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The dream is the same every time: cool sand and scalding air and a sun—no, not a sun, it’s too big to be a sun—fiery and blinding on the horizon. Cassian’s face is close to hers, his arms around her, the frantic thump of his heartbeat the only sound she can hear.
He clutches her close and whispers something in her ear she cannot understand, and Jyn stares at edge of the water until she’s swallowed up in the overpowering light.
Each time, she wrenches awake, tense and gasping. Each time, she closes her eyes and repeats her silent reminder: it never happened. You made it off Scarif. You are alive. You are both alive.
But the memory of it is so real—visceral, as if she’s reliving a life lived in some other universe—that after each dream, she struggles to convince herself of her own reality.
It’s easier when Cassian is lying in bed next to her.
The dream stays the same, even when she sleeps in his bed. But at least when she wakes from it, she can turn on her side and he’s right there, within reach. She can watch the soft rise and fall of his chest, study the way the shadows pool against his face in the darkness. She can look at him—healthy and whole and real—and calm the dizzying whirl of her heart, regain control of her breathing.
Cassian does not question her, and for that she is grateful. Their days remain the same, even as he leaves room for her in his bed each night.
This is utilitarian, she tells herself. A convenient coping mechanism, an unfortunate but (for the time being) necessary strategy to get through each night so that she can tackle each day. She will do this until she can beat back the nightmares into such far corners of her mind, they can no longer torment her.
And if some mornings she wakes to Cassian’s arm draped lazily over her waist, the result of an innocent shift in his sleep, and she feels a whole different kind of fire beneath her skin...well. She won’t let that torment her, either.
When she agrees to accompany Chirrut and Baze on a week long expedition, it doesn’t escape her that this will be her first off-planet mission without him. But that’s all the more reason to do it: this is a test, and Jyn will face it head-on.
Cassian sees them off on the air hangar, chatting mission details with Chirrut and helping Baze load cargo. When he gets to Jyn he hesitates just a moment; his shoulders twitch, like he wants to step closer.
Her heart lurches—she wants him to step closer, too.
She folds her arms across her chest instead.
“It’s just a week,” she says, and she’s not even sure what she means by it.
He nods. “Less than,” he says, fast. Like maybe he’s been thinking about it, too. “Six days.”
“That’s not long,” she notes, even though it feels like a lie.
“It’s not,” he agrees. He bites at his lip. “Check in if you need?”
“Yeah. Okay.”
Once she’s boarded, she looks out the window to see Cassian still standing there, frowning down at his feet. Her chest feels tight, and she doesn’t want to think about why.
Of course, she can’t sleep.
She shouldn’t be surprised—now that she thinks about it, it’s the first night in almost a month she’s spent in bed alone. But Baze and Chirrut are close by, Baze’s snores a rhythmic hum in the background, and that should be enough.
Yet every time she closes her eyes, she sees Cassian’s battered face against the backs of her eyelids, weary and desperate eyes as he tugs her closer, as the sky fills with fire—
She steels herself. It never happened. You made it off Scarif. You are alive. You are both alive.
Time drags, and Jyn masks the tired ache in her bones with briefing memos and patrols. She should be able to make it six days. She doesn’t need to call him.
Three days in, he calls her.
She takes the holo-cast alone in the cockpit, and the relief she feels when Cassian’s face—a bit pale, but safe and unscathed—emerges in front of her is almost overwhelming.
“Do you need something?” she asks, even though it’s not what she wishes she could say.
He shakes his head, smile soft. “No. I just—” He stops, reassesses. “How’s the mission? Are you on target?”
She tells him about how it’s been going—the patrols, the less than savory characters they’ve encountered—relieved to be on neutral ground. He listens, shoots back ideas, and Jyn hadn’t even realized how difficult this has been, how deeply she’s longed to see him. It feels like she can breathe again.
Eventually they run out of steam, talk through all the details. The subjects that remain seem impenetrable.
“I should let you go,” she says, as though she doesn’t mind the thought. “You probably have…”
But then she notices the time indicator, that the room he’s in is dark. She does some basic math. How did she not notice this at the start of the call?
“It’s the middle of the night on Hoth,” she says.
He shrugs. “It’s daytime for you.”
“Yes, but you shouldn’t have—you should be sleeping.”
He glances down. “It’s fine. I, uh, haven’t been sleeping well.”
Her breath catches.
“Yeah?” she whispers.
His eyes flicker back up to meet hers and he offers a small, crooked smile.
“Not for a few days.”
“Me neither,” Jyn says. And then, just to make sure: “Not for the past three nights.”
Something softens in his face.
“Yeah,” he breathes. “Not for the past three nights.”
Jyn’s fingers burn with the urge to reach out and touch him, cup his cheeks and stroke her thumbs across the dark circles beneath his eyes. With sudden, aching urgency, she wants.
“I know a week shouldn’t be long,” says Cassian, leaning closer to the camera, eyes sharp and focused. “I know it shouldn’t, but—”
“Yeah,” she says, stopping him. “Yeah, I know.”
Whatever comes next, she doesn’t want to hear over the holo-cast. She wants it in person, wants him in person. The gates are open now, heat spilling through her chest she can no longer contain and she wants, she wants, she wants.
“I want you home, Jyn,” Cassian says, low and and fervent, an echo of words she hasn’t even spoken.
She closes her eyes; it’s too much to look at him, to look and not be able to touch.
“Me too.”
He’s there when she lands, standing in the same spot on the tarmac as before.
She meets his eye as she climbs out of the ship. He looks at her like she’s a gift he doesn’t deserve, and the want hums so frantically in her veins that she has to look away.
At her subtle gesture, he nods and followers her down the corridors of the base towards her room. She can feel the heat of him at her back, even though he’s at least two paces behind her, and all she can think about is folding herself up in his arms. That will be enough, she thinks: his body against hers, warm and solid and safe.
But when they get to her room he closes the door behind him, pushes her against it, and kisses her.
She’s so surprised, she almost doesn’t know how to respond. Just to touch him would have been enough, but this—this is more than she’d ever let herself imagine.
When he starts to pull back, hesitant, she snaps back; she tightens fists into his jacket and tugs him closer, opens her mouth under his. His beard scrapes at her skin, his palm rough against her cheek, and she feels like she’s on fire: that suffocating feeling from all those dreams turned inside out, made shiny and new.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, even as his knee parts her legs, even as his fingers dig sharp into her side. “I wasn’t planning on—”
She kisses him again. She can’t physically pull him any closer, but that won’t stop her from trying.
“I wasn’t either,” she says against his mouth. “But here we are.”
“Yeah,” he murmurs; the sound curls warm beneath her skin. “Here we are.”