Chapter Text
“The saddest word
in the whole wide world
is the word almost.
He was almost in love.
She was almost good for him.
He almost stopped her.
She almost waited.
He almost lived.
They almost made it.”
-Nikita Gill
Her body has a blaster raised before she recognizes the intruder. She doesn't put it down as they make their way along the black gravel walk to the door, silhouetted by the gunmetal cloud shelf rolling in off the ocean. If they notice (they do, she knows they do) they don't alter their pace, or pause, or raise their own weapon in the face of her threat.
Instead they pull down their mask, hands dropping to their side in askance. She nods at their hip where she knows a blaster is concealed and points roughly to the bin she usually puts her wet umbrellas in. For the first time they hesitate, eyes still trained on the not-quite lowered barrel of her own weapon.
She gestures with her head again. "Trust goes both ways."
A familiar refrain.
The blaster lands in bin with a clatter, followed by the whole holster and the knife strapped under a pant-leg.
Trust was never the issue.
__
Lah'mu rests under its calling-card grey.
Grey as your cold shriveled heart.
The self-deprecation comes fast and sharp and is a disservice to the planet, really. It's not the cold grey of space and steel and all things Imperial. Lah'mu is mixed white foam breaking on inky black sands; the white of moonlit mountaintops against a night sky. It's made for cozy evenings and slow cloudy mornings. Lah'mu's greys are part of palette that screams life in the most persistent, pragmatic way. Earth as deep brown as Jedhan coffee. Damp green plants hugging low and tight along the mountain sides. Oceans a black-blue bruise on the landscape as you fly in.
The stacked black clouds have nearly finished their encroachment on the farm and Jyn turns away from the window to where Cassian still stands in the doorway of her home. There's a new scar, behind his ear, visible beneath his close cropped hair. It's identifiable, not ideal for a spy, especially when she knows they have the resources to make it disappear. Unless, of course, said spy has been taken out of the field.
Only thirty years too late, she thinks nastily.
He thumbs the beat leather jacket hanging by the door, Alliance starbird hanging on by a thread.
"He outgrew it," she offers even though he didn't ask. He raises an eyebrow. "I got him a new one, when he finished the academy. But it had some wears left, felt wasteful to toss. Still keeps the chill out." she says and Force, Jyn, shut the fuck up. His fist closes ever so briefly around the familiar worn leather and Jyn busies herself straightening out the well-loved wool blanket draped over her threadbare sofa. He lets the sleeve drop.
"That's... good. That you got him another. Space is cold," Cassian says stiffly, feet still planted in the entryway.
Space is cold, water is wet, leather lasts a while. Kriffing hells, what conversationalists they are.
She sighs, "Sit down, Cassian."
He settles in the high-backed chair across the piece of driftwood she calls a table. She'll need to find a replacement for it soon. Bits of it flake off each time she rearranges the furniture in a fit of boredom. Should be easy enough to find come dry season though, when the ocean coughs up the refuse from winter. Fitting for a home like hers. Refuse for refuge, all the galaxy's sad sacks seeking shelter in the same place.
She comes around to sit on the sofa, taking care to sit slightly off center from him.
"I assume this isn't a social call."
He turns ever so slightly to face her. "No."
"Well I'm not going to play twenty questions with you. If you have a favor, ask it."
"Leia's pulling together opposition, to the First Order."
"Opposition party?" she asks dubiously, wondering why this would necessitate Cassian, of all people, visiting Lah'mu. Leia was the face of intergalactic diplomacy, her opposing neo-Imperial inroads into her beloved Republic was hardly front-page news. And it was a dick move by the Princess to send him if that was all.
"Opposition force," he corrects quickly. "She's done trying to reason with the Senate. Or anyone else," he adds.
She blinks, biting the inside of her cheek as she tries to digest that. Her stomach roils. It’s barely been a generation since the Rebellion was disbanded. To resurrect it now, because they couldn't even keep their own in line? Then what had been the point?
"Well?" Cassian prompts. The nudging does nothing to temper her annoyance at Leia.
"Well, maybe the Skywalkers should stop fucking up the galaxy over their family drama."
"That's not fair, Jyn," he says in that voice. Calm, gently chastising. As if her anger weren't justified, as if his morals were the only ones ironclad. She snaps.
"How the fuck isn't that a fair description?"
"So you don't care? About millions who will suffer?"
Force, doesn't he get tired of the constant self-righteousness?
"I did care!”
Because she's certainly exhausted.
Silence sits between them and Cassian runs his tongue over his lip. Jyn tenses, anticipating the blow too soon, like a bad action star in the newest holodramas churning out of Corsucant.
"You left."
As if that negates her capacity to care. As if she was the only one to leave, in the end. As if the information he just dropped on her lap didn’t reinforce that as the reasonable fucking decision.
"That served plenty of people just fine."
"It was personal."
"Are you really going to scold me for how I helped the rebellion? Now?"
"It wasn't for the rebellion..."
"Force, Cassian, does it matter? They benefited anyway."
"Jyn--"
"Would you rather me dead in some Endor forest? Would that fit your requirements for sacrifice better? Is that what you think every time you've seen me? You wish I were another one of your ghosts?"
She relishes the brief moment of pain that passes over his face, like she'd planted a truncheon between his ribs.
She knows that's messed up. But they've had this argument before too, more than once. In fact they have it most times they crash back into each other’s orbit. And she knows in a moment his carefully collected face will crease with his own brand of sharp barbed cruelty to hit her back. That's just how their rendezvouses go.
Years haven't healed the wound, gnarled and scarred from of incessant reopening. It's the only way they know how to come together, the pleasure-pain of picking at a scab, unhealthy but addicting nonetheless.
It's left a mess far beyond whatever the original cut was.
"Poe's already agreed."
Cassian's voice is steel; ever the professional even as he guilts her. He avoids looking at her, focused on one of the few holographs lucky enough to have found a permanent place in the small room. A chubby, curly-haired toddler shrieks happily in the arms of his battle-worn parents, Endor's blood-brown mud still stuck to them.
She couldn't hear him at first over the high joyful summer wind. Not until he broke into a run up the path from beach, arms flailing like he was once again drunkenly directing ships landing on Hoth's barren white plains.
"We won!" Kes Dameron shouted, "We fucking won, Erso!"
She huffs. The cut is bleeding again.
"Well then."
He finally meets her gaze and despite the exhaustion, the anger, the frustration, the deliberate way they try to inflict pain on each other-- despite it all, even in Lah'mu's cloudy-cool daylight, his eyes are still warm as in her memory.
A damn shame.
That's what she thought in the moments between their victory and defeat, when she was wrapped in Cassian's weakening embrace and clutching the back of his shirt, eyes trained on the horizon.
The Death Star plans were somewhere in the ether and it was a shame that was where whatever could have been between her and Cassian would end there too.
The blinding light pierced Scarif's atmosphere with her face buried in the soft spot between his shoulder and neck. He smelled like sweat and blaster fire and if she pulled back a fraction she knew she could drink in the same warm gaze she'd seen in the elevator and damn, if that wouldn't be hell of a way to go. A beautiful what-if.
“Well?”
In another reality, he's not here asking because she's already raring to go.
In another reality the fragile thing between them blossomed.
In another reality they thrived together despite their losses.
In another reality they all survived.
This isn't that reality. In this reality, the fragile thing shattered on the floor, blown away like dust in the wind. Everything went from technicolor to greyscale and 'what if' was just salt in the wound instead of a future.
She leans forward until her elbows rest on her knees, two fingers propping up her head at her temples. The first drops of rain echo through the house as they bounce off the windowpanes, tracking paths down to the sills. The water catches underneath the cracking paint, not quite strong enough to chip it more.
Blood ran in rivulets along the corrugated metal, changing in color as it went. Crimson to the dark currant of fine Corsicanti wine to rust. It was drying on her hands and stained Melshi's boots so thickly it looked as though he'd been dunked in an entire vat of blood. The man in question stood feet from where he'd unceremoniously dropped them in the belly of the damaged u-wing, staring in shock out the viewport as the world imploding beneath them gave way to the black of space.
"Do you want tea?"
She leaps from the sofa, stalking toward the kitchen with the same purpose she used on any mission. Cassian visible startles. She resists the urge to smirk-- nothing like an accidental success.
"What?"
"Tea. It's some fancy Chandrillian blend Leia sent. Never opened it."
Cassian tracks her as she digs for a small pan. The old stove lights on the second try with careful jiggling of the knob. "Sure..."
She leans against the chipped tile, arms crossed over her chest.
"What did Kes say?"
"He politely declined," he admits. "Thanks," he adds, wrapping his cracked hands around the mug she slid across the counter. Jyn settles back to her perch on the counter's edge. She risks a small sip of her drink and is rewarded with scorched tongue.
"So why do you have different expectations of me?"
Cassian fiddles his thumb around the handle. If she didn't know better she would think he looked unsure. That this is the longest time in years they've spent together without fucking or coming to fisticuffs might have something to do with it.
The shadows at his feet shift as the storm opens up around them. The rumbling in the distance promises, at the very least, a prolonged afternoon of unnavigable weather.
So, there's still time for their conversation to completely devolve.
"Because you don't care," he finally answers.
"You've already mentioned," she says flatly.
"Come back," he coaxed, callused fingers drawing lazy patterns on her hip. "Come back with me."
"That's a non-starter."
"'Because I said so' is an explanation for a child," he teased.
She rolled her eyes, turning onto her stomach to look at him. "Then because Draven would have a heart-attack."
"Draven's not in charge of the Pathfinders--"
His voice was a touch too earnest, playful pillow talk turned insistent. Jyn bristled.
"Cassian, drop it."
The command shattered the rose-colored illusion that had blanketed the room. The air was suddenly colder and the red lights of the aptly named district that filtered through the window lost their warm glow, replaced by a harsh pall. She should have left soon as she'd delivered Solo's load. It was starting not to have been worth the extra money.
With horror, she wondered if he'd known, if this was some sick joke. But Solo wasn't malicious, however infuriating he may be.
Cassian's brow furrowed as he stumbled for the right words to combat her iciness. "You could at least have the courtesy to tell me why, after everything we-- I thought you'd want-"
"Because there was another damned weapon and all of a sudden none of it mattered again!" she exploded, jumping to her feet. She backed away from the bed, arms crossed across her chest, cursing the day she decided to disarm herself around him. "Everyone I cared for was gone, it didn't matter."
"Liar."
"Takes one to know one."
""You're a liar Jyn Erso. Kes, Melshi, Leia, they were all there." His voice rose. "Me!"
"You weren't there," she mumbled.
"What?"
"You weren't there! The first time, you weren't there. You can't understand, you don't know--" she sucked air through her teeth at the memory of the planet killer looming above, the sickly green glow of the charge building. It would have been different, maybe, if they'd all survived. Maybe she would have curled up on a medical bed with her rag tag family. Cassian in her arms, Chirrut praying for them all. Baze watching Bodhi swindle them all out of their money in sabacc. Instead she sat alone atop the ziggurat, Kyber crystal cutting into her palm as she clutched it.
"Force Jyn, I'm sorry I was in a coma! I'll do better next time," Cassian snarled.
"And after you woke up then? You slipped back into shadows, emerging just long enough to get laid--"
Cassian stood abruptly, stepping into her space so fast it gave her whiplash. "Don't," he whispered, hand flexing in anger inches from her face.
The cold chill of disappointment ran through her. She smacked away his hand, scrambling for her discarded clothing. "This isn't a discussion," she said yanking on her jacket. "I already gave the rebellion everything."
"Not everything,” he spat back, squaring up to her. Jyn shoved him by the shoulder, bolting for the door.
"I offered my life for the rebellion more than once. I'm not you. You'd hand them your blaster and let them pull the trigger."
Cassian pulls back with his hands raised, placating her. The bastard. "You don't care about the cause or the big picture," he repeats. "But I'm betting despite that there's still a few people you'll do it for."
"Should I be thanking you for the backhanded compliment? Selfish is shorter, you know," she snipes, getting more agitated with every word he says.
The nerve of him, to disturb her peace, to accuse her of lacking empathy, only to spin and twist his words to pretend that's a virtue.
She's done this before, let him yank her chin up to stare at the horrors of world. She had false hope pumped into her life and for what? To be humbled by an alliance who'd survived by sheer luck and a set of bleeding heart twins? For him to disappear back into the familiarity of his spy skin and leave her holding the reins of an unfamiliar life she hadn't asked for?
"You still owe me, Erso."
The cold metallic hand of Ruescott Melshi stopped her from boarding the cargo ship she intended to hijack. She thought about telling him to shove it, to tell him to pass on that message to General Madine, who if Solo were to be believed had apparently plucked her as a pathfinder before she'd even agreed to stay.
It made sense-- who else would've wanted the rogue extremist child of Saw Gerrara? Intelligence wouldn't take her so long as Davits Draven lived and breathed, no matter that she'd been vindicated. But Madine loved anyone a bit mad.
She shrugged off Melshi's grip without much resistance. "I think I would have rather you just let me die."
Melshi didn't so much as flinch. Chuckled, even. She was uncomfortably reminded that she wasn't the only one who had seen some shit.
"Not for Scarif," he said. "You owe me for the shovel to my face. And with a death wish like that you're gonna fit in just fine."
"Listen," Cassian sighs, running a hand over his face. She rolls her eyes. Casual stress, but a clear tactic change. He forgets she knows him.
"Jyn, this... this isn't going to be the Alliance. No funds, no allies. There's not a single air of legitimacy to this. Leia's going to be blackballed--"
"You're going Partisan," she interrupts, turning her back to him to place her mug in the wash basin. Extremist cell. She'll admit that's interesting. The irony of it is almost enough to make her mounting frustration with him disappear. Almost.
"We're fighting a different kind of battle," Cassian concedes.
She heel turns so sharp even Draven would've been impressed and searches for the lie. Cassian sits ramrod straight in his chair, taking a slow sip of his no doubt perfectly steeped, perfectly cooled tea. His placid expression doesn't so much as budge while she considers him. Fucking spook, she thinks.
Lie left undetected, she continues cataloging him unabashedly. Her open staring hadn't unsettled him yet, might as well take advantage of the opportunity.
There was the scar of course, and the short hair. He'd always been a handsome man but the close crop does him no favors she thinks. His face is paler than normal-- he's either been living somewhere it was winter or somewhere he was always inside-- and deeply lined but then again, so is hers. It's why she got rid of any mirrors in her home long ago.
He had favored his weight on his left side when he came up the walk in a way that spoke of either a nagging injury or aging joints but now sitting he's shifted right, imperceptibly but still enough and she knows that it's an injury. She knows the exact injury in fact, the way the metal spine branches out to the left, artificially strong in aging body, especially a body stress had been aging prematurely since 6 years old. The skin above stretched thinner than over the good old fashioned human bones. She could imagine the feel of it under her fingers, giving way to knotted muscle and...
Cassian finally clears his throat and she flicks her eyes away for a moment, bravado cracking. Force. She hates him, she really thinks there's part of her that truly despises the man, and yet here she is undressing him with her eyes. They can rehash the same tired arguments ad nauseum but each time she sees him her gut still twists in the painful way it did when she would return to Hoth's base covered in muck and catch a fleeting sight of him across the hanger.
"I'm telling you, any pilot. Literally any one of them will clear your mind. Eagerly, even."
"Shut up, Dameron," she growled, stomping down the ramp, uncaring of the mess she was leaving behind for some poor sop to clean later.
Her battle buddy sighed. "Listen, Intel is great at what they do and if rumors are to believed so is Andor, both professionally and--"
"Shut UP, Dameron!"
"I don't care what the hell went down on Scarif. Once a spook always a spook. It's the black hole of Alliance M-O-S. You've got to let it go."
Except there was nothing to let go. One near death experience does not a happy ending make. She knew that. But the pain of a could have been haunted her. Should have been. Like a phantom limb, rooted in something that was once real but she'd learned to live without a long time ago.
Something like hope.
She breaks the silence first.
"You're not going to guilt me with Poe. I've always known he's been Leia's brand of bleeding heart. Too much of Shara's influence."
Cassian snorts at that, the corner of his mouth lifting just so and Jyn definitely doesn't revel in it. She definitely doesn't want to trace the ghost of a smile with her thumb and chase it with her lips.
She's saved from her own wretchedness by clank so loud it sounds like a gunshot followed by the telltale hissing of the vaporator out of whack.
Jyn groans and Cassian alertness dissolves at her reaction. "I take it that's a normal bad noise then?"
"Something like that," she grumbles, grabbing her boots from next to the door and tugging them on loosely. The irony of fresh water falling from the sky ruining a perfectly good water vaporator was never lost on her. Sometimes she wonders if her parents had just enjoyed being inconvenienced. "I'll be back."
Cassian follows her to the door, hovering with the same uncertainty as earlier. "Need help?"
Her hand hesitates above the doorknob for a fraction of a second. "No, it's a tight squeeze between the house and the access panel. I'll be right back."
This was definition of insanity.
Except worse because while she didn't know or care whether he was at the beginning or end of his mission, or if he even had one to begin with, she certainly was on the clock.
She caught her groan in her throat.
Insane or not, the idea that the paragon of Rebel Intelligence may have brought her to grimiest divebar in the city while they were both on duty with a single-minded focus was doing wonders for her libido.
She wondered if this is the most reckless thing he'd done since stealing an impounded cargo ship with her. That had been years ago. No wonder he was so tightly wound.
Or m aybe at the end of the day Cassian was no better than the hot shot pilots lingering around Echo Base, just better plied with risk than cheap booze.
It was impossibly hot.
The loose door handle dug painfully into her hip but the latch above was still doing its duty admirably, even when Cassian lifted her leg high on his hip.
Someone rattled the door to the fresher and they froze, her arms grasping at his shoulders, his face buried in her neck. The footsteps faded away into the loud music of the bar and she relaxed slightly, hands uncurling from the fists she’d formed on instinct. Cassian chuckled softly.
“Knocking out a bunch of collegiates isn’t going to convince them to join the Alliance.”
“Could have been troopers.”
He dug his fingers into her hip tighter, breath still tickling her ear. “I know you’re smarter than that a nd even the most fearsome pathfinders know the importance of blending in.”
She was practically melting against his chest, could feel how disheveled she’d become and Kes was going to give her hell for this later, after he stopped berating her for disappearing before bug out.
“Maybe.”
“Then pretend to be the drunk sloppy woman they thought you were when you went to the bathroom with a stranger for a quick one.”
The words were a tease and an act, protecting whatever real feelings he may have. But his touch never lied. She laced her fingers together behind his neck, thumb toying with the ends of his hair.
“So what does it mean to be a sloppy party girl then? Never got a chance to go to a fancy university, Saw was big on learning from experience.”
He grinned, more genuine than much else that had transpired. “It means no one will judge you if you scream.”
“Goddamn fucking SHIT” Jyn curses, slamming the power box one final time to get it to close. She slicked back the wet stray hairs that had escaped her bun and with hands on both knees, hoisted herself up. Only her left knee cracked in protest, which wasn't bad considering the weather. Nothing made her joints ache more than a sudden storm, the pain stemming from years of overuse rather than advancing age.
She shimmies out of the crevice between the vaporator and the house, ducking her head as she comes around the corner to avoid the windowsill. She cracks open the door, taking off her boots before she steps in. The floor would get soaked anyway but at least it wouldn’t be muddy.
A fluffy towel appears suddenly in her vision. Cassian shakes it at her, as if she wouldn’t understand what handing a towel to a dripping wet person could possibly mean.
She snatches it, wrapping it around her torso.
Her home wasn’t that big but her few towels were stored at the foot of her bed, behind a definitely closed door to her bedroom. “Find anything interesting?” she asks.
Cassian’s shoulders actually fall. “Just thought you might be cold.”
Despite herself, Jyn softens a bit.
“Then why don’t you be of use and get the fire going.” To anyone else, it may have sounded bossy but the corner of Cassian’s lip curls into the ghost of a smile. "Surely you haven’t forgotten your field skills?”
__
The wind is threatening to knock the panes from her windows.
She counts the seconds to another minute of staring into the suffocating darkness of her bedroom before tossing the sheets off in a huff and pulling on a large thermal as she fumbles toward the door.
"You really were going to stay there?"
His disembodied voice rises from the vicinity of the couch. "And if I hadn't you'd have something to say about that. We're too old for mind games, don't you think?"
She crosses her arms tight across her chest. "Brief escapism isn't mind games," she protests.
Cassian snorts and she can just see his silhouette as he sits up, lit by the blue-green glow of appliances. She can imagine how he might look illuminated by the dim lamp next to him. Rumpled blankets at his waist, chest bare. She knows it's too short now but she imagines his hair tousled and his pupils blown like it used to be when...
"I may have thought about knocking."
The tangle in her chest unknots at the admission. Then, because she's a glutton for punishment: "Why didn't you?"
"Because I wasn't supposed to stay. And tomorrow I'll leave again."
Back to my old life, he doesn't say. His old fight. He's not really talking about the storm.
"Would it have made you happy though?" she asks, hating how small her voice sounds. If he notices he doesn't call her on it.
"Don't worry, you're like the finest wine Jyn. Always better with age."
The joke is flirty and bright and she knows the exact way the smirk is cutting across his face like a dare. The right response is a laugh, a self-assured 'and don't you forget it', the same kind of joke she would've made before slipping out of his quarters and creeping across the ice cold floors of Echo Base before anyone had proof of the Rebellion's second favorite rumor.
Instead--
"Right," she whispers. Mostly to herself but her house isn't that big and he's not that far away, no matter how the darkness and the storm makes it seem otherwise.
The wind howls in the silence and she turns to just slip away from the peace she'd disturbed but Cassian speaks again.
"Jyn," he says hoarsely. "I do regret it."
Another statement pulling double time; things they only admit in the shadows. She sighs. Frustrating but she supposes there's comfort in routine.
"Me too."
__
Dawn blossoms over the horizon in the kind of streaking orange-pink that only can form after a storm.
They drink their caf in silence, sitting knee to knee on the couch. It's the closest they've been the entire time he's been here.
There's not much to say. Cassian was right-- he wasn't supposed to stay and he is leaving again. When the time comes she walks him the five feet to the doorway, watches as he rearms himself, shaking away the deja vu it sets off. She watches his hands slide his blaster into it's holster and the soft scrape of metal against leather sounds like a death knell.
"Are you sure you won't come?" he asks.
"Yes."
Cassian hesitates, stepping back over the threshold. He presses a feather light kiss to her hairline, gently reaching for the hand by her side and giving it brief squeeze.
She clasps her free one on top of his before he can pull away.
"There's still safe harbor here. Let Leia know?"
Something indecipherable flashes in his eyes but he gives a quick nod and then leans down, pressing an equally quick kiss to her lips.
His hands are callused as he holds himself there and she's enveloped by the unmistakable scent of blaster fire and if she hadn't seen the pink sky moments before she'd be convinced when she opened her eyes she'd see sickly green or icy white or muted red or the endless black of space.
He pulls away and his eyes are the same as in her dreams, soft and warm.
"Goodbye, Jyn."
She shuts the door soon as he turns his back before she does something stupid, like cry.
.
.
.
And if she lets herself run a thumb over her lip where he'd kissed her there's no one there to see it.