Work Text:
Here's the thing they never tell you about persistently running away from your problems: you're only prolonging the inevitable. Every lie you tell yourself, every excuse you make, every justification that you repeat to yourself over and over just to hold on to some fleeting sense of sanity, it all comes crashing down like a burning building ready to collapse. In the end, when every wall you've built around yourself begins to fall and the flames are raging around you like the world is finally coming to an end, you're nothing more than the bare wooden frame of a person, and the suffocating smoke is the only thing left for you to hold on to.
Jyn Erso had begun to build her walls, brick of duracrete by chipped brick of duracrete, when she was nine. It was easier that way, she had quickly discovered, with no parents, no one to guide her through all the pain and rage and hatred that ignited inside her and seeped through every layer until she could practically smell burning flesh. It soon took the place of the blood that once coursed through her body, circulating through her veins as if it had always belonged there. The thoughts consumed every square inch of her mind until she was begging for it to stop, and the only way to put an end to it was to stop mourning the loss, stop panicking over the terrors that the future held, stop overanalyzing everything as if it would help anything.
So she built that wall, questioned everything placed in front of her, learned how to defend herself. Besides, the only people around to care were the loyal followers of the most well-known, perhaps most dangerous rebel extremist, and the only things they even thought about teaching her were fighting maneuvers and attack strategies and the basics of blaster care. They couldn't be expected to raise a child, so they trained a soldier instead.
If there was anything she was good at, other than firing a blaster with a precision that impressed even the best marksman and responding with biting comebacks before there was even enough time to process the sneer on her face, it was guarding herself. Fearing that everything would come rushing back to her with sharper edges and blunter truths, she wore a shield that protected her from the overwhelming burden of anything emotionally strenuous—acknowledging or expressing her emotions, forming any meaningful human (or not) connection, revisiting painful memories from her past. She had buried the person she once had the potential to become, and she wasn't planning on dirtying her fingers to dig that person up.
Until that karking captain came along, all dark and brooding, with his rough accent and unexpectedly soft eyes and a past nearly as screwed up as hers to top it off. He had done this to her, she was certain. Made her question her belief that everyone was untrustworthy and actively trying to deceive her. Made her reconsider her overall opinion of people simply because this one human had yet to disappoint her. Made her contemplate the possibility that she might be able to trust said human, because he had fought alongside her as if they had been doing so for years, because he came back for her when no one else would, because trust goes both ways.
Surely someone who had managed to coax her into being civil towards him and his snarky droid, someone who she had seriously considered trusting at one point, would break the pattern, wouldn’t disappoint her.
But instead, he went up to that ledge with a blaster and the intent to kill her father. He didn't, she'll give him that at the very most, but the damage was done the moment she realized he had left with his blaster in the sniper configuration. He had filled her with the hope that he was different, that not every single person she met would inevitably betray her in some way. And then he had gone and ripped that small shred of hope out of her fingers by coming this close to pulling that goddamn trigger.
She could pull the trigger too. She could just as easily fight her way out the moment they landed back at Yavin IV. She had a blaster, she could steal a ship, go somewhere quiet for once.
But that was unrealistic. For one thing, she couldn't get a ship off the ground to save her life, let alone hijack one and fly it away successfully. And another dozen charges pinned to the end of her rap sheet was the last thing she needed, no matter how much she believed she could get away free of consequences.
She stalked off towards the ship's armory under the main hold, avoiding the other men’s gazes and resisting the urge to hunt down Andor just to punch him where he couldn't hide it from the view of his superiors. She barely noticed the dim lighting of the armory as she stormed in, and she would have undoubtedly tripped over the lip of the raised level if it hadn’t been for the weak glow of the light that lined the perimeter of the room. It wasn't huge, especially with the crates of supplies and newly regulated blasters that cluttered the floor, but there was just enough space for her to pace up and down the rows of cargo in an attempt to let off some steam.
When she could practically feel the soles of her boots wearing thinner with every step she took, she grabbed a blaster and hopped up onto a crate. The blaster was of impeccable quality: a newer model, one she had only seen once or twice before, that was simultaneously lightweight and powerful. Despite its pristine condition, she couldn't help but start to work through the basics of blaster care, from what she had been taught when she was a child. And when she finished reconditioning that blaster, she started on the next, and the next, until she had worked her way through the first case.
She continued, her fingers mirroring the exact movements she had been trained to make. Her mind wandered, considering everything that had happened, everything that was so complicated that she initially didn't know what to think, and automatically reverted to her default reaction: anger.
Now that she had time to process it, her mind ran through every scenario in which he hadn’t deceived her, every outcome that allowed for the possibility of forgiveness, every likelihood that what motivated him to defy his direct orders did not involve the pilot interfering or Draven altering his instructions. But none of it really mattered anyway, because her father was dead at the hands of the Rebellion and not even the captain's sudden change of heart had been able to save him.
“Preparing for war, are we now?” a familiar voice asked, his lame attempt at sounding lighthearted swallowed by the sorrow in his voice. Clearly, he was making an extra effort to sound polite and well mannered, but it came out with a bitter tang of condescension. Either way, his unexpected arrival and disdainful tone didn't faze her in the slightest and she remained seated on her crate, continuing to scrub relentlessly at the blaster in her hands.
But curiosity eventually got the best of her, and her gaze briefly flickered onto the man leaning against the door frame, eyes hooded and arms crossed over his chest, before she quickly shifted her attention back onto the newly polished blaster. She tried to picture him on that ledge, blaster in sniper configuration and targeted at her father, prepared to fire at one wrong move. But the only thoughts that entered her mind were of him calling after her during the attack on Jedha, the concern written all over his face as he rounded the corner in Saw’s fortress, his arms wrapping around her shivering body as he pulled her off her father’s cold, disfigured shape.
She tried to hate him, she really did. She tried to feel the familiar desire to throw punches until someone was forced to hold her back. She tried to imagine herself scratching every inch of skin and kicking at every clear shot she got until he could no longer look at her like that, like he kriffing pitied her. But the only visible images were of the upturned edges of his stupid mouth, his gentle hands, those goddamn eyes. She refused to look at his eyes.
“What do you want, Andor? Not satisfied with what you have to report to the Rebellion?” she muttered, trying to stay focused on her work. Instead of lashing out violently in the rage she felt, she settled on taking her anger out on the innocent blaster, treating it with more force than was necessary. Her bloodied knuckles stung as the shredded flesh and the red-stained skin began to turn white at the grip she had on the weapon.
In hindsight, she couldn't say she was truly surprised when she felt him beginning to migrate towards her, but she couldn't say she was expecting him to give up and let her return to sulking by herself, either. He was turning out to be just as unpredictable as she imagined an Intelligence Officer for the Rebellion to be.
He came to a full stop in front of the crate, and she wondered if the distance he put between them was for his sake or her own. More tense silence filled the room until he began to respond to her less-than-friendly greeting. “Jyn—”
“Just go away.” The harshness in her voice mingled with something else, something more desperate, and she hated herself for sounding even the slightest bit distressed.
From her seat on the crate, she noticed his stance visually shift uncomfortably, stiffening sharply at her words. “No. Jyn, look at me,” he ordered, internally cringing at his own tone but determined to keep his expression resolute. Not that it really mattered; she hadn't even looked up from the blaster since the moment she became aware of his presence. “Please.”
She heaved a sigh, continuing to glare down at the blaster with a furious determination that left a tight feeling in her chest. Maybe it was the familiarly fractured weight of his voice, but she decided to finally meet his eyes, before she could back out and change her mind. He was still drenched from the downpour on Eadu, his dark hair plastered to his forehead and the thin fabric of his shirt visibly clinging to his skin since he shed his jacket. But he wasn't shaking from the cold that bit at every inch of exposed flesh it encountered, like she still was, and he didn't seem to be concealing the same physical pain she was hiding under every layer of rage and hurt. He locked his eyes on her, not bothering to glance down at her noticeably trembling hands or shivering body.
For a moment, he looked as if he were about to say something important, something other than “you're just in shock,” but he seemed to be at a loss of words and couldn't come up with anything better than, “Are you injured?”
She couldn't tell if his words were genuine or not, so she stood, walked past him to put away the blaster and reach for another, just to give herself more time to process it. Used to always having a retort equipped with some level of sass to fire back, she was forced to go with the only relevant thing that came to mind. “Why should you care, Captain?” The jab she muttered under her breath hit him like a punch to the gut as she brushed past him, purposely bumping into his shoulder despite the jarring pain that shot up her arm.
Before she could fully walk past him to make her point, his arm jumped out and grabbed her wrist, not aware of the long cut that ripped its way down the side of her arm. Granted, there was no way that he could have known of her injury, but that didn't make the fire that burned through her arm the moment he touched her any less painful. She attempted to disguise the grimace as a scowl, but it was useless; he had already seen the pained expression that crossed her face as she stopped short directly next to him.
Shock and genuine concern flooded his features, and he loosened the grip he had on her forearm. His eyes softened as he leaned down closer to her, and their difference in height had never seemed so easily distinguished as it did then. She could just barely feel his warm breath on her cheek as he mumbled the obvious. “You're hurt.”
I wonder why? she asked silently, almost regretting the thought the moment it wormed its way into her brain; her injury had nothing to do with him or his orders to kill her father. Not physical injury, anyway. She gritted her teeth at the pain that was still ripping through her skin and decided on a scornful retort. “I'll survive. That's what I do best, remember?”
“Just let me help you,” he pleaded with her, moving so he stood directly in front of her and placing the hand that had been holding her wrist on her opposite shoulder. They were standing close now, so close she wondered if the very notion of personal space even existed when it was just the two of them, standing practically on top of one another in the underbelly of a stolen Imperial ship. The cold still nipped at every inch of uncovered skin, but everything seemed warmer when he was bent over her like that. Everything seemed so calm, like the world was moving in slow motion around them. His eyes seemed to almost soften even further, the crease of skin between his eyebrows becoming more defined as he whispered, “I can help you, Jyn,” in a hushed tone.
Without a verbal response, with barely a single moment of broken eye contact, she moved backward and climbed back onto her crate with an irritated huff. It was better not to argue with him, she decided. She had no idea how much longer they’d be stuck in this stupid hunk of metal before they landed back at Yavin IV, and she’d rather not spend that time sitting in awkward silence with the person who had betrayed her last.
A vague expression of surprise passed over his features, and he nodded to himself as if reassuring himself that this was real, that she was actually allowing him to do this. He walked past her, kicking open a cracked crate and removing a small pack of the essential medical supplies required to care for minor wounds. There wasn’t much inside—bacta canisters and patches, some gauze, a random assortment of drugs—but just enough to save, or temporarily stabilize at the very least, an injured soldier.
Neither of them spoke as he started unpacking the medkit, stacking a short tower of the needed supplies on the crate next to her. The once-damp hair that stuck to his forehead was beginning to dry, falling into his face and covering his eyes as he stared down at a pack of bacta. His head rose without warning, and she quickly shifted her gaze onto her hands that sat in her lap as she absentmindedly picked at the grime caked around her fingernails, afraid that he might’ve caught her staring. It was a lame attempt that he clearly saw right through, but he thankfully didn’t say anything about it. Instead, he raised his eyebrows at her in question. “Okay, let me see this injury of yours.”
Suddenly she was beginning to regret her decision to let him help her. She wrapped her arms tightly around herself and shook her head back and forth like a child refusing punishment, her eyes growing wide in fear. Not in fear of Cassian, exactly, but rather the idea of him. The idea that this rough-around-the-edges, war-hardened soldier, this cunning intelligence officer, this unexpectedly complex person who had almost as many layers as she did, could be so familiar. Familiar in the sense that she saw herself in him, the faded scars left as constant reminders of their countless brushes with death, the rough hands calloused from too many years of wielding blasters, the unmistakable look of wariness and dejection that could only be earned through witnessing firsthand the horrors of war. Familiar in the sense of “I’ve been in this fight since I was six years old.”
But, apparently, familiar wasn’t always equivalent to comfortable. No matter how much she trusted someone (which never added up to much anyway) and no matter how much she recognized herself in someone else (nearly unheard of for her), her first instinct was to run, pull away, detach in every sense of the word. She didn’t know if she wanted him to leave or not, but she sure as hell didn’t want to pull away like she always did at rare moments like these. Which was stupid of her, because this was the man that had almost put a blaster bolt through her father’s skull barely thirty minutes ago.
“Jyn,” he whispered, so soft she was hardly able to hear him over the rumble of the ship’s engine. “I can’t help you if you don’t let me see how bad it is.”
The logical part of her brain was telling her that he was right, that he knew all about healing wounds like this, that if she didn’t get help from someone her injuries would get infected, and she would rather not have to visit the med-bay on Yavin IV. But that part of her brain was also screaming at her that this human can not be trusted and abort mission, you moof milker. So she didn’t really know what to think anymore.
She nodded tentatively once, twice, three times. Slowly, she unwrapped her arms from around her middle, gently setting her hands on her knees, frightened that any sudden movements would cause more pain to erupt through her arm and side. His hands were completely steady as he helped her ease off her vest, folding it over and tossing it behind the stack of supplies from the medpack.
The cold air that bit at her skin as her bare arm slid out through her shirt sleeve was fierce, and she was surprised when she didn’t see her skin start to turn blue at the bitterly low temperatures. Now all that covered her right side was the fraying piece of fabric that wrapped tightly around her chest, and she tried desperately to avoid direct eye contact with him. From what she guessed, he was either trying to ignore the fact that she was sitting practically half-naked in front of him, or he was in silent awe of the intensity of the cut that ripped through her arm and just past the side of her hip.
“It looks worse than it is, I think,” she murmured, maybe as a way to evoke a response from him because his silence was distracting, maybe because she didn’t want him to think that it was so bad that she couldn’t handle herself.
It was primarily the anxiety-provoking sight of pure red that concerned him. Not the discolored red painted over the sides of x-wings, not the sharp red glow of light he saw at a distance through the crosshair of his blaster, but the all-too-familiar bold red that only fresh lacerations pumping out blood could properly produce. Had the pouring rain of Eadu not seeped through her clothes and soaked her skin, the blood would have dried and faded to a dull, less intense red. But the damp clothes she wore (the insides of which, he had noticed, were completely stained red) continuously grazed over the cuts and he wondered how she had lasted this long without ripping the irritating fabric away from her skin the very first moment she could. Having been in a similar situation before, more than once actually, he knew he wouldn’t have been able to make it that long without going crazy.
He decided that finding her a new shirt to wear once they were back on base would be his first priority after the mission debrief.
The narrow, jagged lines cut across her pale skin in random slashes. One tore down the side of her arm, a thin trench of shredded flesh and freely flowing blood, while the other was shorter but deeper and running diagonally from her hip to her stomach. It was obviously a fresh wound, the uneven edges of the laceration dripping fresh blood over the splashes of freckles here and there, over the creased remains of healed scars, mingling with little droplets of water that fell from the loose strands of her hair.
Cassian tried not to stare at her. He pulled his gaze away from the injuries that covered her tiny stature every time he found his eyes hovering over her, but he couldn’t help it. Instead of attempting to avoid looking at it, at her, he pulled out the bacta pack and began opening the canister. She barely held in a gasp as the cold bacta met her skin, his hand gently rubbing over the cut on her arm. “Sorry,” he mumbled, his eyes flickering onto her face as he continued to spread the cool substance over her skin. “Tell me if I accidentally — tell me if it hurts.”
They stayed like that for a long time. Jyn, clutching the edges of the crate to fight the pain, so much so that she could feel the chewed-off edges of her fingernails digging into the wood. Jyn, screwing her eyes shut as she tried to ignore the torturing jolts that shot up her arm every he accidentally put the slightest bit too much pressure on it. Cassian, standing directly in front of her, her knees pressed against his hips, reapplying the bacta to the worst of it with unbelievably steady hands. Every so often he’d press too hard on her arm and she’d grit her teeth to suppress a yelp, grasping the side of the crate like a lifeline. He’d mummer an apology, but she didn’t reply because how are you supposed to respond to something like that, to a person like that?
When he finished cleaning out and wrapping up the cut on her arm, there was barely enough bacta left in the canister to use on the worst of it on her hip. He glanced up at her before starting on the deeper wound, silently asking for her permission even though he probably already knew what she was going to say. She nodded again, slightly tilting her head in his direction, because words were just too ineffective, almost too redundant compared to the looks they shared.
For two people who had only known each other for mere weeks, they were already starting to understand the other’s expressions, their ways of nonverbal communication, almost before they themselves knew. Chirrut would have said it was the Force acting in its own strange way; she’d settle on it being the connection of two similarly war-hardened people who knew a silent urge of action when they saw one.
His hand slid gently over the cut on her hip, careful to not press too hard or move his hand at the wrong angle where her injury looked the most painful. This cut was deeper, not as superficial as the one on her arm, and every second longer he held the bacta to her skin the more she wanted to wince in pain. She didn’t, for the most part. Simply dug her nails deeper into the wood and gritted her teeth harder, before the relief (that was supposed to be instantaneous) flooded her system and the coolness finally set in.
“You’re gonna need to visit the medbay when we land back on base,” he said as he cut a large section from the bandage using his vibroblade. But his words weren’t a suggestion, it sounded to her more like the orders of a commanding officer, not that she ever took those well. He continued, “I did the best I could with what I had, but that cut is going to need more than half a canister of bacta and a bandage. Not surgery, I don’t think, but the med-droids will recommend stitches.”
She let out another irritated huff and visually slumped in her seat, before straightening herself again so he could attach the final bandage onto the laceration on her hip. Now that the pressure caused considerably less pain, he pressed it down so it would stay and motioned for her to hold it in place while he grabbed the gauze. Stretching out the roll of thin white material, he held one end directly on top of the bandage and began wrapping the roll around her waist. Her left side was still covered mostly by her shirt, the opposite half hanging behind her. He had to sneak one hand past her shirt and behind her bare back, then reach behind her and meet his hand on the other side to continue unwrapping the thinning roll.
For lack of better materials in the medkit, Cassian had to cut the end with his vibroblade and tie it off to get it to stay in place. He eyed her newly cared-for injuries up and down and admired his work. Not bad for ten minutes and supplies found in a shitty medkit.
Jyn watched him closely as he considered the bandages wrapped around her upper arm and midsection. His hand was still resting lightly on the bandage on her hip, arcing to fit against the gentle curve of her side. He seemed to radiate heat despite the circumstances, and she allowed her mind to briefly ponder the thought that he was always emitting such warmth.
His eyes came up to meet hers, as she was already staring at him intently, and he hesitated a moment before raising his other hand to push a loose strand of hair behind her ear. And she let him. She let him hold her and run a hand through her hair and look at her like the whole world was collapsing around them and he didn’t give the slightest of farks.
She wanted to say something. She wanted to tell him that this didn’t change anything and that absolutely none of her opinions have been altered by this...this interaction. She wanted to tell him that if trust goes both ways, then he should have been more worried about her turning that blaster on him when he first showed up in the doorway. But a giant lump in her throat prevented her from speaking, and any words that attempted to escape were immediately swallowed.
“Captain Andor?”
The speed at which he moved away from her, taking all his comforting warmth with him, was absolutely record-breaking. In one quick movement, he had stepped away from the crate she was still seated on, pulled his hands away from her side and her neck, and turned to face the voice that came from the entrance of the armory. She took longer to adapt to the change in atmosphere, wrapping one arm around her waist so the bandages that he was previously holding up stayed in place and adjusting the shirt so it hung over her front and hid most of her exposed skin.
The pilot—Rook, she faintly remembered—stood in the entryway of the armory, hands unconsciously twitching at his side and wide, unblinking eyes focused on a point somewhere past their heads. He seemed nervous about something, but from what she had observed from the man, he always gave that impression, so she assumed it wasn’t because of the moment (or whatever the hell you want to call it) he was so obviously interrupting.
Cassian’s voice was solid, unwavering as he addresses the pilot. “Yes?”
“Uh—K2-SO sent me to inform you that we will be arriving at Yavin Base shortly,” he said, repeating back to them the droid’s words as he absentmindedly wrung his hands. “He also wanted me to tell you...ah, something about the probability of getting shot with your own blaster?”