it doesn't count as a new WIP
Jun. 30th, 2018 07:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghraine...if I've had it in my drafts for months, right? *cough*
title: like a storm in the desert (1/*mumble*)
verse: at last, it's an everybody lives verse!
characters: Cassian Andor, Jyn Erso; Bodhi Rook, Chirrut Îmwe, Baze Malbus, Taidu Sefla, Han Solo; Jyn/Cassian, implied Han/Leia, one-sided and half-hearted Jyn/Han
stuff that happens: *deep breath* Chirrut, Baze, and Bodhi survive, and are able to rescue two of Cassian's men, along with Jyn and Cassian themselves.
They escaped the way they arrived.
Not everyone, of course. Only two of Cassian’s people made it out, a saboteur and a lieutenant who had thankfully picked up some medical training along the way. Kay lay in pieces where he’d died—deactivated—died for them. The metal had probably fused together at this point, and … and Jyn wasn’t going to think about that. She could still hear Cassian’s scream, unless she tried not to. She was very much trying not to.
Bodhi had saved them all, it transpired. Apparently he’d thrown a grenade like it was a rubber ball, though he shuddered when Baze mentioned it. And Chirrut had walked to the main controls and back again through blasterfire, without so much as singing his robes. Somehow.
“The Force protected him,” Baze said quietly, but with utter assurance.
Okay.
Something of her thoughts most have shown on her face. Baze settled a particularly fierce stare on her.
“Are you going to say it didn’t?”
“No,” said Jyn.
She wasn’t intimidated. Not much could do that, these days, and she’d entirely burned through today’s reserve of fear. In any case, obviously the Force had protected Chirrut, for him to stroll through that untouched and unconcerned. It had probably protected all of them, given the odds. And of course she didn’t begrudge Baze the restoration of his faith. It was just a surprise.
Then again, she didn’t really know much about him. About any of them except Cassian, through the extra—she counted—twelve days she’d known him, suspicion edging into cautious trust as they headed from Yavin 4 to Jedha. Besides, she and Cassian simply knew more about each other by way of the situation, and had spent more time together than with anyone else, and at Eadu, they … no, she didn’t want to think about that, either.
He sat slumped in a corner, silent but for his increasingly laboured breaths, and one bitten-off moan when the shuttle gave a sharp swerve. She’d pulled away to steady herself, turned to say something to Baze, when the sound stabbed at her. In an instant, she scrambled back and knelt beside him, anxiously studying his face. It was strained, paler than her own, and she didn’t know what to do. Awkwardly, she placed her hand on one of his. He’d seemed to welcome it on the beach, so that was something, wasn’t it?
Again, Cassian’s fingers curled around hers. This time, though, the answering squeeze felt more like a flutter.
His eyes opened, heavy but focused. He stared at her blankly for a long moment, then whispered, “Jyn … Jyn, you …”
“You can tell me later,” she said, her own breaths coming fast. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Cassian either couldn’t hear her or chose not to. “You’re … you … you’re here. Still?”
In his situation, Jyn would have been just as surprised. She had been just as surprised, when he jeopardized the mission to save her on Jedha and Eadu, and then when he proclaimed his support in the hangar bay. She’d scarcely believed her ears, in fact, or the bewildered joy that seized her. He had stayed, stayed in his own way, stuck with her where none of his kind ever had, and she didn’t quite understand, but he was saying welcome home and her head whirled.
Two minutes earlier, he’d admitted that the Rebellion would never have listened to her, never have believed in her, nothing. He couldn’t mean a welcome to that. It could only be him, just him. Cassian. She’d found herself falling into orbit with him and smiling into his eyes, dazed and dazzled. Now he was the one who looked dazed—maybe the pain or the stim shot, but maybe—
Trust goes both ways.
“Yes,” Jyn told him. “I’m here. It’s okay. You’re going to be fine.”
Cassian nodded, let his eyes close, taking deep, regular breaths. His lungs were fine, at least, though he still looked ashen. With visible effort, he focused on her again.
“You?”
Something within her clenched, throat to gut. He had a blaster shot in his side, Force knew how many fractured bones, whatever that fall had done to his back, and he was still worrying about her. Most others who’d cared about her like that were few and dead.
“I’m fine,” she said. At his unconvinced expression, she added, “It’s just some scratches and a sprain, Baze checked.”
He relaxed, infinitesimally.
“Cassian.” Her grip had to be hurting him, but she couldn’t help it. “You have to stay, all right?”
He squinted around their compartment. “Yes … but where …?”
Again, the shuttle lurched. Jyn braced Cassian as well as she could, but his shudder reverberated through his body and hers, and a gasp rushed through his clenched teeth. It was only a moment, but frustration boiled in her. She couldn’t make it stop, couldn’t do anything—
In the next instant, the motion of the shuttle fell into into perfect steadiness, so balanced and smooth that it could only mean one thing. Jyn might almost have cried. Instead, she let her head drop, pressed her brow to Cassian’s cold cheek.
“We made it,” she whispered into his ear. Drawing herself together, she straightened up. “We’ve gone into hyperspace. We’re heading home.”
“Home,” he echoed, and settled uncertain eyes on her. “Jyn?”
“I’m here,” she said. “I haven’t left.”
She wouldn’t. He was … others had cared for her, even backed her, for a time. But they rarely came back for her, much less multiple times. The least she could do was stick around.
I’ll never leave sprang into her mind, and she almost flinched back from the thought. She might leave. She didn’t want to. She wanted to fight, and to stay near, his loyalty to her—above the team, above the mission, over and over—almost as reassuring as his aim. Maybe more; it was all very complicated. But although she didn’t want to leave, still less did she want to repeat what had been done to her. She couldn’t promise anything she might not do.
For the moment, Jyn squeezed his hand. “I’ll be right here until we get to the base, okay?”
She wasn’t sure he even heard her. He seemed increasingly out of it now, glance drifting around the compartment more than scanning it, teeth digging so hard into his lip that the skin broke.
More faintly, he mumbled, “Jyn.”
Jyn had no idea of any way to respond, anything that might console either of them. She could only stay.
The return journey to Massassi passed in quiet, the atmosphere ranging from uneasy to mournful to triumphant without rhyme or reason. Apart from Cassian, nobody had any significant injuries; those with them had undoubtedly died before escape could be contemplated. But without fear of supplies running out, their sorrow never dropped to desperation. Cassian got the good cot and the bacta patches, and the rest of them made do.
To Jyn’s total lack of surprise, Cassian’s men spoke of him with the utmost respect and kept their distance. They referred to him as the captain or, very occasionally, Captain Andor. To her actual surprise, Bodhi, Baze, and Chirrut mostly did the same. She couldn’t have heard Cassian from anyone else’s mouth more than twice or thrice during the entire journey to Yavin, and she couldn’t understand why. Jyn and Cassian had drifted from surnames to given names within a day of meeting. By the time they reached Jedha and stumbled into the thick of battle, they were calling out Jyn! and Cassian! without hesitation. It just—they’d formed their earliest understanding so purely in terms of personality and belief, while Kay stomped around complaining about Cassian-this and Jyn-that, that it felt strange to hear him reduced to rank and role.
She supposed that was irrational, in its way. Cassian said he’d lost everything at six, just as Jyn had done at eight. Nothing about him gave the impression that he’d gained any of it back beyond Kay, any more than Jyn had beyond Saw.
Still.
“Cassian,” she said firmly, one day before their scheduled arrival. She jabbed him in his shoulder, the good one, and when his eyes flew open, she felt a bit like she’d stuck her hand into a mirror and reached her reflection instead of shattered glass. “Wake up.”
He tended to lash out at anyone else who touched him in his sleep, something Jyn considered entirely reasonable. The others in the shuttle posed no danger, of course, but—well. Even Jyn herself found it difficult to leave him alone with anyone else, something in her both furiously protective and fearful of loss. The first time he fell asleep, her own breath nearly suffocated her, until Baze said it was good, his body trying to heal itself rather than giving up. He spoke as gently as Jyn had ever heard him, which seemed odd, but she took what reassurance she could.
Even so, she stuck nearby every time Lieutenant Sefla changed the bacta patch, and watched him like a Krayt dragon the whole time.
Sefla was the only full officer to join the mission, besides Cassian, but he didn’t seem to expect deference. Rather the opposite, in fact. He always changed the patch in silence, gave her a vaguely sympathetic look, and left, his saboteur in tow.
In fact, Sefla appeared to be the reason that Jyn got any access to Cassian after they all reached Massassi Base. The medics refused her, at first. Then Sefla showed up, muttered something to a doctor, and gestured at Bodhi and Baze, who nodded agreement with whatever it was. She didn’t really care. The moment she was granted permission, Jyn spared Sefla and her friends a grateful glance before striding alongside the medics and demanding answers.
They, too, proved remarkably tolerant. Although they didn’t answer right away, they led her to Cassian’s narrow room, let her stay there for hours at a time, and explained his injuries and treatments, including how and why they’d sedated him. Meanwhile, nobody would inform poor Bodhi about anything, not even Jyn’s sprained ankle.
“I don’t see why,” she said. “They told me about every one of Cassian’s ribs.”
He was in bacta, again. Most of the breaks had healed, but whatever he’d done—whatever Krennic had done—to his back seemed to be more complicated. The medics assured her that he would walk again, which Jyn considered one of the least reassuring things that anyone could say about a soldier’s spinal cord.
“That’s different, I guess,” Bodhi replied, smiling faintly. “It’s nice to know they had good news for you, anyway.”
Puzzled, she said, “For him. I’m fine.”
“Right, of course,” said Bodhi, anxiety rushing through his voice, his face. Jyn almost winced. She hadn’t meant— “I just wanted ... I … I’m glad for you, that … it’s nice that they’re telling you things. I mean, you know him so much better than us. And everybody, I bet.”
“Oh.”
Jyn thought about it, the soothing quiet of Cassian’s room in the med bay, the rarity of interruptions. The lost everything without any indication of having ever recovered anything but Kay: Kay and then each other, reflected and staring. And she thought of Kay, reduced to rubble somewhere in the destruction of the Citadel, lingering in a set of programming notes in Cassian’s quarters. She’d found them, of course, after a good four hours with his security codes. If they had to evacuate, that rude, condescending, determinedly loyal droid was going with them. But she knew how to break and alter files, not anything on the level of generating droid consciousness from notes. Kay might return from the dead; but for now, he remained dead.
“Yes,” she said slowly. “I suppose I do.”
Bodhi patted her shoulder. Jyn didn’t really go in for that, not since Saw, but it was Bodhi. She managed a smile.
She didn’t even try to manufacture one for the stranger who strolled up to her while she was trying to figure out solo sabacc. The cards had seemed as good a way as any to pass the time. With Cassian in bacta for a good hour, Chirrut and Baze(!) meditating, Bodhi enthusiastically betraying Imperial protocols, and no news or pressing tasks, Jyn didn’t quite know what to do with herself. Nobody had dragged her before some officer and insisted on her joining up, anyway.
“Hey there,” said the stranger.
She was bored already.
“You don’t look like a Rebel,” he went on, tone still friendly.
Jyn glanced up at him. To her dismay, he looked startlingly like—like her. Not physically, but boots, trousers, shirt, vest, holster. His brown hair fell slightly over his face. He leaned against the corner of the wall where she’d secluded herself, arms folded, mouth curled into a smile that aimed for confident and reached cocky.
“Neither do you,” she said.
He grinned. “Me? I’m not here to die for some cause. I’m getting my reward and I’m getting the hell out of here. You?”
Jyn remembered that first bargain she’d struck with Mon Mothma. Although she hadn’t meant to reveal anything, her jaw clenched. She asked,
“What did they offer you?”
“Credits,” the stranger said smugly, not appearing to care that she hadn’t answered. “Lots and lots of credits. I broke their precious princess out of prison, recovered some plans, all of it. I’m practically a hero, you know.”
Jyn jolted up so suddenly that the cards spilled off the table. “The plans! Where? When?”
With a laugh that nearly got his nose broken, he held up his hands. “Slow down, sister. We just got here. It’ll be at least an hour before they’re analyzed.”
She glared at him, hating that it was true. High Command would tell her nothing. Jyn forced her breaths to slow and even out, betray no further weakness. How had this arse—what—he had to be talking about Princess Leia, captured just beyond Scarif—she really had hidden the plans somehow—Force, Jyn was glad she hadn’t told Cassian about any of it in his few moments of lucidity—and she’d have to tell Bodhi and Baze, if Chirrut hadn’t already—
“You care an awful lot about all that for … whatever you are,” he said, smile easy and his eyes sharp. “Funny. Not a lot of women around here.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” lied Jyn. “I have to go to the med-bay. Bye.”
He raised his brows and glanced down her, half-laughing. “You look fine to me.”
At most times, she would have casually despised him for that, relegated him to one of those and not bothered with a second thought. But—the plans. Had he really brought the plans? Would he even know about them if he hadn’t? She certainly could believe that he wasn’t a Rebel. If he’d found her father's plans, found Princess Leia, and—
For a few seconds, Jyn focused all her attention on him. His air of lazy charisma—trying too hard for it, but charisma nonetheless—seemed forced. At a glance, she could see discomfort in half a dozen signals: creases here, forced looseness there, something tense and jittery in his stance. Rather how she must have looked when she bumped Cassian’s arm in the shuttle.
Force, bumped his arm. Through multiple layers of clothes. Nothing, yet her brain had nearly shorted out, and she’d found her gaze drifting all the way down his body. She was ridiculous. His clothes didn’t even fit.
And she remembered Cassian’s own response, his lips parting and eyes flicking from her face downwards, echoing her own glance. He’d looked at once shocked and shy, hand fumbling on the hatch just above him. And—
All right, they were both ridiculous.
With considerable distrust, Jyn eyed the stranger. They’d just met, he couldn’t feel anything like that. Even with Cassian, it took her a good five minutes to register him as anything but a threat, the Rebellion embodied. She felt sure it took him just as long to see her as anything but a different sort of threat.
“You waiting for someone?” she said abruptly.
The man winced. “No. I … well, I … no. Definitely not.”
“That was very convincing,” said Jyn. She gathered the cards from the table and stacked them together.
Predictably, he shuffled a little. “I don’t need to convince her! Or him. I mean, someone. Anyone!”
She didn’t think he was even fooling himself. Kneeling down to pick up the last few cards, Jyn added them to her stack and set the whole thing in their box. The metallic cover slid smoothly into place. Nice quality, this; most of the players Jyn knew had rougher equipment. But then, Cassian seemed to like nice things.
Didn’t have a lot of them, as far as she’d found. But what he did have all was very good quality. Surprisingly good quality for someone who appeared to get paid in hope and jackets.
Jyn respected that, too.
“Or you,” the man added, more firmly. “Who are you, anyway?”
After a moment’s contemplation, she decided that too many people here knew her name to have any hope of hiding it.
“Jyn Erso,” she said.
When he extended his hand, Jyn braced herself and shook it.
“Han Solo,” he replied. “Captain of the Millennium Falcon. You heard of her?”
“No,” said Jyn, thought it actually did sound vaguely familiar. “I don’t think so. And I am going to the med-bay, so unless you have someone to see—”
Solo gave a long sigh. “What is this place? And I … guess I might. Not that she’s … I mean, she’d love to see me. Obviously. It’s just a check-up. Pretty boring.”
“Uh-huh,” said Jyn, shoving the card box into her vest pocket.
She headed towards the med-bay without further conversation, and he fell into step beside her. Despite his manners and obvious lies, nothing about him triggered any particular alarms. And he'd brought the plans. Probably. Jyn, though still on her guard in an unfamiliar place, alongside an unfamiliar person, decided to tolerate him. She trusted her instincts; and, in a peculiar, undefined way, she pitied him.
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “So, you always organize your sabacc deck before you get checked out by the medics?”
“It’s not me,” she said. “A friend took a fall.”
Friend didn’t seem quite right, but she couldn’t think of anything better.
Solo snorted. “With you people, that’s—what, broke five different bones?”
“Vertebrae,” admitted Jyn. “And it’s his deck, anyway.”
“Ah,” he said, voice steadying. “Your partner?”
The memories of their scant weeks together cascaded through Jyn’s mind. The two of them in Jedha, walking together through the streets, scrambling to protect each other’s backs in the fight. Back on Yavin, marching into the shuttle together, her friends and Cassian’s men backing them. On the way to Scarif, organizing the mission and never even considering anyone else at her side. And in the Citadel: Cassian giving orders, but not before running them past her; Jyn leaping into action, but not before checking with him.
Yes, that word fit much better. She could almost have thanked Solo for it. Not that she felt any obligation to this near-stranger, but something in her welcomed the space to respond.
“Yes,” replied Jyn. “He is.”
“Sorry,” Solo said inexplicably. “I didn’t realize.”
After considering that for a baffling quarter-second, Jyn dismissed it. She had bigger problems. Solo, in any case, didn’t seem to expect more. They cordially shook hands at the front of the med-bay, Solo whistling as he headed down a different hall to … pine, Jyn assumed. She paid him no more mind and stalked her way to Cassian’s room.
At the door, she opened the information panel, which blinked Cassian’s formal status at her. He was out of surgery, stable, and not available to visitors. Jyn scoffed under her breath. As if the base’s pathetic security codes could stop her after the hours she’d spent on Cassian’s monstrosities. She easily tracked down the permissions and activated them.
As the door spiraled open, Jyn saw not Cassian, but the back of a tall, fair-haired man. He stood with his arms folded, all but looming over the bed. Only when the doors had completely opened could she make out Cassian, lying motionless on the bed with no sign of pain, but every sign of exhaustion. He blinked sleepy, unfocused eyes, clearly fighting to stay awake.
Without turning around, the intruder snapped, “I told you that I required absolute privacy.”
"Yes, well." Jyn smiled without a sliver of humour. “We both know I’m not much for following orders, general.”
Note:
1) This fic is based on a headcanon post that I made (mostly in the tags) about how different Jyn and Cassian's relationship must look from the outside, especially to people who have no idea how long they've known each other.
...More specifically, it was spawned by my irritation that the headcanon started showing up in a bunch of fics right after the post took off, without any sort of reference to me. I figured I'd have to write a fic with it myself to ever get credited in any way—and then realized that it could be fun, and hey, I could write one about the headcanon rather than just referencing it. From there it grew to something more elaborate and less petty, and I ended up with (at long last) an Everybody Lives But Otherwise Canon verse on my hands.
(I have quite a few Somebody Lives WIPs, from "that script idea happens and only Jyn and Cassian live" on up, but not one where every single one of them and some of the minor cast survive. Which is a spoiler, but I imagine a very obvious one.)
2) The title, like usual (these days), comes from a song:
Like a walk in the rain,
Like a storm in the desert,
Like a sleepy blue ocean,
You fill up my senses,
Come fill me again.
Come, let me love you
Let me give my life to you
Let me drown in your laughter,
Let me die in your arms.
—"Annie's Song," John Denver
Although they don't actually die in each other's arms in the fic, ofc, that reminded me of them for obvious reasons, and then the similes here also reminded me of RO: the sleepy ocean on Scarif, the storm in the desert on Jedha, the walk in the rain on Eadu. And Jyn in her being strikes me as a desert storm of sorts.
title: like a storm in the desert (1/*mumble*)
verse: at last, it's an everybody lives verse!
characters: Cassian Andor, Jyn Erso; Bodhi Rook, Chirrut Îmwe, Baze Malbus, Taidu Sefla, Han Solo; Jyn/Cassian, implied Han/Leia, one-sided and half-hearted Jyn/Han
stuff that happens: *deep breath* Chirrut, Baze, and Bodhi survive, and are able to rescue two of Cassian's men, along with Jyn and Cassian themselves.
Again, the shuttle lurched. Jyn braced Cassian as well as she could, but his shudder reverberated through his body and hers, and a gasp rushed through his clenched teeth. It was only a moment, but frustration boiled in her. She couldn’t make it stop, couldn’t do anything—
In the next instant, the motion of the shuttle fell into into perfect steadiness, so balanced and smooth that it could only mean one thing. Jyn might almost have cried. Instead, she let her head drop, pressed her brow to Cassian’s cold cheek.
“We made it,” she whispered into his ear. Drawing herself together, she straightened up. “We’ve gone into hyperspace. We’re heading home.”
In the next instant, the motion of the shuttle fell into into perfect steadiness, so balanced and smooth that it could only mean one thing. Jyn might almost have cried. Instead, she let her head drop, pressed her brow to Cassian’s cold cheek.
“We made it,” she whispered into his ear. Drawing herself together, she straightened up. “We’ve gone into hyperspace. We’re heading home.”
They escaped the way they arrived.
Not everyone, of course. Only two of Cassian’s people made it out, a saboteur and a lieutenant who had thankfully picked up some medical training along the way. Kay lay in pieces where he’d died—deactivated—died for them. The metal had probably fused together at this point, and … and Jyn wasn’t going to think about that. She could still hear Cassian’s scream, unless she tried not to. She was very much trying not to.
Bodhi had saved them all, it transpired. Apparently he’d thrown a grenade like it was a rubber ball, though he shuddered when Baze mentioned it. And Chirrut had walked to the main controls and back again through blasterfire, without so much as singing his robes. Somehow.
“The Force protected him,” Baze said quietly, but with utter assurance.
Okay.
Something of her thoughts most have shown on her face. Baze settled a particularly fierce stare on her.
“Are you going to say it didn’t?”
“No,” said Jyn.
She wasn’t intimidated. Not much could do that, these days, and she’d entirely burned through today’s reserve of fear. In any case, obviously the Force had protected Chirrut, for him to stroll through that untouched and unconcerned. It had probably protected all of them, given the odds. And of course she didn’t begrudge Baze the restoration of his faith. It was just a surprise.
Then again, she didn’t really know much about him. About any of them except Cassian, through the extra—she counted—twelve days she’d known him, suspicion edging into cautious trust as they headed from Yavin 4 to Jedha. Besides, she and Cassian simply knew more about each other by way of the situation, and had spent more time together than with anyone else, and at Eadu, they … no, she didn’t want to think about that, either.
He sat slumped in a corner, silent but for his increasingly laboured breaths, and one bitten-off moan when the shuttle gave a sharp swerve. She’d pulled away to steady herself, turned to say something to Baze, when the sound stabbed at her. In an instant, she scrambled back and knelt beside him, anxiously studying his face. It was strained, paler than her own, and she didn’t know what to do. Awkwardly, she placed her hand on one of his. He’d seemed to welcome it on the beach, so that was something, wasn’t it?
Again, Cassian’s fingers curled around hers. This time, though, the answering squeeze felt more like a flutter.
His eyes opened, heavy but focused. He stared at her blankly for a long moment, then whispered, “Jyn … Jyn, you …”
“You can tell me later,” she said, her own breaths coming fast. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Cassian either couldn’t hear her or chose not to. “You’re … you … you’re here. Still?”
In his situation, Jyn would have been just as surprised. She had been just as surprised, when he jeopardized the mission to save her on Jedha and Eadu, and then when he proclaimed his support in the hangar bay. She’d scarcely believed her ears, in fact, or the bewildered joy that seized her. He had stayed, stayed in his own way, stuck with her where none of his kind ever had, and she didn’t quite understand, but he was saying welcome home and her head whirled.
Two minutes earlier, he’d admitted that the Rebellion would never have listened to her, never have believed in her, nothing. He couldn’t mean a welcome to that. It could only be him, just him. Cassian. She’d found herself falling into orbit with him and smiling into his eyes, dazed and dazzled. Now he was the one who looked dazed—maybe the pain or the stim shot, but maybe—
Trust goes both ways.
“Yes,” Jyn told him. “I’m here. It’s okay. You’re going to be fine.”
Cassian nodded, let his eyes close, taking deep, regular breaths. His lungs were fine, at least, though he still looked ashen. With visible effort, he focused on her again.
“You?”
Something within her clenched, throat to gut. He had a blaster shot in his side, Force knew how many fractured bones, whatever that fall had done to his back, and he was still worrying about her. Most others who’d cared about her like that were few and dead.
“I’m fine,” she said. At his unconvinced expression, she added, “It’s just some scratches and a sprain, Baze checked.”
He relaxed, infinitesimally.
“Cassian.” Her grip had to be hurting him, but she couldn’t help it. “You have to stay, all right?”
He squinted around their compartment. “Yes … but where …?”
Again, the shuttle lurched. Jyn braced Cassian as well as she could, but his shudder reverberated through his body and hers, and a gasp rushed through his clenched teeth. It was only a moment, but frustration boiled in her. She couldn’t make it stop, couldn’t do anything—
In the next instant, the motion of the shuttle fell into into perfect steadiness, so balanced and smooth that it could only mean one thing. Jyn might almost have cried. Instead, she let her head drop, pressed her brow to Cassian’s cold cheek.
“We made it,” she whispered into his ear. Drawing herself together, she straightened up. “We’ve gone into hyperspace. We’re heading home.”
“Home,” he echoed, and settled uncertain eyes on her. “Jyn?”
“I’m here,” she said. “I haven’t left.”
She wouldn’t. He was … others had cared for her, even backed her, for a time. But they rarely came back for her, much less multiple times. The least she could do was stick around.
I’ll never leave sprang into her mind, and she almost flinched back from the thought. She might leave. She didn’t want to. She wanted to fight, and to stay near, his loyalty to her—above the team, above the mission, over and over—almost as reassuring as his aim. Maybe more; it was all very complicated. But although she didn’t want to leave, still less did she want to repeat what had been done to her. She couldn’t promise anything she might not do.
For the moment, Jyn squeezed his hand. “I’ll be right here until we get to the base, okay?”
She wasn’t sure he even heard her. He seemed increasingly out of it now, glance drifting around the compartment more than scanning it, teeth digging so hard into his lip that the skin broke.
More faintly, he mumbled, “Jyn.”
Jyn had no idea of any way to respond, anything that might console either of them. She could only stay.
The return journey to Massassi passed in quiet, the atmosphere ranging from uneasy to mournful to triumphant without rhyme or reason. Apart from Cassian, nobody had any significant injuries; those with them had undoubtedly died before escape could be contemplated. But without fear of supplies running out, their sorrow never dropped to desperation. Cassian got the good cot and the bacta patches, and the rest of them made do.
To Jyn’s total lack of surprise, Cassian’s men spoke of him with the utmost respect and kept their distance. They referred to him as the captain or, very occasionally, Captain Andor. To her actual surprise, Bodhi, Baze, and Chirrut mostly did the same. She couldn’t have heard Cassian from anyone else’s mouth more than twice or thrice during the entire journey to Yavin, and she couldn’t understand why. Jyn and Cassian had drifted from surnames to given names within a day of meeting. By the time they reached Jedha and stumbled into the thick of battle, they were calling out Jyn! and Cassian! without hesitation. It just—they’d formed their earliest understanding so purely in terms of personality and belief, while Kay stomped around complaining about Cassian-this and Jyn-that, that it felt strange to hear him reduced to rank and role.
She supposed that was irrational, in its way. Cassian said he’d lost everything at six, just as Jyn had done at eight. Nothing about him gave the impression that he’d gained any of it back beyond Kay, any more than Jyn had beyond Saw.
Still.
“Cassian,” she said firmly, one day before their scheduled arrival. She jabbed him in his shoulder, the good one, and when his eyes flew open, she felt a bit like she’d stuck her hand into a mirror and reached her reflection instead of shattered glass. “Wake up.”
He tended to lash out at anyone else who touched him in his sleep, something Jyn considered entirely reasonable. The others in the shuttle posed no danger, of course, but—well. Even Jyn herself found it difficult to leave him alone with anyone else, something in her both furiously protective and fearful of loss. The first time he fell asleep, her own breath nearly suffocated her, until Baze said it was good, his body trying to heal itself rather than giving up. He spoke as gently as Jyn had ever heard him, which seemed odd, but she took what reassurance she could.
Even so, she stuck nearby every time Lieutenant Sefla changed the bacta patch, and watched him like a Krayt dragon the whole time.
Sefla was the only full officer to join the mission, besides Cassian, but he didn’t seem to expect deference. Rather the opposite, in fact. He always changed the patch in silence, gave her a vaguely sympathetic look, and left, his saboteur in tow.
In fact, Sefla appeared to be the reason that Jyn got any access to Cassian after they all reached Massassi Base. The medics refused her, at first. Then Sefla showed up, muttered something to a doctor, and gestured at Bodhi and Baze, who nodded agreement with whatever it was. She didn’t really care. The moment she was granted permission, Jyn spared Sefla and her friends a grateful glance before striding alongside the medics and demanding answers.
They, too, proved remarkably tolerant. Although they didn’t answer right away, they led her to Cassian’s narrow room, let her stay there for hours at a time, and explained his injuries and treatments, including how and why they’d sedated him. Meanwhile, nobody would inform poor Bodhi about anything, not even Jyn’s sprained ankle.
“I don’t see why,” she said. “They told me about every one of Cassian’s ribs.”
He was in bacta, again. Most of the breaks had healed, but whatever he’d done—whatever Krennic had done—to his back seemed to be more complicated. The medics assured her that he would walk again, which Jyn considered one of the least reassuring things that anyone could say about a soldier’s spinal cord.
“That’s different, I guess,” Bodhi replied, smiling faintly. “It’s nice to know they had good news for you, anyway.”
Puzzled, she said, “For him. I’m fine.”
“Right, of course,” said Bodhi, anxiety rushing through his voice, his face. Jyn almost winced. She hadn’t meant— “I just wanted ... I … I’m glad for you, that … it’s nice that they’re telling you things. I mean, you know him so much better than us. And everybody, I bet.”
“Oh.”
Jyn thought about it, the soothing quiet of Cassian’s room in the med bay, the rarity of interruptions. The lost everything without any indication of having ever recovered anything but Kay: Kay and then each other, reflected and staring. And she thought of Kay, reduced to rubble somewhere in the destruction of the Citadel, lingering in a set of programming notes in Cassian’s quarters. She’d found them, of course, after a good four hours with his security codes. If they had to evacuate, that rude, condescending, determinedly loyal droid was going with them. But she knew how to break and alter files, not anything on the level of generating droid consciousness from notes. Kay might return from the dead; but for now, he remained dead.
“Yes,” she said slowly. “I suppose I do.”
Bodhi patted her shoulder. Jyn didn’t really go in for that, not since Saw, but it was Bodhi. She managed a smile.
She didn’t even try to manufacture one for the stranger who strolled up to her while she was trying to figure out solo sabacc. The cards had seemed as good a way as any to pass the time. With Cassian in bacta for a good hour, Chirrut and Baze(!) meditating, Bodhi enthusiastically betraying Imperial protocols, and no news or pressing tasks, Jyn didn’t quite know what to do with herself. Nobody had dragged her before some officer and insisted on her joining up, anyway.
“Hey there,” said the stranger.
She was bored already.
“You don’t look like a Rebel,” he went on, tone still friendly.
Jyn glanced up at him. To her dismay, he looked startlingly like—like her. Not physically, but boots, trousers, shirt, vest, holster. His brown hair fell slightly over his face. He leaned against the corner of the wall where she’d secluded herself, arms folded, mouth curled into a smile that aimed for confident and reached cocky.
“Neither do you,” she said.
He grinned. “Me? I’m not here to die for some cause. I’m getting my reward and I’m getting the hell out of here. You?”
Jyn remembered that first bargain she’d struck with Mon Mothma. Although she hadn’t meant to reveal anything, her jaw clenched. She asked,
“What did they offer you?”
“Credits,” the stranger said smugly, not appearing to care that she hadn’t answered. “Lots and lots of credits. I broke their precious princess out of prison, recovered some plans, all of it. I’m practically a hero, you know.”
Jyn jolted up so suddenly that the cards spilled off the table. “The plans! Where? When?”
With a laugh that nearly got his nose broken, he held up his hands. “Slow down, sister. We just got here. It’ll be at least an hour before they’re analyzed.”
She glared at him, hating that it was true. High Command would tell her nothing. Jyn forced her breaths to slow and even out, betray no further weakness. How had this arse—what—he had to be talking about Princess Leia, captured just beyond Scarif—she really had hidden the plans somehow—Force, Jyn was glad she hadn’t told Cassian about any of it in his few moments of lucidity—and she’d have to tell Bodhi and Baze, if Chirrut hadn’t already—
“You care an awful lot about all that for … whatever you are,” he said, smile easy and his eyes sharp. “Funny. Not a lot of women around here.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” lied Jyn. “I have to go to the med-bay. Bye.”
He raised his brows and glanced down her, half-laughing. “You look fine to me.”
At most times, she would have casually despised him for that, relegated him to one of those and not bothered with a second thought. But—the plans. Had he really brought the plans? Would he even know about them if he hadn’t? She certainly could believe that he wasn’t a Rebel. If he’d found her father's plans, found Princess Leia, and—
For a few seconds, Jyn focused all her attention on him. His air of lazy charisma—trying too hard for it, but charisma nonetheless—seemed forced. At a glance, she could see discomfort in half a dozen signals: creases here, forced looseness there, something tense and jittery in his stance. Rather how she must have looked when she bumped Cassian’s arm in the shuttle.
Force, bumped his arm. Through multiple layers of clothes. Nothing, yet her brain had nearly shorted out, and she’d found her gaze drifting all the way down his body. She was ridiculous. His clothes didn’t even fit.
And she remembered Cassian’s own response, his lips parting and eyes flicking from her face downwards, echoing her own glance. He’d looked at once shocked and shy, hand fumbling on the hatch just above him. And—
All right, they were both ridiculous.
With considerable distrust, Jyn eyed the stranger. They’d just met, he couldn’t feel anything like that. Even with Cassian, it took her a good five minutes to register him as anything but a threat, the Rebellion embodied. She felt sure it took him just as long to see her as anything but a different sort of threat.
“You waiting for someone?” she said abruptly.
The man winced. “No. I … well, I … no. Definitely not.”
“That was very convincing,” said Jyn. She gathered the cards from the table and stacked them together.
Predictably, he shuffled a little. “I don’t need to convince her! Or him. I mean, someone. Anyone!”
She didn’t think he was even fooling himself. Kneeling down to pick up the last few cards, Jyn added them to her stack and set the whole thing in their box. The metallic cover slid smoothly into place. Nice quality, this; most of the players Jyn knew had rougher equipment. But then, Cassian seemed to like nice things.
Didn’t have a lot of them, as far as she’d found. But what he did have all was very good quality. Surprisingly good quality for someone who appeared to get paid in hope and jackets.
Jyn respected that, too.
“Or you,” the man added, more firmly. “Who are you, anyway?”
After a moment’s contemplation, she decided that too many people here knew her name to have any hope of hiding it.
“Jyn Erso,” she said.
When he extended his hand, Jyn braced herself and shook it.
“Han Solo,” he replied. “Captain of the Millennium Falcon. You heard of her?”
“No,” said Jyn, thought it actually did sound vaguely familiar. “I don’t think so. And I am going to the med-bay, so unless you have someone to see—”
Solo gave a long sigh. “What is this place? And I … guess I might. Not that she’s … I mean, she’d love to see me. Obviously. It’s just a check-up. Pretty boring.”
“Uh-huh,” said Jyn, shoving the card box into her vest pocket.
She headed towards the med-bay without further conversation, and he fell into step beside her. Despite his manners and obvious lies, nothing about him triggered any particular alarms. And he'd brought the plans. Probably. Jyn, though still on her guard in an unfamiliar place, alongside an unfamiliar person, decided to tolerate him. She trusted her instincts; and, in a peculiar, undefined way, she pitied him.
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “So, you always organize your sabacc deck before you get checked out by the medics?”
“It’s not me,” she said. “A friend took a fall.”
Friend didn’t seem quite right, but she couldn’t think of anything better.
Solo snorted. “With you people, that’s—what, broke five different bones?”
“Vertebrae,” admitted Jyn. “And it’s his deck, anyway.”
“Ah,” he said, voice steadying. “Your partner?”
The memories of their scant weeks together cascaded through Jyn’s mind. The two of them in Jedha, walking together through the streets, scrambling to protect each other’s backs in the fight. Back on Yavin, marching into the shuttle together, her friends and Cassian’s men backing them. On the way to Scarif, organizing the mission and never even considering anyone else at her side. And in the Citadel: Cassian giving orders, but not before running them past her; Jyn leaping into action, but not before checking with him.
Yes, that word fit much better. She could almost have thanked Solo for it. Not that she felt any obligation to this near-stranger, but something in her welcomed the space to respond.
“Yes,” replied Jyn. “He is.”
“Sorry,” Solo said inexplicably. “I didn’t realize.”
After considering that for a baffling quarter-second, Jyn dismissed it. She had bigger problems. Solo, in any case, didn’t seem to expect more. They cordially shook hands at the front of the med-bay, Solo whistling as he headed down a different hall to … pine, Jyn assumed. She paid him no more mind and stalked her way to Cassian’s room.
At the door, she opened the information panel, which blinked Cassian’s formal status at her. He was out of surgery, stable, and not available to visitors. Jyn scoffed under her breath. As if the base’s pathetic security codes could stop her after the hours she’d spent on Cassian’s monstrosities. She easily tracked down the permissions and activated them.
As the door spiraled open, Jyn saw not Cassian, but the back of a tall, fair-haired man. He stood with his arms folded, all but looming over the bed. Only when the doors had completely opened could she make out Cassian, lying motionless on the bed with no sign of pain, but every sign of exhaustion. He blinked sleepy, unfocused eyes, clearly fighting to stay awake.
Without turning around, the intruder snapped, “I told you that I required absolute privacy.”
"Yes, well." Jyn smiled without a sliver of humour. “We both know I’m not much for following orders, general.”
Note:
1) This fic is based on a headcanon post that I made (mostly in the tags) about how different Jyn and Cassian's relationship must look from the outside, especially to people who have no idea how long they've known each other.
...More specifically, it was spawned by my irritation that the headcanon started showing up in a bunch of fics right after the post took off, without any sort of reference to me. I figured I'd have to write a fic with it myself to ever get credited in any way—and then realized that it could be fun, and hey, I could write one about the headcanon rather than just referencing it. From there it grew to something more elaborate and less petty, and I ended up with (at long last) an Everybody Lives But Otherwise Canon verse on my hands.
(I have quite a few Somebody Lives WIPs, from "that script idea happens and only Jyn and Cassian live" on up, but not one where every single one of them and some of the minor cast survive. Which is a spoiler, but I imagine a very obvious one.)
2) The title, like usual (these days), comes from a song:
Like a walk in the rain,
Like a storm in the desert,
Like a sleepy blue ocean,
You fill up my senses,
Come fill me again.
Come, let me love you
Let me give my life to you
Let me drown in your laughter,
Let me die in your arms.
—"Annie's Song," John Denver
Although they don't actually die in each other's arms in the fic, ofc, that reminded me of them for obvious reasons, and then the similes here also reminded me of RO: the sleepy ocean on Scarif, the storm in the desert on Jedha, the walk in the rain on Eadu. And Jyn in her being strikes me as a desert storm of sorts.
