open ✧ moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars

[realists]

Who: Jyn Erso & ???
Where: Around town
When: May 9-14
What: Getting her bearings, exploring, etc etc.
Warnings: Language?

[ Open ]

---

✧ ꜰʀᴇɴᴄʜ's ɢʀᴏᴄᴇʀʏ

There is so much food.

There is, in Jyn's opinion, too much food. Well, not the quantity, she supposes for a full town there is just enough (still maybe too much), but the sheer multitude of the selections is mind-boggling. Why are there no less than fifteen different types of cereals? There are at least five types of Cheerios alone. How is anyone supposed to decide on which cereal they want. And then they have to decide which percentage of milk they want? What is the other 98% of 2% milk!! She had thought cereal would be easy. She thought wrong.

It's not like she's picky, Jyn has subsisted off protein cubes for six months, she'll eat literally anything so whatever she chose would be perfectly acceptable but the number of choices suddenly available to her has made her indecisive. It's going to be an equally sad story when she tries to decide on a juice to buy.

Softly, "What the fuck."

✧ ɢᴏ ᴀsᴋ ᴀʟɪᴄᴇ

Look, it's not that she's stalking Cassian, it's just that, you know, she has one friend and he's it so she's kind of stalking him. In a friendly, platonic way. Nothing to see here. It doesn't hurt, anyway, that he works at a tea shop and one of Jyn's indulgent comforts happens to be tea. (She's not even actually British.) It also helps that Cassian won't let her pay for it so she doesn't feel like it's so indulgent.

Which finds Jyn curled up at a table nursing her fifth cup of something amber colored and sweet and fiddling with some of the dried bits of violet petals she plucked free of the loose leaves before she let it steep. She's slowly making her way through a paperback copy of the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe but she's unused to anything not on a datapad so sometimes she sets it on the table and it closes itself, as books do, or tips right off the edge and Jyn swears in what is probably not an Earth language.

"I'm starting to see why people burn these." Jyn, no.

✧ ʜᴜʀᴛ's ᴅᴏɴᴜᴛs

And then there is the real indulgence. Donuts. Fluffy, fried dough coated in sugar and cinnamon and glaze and stuffed with jelly or lemon and probably not all at once. Jyn doesn't take her ridiculously large order to someone to share or eat inside the shop itself.

Oh no. Jyn takes her box outside and sits on the curb and eats them right there because that is the type of person she is. Once the hunger is abated, however, she will eat the rest of them while she is walking. The donuts never seem to make it to their intended destination before Jyn is disposing of the empty box in a rubbish bin and wiping powered sugar off on her pants.

Manners, what are those? She will probably not share, unless it is a child or a dog. She'll share with dogs.

Comments

[volitaunt]

"On Ryloth, they preserved their entire history on paper and animal hide."

Random facts Poe Dameron has remembered for four hundred, Alex. Things he is probably not supposed to say, whoops, for a thousand. He twiddles a wave at the nearest camera with a mouthed apology that is as sincere is a Hutt in prison.

He has coffee, and a small pile of cookies on a plate. The latter, he sets down in easy reach. "Don't burn it. There's probably a rule against that."

[realists]

Without looking up from scooping up her book from the floor, Jyn counters: "And their main export was slavery."

So on a whole, not a planet she is looking to emulate. Not actually so far from America though, funny how that worked out. Ah, colonialism. Her hair gets shoved back as she straightens up, dropping the book on the table with a frown. Upside, she knows Twi'leks. Downside, useless knowledge.

"Stop trying to bribe me with cookies." Her friendship can't be bought! And she makes no promises about burning or not burning the book!

[volitaunt]

"That's why the twi'leks used paper. No one cared if slaves had it."

Which about exhausts his remembered knowledge of Ryloth. He could ask BB-8 for more, but the droid is currently rolling around in the shop's kitchen talking to the fridge and the dish washer.

Poor guy is lonely, Poe thinks, and puts the thought away. He can't do anything about it, except talk to BB-8 more himself, but with the restriction of being watched... it's hard.

"And I'm not trying to bribe you with cookies." He plucks one off the plate, and flashes the kind of grin that is guaranteed either to make someone smile or make someone want to punch him in the face. "I'm hoping some of the sweetness sticks."

[realists]

She neither smiles nor punches him in the face, though the urge is admittedly there. Instead she flips him off with a dry: "It won't." Just your every day rudeness between passing acquaintances because she refuses to call them friends out of spite.

Because Poe would gloat and then she'd have to kill him and Cassian would be distraught and it would be a Thing.

"Always bringing me cookies, if I didn't know any better, Poe, I'd think that you fancy me." Which is such a laughable notion it's honestly a marvel she doesn't actually laugh.

[volitaunt]

He gives her his most innocent face, which is like, the most transparently "innocent" face ever. "I was under the impression you weren't considering suitors."

[realists]

"You fancying me doesn't mean I have to consider you at all." For the record. She opens her book again, almost pointedly, but she doesn't start reading it, instead just holding it open like she can force her hand to learn how to hold actual for real books. It's garbage and barbaric.

Casually, "What do you know about Saw Gerrera?"

Should she be talking about this in public? No. Does she care? No. Besides, maybe he is the town gardener. It could be a completely innocuous question should Poe's answer be that he knows zero things.

french's grocery

[seaweedbrain]

"Hey, do you need help with anything?"

It's Percy's job to assist any possibly lost customers, you know, aside from manning the cash register, stocking new products, and cleaning aisles up when they've gotten a little out of sorts.

It's all part of the gig, something he feels like he's been doing since the beginning of time, but can't have been for more than a year maybe. A year and a couple months at most.

Only when he approaches Jyn does he recognize her from around town, and most recently, the bake sale. Her cupcakes were pretty awesome.

"Oh, hey. You were the one with the cupcakes."

[realists]

She does not want to be known as cupcake girl but that is how she met literally how 90% of the people at the bake sale so maybe this is her lot in life.

"You were the one failing English." Somehow it doesn't sound like an insult, just a comment on a basic fact. She is the girl with the cupcakes, he is the kid with the bad grade who chose the right combination of frosting and cake and who likes gym.

"Did you stay out of detention?"

[seaweedbrain]

"I did, yeah," Percy says, just a little guiltily, but obviously not enough not to think that maybe if he had a better plan, it'd work out next time. "Didn't get out of having to take the make-up test though."

This school is so determined that Percy get a decent grade. It'd be nice if it wasn't so frustrating. Luckily he's got good, smart friends.

"All I can hope for is a pass at this point."

[realists]

"If it was anything but English, I'd offer to help..." But it's not like she was well educated. And definitely not in the American school system. If someone asked her to write a five paragraph essay she would drop out.

She wouldn't usually offer to help, but he's a cute kid and she's purposefully distracting herself from the Too Many Cereals that were trying to shatter her brain.

Anyway, it's funny because... she sounds English. So you'd think she'd be good at it.

[seaweedbrain]

"Thanks," Percy says good-naturedly, just because, yeah, that is actually really nice of her to offer. She doesn't have to, obviously, but she is, and that's pretty cool.

"In the mean time, I can definitely help you here. It's kind of my job."

So, basically. Ask him any question where it concerns the stuff they sell here and he will answer. Like a grocery guru.

[realists]

"Why are there so many?" She gestures to the Too Many Cereals in question, nose crinkling in frustration. Grocery shopping should be easy, why is it not easy? She's fought armies, she's survived on her own for five years, she's been a rebel since she was eight years old.

She's being defeated by boxes of cereal.

go ask alice

[votively]

Luna pauses when she hears the familiar sound of a book hitting the ground. She would have reached to pick it up anyway, but Jyn's comment earns a quiet, amused laugh as she does so.

"Is that so?" she asked, offering the book back to her. "Most people I know find their troublesome qualities rather endearing."

[realists]

Jyn would have gotten it eventually, once she was done silently complaining, but it's nice to not have to expend the effort.

"Why?" A datapad would be so much easier to use, why are they stuck in the 90s? Plus a datapad would hold the entire series on one portable little tablet instead of a stack of books on her bookshelf. Books suck. Jyn doesn't get the appeal, honestly.

Belatedly, "Thanks."

cassian's house ( closed )

[realists]

After talking to Poe and BB-8 -- and after abruptly abandoning them in her house -- and calmly walks to Cassian's house. Calmly in that once she is down her own street she doesn't sprint over, but she takes an incredibly convoluted path to her friend's house, anxiety manifesting in an apparent inability to walk in a straight line. If she thought ahead, if she had thought to think ahead, she would have called him and brought beer because she probably needs it but instead she is barefoot and still in her pajamas.

She could knock on the door, it's close enough to his room, but she doesn't want to wake up his roommate. The night is a study of could haves, would haves, and should haves. She should have not scrambled between the bushes in front of his window and broken in through said window, but that is exactly what she does, shimmying the lock open with a butter knife. Or, well, attempting to, because she doesn't get very far before her breaking and entering is noticed and Cassian is suddenly at the window to see her on her tiptoes with her arms stretched up to the break in the window frame. Definitely should have brought beer.

She draws her hands away from the window, blinking at him through the window, as she hides the knife behind her back, dropping it in the bush. "Can I come in?"

[ouzel]

Cassian is mostly glad he decided to stick his head through the window first instead of his weapon; if he can live another lifetime without ever aiming a weapon at Jyn Erso he will consider it a success in at least this one degree. He nods, and there's a pause where he disappears (to set aside said weapon on the top of the dresser) and then he leans out the window to offer her the use of his hands - and most of his arms - to haul herself up the wall and inside via said window.

Which probably looks really suspicious from the outside and he's sure that he'd end up with some well-meaning lecture about normalizing her behavior if anyone knew either of them well enough to connect those dots but...honestly, he doesn't care. Either she's got a reason for trying to break into his room knowing he'd be in it or this is just what she does now and he'll manage, either way.

If she takes his arms (she doesn't need them but he figures they'd help and it'd be rude to just stand there and wait) that means he'll end up uncertain how long to hold on for once she's inside but he'll just...handle...that when the time comes.

Yeah.

[realists]

Jyn takes his help with zero hesitation, scrambling up the wall and over the sill until she is in his bedroom at something close to three in the morning but maybe this is just what she does now. Her eyes are still red, she knows from the way they burn every time she blinks and she's starting to feel the mild burn on her fingers now that Cassian is holding them, it's only a matter of time before Cassian notices both and quietly fusses at her. That's what he does now.

Now that time and circumstance aren't working against them.

Now that they're dead and time is seemingly infinite. They've reached the end and now what?

Now there is zero hesitation when Jyn pulls her hands back only to lurch forward and curl her arms around his shoulders, burying her face against his neck, breathing in the living scent of him, the warmth, feeling her own unsteady heartbeat pounding against her chest. It is impossible to not compare it to their last embrace, broken on the sand with the blinding white of the shattered horizon racing toward them. She feels as broken, if not physically, knowing that everyone had been lost on that beach.

[ouzel]

The embrace is unexpected but not unwelcome and it isn't hard for Cassian to lean into it, bending his height a little to make it less of a reach for her. He can feel her breathing against his neck, takes in how unsteady it is, and puts his arms around her back. He'd feel more settled by the contact if he knew what, exactly, had been the cause of the visit in the first place...but he can guess.

It's sad that there's a list of possibilities, really.

Still, Cassian closes his eyes and lets out a breath. Allows himself to relax, or at least be a little less hypervigilant in the moment.

It's different than before, of course. Neither of them are bleeding (hurt, however, yes). There's no sand, no torn and bloodied Imperial uniforms. The hardwood is cold beneath his toes in a way that doesn't remind him of Scarif at all. But she smells the same underneath those foreign factors, and they're both in their pajamas, both barefoot, both clinging on.

She smells the same and something in Cassian's chest twists and his arms shift a little, his grip encircling around her.

It'd be nice if they could have this without the suffering on their heels, he thinks, but. He'll take what he can get. "I'm here." It's not a lie, like we're okay would be, or an opening for her to fill up the ensuing silence of hey. It's true, and it is a strange, impossible sort of comfort, but. "I missed you," is much more quiet.

He hopes she understands what he means. He died like this and then woke up here alone.

[realists]

The feel of his arms around her is grounding and she doesn't know when that happened. The casual touches have always come naturally, but when did his touch begin to settle her? On Jedha, maybe. His touch had dragged her foggy mind from the grief of seeing her father back to the present grief of having to say good by to Saw again as a planet exploded around them. They'd fled, barely escaping and it was like Tamsye Prime all over again, and it was Cassian's grip on her arm that kept her running out of the Partisan stronghold and on to the ship.

Now his arms are around her, sure and strong, and for once everything feels settled.

"I remember." Maybe not everything still, she feels like their are still gaps missing, emotions lacking the correct context, names that don't have faces, but enough. She remembers enough. She remembers them. Jedha and Eadu and Scarif, running and fighting and dying alongside each other. That moment of peace in the turbo lift.

"You killed Krennic. I'd thought he'd killed you like he killed my parents and Saw, but then there you were." She laughs, or something close to it, a puff of air and a wobbly, wet smile buried against his shoulder. Even when she thought she'd lost him, he still came back for her, impossibly, and ended the nightmare that had plague her whole life. "You came back for me."

And then they had died, a fact Jyn can't seem to escape now that she is fully aware of it.

[ouzel]

He remembers how tired he'd felt, how utterly exhausted and Cassian has the fleeting thought that he's never been rested since. The closest he's gotten, recently, was in her guest room and even that was a fragile sort of thing. Yet there is something he can't quite give name to in the weight of her in his arms, like he can maybe, finally, relax. Just slightly. Enough to know, accept, that she is alive and this is real.

He could say that he doesn't like leaving people behind, but she would know eventually that meant very little in the face of what he had to do before.

He could make an attempt at sorting out his feelings, his head out loud, to get her to understand how important she is (to the part of him that is both wed to the movement and born of the movement and existed before the movement) but that sounds like a torture she wouldn't want to sit through right now. Plus there are cameras.

Plus he is afraid.

"I plan on making it a habit." Always is a dangerous sort of thing to promise, considering the last few months, at least. Cassian shuts his eyes and tries to leave that particular train of thought alone.

wayward pines national park ( closed )

[realists]

Poe's picnic is both fun and educational -- but only if you're Jyn and find the idea of amateur surgery fun, which she does. She likes stretching her legs for skills she hasn't used in quite some time. (Though she didn't inform Poe on just how long it had been. He didn't ask, not her problem.)

After asking them to pass along the information to Leia, the General, Poe leaves to further disseminate what BB-8 had learned and Jyn leaves the General situation to Cassian, he's the one with a cell phone after all and she is happy to distract herself with eating while he asks Leia to meet them at their picnic spot.

Which is what finds Leia happening upon two dead rebel heroes sat on a blanket under the shade of the trees with Jyn feeding dried fruit to the chipmunk perched in her hands like some kind of Disney princess and telling Cassian about a tiny rodent on the planet of Skuhl that had a symbiotic relationship with an indigenous vine that their nests were made out it. "The seeds would take plant in their skin and as the vines grew they would wrap around their thin bones and it would give them the strength they lacked. They were so light, it was like holding a cloud."

She's enraptured by the chipmunk, smoothing her finger down its back, tracing the ridge of its spine. "When the bulbas died, new vines would grow out of their bodies and pregnant mothers would make nests out of their flowers, starting everything all over again."

Yeah, Jyn's a nerd.

[oldladyleia]

It's weird to see them in the clearing when she comes upon them, both of them looking so young and so very much alive. It's odd when all she had ever really known them from before was halos, and her father's coded messages about the mission that they were undergoing. But they had given her strength to go along with the hope that they'd delivered to her, and she'd in turn delivered to the rebellion and all of the adventures that had gone along with that.

Thinking of the two of them had helped with what she had just remembered about being tortured at the hands of Vader, how they had died to be brave and save the resistance, and how she needed to do it as well. But here they were, younger than her son, just a bit older than the person she remembered as her grandson, and this place reminded her of Endor after the battle, when it had been her and Han and Luke and the Ewoks just celebrating.

This didn't feel like anything to be celebrating right now, not with the layer of fear over everything, but she couldn't deny them the happiness of just being together and talking about something as simple as wildlife. Leia herself didn't know the story, but she could appreciate it for what it was; all of the things in the world needed to live in balance, even if at this point it seemed like balance was slipping further and further away rather than coming closer.

Gently clearing her throat, she offered a smile to the two of them, and spoke softly and gently. "Sorry to interrupt." But life always seemed to interrupt folks like the three of them didn't it?

[ouzel]

Cassian's got his legs folded in front of him, watching Jyn tell her story with a look of utter enrapture - think heart eyes. It's not often that Jyn opts to tell a story from her past, and the fact that she's sharing one that makes her practically light up is nice. Plus she's feeding a small furry animal by hand and his fingers itch for some way to record the moment.

Alas.

He turns when Leia speaks and his smile is genuine. "It's quite all right. We're lucky to have found a nice, quiet spot." A gesture. Please, Leia, sit! If you don't mind, anyway.

[realists]

Jyn had been warned, that Bail Organa's daughter wasn't exactly Jyn's age anymore. That had been the only context she had for Leia Organa before now -- Cassian had told her about the young princess when she'd woken up from a dream (nightmare?) about the council denying them, assuring her, at least, that they didn't disbelieve her because she was a young woman because Bail himself had a girl a bit younger than her.

That doesn't mean it's particularly easy to reconcile that a woman younger than her, the youngest of the Rogue One squad itself, has grown up into an adult. She could be the same age as Baze or Chirrut. The same age as Galen when he died.

Knowing that Leia Organa grew into adulthood is not the same as seeing Leia Organa having grown into adulthood. Which means her arrival is the first time that Jyn has realized that if Poe worked under the princess in her current title of General it probably wasn't... during her and Cassian's time with the Alliance. Her eyes flicker to Cassian as she gently sets the chipmunk down to scamper away, and the realization is clear.

It's a brief look before her attention turns back at Alderaan's princess, hand lifting to twist around her mother's crystal. She doesn't say anything, because Jyn has the social skills of dirt, but she watches the older woman carefully.

[oldladyleia]

Leia just smiles at Jyn when the woman watches her carefully, and she can't help but think of herself at that age. It was lifetimes ago, centuries, really when one factored in how she'd led her life from there to now. But there's something that reminds Leia of what she once saw in the mirror as she looks into the hero's face, and as she watches as her fingers go to something around her neck. Leia had no idea what it is, but it seems like a personal talisman of some sort, and her own fingers brush the double-stoned ring around her finger in response.

Settling onto the ground with little regard for her age, Leia Organa just tucks her feet below her knees as she looks to the two of them. Oh, it's going to be awkward when it comes time for cutting, but for now she wishes to intrude upon them as little as she can. This situation is difficult and weird at best, and Leia knows about how situations can be in that way, but they don't hold a candle to what is happening now.

Slowly she extends her hand to Jyn, and her voice is soft but there's a real warmth in it that touches her eyes. "I'm pleased to meet you, Jyn. I'm Leia Organa."