Chapter Text
He saw her at the back of the ship, silhouetted against the vibrant blaze of orange-white, and despite the gravity of the situation he couldn’t help but smile.
“How many times is this, now?” he asked, coming up beside her, watching out the viewport as the explosion faded in the wake of the ship’s exhaust.
The aftershocks buffeted the ship, but the worst was over, and he could hear a soothing, steady beep as K-2 plugged hyperspace coordinates into the navicomputer. Jyn tore her gaze from the window, arching her brows at Cassian in an expression that had become familiar to him mere moments after he’d first met her.
“How many times is what?” she said, and though her eyes were narrowed, he heard a hint of playfulness in her tone.
“How many times have we escaped certain death in a perilous explosion by mere seconds?” Cassian said. “This must be, what, the fourth? Fifth?”
Jyn broke into a smile, cracking the soot and dirt caked over her face, remnants of the close call. “I’d say we have it down to an art form by now, wouldn’t you?” Then she lowered her voice, waggling her eyebrows like she was about to tell him a secret. “Keep it down, or Kay will be all too happy to tell us exactly how many times it’s been. In great detail. With plenty of complaining.”
“I can hear you, you know.” K-2’s peevish voice rang from the cockpit, his head swiveling toward them. “And Cassian is right. It has been five times, now. First on Jedha, then Eadu, then the escape from Scarif, then from the facility on Boz Pity, and now today. You are all very fortunate to have such a devoted and punctual droid as your pilot.”
“Ah, excuse—excuse me,” came Bodhi’s voice, softer but still clear. “I believe you mean co-pilot.”
“I’ll have you know, Bodhi Rook, that before you came along…”
As per usual, the conversation from the cockpit devolved into the tension-releasing banter that inevitably followed a harrowing escape, and Cassian tuned out the bickering. He lifted a hand to Jyn’s face, running his knuckles gently down her cheek.
“I would say we should stop cutting it so close,” he murmured, “but it does keep things interesting.”
“Mm,” Jyn said, and though her tone was noncommittal, her eyes were gleaming. She leaned up and touched her forehead to his.
“Cassian?” she whispered.
“Yes?”
“Less talking,” she said. “More kissing.”
He was only too happy to oblige.
“Jyn,” he whispered, quite a bit later. He watched as she propped herself up against the bulkhead in the small quarters that passed for a bedroom on the ship, her eyelids fluttering in response to his voice. She’d nearly dropped off to sleep. He ran his fingers through her hair, brushing the stray locks from her face, watching her lips curve in a soft smile.
“What?” she murmured. Her eyes were still closed, but she tilted her face toward his hand.
Cassian took a deep breath. “Let’s get married.”
He kept his fingers running through her hair, but Jyn stopped moving. Slowly she opened her eyes, and he waited as she blinked the fatigue away, focusing on his face.
“Cassian,” she said, a cautious note in her voice. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but…we’re already engaged.”
As she spoke, her fingers wandered up the front of his jacket, delving beneath the fabric layers to fish out the betrothal pendant dangling from its leather cord. It was warm from hours spent nestled against his skin, slightly damp with sweat from when he’d run like a mynock out of hell away from the explosion, but Jyn didn’t seem to mind. She closed her fingers around it, giving a gentle but pointed tug.
“Yes, I know we’re engaged.” He made a mock face at her. “I haven’t exactly forgotten. What I meant was, let’s not wait any longer. Let’s get married right now.”
“What, here?” Jyn was fully awake now, her hazel eyes murky in the cabin’s dim light. “On the ship? In the middle of hyperspace?”
“Why not? What better time than here and now? I’m sure Chirrut would be happy to perform the ceremony, and we have Bodhi and Baze as witnesses. And Kay,” he added, though he wasn’t sure if droids really counted given the existence of memory wipes. “All I can think is…if the sixth explosion should turn out to be my last, I wouldn’t want to leave this galaxy without having been your husband.”
Jyn’s face softened, her lips parting. She sat up, winding her arms around Cassian’s shoulders, and let her mouth hover just above his ear. He felt the warm puff of her breath playing over his skin, and fought to suppress a shiver.
“Cassian,” Jyn whispered, her voice going low and breathy. “You have got it so bad.”
“Oh, is that so?” He grinned, wrapped his arms around her waist, and tugged her down to the bunk, muffling her laughter with his mouth. “In that case, I’ll show you bad.”
Much later, Cassian was the one mere moments away from sated slumber when he felt the press of Jyn’s skin against his, followed by her murmur:
“If we’re going to do this, I suppose I had better put on pants.”
It took him a moment to recall what this referenced. Then he sat bolt upright so quickly he almost slammed his skull on the bulkhead.
“Pants,” he said, swallowing down a mouthful of nothing. His throat was suddenly as parched as a Sarlacc lair. “Yes. That would be good.”
Jyn chuckled, trailing her fingers over his bare arm. “And here I thought you liked it when I didn’t wear pants.”
“I cannot argue,” he said, sending a sly glance over his shoulder. “But perhaps not to one’s wedding.”
“Perhaps not,” she agreed. “Where exactly did you fling them in your mad rush, anyway?”
For once, he didn’t mind that the cabin was so tiny and cramped. It took only a moment’s search to locate the garment, piled haplessly in the most distant corner. He helped Jyn slide them on, letting his fingertips linger on the gentle red blotches marking her inner thighs.
She smirked. “We have this to thank for that,” she said, running a finger over his stubble.
He almost blushed.
As he’d anticipated, the rest of the crew reacted to the announcement of the accelerated nuptials with no small amount of surprise, but it quickly passed into congratulations and a few hearty slaps on the back. Even K-2 kept his grumbling to a minimum. Deep down, they all knew: tomorrow was a hope, not a guarantee, especially in a galaxy where planet-killing weapons were a reality. Seizing the moment could be forgiven.
At least, he hoped Mon Mothma and Senator Organa would think so. He’d occasionally caught them smothering smiles across the briefing room table when he spoke of Jyn.
“My friends,” Chirrut intoned, spreading his hands wide. “The Force has gathered us here today to witness and celebrate the union of these two soldiers of freedom, Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor—”
“Who have already united several times since we entered hyperspace,” K-2 interjected, a distinct sour note in his vocabulator.
Cassian closed his eyes. “Kay…”
“Sorry,” the droid said, not sounding sorry in the slightest.
To Cassian’s gratitude, Chirrut continued on smoothly, his mellow smile never wavering. He kept the ceremony brief but poignant, and by the time the vows were exchanged and the solemn pronouncement ‘you may kiss’ echoed through the room, Cassian felt as though he were floating, able to soar through hyperspace under his own power.
He’d never been so happy.
Two years later
“Don’t you kriffing touch me, you Hutt-humping son of a diseased nerf!” Jyn bellowed.
Cassian covered his wince as his eardrums throbbed in protest. He raised his hands, palms out, and scooted back several inches, shooting a plaintive look toward his droid. “Kay, can’t you go any—”
“As I told you when you last asked that question forty-three seconds ago,” K-2 interrupted, “if I pilot the vehicle any faster, the odds of either crashing or being stopped by the local authorities are eighty-four percent.”
“Okay. Okay.” Cassian raked his fingers through his hair, already standing on end after his frantic leap from bed in the dead of night. “Just get us there as fast as you can, all right?”
“I am doing my very best,” K-2 said, somehow managing to sound offended. As though to punctuate the remark, a horn blared by the window as the speeder shot past a vehicle piddling along in the next lane over.
Cassian looked back to his wife. Jyn sat panting beside him, bracing herself against the backseat, one arm curved beneath the bulging expanse of her belly. Her gaze was fixed on him, her teeth bared, and he had the feeling that the look in her eyes could have obliterated a whole fleet of Death Stars without any need for structural plans or carefully laid traps.
“This is…your…fault,” she hissed between her teeth. “‘Oh Jyn, let’s have a baby,’ you said. ‘The miracle of life,’ you said. You parasite-infested Sith-licking—”
Cassian was fairly sure he’d never said anything of the sort, but any protest he might have issued—had he been a far less sane man—would have been cut off anyway as Jyn’s progressively creative insults dissolved into a scream of agony. Instinct grabbed hold of him, and he seized her hand in both of his, holding on tight as she crushed his fingers with a strength he hadn’t known she possessed.
He’d stared death in the face on more occasions than he cared to count. He’d volunteered for assignments that could easily have been termed suicide missions. Yet he’d never before felt anything that quite matched the cold tendrils of fear tightening around his heart.
He had seen Jyn bereaved and grieving, battered and bruised, stripped down and submerged in bacta after missions gone terribly wrong, but he’d never seen her quite like this.
“Hey,” he said, and risked reaching for her. His fingers slipped over her cheek, cupping the back of her neck. To his relief, she didn’t pull away. “It’s going to be all right. It’s gonna be over soon.”
He pulled her against him, pillowing her head on his chest, stroking the sweat-slicked hair back from her temples. Her fingers dug trenches in his jacket, then slowly relaxed as the contraction finally passed.
“Define ‘soon,’” she groaned, muffled against his shirt.
Before Cassian could answer, K-2’s voice piped up from the front seat.
“Perhaps this would be a good time to mention the many different occasions that I encouraged the use of contraceptives?” he said. He sounded obnoxiously cheerful.
Cassian felt Jyn’s shaky breath across his collarbone.
“I’m going to kill him,” she murmured.
He winced over the top of her head. “Please don’t. I’ll make it up to you. Somehow. I promise.”
“You’d better.”
Somehow, against all odds, they made it to the hospital without any brushes with death, law enforcement, or newborns arriving on the speeder’s backseat.
Med droids were already waiting when K-2 pulled the speeder up to the curb, and Cassian ran to keep pace with them, trying not to focus on the sound of Jyn’s moans forcing their way out through her gritted teeth. In the back of his mind, a tiny part of him was amazed at how his heart was roaring even faster than it did whenever he tried to outrun an explosion.
The droids made a sharp turn into a small birthing chamber, balancing Jyn’s gurney between them. Cassian pivoted on his heel to follow them, and only then became aware of K-2’s footsteps behind him, a heavy clatter coming to an awkward halt.
“I suppose I will just…wait out here,” K-2 said, even as his head craned to follow Jyn’s movements through the doorway.
“Yes, that would be best,” Cassian said, his mind already inside the room, where the med droids were trying their hardest to convince Jyn to climb onto the bed.
“Cassian?” K-2 sounded almost hesitant, an experience so rare and bizarre that Cassian would have been startled if he weren’t so distracted. But this was uncharted territory for all of them, wasn’t it?
“With modern technology and medicine,” K-2 was saying, “the vast majority of pregnancies have positive outcomes.”
It was the small minority Cassian was worried about, but he didn’t voice the thought. He reached up, briefly laying his hand on the cool metal of the droid’s shoulder.
“Thank you, Kay,” he said.
“No,” came Jyn’s voice from inside, brittle and raw, and Cassian’s whole being latched onto the sound, everything outside forgotten. Jyn was standing by the bed, clutching it with one hand, using the other to ward off the droids that hovered around her like overprotective parents. “I don’t want to lie down.” Her head shot up, catching sight of Cassian as he came through the door. “Cassian, I need to walk around. These droids won’t leave me alone. Where’s my blaster?”
“I don’t think shooting the med droids would be the best course of action.” Cassian chose his words with care.
“You’re not the one trying to push something the size of a stinkmelon out a hole the size of—”
“Okay, okay.” He stepped toward her, weaving through the semicircle of med droids. “If you need to walk, you’ll walk. Do you want me to walk with you?”
She nodded, sharp and quick. Cassian slipped his arm around the small of her back, guiding her out into the hallway. To his relief, K-2 had retreated down to the far end of the hall, and remained mercifully silent.
Jyn put one foot in front of the other with the slow but dogged determination of someone resigned to a gallows march, Cassian thought, then struck the notion from his mind as quickly as it had entered. He listened to the sound of her breathing, slowing his steps when her long inhalations turned to shorter, ragged gasps.
“Contraction,” she bit out, unnecessarily.
He eased her against the wall, both hands kneading at the small of her back. She wound her arms around his shoulders, fingers laced around the nape of his neck, nails digging in hard. He knew he’d have bruises later. He knew it was nothing compared to what she was enduring.
They wore the hours down, pacing up and down, back and forth, like a pendulum swinging ever closer to inevitability.
When the baby finally came, it happened far faster than Cassian had anticipated.
Jyn arched back in the bed she’d finally climbed into, her fingers threatening to make ribbons of the sheets. She yelled, a sound that seemed as much a scream of rage as of pain, drowning out the med droids’ mindless encouraging noises.
“Push!” one of the droids chirped, standing at the foot of the bed, its ocular units swiveling back and forth between Jyn’s thighs and her face.
“I—” Jyn panted. “Am—pushing!”
The words trailed off into another yell, and she seized Cassian’s hand. He felt his bones grinding against each other, but the pain seemed as distant as the stars.
“Here comes the head,” the droid said, a soothing burble that turned Jyn’s face a unique shade of crimson. “Another push.”
Another push, another scream that rattled Cassian’s ears and made his breath jerk in his lungs.
Then, a second scream. It was smaller and more shrill, but drove into Cassian’s heart all the same.
“Congratulations,” the med droid said, holding up a wrinkled bloodstained bundle topped with tufts of wet dark hair. “It’s a girl.”
Jyn sagged back in the bed, her eyes rolling to the ceiling until the whites showed. “Thank the kriffing Force.”
Cassian felt his jaw flapping like a flag in the breeze. He looked from Jyn to the baby and back again, torn between two equal forces, both stronger than anything he’d felt in his life.
His wife won out.
“Jyn,” he whispered, slipping his hand beneath her head. Her hair was almost sopping against his palm. “You—are you—”
She opened her eyes, an exhausted but blissful smile winding across her face, and the bolt of relief that hit him was as sudden and strong as a ship exiting hyperspace.
“You did it,” he breathed, awe and love nearly trapping the words in his throat.
Her smile softened, her hand finding his. “Cassian…I’m glad you’re here.”
As if he could possibly be anywhere else.
A humming noise made him turn, still clutching Jyn’s hand, and he saw the med droid holding his daughter. The infant was already cleaned and swaddled, and her mouth dropped open in a tiny yawn as the droid transferred her to his arms.
He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything but stare until Jyn’s impatient voice broke through the stupor.
“Let me see her.”
He turned, slipping the baby into Jyn’s arms, watching her run a fingertip over the dark hair, the snub nose, the tiny grasping fingers.
“Why is it so red and lumpy?”
The sudden interjection made Cassian start, and he turned to see K-2 leaning over his shoulder, staring down at the baby with as quizzical an expression as a droid could muster.
“Cassian.” K-2 sounded almost perplexed. “Is it supposed to look like that?”
“Quiet,” Jyn said from the bed, looking up from the bundle in her arms, but Cassian heard laughter in her voice. “Or we won’t pick Kay for her middle name, after all.”
K-2 took a step back, his head swiveling between Cassian and Jyn. “What?”
Jyn let out a soft breath, satisfaction stealing across her face. “Lyra Kay Erso-Andor.”
Amazingly, K-2 was quiet for two long breaths.
“Jyn Erso,” he finally said, eye circuits dimming, brightening, and dimming again. “Thank you.”
Jyn shrugged one shoulder, the corner of her mouth tugging up. “It was Cassian’s idea.”
Cassian felt himself perch on the side of the bed, moving slowly, as though working his way through a dream. He slipped one arm over Jyn’s shoulder, the other moving up to gently cup the baby’s head. He felt Jyn’s head tilt up, and he looked down to meet her grinning eyes. She hooked her fingers in his collar, tugging him down for a kiss.
“Welcome home,” she whispered against his lips.