"I did." He expression tries to settle into something more fond and relaxed; it gets about halfway (he manages fond, at least) there before he gives up on it, shaking his head and peeling out of his work clothes. There's plenty of bruising for her to look at anyway, as he finds a softer shirt than the one he works in to pull on over his head.

He could question what she's doing here - or better yet, what she was doing while she was gone, locked away in her room only sending him the occasional reminders to eat or sleep which he may have only done half the time - but he's pretty sure she ran because talking hurt too much anyway.

So maybe, he thinks, climbing into bed next to her, it's better not to ask. The last thing he wants is for her to decide to leave again.

"I have something that belongs to you," he says instead, glancing at her.

[realists]

"My grey blanket, yes, I know." She also knows that isn't what he means. There hasn't been a second since he went down to the sandy planet's surface that Jyn hasn't been completely aware of what Cassian has. She finds herself reaching for it more often than she would have expected and she feels naked without it, exposed.

Trust is hard for her, even trusting in the Force.

Threads of nervousness shoot through her eyes, even if she doesn't truly feel any anxiety at all. "Are you going to keep it?"

[ouzel]

There is minimal wincing as he gets himself settled into the bedding; despite the fact that Jyn Eros appears to be some sort of living heat sink (he suspects it might have something to do with Jyn not eating enough) he missed her presence, her physical weight while sleeping.

They've never slept well, at least not while piled in a bed together, but it's nothing compared to the shit sleep he got on Oros and immediately after.

"Do you want me to?" He turns his entire body so that he's facing her. "I don't have anything I could give you in return."

[realists]

"No!" That came out too fast, almost callously so. She tries to course correct, shaking her head against the pillow, it's not that the idea of him having it upsets her it's just... "No. It was--"

Her mouth settles into its natural frown, memories of rain drenched grass and the crackle of blaster fire in the mist making it feel like something is squeezing her heart in a vice. "My mother gave it to me before she-- It was hers."

[ouzel]

He had figured that it was connected to her parents in some way, but hearing even half the story puts things in stark lighting for him. He has nothing like that, nothing from his parents; no mementos, barely any memories, and unlike her, no one in the room could be blamed for his parent's death.

She shouldn't have given it to him. She did, and he's...grateful. Honored. But undeserving.

"You should have it back," he says softly, and reaches behind him to untie the knot near his neck

[realists]

Jyn isn't going to stop him from giving it back, but she isn't going to help or rush him either. She fidgets under the blankets, wanting to pull him down completely so she can curl her arms around him and feel his heartbeat under her hand, but she doesn't do that either.

"There was a plan," she starts softly. "All three of us were supposed to hide until Saw came for us. But Krennic... my father must have known he wouldn't leave without him and he told us to go." Darkness clouds her eyes, the memory of her chubby arms around her father's neck warring with the memory of his broken body in her arms. "Mama and I ran but she. She stopped and gave me her crystal and made me promise to keep going on my own."

The words come out slow and unsure, as if she's never told anyone the full story and doesn't know how to tell it. "I tried to be good and listen to her but I've never been very good at following directions--" That draws a wry, brittle smile. "--and so I followed her. I hid in the grass and watched as Papa tried to talk Krennic out of taking them. Krennic's Death Troopers killed her." And tiny Jyn saw it, clutching her brand new hand-me-down necklace and her beloved handmade Storm Trooper doll. "Krennic sent them to look for me, that's when I ran."

Ran and left her doll behind.

[ouzel]

Cassian frowns softly as he listens to her story, fingers catching and sliding on the knot he can't see. As she finishes he manages the last slip of cord, and the necklace comes free, sliding down an inch or so from where it rests against his chest.

His hands are warm as he brushes her cheek, and sets to fastening it around her neck himself.

He wonders what her mother had been thinking, why she had turned back instead of staying with her child. Could he have done that? Could he have left his own flesh and blood behind, young and inexperienced and unarmed, just to be shot by Death Troopers?

A handful of months ago, before Jyn, before the Death Star and all it wrought, he thinks he knows what his answer would have been. It would have depended on the mission. His odds. If the child would be safe on their own.

The latter would have been the last consideration.

But now, watching her expression, he hopes he never has to make that choice, because he would have about an equal chance leaving Jyn behind and historically that hasn't happened yet.

"My father died protesting at the Carida Academy." Cassian shakes his head, slowly. "If the Resistance hadn't had a record of it, I probably would have long since forgotten. My mother, my sisters, they died in a riot back home on Fest."

[realists]

Jyn wonders, briefly and without condemnation, how he could ever forget. Her last day on Lah'mu were seared into her mind; even if she'd want to forget it would be impossible and she had tried over the years, pushing it down and out of sight where she pretended it couldn't hurt her while it was corroding her from the inside out like acid bubbling through metal.

It sounds as if he heard second hand, which she finds herself oddly grateful for, hand reaching up on it's own accord to press her fingers to the familiar crystal. She doesn't relax once it's back around her neck so much as she settles.

"I didn't know you had sisters." She's noticed, before, that she doesn't actually know much about him at all, reminded that there wasn't time or inclination once and then there simply wasn't time. They have time now, but it had been lost trying to orient themselves and grasp every second they had all together, just existing. Time feels... discouraging now. A taunt in the face of losing Bodhi.

And yet still she pushes away from the wall to press her lips against his cheek, cold and ephemeral. Gratitude is hard for her so she simply doesn't say thank you at all.

[ouzel]

"Most people don't." Most people don't know anything about him, really, about who he is and where he came from. About what he wanted and dreamed before he lost the ability to reasonably expect that they'd ever come to pass. And here, now, that's beginning to bother him. It come through his voice, regret and hesitation dripping from the corners of his mouth.

He closes his eyes and she kisses his cheek, and he's grateful and sad all at the same time.

Cassian's fingers touch her cheek again. "What would you like to know?"

He's offering her answers. Or at least an open forum to ask questions.

He doesn't know what else to offer.

[realists]

Everything.

Her hand curls around the crystal, thumb tracing the etchings on the side as she tries to think of a question to start with. "Were you the oldest?"

It's a simple question, innocuous, and an easy question to start with. She suspects the answer is yes, because Cassian is so good at taking care of people that it has to be something natural as well as learned. Did tiny Cassian change wet nappies and tuck his sisters down for naps? Were they babies when they...

She finds suddenly that she doesn't want to know the answer.

[ouzel]

"Mmhmm." He nods, shifts so that his arm is propping up his head. "There were four of us. I don't remember their names."

Six is young and they were just 'his sisters' until they weren't. Until there was nothing but fire, rubble, and the Occupation by the Empire.

"The entire neighborhood was gone when I got back. Leveled, really." He shrugs with his eyebrows. What can you do? Theirs are lives of loss and loss compounded.

[realists]

Jyn was right, she didn't want to know that. Idly Victor's words tumble through her mind: Life isn't about hearing only the answer you want to hear. It still makes her a little annoyed to think about, but that's probably the guilt of not wanting to find out what happens to the people who go missing.

Now it's guilt over not wanting to hear about Cassian's dead sisters with names lost to the war.

"What happened to you?" He was six, how did he survive that? He'd lost his entire family and had nothing left, not even his home. If Jyn hadn't had Saw she would have just stayed in her little cave and died clutching her lamp.

[ouzel]

"I lived on the streets for a while. There were a lot of us; we looked out for each other because we had no other choice. Fest is an ice planet; I can't tell you the numbers that starved or froze that winter.

You can't kill neighborhoods wholesale and expect that there won't be resistance. That people won't try to fight back.

It started small. Watch the soldiers, see where they go. Throw rocks at them, sometimes." He smiles a little. "I was good at seeming older than I was. Better still at getting into small spaces and listening to conversations, putting things together."

[realists]

"I can imagine." She can, tiny little Cassian, all long and lanky probably, learning to be a spy all on his own before Draven turned him into something... more.

Jyn also differs on her opinion. You can definitely kill entire neighborhoods and expect there won't be resistance. The Empire was built on that premise, they'd counted on it. The Alliance and the rebels fought back, but it wasn't enough, clearly. Especially not following the Clone Wars.

"You were a spy before you even knew what the word meant, weren't you?"

[ouzel]

"I knew it meant listening and keeping quiet until you could tell the right person." But the rest of it? That came with time, and training that was less about teaching him how to be and more about learning how not to get caught or die.

"I got older and I learned more. Learned how to take what I saw watching people when they didn't know someone was there and combine it with how they acted when presented with an audience. I got better at tactics. Better at taking the little parts of myself that seemed too fragile for war and putting them away.

It would have been worse, without Kay, I think."

[realists]

She hums a noise of acknowledgment, mouth turned down in a familiar frown, but doesn't respond right away. Their lives are almost eerily similar: orphaned as children, raised into a rebellion they had no right being in by men who should have allowed them to be children, entire lives lost to the cause before they quite literally died for it.

Cassian stayed with the rebellion while Jyn was abandoned by it and in turn abandoned it, but she already knows he's a better person than she is.

Eventually, she murmurs quietly: "Kay's a good friend."

[ouzel]

"Better than I've deserved."

Cassian sighs, closing his eyes. "I would have killed myself long before I met you if not for the fact that I wasn't sure anyone would make sure he was okay."

Things he's never said aloud before: that.

[realists]

Cassian.

Jyn would have more of a reaction if it weren't for the depressing fact that she's heard it before. From Saw's rebels, from people just too exhausted from trying to survive the Empire, from her own quiet thoughts. She was always too bitter, too spiteful to give in. Cassian's reasons were so much more selfless, but she's not surprised.

Instead of letting herself get upset over it, she flattens her hand against his chest, nudging him to roll over. She'll keep nudging until he's facing away from her and she can curl her arm around his waist from behind, pressing her forehead to the back of his neck.

"I won't, so you don't have an out." She would, of course, but she won't.