It takes him a moment. The name catches up to him as the baby with Baze, but it's like his brain cannot comprehend what she's telling him. Javi is his. Javi can't be his. He has no children, he hasn't seen Jyn in over a year.
A year is long enough for someone to have a baby.
He pulls back enough to look at her face, confusion plain on his. Her words repeat in his head again, and his confusion is sprinkled with shock, with distress, with bewilderment, with who knows what else, because that can't be right.
"What?" He stares at her messy, tear-stained face and tries to make sense of what she's just told him. "That - that baby with Baze is..."
He can't say it. It can't be real, how is this real?
"He's yours," Jyn whispers again, sounding brokenhearted as she stares down at the dirt and gravel underneath her knees. She can't say that he's hers because she can't get past the idea that she gave the tiny baby away, gave him up for someone else to take care of and love and protect.
"I couldn't... I couldn't do it, without you."
She couldn't bear it, more like. Jyn could probably keep a baby alive on her own, but she wouldn't be any good at it. The baby would grow up to be an adult that hated her, or worse -- hated himself.
It still doesn't make any sense. How could he just... not know this happened? How could it not get back to him at all, even after he returned from his last mission? How could he touch the child and Baze not say a single word to him?
He has a son. He has a child with Jyn. Why isn't the ground shaking under him?
Cassian falls back on his own knees, grip slipping from around her and hands sliding down her arms. He doesn't let go, because he's afraid she'll run and he can't handle that right now. His fingers wind around her arms, firm without being forceful.
He doesn't know how to handle any of this.
"Why didn't you tell me?" As soon as the question is out of his mouth, it makes it feel more real somehow, and he feels a quiet surge of anger with it. What if he never came to find her? "Were you going to tell me?"
Her eyes lift but she can't force the anger she wants to have. She wishes she could be angry, it would be so much easier.
"How was I supposed to tell you, Cassian? Comm you on one of your many radio silent missions? The missions you took to get away from me?" So first of all, fuck him. He has no right to talk about communication when so many of his missions had no means of contact.
"Baze would have told you. When you weren't being suicidal." When the time was right, he would have known the best time.
He deflates instantly, even if she's not yelling at him in anger. It's still there, or it would be if she could muster it. He lets go of her, jerking his hands back into his lap, because it's all a reminder of what he did to her, he shouldn't be touching her. If she wants to leave, who is he to stop her?
No wonder she didn't tell him. He didn't deserve to know.
"I never took them to get away from you," he says hoarsely. He took them because, as she mentioned, he was probably somewhat suicidal in his desperate run to avoid himself after the war. He's not sure there would be a right time. Maybe he shouldn't have ever known.
"Not if you told him not to." It doesn't sound accusatory this time, just matter of fact. He left them all, not just Jyn. Baze has no reason to share it, and it's not like Cassian is in any kind of shape to care for a baby when he can barely look after himself.
His baby. He has a baby. He squeezes his eyes shut in an effort to stave off the dizziness.
When Cassian wasn't a mess, when he wasn't jumping to get on the next mission, when it looked like he was going to stay. Baze was never supposed to tell Cassian about Jyn, only the baby.
She feels cold without his touch, but it's expected and she's depressingly used to it. It's what urges her to push herself to her feet, wiping the dirt and gravel off her knees. It was like the admission broke something inside her; the tears have mostly abated, she can breathe again, but it's like she's hollow.
"Go home, Cassian. Say hello to Javi before you leave again."
She climbs to her feet, but Cassian can't move. He wants the ground to swallow him up. He should be mad Jyn didn't tell him herself, but part of him can't blame her, part of him still thinks he shouldn't have come to know it at all.
How can he have a baby with Jyn when Jyn doesn't want anything to do with either of them? He can't possibly go to that baby without her.
He told himself that boxing away his feelings was bad, that he had to stop doing it. It drove him away from everyone, from Jyn. But when he tried to do something about it, he finds it somehow made things worse. Before he leaves again, she said, of course she doesn't believe him, he wouldn't believe him.
He just has to box it up again. Maybe he can't fix himself. He is beyond repair, just like he always thought.
"Baze and Chirrut and Bodhi. K2, force, even Draven. You have a home, Cassian. You have a family. Stay long enough to let them remind you." She knows Bodhi misses him -- she knows Bodhi misses her, but that's a different story. She thinks she has the right to be hypocritical.
"He has a dimple, like you. But I couldn't do it on my own, I can barely take care of myself. Baze and Chirrut were a natural choice." She shrugs, voice continuing to be quiet and monotone, devoid of any inflection. "What else was I supposed to do?"
Cassian shakes his head. He left all of them, and he's already botched up trying to patch up the most important part of his home. He ruined his home and he doesn't feel capable of fixing it. He lost it. He doesn't have her, how can he have a home?
He can't disagree with her there. Baze and Chirrut probably are the natural choice. He seemed like a happy baby. He has a baby. Nausea, that's what this churning is.
His own tone starts to match hers, though his monotony is forced. He doesn't want to feel anything. He doesn't want to think about Javi having a dimple just like him.
"What makes you think I can do it on my own either?"
It's not an insult. Neither of them could do it by themselves, she doesn't even know if they could have done it together. That is why she gave him to the people she knows who have their shit together the most.
But if he wanted Javi... Jyn can't take the chance away from him now.
Another shrug, she sighs heavily. "I don't think either of us could, not on our own. I wanted him to have a better life than whatever he would have had with me. Maybe now he'll learn how to be gentle and kind, he won't turn into me. That's all I could do for him."
He doesn't know what he wants anymore, because he doesn't want to let himself think about it. He can't even begin to imagine himself as a father, not when he thinks about how little effort he put into his own health lately.
"Better he turn into you than me," he mumbles it, but he still means every word. Jyn is great with kids, she always has been. "You... you would have taught him how to be kind."
They couldn't do it on their own though. He's not insulted, it's just the truth. If neither of them could do it, then -
"Why did you have him?"
If he wasn't there, if she couldn't do it on her own. She didn't have to go through with it.
Jyn's mouth thins into a line, eyes falling back to the ground. She didn't want to have to talk about her choices and here she is, talking about her choices anyway.
She owes Cassian that, she decides. "The war took your family away from you, I couldn't do the same thing."
Jyn's own losses were still too fresh for her to think too much about her family, preferring to focus on Cassian's legacy instead. "You've fought for so long, maybe I thought proving that you were capable of something so perfectly good would... put us back together. But you were never around to tell and then I couldn't-- I couldn't keep waiting. It was unrealistic, all of it."
Out of everything that either of them have said today, this might be the part that really breaks him. The war did take his family - then he ruined the new one he found, only to have Jyn... try to help him find it again, despite how completely terrible he was to her.
He starts crying, but he doesn't quite realize it. She kept the baby because it was his, it was theirs together, even if she doesn't seem to be talking about Javi as hers too.
She wanted them to come back together. He should have stopping running sooner. She was still waiting, even after weeks turned into months.
"How can you think he would learn anything but kindness from you when you would do something that selfless? Even as I failed you again and again you still..."
He draws in a sharp breath, trying to keep it under control because he doesn't want to lose control. "I am sorry."
"Selfless?" She practically barks it out, disbelieving. She gave her baby up! It feels selfish. It feels horribly, debilitatingly selfish, she hates herself for giving Javi away like a misbehaving puppy. Someone else is taking care of her baby because she couldn't handle it.
How is the selfless?
Jyn is a piece of huttshit and she shakes her head, refusing to accept Cassian's apologies. She glances away, wanting to stop herself from getting caught in comforting him. It felt to natural and warm with his arms around her and she can't let herself fall into that. Not again.
She literally carried a baby! One she did not have to! Because she thought of it as Cassian's family! He wouldn't call it selfish for giving him away, even if it was definitely not selfless either. But as she has clearly said already, neither of them are in a place to care for a child. He remembers Baze's very specific phrasing quite suddenly: they were looking after him for a while.
She is tired of his apologies and he needs to stop, but they just keep pouring out, because he doesn't know what else to say.
He still doesn't think he can move. He doesn't know what to do with anything.
"I do not hate you." Part of him is still mad she hadn't told him, but she gave him a very good counterpoint: it's not like he gave her the chance. It's a strange battle in his body right now, trying to oppress his emotions and disentangle them at the same time. "I told you I would not."
It's spoken into the looming silver trees that line every street, like the nature will accept her hate and turn it into fertilizer. She wouldn't have been surprised if Cassian hated her too, she deserves it. She did the same thing to her child that her parents, that everyone, did to her.
But she finds it impossible to ignore Cassian's tears anymore, sinking down to her knees with purpose now, gathering his hands in hers. "Come on. It's easier with alcohol. Let's get a drink."
Before he leaves, because Jyn still can't fathom that he hadn't already planned on it.
He supposes that's something they've always had it common, but they were... better, for a little while. It feels worse now, like because they knew what it was like to feel happier, losing it makes it harder.
He startles when she takes his hands, because he might have already had his arms around her, but he initiated the contact. Cassian hasn't been touched this carefully in a very long time. He feels like he forgot how to react to it.
She could have offered virtually anything and he would agree if it meant getting to stay with her longer. "Okay."
"You did what was best for the galaxy." She murmurs it as she coaxes him to his feet, not letting go of his hands right away once he's standing. It still feels natural to hold his hands. God, he's so tall, how had she forgotten that?
Well, it's been nearly a year...
She swallows, drawing her hands back. "If you have questions about--" She can't spit out 'our baby' so instead she gestures idly toward her midsection. "You can ask."
"Do you know how many times I have tried to tell myself that?" It was a mantra, and it worked for a while. But the galaxy took and took and left him with nothing, not even Jyn. They finally won, but Cassian thinks he might have lost himself in the process.
He misses her hands as soon as she lets go, feeling a little wobbly on his feet. Standing, walking, right. He's got to do that.
His eyes are drawn to her hands, especially when she moves them. He knows what she's implying, and he's sure he has a lot of questions but the first one is just -
"Are you okay?"
He missed all of it. Maybe it took a real physical toll on her.
But she works herself to exhaustion and then sleeps fitfully so when she wakes up at four am, she starts the whole process over again. She certainly isn't helping herself in that aspect, but when she stops and breathes then she has time to think and... that is worse. She'd rather be tired than crippled by depression and anxiety and loneliness.
She doesn't say that, of course, but tired seems to be all encompassing.
She looks tired. It was probably the first thing he noticed about her, but it was a different kind of fatigue than what she carried with her before. It doesn't quite answer his question wholly, but at least it tells him she's... better now, if not mentally and physically exhausted.
"Was it - was the birth... okay? Were there any kind of complications? For you or him?"
He wants to ask if anyone was there, but he's not sure he could bear the answer if it was a no. He's sure if Baze knew, he would have been there, right?
Her arms fold over her chest as she starts walking toward the barracks, assuming he will follow her. They used to follow each other across the galaxy but then he'd started going places she couldn't follow.
"He was early, very small. He's nearly three months old." And the size of a newborn still. "It's had little effect. He can eat and breathe and scream." Force, she remembers the wailing. "He's just small."
Javi is nearly three months old. He has had a son for almost three months. Five months ago he came closer than he ever had to taking the lullaby, unknowing as to what was there waiting for him. He supposes that answers the when was he born question.
There's about three seconds pause before he follows after Jyn easily, mostly because he was distracted by this new information. Following her is still a nonissue.
"He... seemed very small."
He saw Javi. He touched Javi. He thought the baby just looked small because Baze was so large, but Cassian supposes he really was that little. But he's... fine. He's healthy and loud and a tiny little boy equal parts he and Jyn both.
He would have been there. He should have been there. "I forget they can be that small."
"They're babies," she answers simply. Babies are small by design. Her body wouldn't have been able to handle a large baby anyway. She barely kept him in there long enough to fully bake, much less thrive.
"He's perfectly healthy." Which seems impossible to her, considering she was the one carrying him and while Jyn's body has kept her alive and surviving for nearly her whole life, she never believed it could keep another human being alive at the same time. She'd always assumed she'd never be able to get pregnant if it ever came up and then suddenly, there she was.
Her shoulders slump a little, holding herself tighter. She's so tired of life.
Jyn is made out of tough stuff. Maybe her body has been wrecked by war, but it's strong and wonderful, it makes perfect sense to Cassian that she would be capable of seeing a baby through, even if neither of them thought it was a real possibility before.
He is healthy and safe and that's all Cassian could hope for. But he also notices the way she seems to sink on herself, biting back on the urge to wrap her up in his arms again.
"That's good."
That's dumb to say, probably, but he doesn't know anything else about Javi and he doesn't even know how to ask. He wants to ask after Jyn more too, but he's afraid to press too hard there.
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ohnofeelstho2018-09-24 07:35 pm
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It takes him a moment. The name catches up to him as the baby with Baze, but it's like his brain cannot comprehend what she's telling him. Javi is his. Javi can't be his. He has no children, he hasn't seen Jyn in over a year.
A year is long enough for someone to have a baby.
He pulls back enough to look at her face, confusion plain on his. Her words repeat in his head again, and his confusion is sprinkled with shock, with distress, with bewilderment, with who knows what else, because that can't be right.
"What?" He stares at her messy, tear-stained face and tries to make sense of what she's just told him. "That - that baby with Baze is..."
He can't say it. It can't be real, how is this real?
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"I couldn't... I couldn't do it, without you."
She couldn't bear it, more like. Jyn could probably keep a baby alive on her own, but she wouldn't be any good at it. The baby would grow up to be an adult that hated her, or worse -- hated himself.
Jyn couldn't do that.
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He has a son. He has a child with Jyn. Why isn't the ground shaking under him?
Cassian falls back on his own knees, grip slipping from around her and hands sliding down her arms. He doesn't let go, because he's afraid she'll run and he can't handle that right now. His fingers wind around her arms, firm without being forceful.
He doesn't know how to handle any of this.
"Why didn't you tell me?" As soon as the question is out of his mouth, it makes it feel more real somehow, and he feels a quiet surge of anger with it. What if he never came to find her? "Were you going to tell me?"
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Her eyes lift but she can't force the anger she wants to have. She wishes she could be angry, it would be so much easier.
"How was I supposed to tell you, Cassian? Comm you on one of your many radio silent missions? The missions you took to get away from me?" So first of all, fuck him. He has no right to talk about communication when so many of his missions had no means of contact.
"Baze would have told you. When you weren't being suicidal." When the time was right, he would have known the best time.
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No wonder she didn't tell him. He didn't deserve to know.
"I never took them to get away from you," he says hoarsely. He took them because, as she mentioned, he was probably somewhat suicidal in his desperate run to avoid himself after the war. He's not sure there would be a right time. Maybe he shouldn't have ever known.
"Not if you told him not to." It doesn't sound accusatory this time, just matter of fact. He left them all, not just Jyn. Baze has no reason to share it, and it's not like Cassian is in any kind of shape to care for a baby when he can barely look after himself.
His baby. He has a baby. He squeezes his eyes shut in an effort to stave off the dizziness.
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When Cassian wasn't a mess, when he wasn't jumping to get on the next mission, when it looked like he was going to stay. Baze was never supposed to tell Cassian about Jyn, only the baby.
She feels cold without his touch, but it's expected and she's depressingly used to it. It's what urges her to push herself to her feet, wiping the dirt and gravel off her knees. It was like the admission broke something inside her; the tears have mostly abated, she can breathe again, but it's like she's hollow.
"Go home, Cassian. Say hello to Javi before you leave again."
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How can he have a baby with Jyn when Jyn doesn't want anything to do with either of them? He can't possibly go to that baby without her.
He told himself that boxing away his feelings was bad, that he had to stop doing it. It drove him away from everyone, from Jyn. But when he tried to do something about it, he finds it somehow made things worse. Before he leaves again, she said, of course she doesn't believe him, he wouldn't believe him.
He just has to box it up again. Maybe he can't fix himself. He is beyond repair, just like he always thought.
"I do not have a home anymore."
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It's her, it was her before he decided otherwise.
"Baze and Chirrut and Bodhi. K2, force, even Draven. You have a home, Cassian. You have a family. Stay long enough to let them remind you." She knows Bodhi misses him -- she knows Bodhi misses her, but that's a different story. She thinks she has the right to be hypocritical.
"He has a dimple, like you. But I couldn't do it on my own, I can barely take care of myself. Baze and Chirrut were a natural choice." She shrugs, voice continuing to be quiet and monotone, devoid of any inflection. "What else was I supposed to do?"
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Cassian shakes his head. He left all of them, and he's already botched up trying to patch up the most important part of his home. He ruined his home and he doesn't feel capable of fixing it. He lost it. He doesn't have her, how can he have a home?
He can't disagree with her there. Baze and Chirrut probably are the natural choice. He seemed like a happy baby. He has a baby. Nausea, that's what this churning is.
His own tone starts to match hers, though his monotony is forced. He doesn't want to feel anything. He doesn't want to think about Javi having a dimple just like him.
"What makes you think I can do it on my own either?"
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It's not an insult. Neither of them could do it by themselves, she doesn't even know if they could have done it together. That is why she gave him to the people she knows who have their shit together the most.
But if he wanted Javi... Jyn can't take the chance away from him now.
Another shrug, she sighs heavily. "I don't think either of us could, not on our own. I wanted him to have a better life than whatever he would have had with me. Maybe now he'll learn how to be gentle and kind, he won't turn into me. That's all I could do for him."
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"Better he turn into you than me," he mumbles it, but he still means every word. Jyn is great with kids, she always has been. "You... you would have taught him how to be kind."
They couldn't do it on their own though. He's not insulted, it's just the truth. If neither of them could do it, then -
"Why did you have him?"
If he wasn't there, if she couldn't do it on her own. She didn't have to go through with it.
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She owes Cassian that, she decides. "The war took your family away from you, I couldn't do the same thing."
Jyn's own losses were still too fresh for her to think too much about her family, preferring to focus on Cassian's legacy instead. "You've fought for so long, maybe I thought proving that you were capable of something so perfectly good would... put us back together. But you were never around to tell and then I couldn't-- I couldn't keep waiting. It was unrealistic, all of it."
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He starts crying, but he doesn't quite realize it. She kept the baby because it was his, it was theirs together, even if she doesn't seem to be talking about Javi as hers too.
She wanted them to come back together. He should have stopping running sooner. She was still waiting, even after weeks turned into months.
"How can you think he would learn anything but kindness from you when you would do something that selfless? Even as I failed you again and again you still..."
He draws in a sharp breath, trying to keep it under control because he doesn't want to lose control. "I am sorry."
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How is the selfless?
Jyn is a piece of huttshit and she shakes her head, refusing to accept Cassian's apologies. She glances away, wanting to stop herself from getting caught in comforting him. It felt to natural and warm with his arms around her and she can't let herself fall into that. Not again.
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She literally carried a baby! One she did not have to! Because she thought of it as Cassian's family! He wouldn't call it selfish for giving him away, even if it was definitely not selfless either. But as she has clearly said already, neither of them are in a place to care for a child. He remembers Baze's very specific phrasing quite suddenly: they were looking after him for a while.
She is tired of his apologies and he needs to stop, but they just keep pouring out, because he doesn't know what else to say.
He still doesn't think he can move. He doesn't know what to do with anything.
"I do not hate you." Part of him is still mad she hadn't told him, but she gave him a very good counterpoint: it's not like he gave her the chance. It's a strange battle in his body right now, trying to oppress his emotions and disentangle them at the same time. "I told you I would not."
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It's spoken into the looming silver trees that line every street, like the nature will accept her hate and turn it into fertilizer. She wouldn't have been surprised if Cassian hated her too, she deserves it. She did the same thing to her child that her parents, that everyone, did to her.
But she finds it impossible to ignore Cassian's tears anymore, sinking down to her knees with purpose now, gathering his hands in hers. "Come on. It's easier with alcohol. Let's get a drink."
Before he leaves, because Jyn still can't fathom that he hadn't already planned on it.
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He supposes that's something they've always had it common, but they were... better, for a little while. It feels worse now, like because they knew what it was like to feel happier, losing it makes it harder.
He startles when she takes his hands, because he might have already had his arms around her, but he initiated the contact. Cassian hasn't been touched this carefully in a very long time. He feels like he forgot how to react to it.
She could have offered virtually anything and he would agree if it meant getting to stay with her longer. "Okay."
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Well, it's been nearly a year...
She swallows, drawing her hands back. "If you have questions about--" She can't spit out 'our baby' so instead she gestures idly toward her midsection. "You can ask."
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He misses her hands as soon as she lets go, feeling a little wobbly on his feet. Standing, walking, right. He's got to do that.
His eyes are drawn to her hands, especially when she moves them. He knows what she's implying, and he's sure he has a lot of questions but the first one is just -
"Are you okay?"
He missed all of it. Maybe it took a real physical toll on her.
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But she works herself to exhaustion and then sleeps fitfully so when she wakes up at four am, she starts the whole process over again. She certainly isn't helping herself in that aspect, but when she stops and breathes then she has time to think and... that is worse. She'd rather be tired than crippled by depression and anxiety and loneliness.
She doesn't say that, of course, but tired seems to be all encompassing.
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"Was it - was the birth... okay? Were there any kind of complications? For you or him?"
He wants to ask if anyone was there, but he's not sure he could bear the answer if it was a no. He's sure if Baze knew, he would have been there, right?
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"He was early, very small. He's nearly three months old." And the size of a newborn still. "It's had little effect. He can eat and breathe and scream." Force, she remembers the wailing. "He's just small."
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There's about three seconds pause before he follows after Jyn easily, mostly because he was distracted by this new information. Following her is still a nonissue.
"He... seemed very small."
He saw Javi. He touched Javi. He thought the baby just looked small because Baze was so large, but Cassian supposes he really was that little. But he's... fine. He's healthy and loud and a tiny little boy equal parts he and Jyn both.
He would have been there. He should have been there. "I forget they can be that small."
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"He's perfectly healthy." Which seems impossible to her, considering she was the one carrying him and while Jyn's body has kept her alive and surviving for nearly her whole life, she never believed it could keep another human being alive at the same time. She'd always assumed she'd never be able to get pregnant if it ever came up and then suddenly, there she was.
Her shoulders slump a little, holding herself tighter. She's so tired of life.
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He is healthy and safe and that's all Cassian could hope for. But he also notices the way she seems to sink on herself, biting back on the urge to wrap her up in his arms again.
"That's good."
That's dumb to say, probably, but he doesn't know anything else about Javi and he doesn't even know how to ask. He wants to ask after Jyn more too, but he's afraid to press too hard there.
"Did you give him a middle name too?"
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