Cassian has lost complete track of time when the door opens, and it registers that Jyn is the only one who could enter two seconds before he reaches for his blaster. He opens his eyes and catches sight of her frame halo'd in the doorway before she closes it behind her, and he still wonders if maybe he fell asleep, because there's no reason for her to be here.
But then he feels her settle beside him and feels her arms drop around him. He stiffens, like maybe it's still fake or maybe he still doesn't deserve it. Against his will, he finds himself leaning into her and how warm and alive she is.
He can count on one hand the number of times she's apologized, and normally he might tease her about it. He still doesn't really know what to do with his hands, because as much as he wants to touch her, he can't bring himself to do it.
He sinks against her more, even if his hands ball into fists and come to rest on his legs. He doesn't think he has any right to ask, but he can't bear the thought of her running away again even more, and maybe that's a sign he hasn't totally cut off all his emotions, or maybe she just cracked open the cage by touching him. It's not like anyone's ever done that in these moments before. "Please stay."
Pressing a kiss to his hair, Jyn shakes her head slowly. She still can't shake the feeling that Cassian is going to wash his hands of her like a mistake better off forgotten, but she can't forget what Baze had told her, holding her face between his large, gentle hands.
You're not opponents, Jyn. Fight the battle, not each other.
She holds him tighter, like she can hold him together with her arms around him alone, as if that would somehow be enough. "I'm not going anywhere, I promise."
He shudders under the kiss, like the affection stings, but he closes his eyes and lets it wash over him anyway. He lets her promise wash over him too, even if he wouldn't blame her for breaking it should she find out about the mission.
The pit at his stomach grabs hold again, and he turns his head, burying his face against her as her grip tightens around him. It would be nice to disappear into her arms. There is a part of him yelling that he's being too weak, but Jyn is already familiar with all the worst parts of him, vulnerability and all.
"I have three more days leave." It feels like too much and not enough. His voice feels scratchy. "I earned it," he adds, and he could not sound more bitter if he tried.
Jyn's eyes close at his tone, stiffening with the sudden understanding of his mood, why he wouldn't find her, why he had sat himself uncomfortable on the floor. It takes a lot of effort to relax against him, fearing he might take any action, or even inaction, the wrong way. She is certainly prone to doing so when she is upset.
Her forehead rests against the top of his head. "Get in bed, Cassian. We can talk there." Only then does she release her grip, but only slightly.
He is hyperaware of the way she stiffens and automatically assumes it's his fault, even if there's no visible sign. But he's also hyperaware of how she relaxes soon after. Cassian is always vigilant, but it always feels extra when he comes back from missions like these.
He misses her arms as soon as she starts to let him go and vaguely registers her plea to get in bed. "I don't want to talk," is the automatic and monotonous reply, because classified, because he's never needed to, because he doesn't want to make Jyn leave or disgust her like he disgusts himself.
But he gets to his feet unsteadily, refusing to use her for support to stand, which is at the very least a sign he's going to get in bed. Maybe. He stares at it again instead of crawling in, frowning deeply.
Jyn frowns herself as she scrambles to her feet next to him, feeling off balance because she doesn't know what to do to help him or just open him up even a little bit.
"Alright, you don't need to talk." Prime candidate for avoiding conversation is Jyn herself, she can't begrudge him the same avoidances. Maybe she should push or pry or force him to open up but if he did that to her it would start a fight and she is trying very hard to avoid fighting with him right now because they are supposed to be one the same team. "We can stand here all night. Or sit. Or lay down. We don't have to talk at all. But you have to look at me."
Cassian doesn't know what he wants, because he isn't used to having someone here with him. Usually he just stares into space until passing out from complete inability to keep awake any longer.
A few more seconds of silence go by, before he turns his head and looks at her, the slow tilt like he's afraid she won't like what she sees. His eyes are a little unfocused, his mind trying to draw him back planetside.
His gaze moves over her face, her pale cheeks in the dim light, the unkempt hair hanging over her forehead, her chapped lips, the scratches on her chin, the circles under her eyes undoubtedly matching his, and his chest aches. He closes his eyes tightly, trying to push out dead agents and replace them with Jyn's face, but it seems cruel somehow, like he's abandoning them twice.
They snap open and land back on her, making sure she hasn't suddenly left. He sits soon after, because he doesn't like the sensation of looking downward at her.
Jyn is used to looking up at him. She knows every faint freckle, the curve of his chin, the shadow of his perpetual stubble, the tiny scars hidden beneath. She is entirely used to that view from every angle, she is unused to looking down at him, but after a moment of uncertainty she refuses to let it stop her.
Stepping forward, she moves between his legs and uses her index finger to gently tip his chin up.
"You don't have to talk. But you can't--" Her chin wobbles briefly and she looks to the ceiling to get control of herself before she continues. As much as Cassian isn't pushing her away it still feels like he is, like he's going to ask her to leave. She tries to ignore that part of herself. There's a protracted silence before she looks down again and starts over. "You don't have to talk, but you can't keep me out. That's not what this is. We're not alone anymore."
His hands stay uselessly in his lap, still afraid to touch her. She tilts his chin and he allows it with no fight, even if his jaw clenches.
Cassian is fine with hurting himself, but he doesn't want to hurt Jyn. He looks a little ashamed, and the temptation is there to look away, but he doesn't, even if his shoulders curl inward.
"I don't know how to do this with another person," he quietly admits. He doesn't know how to cope successfully in general, but especially in a way that allows him to keep hold on the family he has come to love with a fierceness he was never supposed to have to be a good spy.
The only option has always been shut down when it got too bad. Jyn makes that impossible, but he doesn't know how to pull himself back out of this without locking away his feelings. He's been on terrible missions since Scarif, but none of them have been this bad.
Jyn's never been all that shy about admitting she doesn't like Cassian's job. She knows it's an unfortunate necessity and that what he does will help promise peace in the galaxy and she knows he is the best at what he does.
But she hates how it makes him feel. She hates the way he isn't allowed to talk about it, the way he comes home silent sometimes and washes away blood and sin in the shower, the way he struggles with his job. Luckily, Draven has always been an easy repository for her hate -- first for her father, it had quickly become because of Cassian. She hates what the rebellion makes Cassian do. They had survived impossible odds and the worst kind of near death but while she and Bodhi are tasked with missions that are comparably easy, Cassian is still sent out on his intelligence missions.
And Jyn doesn't know how to help him deal with that kind of fall out.
Her mouth slants into a frown, fingers sliding up to push his hair back from his temple, soft and easy. "What do you need?"
He closes his eyes when she runs her fingers through his hair, both taking comfort in the gesture and feeling bad that he is. They stay closed for a few long seconds, while he struggles with basking in how close she is to him.
No one's ever really asked him that before, especially post-mission, because what Cassian Andor needs doesn't usually matter in the face of what the Rebellion needs.
He probably needs a break. Not just a few days before another mission comes his way. "I don't know." That's probably part of why he avoided Jyn too, the uncertainty of getting her help. He's grown more comfortable with trusting her with himself, but if he can't be in control after a mission like this he doesn't know who he is. He doesn't want to fall apart completely.
He wants to hold her, but he's afraid to. "I need it to go away."
Jyn doesn't think she is capable of making that happen, especially when her first instinct is to stalk down the hall and punch Draven in the face. She tempers that instinct solely because leaving Cassian right now feel impossible.
He's sat with her grieving Saw and her father and their compatriots that died on Scarif once they actually had time to grieve, the least she can do is stay with him now.
But she doesn't know what to do and everything she thinks to offer seems inadequate. After a moment, letting her hand fall to his shoulder, she sit next to him, tucking one leg beneath her so she can face him. "Tell me about it. Let it go."
It can't ever really go away is the thing, and he knows that, just like he knows come the morning it'll be tucked away in a box with all the other deaths on his conscience.
Cassian tilts his body towards hers when she sits, pulled in like an orbit. He closes his eyes again and frowns. "I'm afraid if I do, you will leave."
She hates what he does and that's another thing he knows. He always worries that one day a choice he makes will be too much for her, that she'll look at him and realize he isn't as good as she insists. That his hands are too bloody for her to keep holding. He believes in the Rebellion wholeheartedly, but it doesn't mean Cassian isn't aware it's probably ruining him from the inside out to carve out that hope for the universe.
"I won't," she says in a hurry, shaking her head even though he's not even looking at her. Her hands lift to cradle his face, pulling herself in closer, touching her forehead to his very briefly.
"Cassian, there is nothing you can say that will make me leave this room or you. I understand what you do." She doesn't hate it any less, but she knows why it has to be done. It's messy, dirty work and it bothers her down deep that Cassian is the one carrying out this work that is so unsavory no one else is even allowed to know about it.
He'd been tasked with murdering her father.
He had walked away because the ends didn't justify the means in that instance (and, to some degree she knows, because of her), but it had remained even in the aftermath something of a secret. Mon Mothma apologized to Jyn for what they had done to her, what she had lost, but it hadn't been the apology of a woman who sentenced her father to death. Draven's job was to keep her hands clean, and that meant dirtying Cassian's in the process. For the good of the rebellion. That is what Jyn hates about Cassian's job.
He leans into her touch when she cradles his face, starved for the affection even if he still thinks he doesn't deserve it. Her quick reassurances settle him against the voice in his head that tells him she can still break the promise, once she finds out what he's done.
But she says I promise, and his eyes open to meet hers. She's so close he can feel her breath on his skin, and he aches with how much he missed her. Slowly, so very slowly, he raises his hands up. They start to shake but he doesn't lower them, gently pressing his fingertips to the back of her hands and carefully sliding them to cover her hands with his, to keep her there.
They're still shaking, but he breathes out something like relief to finally touch her, like it's more proof she won't actually leave, proof that his hands exist beyond killing. He believes her. He wants to talk to her, and he trusts her with his whole self, even the bad parts. Since he's known her, she's understood him on a level no one else really has.
"I lost two agents," he says quietly, which is terrible enough on it's own and only the start. "And I thought to myself for a few moments as I was leaving, should I have been with them?"
No he shouldn't have been with them, but Jyn knows that is her own care for him talking and so she doesn't voice that. Obviously Jyn cares more about Cassian than strangers because she is human and maybe not a good person. Should he have been with them? Jyn doesn't have any of the facts so she can't say it would have changed anything.
Maybe three people would have saved them all, maybe it would have killed them all. Jyn doesn't know but she is glad he wasn't with them, as cruel as that may be. She's always been more selfish than selfless. Her fingers shift a little, spreading apart as if inviting him to actually hold her hands, not just cover them.
"That wasn't your part of the mission though." It couldn't have been or Cassia would have been with them. She knows how he works within the confines of a mission, he's had to reel her in from intervening when she saw someone else's part going wrong, remind her that slipping away from her particular role in the dance could compromise the entire mission even worse.
It's a little delayed, but he slides his fingers through hers when she spreads them, winding together even as she keeps holding his face. His one hand is stiff and knuckles a little swollen from punching the ship, but he can't bear to pull away from her now that he's finally touched her.
"Placing them was part of my mission. It wasn't - they were never supposed to die. But they did, and why do I get to be the lucky one?" There is something cynical on the last words, because the only lucky thing he feels right now is having Jyn with him. He doesn't want to die at all, but he does marvel at how many times he escapes while others don't. It isn't that he should have been with them in the building so much as wondering if he should have died too.
"Rhel Kolbrun and Tiric Gundo. Someone else should know their names too." A beat. He feels like he needs to defend himself from being so effected, a decade of - for lack of better words - sucking it up. "I have lost agents before. I'm always prepared for the possibility."
"Cassian." Slowly, she draws their clasped hands down into her lap, pulling his hands closer to her, like she can pull him closer to her, sooth some broken edge with her presence alone. She finds this a devastating failure because she's setting impossible standards for herself.
"Is this lucky?" Her voice pitches up a little in disbelief. "If it were it wouldn't hurt so much to get out of bed in the morning because you hate everything about yourself, second guessing every single decision and choice you've ever made until you feel physically ill. There is nothing lucky about surviving, Cassian."
That was maybe too bitter to be helpful and she puffs out a short sigh before trying again. "You have a heart, losing people shouldn't be easy."
He lets her pull his hands, watching the movement with an ounce of nerves, like if he gets too close to her everything will be ruined. She's wrong though, because Jyn does sooth him. And maybe that's part of why he avoided her too, the sinking feeling that he didn't deserve to be soothed.
Cassian looks up at her again, and she's right on that front. It's not luck, and he does hate himself; some days it's not so bad, on the days he gets to smile at her or Bodhi, or laugh with Chirrut, or drink with Baze. They remind him that even if surviving is a challenge, there are pieces that help. He never had that before.
It doesn't mean he can't recognize the bitterness in it because he feels it. It's overwhelming right now, especially after hearing it so plainly, like she's completely read him for filth. "The alternative is not lucky either."
It's the strangest pinch of a feeling, not wanting to die but still feeling like you've escaped death too many times. Cassian knows how to survive both the world and things he does, but the cost of it is still killing him slowly.
"It's supposed to be, in this." He squeezes her hands a little. Does he have a heart? It's a good question. "Even when you are the reason why it happens. To do this work, I need to be prepared to cut any losses."
"Being prepared isn't the same as being heartless." Once both his hands are settled in her lap, she extracts one hand to reach up and hold his shoulder, firm. She also wants her hand free in case he tries to look away and she can hold both of his hands with her one. Honestly, when it comes to Cassian, she can do anything if it will make it just a little bit better for him.
"You didn't go into that mission hoping Rhel and Tiric would die. I know you. You had plans and contingencies and escape routes and every single thing planned so that all of you would make it back alive. You did everything you could to protect them." That's just not a reality of war, it's their reality. Ever-present loss chipping away at the shoddily erected walls they'd built up around themselves.
The unfortunate fact of letting each other in, letting Bodhi and Chirrut and Baze in, means that their walls have ceased being secure. It would be easier to do the dirty work, she thinks, alone. But what good would their even be in surviving in that case?
"It hurts because you're not a storm trooper, Cassian."
That's probably why he was alone for so long. Spy work is easier when your only friend is a droid. The more time he spends with Jyn, with the rest of them, the more he finds himself at a loss in coping. When he could avoid most people, he didn't have to be vulnerable. His walls kept him safe, and even though he's a different kind of safe with them lowered, he feels like a mess of a man.
Realistically and logically he knows everything she tells him is true, but it's so unusual to hear another voice reminding him of it. Most of the time the little guilty voice in his head just reminds him how awful he is. Rationality gets thrown out the window.
He shudders under the words. You're not a stormtrooper. He knows that too, deep down, because he knows the Rebellion is the moral choice, even if he can't always do moral things. That's how war works.
Maybe the hurt is what separates him from the blind obedience of a faceless army. But when the way she threw it in his face after Eadu wouldn't stop echoing in his ears, to hear the reverse of it now is like a weight lifted. Some of it.
He does look away, closing his eyes, and he almost, almost, touches his cheek to her hand on his shoulder. It's like he's still refusing the comfort of more contact. "I set off the bomb ten minutes earlier than planned. The entire operation would have been discovered if I hadn't." His voice is matter of fact until the pause, dragging on awkwardly. When he finally continues, it sounds like he's going to choke on shame. "They were not out yet."
Jyn remembers the blood pouring from Saw's body on Tamsye Prime, soaking her with sticky warmth. She remembers Jari's screams and frantic entreaties before they were cut off entirely. The reassurances from Akshaya and her Hadder before the heartbreaking silence and realization. Blue, who trusted Liana Hallik the expert forger. Blue who Liana sold out to the Imperials for her own freedom. Cassian isn't the only one who dwells on the people that have died because of him. He and Jyn happen to have the same coping mechanism -- not.
Saw had told her once that war was a massacre. She didn't realize then it was more of an emotional massacre.
"We all know the risks," she says quietly, feeling grief and anger war inside her. As much as she wanted to haul off and deck Saw when Maia died, she wants to do the same to Draven now because she knows it comes down to his decisions to send Cassian on these missions. It kills her that he's killing himself like this, for the rebellion.
That old bitterness flares bright. How much do they have to lose before they've done enough?
He can't bring himself to look at her, too afraid of what he might see. Her voice is quiet, unjudging, but Jyn has her own masks and unreadable expressions. There is anger in her frame, which is the part he seems to hone in on above the more mournful parts, because it's easy to assume any anger is aimed at himself.
Even if she isn't angry with him, she's angry with the Rebellion, and he hates to make her feel that way. Another point in favor of his former isolation: no one to worry he's scared off the cause.
"I always do," he says, resigned. Everything in his life always seems to come down to had to, needed to. Cassian always does what he has to do.
It's not even the first time he's killed his own people before, or done something that led to their deaths. He's beaten and killed informants. The bomb from this mission was full of civilian casualties. He's pointblank killed civilians before, witnesses to his work, to prove he wasn't a spy to Imperials, excuse after excuse that was valid to the Rebellion but carved out pieces of himself. Sabotage and torture and blackmail, all on his resume.
Not so easily locked up anymore though. Unable to be erased from the datafile he assumed he had instead of a heart.
Cassian feels like he's losing his touch, and it scares him in a very existential way. He's not proud to be a skilled murderer, but it's all he's known for so long.
His words are clipped like he's giving some sort of report, but his tone gets lower, quieter, coarse like he's losing his voice. "They were good agents. I killed them. There were civilians inside with them. Wounded. Children. The moon will be ours. The Resistance was centralized, officially aligned to us. It was a success."
So why does he feel like he's going to start hyperventilating?
It's sharp, firm, and she lifts her hand to his cheek again, forcing him to look at her. Her jaw is set angrily, but her eyes are soft.
"Saw left me on Tamsye Prime. It's a planet in the Outer Rim. The Empire shipped ore there to be processed in their manufacturing factories, they made parts for Star Destroyers -- what we thought were parts for Star Destroyers." Time and gained knowledge proved differently, of course, the looming reminder of the Death Star making Jyn's stomach turn over. "The planet, the entire planet, was stuck in a debt system with the Empire. The entire planet was akin to slaves. Entire families and they can't fight back because then the Empire will slaughter their children in front of them, to remind them of their power."
There are some stories Jyn just doesn't tell, the full heartbreak of being left behind by Saw is one of them and so she leaves it at that.
She swallows, lips pursed before she breathes out a slow steadying breath to get to the point of the story in the first place. "They may have lost family today and it will be a heartache, yes, but what the Empire could have done to them would have been infinitely worse." Her thumb smooths over his beard, voice cracking at the pain in his eyes. "I've been in an Imperial prison, Cassian, I know what they're capable of."
It takes her manhandling him to look, and even then he can't look passed her jaw at first and the way it sits angrily. It's only when she starts talking about Tamsye Prime that he finally meets her gaze and exhales at the softness of her eyes. His breath comes in hard, but at least it's not the rapid fire of a panic attack.
The way she talks about the planet, her arrest, it has him moving, lifting his hand up to cradle her cheek, because he can't touch her for himself but Cassian can do it for her. Even while he can barely hold himself upright, he wants to comfort her too.
Jyn's prison sentence was for life, but she served only six months before the Alliance broke her out. Cassian knows what happens in their prisons too. He's been inside them, both with short purposeful prisoner stints and undercover with Imperial identities.
If there is anyone who can understand him right now and this chasm he's standing over, it's Jyn.
"I have told myself again and again these same things. That the Empire will always be worse. And I know it is. That's why I do this. It's why I fight them."
The Empire is always worse. It is and he knows that. It's been drilled into him for years, but hearing it from Jyn is different. She hates what he does. She threw it in his face before. But she's still here, telling him the Empire is worse, and it's a strange comfort to breathe in. For the good of the galaxy is a slippery slope, but maybe he hasn't fallen completely off track. His breathing slows down.
His shoulders sink in, not so much defeat as exhaustion. He finally lets himself lean into her hand on his cheek. His voice is quiet like he's afraid to admit it, and he is, but if he can't be vulnerable with Jyn, that's the scarier part of his life now. Losing her is more terrifying than facing himself. He doesn't want to go back to being lonely, even if it was easier to turn off his emotions that way. "But I'm tired, Jyn. I'm so tired."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
realists) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
ohnofeelstho2017-03-22 07:37 pm
no subject
But then he feels her settle beside him and feels her arms drop around him. He stiffens, like maybe it's still fake or maybe he still doesn't deserve it. Against his will, he finds himself leaning into her and how warm and alive she is.
He can count on one hand the number of times she's apologized, and normally he might tease her about it. He still doesn't really know what to do with his hands, because as much as he wants to touch her, he can't bring himself to do it.
He sinks against her more, even if his hands ball into fists and come to rest on his legs. He doesn't think he has any right to ask, but he can't bear the thought of her running away again even more, and maybe that's a sign he hasn't totally cut off all his emotions, or maybe she just cracked open the cage by touching him. It's not like anyone's ever done that in these moments before. "Please stay."
no subject
You're not opponents, Jyn. Fight the battle, not each other.
She holds him tighter, like she can hold him together with her arms around him alone, as if that would somehow be enough. "I'm not going anywhere, I promise."
no subject
The pit at his stomach grabs hold again, and he turns his head, burying his face against her as her grip tightens around him. It would be nice to disappear into her arms. There is a part of him yelling that he's being too weak, but Jyn is already familiar with all the worst parts of him, vulnerability and all.
"I have three more days leave." It feels like too much and not enough. His voice feels scratchy. "I earned it," he adds, and he could not sound more bitter if he tried.
no subject
Jyn's eyes close at his tone, stiffening with the sudden understanding of his mood, why he wouldn't find her, why he had sat himself uncomfortable on the floor. It takes a lot of effort to relax against him, fearing he might take any action, or even inaction, the wrong way. She is certainly prone to doing so when she is upset.
Her forehead rests against the top of his head. "Get in bed, Cassian. We can talk there." Only then does she release her grip, but only slightly.
no subject
He misses her arms as soon as she starts to let him go and vaguely registers her plea to get in bed. "I don't want to talk," is the automatic and monotonous reply, because classified, because he's never needed to, because he doesn't want to make Jyn leave or disgust her like he disgusts himself.
But he gets to his feet unsteadily, refusing to use her for support to stand, which is at the very least a sign he's going to get in bed. Maybe. He stares at it again instead of crawling in, frowning deeply.
no subject
"Alright, you don't need to talk." Prime candidate for avoiding conversation is Jyn herself, she can't begrudge him the same avoidances. Maybe she should push or pry or force him to open up but if he did that to her it would start a fight and she is trying very hard to avoid fighting with him right now because they are supposed to be one the same team. "We can stand here all night. Or sit. Or lay down. We don't have to talk at all. But you have to look at me."
Silence she can deal with.
no subject
A few more seconds of silence go by, before he turns his head and looks at her, the slow tilt like he's afraid she won't like what she sees. His eyes are a little unfocused, his mind trying to draw him back planetside.
His gaze moves over her face, her pale cheeks in the dim light, the unkempt hair hanging over her forehead, her chapped lips, the scratches on her chin, the circles under her eyes undoubtedly matching his, and his chest aches. He closes his eyes tightly, trying to push out dead agents and replace them with Jyn's face, but it seems cruel somehow, like he's abandoning them twice.
They snap open and land back on her, making sure she hasn't suddenly left. He sits soon after, because he doesn't like the sensation of looking downward at her.
no subject
Stepping forward, she moves between his legs and uses her index finger to gently tip his chin up.
"You don't have to talk. But you can't--" Her chin wobbles briefly and she looks to the ceiling to get control of herself before she continues. As much as Cassian isn't pushing her away it still feels like he is, like he's going to ask her to leave. She tries to ignore that part of herself. There's a protracted silence before she looks down again and starts over. "You don't have to talk, but you can't keep me out. That's not what this is. We're not alone anymore."
no subject
Cassian is fine with hurting himself, but he doesn't want to hurt Jyn. He looks a little ashamed, and the temptation is there to look away, but he doesn't, even if his shoulders curl inward.
"I don't know how to do this with another person," he quietly admits. He doesn't know how to cope successfully in general, but especially in a way that allows him to keep hold on the family he has come to love with a fierceness he was never supposed to have to be a good spy.
The only option has always been shut down when it got too bad. Jyn makes that impossible, but he doesn't know how to pull himself back out of this without locking away his feelings. He's been on terrible missions since Scarif, but none of them have been this bad.
He wonders, briefly, if he's becoming incapable.
no subject
But she hates how it makes him feel. She hates the way he isn't allowed to talk about it, the way he comes home silent sometimes and washes away blood and sin in the shower, the way he struggles with his job. Luckily, Draven has always been an easy repository for her hate -- first for her father, it had quickly become because of Cassian. She hates what the rebellion makes Cassian do. They had survived impossible odds and the worst kind of near death but while she and Bodhi are tasked with missions that are comparably easy, Cassian is still sent out on his intelligence missions.
And Jyn doesn't know how to help him deal with that kind of fall out.
Her mouth slants into a frown, fingers sliding up to push his hair back from his temple, soft and easy. "What do you need?"
no subject
No one's ever really asked him that before, especially post-mission, because what Cassian Andor needs doesn't usually matter in the face of what the Rebellion needs.
He probably needs a break. Not just a few days before another mission comes his way. "I don't know." That's probably part of why he avoided Jyn too, the uncertainty of getting her help. He's grown more comfortable with trusting her with himself, but if he can't be in control after a mission like this he doesn't know who he is. He doesn't want to fall apart completely.
He wants to hold her, but he's afraid to. "I need it to go away."
no subject
He's sat with her grieving Saw and her father and their compatriots that died on Scarif once they actually had time to grieve, the least she can do is stay with him now.
But she doesn't know what to do and everything she thinks to offer seems inadequate. After a moment, letting her hand fall to his shoulder, she sit next to him, tucking one leg beneath her so she can face him. "Tell me about it. Let it go."
no subject
Cassian tilts his body towards hers when she sits, pulled in like an orbit. He closes his eyes again and frowns. "I'm afraid if I do, you will leave."
She hates what he does and that's another thing he knows. He always worries that one day a choice he makes will be too much for her, that she'll look at him and realize he isn't as good as she insists. That his hands are too bloody for her to keep holding. He believes in the Rebellion wholeheartedly, but it doesn't mean Cassian isn't aware it's probably ruining him from the inside out to carve out that hope for the universe.
no subject
"Cassian, there is nothing you can say that will make me leave this room or you. I understand what you do." She doesn't hate it any less, but she knows why it has to be done. It's messy, dirty work and it bothers her down deep that Cassian is the one carrying out this work that is so unsavory no one else is even allowed to know about it.
He'd been tasked with murdering her father.
He had walked away because the ends didn't justify the means in that instance (and, to some degree she knows, because of her), but it had remained even in the aftermath something of a secret. Mon Mothma apologized to Jyn for what they had done to her, what she had lost, but it hadn't been the apology of a woman who sentenced her father to death. Draven's job was to keep her hands clean, and that meant dirtying Cassian's in the process. For the good of the rebellion. That is what Jyn hates about Cassian's job.
Everything else she thinks she can deal with.
"I promise."
no subject
But she says I promise, and his eyes open to meet hers. She's so close he can feel her breath on his skin, and he aches with how much he missed her. Slowly, so very slowly, he raises his hands up. They start to shake but he doesn't lower them, gently pressing his fingertips to the back of her hands and carefully sliding them to cover her hands with his, to keep her there.
They're still shaking, but he breathes out something like relief to finally touch her, like it's more proof she won't actually leave, proof that his hands exist beyond killing. He believes her. He wants to talk to her, and he trusts her with his whole self, even the bad parts. Since he's known her, she's understood him on a level no one else really has.
"I lost two agents," he says quietly, which is terrible enough on it's own and only the start. "And I thought to myself for a few moments as I was leaving, should I have been with them?"
no subject
No he shouldn't have been with them, but Jyn knows that is her own care for him talking and so she doesn't voice that. Obviously Jyn cares more about Cassian than strangers because she is human and maybe not a good person. Should he have been with them? Jyn doesn't have any of the facts so she can't say it would have changed anything.
Maybe three people would have saved them all, maybe it would have killed them all. Jyn doesn't know but she is glad he wasn't with them, as cruel as that may be. She's always been more selfish than selfless. Her fingers shift a little, spreading apart as if inviting him to actually hold her hands, not just cover them.
"That wasn't your part of the mission though." It couldn't have been or Cassia would have been with them. She knows how he works within the confines of a mission, he's had to reel her in from intervening when she saw someone else's part going wrong, remind her that slipping away from her particular role in the dance could compromise the entire mission even worse.
no subject
"Placing them was part of my mission. It wasn't - they were never supposed to die. But they did, and why do I get to be the lucky one?" There is something cynical on the last words, because the only lucky thing he feels right now is having Jyn with him. He doesn't want to die at all, but he does marvel at how many times he escapes while others don't. It isn't that he should have been with them in the building so much as wondering if he should have died too.
"Rhel Kolbrun and Tiric Gundo. Someone else should know their names too." A beat. He feels like he needs to defend himself from being so effected, a decade of - for lack of better words - sucking it up. "I have lost agents before. I'm always prepared for the possibility."
no subject
"Cassian." Slowly, she draws their clasped hands down into her lap, pulling his hands closer to her, like she can pull him closer to her, sooth some broken edge with her presence alone. She finds this a devastating failure because she's setting impossible standards for herself.
"Is this lucky?" Her voice pitches up a little in disbelief. "If it were it wouldn't hurt so much to get out of bed in the morning because you hate everything about yourself, second guessing every single decision and choice you've ever made until you feel physically ill. There is nothing lucky about surviving, Cassian."
That was maybe too bitter to be helpful and she puffs out a short sigh before trying again. "You have a heart, losing people shouldn't be easy."
no subject
Cassian looks up at her again, and she's right on that front. It's not luck, and he does hate himself; some days it's not so bad, on the days he gets to smile at her or Bodhi, or laugh with Chirrut, or drink with Baze. They remind him that even if surviving is a challenge, there are pieces that help. He never had that before.
It doesn't mean he can't recognize the bitterness in it because he feels it. It's overwhelming right now, especially after hearing it so plainly, like she's completely read him for filth. "The alternative is not lucky either."
It's the strangest pinch of a feeling, not wanting to die but still feeling like you've escaped death too many times. Cassian knows how to survive both the world and things he does, but the cost of it is still killing him slowly.
"It's supposed to be, in this." He squeezes her hands a little. Does he have a heart? It's a good question. "Even when you are the reason why it happens. To do this work, I need to be prepared to cut any losses."
no subject
"You didn't go into that mission hoping Rhel and Tiric would die. I know you. You had plans and contingencies and escape routes and every single thing planned so that all of you would make it back alive. You did everything you could to protect them." That's just not a reality of war, it's their reality. Ever-present loss chipping away at the shoddily erected walls they'd built up around themselves.
The unfortunate fact of letting each other in, letting Bodhi and Chirrut and Baze in, means that their walls have ceased being secure. It would be easier to do the dirty work, she thinks, alone. But what good would their even be in surviving in that case?
"It hurts because you're not a storm trooper, Cassian."
no subject
Realistically and logically he knows everything she tells him is true, but it's so unusual to hear another voice reminding him of it. Most of the time the little guilty voice in his head just reminds him how awful he is. Rationality gets thrown out the window.
He shudders under the words. You're not a stormtrooper. He knows that too, deep down, because he knows the Rebellion is the moral choice, even if he can't always do moral things. That's how war works.
Maybe the hurt is what separates him from the blind obedience of a faceless army. But when the way she threw it in his face after Eadu wouldn't stop echoing in his ears, to hear the reverse of it now is like a weight lifted. Some of it.
He does look away, closing his eyes, and he almost, almost, touches his cheek to her hand on his shoulder. It's like he's still refusing the comfort of more contact. "I set off the bomb ten minutes earlier than planned. The entire operation would have been discovered if I hadn't." His voice is matter of fact until the pause, dragging on awkwardly. When he finally continues, it sounds like he's going to choke on shame. "They were not out yet."
no subject
Jyn remembers the blood pouring from Saw's body on Tamsye Prime, soaking her with sticky warmth. She remembers Jari's screams and frantic entreaties before they were cut off entirely. The reassurances from Akshaya and her Hadder before the heartbreaking silence and realization. Blue, who trusted Liana Hallik the expert forger. Blue who Liana sold out to the Imperials for her own freedom. Cassian isn't the only one who dwells on the people that have died because of him. He and Jyn happen to have the same coping mechanism -- not.
Saw had told her once that war was a massacre. She didn't realize then it was more of an emotional massacre.
"We all know the risks," she says quietly, feeling grief and anger war inside her. As much as she wanted to haul off and deck Saw when Maia died, she wants to do the same to Draven now because she knows it comes down to his decisions to send Cassian on these missions. It kills her that he's killing himself like this, for the rebellion.
That old bitterness flares bright. How much do they have to lose before they've done enough?
"You did what you had to."
no subject
Even if she isn't angry with him, she's angry with the Rebellion, and he hates to make her feel that way. Another point in favor of his former isolation: no one to worry he's scared off the cause.
"I always do," he says, resigned. Everything in his life always seems to come down to had to, needed to. Cassian always does what he has to do.
It's not even the first time he's killed his own people before, or done something that led to their deaths. He's beaten and killed informants. The bomb from this mission was full of civilian casualties. He's pointblank killed civilians before, witnesses to his work, to prove he wasn't a spy to Imperials, excuse after excuse that was valid to the Rebellion but carved out pieces of himself. Sabotage and torture and blackmail, all on his resume.
Not so easily locked up anymore though. Unable to be erased from the datafile he assumed he had instead of a heart.
Cassian feels like he's losing his touch, and it scares him in a very existential way. He's not proud to be a skilled murderer, but it's all he's known for so long.
His words are clipped like he's giving some sort of report, but his tone gets lower, quieter, coarse like he's losing his voice. "They were good agents. I killed them. There were civilians inside with them. Wounded. Children. The moon will be ours. The Resistance was centralized, officially aligned to us. It was a success."
So why does he feel like he's going to start hyperventilating?
How can Jyn still be here beside him?
no subject
It's sharp, firm, and she lifts her hand to his cheek again, forcing him to look at her. Her jaw is set angrily, but her eyes are soft.
"Saw left me on Tamsye Prime. It's a planet in the Outer Rim. The Empire shipped ore there to be processed in their manufacturing factories, they made parts for Star Destroyers -- what we thought were parts for Star Destroyers." Time and gained knowledge proved differently, of course, the looming reminder of the Death Star making Jyn's stomach turn over. "The planet, the entire planet, was stuck in a debt system with the Empire. The entire planet was akin to slaves. Entire families and they can't fight back because then the Empire will slaughter their children in front of them, to remind them of their power."
There are some stories Jyn just doesn't tell, the full heartbreak of being left behind by Saw is one of them and so she leaves it at that.
She swallows, lips pursed before she breathes out a slow steadying breath to get to the point of the story in the first place. "They may have lost family today and it will be a heartache, yes, but what the Empire could have done to them would have been infinitely worse." Her thumb smooths over his beard, voice cracking at the pain in his eyes. "I've been in an Imperial prison, Cassian, I know what they're capable of."
no subject
The way she talks about the planet, her arrest, it has him moving, lifting his hand up to cradle her cheek, because he can't touch her for himself but Cassian can do it for her. Even while he can barely hold himself upright, he wants to comfort her too.
Jyn's prison sentence was for life, but she served only six months before the Alliance broke her out. Cassian knows what happens in their prisons too. He's been inside them, both with short purposeful prisoner stints and undercover with Imperial identities.
If there is anyone who can understand him right now and this chasm he's standing over, it's Jyn.
"I have told myself again and again these same things. That the Empire will always be worse. And I know it is. That's why I do this. It's why I fight them."
The Empire is always worse. It is and he knows that. It's been drilled into him for years, but hearing it from Jyn is different. She hates what he does. She threw it in his face before. But she's still here, telling him the Empire is worse, and it's a strange comfort to breathe in. For the good of the galaxy is a slippery slope, but maybe he hasn't fallen completely off track. His breathing slows down.
His shoulders sink in, not so much defeat as exhaustion. He finally lets himself lean into her hand on his cheek. His voice is quiet like he's afraid to admit it, and he is, but if he can't be vulnerable with Jyn, that's the scarier part of his life now. Losing her is more terrifying than facing himself. He doesn't want to go back to being lonely, even if it was easier to turn off his emotions that way. "But I'm tired, Jyn. I'm so tired."
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)