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Jyn wakes in the dark, blaster fire echoing in her ears, the afterimage of explosions seared into her retinas so it hovers before her with every blink.
She lies still – it’s been a long time since nightmares were unusual enough to wake her with a jerk, even if her heart is pounding in her chest – and tries to remember where she is. No rattling snores or steady drips: not Wobani. No muggy, cloying heat or strange orange shadows: not Yavin IV, either.
There’s a weight on her, shifting as she breathes. Blankets, heaped high to ward off the chilly air currently soothing the sweat from her forehead. A curving, smooth wall before her.
Hoth, she remembers. Echo Base, they called it, the illustrious new headquarters of the Rebel Alliance. Her heart settles a little.
But something’s wrong. When she went to sleep, Cassian was curled up with her, the now-familiar gentle scratch of his stubble brushing the back of her neck. She doesn’t need to turn over to feel the emptiness behind her; he’s not there anymore.
The blankets can’t ward off the hollow chill of fear that creeps up her spine. It doesn’t matter that she trusts him, more than she’s trusted anybody, ever. Old habits are so hard to break, and her first instinct is always that this is the moment the universe takes him away from her. This is the moment it remembers that Ersos are destined to suffer, and lose the things they care most about. This is the moment the universe collects its dues.
She rolls over. A faint, artificial yellow light spreads across the ceiling from a lit holopad resting on the desk tucked in the corner of their small room. It’s dim, but it’s enough for her to make out Cassian’s silhouette where he sits at the desk. It’s enough for her to see how his head is cradled in his hands. Her heart aches. He hasn’t told her too much of his past. Snippets, mostly, like what he’d done on Kafrene (you had to, she’d told him, but he hadn’t looked like he’d bought it). A few smaller regrets. She knows there’s more weighing on him. Her pain might give her nightmares, but his guilt doesn’t even let him get that far some nights.
She shifts, rustling the blankets enough for him to hear, and extracts herself from the bed. Her shoulder protests as she wraps one of the sheets around herself. She ignores it. She’s good at that.
He doesn’t react as she shuffles over. His shoulders are rock-hard with tension; she runs her fingers experimentally over one of them, but when he doesn’t look up, she lets her hand drop and moves to lean on the desk.
“Cassian,” she says, after a moment.
He raises his head slightly, enough that she can see a telltale dampness on his cheeks. His breathing is steady and even, the faint glisten of the holopad’s light off his skin the only clue.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he says, his voice hoarse.
“You didn’t.” She hesitates. “Aren’t you cold?” She is, even with the blanket wrapped around her. He’s not even wearing a shirt, only a thin pair of sleep pants.
He shakes his head, just a little.
Jyn frowns. She’s not great with words at the best of times, but they feel especially inadequate in dark, quiet moments like this. Maybe there’s a set of magic words that would lift the weight from his shoulders, but if so, she has no idea where to find it. Where even to begin.
“Come back to bed,” she tries. “We’ve got all those meetings tomorrow.”
His mouth quirks, just slightly, and he tilts his head towards the holopad. “I know. I was reviewing reports.”
She reaches over and turns the holopad off. “The reports can wait.”
He nods, but he doesn’t move.
Jyn pulls the blanket tighter and hisses when the pressure tweaks her bad shoulder.
That gets a reaction, finally. He looks up, turns towards her, concern replacing the blank look in his eyes. “Jyn—“
“It’s fine,” she says, for the hundredth time that day.
“You should sleep,” he says.
She raises an eyebrow. “I will when you do.”
He shakes his head, an exasperated half-smile on his face. It’s an improvement from the blank tears, so she’ll take it.
She tries again, hesitantly. “You don’t have to talk about it. But I’m here, if you want to.” She braces for a quick (if gentle) rejection. He’s the most intensely private person she’s ever met, even if he’s started to let her in, so she tries not to take it personally when she hits a wall he hasn’t taken down yet. She’s always been the type to smash straight through walls that are in her way, but that’s not going to work here. She’d hurt him in the process. That’s collateral damage she’s not willing to risk.
But the rejection doesn’t come. He looks down at his hands for a long, quiet moment. “I don’t know if I can,” he says finally, almost guiltily. “And—“ he cuts off.
“And?” she prompts.
He hesitates. Then, “Sometimes, I’m afraid that something I’ve done… If you knew…”
Oh. She snorts. “As if anything you’ve done could scare me away.”
He smiles, a little. “It’s easy to say that.”
It’s not. That’s the thing. It’s the hardest, scariest thing she’s ever done, to promise she won’t run away. To stay even when she knows, knows with 100% certainty that one day she’ll be left alone again, and it will hurt so much more for having done so.
But he knows that. And they’re mirrors of each other in so many other ways, it really shouldn’t surprise her anymore that he could be afraid of the same things she is. Of being alone again. Of letting someone in only to have them leave, albeit for different reasons.
If it’s easy to say it, then she’ll just have to show it. As many times as it takes until he believes her.
She lets go of the blanket and reaches out a hand, resting it gently on his cheek. She half expects him to pull away, but instead he lets out a quiet sigh and leans into the contact. There’s abruptly too much space between them; she steps forward to wrap her arms around his shoulders. The blanket slithers to the floor. Cassian’s arms rise to hold her against him, warm and strong. It’s a little awkward, him sitting while she’s standing, but she presses her lips to his hair and he tucks his face against her chest, and if his shoulders start to shake a little she doesn’t call him out on it.
She thinks of saying: I’ll prove it to you. She thinks of saying: I’m not going anywhere. She thinks briefly, carefully, of saying: I love you.
All of these things are true. She says none of them. She holds him, feels him breathe against her, and knows that words could never even come close to describing how good, how profoundly right this feels.
Finally, the trembling in his shoulders eases. She murmurs into his hair, “Come back to bed.”
They curl into each other, legs tangled under the heap of remaining covers (Cassian more than makes up for the one she left by the desk, Jyn thinks). She drapes an arm over his back, hand curving up to stroke his hair. It’s one of her favorite, private things she discovered in the week after Scarif, when they were still learning how to touch each other: Major Cassian Andor, rising star in Rebel Intelligence, likes having his hair petted. The way his eyes slide closed, the little soft sound of contentment in his chest, the way he tilts his head to give her a better angle. It says more than words ever could, that he trusts her enough to let her see how much he enjoys it.
She rests her forehead against his. The last of the tension slowly drains out of him, his breath leveling out as he finally drifts off to sleep.
It takes her a little longer to follow him, still turning over the conversation in her mind. Maybe she should be hurt that he won’t tell her some of the things that keep him up at night, but she’s not. He doesn’t owe her that, doesn’t owe it to anyone to share his demons. She trusts that he will when he’s ready.
In the meantime, this is more than enough.