pineslog | open ✧ moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars

Entry tags:

open ✧ moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars

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

[ Open ]

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✧ 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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"I'm a bad habit," she murmurs against him, lips moving against his neck. She could just talk like a normal person, but she's had it confirmed thrice over now that she died on an Imperial beach, in this man's arms -- she doesn't want to leave his arms. Even if her shoulders are aching and her feet are cold from walking to his house barefoot and she may have stepped on a pine cone and stubbed her toe on the curb and actually have fallen on the sidewalk and scraped her knee like a little kid.

It was a lot easier to hug him when they were both collapsed on the ground but she still wants nothing to do with the idea of letting go, none of her ails seem relevant in comparison.

But it is true, in her opinion. She'd been a lot of trouble for Cassian, a dangerous habit. Still, she doesn't seem to mind his plan, the unspoken promise, and she twists her arms tighter, pressing up on her tip toes. Sure a thirty minute hug is impractical and unrealistic, but that doesn't mean she's going to try for it regardless.

There is quite a lot of willpower involved not to shudder at the feeling of her lips moving against his throat - while Cassian recognizes that he is a wholly lonely and probably mostly sad individual he also recognizes that now is definitely not the time, and so. He swallows that feeling down, and shoves it in a box, where all his feelings for Jyn exist in a complicated miasma that doesn't take well to mental storage containers.

It leaks, spreading out into everything, catching him unawares at even the least obvious moments. (This is not, for the record, one of those.)

"Maybe," he says, and it's quiet too. His hold on her doesn't lesson at all. "But I'm already committed."

He's already made mistakes, flagrant ones, ones that could be classified more as 'poor choices' than simple 'mistakes' if he were being honest. He's made those poor choices and he's made them in the hopes of furthering her well-being and he can't be sorry for it. Not now. Not when he's already gone and lost everything anyway.

Not to say he doesn't have regrets. But decisions involving Jyn Erso haven't made it on the list.

One hand moves up her back to pet at the back of her head (and her hair's a mess, of course, but he doesn't think she'd be willing to sit still for him to comb it out either) and he tilts his face down into her shoulder. "So I guess you're stuck with me."

If a pyroclastic surge came and buried them in exactly this position like the remains of Pompeii, Jyn wouldn't care. Just like on the beach, there is finally a peace.

"You're so stubborn." Which is to say: perfect. Jyn being stuck with Cassian and vice versa sounds perfect to her. She doesn't know that she could have coped with this realization alone and she's honestly glad that it is Cassian here with her, as much as she pines for Bodhi and Baze and Chirrut, the family that had collected themselves for her.

She can't imagine having to live with this alone and so, "I'm sorry I was late."

"High praise," coming from one of the most stubborn people he knows, but he's glad that she's accepted it. Maybe even taken no little comfort in the idea that he will, without hesitation, be there for her. Come back for her. Again and again, as often and as many time as necessary.

One day she might even decide to ask him why and he can only hope he has a complete and honest answer for her at that point.

Her apology, however, cuts him to the core. Apologizing for things is not really Jyn's way; to have her apologize for essentially being kidnaped, post-mortem, and then take a little longer to be reunited with him? Cassian shakes his head, and his lips brush against the tip of her ear. "You're here now, and that's what matters."

The breath of a laugh vibrates through her, even if it's not truly verbalized, head tilting into his hand finally, a sigh following, long and heavy but not unhappy. This is what matters, he's right. They're all that is left of Rogue One and they aren't even left, are they? They're still dead, even if she can feel his heart beating against her chest, can feel his breath on her skin.

They're very alive and, yet, inescapably dead.

Jyn draws back slowly enough to not dislodge his hand in her hair and her arms around his shoulders. It's a different kind of embrace, one that makes her think of the turbo lift instead of the beach, too bright eyes searching his. "Can I stay here tonight?"

Cassian's hold expands to allow her to move as far away as she wants to without actually letting go until the last possible moment, and so part of him is pleased that it is a slow sort of movement. The hand at her back manages to drift down towards the small of her back, before eventually settling near her waist.

At her question Cassian swallows, and nods. "Of course."

His eyes dart across her features, and Cassian presses his lips together. "The answer will never be no."

Never is A Lot, but it warms Jyn inside, making her feel safe and whole for the first time in... ages. Part of her wants to be flippant, tease him for being so obliging but she refrains. Somehow.

"It's late," she says instead, as if she's just realized that, even after dragging Poe out in the middle of the night. Even after walking over here in the middle of the night. She's just realizing it's late as hell.

"Do you mind if I sleep?"

Cassian shakes his head and then, before he can convince himself it's a poor idea, presses his lips to her forehead softly.

"No, I don't mind. Do you want to sleep in here?"

He can sleep on the floor. Or they could curl up on the couch. She could take the guest room, instead (he would still end up on the floor of that room, though.) "Do you want tea?"

Or does she just want him to shush so she can get on with being comfortable and probably not freezing her toes off?

Oh.

Jyn can remember the last time she's had affection that soft and sweet. Her father's fingers brushing her temple as he whispered Stardust. Chirrut squeezing her fingers one last time before they departed the ship. Bodhi's wide, skittish eyes softening as she clutched her fingers at his arm and his hand brushed against hers. Baze's low voice rumbling Little Sister and his large hand steady on her shoulder. Cassian's hand between her shoulder blades as death thundered toward them.

Her chest tightens at the memories now painful enough to feel like a physical injury, but she's still safe and alive in Cassian's arms so it doesn't overwhelm her, as much as it threatens to do. They had died, their friends had died. That hurts more than her own death could ever.

"Here, yeah." As much as she is reluctant to move, she does start toward his bed. Taking him with her.

Shushing, then, and traveling with her across the room. Some part of Cassian's mind assumes that as they reach his bed she'll let go (gently pushing him away, maybe) and when that doesn't happen there's a good 15 seconds of just...

A complete lack of coherent thought.

Pulling away, stopping, pausing? Not options. Any and all of the aforementioned would signal a reluctance on Cassian's part that might cause Jyn to withdraw and would be generally untrue.

"Do you want to be near the wall?" Or would she rather pin him in?

No complaints, either way.

She nods without hesitation. Her bed has always been against the wall; from the little nook on Lah'mu to the mattress lovingly pressed against the wall by Saw on Wrea, Tanith's bed under the mandala on Skuhl, the cement slab that passed for a bed on Wobani. A wall on one side means she only needs to worry about the opposing side.

But Cassian will be there.

Finally, she releases him, but only to clamber into his bed, throwing the rest of the blankets back to burrow herself between them with her back pressed against the wall. The bed still seems warm but she thinks she might be imagining that. Maybe she is just very, very cold. After a long few seconds she unbarnacles herself from the wall, scooting forward but staying on her chosen side. She's small, she sleeps small, she doesn't know Cassian's preference to sprawl or not.

Cassian lets her settle, or what he presumes to be her settling, before he starts to follow her onto to mattress. Which means that he's a good halfway to laying down when she moves away from the wall, and he freezes in place before determining that no, he didn't cross some unforeseen boundary, Jyn is just getting comfortable.

Probably.

Either way, he's going to go ahead and follow through with getting back to bed, and trying to relax enough to let Jyn sleep.

He doesn't sprawl but he does take the chance not to curl into himself too tightly; his back still protests that sort of behavior, after all, so Cassian tucks his arms up near his head and lies on his side, facing Jyn, before he remembers the blaster. Unfortunately that means sighing, rolling over, getting up and getting said blaster from the dresser, shutting the window and then bringing the weapon back to bed. Cassian shoves it beneath his pillow rather unceremoniously after double-checking the safety.

"Sorry," he murmurs as he climbs back under the covers. He doesn't have much practice in sharing a bed with someone - he suspects wrapping blankets and sweaters around Kay and getting as comfortable as possible in non-traditional sleeping spaces counts, but very little.

She almost tells him to shut up, but there is something strangely comforting about Cassian fixing everything to the way it was before and then climbing back into bed. His fussing reminds her of home.

"Where'd you get the blaster?" she asks quietly, as if being in bed means the need for quiet suddenly exists. She didn't have a blaster when she woke up and she doesn't remember if they said anything about it at the Sheriff's station, so thus the question.

Shifting a little, she draws the blankets tighter around her shoulders, burying her head against the pillow. Everything here is so... soft. Not just the mattress and the blankets and the pillows, which are decadent compared to... anything. But the town itself, the townspeople are irritatingly kind, the whole place isn't wrought with war or strife. It's odd.

Cassian's presence makes her feel solid amidst all the wrongness.

"They sent it to me." The ever ubiquitous 'they'. "Five weeks after I woke up here. I don't know why. It works; I did a test firing and took it apart, put it back together." Because paranoia.

He watches her get comfortable and brings his own hands to settle near his chest, in the space between them. He wants to reach out and curl his arms around her but he doesn't want to make it weird. That could make it weird, right?

Instead his fingers twist into the edge of the blanket he pulls up toward his ears.

"Of course you did," she agrees quietly, sleepily, eyes closing against the emotions of the night. It's been a lot to handle in a very short period of time and, if she's honest, she hasn't handled it, not really. How is anyone supposed to handle being dead.

But maybe sleep will help.

Eyes still closed, she stretches her hand across the space between them, brushing across his knuckles until their fingers wind together as naturally as if they'd been doing it for thousands of years. She needs the anchor, the reminder that he's there, the same anchor she'd had on Scarif. She needs Cassian, that's all there is to it.

"See you in the morning, Cassian."

Cassian keeps his eyes open so of course he tracks the movement of her hand, opening his fingers to her easily. It settles something in his chest; they never had this opportunity, before, but he'll take it now.

And run with it, as long as she'll let him.

"Rest well, Jyn. Dulce sueños."

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open ✧ moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars

✧ ꜰʀᴇɴᴄʜ's ɢʀᴏᴄᴇʀʏ

✧ ɢᴏ ᴀsᴋ ᴀʟɪᴄᴇ

✧ ʜᴜʀᴛ's ᴅᴏɴᴜᴛs

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