"I know. He talks about you a lot." In a very fond and biased way, but Cassian is good at reading between the lines. Of which there are many, if Bodhi doesn't know about some of the shit she gets up to that leaves her bruised and bloodied. It's still very clear that the pair of them would do anything for each other, and Cassian would be lying if he didn't say that feeling must be nice.
"I don't think he likes me that way either, which would be another important factor." He's not going to mention the way Bodhi's eyes light up whenever Luke walks into the room at work though, definitely not yet. "You never told me which politician."
Clearly bringing it up out of nowhere will get some kind of reaction! Not necessarily a name, but something.
Damn, that is a good point. She wants Bodhi to be with someone he likes, at the very least. She will concede that point, however silently, because she won't concede to anything out loud. She doesn't even concede to Bodhi, she's not going to concede to Cassian.
She looks up from her cake slowly, eyes defiant. "I didn't. Do you really want to know which politician's aides carry around knives? Wouldn't you be morally obligated to do something about it?"
He doesn't answer her right away. There is a very fine line here, because Jyn very clearly broke the law, but it sounds like the aide did too. Probably more. Cassian knows there's a lot of corruption in the government, just like it exists inside his own precinct. He is morally obligated to do something about it, even if people he works with would prefer he didn't.
"They shouldn't be carrying around knives, or stabbing people." He meets her gaze evenly, just as steady. His phone goes off, but he refuses to look away even though the beep tone is from work. It keeps beeping. "Yes. I want to know."
"He's called Astarte." Her lips purse, clearly still half unwilling to admit any of this but as she keeps pointing out, he is a detective. He'll find out anyway. "He works under Tarkin."
Because Jyn doesn't fuck around. She assaulted a high ranking government official's aide, but specifically one that is very corrupt, the insidious kind. She would have beat up Tarkin himself, but she didn't want to deal with both his twin bodyguards so.
Tarkin is one of the most corrupt politicians in the city. It's very well known, even if nothing has ever quite been able to come of it. Cassian even recognizes the name Astarte after she says it; he'd had to take a statement or two from that aide before.
"I know who he is," he says first, to give himself more time. She assaulted someone; a terrible someone, who probably deserved it, but he's a detective. "How did you come to find out he had a knife?" Which seems like a safer question than to ask flat out why she targeted him.
He glances down at his phone, finally, and only needs to read a few words of the text before he knows it's an alert about the assault. "Shit," is what follows.
Jyn is this close to answering his question with something flippant -- she realized he had a knife when he stabbed her with it -- but then he is swearing at his phone and Jyn decides she shouldn't have answered in the first place.
"Look, you don't want to know because if you do, you're morally obligated to do your job and you'll feel bad if you arrest me when you told Bodhi you were going to check on me. Just... let someone else figure it out, okay?" She shrugs, not seeming ruffled by the idea of being arrested. She's doesn't regret what she did. "Or don't, it's up to you. Maybe Bodhi will get better friends if you do, 'cause I am definitely not the best option he has."
He wants to know. He wants to know what brought Jyn to him in the first place. Was it premeditated? Did she catch him doing something shady? Both? It's not even just his job that fuels the curiosity, it's his own fascination.
She's careless about being arrested. But she's just as careless about losing Bodhi's friendship which he knows to be fake, so there are elements of an act.
He moves closer to her again, mouth in a line. "Answer my first question." He shouldn't ask. He should just walk away and pretend he was never here, but he can't, and he doesn't know which is the better option.
Technically his first question was about her injuries but again Jyn thinks it would be better to not be flippant, go figure.
"I found out he had a knife when he pulled it on me, Cassian, but I assumed he'd be armed anyway. Tarkin is a weapons dealer, even if no one can prove it. He is and he's working in concert with--" She makes a face and shakes her head before she blurts out either Krennic or her father's name. "They have their own bloody army and no one can do anything about it because they're too big and the rest of the world is too small."
She's clearly angry, clearly has a grudge, but her shoulders slump a little because this all feels like prison time is coming again and she really doesn't want to go back to prison.
"Saw tried fighting them in the open and they called him a terrorist. I decided to be less open about it."
Cassian is holding remarkably calm despite the revelation, which isn't much of a shock considering what he's gleaned of the situation already. The surprising part is just that he'd gotten her to admit it.
Silence drowns the air between them. He should step back, but he can't bring himself to, nor bring himself to look away from her. He knows Tarkin is a literal pile of shit, most of the department knows, but no one has ever been able to establish enough evidence against him. What Jyn did was lawfully wrong, but Cassian would be lying if he didn't acknowledge having the same urge to beat up his cronies. Too many people gain access to arms they shouldn't have.
He can't arrest her. By all means he should, but he knows he's not going to. He refuses to make Tarkin's life easier.
"Does that mean all the other particular politician assaults in the city recently are also your doing?"
There's a pattern. They're all shady. He and Bodhi have definitely talked about how it was some kind of karma, despite both of them having worked on a case or two; Bodhi getting called in for wounds, Cassian to investigate. It didn't last very long, which doesn't surprise him either. Someone in the department would rather keep it hush, lest a pattern be noticed. Unfortunately for them, Cassian is very clever.
There's some internal war going on with Cassian and she doesn't understand it. He has every right to arrest her, he should, but he's asking her questions like it's for his own personal clarification, ones he should be saving to ask her when she's in custody.
"Most. The guy on East Street who got shot wasn't my doing."
Jyn doesn't kill people, as a rule. She doesn't even injure them enough to do grievous damage, although some of them make a case for it with the disgusting things they hiss at her before she inevitably punches them in the throat so they can't say anything at all. Aside from concussions and probably some mild internal bleeding, the most damage Jyn has caused was on the guy that tried to pin her to the sidewalk while he explained in disgustingly graphic detail what he was going to do to her.
She hit him with a brick and broke his cheekbone, probably damaged his eyesight if the patch he was forced to wear was any indication. The 110 stitches seemed like a gross exaggeration and he'd claimed it was from a car wreck but really it was just what he deserved.
Cassian needs to stop asking her questions because she just keeps giving him more reasons to arrest her. He can imagine the look on Bodhi's face, him coming to the station with Jyn in handcuffs.
But that fits into the pattern too, because none of them have died, and they're all too skittish about what happened. If it's unconnected assaults, there's no reason for the targets to be suspicious. People out in the city have started to notice too despite that, little one off comments he gets from his contacts or detainees.
"Because you use your fists, not guns." He drops his eyes down and grabs her wrist, lightly enough that she can yank it out. He just wants to look at her bruised knuckles. He looks back up at her face, abruptly remembering just how close they still are, but he doesn't drop her hand or move yet anyway. "This makes your job difficult, I'm sure."
Of course knows what she does for a living. Bodhi is a chatterbox.
"I don't like guns," Jyn agrees, following his gaze to where his large hand is curled around her thin, pale wrist. It takes her a moment to look back up at him, finding him already looking at her, and she breathes out sharply.
"God, he never shuts up, does he?" It's doesn't inject the levity it could, too much tension still swirling around them as Jyn waits for Cassian to remember he needs to arrest her. But she's compelled for some reason she doesn't understand to keep answering him. It's not like she wanted so much to keep it a secret, she simply wanted to keep it a secret from Bodhi and then it turned out Bodhi was her only friend.
"Yeah, it does. It's worth it though. They need to know they're not untouchable."
That's fair. Cassian doesn't like them much either, but he's comfortable enough using them. Not that he's proud of that fact, but he can't blame her.
He meets her gaze and finds himself locked in. "Some people just like to talk." Bodhi is one of them. And so is Jyn with him, apparently, spilling her secrets like a fountain.
They need to know they're not untouchable. He agrees, instantly. He shouldn't, but he does, because for so long he watched them walk around like they owned the city, and even joining the force, Cassian couldn't do as much as he wanted. Not like Jyn is doing.
He has no reason to keep hold on her wrist. But any sort of reason seems to be getting thrown out the window today, and it's entirely Jyn's doing for hell knows what reason. His breath feels uneven.
Jyn sighs, almost breathing out a bitter laugh as she shakes her head, looking down at the table as she seems to sort of deflate.
"Saw used to say 'one fighter with a sharp stick and nothing left to lose can take the day'," Jyn starts, realizing again that maybe Saw gave her a childhood that was a little too far from typical. "But my stick's not sharp enough."
She looks up again, settling on his warm eyes, even though she assumes she's just going to see disappointment there. She imagines Saw would be disappointed, her parents would no doubt be disappointed with what their daughter had become, what's one more disappointment to add to the list? "I don't think it's working, no. I have to try."
The way she sinks in on herself has him wanting to reassure her, which is stupid and dangerous because he shouldn't be encouraging assault.
He doesn't look disappointed in her. He looks grimly decisive and maybe a little unhappy, but he's still holding onto her and there are zero signs of arrest. He wants to be the good guy, but that can't always mean following the law at this point, can it?
"I think you have them spooked." Goddamnit, Cassian. "I think half the department is scrambling to cover it up and the other half is wondering why no one else has noticed the pattern." He looks down again at her bruised knuckles and thinks she should probably ice them. "Maybe not sharp. But your stick is not broken. I think it's working more than you realize."
Jyn had been moderately prepared for arrest since she found Cassian at the door. Now he knows the truth and not only is she still not arrested, he's holding her wrist like he'd rather hold her hand were it not messed up and he's telling her that all the highly illegal assaults are working.
She wouldn't say he's outright condoning it, but...
"Are you saying I should. Not stop?" This is too confusing. He's supposed to be the lawful voice of reason, but she feels suddenly like reality has been upended.
"I have no say in what you do or don't do." That's kind of a lie, because he can still arrest her. He just doesn't want to, but he definitely can't tell her to go beat up some more corrupt politicians either. He has no control over her choices would be the better way to phrase it.
She looks as confused as he feels about the whole thing.
Relief comes in increments, tempered by a wariness like he might change his mind at any moment.
"You're off the record here, Andor." She would like to know why he is not arresting her but she doesn't know how to ask without the possibility of him changing his mind and deciding that no, she would look too cute in orange to pass up the chance of seeing her in a jumpsuit of that particular shade.
He knows what she's asking, but he honestly doesn't have an answer. Cassian is very good at trusting his instincts as well as being logical - so of course his instincts are telling him to be illogical.
"I don't want to be someone that helps Tarkin and his ilk."
Arresting Jyn would feed into their image of power, wouldn't it?
Jyn's mouth opens in a small o of surprise. It wasn't that she thought he was the type of person to support the kind of politician who uses their power to oppress the people under them, he'd always struck her as the kind of detective that took protect and serve seriously, but it feels almost like he's... supporting her?
Maybe she's reading too much into it, but he's still carefully holding her wrist, too.
"I could maybe put a personal nurse on my payroll if you want to continue being someone that doesn't help them." This isn't the first time she's coming home needing medical attention, if would be easier if she had her own 911 service. "Your bedside manner sucks, but I kinda like it."
He's not supporting her!! That would be illegal!! Even though that's almost exactly what he's doing by not arresting her, by the words he's tried to soothe her with. Those are not the actions born from zero support.
"That's why Bodhi is in the medical profession, not me." She didn't even want his help, she doesn't get nice bedside manner. He isn't sure he likes the idea of being attached to her so readily with this endeavor, but at the same time he'd rather her not bleed to death. At the very least Bodhi would be sad. "I only know basic first aid, not much more than what I handled today."
"I don't want Bodhi involved," she says, shaking her head before she finally draws her hand back to herself and waving her hand dismissively. "There isn't actually a payroll anyway."
No loss on either of their parts.
"Please don't tell him. He's a good person, he'd want to help and I can't-- Just don't tell him, okay?" Bodhi is too good, he just wants to do the best he can and make up for working for those guys, Jyn refuses to get him involved with actively fighting them from the shadows.
"I'm just saying bedside manner has never been the most important for me." Urgency tends to take precedence. Bodhi is better at it.
Oh. Part of him wishes she hadn't pulled her hand back, but he supposes he was already holding it for an unnecessarily long amount of time. "I'm not going to tell him. That's not my choice to make." Cassian cares very much about Bodhi too, and he definitely factored into the decision not to arrest Jyn.
"Unless you give me no choice." Aka unless she gets too injured, so let's be a bit careful, shall we? Don't make him have to call in a legit medical expert.
"So we should probably find another excuse for you to be here." Aside from the cake which is a perfectly acceptable excuse, honestly, but how long can they really press cake? It's still in her lap, but it'll be gone in two hours when Bodhi is done with his shift, if not in twenty minutes when she decides to start eating it again.
Cassian needs another reason to stay. Which might be Jyn's way of asking him to stay. Maybe.
She's...asking him to stay? He doesn't want to know how he knows this, so he focuses on wondering after why she does. Not that he disagrees, because he finds he wants to stay too.
Today has been full of far more uncertainty than Cassian likes, all of which seems wrapped up in Jyn Erso.
"We can order takeout. Bodhi doesn't need to know the exact time I got here."
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ohnofeelstho2017-06-22 01:24 am
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"I don't think he likes me that way either, which would be another important factor." He's not going to mention the way Bodhi's eyes light up whenever Luke walks into the room at work though, definitely not yet. "You never told me which politician."
Clearly bringing it up out of nowhere will get some kind of reaction! Not necessarily a name, but something.
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Damn, that is a good point. She wants Bodhi to be with someone he likes, at the very least. She will concede that point, however silently, because she won't concede to anything out loud. She doesn't even concede to Bodhi, she's not going to concede to Cassian.
She looks up from her cake slowly, eyes defiant. "I didn't. Do you really want to know which politician's aides carry around knives? Wouldn't you be morally obligated to do something about it?"
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"They shouldn't be carrying around knives, or stabbing people." He meets her gaze evenly, just as steady. His phone goes off, but he refuses to look away even though the beep tone is from work. It keeps beeping. "Yes. I want to know."
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Because Jyn doesn't fuck around. She assaulted a high ranking government official's aide, but specifically one that is very corrupt, the insidious kind. She would have beat up Tarkin himself, but she didn't want to deal with both his twin bodyguards so.
Alas.
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"I know who he is," he says first, to give himself more time. She assaulted someone; a terrible someone, who probably deserved it, but he's a detective. "How did you come to find out he had a knife?" Which seems like a safer question than to ask flat out why she targeted him.
He glances down at his phone, finally, and only needs to read a few words of the text before he knows it's an alert about the assault. "Shit," is what follows.
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"Look, you don't want to know because if you do, you're morally obligated to do your job and you'll feel bad if you arrest me when you told Bodhi you were going to check on me. Just... let someone else figure it out, okay?" She shrugs, not seeming ruffled by the idea of being arrested. She's doesn't regret what she did. "Or don't, it's up to you. Maybe Bodhi will get better friends if you do, 'cause I am definitely not the best option he has."
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She's careless about being arrested. But she's just as careless about losing Bodhi's friendship which he knows to be fake, so there are elements of an act.
He moves closer to her again, mouth in a line. "Answer my first question." He shouldn't ask. He should just walk away and pretend he was never here, but he can't, and he doesn't know which is the better option.
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"I found out he had a knife when he pulled it on me, Cassian, but I assumed he'd be armed anyway. Tarkin is a weapons dealer, even if no one can prove it. He is and he's working in concert with--" She makes a face and shakes her head before she blurts out either Krennic or her father's name. "They have their own bloody army and no one can do anything about it because they're too big and the rest of the world is too small."
She's clearly angry, clearly has a grudge, but her shoulders slump a little because this all feels like prison time is coming again and she really doesn't want to go back to prison.
"Saw tried fighting them in the open and they called him a terrorist. I decided to be less open about it."
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Silence drowns the air between them. He should step back, but he can't bring himself to, nor bring himself to look away from her. He knows Tarkin is a literal pile of shit, most of the department knows, but no one has ever been able to establish enough evidence against him. What Jyn did was lawfully wrong, but Cassian would be lying if he didn't acknowledge having the same urge to beat up his cronies. Too many people gain access to arms they shouldn't have.
He can't arrest her. By all means he should, but he knows he's not going to. He refuses to make Tarkin's life easier.
"Does that mean all the other particular politician assaults in the city recently are also your doing?"
There's a pattern. They're all shady. He and Bodhi have definitely talked about how it was some kind of karma, despite both of them having worked on a case or two; Bodhi getting called in for wounds, Cassian to investigate. It didn't last very long, which doesn't surprise him either. Someone in the department would rather keep it hush, lest a pattern be noticed. Unfortunately for them, Cassian is very clever.
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"Most. The guy on East Street who got shot wasn't my doing."
Jyn doesn't kill people, as a rule. She doesn't even injure them enough to do grievous damage, although some of them make a case for it with the disgusting things they hiss at her before she inevitably punches them in the throat so they can't say anything at all. Aside from concussions and probably some mild internal bleeding, the most damage Jyn has caused was on the guy that tried to pin her to the sidewalk while he explained in disgustingly graphic detail what he was going to do to her.
She hit him with a brick and broke his cheekbone, probably damaged his eyesight if the patch he was forced to wear was any indication. The 110 stitches seemed like a gross exaggeration and he'd claimed it was from a car wreck but really it was just what he deserved.
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But that fits into the pattern too, because none of them have died, and they're all too skittish about what happened. If it's unconnected assaults, there's no reason for the targets to be suspicious. People out in the city have started to notice too despite that, little one off comments he gets from his contacts or detainees.
"Because you use your fists, not guns." He drops his eyes down and grabs her wrist, lightly enough that she can yank it out. He just wants to look at her bruised knuckles. He looks back up at her face, abruptly remembering just how close they still are, but he doesn't drop her hand or move yet anyway. "This makes your job difficult, I'm sure."
Of course knows what she does for a living. Bodhi is a chatterbox.
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"God, he never shuts up, does he?" It's doesn't inject the levity it could, too much tension still swirling around them as Jyn waits for Cassian to remember he needs to arrest her. But she's compelled for some reason she doesn't understand to keep answering him. It's not like she wanted so much to keep it a secret, she simply wanted to keep it a secret from Bodhi and then it turned out Bodhi was her only friend.
"Yeah, it does. It's worth it though. They need to know they're not untouchable."
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He meets her gaze and finds himself locked in. "Some people just like to talk." Bodhi is one of them. And so is Jyn with him, apparently, spilling her secrets like a fountain.
They need to know they're not untouchable. He agrees, instantly. He shouldn't, but he does, because for so long he watched them walk around like they owned the city, and even joining the force, Cassian couldn't do as much as he wanted. Not like Jyn is doing.
He has no reason to keep hold on her wrist. But any sort of reason seems to be getting thrown out the window today, and it's entirely Jyn's doing for hell knows what reason. His breath feels uneven.
"Do you think it's working?"
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"Saw used to say 'one fighter with a sharp stick and nothing left to lose can take the day'," Jyn starts, realizing again that maybe Saw gave her a childhood that was a little too far from typical. "But my stick's not sharp enough."
She looks up again, settling on his warm eyes, even though she assumes she's just going to see disappointment there. She imagines Saw would be disappointed, her parents would no doubt be disappointed with what their daughter had become, what's one more disappointment to add to the list? "I don't think it's working, no. I have to try."
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He doesn't look disappointed in her. He looks grimly decisive and maybe a little unhappy, but he's still holding onto her and there are zero signs of arrest. He wants to be the good guy, but that can't always mean following the law at this point, can it?
"I think you have them spooked." Goddamnit, Cassian. "I think half the department is scrambling to cover it up and the other half is wondering why no one else has noticed the pattern." He looks down again at her bruised knuckles and thinks she should probably ice them. "Maybe not sharp. But your stick is not broken. I think it's working more than you realize."
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She wouldn't say he's outright condoning it, but...
"Are you saying I should. Not stop?" This is too confusing. He's supposed to be the lawful voice of reason, but she feels suddenly like reality has been upended.
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She looks as confused as he feels about the whole thing.
"But I'm not arresting you tonight."
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Relief comes in increments, tempered by a wariness like he might change his mind at any moment.
"You're off the record here, Andor." She would like to know why he is not arresting her but she doesn't know how to ask without the possibility of him changing his mind and deciding that no, she would look too cute in orange to pass up the chance of seeing her in a jumpsuit of that particular shade.
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He knows what she's asking, but he honestly doesn't have an answer. Cassian is very good at trusting his instincts as well as being logical - so of course his instincts are telling him to be illogical.
"I don't want to be someone that helps Tarkin and his ilk."
Arresting Jyn would feed into their image of power, wouldn't it?
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Maybe she's reading too much into it, but he's still carefully holding her wrist, too.
"I could maybe put a personal nurse on my payroll if you want to continue being someone that doesn't help them." This isn't the first time she's coming home needing medical attention, if would be easier if she had her own 911 service. "Your bedside manner sucks, but I kinda like it."
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"That's why Bodhi is in the medical profession, not me." She didn't even want his help, she doesn't get nice bedside manner. He isn't sure he likes the idea of being attached to her so readily with this endeavor, but at the same time he'd rather her not bleed to death. At the very least Bodhi would be sad. "I only know basic first aid, not much more than what I handled today."
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No loss on either of their parts.
"Please don't tell him. He's a good person, he'd want to help and I can't-- Just don't tell him, okay?" Bodhi is too good, he just wants to do the best he can and make up for working for those guys, Jyn refuses to get him involved with actively fighting them from the shadows.
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Oh. Part of him wishes she hadn't pulled her hand back, but he supposes he was already holding it for an unnecessarily long amount of time. "I'm not going to tell him. That's not my choice to make." Cassian cares very much about Bodhi too, and he definitely factored into the decision not to arrest Jyn.
"Unless you give me no choice." Aka unless she gets too injured, so let's be a bit careful, shall we? Don't make him have to call in a legit medical expert.
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Cassian needs another reason to stay. Which might be Jyn's way of asking him to stay. Maybe.
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Today has been full of far more uncertainty than Cassian likes, all of which seems wrapped up in Jyn Erso.
"We can order takeout. Bodhi doesn't need to know the exact time I got here."
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