Guess who’s back back back! It’s meeee! Man, we are getting close-ish to the end
Read here on Ao3!
Cassian’s dreams were hazy and unfocused at some points, vivid and sharp at others.
No more pain, at least for now. Thank the Force for small blessings. Or maybe he wasn’t capable of sensing it anymore. He had seen it happen before: a perfectly-placed hit robbing a man of all feeling. It was seen as a mercy when the man died days later. Cassian had agreed at the time, but now he wasn’t so sure.
He did feel cold, weightless. Like he was underwater. But not drowning. He had no experience with drowning, but he assumed his body would've been in more of a state of panic if he was drowning.
Slowly, barely, his eyes opened.
A blindingly bright expanse met him, shadows moving just outside of his field of vision.
No, too bright.
Was he dead? Injured?
His eyes shut again.
…
He dreamt of the Citadel. The memory was too new, shiny like freshly-spilt blood. He dreamt of climbing just below Jyn and he could see the record, the all-important record, clipped to her belt. She was going to be a hero and all he had to do was follow. Cassian had accepted that he was probably follow this woman to the very end.
His limbs were leadened, each movement delayed, every second she climbed higher and higher and he couldn’t keep up.
“I’ll be right behind you,” he had said, right before she jumped onto the records tower.
He wasn’t keeping his promise very well.
Then, a door hissed open and blasterfire screamed through the space, three figures in the shadows.
Cassian was too slow, couldn't get to his blaster in time, a cry of warning drying up on his mouth, unsaid.
A red bolt struck Jyn and she fell, absolutely silent. She plummeted past him, her hair streaming over her face, hiding her from him.
He couldn’t move, couldn’t scream. He only watched and heard her hit the platform so far below them with a jarring thump.
The records tower evaporated to smoke beneath his hands.
…
Something wet was dripping on his face. He heard a soft sniffle.
He couldn’t move or open his eyes. No pain, just numbness.
A soft pressure on his forehead, something whispered, wordless like a breeze.
A hallucination, nothing more.
Unfeeling darkness swallowed him up.
…
The next he knew he was huddled in a forest.
He was lucky, then.
It was the middle of the summer months on Fest when his village was destroyed by the Empire. If it had been the winter and he had fled to the forest, he surely would have frozen to death before dawn.
Cassian had found a large divot in a tree, remembered how it was a good hide-and-seek spot, a game played by children who now burned in their homes. Just big enough for him to hide in. He pulled some brush over the hole for camouflage and curled into as small a ball as possible.
It was cold, still. His pajamas weren’t meant for being slept in outside. His mother would’ve wrapped him up in layers and a coat before even thinking of sending him outside.
His mother.
Grief clutched at his throat, but he was silent.
He wished he was dead, that he didn’t make it out of his burning house and just died with his parents. But the instinctual part of him wanted to live.
He waited in the cold until the sun rose, unmoving for fear of discovery, until the rays of light blinded him.
…
Cassian awoke to pain and movement.
Head on his chest, feet dragging along, nerves on fire.
Unaware, not moving under his own control.
He couldn’t speak to tell whoever was holding him to let go.
He was grateful when a pain like electricity wrapped around his chest and knocked him unconscious.
…
“Lay low, cut the fuel line, don’t get caught.”
Cassian was given that directive. Pretty easy instructions, simple enough for a child to understand.
He was eight, at least that’s what the Alliance told him. He was old enough to be useful, not just another mouth to be fed.
He snuck into the Imperial facility, blade tucked in his shirtsleeve, small and unnoticed.
His vibroblade cut through the tube, spilling fuel over his hands. It smelled foul, almost enough to choke him.
Cassian stayed quiet, reeking, as he left the way he came.
Later, a spark would light the fuel and explode, killing over a dozen Imperials. He didn’t see that report until years later. The Alliance let children kill, but didn’t tell them they were killers until they could understand.
After that success, more of the same followed: death after death of people he didn’t know but knew were bad. A poison pill here, a planted bomb there. Jobs for a child who could go unnoticed.
Each mission could’ve been his last.
Any moment, he would become a body in too small a coffin, if he was ever given a funeral.
…
He dreamt of the ground coming up in a wave of rock and sand and light.
Jedha, but different, still familiar. It was something that was and wasn’t, an unfulfilled prophecy.
Dying alone, burning to cinders.
…
The first sensation he felt was the stiff tightness around the trunk of his body, a hollow kind of pain. He still could breathe. That was obvious. Each push and pull of air into his lungs met some resistance but not enough to start an instinctive panic.
The next sensation, the next coherent thought, was that whatever he was lying on felt too coarse on his skin.
His eyes cracked open, muted light flooding in.
An unfamiliar room. Everything was still fuzzy and out of focus, but he knew this wasn’t his quarters or the med-bay on Yavin 4.
It was a dream, likely. Maybe a hallucination. Maybe he was dead.
A light touch startled him into focus.
Jyn was seated next to him, the mattress dipped under her weight. A patchwork of light and shadow, real and not real.
Her fingers lightly combed through his hair, pulling wayward strands away from his face. Damp hair. Why was his hair wet?
It felt real. He wanted it to be real. But it was a hallucination. Something he wanted but couldn’t have.
Cassian shifted a little, the movement taking much more effort than he predicted. A tiny grunt escaped his mouth.
Jyn’s hand left his hair almost instantly and Cassian almost wept at the loss.
Her mouth moved. He was staring at her lips and that was the only way he would’ve known she was talking to him. His name, maybe.
He wanted to say something, but couldn’t.
Cassian lifted his hand, somehow finding the strength to move.
Up, up, pointing at the woman at his side, ignoring the pain that stretched ribbon-like over his chest.
Jyn blinked, stiffened, the moment the tip of his finger touched her nose, just shy of missing. Skin-on-skin felt real, as real as the pain. He couldn’t be sure.
Hallucination or not, it meant they were both existing in the same sphere at the same time.
That could be enough.
…
Cassian woke up for good to a different room and a different bed with softer sheets.
And less pain, more coherence. More things to be grateful for.
He lifted his head as best he could and glanced around, feeling delightfully alive, for his eyes to find a brunette rummaging through a pack on the ground.
“Jyn?” Cassian rasped.
She jerked like someone jabbed her with an electric poker, her eyes turning to his eyes immediately.
Something undefined, great and terrible, seemed to drift across her face, but it was gone before Cassian could think to try to identify it.
“Welcome back to the land of the living,” she said.
It should’ve been playful. Friendly, yet dry, banter between two comrades in a war. But it sounded too strained, too frayed, on her lips. They sounded exhausted and relieved in equal measures.
Instead of acknowledging the banta in the room, Cassian grunted, looking down at himself to make sure all of his limbs were still attached.
Then he looked around the rest of the room. It was small, one bed, a table and two chairs, what Cassian could only assume was the door to the ‘fresher.
“I don’t remember the drapes being that ugly.”
Jyn glanced at the green-grey drapes covering the windows and grinned.
“Uh, yeah. We were holed up in one motel for three days, then I moved us here. Management here’s a bit more of the ‘I see nothing if you pay’-type, but have terrible taste in décor.”
Cassian’s brain took a moment to understand what she was saying. “You moved me yourself?”
Jyn shrugged. “You’re not light, Cassian, but I managed.”
There was a half-eaten plate of food on the table and Cassian quickly realized he was starving. But barely had the energy to talk, much less eat.
“How long have I been out?” he asked.
It was something he should find out before he inevitably fell into a drug-induced fog.
Jyn’s expression shuttered almost instantly, a bright light suddenly snuffed out. Guilt, sorrow, exhaustion, all muddied into one.
“Jyn?” Cassian asked. He was unable to keep the note of concern from his voice, making it crack.
She seemed to shake herself. “Bacta tank, two days. You’ve been in and out five days after that.”
A week. That was definitely a record for Cassian. Months and years before that day he was concussed and unconscious for two days. He didn’t exactly remember what had happened to cause it, but Kay had rubbed in the fact he saved him for ages.
The thought of Kay was like a bolt through the heart.
“Has anyone made contact?”
He didn’t need to be specific for her to know what he was saying. Did the Rebel Alliance look for them? Did she try making contact?
Jyn shook her head.
“No. I was going to wait until you were strong enough.”
It made sense. He knew there wasn’t much Imperial presence, but there could be spies. It would’ve been foolish to potentially tip them off by sending a transmission with Cassian still bedridden.
“I am strong enough now.”
Both of them knew it was a lie.
…
After that, he could only sleep in snatches of a couple hours at a time. Sometimes he’d wake to his mouth tasting like soup and sometimes like cotton.
Sometimes (most times) Jyn was there, sometimes she wasn’t. He only caught her sleeping once. The rest of the time she was pacing, eating, taking care of him, and staring off into the distance.
It had been a day and a half. He felt stronger, and not all of it could be from the painkillers Jyn made very sure he took.
Cassian pushed his arms underneath his body in an attempt to sit up by himself. He managed to lift himself several inches without pain before Jyn noticed.
“What are you doing?”
The demand, sharp like broken glass, shocked him enough that he froze.
Cassian found words quickly. “I need to get up.”
It was a simple enough thing. He needed to stand, move around. He was injured, yes. When Jyn changed his bandages, he saw the mottled bruises and the stitches where the doctors inserted tubes into him.
But he could likely stand, able to feel his fingers and toes. He was doing fine so far.
Jyn shook her head. He could see the tendon of her jaw jump as she clenched her teeth.
“You almost died Cassian. We can’t be sure you won’t injure yourself more if you move.”
She was probably right. Of course, she was right. The smart thing for him to do was to obey and just lay back down. But, the obstinate and prideful part of him wanted to try to stand up.
Jyn dragged him around to keep him alive. He could at least pretend to not be weak.
“I’m pretty sure there’s little more I could do to myself.”
Propped himself up a little more, chest feeling the strain. His body pivoted a little, and he gently swung one leg over the side of the bed.
“Cassian!”
Jyn lunged forward, but clearly stopped herself when Cassian’s other leg joined the first and he hoisted himself up to a sitting position.
It took just about everything he had not to show the pain that rippled over his back and chest, almost knocking the wind out of his chest.
He was a spy and, therefore, good at hiding that sort of thing.
Okay, he was sitting up. And he had enough self-preservation to not actually stand. Either Jyn or his own body would knock him on his ass for trying.
Sweat beaded his temples and upper lip from the effort alone, despite whatever drugs Jyn injected in him a few hours earlier. Those would wear off eventually and he would definitely regret his pride.
Jyn looked like she was personally going to murder him. Maybe smother him with a pillow. Her jaw was tense, like she was trying to grind her teeth to powder. Her eyes were fiery anger, but too bright.
“I’m not picking you up if you fall on your face,” Jyn hissed.
Seeming to dismiss him, she turned to the likely-stolen datapad on the table, fingers tapping and swiping on the screen.
Cassian watched, in a sore daze, as the unnatural light shone over her profile. She had new clothes, a loose tunic and pants. And she seemed to be without pain. A week must have been enough time for her shoulder to heal.
He watched and watched, heart feeling too big for his chest.
Gods, he wanted to kiss her.
Jyn froze instantly and whipped around to stare at him like he just grew a second head.
Cassian felt the blood drain from his face before it rushed back to color his cheeks.
Shit. He said that out loud, didn’t he? Maybe he was on more drugs than he realized.
“I—um,” Cassian sputtered, looking to anywhere that wasn’t the woman across from him.
Well. If the gods or the Force or whatever wanted to strike him dead, there was no better time than that moment. Just let him sink into the mattress and disappear.
His ears felt too hot and his head too light as he stared down at himself and how his hands gripped the bedframe, white-knuckled.
Idiot. Drugged-out idiot who probably just ruined something that wasn’t even there yet.
Cassian started almost violently when her shoes came into view and a slender finger tapped him under the chin.
He looked up, heart in his throat, expecting to see an open palm or a fist coming for his face. Instead, Cassian was treated to the sight of Jyn leaning down.
He stayed still, shock-still, Jyn’s breath washing over his mouth for a moment before her lips touched his.
Cassian inhaled as softly as possible, afraid that if he breathed loud enough the illusion would break.
Jyn kissed him softly, like he would break into pieces if she pressed her mouth too hard. And really, she could have. He felt like he was dying in the best way on the inside.
Cassian tilted his head back a bit, letting Jyn deepen the kiss.
One of her hands cupped under his jaw and the other lightly rested on his shoulder. It seemed really restrained, but something told him that if he weren’t injured, he would’ve had a lapful of Jyn.
Her lips were chapped and soft and the inside of her mouth tasted like a fruit he couldn’t name. He reached up to run his fingers through the strands of hair that fell across her face.
It was perfect. It felt like the culmination of a thousand little things that finally fell into place, putting them both in that exact spot.
He had stars in his eyes. He felt lightheaded. He was…he was going to pass out.
Cassian broke the kiss with a pathetic-sounding gasp, fighting to get air back into his lungs.
“Jyn,” he whispered between gulps of air.
Figures that the first kiss they shared would almost knock him out.
Jyn’s eyes scanned his face, expression softer than he had ever seen it before. She was blushing and her green eyes were bright.
He wanted to kiss her again and he told her so when he could finally breathe again. He wanted to kiss her again and again.
She smiled, a tiny thing, a thing that spoke of both affection and exasperation.
“You’re a real idiot, Cassian Andor,” she said, punctuating the words with a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Just so you know.”
