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.
"I had orders," Cassian says simply, because he doesn't know what else to say but continue onward with the truth as he knows it to be. Still, he gives a little sigh and turns off the water, at least. They can sit there and soak but it's getting in his ears. "You know that."
Is he sorry they died? Yes. He's always sorry they died, and the list of 'they' gets longer and longer with every mission he's assigned, but he's also...he pulls Jyn a little closer, kissing the top of her head.
In fairness, there are a lot of orders that Jyn doesn't agree with, not in part because she's just not an agreeable person in general. Saw had taken all the wild impetuosity of her traumatized youth and turned her into a wildly reckless soldier with every disregard for authority (even her Captain Andor) and then swept what little self-worth she had away when he abandoned her.
For her own good. Just like her father.
"Do any of the stories say what happens to the people the bodhisattva leave behind?" The crux of everything, of course, is a mountain range of abandonment issues. There is only so much one person can take before they're convinced it's their fault. "We get their truth, but at what cost?"
Cassian swallows, closing his eyes. "We achieve Enlightenment, through the Truth, and remove ourselves from the wheel of suffering and rebirth. Or become bodhisattvas ourselves."
His arms wrap tighter around her. "Listen. Your father, Bodhi, they wouldn't have left if they'd been able to choose. I'm not going anywhere. I know it's not enough, but I hope it's something."
His words hit harder than K-2, making her chest ache like she's been winded and she pushes herself back and out of his arms, expression stricken. She loved her parents more than anything in the known universe, more than grapes, and she had felt a strange kinship with Bodhi that she still can't fully quantify, a shared love of someone else creates a connection. Chirrut and Baze had held a deep affection from Jyn, similar to the one she held for Saw, albeit less tied up in the pain of her childhood.
"It's enough," she tells him with a quiet ferocity, fingers ghosting against his cheek, pushing his wet hair back. She had come to the showers because she'd woke up feeling the heat from the blast, but she hadn't really thought about sitting under the chilly spray of the water until she had a moment to notice that he had done the same.
For her.
"I'm sorry." Words she may have never said in her entire life spring forth freely and without hesitation. "For letting you believe that you haven't always been exactly enough."
At first Cassian merely stares at her, silent and nearly stupid, the original gesture of her pushing away from him not exactly shocking but still. Hurt. And while he's processing that, shoving it into the little mental box where things that won't be useful and dark toothy secrets go, Jyn is taking his face in her hands and saying he's enough.
That what he's offering, himself, his unwavering loyalty, is enough.
That strikes him before the apology, which is an emotional explosion all of its own. Cassian blinks. "Te amo."
A swallow and he moves his hands to mirror hers, framing her face with them. "That means I love you, in case you were wondering."
All she has ever wanted was to feel loved. Safety and security and good health are all secondary to a desperate, feral need to be loved. Every part of her, even the broken parts that can cut if brushed against without enough care. She knows she is not an easy task to conquer, she'd rather hold people at arm's reach than suffer the pain of being left behind again. It's part of what threw her for such a loop when their friends became friends, became family, slipped between the cracks in her armor and settled comfortably in her heart.
And then left her.
She hadn't even wanted Cassian in her life. She wanted him very far from it at one point, grief of losing her father so soon after finding him again bubbling up into a rage that she will still not apologize for. But now he is firmly settled in her heart and he's perfectly content to be there? Jyn can't rationalize that and her natural instinct to fight back explodes out of her.
Her hand on his cheek falls away slightly, only to rush back in a quick slap that echoes against the tile in her shocked silence. It's punctuated by a sharp gasp before her hands settle against either side of his neck and she uses him as leverage to pull herself forward on the slippery floor until she's so close that were she any closer, she would be literally in his lap. She catches his mouth in a kiss full of desperation and passion, trembling from cold or happiness or terror. The quick-temper and impulsivity that neither Saw or the Alliance could stamp out of her make it all the more eager and fiery.
Cassian's head does recoil slightly, when she hits him, mouth a little open, hands still at her face and brain uncertain if laughter would incite another slap but definitely certain he deserved that one at the very least. He almost shot her father, to start; their interactions were based on a lie. Not one he told, mind, but still.
Then she's holding onto him for dear life, kissing him hard enough to make his head spin, and he wants to laugh again even though the first one never made it out in the first place. Of course he kisses back; he honestly can't consider anything else to do with her so close.
He bites at her lower lip, hands back at the side of her face, thumbs pressing against her cheekbones. He should encourage her to her feet, get them out of the shower and out of their wet clothes. Cassian just keeps kissing her instead.
Emboldened by his reciprocation, her arms twist around his shoulders, wet fabric of his clothes bunching between her fingers. These are not the gentle, tentative pecks of old; Jyn is chasing the taste of him like she could drown in it, heartbeat pounding against her ribs.
She's flushed when she finally drags herself away from his mouth, eyes closed a handful of moments longer before they flutter open, glassy and bright as she struggles to focus on him so close.
Her shoulders rise and fall with unsteady breaths, licking her lips before she can manage words. "I don't know about you," she starts, flippant tone softened by sheer affection and the way she looks at him with the same intensity that she looks at, well, grapes. "But I feel surprisingly enlightened."
His hands work at smoothing her hair back off her damp face while his heart is racing, lips heavy and tingling from kissing her, breath coming out in a huff that is almost a soft laugh but definitely more of a sigh.
"Enlightenment can happen at any moment, in any particular state of being," he points out, caught between wanting to kiss her and wanting out of rapidly chilling damp clothing. Porqué no los dos? Cassian kisses her again, for good measure, before wrapping his arms around her waist. "Come on, let's get out of here. I'd rather be enlightened and warm."
Part of her wonders if maybe it wasn't her father's love she was meant to be enlightened to, but her own.
She nods in answer but makes no move that she's actually going to get up for a moment, stealing another kiss as her arms release her death grip on his shoulders, thumb brushing across one cheek before her hands fall to settle against his chest. She breaks with a quiet laugh and shakes her head. If he thinks she is moving anytime soon...
"Shhh. Shut up." And then she is kissing him again, unwilling to let him go for even the couple of minutes it would take to get dry clothes. She's always been single-minded to a fault.
Why is she shaking her head, is she seriously...? Yes. Yes, apparently, because she's kissing him again, telling him to shut up, and he's actually listening.
Instead he's leaning against the cold wet tile, in cold, wet clothes, pulling her closer because if he's stuck in this shower with armfuls of Jyn she can just. Sit on him instead. That would be better, in his opinion.
She's more than inclined to clamber into his lap, not seeming to notice the chill even when she begins noticeably shivering. The overwhelming flood of emotions from her nightmare had ebbed, but they didn't go anywhere, shifting instead into less destructive and painful emotions. There's still enough to make her feel like her chest is going to explode but she's not sure she would mind.
Death by kissing wouldn't be too bad, after all. Especially with someone she--
Again she wrenches back, but only to breathlessly blurt out, stilted and awkward: "Yo también te amo."
The emphasis isn't all there; she isn't a linguist, she learned from reading instead of hearing, and she only half pays attention to learning while watching Cassian as he is trapped in physical therapy. But it's unmistakably his homeworld's native tongue that she is butchering with her uncertainty and inexperienced vowels. She happened to tuck that particular phrase away on the off chance it was ever relevant -- if Cassian met someone here and Jyn felt magnanimous enough to help them woo the rebel captain, perhaps. Instead it's her saying it and she really doesn't mind.
He notices, one arm remaining behind her back while the other pushes her hair out of her face. He notices and he worries and she pulls away and he's already frowning but leaning into her space before she opens her mouth and stops him dead.
Honestly, honestly, he expected to wait to hear it, if he heard it at all, but there was nothing to prepare him for hearing her terrible accent, or the way his chest constricts at the sound.
Cassian leans in quick and kisses her again just as he scoops her up off the floor and hauls them both up, until he's standing with his back against the shower wall and coaxing her legs around his waist. "We can't stay in here, we just can't." They're cold, they're wet, they'll try to fix that and this is not a secure sort of place, in his mind, for that kind of behavior.
"Don't fight me, please, let me at least get us off this tile."
She doesn't fight, but it's half out of shock and relief, lips lifting with a smile as she curls her arms around his neck again.
"Strong, I see." Admittedly, she is a small person and doesn't weigh all that much, especially with her lack of appetite making her thin frame thinner, but there was a time he could barely hold himself up, much less another person.
"I've been working on it." Getting stronger, possibly with this exact scenario in mind, or at least something like it. Cassian kisses her cheek and takes measured steps to get them out of the shower, opening the door by backing into it slowly until it pops open.
It's not that far to their shared room, with two beds where only one is ever used, and people clear more or less out of his way as they go down the hall. He doesn't put her down until he's reached said bed, kissing her again before pulling away. "Out of these wet clothes?"
"Mmm," she hums an impressed little noise and tries her best not to be too much of a dead weight as he carries her. She's perfectly capable of walking on her own, of course, but as that would involve not being gathered up in her arms she declines, tucking her forehead against the side of his neck.
Once in private, she suddenly realizes how cold she is when Cassian puts her down. "Yes. Feel free to start without me." And even though she is loath to leave his arms, she sprints over to the thermostat to pump the heat up.
Cassian chuckles a little as she goes dashing for the thermostat, stripping first out of his jacket and boots before casting his eyes back in her direction. He wants...he wants, and wants, and wants, and isn't that different than usual?
Mostly he wants her to be happy and secondly he wants to be a vehicle for that happiness, to bask in the moments she gets to smile and tease and poke at him. There's a moment's pain; he misses the others, wishes they were there to see the two of them smiling, but he can imagine they do, wherever they are.
Energy never truly dissipates, after all, it just changes form.
Realizing he's staring Cassian ducks into the bathroom to get them both large, fluffy towels, and tosses one at Jyn.
As the thrum of the heater kicks on, Jyn flings one of her layers off, still in the habit of wearing a handful, before turning to catch the towel. Well, she catches it with her face and a muffled laugh before it slips down into her arms. She attacks her hair with the towel first, wringing it free before shaking it out like a sodden dog after a bath.
Not one to be particularly shy about her body, Jyn loses the rest of her clothes quickly, wrapping the towel around herself like a cloak, gathering the towel in her fists and tucking her hands under her chin.
"We're taking these towels with us when we leave." Far better than the towels on Yavin IV, which were effectively sandpaper. There is nothing written that demands a rebellion must come equipped with shitty towels. She tiptoes over to him, chin tipping up to look at him. "All of them. The entire lot of them."
"All right." Cassian grins down at her, still in his own half-wet clothing, reaching down and rubbing her arms with his hands and the towel. He suspects if he tells her no she'll just do it anyway; might as well be prepared.
After a second he dips down to kiss her once more before pulling away to get his shirt off over his head. The lack of an ache in his shoulders is something he's grateful for, in this instance, and then there's the rest of his clothes to be done with. The towel ends up at his hips as he crowds Jyn's space. "Anything else we're squirreling off with?"
Jyn watches him undress like the unveiling of a marble Adonis, eyebrows arched and lips curved in a faint smirk, a promising invitation, green eyes sparkling with excitement. "Undecided. But I have decided that your clothes will no longer be necessary."
Ever again.
Still on her tiptoes, she presses forward as her hands fall, towel still gripped between her fingers. Her arms loop around his waist as usual, but the shock and newness of her very bare skin encountering his draws forth a teeny little gasp. This is a little different from her bare legs thrown haphazardly across his lap while they're talking or gingerly applying salve to his bare back with unsteady hands. The novelty of this is all very exciting.
This is, by Cassian's standards, very different than her touch associated with healing, associated with boredom; those touches are no less charged, for him, for all that they've become a part of his life recently, but then again he might be a little...weird, regarding touch.
Starved for it at times, maybe. He can't always decide.
"Good?" His hands are at her shoulders immediately. "Want to lay down?"
It takes her a second to nod, easily distracted by literally everything happening all at once. She's currently deciding if he smells like her or if she smells like him so when she answers her voice soft and thready. "Yeah, uh, yes."
Same answer to both questions, really, and she pushes forward a little to urge him in that direction.
He can't turn around that would just be...foolish, maybe, or at the least asking for trouble so he walks backwards until his legs hit the bed and sits down.
Cassian's hands find Jyn's and he pulls her towards him with every intention on laying next to her, possibly under the blankets, definitely without the towels.
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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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Is he sorry they died? Yes. He's always sorry they died, and the list of 'they' gets longer and longer with every mission he's assigned, but he's also...he pulls Jyn a little closer, kissing the top of her head.
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For her own good. Just like her father.
"Do any of the stories say what happens to the people the bodhisattva leave behind?" The crux of everything, of course, is a mountain range of abandonment issues. There is only so much one person can take before they're convinced it's their fault. "We get their truth, but at what cost?"
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His arms wrap tighter around her. "Listen. Your father, Bodhi, they wouldn't have left if they'd been able to choose. I'm not going anywhere. I know it's not enough, but I hope it's something."
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"It's enough," she tells him with a quiet ferocity, fingers ghosting against his cheek, pushing his wet hair back. She had come to the showers because she'd woke up feeling the heat from the blast, but she hadn't really thought about sitting under the chilly spray of the water until she had a moment to notice that he had done the same.
For her.
"I'm sorry." Words she may have never said in her entire life spring forth freely and without hesitation. "For letting you believe that you haven't always been exactly enough."
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That what he's offering, himself, his unwavering loyalty, is enough.
That strikes him before the apology, which is an emotional explosion all of its own. Cassian blinks. "Te amo."
A swallow and he moves his hands to mirror hers, framing her face with them. "That means I love you, in case you were wondering."
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And then left her.
She hadn't even wanted Cassian in her life. She wanted him very far from it at one point, grief of losing her father so soon after finding him again bubbling up into a rage that she will still not apologize for. But now he is firmly settled in her heart and he's perfectly content to be there? Jyn can't rationalize that and her natural instinct to fight back explodes out of her.
Her hand on his cheek falls away slightly, only to rush back in a quick slap that echoes against the tile in her shocked silence. It's punctuated by a sharp gasp before her hands settle against either side of his neck and she uses him as leverage to pull herself forward on the slippery floor until she's so close that were she any closer, she would be literally in his lap. She catches his mouth in a kiss full of desperation and passion, trembling from cold or happiness or terror. The quick-temper and impulsivity that neither Saw or the Alliance could stamp out of her make it all the more eager and fiery.
Emotional whiplash at it's finest.
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Then she's holding onto him for dear life, kissing him hard enough to make his head spin, and he wants to laugh again even though the first one never made it out in the first place. Of course he kisses back; he honestly can't consider anything else to do with her so close.
He bites at her lower lip, hands back at the side of her face, thumbs pressing against her cheekbones. He should encourage her to her feet, get them out of the shower and out of their wet clothes. Cassian just keeps kissing her instead.
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She's flushed when she finally drags herself away from his mouth, eyes closed a handful of moments longer before they flutter open, glassy and bright as she struggles to focus on him so close.
Her shoulders rise and fall with unsteady breaths, licking her lips before she can manage words. "I don't know about you," she starts, flippant tone softened by sheer affection and the way she looks at him with the same intensity that she looks at, well, grapes. "But I feel surprisingly enlightened."
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"Enlightenment can happen at any moment, in any particular state of being," he points out, caught between wanting to kiss her and wanting out of rapidly chilling damp clothing. Porqué no los dos? Cassian kisses her again, for good measure, before wrapping his arms around her waist. "Come on, let's get out of here. I'd rather be enlightened and warm."
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She nods in answer but makes no move that she's actually going to get up for a moment, stealing another kiss as her arms release her death grip on his shoulders, thumb brushing across one cheek before her hands fall to settle against his chest. She breaks with a quiet laugh and shakes her head. If he thinks she is moving anytime soon...
"Shhh. Shut up." And then she is kissing him again, unwilling to let him go for even the couple of minutes it would take to get dry clothes. She's always been single-minded to a fault.
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Instead he's leaning against the cold wet tile, in cold, wet clothes, pulling her closer because if he's stuck in this shower with armfuls of Jyn she can just. Sit on him instead. That would be better, in his opinion.
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Death by kissing wouldn't be too bad, after all. Especially with someone she--
Again she wrenches back, but only to breathlessly blurt out, stilted and awkward: "Yo también te amo."
The emphasis isn't all there; she isn't a linguist, she learned from reading instead of hearing, and she only half pays attention to learning while watching Cassian as he is trapped in physical therapy. But it's unmistakably his homeworld's native tongue that she is butchering with her uncertainty and inexperienced vowels. She happened to tuck that particular phrase away on the off chance it was ever relevant -- if Cassian met someone here and Jyn felt magnanimous enough to help them woo the rebel captain, perhaps. Instead it's her saying it and she really doesn't mind.
"I should have said that before."
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Honestly, honestly, he expected to wait to hear it, if he heard it at all, but there was nothing to prepare him for hearing her terrible accent, or the way his chest constricts at the sound.
Cassian leans in quick and kisses her again just as he scoops her up off the floor and hauls them both up, until he's standing with his back against the shower wall and coaxing her legs around his waist. "We can't stay in here, we just can't." They're cold, they're wet, they'll try to fix that and this is not a secure sort of place, in his mind, for that kind of behavior.
"Don't fight me, please, let me at least get us off this tile."
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"Strong, I see." Admittedly, she is a small person and doesn't weigh all that much, especially with her lack of appetite making her thin frame thinner, but there was a time he could barely hold himself up, much less another person.
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It's not that far to their shared room, with two beds where only one is ever used, and people clear more or less out of his way as they go down the hall. He doesn't put her down until he's reached said bed, kissing her again before pulling away. "Out of these wet clothes?"
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Once in private, she suddenly realizes how cold she is when Cassian puts her down. "Yes. Feel free to start without me." And even though she is loath to leave his arms, she sprints over to the thermostat to pump the heat up.
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Mostly he wants her to be happy and secondly he wants to be a vehicle for that happiness, to bask in the moments she gets to smile and tease and poke at him. There's a moment's pain; he misses the others, wishes they were there to see the two of them smiling, but he can imagine they do, wherever they are.
Energy never truly dissipates, after all, it just changes form.
Realizing he's staring Cassian ducks into the bathroom to get them both large, fluffy towels, and tosses one at Jyn.
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Not one to be particularly shy about her body, Jyn loses the rest of her clothes quickly, wrapping the towel around herself like a cloak, gathering the towel in her fists and tucking her hands under her chin.
"We're taking these towels with us when we leave." Far better than the towels on Yavin IV, which were effectively sandpaper. There is nothing written that demands a rebellion must come equipped with shitty towels. She tiptoes over to him, chin tipping up to look at him. "All of them. The entire lot of them."
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After a second he dips down to kiss her once more before pulling away to get his shirt off over his head. The lack of an ache in his shoulders is something he's grateful for, in this instance, and then there's the rest of his clothes to be done with. The towel ends up at his hips as he crowds Jyn's space. "Anything else we're squirreling off with?"
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Ever again.
Still on her tiptoes, she presses forward as her hands fall, towel still gripped between her fingers. Her arms loop around his waist as usual, but the shock and newness of her very bare skin encountering his draws forth a teeny little gasp. This is a little different from her bare legs thrown haphazardly across his lap while they're talking or gingerly applying salve to his bare back with unsteady hands. The novelty of this is all very exciting.
And mildly nerve wracking.
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Starved for it at times, maybe. He can't always decide.
"Good?" His hands are at her shoulders immediately. "Want to lay down?"
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Same answer to both questions, really, and she pushes forward a little to urge him in that direction.
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Cassian's hands find Jyn's and he pulls her towards him with every intention on laying next to her, possibly under the blankets, definitely without the towels.
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