Hyperspace is smeared white with the light of a million stars, a million planets and suns and moons and people. Hearts of kyber and fleshier things. Flares of life. Bugs on a windshield.
His spine aches and the ache pulls like the fingers of a grubby street child, like a grasping weed, draws his mouth into a thin line. Immeasurable.
The smears don’t blink out as they come out of hyperspace and that confirms his suspicions. He’s going to pass out. Maybe already has passed out and is surfacing, head above water, before the waves submerge him again. Maybe it’s worse than that. He doesn’t think so; he’s grown remarkably good at knowing the limits of his body and feels certain that he’ll die without bacta and bone stabilizers but not immediately. That’ll have to be enough. Internal bleeding aside, his body is not riddled with shrapnel or tattooed with the burning ink of an explosion.
The Death Star fired on its own base and its only Bodhi that got them out. Imperial pilot. Defector.
Cassian doesn’t allow himself to think the word friend.
The grating beneath him shutters, pitches, and he hears distantly K-2’s steady back and forth with Alliance flight control. It’s out of order. An echo. K is dead. K is a square of data in his quarters. K is stuttering into the comms—stuttering—shouting Goodbye into an ever darkening vault. Bodhi is stuttering. Bodhi is alive. K is dead.
A hand bunches into his tattered shirt and presses down into his chest just beneath his collarbone. A shadow leans over him but the stars of hyperspace remain, dashed across the bridge of her nose, her eyes, her mouth. It’s Jyn, he thinks. She was next to him when they took off and Chirrut is a half-dead slump that Baze hovers over. Or was. Maybe now he is an all-dead slump.
This is the first time quiet has sung so loud.
“Cassian. S-stay.” It is Jyn. “You need to stay awake.”
He knows that. The majority of his career has been solo missions, regardless of the presence of assets, and though he’s never really had to call upon it much, he knows basic first aid. Knows how to bandage a blaster shot, a vibroblade wound. Knows that falling asleep with a concussion could mean never waking up.
He knows it but the stars are getting brighter and she’s fading to light.
The stars, suns, moons, the shades of hyperdrive are burned into his eyelids but he still turns his head towards her voice and reaches for her arm, desperate. When he finds it, he slides his palm down her sleeve until he hits exposed forearm and lingers. Presses two fingers to her pulse point. Lingers. Only for a moment. Even as her other hand comes to rest on his wrist, he slides further down to her hand that holds tightly to the clunky weight of the plans. She presses his hand.
“I’ve got them. We got them. Stay awake.”
Can’t, he thinks as his eyelids slip shut. The stars are here. In the dark, and burning bright.
He turns his hand, feels the data drive fall away, and all that’s left is Jyn’s skin.
It’s odd how hungry he is for the touch. More than for the plans even. He remembers touching her hip where they originally hung as soon as he and Jyn were dragged bodily by Baze on board, not even out of atmo yet. Not safe, no promise of escape. Touched and gripped and thought it’s done, though really it isn’t. And still, more than all of that, he wants to touch Jyn Erso and feel that she is alive.
Maybe he is delirious from the concussion. It’s nonsensical.
He’s never felt an urge to hold a person without motive or prompting.
He won’t and he knows it but the corners of his mouth tighten with an effort.
He’s more Cassian than he’s ever been.
She gives that to him. No aliases, no lies.
