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They do the impossible.
Then they do it a second time, when they live to tell the tale.
There is a light on the horizon. It's horrible and beautiful, and Jyn can't look at it any more than she can look away.
She knows the moment she sees the shuttle come screaming towards them that this will be a hot evac, if it's an evac at all. There will be no time for landing, certainly not for gentling the thrusters, or stuttering the magnetic field that keeps inertia from turning the occupants into red smears inside the shuttle.
"He hasn't shut down the field," Cassian says. There's a distant sort of confusion in his eyes, the kind that says he knows something that would explain this; he just can't remember what he knows.
If this is all that's wrong with him after that fall of his, Jyn will count it as a giant win.
"He can't," Jyn reminds him, licking her lips and wondering if this is it or if they still have some luck in the bank. "Imp shuttle, remember? If you aren't on the ship when it launches, you aren't getting on."
It's as much a security feature as it is a warning to their own people.
The Alliance employs the standard issue stutter drives in their ships, making it possible for a field to be paused for ten, sometimes twenty minutes. Pausing being always preferable to a cold start which brings with it the fear of not having the time needed to start the drive back up in time should things go bad.
It's a nice little bonus to have. One that allows for the impressive rescues and those selfless feats of bravery the Rebels seem to love.
If you try that shit with an Imp shuttle, there won’t be any heroics, just a mess and a cautionary tale. If you're really lucky, your skin will grow back, and you'll get prosthetic eyes to replace the ones you lost.
The closest you can get to a stutter drive's capabilities on an Imp ship is a hard stall of the drive. It can buy you time, just not much of it. And even if it works, it's still gonna chew you up a little for the trouble.
But hey, a little pain and some scars are practically a hallmark of survival these days.
Next to her, Cassian is trying to push himself up. Jyn stops him, gently as she can. He's walking all wrong, his arm hanging at his side with an unnatural stillness she's trying not to look too closely at.
"Not yet," she reminds him. There's another flash of frustration and annoyance, a good sign when it comes to injuries like his. It means he’s still there, he’s just a little scrambled.
Jyn's only done two hot evacs, and the learning curve had been steep. What’s she’s learned boils down to this: the closer the shuttle gets, the smaller they'll want to be.
All too aware of the man next to her, she moves her own body so he doesn't have to. Leaning and trying to take up as much space to cover what she can of him while putting her back towards the shuttle as she waits.
"Close your eyes until I tell you," she prompts him.
His eyes are on her, and while he might know better usually, he doesn't right now. He wants explanations, but they don’t have time for that right now.
"When we move, we'll need to move quickly."
"Or?"
Jyn pretends not to hear him over the wind that comes whipping in, bringing with it sand that feels like it's trying to ablate her skin. The static comes next, inspiring an instant migraine that has her doing her best not to vomit from the spike of pain that makes itself at home behind her eyes.
Still, as bad as it feels, it's better than she expected. Best of all, it comes relatively gradually enough to tell her that this isn't Bodhi's first hot evac either.
And that means maybe, just maybe they can pull this off. Keeping her eyes closed and arms locked around Cassian, Jyn waits for the sound of the ramp, then for it to stop lowering.
Jyn feels it happen, the feeling of being underwater and upside down, vertigo followed by her ears popping the moment the inertial mitigators flicker off and the gust around them calms a little more.
"Now," comes Baze's bark from behind her. He offers no explanations, just a command spoken in a tone that demands that you to obey.
(She'll hear Baze bark this word again and again. She hears it in the creek of rusted metal doors being thrown open. In the hours where sleep is elusive, and in the sound of engines stalling out.)
"Now," Jyn echoes, because it's better to be clear when someone is rattled the way Cassian is.
She turns, pulling Cassian's arm over her shoulder in a way she knows can't feel comfortable as she pushes them both up. Her muscles protest the move, a spark of fire in her shoulder as she propels them forward, unsure if she has seconds or minutes before even Bodhi's skill hits a wall and he has to either kill the field or let it eat them alive so that at least the others can survive long enough to escape.
She hopes he'll do the smart thing, and she thinks Cassian would too if he was really here with her.
They don't so much make it to the ramp as they stumble forward until Baze can lock a hand around her arm and pull her inside while she holds onto Cassian, dragging him after her like his life depends on it, because it does.
There's a burst of liquid fire at her back, hot and close enough that her body decides vision isn't important right now, not until they figure out how to make it stop.
The field is up.
Tears are stinging her eyes because of that, or maybe because Cassian's bony ass followed her down to the floor when she fell and is currently crushing her.
Jyn takes a moment to close her eyes, sending her thanks up into the Force. Looks like they'd had some luck left after all.
On top of her, Cassian is smiling when she opens her eyes. Looking whole and gloriously alive in the wake of her ascent up the ramp and his fall onto her.
She watches as Baze helps Cassian move off her, her fingers moving to massaging her temples in the hopes of shaking the inertial field induced migraine.
Somewhere nearby, Baze has diagnosed a concussion in his patient. Cassian laughs, a little too high, a little too fast. Manic as it sounds, it still feels like balm on her soul.
Under her, the ocean water that had soaked her pants has started to crawl up her back, but the idea of sitting up or moving sounded like more trouble than laying here a little while longer in damp, salty clothes.
She tries to shift, just a little, to let up the pressure on her abused shoulder, but the pain from that action has her hissing in pain.
"Jyn," Baze says, and there's something in his voice that halts her movement better than the pain ever could.
Cassian is at her side, quicker than she expected him capable of, and staring down at the floor by her shoulder. He curses, looking dazed even as he stares across her to where Baze is kneeling. He's looking at her shoulder too, but when Jyn tries to see whatever it is, Baze's fingers catch her face.
Gentle by unyielding, he holds her in place and keeps her from seeing.
"No," Baze says, soft as a whisper. "It is time to be still now, little sister."
She glances over to Cassian, his face giving too much away. More than she suspects he'd be comfortable with.
When he runs a hand through his hair, his hand shakes.
More notably, it's covered in something dark and sticky looking.
It's not the ocean water that's soaking her shirt, Jyn concedes. Her luck has run out, after all.
"I've seen worse," Cassian assures her, his pupils all the wrong size.
Thankfully, Jyn's still numb enough from whatever's wrong that she can actually appreciate that he isn't lying to her.
Cassian has seen worse.
They all have.
Seeing worse isn't the issue; living through it is.
If this is it, Jyn thinks that could be okay. She hasn't been afraid of death in a long time, only fearing it when it comes for the people around her.
Taking an inventory of her body she realizes just how little she's feeling and just how wet her shirt feels. She also notices that Cassian's hand is in hers, but she doesn't remember how that happened.
She blinks, and when she opens her eyes, it's from the pain. There are pins and needles dancing across her skin and Cassian's frantic eyes watching her. His hands and parts of his forearms are red when he reaches for her face. Cradling it, he tries to smile and she tries to believe it.
"Jyn," he says, and he sounds like he's been yelling, like he's been breathing in smoke. "Come on, Jyn. Stay with me," he begs.
(She'll hear this in her dreams, wondering when she wakes if she misremembered it. Wondering what changed between that and the moment he decided, like so many others before him, that staying wasn't all it was cracked up to be.)
Despite his best efforts, Jyn is unconscious for their return to the newest Rebel Sanctuary, but she can figure out the gist of it.
They'd all been taken to the medbay. When she woke, it was to a room full of familiar faces.
Not Cassian's, though.
Bodhi had assured her that Cassian had come by, that he'd been fresh from his own bacta treatment, but he'd stayed long enough to ask after her before disappearing again.
"He'll come back," Baze says, sounding sure.
It doesn't sound so crazy when it's Baze who says it.
The next week, there's still no sign of Cassian.
There are other signs, though. Writing on the wall that says Baze and Chirrut are staying, Bodhi too, given that he's replaced the imperial patch on his shoulder for its rival, and Jyn -
Well.
She has options. She has memories of an embrace on a beach where she was ready and willing to be still finally. Memories of the calm that comes from knowing there are no fights left, from waiting to see what comes next for the first time in decades.
Another week passes. Then another.
Draven frowns down at her, looking at her like she's speaking nonsense instead of asking him a rather simple question.
He cocks his head to the side, staring into her like he can see her soul. "Are you saying you haven't seen Andor since your return?"
Jyn doesn't bother answering him. It's an answer all on its own.
It's easier to see the truth, when the dust clears. Easier to think clearly when adrenaline and heroics don't make everything seem more important than they are.
It's okay.
He's not the first, and she's not selfish enough to expect people to stay once they realize what they'd have to stay with.
Still. She has options. Jyn’s shackles are gone, her record is clean-ish, and she has nothing but possibilities.
They all do.
They've done the impossible, and even amidst a rebellion, everyday life can't be all that much harder.
The surviving rogues are finding their footing, all around her. Finding the places they fit, the places they can help. Bodhi gets reborn as a new breed of enlisted man. He gets a ship and a Starbird on his uniform. The respect and easy camaraderie with the other pilots. People who look at Bodhi and see a man who risked it all to do the right thing and not the former Imp like Jyn had worried they might.
Jyn doesn't let it hurt when Chirrut announces that the Force requires him to be here, to wait for someone who isn’t here yet. There is a man on his way; he informs the Council. A man whose light shines like a beacon within the force, a man who needs someone to guide and support him.
It's hard to hate a man you've never met, but Jyn manages it all the same.
Jyn knows better than to ask what Baze will do. Where Chirrut goes, Baze will follow. Bitching the whole way, but still keeping a wary eye and a surplus of ammo nearby for any who threaten the man who credits the Force for his continued survival.
There are meetings. Endless, boring things that are full of the same faces who once scoffed at her plans. They thank her for her service this time, forgive her trespasses in light of what she’s achieved, and as a measure of the Rebellion's goodwill, she is offered a small shuttle and some credits.
The shuttle will take a while to arrive, but once it's arrived, it's expected to leave for good.
They don't say it out loud, but it's on their faces. In their lack of offers. They expected her to run. They expect her to still be the woman they'd pulled from the mud who they probably expect to return to it.
She can't fault them for that.
There had been other expectations, but they were wishful thinking, promises spoken between people who had never expected to live long enough for their words to matter.
Jyn knows how to say home in a dozen languages, and knows what it means the same way she knows how hyperspace travel works and how her metabolism functions. She knows home is a farm, that hyperspace is the quickest way to get from point a to b, and that her metabolism is why she eats before missions, even if she doesn’t feel hungry.
She knows the structure, the purpose, and why they matter. She just doesn’t understand how they work.
Never had anyone stick around long enough to teach her.
A door opens, making the last three hours she spent rooted to the floor here worth it. For a moment, she sees him. Knows he's alive, and that the gossip wasn't wrong. He's on base. The same base as her, but unlike her, he’s hidden away so well she had assumed him off-world.
Cassian has his head bent towards Draven, but his attention is fixed on Mothma. The three of them are busy speaking words Jyn can’t hear.
They look heroic, bathed in blue lights and faces set with that breed of conviction that rebels always manage to pull off.
They don’t look like the kind of people who need someone like her clinging onto them, getting in the way.
The door closes, and Jyn is left, all alone in a hallway.
Jyn doesn't ask for advice, but Chirrut often offers it. He gives her rambling lectures on how sometimes it seems easier to embrace the familiar than the new, about how sometimes running feels easier than staying.
"It takes time," he says, like she doesn't know that. Like waiting hasn't defined her life right up until she'd been thrown into the frozen mud of Wobani, facing down a machine that would surely outlast her even if she tried to run.
The problem is, Cassian already came back once, and he did it in the hardest possible scenario.
Some people get a happily ever after, but those people aren’t her.
She got someone who came back once, and that will have to be enough.
Bodhi makes friends. He makes so many friends. People who slink up to him and throw arms around his neck, people who invite him to gatherings. People who slap him on the back while he blushes as they regale the room with stories of his piloting skills and daring.
He is adored, and in turn he blossoms under the affection of the Rebellion, even if he doesn’t always understand why people think he's a hero. Even if he doesn’t understand why Jyn is less well-received, and less willing to come with him to social events.
Jyn pushes some of the stray hairs behind his ear, framing Bodhi's face with her hands.
If she asked him, she thinks he'd come with her. Despite his life. His friends.
But he'd do it out of duty, out of deference to a man that he ended up knowing better than Jyn ever had a chance to.
There's a part that doesn't care about being selfish. A part that wants to sink her claws into Bodhi and keep him at her side.
The universe around them is so big, and it gets so lonely out there. Bodhi could make it easier to endure.
“Go,” she insists, swallowing down the impulse to hold on and never let go. “Get shitfaced and kiss someone who wants to kiss you.”
“You’re sure you don’t want to come too? Kes was saying they have Spiced-“
“Go,” Jyn insists. She’s made the mistake of caving to his requests before. There is no love for her the way there is for him at these parties. He doesn't understand it and leaves whatever merriment he’s found in the hopes of sliding up to her and trying to make her less lonely.
Her Papa used to sew and carve her toys as they ran and hid from the Empire, making friends for the girl who had none. He’d turn cloth and wood into dolls and beasts, trying to make her less lonely.
Jyn wonders if her father had known what he’d sent her when he put Bodhi on a path that led to her.
She pulls up on her toes, pressing two firm kisses to his cheeks that make him smile, chasing away the guilt in his eyes from her refusal to join.
There are new heroes soon enough. Four sentients who did the impossible. Again.
The word is losing meaning, but then again, so many words are.
Chirrut had told her once that she shined. Jyn watches now as he speaks to a bashful boy, his own face lit up as Chirrut speaks of the Force, of destiny, of the burning light inside a hero forged from a moisture farmer.
It’s pointless to be jealous of things you can’t have. Knowing that doesn't make it any less painless.
Baze finds himself a strange role in a post-Death Star galaxy.
He sits, listens, and lets people's words wash over him. He lets strangers seek him out, and he turns his attention to them and listens to them as they share their burdens with them.
The doctors on base start sending shell-shocked, trembling sentients to him. It’s easy to see the man Chirrut described not so long ago. A devout man, one dedicated to service, to something bigger than himself.
It is not the battle she would have expected Baze to fight, but it’s one that needs solid shoulders and patience, both things he has in spades.
He sends Jyn apologetic glances when their meals are cut short. Still puts his hand on her shoulder, still calls her little sister but his time these days is rarely free, and there are so many who need him so much more than she does.
Jyn doesn’t know what it says about her, that the safety the rebel Alliance offers her is hard for her in ways Wobani never was.
Jyn doesn’t have Cassian’s comlink frequency. Isn’t sure he has one, considering his job. She talks herself in and out of it for almost a standard hour before she caves. She steals a pen and some flimsi from the hangar and slices her way into his room.
She has seen him through windows and across rooms and hallways, but she hasn’t spoken to him since the beach. Hasn’t had a single question about him answered except for vague comments from Chirrut that sounded more like wishful thinking or prophecy.
She tries not to think of him too much, and tries not to push the Alliance staff too hard for answers.
She tries. Force, Jyn tries.
She sits at his desk and writes and rewrites and rewrites a letter until there’s no space left, just hastily scribbled-out words she knows better than to leave in the trashcan of a spy’s room. She burns the flimsi in his ‘fresher’s sink and then lays in his bunk and tries to breathe around the smell of burnt flimsi that fills the room and the stones piling up in her throat.
The top of his bunk is a smooth metal panel, markings near her knees identifying its original form as a snipping crate before it had been where Cassian slept. She squints down at the lettering, the stamps that indicate it traveled through the Core at some point, and the Agro inspection numbers are hastily written in thick black paint. She scoots down the bunk, peering up at dozens of printed, stamped, and written hands. Aurebesh, High Galactic, and the Umbaran alphabet all mix together above his sleeping alcove.
Jyn uncaps her pen with her teeth. In Outer Rim Basic, she adds her com frequency. On a whim, she adds, for a good rebellion, com: above it.
On her way back to her room, she watches as people cling to each other in the halls of the base. The party must be breaking up, people filtering back to their rooms in groups and pairs, happy and alive and still shaken up enough to be baffled they lived to tell the tale.
There's a ship in the hangar with her name in the manifest.
Jyn knows she was always expected to run and that genuinely makes it all a little easier. Removes some of the guild by making it a universal problem, not a her problem.
She's not running for her, see? She's running because that's what happens.
She has never been good at restraint.
What she is comfortable with is everything, nothing, or whatever it takes to survive, just until she can tear back control.
Chirrut is standing outside the room that was hers right up until her mind was made up.
“For what it’s worth, I still think you could be happy here. With us.”
Maybe she could. Maybe she could turn herself into someone who didn’t remember the council’s betrayal as keenly as she does. Maybe she could become someone who understands how to close the distance between her and Cassian, someone who could be content telling themselves he’s busy, and it's not personal so much as it's a war.
But she doesn't have Cassian's training. Can't compartmentalize it like he could. Can't let herself be the kind of idiot who spends a month making excuses for someone else.
"He will not be happy to discover you left," Chirrut says as if he believes it.
Maybe in another life, it was true.
In that life, Jyn wouldn't have had to make do by catching glimpses of Cassian.
They would still be busy in that life, but if he cared, Jyn thinks he'd find time for her. He wouldn't let something as small as one or both of them being injured stop him from seeking her out.
Jyn inhales, letting a million scenarios run through her head of that kinder world. A world where Cassian wanted to keep her still, to have her grow roots at his side. A world where they'd laugh and fight, but never about big things.
They'd save the galaxy, for good this time.
They'd both understand that sometimes they couldn't talk about where they were, or what they were doing. A month of coms blackouts would just make their reunions sweeter. He'd be comfortable with that part of her that scares people away and realize it wasn't a threat to him; if anything, it was the opposite.
Cassian's practicality, his love of economization, probably wouldn’t even begrudge her if her bed hadn’t been empty when he'd been gone, especially if the rumors here, in the real world, were accurate and his missions sometimes require him to wander into the beds of others.
Jyn exhales, painfully aware of what life she's living.
It's not the one she wants, but it's still life. That can be enough.
“I’ll visit,” Jyn says, unsure if it’s a lie or not. She licks her lips, “Tell Baze and Bodhi -“
“Will you, though?” Chirrut wonders. “Will you actually visit?”
Jyn doesn't have an answer for him.
No one stops her when she leaves. The clearance comes in from the tower, crisp and cool, and she lifts off without a fight.
It was part of the deal, after all.
Jyn finds Solo without meaning too.
She doesn’t expect to find him, and from the inquisitive look he gives her before jerking his chin toward the empty chair across from Chewie, he wasn’t expecting her either.
“Unless you have something better to do,” he says, part challenge, part invitation.
She surprises them both by taking the seat.
Solo, she realizes, is familiar in all the ways Cassian never was.
He’s intimidated more than he lets on. He’s greedy and terrified of losing what little he has managed to keep for himself. He’s prone to grand, terrifying acts of selfless acts of kindness that he doesn’t want to acknowledge.
He’s in love with someone who is better than him in every possible way, and he is bruised from the knowledge that an ultimatum between him and a rebel cause would never, ever end with him being chosen.
They’re both scared and greedy and lonely enough to pretend with each other.
Solo kisses her like he’s trying to stop himself from talking. Like he needs something to press his lips to or his secrets might spill out.
It’s probably true enough.
Maybe it’s another one of the survival skills he learned along the way. Why he’s so good with his mouth and so willing and eager to press it anywhere she’ll allow him.
Jyn wonders sometimes if his princess would be shocked to know what curls her smuggler’s toes. What makes him pant and beg and come so hard that he has to cling to someone afterward.
It’s far from the strangest request Jyn’s has had asked of her, her only shock coming when she realized the way it also wrecked her that first time she indulged Solo.
They floated, exhausted, sweaty, and a little terrified until the adrenaline settled, and he started snoring. A reminder of why Jyn typically kicks him out before her legs stop trembling.
Jyn gets a chance to live out a childhood dream in a fancy bar on the outer rim.
Solo’s busy grappling with a buyer who decided paying wouldn’t be as easy as killing them, both his security guards running to their boss’ side and leaving Jyn utterly alone at the bar with a large glass bottle next to her.
She’d be offended, but it gives her a chance to slam the end of the bottle against the bar top.
Unfortunately, the whole fucking bottle shatters, not just the end like in the holos.
Luckily, no one is paying attention to how it startles her and leads to a bloody finger.
Jyn pulls her baton out, trying not to feel disappointed.
“Tell me you love me,” Solo pleads. His voice is soft, ragged.
He’s not ashamed of what he needs, not with Jyn, not anymore. They stumbled into each other when they were both raw and hurting, and it’s taken time to trust, but they’ve found a way.
Despite what some think, there can be honor among thieves, trust among smugglers, and gentleness between damaged people. It's not always perfect. They'd never been taught these things the way they were supposed to; instead, they'd had to watch others. To mimic witnessed kindness and hope their words came out right, that their touch wasn't too hard, that they made themselves a little smaller so that they weren’t too much for others to bear.
"I love you," Jyn lies.
Han smiles, keeps pretending it's her that he wants to hear this from even as he echoes the words back.
When he kisses her, it's easier. Easier to close her eyes, to pretend that someone loves her enough to wrap a hand around her hip and another over her shoulder, pulling her body down towards theirs like they wanted to find the secret to making two bodies meld into one.
There's a blaster on the floor by the bed, an ache between her legs, and a primal sort of comfort that Jyn knows good people don't feel. Good people don't watch a man kill on their behalf and respond by shoving them to a bed and fucking them within an inch of their life.
Princesses and heroes don't do those kinds of things, but they do.
Jyn threads her fingers in his hair, pulling. He smiles, pupils blown wide, and breath coming in ragged pants. She times her movement with a rake of nails against his scalp, with a clench of muscles, and watches as he shudders and whines under her.
"Fuck," he hisses. "Just like that, Sweetheart."
She returns the favor soon enough. Solo's reputation had turned an otherwise straightforward job into a cluster fuck, but while they'd been watching him, they hadn't been watching her.
She’s got blue blood staining her clothes even as Jyn lets her body go lax as Solo presses a hand against the wall of the bar; his other hand undoes her belt. The hand pinning hers to the wall leaves, helping to shove down her pants, before both are reminded why they never do this.
"Why are you so short," he whines into her hair, sounding utterly miserable. Like he doesn't thrill at being able to tuck her into the side of him, like he doesn't get hard from manhandling her.
Jyn laughs, high and hard, and she feels a little like she's spinning apart. Like she's held only in one piece by the wall, her forehead is pressed against, and the man plastered to her back.
A kiss gets pressed to her temple, then one to her neck, before a playful nip of teeth follows it.
"Don't move a muscle, darlin'," he rumbles into the bend of her neck. "I'm gonna get one of those weapons cases, I'm gonna put you on it, and then I'm gonna take real good care of you."
"You have two minutes or I'm catching a cab back to the port," Jyn counter offers.
"Oh, I can do two minutes," he assures her, stopping only when she starts laughing again.
"You'll regret that," he warns her as he scrambles away, and Jyn closes her eyes as she waits and hopes that she doesn't fall apart before he returns.
Leia sends work their way sometimes.
Well, she sends work Solo’s way.
Picking up a product, dropping it off to needly rebels. Making less profit than they normally do, but doing it all the same.
Jyn tends to watch the ship on those trips. Watch Chewie and Solo as they march off for glory and paperwork in triplicate while she puts on old music and dances while the noodles are cooking on the stove.
The majority of the time, Solo comes back with a complaint about the pay (which he knew upfront) and Chewie with a complaint about the droids on base (which apparently know Chewie?) and that’s how it goes.
Sometimes, her com gets a low frequency ping, though.
She doesn’t dance on those days, doesn’t go near any windows or portholes.
Today was that kind of drop off.
“He's always like that?” Solo wonders aloud as they finish strapping in the cargo.
“Like what?”
Solo makes exaggerated eye contact, affecting an emotionless expression that fails to impress but does make her feel tempted to smile.
“Strong silent types are the worst, aren’t they,” Jyn says in commiseration. If they can keep their pace up, they can lift off in an hour or so.
Chewie snorts from somewhere from behind her.
Jyn gives Chewie a wary look, “You got something to add, old man?”
Chewie shrugs, finishing up packing a pallet in half the time it would have taken both of them to do one.
Chewie warbles out his observation and Jyn rolls her eyes because fuck him.
“I talk plenty,” Jyn snaps back at him.
Solo winces, and Jyn can already tell she’s gonna hate whatever comes out of his mouth.
“But you don’t really say much, do you?”
Yup. Called it.
The problem with these two is that they’re as protective as they are possessive, which is hilarious and great in a fight, but it also leads to moments where they think they’re helping and all Jyn can think about is throwing them out an airlock.
Chewie teaches her how to use his bow, and Jyn teaches him all the Onderon drinking songs she knows.
He sits with her in the cockpit when she can't sleep, but Solo can.
He worries more than Jyn deserves.
"It's not like that," she assures him because her thing with Solo only hurts when they let it hurt.
After they fuck, well, that's the easy part. That's where the companionship and laughter come from. That's when they get to look at each other and see the person across from them.
Jyn wraps her hands around her mug, the warmth of the ceramic seeping into her palms and chasing away the chill she can't shake when they're chasing lines.
"It's okay," she says, because Chewie worries.
Solo starts more fights than she does.
Jyn ends more of them, though.
Chewie just complains that they’re taking dozens of years off his life with every fight.
When Jyn was a child, she remembers someone asking her what she’d do if all her friends flew into a black hole. She’s never understood why flying in after them wasn’t the right answer.
She’s beginning to suspect these two won’t know why that’s the wrong answer either.
Solo and she are both comfortable in hard times. In the lean, hungry years that mark more of their lives than not. Maybe that’s why this wrecks them both. Maybe that’s why it feels so dangerous, so sweet.
She cards her fingers through his hair, as couples do in the holos when they love each other, and she leans down over him and puts her lips next to his ear. She tells him what he needs to hear, lets him hear the gasp he draws from her as it snaps him from his stillness under her and drives him into a frantic, hungry rhythm.
He flips them over; his hand is careful to cradle her head so it doesn’t hit the deck beneath them, even though they both know she would take it and not complain.
That's the whole point, she thinks. He'll never make her. That's what makes them fall apart and fall into bed with each other over and over and over -
“Han,” she gasps as he adjusts their position, throwing her leg a little higher over his shoulder and dropping a hand to where they meet.
It’s like a drug, these moments, these kindnesses they offer each other.
He smiles, softer than he ever has over a winning hand of cards or a payday. He rasps her own name, the words he doesn't mean, but they both crave. There is no judgment in him when it shakes her apart and has him speeding up as he tries to follow her.
She wonders sometimes, what it means that they can survive the hard times better than the lonely ones.
He presses a kiss to her forehead, wrapping his arms around them and rolling them so it’s his back on the cold floor, and she’s laying on him. He exhales into her hair, and she traces the shape of his shoulder with a soft touch.
They’re excellent lairs.
Solo gets a com two months later that leaves him anxious and snapping at her and Chewie.
“She wants the Falcon,” Han finally says over dinner, unable to make eye contact any more than he can give himself hope by implying his princess might want him and not just his ship.
Jyn wishes she could judge him. Wishes she could pretend that if her com, only ever used by Bodhi, Chirrut, and Baze, were to ping with a call from someone else that she wouldn’t tear across the galaxy if that caller asked something of her.
If he cared enough to ask.
Chewie lingers long after Solo locks himself in his bunk, watching her in a way that reminds her of just how much older than them he is.
He's undoubtedly seen their breed of bullshit before. It's not like they're special, not even in their fuck ups are all that unique.
"It's fine," Jyn assures him, because if she doesn't, she's worried she'll ask him how it turned out. If whoever made him understand this got some kind of happy ending.
Did they ever really move on?
Does it ever hurt less?
She thinks Chewie would tell her the truth if she asked, so Jyn’s careful not to ask.
Jyn finds a small planet between them and the Alliance base. They drop her there with a more significant cut of their profits than previously negotiated. Solo refuses to talk about it any more than he will comment on how Jyn woke up to find her shity, second hand blaster missing and Solo’s lucky blaster tucked into her holster.
“Take care of yourself,” he calls after her in a fragile voice that he tries to cover with a smirk.
Jyn rolls her eyes back at him, sending him a cheery salute.
Of course, she will. Someone has to look out for her, to put her first and Jyn learned long ago, somewhere between her mother handing her a necklace before running toward her certain death and turning 16 alone in a bunker, that no one else wanted the job.
She wonders what it means that everyone who leaves her only does so after giving her something.
Does it make it easier, maybe? It is like closing out the tab before you leave a bar?
And if it is, is that all she’s worth to them?
Solo coms her. Not as frequently as Bodhi and not as sporadically at Baze, but somewhere between that, in the Chirrut ranges. He complains and enthuses about Luke and Chewie in equal turns. He doesn’t talk about his princess by name, but Jyn senses the woman's presence in the space between Solo's words. The gentle hope he can’t entirely suffocate. The pain that scrapes him raw when they are clearly fresh from another fight.
Do you ever miss playing house on the Falcon, he asks her, the filter between his brain and his lips made too thin from drink and a disastrous series of miscommunications with the woman he loves more than he loves himself.
Jyn closes her eyes and covers them because just closing them isn't enough to allow her to feel safe admitting: “Sometimes.”
Her jaw hurts, just under her ears from how hard she’s been grinding her teeth at night these days.
He makes a soft sound, and she wonders what his ideal world looks like.
It would be on the Falcon, she thinks. Chewie and Luke at his side chasing adventures and stories. She doesn’t think Solo's ideal world would have him chasing women. There would be a single woman in this ideal world of his, one with braided hair, a sharp tongue, and a regal presence.
Jyn has no idea what Leia’s ideal world would look like, but she’s pretty certain it’s nothing like Solo's.
There are moments when Jyn comes close to hating a woman she never had a chance to get to know.
A woman who is so loved that if she only asked, a proud, dyed-in-the-wool scoundrel would pack it all up and leave it behind.
It’s hard to hate someone like Leia, though. Someone who carries herself like she wants you try her. Someone who carries the scars and the survivors guilt of a soldier who has been tried by fire, by the hungry green light that swallows up planets and hope.
Leia has lost more than Jyn ever had to lose in the first place, but she’s still out there. Still trying.
It’s hard to hate someone like that for very long.
It'd be easier, if it was.
Jyn clings to her memories a little harder than she should. She keeps the monsters under her bed well fed, the mirrors polished and clean so she can see every last flaw.
It’s not healthy, but at least she knows it.
It's why she drops her remaining credits in the hand of a too-thin man dressed in the ragged robes of a Guardian of the Whills, even though her own stomach is begging for a meal.
It's why she renames her shuttle the Rook.
It’s why she knows there’s no reason to waste the credits to plate her new armor in red, not unless she wants to draw attention and summon up memories of being called little sister.
In the same way she knows there’s no reason to introduce herself as Andora to her new contacts on Cloud City.
It’s why she lingers in the droid markets, talking to those on display and hoping, wishing one would do more than chirp back subserviently at her.
Jyn knows.
Why she keeps dragging the weight of the past along with her when she otherwise carries only what she needs, is a riddle she wishes was harder to solve.
She makes new friends. New allies. New enemies. Her bed is only as cold as she wants it to be and only as warm as her patience allows it to be.
Life continues.
Life is currently dripping out of her side in thick, red drops.
Jyn manages to com Bodhi but only gets the three quick chimes in response to indicate he’s on a mission and his com is off. She leaves a message, unsure of what she’s saying but knowing whatever it is, it’s goodbye. It’s thank you. It’s her hoping that he’ll be the one to tell the others in his own words, which have always been so much kinder than Jyn's could be.
Jyn makes one last com, on a whim, because she would want to know if he died. They couldn’t give each other what they needed, but she could at least give Solo this. Can make sure he doesn’t have to wonder why she stopped taking his sporadic coms.
She’s slurring when he picks up; she hears her words falling from her tongue in a mumble that takes far too much effort. She tells Solo about a bank account in Cloud City. Tells him to split it with Chewie - fairly - or she’ll become a Force ghost and haunt him.
He cuts her off because he’s always been an ass.
Jyn, I need you to tell me where you are, Sweetheart. Can you do that? Solo’s voice fills the tiny maintenance tunnel, the words ricocheting off the metal tubes like blaster blots.
He sounds all wrong. She hears the warm rumble of Chewie behind him, the concerned trill, and she misses them both so much it physically hurts. She misses Chewie’s adaptability and Solo’s shitty humor.
God, she missed how she felt a little less alone when she woke up on the Falcon. How Solo always had an extra cup of caf waiting for her in the kitchen, and how when he'd seen what she hadn't wanted him to those first few times, he didn't judge her. He just kept making her a cup of caf in the mornings until she was comfortable enough to pick it up and drink it before it went lukewarm.
She misses how Chewie always had a filthy joke and an extra spice packet for her to sprinkle over her dinner once he realized she also found Han’s cooking lacking. She misses his comfort and irritation with everyone, how he'd huff, and bitch, calling them children but always coming back when they'd driven him into his bunk with their pestering.
It was the first time since the farm that Jyn felt wanted for reasons that weren’t her parent's legacy, her connections, or her willingness to bleed for a cause.
Han makes a frustrated sound, cursing under his breath and reminding Jyn she's still holding her com.
She listens, wishing he'd talk to her like he used to, but he's busy, an angry whisper meant for someone else, Solo's words too faint for her to hear.
After a year or a second, his voice comes back louder, clearer.
When she breathes, her lungs make a wet sound. It burns and bubbles, and has her coughing red droplets onto her hand.
Hey, Solo barks, startling her. You gotta keep talking. I need you to leave the channel open, okay Sweetheart?
She’ll try. Jyn looks down at her thumb, smeared red, and pressed against a very small button. She can’t really feel her arm, but she’ll do what she can if it means so much to him.
Jyn swallows; it’s more complicated than she remembers it being. Her eyes sting with unshed tears, and she knows they won’t stay like that for much longer.
“I didn’t want you not to know,” she admits. “The not knowing is,” bad, Jyn thinks. Worse than bad.
She doesn't need to tell him, though. Solo understands.
Yeah, it is, isn’t it?
Her thumb feels like pins and needles are dancing over it.
“Will you-“ she shifts, tugging her hair down from its bun and taking the tie with it, and her chest burns in punishment for her movement. It takes her a moment to catch her breath, to realize Han is talking, too loud, too fast.
“‘m here,” she tells him, refusing to add for now. Instead, she focuses all her energy on wrapping the hair tie around her thumb and the thin cylinder of her comlink.
“Will you tell me you’ll miss me?” She doesn’t care if it’s a lie.
Right now, Jyn doesn’t want to be forgotten.
Erso's daughter will be remembered for Scarrif, she knows, but Jyn, the person who likes rainy planets and hates the fancy caf from the Core, isn’t what will be remembered. It’ll be some carefully censored creature the Alliance creates for their history books. The kind of person who did things for the bigger picture and never for herself.
Whatever is remembered, it won’t be her.
She isn’t sure if he tells her, her mind goes a little sideways and then down, down, down-
Jyn wakes to the sharp jolt of pain and hands on her body.
She pulls her knife and sticks it in the arm of whatever Imp bastard found her body. It’s too much movement, too quick, and her body rages at her, burns her up for trying.
Somewhere to her left, she can hear a familiar voice.
“Package is secured, but package also fucking stabbed Opanic,” someone growls back at the voice. There’s a press of something metal, and her body is still resisting her orders and won’t even flinch away from the injection.
She probably thought you were Empire goons, Han dismisses, his voice far away, distorted in a way that hurts her brain. You shoulda introduced yourself, boys.
It takes her a moment to remember the com tied to her left hand.
“Didn’t have a chance to introduce ourselves, what with the package being unconscious,” the nearby voice snaps.
Well, Han counters, but Jyn can’t pay attention as once more her body melts away from under her-
Jyn wakes up in a familiar bunk with lines streaking past the porthole in the room. On the floor of her old room, Solo is stretched out, laying on top of a blanket she’s pretty sure was stolen from Chewie’s room.
It takes some significant effort, but after a few tries, Jyn manages to roll over enough to throw a hand off the side of her bed and at him. Her aim is not spectacular through the pain and effort it takes, and his return to consciousness is about as graceful and involves him hitting his head on the nightstand twice.
When he’s done cursing her, the room, and tables in general, he rubs at his head, squinting up at her with a strange, pinched look on his face.
“I’m not dead,” she says because that seems important when the last thing you remember is bleeding out, trapped in a hole on an Empire-controlled planet.
Solo nods. “The tech kids tracked you down off your com signal. Rerouted some Pathfinders to go evac you. We met 'em halfway and took them off your hand, so they could do whatever crazy shit they were meant to do originally.” She is treated to a broad, happy smile. “You stabbed one of ‘em, you know. One hell of a thank you for the poor kid who dragged your ass outta the fire.”
She blinks and lets the slurry of memories condense in her brain until she can remember pulling a knife. Jyn doesn’t remember the face of the man. Doesn’t remember much afterward.
“I'm not dead," she says again, unsure how to feel about it.
Solo’s smile dies as quickly as it came.
He nods, “Yeah, you gave us one hell of a scare.” He scoots over, close enough he can lean his back against the side of her bunk. He exhales slowly and Jyn watches his back move as he does. Watch as he turns, shifting around until his head is resting on her mattress, starting over at her.
A big, warm hand comes out, cradling her face and feeling like the best and worst thing she's ever felt.
“What were you thinking, going into a place like that with no backup?”
She doesn't have an explanation she is comfortable telling him.
Luckily, it’s Solo, and he won’t press.
"I'm okay," she tells him, her voice scratchy and her ribs still burning with the effort it takes to speak.
“Chewie’s pissed,” Solo says, offering up an escape from the weight of this. “Heads-up - he’s gonna wait till you’re on your own feet and he’s gonna yell at you until you feel about this big,” he says holding up two fingers, a breath apart. "Okay?"
Jyn nods, closing her eyes as the world swims from her actions. "Okay."
She sleeps more than anything else. Curled up in her old bunk, Jyn wakes to eat, to have Solo help her stumble to the fresher, to have Chewie lean over her while Solo holds a light, digging out shrapnel from her body.
When she can’t take anymore, he stops, presses bacta strips to her still-raw body, and sits at her side until sleep takes her.
She doesn’t ask where they’re going or why they’re going there. Doesn’t even think to ask until Chewie shows up to pet her hair as he tells her they’ll be landing in roughly a standard hour.
For the most part, Jyn’s been wearing blankets to aid with her dressings and impromptu scavenging surgeries whenever one of them finds another scrap of metal under her wounds, but Chewie helps her remedy this. He takes almost all her weight in one hand and helps her as best he can as she pulls on a pair of soft pants. She has to take a breather after that, and he sits next to her, and lets her lean on him.
When her pain levels no longer are in the ‘sit down or fall down’ levels, Chewie helps pull one of Solo’s button-up shirts up her arms. He works the little buttons with his always surprising dexterity, and soon enough, she’s passable for company.
“Where,” she grits out, still feeling half-dead from the effort of lifting her left arm.
He trills out the answer, and Jyn can’t do anything but stare at him.
“Not if I kill Solo first,” Jyn declares once her brain reboots.
She gets about two steps away from the bed before Chewie makes an executive decision and picks her up. He carries her out of her room, and it’s such a relief in the deluge of pain that had been threatening to destroy her sanity, that doesn’t even complain.
Sort of.
She does manage to say some things about Chewie's mother, but comparing the sexual politics of Wookiees and Humans is a lot like comparing going swimming with jumping into hyperspace and Chewie just thinks she’s being nice.
When familiar noises start, Jyn is trying very, very hard not to look to see who is there when the ramp lowers. Hoping, fervently, that the Alliance is too busy to bother noticing the limping return of their least favorite daughter of an Imperial officer.
When she can’t resist anymore, she lets herself look, half expecting a smattering of nosy flight crew, who are the powerhouse of on-base gossip. Maybe some bored pilots or someone Solo owes money too.
Maybe even a princess, if Solo hasn’t fucked that up this week.
What she isn’t expecting is Cassian standing there, radiating a silent rage that has even the astromech droids giving him a wide berth.
Jyn closes her eyes, counts to three, but he’s still there when she opens her eyes, but this time he has his emotionless mask firmly in place. Worse, he’s stalking up the ramp, seemingly putting all the rage that was once on his face into his thundering steps.
He’s still fucking beautiful, even like this. Even when he’s the last thing she wants to see, Jyn can’t look away.
The problem with being ready to die is it does funny things to your brain. Makes you believe the things you told yourself wouldn’t, couldn’t be true. It’s why Partisans who only believe in the cause will still pray to the Force when the battle goes to shit and the calvary that was supposed to come is reduced to paste beneath the heel of an Imperial mech.
It’s an instinct older than ships and blasters, chemicals screaming in their bodies that fuck it, they came this far, why not go for broke? What’s there to lose if everything is already lost?
The problem with that instinct is that it gets a little messy when you aren’t alone. Preparing for death in someone’s arms, with their voice in your ear, it just feels bigger than it is.
It’s an everyday thing. Living, dying. But when you do it with someone else there, someone who seems to give a shit? Well, you wonder why you’d ever want to be alone again. It makes waking up alone feel like waking up with a missing limb, like something integral to your survival was stolen from you.
Brushes with death, much like drunk people, aren’t great when it comes to informed consent.
Signals get mixed.
Intentions become projections of what you want to see.
Jyn has made her peace with that.
Well, most days.
More often than not, Jyn’s made her peace with that.
Yeah. Let's go with that.
"Jyn," Cassian says her name without a single inflection. Like he’s got a droid in his throat, speaking for him. Like she's some random fucking rebel he expects to stop and salute him in the hall.
He says her name like it's not the first thing he's said to her since the day they held off death by holding on to each other until Bodhi could come and get to them. Like the last thing he'd said to her wasn't him begging her to stay with him, his face pressed against hers, their hands tangled together while his tears and blood mixed with hers.
Chewie shifts Jyn in his arms, and starts making noise about getting her to the med bay, but Cassian doesn't seem to hear him. Or doesn't understand. Or -
She’s jostled, just a little, but it feels like someone stuck her with a vibroblade.
"Chewie," Jyn says because this is important, and she needs to get this out before she passes out. "I think we missed one, left deltoid."
Chewie pushes past Cassian, barking out calls for a medic, for someone to come and help with -
“What, no, my left,” Jyn hisses. “Not yours, Force, why would I use your left?”
She doesn’t get a chance to figure out why.
When she wakes up, the first thing she hears is that the shrapnel they'd missed wasn't in her deltoid; it was in her trapezium.
Chewie brings her a children's book on human anatomy. He thinks he's funny which only adds to the pain of Solo thinking he’s a comedian too, as he reads the passages about puberty aloud.
Jyn’s gonna force-feed them that book once she can feel her arm.
“Sure you are, kiddo,” Solo says with a pat on her good shoulder.
Cassian appears in her curtained-off section of the med bay. It’s like being trapped in a dream, one where you know you’re dreaming, but not lucid enough to do anything.
She lays there as he gives her platitudes. Tells her he's glad she's okay. Hopes she's feeling better.
Jyn nods along as she stares up at the ceiling, and pressing her thumb against the analgesic button again and again until a droid comes along and takes it away from her.
Eventually, Chewie makes Cassian leave. She doesn't remember why, the painkillers she’d managed to get pumped into her body before the droid stopped her had her brain doing its best to turn into a cocoon, to become something that could fly away.
The second time Cassian shows up, he follows Solo in. He doesn't talk, just stands awkwardly by the gap in the curtain that serves as a doorway.
Solo seems content to ignore Cassian’s presence, perching himself on the gurney next to Jyn while perusing the food tray they'd left for her. He steals some fruit, pockets the package of sweet bread, and puts his filthy boots on her blankets when he sprawls out beside her to better help her sip her broth.
Cassian watches them both like an ISB agent has possessed his body and is slumming it in rebel medbays, looking for answers about who caught what from who and how many days the rash on Draven’s foot will take to clear up.
She tries not to look at Cassian. Tries not to see how there’s a tick in his jaw, a flinty aspect to his gaze like he’s miserable even being this near her.
If she looks at him, there's a distinct possibility she'll start crying.
It's one thing not to be wanted. It's another not to be trusted to be unsupervised in the Rebel base she once helped protect.
Cassian should remember that, if nothing else. He’d been there. She’d been the one keeping him alive when his head was scrambled as a pirate’s signal was being broadcast on long-wave.
Jyn waits until Solo is paying attention the way she needs him to.
Like she had half a system away, she puts her thumb on his pulse point and waits for him to catch up.
Solo blinks, but Jyn can all but see him mentally returning to that cantina with the blue chairs and the red walls. They couldn't talk on that job, but they'd found a way around it. Half Bothan thieves’ cant, half them; they’d made up a language no one would bother to listen to.
She rolls the blunt edge of her nail on his wrist, leaving no marks, just meanings.
Jyn meets his eyes, only to find there's something brewing inside Solo that looks an awful lot like an objection. It has her recoiling, pulling back, unsure of what's happening right up until Solo's hand darts out, wrapping around the back of her neck, gentle but resolute in its refusal to let her withdraw.
She closes her eyes, refusing to let him see how much that hurt.
"Hey, hey now," he whispers. "None of that, okay? I got you, darlin'."
There's a sound in the distance, a sharp inhale.
When Jyn opens her eyes, Solo doesn't need to do anything. Cassian has already seen himself out.
Solo's thumb pets at the nape of her neck, his eyes following hers to the empty space. There's a complicated look on his face, something that would look like guilt on anyone else, but this is Solo.
“You know, I don’t think he was trying to cause problems,” Solo says, sounding incredibly sure of himself.
Again, that would mean something if it was anyone else, but this is Solo.
They set her up in a room with Solo's name scrawled on a piece of electrical tape pressed over the door panel.
Jyn gives the space an appreciative whistle and nods along to him, listening about how Leia had pulled some strings to get the room for him and Chewie.
“I’m kind of a big deal these days, you know?”
“Oh yeah,” Jyn hums, closing her eyes and pulling the pillow closer. “So important.”
Solo’s rambling self assurances about his need to stress his importance to Leia and her Rebellion have always been an effective sleep aid.
She blinks back to wakefulness as Solo bitches to himself as he tries to crawl over and behind her.
“Shove over, Erso,” he mutters when he sees she’s awake. “And don’t think I haven’t noticed how when I need to vent you grab a pillow and blanket.”
“I have no idea what you mean,” Jyn insists around a yawn before scooting forward.
Solo huffs out a breath, making himself comfortable before turning and fitting himself in-between the wall and her. His breath tickles at the back of her neck, sending a shiver down her spine that pulls at muscles that don’t want to be pulled.
Jyn swallows the pained noise, preferring to focus on the warmth that’s plastering itself along her back. The arm that curls around her waist and the hand that tries to warm itself on her stomach.
“If you hog the blankets I’ll replace your painkillers with sugar pills,” Solo warns her.
It’s hard to keep her eyes open now that there’s a familiar presence, a warmth nearby.
“You do and I’ll tell Chewie,” she points out in-between blinks that keep lasting longer and longer.
“You do that, and you’re gonna have to scratch your own itch next time you get all worked up,” Solo mutters, because he’s the kind of idiot that forgets just how easy he gets when Jyn starts hitting people. Or when she wears those pants that are a little too tight. Or when she gets bored enough to poke him in the shoulder and suggest they fuck. Or -
“I want you inside me,” Jyn lies.
Behind her, Solo goes completely still, utterly unaware of just how easy he is.
He clears his throat, swallowing thickly before asking, “Are you, um, medically cleared for that?” Before Jyn can inform him he’s an idiot, he’s talking again. “You know what, I have an idea. I’m gonna just need you to -“
“Shhh,” she insists, reaching back to pat his side placatingly. “Sleep now. I’ll shame you for your lack of self awareness later.”
Solo makes a disgruntled sound, but acquiesces.
She wakes up to the sound of a door opening. There’s a familiar silhouette standing there, washed out by the lights in the hall.
Behind her, with a hand snaked up inside her shirt, Solo continues to snore.
"Did you need something?" Because Cassian must, if he's seeking her out.
Maybe there's another secret facility to raid.
Maybe Saw survived and Cassian's here to trick her into finding him so he can kill him.
Maybe -
"You weren't in the quarters you got assigned," he says, voice tight. "Medical required an update on your status and then they couldn’t find you, I was alerted.” Cassian’s jaw works, and when he continues speaking, his voice is lower. Angrier. “Get in contact with them first thing tomorrow so they know how to find you.”
With that, his hand reaches out, punching at the door panel. The metal door slides shut between them before Jyn can figure out what to do with that.
"Oh good, because he didn't hate me enough," Solo mutters, shoving his frigid feet over Jyn’s.
Jyn gives him a warning growl, and thankfully he remembers what happened that one week the life support was weird and Jyn almost killed him at zero dark thirty. Quick as they’d come, he withdraws his frigid feet.
"I'm gonna get murdered because of you, and this is how you treat me," he whines. “They’ll probably never find my body, depriving everyone of one last look at all this.”
Carefully, more careful than he's ever needed to be with her, he pulls her closer while also rolling closer to her and pressing his interest into her hip as he noses his way up her neck.
"Make it worth it, huh, Erso?”
Jyn shoves half heartedly at him, but they both know she doesn't mean it. Not when orgasms are fun and also such a nifty, all-natural source of pain relief.
"No one's going to kill you," she assures him.
Solo rolls over, strategically bracing himself over her as he gives her a roguish grin in the dark. Her heart skips a beat, fondness filling her chest for this idiot. He starts at her jaw, pressing kisses lower and lower until he reaches the front of her tank top.
It would have been nice, Jyn thinks, to love Solo.
"You gonna protect me?" he wonders, pausing in his adventures along her neckline to press a gentle kiss over her bad shoulder. For all he plays at being a scoundrel, he’s not. There’s far too much heart hidden away behind cheesy vests and infuriating smirks.
"Depends," Jyn admits. "What's in it for me?"
Solo rolls his eyes, sitting up and tugging her tank top up until it's bunched under her arms. He gives her breasts an appreciative grin.
"Ladies," he greets them. "It's been a while." He gives the left one a wink and dodges the slap Jyn sends his way. "You're both looking perky."
"I swear on the Force," Jyn grits out. "I will end you."
"Don't pay attention to her," he mock whispers, leaning down to press a wet, sucking kiss to one and then the other.
Jyn would argue. Or bludgeon him. Something.
Sometimes it's just better to go with the flow, even if the flow is a grown man pretending your breasts are twins he met at a casino in Cloud City.
Jyn relaxes into the sensation of a warm tongue and gentle suction. To her dismay it’s interrupted by a gentle swat against her hip.
"Up," Solo insists, mouth leaving her skin only long enough for the word to be spoken.
She complies, lifting her hips enough for him to tug down the soft pants the med droids hand out. It, like the twinge in her side, a sudden reminder that she's not exactly at her best. She's covered in bandages and likely tastes like bacta while dressed like an outpatient.
Or, she was, before Solo made it worse by rucking up her shirt and shoving her pants down to her knees.
"How are you even into this?" she wonders, unsure if she wants to laugh or cry at the madness that seems to be the hallmark of the two of them being locked in the same room.
Solo pulls away from her breast with an audible pop that he seems to enjoy far too much.
"I'm a depraved man,” he insists with surprising earnestness. "Also, I think there's some kind of pavlovian response I blame you for, where I associate the smell of bacta with getting laid."
Jyn isn't quite sure what to do with that. However, yeah. It checks out.
"Any other questions, sweetheart?"
Blinking, she considers a few but eventually shakes her head. "How are you planning to do this without sending me back to the medbay?"
He grins, happier than any sane person has any right to. "Oh, darlin', you relax and leave the heavy lifting to me."
Jyn tries to give Solo what he needs, but finds him silencing her with his lips pressed to hers.
“Shh,” he says, sounding more than a little broken up about it. “Not today,” Solo insists. “We’re scoundrels, but let’s try being honest scoundrels for a while. What do you say, Erso?”
Jyn really doesn’t care one way or another.
Half asleep, she watches as Solo tosses and turns, trying to find a comfortable position to sleep in.
“You don’t like it anymore?” She didn’t intend to ask, but she also can’t. The two of them, if nothing else, have always had an understanding between them. Not understanding him is more uncomfortable than she knows how to deal with.
He peers over at her, clearly confused until he sees her expression. No longer interested in finding the perfect stop, he instead crawls over and lays with his chin resting on her good shoulder.
It’s not comfortable, but it’s not uncomfortable enough to push him away.
“You and me, Erso, we see through the bullshit, don’t we?”
She nods. In the ways that matter, they both do. It lets them know when to run and when to fight. It lets them know it’s not just okay, it’s also safe to leave a place in her bed and affections for Solo.
Because he’s not just the scoundrel he sees in the mirror. He’s the man who likes the silence of hyperspace more than unnecessary small talk. He’s the man who wakes up early and makes sure Chewie and her always had a hot cup of caf waiting for them in the kitchen because he doesn’t know how to say he gives a fuck about them without feeling exposed, but he can do that.
“I trust you not to pull any fast ones with me, Erso,” he says, and there’s a sad little smile on his face that makes her want to pull him closer. “So, why do we keep tempting fate, you know? Why say what we don’t mean?”
Jyn reaches out, running her fingers through his hair and pretending it doesn’t hurt how much he melts when someone touches him without wanting to fight or fuck him.
She forgets, sometimes, that she was lucky. That for all her shit, for all the sins of her fathers that derailed her life until it no longer felt like its own story so much as their epilogue, she had people from time to time who gave her love and affection without asking for anything in return.
She knew what it meant to be held by her mother, to be looked at with adoration by her papa, and what it felt like to grow up the focus of the hurricane force of Saw’s affections. How he could rest his giant hand on the back of her skull and look at her and leave her feeling like even a Stardestroyer couldn’t touch them.
Jyn doesn’t know Solo’s story, not the parts that matter, but she knows that if someone touched him like this, it never lasted long. It never came without a cost.
Carefully, she slides her hand back, resting her palm over the back of his skull and cradles it there. Looking at him, she summons every memory they have made to mind. The bloody ones, the drunken ones, the ones where they were blurs of skin and teeth. The ones where he understood what she was so sure no one else could.
Jyn tries to hold on to those, tries to push them into the Force in the hopes it might let Solo understand.
He’s her friend. Not like Bodhi, who loves her because her father made her into a monument and not a person. Not like Chirrut, who saw a purpose in her, a beacon shaped like a girl. Not like Baze, who only saw her because Chirrut did. Not like -
Well. That doesn’t matter.
Solo is hers because he wanted to. Not for destiny, missions, or legacies, but because he wanted to be hers.
“I do love you,” she says, and it’s not a lie like this.
There’s more types of love than just romance.
There’s the kind that makes him the most annoying person she’s ever met but also the only person she trusts to see her on the anniversary of Scariff when she can’t do anything but drink and shake.
He grins brightly at her, giving her a cheeky wink. “You and half the system, darlin’.”
She’s half asleep when Solo is finally brave enough to say what he couldn’t before.
It takes her a moment to realize he probably thinks she’s asleep, but it’s an easy choice to give him the comfort of not knowing she’s awake.
The next morning has Cassian setting his tray down at her table the same way Saw used to plant the partisan flag in the chest cavity of the corpse of the ranking Imp on base. It is an undeniable claim, which is confusing in the same way his eyes were when he'd been in their room the night before.
It’s beyond frustrating for about a million reasons, but mostly because he doesn't get to run, doesn't get to hide, and then act like this.
It's not fair.
Jyn stands and gathers her own tray, hating that she can recognize the hurt on his face and hating herself even more for caring. There’s a hand on her arm, and when she looks over at him, his mouth is open like he has something to say.
She waits, brows raised expectantly.
As she suspected, nothing comes out.
“More silence,” she says, pressing her lips together as she nods. What a new and novel concept from him.
Cassian seems to hear what she doesn’t say, flinching away and taking his arm with him.
He licks his lips, looking down at the table in front of him. “After everything, if I tried to talk to you, would you listen?”
It’s her turn to stand there, words just out of reach. She ends up shrugging.
“Tell me something worth listening to,” she suggests.
His face goes blank, efficient and cold as the blast doors that come slamming down at the first sign of danger to ensure nothing gets in, nothing out.
“Right,” Jyn says, pretending like she doesn’t know for a fact that getting shot in the side hurts more than this bullshit dance of theirs. She turns, ready to be anywhere else but here.
Fuck, at this point she’d meditate with the farm boy over this.
“I didn’t think we’d survive,” Cassian calls out, stopping her feet and her heart with five words.
Five words she’d suspected, but finds that they hit different when she knows.
“Put yourself in my shoes. Uprooting your life, the only thing you’ve ever known, for someone you’ve only known a week,” Cassian says, soft enough she has to turn to better hear him. He shakes his head. “That’s madness, Jyn.”
It is. But madness is kind of their cornerstone.
It’s what gave them the courage, the sheer audacity they needed to do what they did.
“You mean like, letting a prisoner keep your blaster? Or flying off to Scariff on an unsanctioned mission?” Her voice breaks and there’s a growing pressure building up in her head, right behind her eyes. “Or maybe you mean it’s risky, like trusting the man who’d used me so that he could get close enough to assassinate my father?”
Her eyes are burning and the room around her is big enough, empty enough, to make her feel small and trapped, all at once. She clears her throat, trying to look Cassian in the eye but failing.
“Exactly,” he insists, voice all but shaking with the anger he’s no longer keeping checked. “Before you? I was a good soldier,” Cassian pauses, exhaling heavily. “My life made sense, Jyn, and then you came along. We did good things, yes, but I did things I still can’t explain to myself, let alone the Alliance.”
He stares up at her, and like a switch was flipped, the anger drains from him. It leaves behind a man who looks like he hasn’t seen enough warm meals and full nights of sleep. In the too bright lights of the mess hall, he seems made completely out of sharp lines and bruised eyes.
“And when you needed me most, all I could do was watch, concussed and fucking useless, as the person who inspired all that madness almost died.”
Jyn realizes, too late, that maybe the silence was preferable. “How’s that my fault?” She wonders, because she’s fine carrying the sins of her fathers. She’s made her peace with her own fuck ups, too, but it’s not right that he expects her to break her back by adding Cassian’s shit to the pile.
“It’s not.”
Jyn snorts. “You have a funny way of showing that.”
“Probably,” he agrees. “You terrify me, Jyn,” Cassian says, softer. Like she’s the one breaking his heart. “Of course I ran.”
She sees red.
Sees a green glow coming from them on the horizon.
“Fuck -“
“But I’m not running anymore,” he says, cutting her off.
It’s not a threat, it just feels like one for reasons she can’t quite parse.
When she finally gathers the courage to look at him, Cassian’s staring up at her looking like a Partisan who’s seen one too many missions back-to-back. Fragile and dangerous, all at once.
“Right, and what does that mean, Cassian?”
He shrugs. “Based on our limited history? Probably a court martial.”
Jyn just stares over at him, not sure if this is a joke or a mental break. On rebel bases, it can be hard to tell.
Cassian pauses, considering something that he seems to chew on before looking up and proclaiming, “Also, Solo’s no good for you.”
Jyn feels her brows raise high enough to kiss her hairline. “Too bad you don’t get to have an opinion on that.”
“I do, though,” he says, calm and cool in the way that he adopted when they’d walked through an Imperial Base. “I’m sure he’s fun,” Cassian says that word the same way Baze says ’storm trooper’, “but you need things he can’t give you.”
The egos of human men will never cease to amaze Jyn. If scientists could find a way to harness it, to use it to fuel ships, the balance of power in the galaxy would change overnight.
The Falcon would become unstoppable.
Jyn considers the idiot before her. “And you think you can?”
Cassian shrugs. “I know what I want, and unlike your smuggler, I’m not afraid to do what it takes to get it.”
His gaze darkens, eyes reducing to that eerie bleakness Jyn’s only ever seen after the clusterfuck on Eadu. Back when they’d both been soaking wet and running out of lies that the other person would believe. Cassian turns to look down at the table in front of him, placing both his hands flat against the surface.
He looks his hands over, finger by finger, methodical in his examination while the rest of him is far too still. Finally he speaks.
“But I also know no one can make you do anything you don’t want to do, so at least be careful with him,” he says. “He’s greedy, his eyes will always be on another prize.”
It takes her a moment, but Jyn finally feels the pieces click together. Feels a small ache in her chest, maybe because Cassian is trying to warn her.
Even Cassian, who apparently wants her now, knows that no one would ever pick Jyn over Leia if they had options.
“I know about Leia,” she assures him. She exhales, scrubbing a hand over her face and for a moment, she toys with the idea of regretting ever meeting Solo. It’s an easy enough thought to dismiss.
When she looks back to the man before her, he’s still frozen in place but his eyes are burning with that righteous fire.
She knows that fire. It kept her alive, kept her hurting others because it made her own hurt feel less.
“He loves her,” Jyn says, hoping Cassian can understand what she’s saying as well as the lengths she will go to if he makes her regret telling him this.
Solo has too much heart, but somehow there’s never any left over for himself.
Cassian’s head cocks to the side. “And you’re okay wi-” he cuts himself off mid snarl, pausing to breathe in and out. He sits there, silent and angry, looking for the right words before starting again.
She’s expecting something cruel dismissal of Solo, maybe some platitude about what Jyn deserves. The kind of thing you’d expect to hear from a respected officer in the Alliance.
What she gets is, “How upset would you be if I killed him?”
Jyn can’t help it, the laughter bubbles up out of her like a pipe burst. It has her barely able to keep herself upright from the force of it, her tray falling to the floor, her meal scattered much the same. She braces herself as best she can as she tries to ride it out, one hand desperately trying to hold herself up and pressed against the table top, the other pressed to her side, trying to stop her stitches from popping.
Cassian just watches her, unamused and unfazed. Right up until he clicks his tongue, and pulls her hand from her side. He frowns down at her side like he had when he’d seen his blaster in her hands.
She wonders what he’d look like if he knew where her current blaster came from. If it wasn’t for the uncontrollable laughter preventing her from doing so, Jyn would probably tell him.
Just to see, to find out.
“Come on,” Cassian says, standing. “You’re bleeding.”
Isn’t that always the way with them, though?
Jyn closes her eyes, each ragged inhale bringing in too little air and leaving her lungs burning, and the hysteria refusing to stop pouring from her even as he pulls her arm around his shoulders.
“I’ve got you,” he says, softer now, his hand still in hers. “Come on, Jyn.”
Cassian sits on the edge of her gurney, one leg absently kicking back and forth as he watches the med droid reapplying her stitches and beeping it’s displeasure at Jyn’s self-care.
It won’t let her near the painkillers, but the sedatives in her system help. Make her feel sluggish and fuzzy around the edges that are normally so sharp.
“You can’t kill Solo,” Jyn blurts out, because she had been meaning to say this and she finally can. She’d tried before, but she’d been a bit distracted by being all but dragged through base while people kept giving them looks as Jyn’s body over did it with the healing power of laughter.
“I could,” Cassian says with a calm surety.
Jyn rolls her eyes, because what a fucking sociopath.
Force, Jedha would have gone a lot differently if Cassian had brought this kind of honesty to the table back then. Saw had always approved of anyone who thought murder was an acceptable answer to perceived slights against her. He would have happily seen them off with his blessing, Bodhi, her papa’s message, and a dowry of stolen Imperial plasma grenades.
“I’d hate you if you did,” she promises him, poking at the fresh row of stitches until a metal hand slaps her away. “The rebellion stole all my friends, Solo’s all I have left.”
He gives her a look. “The rebellion didn’t -“
“They did,” Jyn snarls, deciding that she’s allowed to get a little dramatic about it given the situation and recent mental health crisis that half the Alliance probably has heard about by now. She exhales, leaning back into the gurney and the lumpy pillow that has probably been around offering little to no comfort to patients experiencing everything from child birth to sucking chest wounds.
“Also, orange is such a stupid color for flight suits,” because it needs to be said.
Cassian’s lips twitch up into a smile. “The Partisan flag is-“
“It’s burnt sienna,” Jyn says, narrowing her eyes. “Which is different.”
He hums, and then there’s a hand on her knee. Just laying there. Jyn frowns down at it and then back up at the man it belongs to.
“You say the rebellion stole from you?” Cassian smiles, and yeah, Jyn gets why Draven keeps him around. “You were a thief, Jyn. If you miss us so much, steal us back.”
It’s really unfair how much that makes sense, how much she’s tempted to do just that.
It’s also really unfair that she’s pretty sure Cassian is very aware given his fond little smirk.
Cassian is the one to walk her back to her room. Well, Solo’s room.
He’s not exactly enamored with her staying here, but it’s not like people who aren’t part of the Alliance get rooms, she feels the need to remind him.
“There are other bunks,” he insists, sour as tauntaun milk.
“I see why they got this guy working intel,” Solo drawls, not bothering to look up from where he and Chewie are in the middle of a game of Corellian Spike. “Nothing gets by him.”
Thankfully, Chewie leans back in his chair and uses his considerable reach to hit the control panel by the door before Cassian decides to cross the threshold.
Solo smirks up at the Wookiee. “Admit it, your life would be empty without me.”
Chewie objects, at length, to this accusation.
She’s halfway asleep, wrapped up in the warmth of her friendly neighborhood scoundrel when the fuzzy blur lifts enough for her to remember what she’s been meaning to tell Solo.
“Don’t go anywhere alone with Cassian for a while, okay?”
Solo mutters something under his breath, cranky at being woken up, and nuzzles back into her in an attempt to slide back into unconsciousness.
Only to freeze.
“Sweetheart,” he says slowly, “Due to the ominous nature of that comment, I’m gonna need to request a little more information.”
“Tomorrow?” Jyn says hopefully.
“Erso.”
Ugh. Fine.
There was some truth to what Cassian had said. Some blame that’s on Jyn’s side of the fence for not coming as much as she could have and for, more damningly, how she’s made no effort to reach out to them since Solo dragged her to Hoth’s medics.
For all she misses them, she sure hasn’t been showing them. Hasn’t been trying to meet them halfway, too content to let old pains keep them all at a distance.
There’s a comparison there, one she would prefer not to acknowledge, but feels all the same.
It has her limping through the frigid hallways, looking for a familiar ponytail. What she finds is a man with his hair shorn down in a style that’s remnant of the clone troopers. Jyn can’t stop looking, and with a roll of his eyes, Bodhi leans down as he pulls her hands up to feel.
It’s fuzzy on the sides, soft and tingly when she moves her fingers across it.
“When did this happen?” She wonders.
The smile on his face falters, just a little. “Changed it up about a year or so ago.”
There’s a stone, sinking in her gut. It hadn’t been that long. It couldn’t have been.
Only, yeah. Yeah, it probably has been about that long since they did more than leave each other voice messages in-between his missions and her adventures.
“You and I will have to do better from now on, or who knows what else you might miss,” he teases, a crooked smile gentling the reminder they both know she deserves.
Jyn nods. Yeah.
She can do better.
They take it slow.
They share meals in the mess hall. Sitting amongst their friends because that helps. He walks her from the mess hall to the gym where she and Baze give lessons to new recruits and rusty ones.
Sometimes, before he leaves, his hand reaches out. His fingers brush against the side of her palm, sliding along the side of her fingers in a strange, silent goodbye.
In the evenings they take their dinner trays to the hangar, find a place tucked out of the way and they sit and eat. Talking when they can, staring holes into the hangar bay when they can't.
Cassian has a sweet tooth, and sometimes she hands over her desert and will accept it like a man accepting eight dozen plasma rifles. Inspecting it on his plate, turning it around from all angles, before nodding his acceptance and dishing out whatever quantity of the carbohydrate of the day his mental math has appraised her offering to be worth.
The problem is, he learned to barter in the Alliance. Jyn learned to barter with Partisans, and she does her own math.
They break a lot of utensils in the ensuing carbohydrate wars.
There’s a room, somehow miraculously located right next to Cassian’s that becomes vacant. Somehow, despite not being a rebel, let alone having a room request filled out, Jyn’s name was at the top of the list for it.
“A coincidence,” Cassian assures her.
When he takes her to see it, just to look, he’d assured her, all her items have somehow been packed up and somehow deposited in the room.
“A -“
“Coincidence,” Jyn finishes for him, in a drawl. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
Cassian sits on her bed, watching her pull her meager possessions from the three boxes and shuffle them around the room.
Sharp, dark eyes that watch her every move. It should be unnerving, but there’s something a little wrong with her, something that understands what his intentions are and aren’t. It makes the attention feel comforting.
Safe.
Jyn pauses in her unpacking. Leans against the wall, watching him right back. Like a big cat, he simply blinks over at her, leaning back in a lazy sprawl.
“You never told me what it is you want,” she reminds him.
He smiles, utterly unbothered by her question. “You know what I want.”
She considers him, chewing on her lip.
Jyn knows he wants her, knows he hates Solo in her bed, but she also knows that despite his threats and declarations, he never does more than watch her and occasionally run a hand down hers.
“Maybe I don’t,” she admits, all aware she’d assumed once before and look how that turned out.
Cassian, to his credit, doesn't mock her so much as he weighs her words. Pushing himself up from her bed he starts closing the distance between them with a pace slow enough to feel like he’s giving her a chance to flee.
When he gets close enough that she can feel the warmth of his body, but not his touch, he shoves his hands in his pockets. Rocking back on his heels he looks her up and down with an appreciative smile.
He angles his head to the side, bending in until their eyes are at the same level.
Jyn wants.
To push past him, and out the door.
To shove him back, down onto her bed and then follow him down.
To wipe the smile off his face, to remind him he’s not the only one here with power.
“Do you really want to know what it is I want?” His words come out a low rumble.
She swallows and nods, not trusting her words.
Cassian takes a step closer, pressing his chest to hers and his lips next to her ear. “I want a lot of things.”
Closing her eyes, Jyn keeps her breath steady even as he lingers, exhaling against her skin before there’s a faint whisper of lips just under her ear.
“Right now, I really want you to keep that fucking criminal out of your bed,” he says, his voice as unyielding as it had been in the aftermath of Eadu.
Shivers comes, rolling her body closer to his which does nothing to help her issues. There’s something wrong with her.
Probably with Cassian too.
She’s not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad one.
“If you have a problem with criminals, you’ll have a problem with me,” she hears herself say, unsure if it’s a defense of Solo or something born of the fear of being seen.
“You’re trouble, Jyn, but you’re never a problem,” he assures her, his voice softer but the rest of him unrelentingly solid against her.
She huffs a soft laugh. “Liar.”
“By profession,” he assures her with a scrape of teeth against her jaw, hot breath climbing up the side of her face. “But not here, not unless you want me too.”
Jyn doesn’t know what to make of that, just knows she can’t think with him this close and this intense. Her hand finds his chest, and for a second he leans into the touch until he feels the pressure she’s applying.
He retreats without complaint, letting her move him back.
“Think about it,” he says, but his chest is heaving like he’d recently run for his life.
It’s nice to know she’s not the only one here feeling punch drunk.
“Maybe. He’s there when I need him and knows how to show me a good time,” licking her lips she takes in the shuttered look on Cassian’s face, the hard line of his jaw. “Maybe I like having a criminal in my bed.”
Maybe she likes knowing her heart is as safe as the rest of her with Solo.
“Lucky, then, that you already know the lengths I’ve already gone for you when I barely knew you,” Cassian muses, turning and heading towards her door. He presses the panel control without looking back at her and slipping out into the base.
Cassian still has his work, the kind that takes him off base. It doesn't matter that their bridge is half built, not when there's a war going on.
"It'll be a while," he tells her, eyes searching her face for a clue to her response.
Jyn knows. He wouldn't look this miserable over just a week.
His eyes flicker back to where Solo is sprawled out on his bunk, tablet in hand. For the first time in a while, there’s no anger in his face at finding Solo there.
“You'll take care of her?"
"She'll take care of herself," Jyn reminds the room.
"Oh, this is novel,” Solo mutters. "The new guy giving the pro pointers on how to do his job."
“If you want me to give you something, just ask,” Cassian says with a smile that looks about as friendly as a blaster.
Solo rolls his eyes. He’s gotten a little cocky since Jyn promised to defend his honor.
There is a difference between turning into a ghost to avoid the woman who gave you a midlife crisis and going on a mission. Jyn gets this. She gets that there’s a war going on outside and it doesn’t come with a pause button she can push until she and Cassian figure their shit out.
The problem is, what you know and what your brain thinks it knows isn’t always a ven diagram, sometimes it’s just two fucking circles.
She listens to the voice in the back of her head that sounds like rolling thunder and orders shouted across battlefields. Finds the gym and Baze and tries to burn through her stupidity through a little violence.
He tells her she’s gotten soft and Jyn maybe sorta regrets not telling him that there’s still sixteen stitches in her side and three more on her shoulder.
Baze is a smart cookie though, and he figures it out soon enough and there is a reckoning she only half listens too.
Baze’s students aren’t as smart as their instructor.
She’s not in a bad way, but she is probably just a little too close to listening to that siren song of sore muscles and empty thoughts that can turn men into berserkers and Jyn into one of Saw’s best.
Things get a little fuzzy that close to the music, and it takes her a moment to realize the person with a hand locked around her wrist is Solo.
He’s not a fighter, but he’s a survivor. More importantly, he’s got mass and a knowledge of how to use that mass on better fighters to throw them off. At some point they’re both panting and angry, he’s on top, but only just and Jyn’s not sure how that happened.
“Easy, tiger,” he says, but it’s too loud, it’s like he’s yelling and she can taste blood but she can’t find a wound in her mouth.
“There you are,” Solo’s voice is softer this time, soothing. “Come on, sweetheart, you’re scaring the baby rebels.”
Jyn goes limp against the matts, sucking in air and letting the fight leave her as he holds her down. Holds her together.
Solo starts to get up, starts to let her go, but she isn’t ready. She’s too many pieces and none of them lock together the way they should. They all want to fly away and if they do, she’s terrified they’ll be nothing left of her.
When his hands leave her wrists, she lashes out, wrapping hers around his because she needs contact and touch and if he won’t give it to her, she’ll take it.
You were a thief, Jyn, another voice whispers. Steal us back.
Above her, Solo is staring down at her like she’s the one pinning him. Like he’s the one with blood in his mouth and static in his brain.
He looks off to the side. “Clear out the room,” he tells whoever has his attention, but it’s not the scoundrel’s voice, not the cocky pilot, it’s something new.
She closes her eyes, for just a moment, but when she opens them again Solo is laying next to her on the mat. They’re close, but not touching apart from her deathgrip on his wrist.
At some point, the chaos inside her seems to have settled leaving nothing but a sore body and the stink of a hard sweat.
“You wanna talk about it?”
Jyn tries to talk, but she has to stop and swallow. Lick at cracked, dry lips before she can reattempt it.
“Fuck no.”
Solo nods. “Wanna fuck?”
Everything on her hurts, and while that’s not usually enough to matter, today it is. She shakes her head no.
“Final offer,” he says, and there’s something testing in his voice that wasn’t there for the first two. “The Princess confiscated some top shelf liquor from the engineer’s room. I may know where it is, but I need a look out.”
Jyn blinks over at Solo, who has red lines from the gym mats pressed into his face and has somehow convinced even the rebel gym rats to clear out.
For her.
“I’m in,” Jyn assures him.
Solo doesn’t need a lookout. And given the three empty holes in the crate, it’s hardly his first time coming down here. Still, Jyn plays along and Solo doesn’t imply she’s a basket case and everything’s fine.
They climb into the cockpit of the Falcon, pretend the windows show them stars and not a cement wall, some droids, and a kid who doesn’t look old enough to even know how to shave, getting his ass handed to him for losing some kind of tool.
The bottle gets passed back and forth until Jyn’s eyelids are too heavy to keep them open.
“I’d pretend to be shocked, but I suppose there’s no point,” a voice hisses, trying hard to be quiet but too angry to really hit the mark. “Do you want to explain to me why I have complaints about some civilians kicking everyone out of the gym?”
There’s a pause, the sound of liquid moving and someone drinking.
“Not particularly, no.”
The silence stretches out. “If I find out you two were in there -“
“You’ll what?” Solo wonders. There’s another long pull from the bottle, then, “I’d swear you sound jealous, but that’s not possible, right Princess?”
There’s a pause, and an angry sigh.
“Can we not do this here?” Leia says, sounding smaller than her previous anger had made her seem. “I want to yell at you and she looks like she needs all the sleep she can get.”
“You want to go to some place where no one will hear us?” Solo says, his charisma cranked up so far it risks backfiring.
Only, it doesn’t. There’s a laugh, but the kind people make when they’re trying to pretend they’re not charmed.
“Less and less, with every moment.”
She can hear Solo pushing himself up, the sound of a bottle being left on the the console, and -
“Oh, you might as well bring that along,” Leia insists.
A scrape, a soft gust of wind as Solo moves past her and then a low, “Whatever you say, princess.”
Force, how these two hadn’t figured it out already is beyond Jyn.
There’s an awkward lunch the next day where both of them end up moving food around on their plates, unable to look at each other.
Jyn thinks out about thirty different ways to say ‘I’m gonna take a chance on something and if I do that while fucking you, I think Cassian might actually disappear you. Also, I’m pretty sure your princess would sooner let the farm boy into her bed than a guy who has his fuckbuddy over often enough that half of his closet is full of her clothes.’
Somehow, their lunch ends and finds them back in his room with Jyn crawling into his lap while Solo rips the buttons off her shirt.
There’s a space between them when they’re done.
There’s not normally space between them afterwards.
The thing is, Jyn doesn’t think it was just Solo who put that space there.
“Oh,” she realizes. “This was our goodbye, wasn’t it?”
He blinks over at her, a little fond, a little mocking, and all Solo.
“You’re an idiot, Erso.”
It should be awkward and lame, but somehow he reaches over and gently punches at her shoulder and somehow, yeah. She’s an idiot. This isn’t goodbye, this is just a new chapter for them.
One where they keep their pants on.
Chewie’s gonna be thrilled.
She carries one box and Solo carries the other back to her room. Their contents get dumped out on her bunk, and then the boxes get filled with Solo’s belongings from her room.
Jyn eyes the blaster, tucked into her holster, hanging from the hook intended for winter coats.
“That’s yours now,” Solo says, but he won’t look at her.
“Yeah?”
He nods, focusing way too hard on his efforts to go sorting through a drawer. He throws a shirt of his in the box, then steals her good socks like she won’t notice.
Like his good socks aren’t already on her bed, hidden inside her sleeping pants from his room because unlike him, she doesn’t get caught.
“You know we’re still gonna be -“
“Yeah,” Jyn nods, biting at her lip and wondering what to say. Crossing her arms, she wanders closer.
He knocks his shoulder into hers and she rests her head on his shoulder.
“If your shit doesn’t work out, I’m sure I can talk her highness into some kind of rental program.” Solo offers with unearned confidence and the kind of hubris that might result in Solo not being able to make little Solos.
“If anyone is gonna crash and burn, it’s gonna be you two,” Jyn says, but her heart isn’t in it.
Judging from the soft kiss that gets placed on the crown of her head, Solo’s lost his taste for the joke too.
Jyn sighs, pretending she isn’t afraid. Not just for herself, but for Solo.
“It’s gonna be okay, Erso,” he whispers. “We’re survivors. We’ll survive.”
The door to her room opens, way too early to be anything good. It has her reaching for Solo’s blaster only to stop because -
Because it’s good.
It’s Cassian.
He who looks a little worn around around the edges, and more than a little tired, but he's here.
Cassian's here.
Given the bag in his hand and the other over his shoulder, he came right here.
To her.
Jyn can't help the smile on her face, and doesn't want to after she sees it light up Cassian's in response.
“Come to check under my bunk for criminals?” She teases, only the look on his face says maybe he was and maybe he’s not sure if that’s okay.
Jyn doesn’t have the emotional bandwidth to deal with that, so instead she reholsters her blaster and turns on the light by her bunk.
He looks worse in the light, but she keeps that thought trapped behind her teeth because she’s been in his shoes. Tired and sore, wanting to remember what it’s like to be a person and not a blunt instrument in a war.
Though, admittedly, he’s more of a precision weapon.
The scalpel to her hammer.
And isn't that a pretty thought that should never, ever make it into the medics ears, lest they all get another round of Rebel Alliance brand psych evals.
Belatedly, she realizes too much time has passed in too much silence. She’s sitting on the edge of her bunk, looking up at him, and he’s looking at her like he’s waiting for a passcode to be spoken.
Jyn doesn’t know what he needs to hear, but she’s always been better with her fists than her words.
For him, she’ll try, though.
Getting up, slow enough that he can anticipate and adjust as needed, she makes her way to him. Meets his eyes as she fists her hands in his shirt.
“Made Solo pack up all his shit,” she informs him. “He stole my good socks.”
His eyes turn to her room, seeking out confirmation on top of her dresser, her open closet door, before returning to her. His eyes are narrowed, staring a hole into her like he’s waiting for something from her.
Swallowing, he looks away. “I’ll get you new socks,” Cassian eventually says, his words sounding somehow more profound than just a promise of warm toes.
“I don’t need new socks.” She’d preemptively stolen Solo’s, after all, but more importantly, she also really doesn’t want this to be misunderstood.
“Okay,” Cassian frowns, and she can see the gears spinning and when he speaks he sounds a lot less confident than she’s ever heard him before. “What do you want?”
She wants to rough him up, she wants to be so sweet to Cassian that he’ll think it’s a trap.
Jyn, more than any of this, wants to not fuck this up.
When Baze had insisted they talk about this, he’d stressed the importance of restraint. Moderation.
The two of them are used to a life that’s high speed, no drag, but that is not how things between people are supposed to work.
She’d argue, but Baze is the one in a long term, healthy(ish) relationship. All the relationships Jyn has been familiar with involve betrayal, screaming fights, transactional comfort, or one person outliving another.
So, Jyn’s gonna be calm. She’s gonna take this slow.
Besides, they’re both damaged enough that this is probably the only safe way to start this thing between them.
Trying to sound braver than she feels, Jyn meets his eyes.
“I want,” and she stops, because there’s not a word she knows that has a strong enough sentiment behind it.
They aren’t normal people, that is the problem.
In human soldier’s years, they’re already in their twilight years. There’s only so many years of fight in them before the fight finally runs them down, leaves them cold and still on a battlefield that no one will remember in a hundred years. Promising someone forever is a lot easier to do when you know forever is only gonna another ten years or so, max.
She could give Cassian ten years. She’s given a lot more for a lot less. The problem is explaining to him that she’s not having another moment of hysteria or overconfidence.
“I want,” she tries again, but ‘it all’ is too vague and ‘you’ is somehow not possessive enough to match the need inside her.
Cassian just nods. “Okay,” he says, soft enough it’s hard to hear over the faint hum of warmed air that’s being cycled through the frozen base.
He steps closer, his duffle hitting the ground as he goes, and he keeps walking until there’s no space left between them. Until she has to turn her face up and he leans down because they’re finally finding a middle ground that works for them, and of course it ends up being a fucking metaphor that Chirrut will undoubtably know about and casually throw into conversations with far too much smugness -
“Okay?” He says, and it’s a question, but only in the way a sun is a potential source of warmth.
Jyn wants to tell Cassian that they’re supposed to take this slow, that this needs to be done carefully, but instead she’s grabbing him by his lapels and dragging him down into a kiss.
Shock at her own actions ends up stalling her out once the match it lit. She stands there frozen, wondering how badly this will go, but Cassian doesn’t seem to have the same compunctions. He keeps kissing her, cradles her head and angles his head against hers like this is just another aspect of the history they share.
Slowly, his lips coax hers back to life and he’s kind enough not to mention how she has a death grip on his shirt, how she’s all but using it to keep herself upright. It has to be uncomfortable, it has to feel like hell on his neck, but she can’t let go and he can’t stop kissing her long enough to say anything that would matter.
When they both finally part, his arm around her waist and hers still ruining a perfectly good shirt, he smiles, pressing his forehead against hers.
“Okay,” he says, breathless and happy in a way she’d like to never forget. “Okay.”
Leia, very politely, does not laugh her out of the room. Doesn’t make Jyn repeat herself, jump through hoops, or have her navigate a gauntlet with a pinless grenade she’s not allowed to abandon.
(Jyn’s not really sure what Rebel hazing looks like, but based on Cassian’s reaction to that story that there's pretty much no chance she’ll need to worry about that.)
It is all very by the book, if noticeably awkward in a way that is not helped by Solo and Chewie inviting themselves into the room and refusing to be silently shamed into leaving.
There’s some exaggerated sighing and pontificating, and one weasel faced senator who takes the floor to huff and puff about how despite Scarf he doesn’t trust Jyn, like really, at all.
The biggest hiccup comes with trying to give an answer to everyone who asks Jyn variations of why now and why not before.
Jyn does not say, as Solo had suggested during his pep talk before hand, that Rebel dick is just that good.
Instead she smiles with her teeth hidden away and tells them the things they keep forgetting. She’s lost two fathers and a mother to the Empire. She almost died, multiple times, and if for no other reason than not dying, she’d rather like the option of some backup the next time she tries to smuggle documents off an Empire controlled planet.
“So,” Leia says, looking as if she’d heard all that went unsaid but didn’t mind it. “You want a place within our little rebellion.”
“Yes,” Jyn says, giving Leia a little nod and projecting what she hopes comes off as credibility, a willingness not to resort to violence over not-so-subtle insults, and a lack of issues with their organization’s choice on uniforms.
Leia's lips purse, her eyes dragging over Jyn.
“Is there a reason you’re dragging this out, princess?” Solo calls from the seat he’s been lazily rocking back and forth on, trying and failing to keep balance on the two back to legs. “You know you need her, and you know Captain Cranky is gonna make that face if you say no.” Solo manages to achieve balance for all of two seconds before he makes a triumphant noise that spells out his very literal downfall.
Chewie’s booming laughter fills the room and Force, Jyn would like to be anywhere else than here.
Rubbing the bridge of her nose, Leia takes a long, slow inhale, clearly wondering why she tolerates the man currently scrambling up from the floor.
Jyn knows why, but she’s smart enough not to say anything.
“Captain Andor seems to think you might help us find a way to counter the guerrilla tactics the Empire is starting to employ within their territory,” she says, her tone doing a good job of not sounding like she doesn’t believe that, not even a little.
Which, fair.
You can guard against kill shots and armor up what’s most vulnerable, but you can’t guard against guerrilla tactics in any meaningful way. Trying to outmaneuver and out-think well managed guerrilla troops is a lot like getting a pilot drunk, strapping a blindfold on them, and telling them to land an X-Wing in the hangar two planets over.
There is a chance it you’ll pull your plan off.
But there’s a much bigger chance you’ll be down a pilot.
“I can certainly try,” Jyn says, because it’s that or reminding the room of how long the Partisans held on despite the entire Empire trying to hunt them down.
The smile she gets aimed her way reminds her that Leia is more than just the person who hurts Solo’s heart from time to time. She’s also someone who knows that trying is sometimes the best you can hope for.
“Good,” she insists. “Welcome to the rebellion, Miss Erso.”
Behind Leia’s shoulder Solo is mouthing I told you so, and Jyn gets it, okay. She finally gets it. The princess is a fucking catch.
Cassian is waiting outside the conference room when she emerges. The bags under his eyes are lighter than they were a week ago, but darker than they’d been three days ago.
From the wary looks he’s getting from the others in the main area, he’s probably been doing something to scare the children.
It shouldn’t be as charming as it is.
“Yeah?” He says, a hesitant, hopeful smile breaking out on his face.
“Yeah,” Jyn agrees. “Looks like you’re stuck with me, Andor.”
They celebrate the good news
There’s nothing special about Cassian’s room. It could be any other rebel’s room, right up until you slide into his bed.
She’s got her hands in his hair and his head between her thighs, her head thrown because he is a fucking tease and she hates him, but also she would also kill anyone who looked at him wrong for the rest of his life if he’d just keeps doing that.
But that’s when she sees it.
An old frequency, one she hasn’t used in years.
The marker is worn away, but each digit is still visible thanks to the pathing where the paint had been worn away.
There’s a finger slipping inside her, and it’s strange to realize that the finger might be the same one that traced those numbers until the marker gave way, and then the paint, until all that was left was reinforced steel.
It caves her chest in, reinforcing it stronger than it was before.
She tugs at his hair, staring down to where he is pulling away from her, his hair still in her hands, his eyes dark, and his face wet. He looks like something worth dying for and Jyn is at least self aware enough to realize that doesn’t mean a whole lot when she almost died from Chewie’s inability to read a map.
“You should know,” she says, and she hears how wrecked she sounds and she’d be ashamed if it wasn’t him. “I’m not gonna be okay with anyone else having you.”
She doesn’t know what she’d do, but it wouldn’t be pretty.
“Okay,” he says, a baffled expression on his face.
“Even on missions,” she clarifies.
Cassian just blinks up at her, and then he’s laughing, low and pleased in a way Jyn doesn’t know how to read.
“Did you only just realize this?” He wonders once he gets his laughter under control. “Jyn, you share worse than I do.”
Jyn doesn’t have to take this bullshit. She pulls him back where she’d prefer him, and keeps her eyes on the top of his bunk, the place where he passed the years tracing a number he never used.
Cassian leaves, and she goes with him. She sets up on the other side of the market from where his contact is supposed to meet him half an hour after he arrives. Keeps a cup of caf in front of her and keeps a lively game of Sabacc going on her tablet that she only pretends to be invested in.
When men across from her pull their blasters, she pulls hers.
There’s a firefight, one that turns into a brawl once blasters get dropped and wrists get shattered. Jyn hadn’t been so sure how it would end, but the moment the first fist flies and the guy recoils when she takes a hit and rolls into it, she knows.
This victory is theirs.
Across the fray, Cassian is watching her with a bloody nose and an indignant sort of look that says he wants to know why she’s laughing but he also wants her to focus.
Cassian is a chameleon when he wants to be. His face, his voice, even the way he holds his body can change when he wants it too.
It’s fascinating and terrifying in equal parts that he can make himself into something that her subconscious instinctively doesn’t trust when she’s blindsided by a transformation, even after all this time.
There are times where his change isn’t intentional. Sometimes it’s just him, feeling too much, and not knowing how to filter it all down into something he can repackage.
She’s getting better at spotting these moments. At recognizing the placid face that means he’s drowning. Better at knowing that behind calm, still motions, his heart is beating like he's prey and not a soldier. At knowing that behind shuttered eyes, he is desperately trying to figure out what face has the best chance of keeping her from running.
There’s another face she’s starting to recognize. It looks like that one, but there’s something hard around the edges of it, the motions he makes. A package ripped open with just a little too much force, a cup held with white knuckles even as he smiles.
“That’s going to bruise,” he tells her, his words cold as the planet they left from.
“I know,” it’s not her first rodeo. It won’t be her last.
Jyn rolls her shoulders, wincing at the motion that makes the back of her neck sting and burn. With a frown, she reaches up to see, but a hand catches hers before she can.
His grip is too hard for what he’s trying to do, but it’s not too hard for her.
“There’s an abrasion along the back of your neck,” he says, and there’s nothing in his tone.
“Okay,” Jyn says as she stares up at him, and doesn't look at his hand where it is trapping hers.
He inhales, holding it in far too long not to be intentional.
“Your hands are dirty,” he swallows, “and I haven’t cleaned it yet,” he rasps, and there it is. There’s all the messy humanity he doesn’t like to let spill over when he’s mad.
Like it costs him something, he drops her hand in a way that feels a lot like a man surrendering.
He still thinks he’s going to scare her away. That a man who loves her enough to get rattled when she’s hurt is gonna be the thing that has her packing her bags.
It’s cute enough that she doesn’t mind.
When Jyn lets herself get too close to flame, Cassian watches. A man eternally fascinated by the kind of honesty that fuels her preferred breed of carnage.
When the battle is done he’ll patch her up, kiss her face and knuckles, and fuck her like that green glow is creeping in at the edges of his vision.
He stands up, shoving a hand into his pocket. When he pulls it out, a familiar crystal is dangling from his fist.
Jyn blinks, hand automatically raising as she. tries to touch the back of her neck. His hand stops her and there's a fond but exasperated expression on his face.
Unsure what else to do, Jyn reaches out, touching the necklace that must have been torn off.
It would have been lost.
If it was just her, it would have been yet another memory.
But it wasn’t just her.
Cassian was there, Cassian saw whatever it was that Jyn didn’t even feel in the middle of the brawl.
Jyn licks her lips, reaching for the necklace with her free hand, wrapping her hand around the crystal and watching as he lets go. The broken leather bands are too short to fit even around her wrist, let alone her neck.
Still, he got it back.
For her.
She’s not sure how long she stares down at it, but it’s long enough Cassian sighs, pulling the necklace away from her grip. Jyn watches it slip through her fingers, feeling no fear, no apprehension. Instead she in content to stay there, staring up at him, watching him take what isn't his even though the angle makes the stinging sensation on her neck worse.
“Shower,” says gently. One of his hands comes up, trailing down the side of her face as gently as he used to touch her hand. “I’ll find something we can use to restring it while you do that, okay?”
Jyn blinks, nodding along. Yeah. She can do that.
With wet hair and raw skin, she sits on their bunk and watches as Cassian presses bandages where he can, as he drags a needle and bacta thread through her skin where that’s not enough.
There is a thin, silver chain hanging out from the breast pocket of his shirt, a familiar shape covered in fabric sitting in the bottom of the fabric. Jyn can’t look away. Can’t figure out if she wants to sleep, fuck, or try to say the pretty sorts of words that might tell Cassian about the unhinged way her body and brain reacts to him.
She wants to crawl inside him, sometimes. Wants to push and shove, wants to kiss him until he can’t breathe. She wants to know that he wants her with the same unstable energy in his veins.
Tugging at the chain, she tries to pull the necklace out and see what he’s found but he bats her hand away.
“Just a little longer,” he assures her.
Jyn hums, willing enough to lean forward, to rest her head against his shoulder as he works. To close her eyes and drift, content enough to tune out the well-meaning pinch of her work and focus instead on the smell of metal, rain, and sweat that clings to him.
“You're tired,” he observes, his voice reaching out and wrapping around her brain like an embrace. It has her eyes feeling heavier than they were before, has her leaning a little more of her weight onto him.
“No,” she lies, because he hates being alone in the pilot seat when he flies, but he’s too proud to say as much. If she sleeps now, he’ll sneak away, bring her home to Hoth and the room where her old com frequency watches over them when they sleep.
She’d much rather just wait it out. Make some caf, double thick, and then fall asleep next to him.
She’s gotten soft like that when it comes to him.
Based on the sound he makes, he doesn’t believe her, but he at least isn’t willing to turn it into a fight. The tug and pull of his needle stops, with a soft there.
There’s some fumbling, him trying to work around her, but after a moment there’s the soft jingle of metal, and then the cool drag of being pulled around her neck and over her bandage. After some more fumbling and curing, a familiar-ish weight returns.
“Don’t lose this one,” he says, and he’s teasing her, but there’s something else there, too. Something that wakes up the lazy, languid thing inside her that knows they’re safe inside the shuttle.
Pulling back, just enough to fit her lips against his, Jyn captures his lips. She’s kissed him a thousand times, at least, and she’d like at least that many more from him.
He laughs into her kiss, and she knows it’s not her best work but she just beat four large humanoids to death for him, so he can fucking stow the attitude. She bites at his lip, hoping to get that point across.
Cassian was never wired right though, arcing into her at the bite as he let a rumbling sigh out.
"I don't know why I put up with you," he lies.
"Because you love me," she reminds him.
"Oh yeah," he says with a fond look. "I suppose there's that."