Knowing me is an unfortunate enough circumstance that you didn't have to do anything.
[ Hey, she's not the one who is having a 100 point list of their failings complied by people they know and getting cupcakes as a result. His pride would be wounded if he didn't have papercuts to remind him that his pride is a useless sort of thing anyway. ]
[ Don't give him looks, Jyn, or he'll have to spend too much time dissecting them in his own mind.
Which is why he isn't looking at the cupcakes at all, he's watching her reflection in the window instead and has to stop himself from blinking too quickly when she asks...that. ]
That's... [ He takes a breath. ] Loaded sort of question isn't it?
For people who haven't done normal in a long time.
[ Cassian nods. ] It's beyond strange. Feels like a dream, completely inaccessible and unreal.
It's less about food or coffee and more about...he feels like they're always at the edge of something, which is honestly fine, but there is only so much he's willing to commit to hackable data transmissions.
Besides which, she'd said "the world wants us to be better people" and he'd been gripped with the sudden worry that she was already on her way out. Jyn does not strike him as the sort of woman very thrilled to do what an entire planet of people want her to do, not after living as long as she has flying under the Imperial radar.
So. It's about all that, but also a man needs to eat, and he strongly dislikes doing it with strangers; K-2 is busy, anyway, so after a quick exchange of where are you, exactly? there's Cassian, not quite smiling.
"Noodles, then?" You can put anything in noodles, it's what makes them a great food.
Then again, Jyn isn't much different. She's kept to herself for so long, only looking out for herself and simply trying to survive, that having someone else concerned for her general well-being is... still odd. Even odder still that she feels the pull toward him. Perhaps it's the fact she's never had a true friend before. There was Saw, of course, but that had been different. She and Cassian have really been through something, too, and something tells her they've yet to be done with their adventures. Together. That word makes her nervous, but also gives her hope. Jyn's felt a lot of that lately, really.
She also knows she cannot leave him, not when there's almost something there, a thing she really doesn't know much about. If it's only friendship, it's still a bond and connection she too doesn't quite understand, but it fills her with a warmth that makes her want to stay.
This is only noodles and coffee, but it's noodles and coffee with him, which makes it a little more than just a survival tactic. She does give him a bit of a smile and a nod.
He turns, then, and waits for her to fall in step at his side before leading them through a few narrow alleyways to a small hole in the wall restaurant. It contains a handful of booths, a counter, and a kitchen essentially, the wall covered in hand-drawn illustration of menu items. Cassian glances at her as they walk inside, holding up two fingers for the man behind the counter, who gestures at the booth furthest from the door.
"This place is good," he murmurs as they sit down. The booths are close to one another and his long legs end up bumping against hers before he pulls them back. "And the coffee isn't bad."
The restaurant is simple, but then Jyn doesn't really mind simple. Her life had only been extravagant as a small child, when her family had lived briefly on Coruscant. Though she didn't remember much, she remembered a distant father and an often distracted mother. The feelings of that time were not pleasant.
She sits across from him, her own shorter legs folding in more easily than his. "I'm sure I've had worse," she replies lightly, though it's not untrue. She quirks her brow, teasing him a little. "This is your chance to learn how I take my coffee." When someone take their orders, she gets the same as Cassian.
"Well if you like your coffee sweet..." Then she should like it here, but if she's at all like him and used to sludge masquerading as coffee, then it's a little. Weird. Nice, but weird for sure.
Cassian had no idea people used different types of chocolates in coffee before he came here, for instance.
He orders noodles that are a little on the spicy side, plenty of things to go in them. In moments, two steaming bowls of food plus a dozen or so tiny trays of food end up arranged in front of them. "So how do you take your coffee?"
There are good days and bad days. The bad usually outstrips the good in the beginning but they end and the sun rises and they start again.
There are good days and bad days and then there are days like today.
Jyn doesn't suffer from a lot of nightmares, because Jyn doesn't sleep particularly well or often, she rarely finds herself in a deep enough sleep to actually have nightmares. Instead sleeplessness plagues her until her very bones hurt, feeling like glass grinding against itself any time she so muchs as closes her eyes, an ache so deep and heavy that the very act of breathing hurts.
Eventually sleep takes her. Mid-afternoon, when the rest of the world is bustling about their daily activities Jyn finds herself still just long enough to nod off tucked in the corner of the communications tower, watching transcribed transmissions flicker across the screen, the familiar occasional static and crackle of a ship's radio as it approaches. It's all rather soothing in it's familiarity and she's asleep before she can begin to fight it.
The story comes in spurts when they find Cassian. A scream so powerful the radioman looks haunted by it. A fit, maybe, the other offers, fidgeting nervously in the presence of the (former?) Alliance officer. And then she ran. All they can offer is a point in the right direction, but the trail of hand-wringing natives is enough to find Jyn.
Under the spray of the shower, Jyn is sat, knees pressed to her chest, brown curls plastered to her forehead. Her expression is hollow, sadness found only in the perpetual downturn of her mouth. She doesn't seem to notice the water, or at least isn't bothered by the steady stream of water soaking through her clothes, fingertips starting to prune. She doesn't look up when she hears a woman warning Cassian, as if unsure he can handle what's behind the door. She doesn't look up either when the door opens and closes behind him.
But her eyes do flicker up, flecked with gold and silver like stardust and looking so impossibly broken.
A fit. He's no idiot; Jyn doesn't have fits, he's fairly certain - this is something else, and he runs through the possibilities as he makes his way to the showers, explaining to the woman that he knows what he's doing, thank you, please...and he gestures, and she leaves, and he opens the door.
His stride is quiet as he settles down, not in front of but next to her, pulling her close with an arm around her shoulders. He's silent for a while, letting her gather what she can just from his being there, ignoring the water dripping down his head and shoulders into his face and down his back.
"Jyn?" A moment's hesitation. "I could carry you."
It's only when his arm curls around her that she moves, shifting to sink against him and wrap both of her arms around his. It's with the kind of hysterical insistance that leaves no thought for any injuries and her normal care for not being too rough with him -- she isn't thinking about that right now. It's such a stark difference from the woman usually so unwilling to show any sign of weakness lest it be used against her. But she isn't thinking about that either.
"He was alone," she murmurs, ducking her head against his chest. She and Cassian had been together when Scarif had gone down, but... Bodhi had been alone. In Jyn's eyes alone meant not with her since the less traumatized part of her brain knows full well there were Alliance fighters assigned to maintain the ship so they could escape, a laughable notion now.
But he wasn't with her and he had died and Jyn had lost the one link she had left to her father, which she selfishly mourns more than the loss of the sweet, cheerful, effervescent man himself. Another facet of her crippling guilt.
It doesn't take but a second for Cassian to know who she means, what she means; Bodhi has been in his own nightmares, and Cassian is still (human? flawed?) enough that the death of a teammate, a friend, still affects him.
Bodhi was their friend, even though he can count on his fingers the number of people he's considered as such.
One arm wraps around her shoulders while the opposite hand rests against the back of her head.
"Bodhi is short for bodhisattva," he says quietly, rubbing circles into her back and holding her almost as tightly as she's holding him. "There are different kinds of them, but...there's one group, the bodhisattvas of the earth. They're born in times of conflict, to show people the way to the Truth. They agree to do this, lifetime over lifetime again, helping those they meet. He helped your father, he was the vehicle for the truth that your father loved you intensely."
"I would have preferred lies." She wouldn't have watched her father die, she wouldn't have lost her friends. She wouldn't have made friends in the first place. She would have been unhappy in her ignorance, but she wouldn't have goaded them all to their deaths. Why couldn't the truth have come without such casualties? Rogue One was the least of the sacrifices, so many Alliance fighters fell because --
What? She and her father decided to take a stand?
"Why couldn't you have just left me in that prison camp? None of this would have happened." It is, perhaps, giving herself too much credit but she can't help but blame herself for being something of a catalyst. If her father had just done less to protect her, if he had cared less, if she had continued her own personal rebellion instead of joining one far greater than herself. So many lives could have been spared.
[ To say that General Draven is not thrilled with Cassian recent decision is quite the understatement; behind closed doors he's read the riot act, told on no uncertain terms he is expected to follow orders and Cassian doesn't bother defending his decision.
It's done. This is where they are now, with the Ersos as unlikely and unexpected Resistance fighters.
Well. Jyn is fighting - Cassian suspects she'll never stop, really, which is an interesting contrast to her father, but she's off helping Bodhi with blaster training which is how Cassian ends up being the one brining food and water and coffee to Galen after he'd holed himself up in the tiny laboratory for going in five hours. ]
Glad to see you're doing better.
[ Cassian sets the food down and crosses his arms over his chest. He's not going anywhere until he sees the other man eat. ]
[ It takes Galen a moment to even process what better should be, mind only slowly coming back to concerns like food or caffeine from its calculations in the trenches; he's been entering schematic information into a program that will give the Alliance likely outcomes for detonating the reactor module. One single-piloted craft, in and out; a single delay and that ship will probably go up with the Death Star, but--he hadn't laid an easy trap, he knows that.
So. Better. Better could certainly be said for not bleeding out in the rain back down on Eadu. He almost smiles, a tipping corner of that down-turned mouth; in resting position Jyn's does the same. His daughter, after 15 years, is only barely more a known quantity than Captain Andor himself, but the glances that almost, almost past between them and don't quite catch...he imagines he would recognize those, if Lyra had ever been anything but direct, precise as a laser.
Speaking of direct. He's discovering some of that is still left to him, as long as he'd obfuscated and equivocated and delayed-- ]
And when I outlive my usefulness? Will I be worse then?
[ A mild inquiry, not accusatory or even really directed at Cassian. The young man just seems like he might be high enough on the chain of command to know, and truthfully--Galen doesn't have any expectations of a long life here. The only mercy he'll ask for is time with Jyn, just long enough for her to know--he'd loved her, never any less any second they were apart. That of all the terrible mistakes he's made he would make them all over again to know any of them had kept her safe.
But none of that is, he suspects, up to Cassian. Galen finally notices the provisions he's brought along and takes the coffee, at least, blows on it before poking around for whatever passes for a nice watery milk substitute, if one is to be had. ]
[ There is a watery milk substitute, in fact, and Cassian draws the man's attention to it with a small gesture, considering his answer carefully before opening his mouth. ]
You won't be here, should someone decide to make that decision and I become aware of it. For that matter, neither will your daughter.
[ Cassian says it with firm simplicity and yet there is very little that is simple about what he is implying. Yet, he's certain of it, and has even begun considering just where and how he'd do it.
There's no reason, in his mind, to stay if that is what the Rebellion has come to. Assassinating those who come to them looking for help. Yes, Galen went to Saw, not to the Council...but there is the fact that the difference between Saw and the organized Resistance is in varying shades of grey, and Cassian is tired of that shade growing darker with each passing moment.
He's certain he can get them off-world, set them up with a resources, and help them disappear. What happens after that? He has no idea. ]
The gesture is appreciated, small as it is--maybe that's why, actually, so small a concession between two people. His life has been for so long directed by work on a grand, apocalyptic scale little kindnesses loom large. "Thank you." A little tip of his head, the gesture reserved. "I've never been able to make myself like the taste."
This is as much because he needs a moment as anything, hands steady in shuffling around coffee additives. "She must have made quite an impression, if you care for her so quickly."
He's pretty sure, because it seems sensible, Cassian could have the kindest heart of all life everywhere, and even he would think twice about simply allowing the Known Imperial Collaborator, the one whose work was the heart of the Death Star, to go free without consequence. But to let Jyn go, to have the compassion not to leave her alone again ...that, yes. He can understand.
"It's terrible stuff," Cassian admits, because it is the honest truth, but it's the best of what they have unfortunately. Terrible stuff. Completely unsurprising, that, and Cassian thinks with a vague air of unease that the man must be used to better than this. "I'm sorry we don't have anything else."
She must have made quite an impression and Cassian thinks of the way she spun when she knocked several Stormtroopers to the ground, and he thinks of the look on her face after she'd seen the message from her father and he thinks this is an understatement. He would rather hedge, oh he would rather, but he feels he owes this man an explanation.
Or several.
"She deserves family." He nods, mouth pressed into a thin line. "And peace if she wants it."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
[ for kybercore ]
[ Hey, she's not the one who is having a 100 point list of their failings complied by people they know and getting cupcakes as a result. His pride would be wounded if he didn't have papercuts to remind him that his pride is a useless sort of thing anyway. ]
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I've had worse things happen.
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Well, that's comforting.
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Does normal feel as strange to you as it does to me?
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Which is why he isn't looking at the cupcakes at all, he's watching her reflection in the window instead and has to stop himself from blinking too quickly when she asks...that. ]
That's... [ He takes a breath. ] Loaded sort of question isn't it?
For people who haven't done normal in a long time.
[ Cassian nods. ] It's beyond strange. Feels like a dream, completely inaccessible and unreal.
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[ for herchoice ]
Besides which, she'd said "the world wants us to be better people" and he'd been gripped with the sudden worry that she was already on her way out. Jyn does not strike him as the sort of woman very thrilled to do what an entire planet of people want her to do, not after living as long as she has flying under the Imperial radar.
So. It's about all that, but also a man needs to eat, and he strongly dislikes doing it with strangers; K-2 is busy, anyway, so after a quick exchange of where are you, exactly? there's Cassian, not quite smiling.
"Noodles, then?" You can put anything in noodles, it's what makes them a great food.
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Then again, Jyn isn't much different. She's kept to herself for so long, only looking out for herself and simply trying to survive, that having someone else concerned for her general well-being is... still odd. Even odder still that she feels the pull toward him. Perhaps it's the fact she's never had a true friend before. There was Saw, of course, but that had been different. She and Cassian have really been through something, too, and something tells her they've yet to be done with their adventures. Together. That word makes her nervous, but also gives her hope. Jyn's felt a lot of that lately, really.
She also knows she cannot leave him, not when there's almost something there, a thing she really doesn't know much about. If it's only friendship, it's still a bond and connection she too doesn't quite understand, but it fills her with a warmth that makes her want to stay.
This is only noodles and coffee, but it's noodles and coffee with him, which makes it a little more than just a survival tactic. She does give him a bit of a smile and a nod.
"Noodles it is," she agrees lightly.
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"This place is good," he murmurs as they sit down. The booths are close to one another and his long legs end up bumping against hers before he pulls them back. "And the coffee isn't bad."
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She sits across from him, her own shorter legs folding in more easily than his. "I'm sure I've had worse," she replies lightly, though it's not untrue. She quirks her brow, teasing him a little. "This is your chance to learn how I take my coffee." When someone take their orders, she gets the same as Cassian.
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Cassian had no idea people used different types of chocolates in coffee before he came here, for instance.
He orders noodles that are a little on the spicy side, plenty of things to go in them. In moments, two steaming bowls of food plus a dozen or so tiny trays of food end up arranged in front of them. "So how do you take your coffee?"
creeps on u
There are good days and bad days. The bad usually outstrips the good in the beginning but they end and the sun rises and they start again.
There are good days and bad days and then there are days like today.
Jyn doesn't suffer from a lot of nightmares, because Jyn doesn't sleep particularly well or often, she rarely finds herself in a deep enough sleep to actually have nightmares. Instead sleeplessness plagues her until her very bones hurt, feeling like glass grinding against itself any time she so muchs as closes her eyes, an ache so deep and heavy that the very act of breathing hurts.
Eventually sleep takes her. Mid-afternoon, when the rest of the world is bustling about their daily activities Jyn finds herself still just long enough to nod off tucked in the corner of the communications tower, watching transcribed transmissions flicker across the screen, the familiar occasional static and crackle of a ship's radio as it approaches. It's all rather soothing in it's familiarity and she's asleep before she can begin to fight it.
The story comes in spurts when they find Cassian. A scream so powerful the radioman looks haunted by it. A fit, maybe, the other offers, fidgeting nervously in the presence of the (former?) Alliance officer. And then she ran. All they can offer is a point in the right direction, but the trail of hand-wringing natives is enough to find Jyn.
Under the spray of the shower, Jyn is sat, knees pressed to her chest, brown curls plastered to her forehead. Her expression is hollow, sadness found only in the perpetual downturn of her mouth. She doesn't seem to notice the water, or at least isn't bothered by the steady stream of water soaking through her clothes, fingertips starting to prune. She doesn't look up when she hears a woman warning Cassian, as if unsure he can handle what's behind the door. She doesn't look up either when the door opens and closes behind him.
But her eyes do flicker up, flecked with gold and silver like stardust and looking so impossibly broken.
my dear heart creep away
His stride is quiet as he settles down, not in front of but next to her, pulling her close with an arm around her shoulders. He's silent for a while, letting her gather what she can just from his being there, ignoring the water dripping down his head and shoulders into his face and down his back.
"Jyn?" A moment's hesitation. "I could carry you."
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"He was alone," she murmurs, ducking her head against his chest. She and Cassian had been together when Scarif had gone down, but... Bodhi had been alone. In Jyn's eyes alone meant not with her since the less traumatized part of her brain knows full well there were Alliance fighters assigned to maintain the ship so they could escape, a laughable notion now.
But he wasn't with her and he had died and Jyn had lost the one link she had left to her father, which she selfishly mourns more than the loss of the sweet, cheerful, effervescent man himself. Another facet of her crippling guilt.
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Bodhi was their friend, even though he can count on his fingers the number of people he's considered as such.
One arm wraps around her shoulders while the opposite hand rests against the back of her head.
"Bodhi is short for bodhisattva," he says quietly, rubbing circles into her back and holding her almost as tightly as she's holding him. "There are different kinds of them, but...there's one group, the bodhisattvas of the earth. They're born in times of conflict, to show people the way to the Truth. They agree to do this, lifetime over lifetime again, helping those they meet. He helped your father, he was the vehicle for the truth that your father loved you intensely."
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What? She and her father decided to take a stand?
"Why couldn't you have just left me in that prison camp? None of this would have happened." It is, perhaps, giving herself too much credit but she can't help but blame herself for being something of a catalyst. If her father had just done less to protect her, if he had cared less, if she had continued her own personal rebellion instead of joining one far greater than herself. So many lives could have been spared.
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Galen ::
It's done. This is where they are now, with the Ersos as unlikely and unexpected Resistance fighters.
Well. Jyn is fighting - Cassian suspects she'll never stop, really, which is an interesting contrast to her father, but she's off helping Bodhi with blaster training which is how Cassian ends up being the one brining food and water and coffee to Galen after he'd holed himself up in the tiny laboratory for going in five hours. ]
Glad to see you're doing better.
[ Cassian sets the food down and crosses his arms over his chest. He's not going anywhere until he sees the other man eat. ]
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So. Better. Better could certainly be said for not bleeding out in the rain back down on Eadu. He almost smiles, a tipping corner of that down-turned mouth; in resting position Jyn's does the same. His daughter, after 15 years, is only barely more a known quantity than Captain Andor himself, but the glances that almost, almost past between them and don't quite catch...he imagines he would recognize those, if Lyra had ever been anything but direct, precise as a laser.
Speaking of direct. He's discovering some of that is still left to him, as long as he'd obfuscated and equivocated and delayed-- ]
And when I outlive my usefulness? Will I be worse then?
[ A mild inquiry, not accusatory or even really directed at Cassian. The young man just seems like he might be high enough on the chain of command to know, and truthfully--Galen doesn't have any expectations of a long life here. The only mercy he'll ask for is time with Jyn, just long enough for her to know--he'd loved her, never any less any second they were apart. That of all the terrible mistakes he's made he would make them all over again to know any of them had kept her safe.
But none of that is, he suspects, up to Cassian. Galen finally notices the provisions he's brought along and takes the coffee, at least, blows on it before poking around for whatever passes for a nice watery milk substitute, if one is to be had. ]
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You won't be here, should someone decide to make that decision and I become aware of it. For that matter, neither will your daughter.
[ Cassian says it with firm simplicity and yet there is very little that is simple about what he is implying. Yet, he's certain of it, and has even begun considering just where and how he'd do it.
There's no reason, in his mind, to stay if that is what the Rebellion has come to. Assassinating those who come to them looking for help. Yes, Galen went to Saw, not to the Council...but there is the fact that the difference between Saw and the organized Resistance is in varying shades of grey, and Cassian is tired of that shade growing darker with each passing moment.
He's certain he can get them off-world, set them up with a resources, and help them disappear. What happens after that? He has no idea. ]
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This is as much because he needs a moment as anything, hands steady in shuffling around coffee additives. "She must have made quite an impression, if you care for her so quickly."
He's pretty sure, because it seems sensible, Cassian could have the kindest heart of all life everywhere, and even he would think twice about simply allowing the Known Imperial Collaborator, the one whose work was the heart of the Death Star, to go free without consequence. But to let Jyn go, to have the compassion not to leave her alone again ...that, yes. He can understand.
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She must have made quite an impression and Cassian thinks of the way she spun when she knocked several Stormtroopers to the ground, and he thinks of the look on her face after she'd seen the message from her father and he thinks this is an understatement. He would rather hedge, oh he would rather, but he feels he owes this man an explanation.
Or several.
"She deserves family." He nods, mouth pressed into a thin line. "And peace if she wants it."
Big if, that.
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To buy you food
That cost more than you paid them
??
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he had no idea what was happening
its like hes never met a talking raven before idk
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Still can't believe you paid him.
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i made his day probably
now he has a story to tell his kids
im essentially immortal
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