Rebelcaptain fanfic: 5 times Cassian and Jyn shared a bed
But then again, you can be quick to envy someone else’s struggles when they appeared easier than yours.
The first two weeks Jyn Erso simply didn’t sleep.
It was that easy; she instead haunted Yavin base, wandering the endless corridors like the rebellion’s very own personal ghost. It was fitting. There were enough ghosts surrounding her, so she may as well invite them in, let them become a part of her. She would eventually pass out in odd places: inside a crate amongst several blasters, in the middle of the north staircase. Once, she was even found curled up inside the cargo hold of one of the transports. She might’ve ended up in Imperial territory if someone hadn’t found her.
Cassian seemed to be the only one who was willing to dare approach her. She wasn’t aware of much, but she would hear the other soldiers make the call (“Captain? Uhhh … yeah, sorry, but we’ve found Erso again,”) and knew he was the one who would come for her. She was liable to lash out at anyone who dared try and wake her, but the man was nothing but patient and Jyn didn’t know whether she loved or hated him for it. He would wake her as gently as he could, before sliding his arms under her slight weight. She would protest weakly, but the truth of the matter was that her brain was tired, confused and dangerously spiralling, and she would let him take her to the sickbay.
“You’re going to hurt yourself soon,” he would say gruffly as she dozed half-conscious in his arms.
But the dark abyss of sleep threatened to swallow her whole every time she tried. Every time she closed her eyes, her ghosts were faithfully there to keep her company. Rogue One would hang over her head, the blaster shots, the explosions, the pain and the exhaustion of the battle. The tears she’d been unable to choke back as she watched her father’s message, her cries as she held his broken body in her arms – all of it would flood her in sleep until she was sure she was slowly being driven insane.
Cassian kept bringing her to the sickbay, probably because the man just didn’t know what else to do. Somewhere in her mind she recognised this and felt the guilt churning, knew that he was worrying over her, wanted to make it better somehow, but didn’t have the first clue how. She used to be so good at sleeping. She was a thief, a liar, always on the run, always trying to keep her head down and hide; she had to be good at sleeping whenever she got the privilege. Where had that Jyn Erso gone?
Maybe she really had died on that beach.
She didn’t recognise any of the parts of herself that were left, after all.