Chapter Text
Cassian startles as the door to the med-bay hisses open. He glances at the chrono on the opposite wall. It’s late and he hadn’t been expecting any visitors.
The datapad he’d been poring over is quickly shoved aside as Jyn shuffles into the room. He sits further up on his pillows.
He almost asks if everything’s okay, but he can tell it’s not. Jyn’s shoulders are high, her gait stiff-limbed, her eyes averted as if she’s guilty of something. The smile she greets him with is wan.
“Hey,” he murmurs as she lowers herself on the edge of the empty bed next to his own.
“You should be sleeping,” she returns, toneless.
He wants to point out that, well, she should also be sleeping, but he just nods. There’s something raw and vulnerable about her, something strangely penitent. He doesn’t want to do anything that could harden her, send her fleeing right back through the door. Not after she’s seemingly exhausted herself in her efforts to not come here. Not come to him.
“Couldn’t sleep,” she offers unnecessarily, fiddling with her sleeves that, he’s just noticing, are much too long for her arms.
It’s his shirt.
His heart swells painfully in his chest. He has to rip his eyes away from the sight of the collar against her neck. He clears his throat.
“Seems like you can’t either,” she points out, waving to the datapad, lying forgotten on his knees.
“No,” he mutters, switching it off and placing it on the bedside table, “no, not really.” He shrugs. “I’ve never been good at sleeping.”
Jyn draws her bottom lip over her teeth, looks up to the ceiling as if beseeching some unknown force to give her strength to do whatever it is she is wanting to do in that moment. “I had a nightmare.”
Cassian waits, eyes searching her face, but she won’t look at him. “I have them, too,” he offers gently.
She looks up from her cuticles, surprise flitting across her face until she sobers, perhaps realizing how silly her assumption had been— that he wouldn’t similarly be haunted by bad memories and old ghosts. “Scarif?”
He nods. “And other things… but lately, yeah. Scarif.”
She nods, swallows, gathers her courage to continue. “In mine… you— you don’t come back.” Her eyes glow fervently, pierce straight through him. “Krennic… he—“ She stops, shakes her head. “I get shot off that platform. The plans never—“ She falters again, looks to her feet, toes grazing the stone floor. “You don’t come back.”
Cassian is not sure what to do. What he should say. His arms feel leaden. His mouth dry and sealed shut. Every word of comfort he is able to conjure sounds too trite or else is too… much. The outline or suggestion of a promise he had no right to grant her, the whisper of a platitude she would surely scoff at.
The silence stretches, grows uncomfortable.
“I left you, Cassian,” Jyn says quietly but the words ring painfully in his ears. “I left you at the bottom of that tower and you—“ She grimaces, shakes her head. “You’ve never left me. Not once. And the first time I could return the favor—“
“Jyn, you thought I was dead,” Cassian interrupts. He barks a mirthless laugh. “Force, I thought I was for a second there.”
She shakes her head, her mouth tilted in a hard line. Her knuckles have gone white over the edge of the mattress. She looks ready to tear down Yavin IV brick by brick. “I could have checked. I should have—“
“Hey, hey…” he soothes, shifting on his bed to face her more fully. “I told you to go ahead, Jyn. And… besides… why think about that? What use is there? What would have happened if you had come down after me?”
Something seems to lock home at that. She meets his eyes and her gaze steadies, some of the consuming fire behind her irises fading. Her fingers loosen in the bed. She looks down to the floor.
“I understand, Jyn” he continues gently. “That is… it’s always been my worst regret. Leaving people. And I’ve had to do it. There have been…” he trails off, grimaces. “Well, let’s just say that I have never felt more useful than when I could go back for someone.” He smiles at her, sad. She is staring at him with a strange, stunned expression. “Than when I could come back for you… on that tower.”
Her eyes have intensified to an almost caustic degree. She swallows, nods, gives him a look so replete with gratitude he feels unworthy of it. “Thank you.”
Her voice is throaty, her eyes over-bright and he knows she means more than just this simple reassurance. His smile deepens, grows a bit more solemn, in a strange sort of way. It’s yet another recognition between them. An acknowledgment and a benediction. He beckons her with a little tilt of his head and Jyn acquiesces as easily as if she had been physically pushed.
The nurse on her early morning rounds will click her tongue in disapproval upon finding sergeant Jyn Erso and Captain Cassian Andor crammed quite ridiculously into the same bed an hour later. But she will be merciful enough to let them be. Her patient needs all the rest he can get, after all, and she hitches the blanket up a bit higher on both of their shoulders before going to check on her other charges.