realists | open ✧ the time to fight is now

"Do you think my experience is any better?" It's not an unkind question, just commiseration. His parents have been dead over two decades. "The Rebellion doesn't tend to lend itself to relationships. It doesn't stop them, but there are few role models. It never felt as important as the cause for most."

Except Bail, probably. He and Breha have got that shit down.

He smiles though, softly, when she looks up at him, and he feels like he's on top of the world that she can be so comfortable with him. People never trust him this much and this openly.

"Let's make a deal. We tell each other when something is so terrible. I know how to pretend to do this, but the real thing is not something I want to ruin with you."

He can be patient, if she can do the same for him.

There are a lot of things Jyn could take from this. She takes none of the truly relevant facts to heart.

"You pretended to be married?" Not that that is what they are attempting, but it's not the point. The point is that however... not sheltered, but Jyn's had a lonely life. Regardless of that, she still feels a trill of jealousy making her feel warm and fighty.

With whom did he have this pretense with is the real question, followed by can Jyn punch him or her?

That seems to be an understood, at least, because she doesn't ask.

If record scratches were a thing in a galaxy far far away, he'd hear one right now. Instead he just blinks a few times, before letting out a laugh.

Jyn is jealous and it's simultaneously hilarious and charming. He suspects the follow up questions, which really only adds to how amused he is by her entire reaction. "I'm an intelligence officer, Jyn. We pretend to be people we are not to get information all the time."

He's still smiling. It's nice to smile.

"Only once, as one half of a married couple. But I have pretended a relationship where there wasn't a real one a handful of times. You do realize I used the word pretend, right? You don't have to fight anyone for my honor."

Edited 2017-01-20 03:39 (UTC)

"I don't want to fight for your honor." She makes a face, half offended, half embarrassed, all scrunchy faced affront as she hurries to brush it off as just casual wondering.

It's a struggle to make it seem like she's not running away when she steps out of his arms, but her hands fall to catch his to lead him further out into the water. Which was the whole point before she got distracted by being scared about ruining their tentative thing and how good he smells. (Did he pack cologne? She doesn't understand it.)

"I'm just curious. I don't know very much about you, do I?" You lying piece of shit, just curious. Bullshit.

Edited 2017-01-20 04:01 (UTC)

She continues to be almost adorable about it - even though adorable is never a word he would apply to Jyn. It's more like a new side of her he finds amusing.

Cassian doesn't fight her when she starts moving out into the water, though he does miss having her so close.

BULLSHIT SENSES TINGLING. He humors her anyway. "You already know a lot more than most," he says, squeezing her hands. "But the fake marriage was to a woman named Latia. She was an excellent agent." Note the use of 'was'. He makes a thoughtful noise. "There were a few occasions where showing up with a partner was less suspicious. It didn't usually last longer than a week. They were not my favorite missions."

Cassian your need to work alone is showing.

She notes the past tense, still find herself irrationally jealous as Cassian talks and she leads them deeper and deeper into the water. Her lips purse slightly, thoughtful, until a wave breaks across her thighs and she jumps a little, returning her focus on the task at hand.

"I don't work well in groups," she offers. As if Cassian was unaware of this fact. As if the entire galaxy is unaware of this. "I didn't when I was a little girl either." A small smile touches her lips, almost nostalgic. "I remember there was this playground on Coruscant, near our apartment or my father's work... I'm not sure. My mother had to tell me to take turns every other breath."

She can practically still hear her mother calling and no pushing! after her as she ran around like a tiny whirling dervish. "I was feisty."

The water's only a little above his knees, so it doesn't feel like they're in very deep yet. It's a strange support on his leg, one half sturdy and one half uncertain, because water is unpredictable.

Cassian makes a (sarcastic) shocked face when she says she doesn't work well in groups, but he's fascinated despite himself by the brief dip into her childhood. He can picture her behaving exactly as she says.

"None of that surprises me. Though I would say that you're still feisty, only it manifests in far different impulsive ways now." He pauses, trying to think of a comparable story but: "I mostly just remember being angry, all the time. I used to throw rocks at Clone Troopers."

Cassian that is not a heartwarming childhood story to match. At least he doesn't sound bitter, just his own version of semi-nostalgic matter of fact.

Rare as the necklace still hung around her neck, Jyn smiles at the story, however brief. Maybe she's pleased with the commiseration of a childhood full of anger. Sure, she hasn't grown out of that, yet, but she's softening with time.

She's a lot like her father, but she wants to fight everything, all the time, like her mother.

"I imagine you were quite the menace." Jyn doesn't remember the Clone Wars, too young, but she half remembers a story from her childhood, a bedtime tale that made her mother frown at her father's retelling. Or maybe that was a dream. She can't tell the difference anymore.

"I certainly tried to be, but I like to think I was successful."

The Clone Wars feel so far away in the face of the Rebellion. It was such a short conflict compared to how long the Rebellion has been fighting the end results. War has been his whole life.

"Though it sounds like you were quite the handful too. How many other kids did you beat up?"

Cassian doesn't usually like thinking about his childhood, mostly because it doesn't feel like a what a proper youth should be. But it made him who he is, and it's... nice, to share with Jyn. They survived it all to be here now.

He urges her a little further into the water, still keep hold of her hands.

As she creeps backward at his urging, her toes brush a row of rocks and she drops off her tiptoes, losing a couple inches in the process as she continues her walk.

"Enough," she admits on the breath of a laugh, "that Mama had to make Papa discipline me. That's when I knew I was in trouble." She was too young to realize that he couldn't say no to her unless Lyra was forcing it, but she'd also lost however many months to him drowning himself in his work and her time with Lyra on Alpinn.

She stops abruptly, freeing one hand from his to press flat against his chest. "There's a drop off, right here. We can't walk any further."

Sometimes he's reminded how much taller than her he is, like now for example. "Something tells me the discipline did not always go well."

It doesn't even go well now, why would it then??

Cassian stops instantly before she puts a hand on his chest. It feels warm, even through his shirt, even though it's wet from the water. His leg makes him feel weak, but Jyn in front of him helps. "I'm going to see how well I can float."

He figures a warning is probably nice to have before he just falls over on her. He still hesitates, because he's not used to needing to rely on people, and it's a little nerve-wracking to contend with the idea that his leg prevents him from doing something as simple as floating but - they're here to recover. This is part of it. "In a second," he adds, keeping his voice even.

"I told you I won't let you drown." She releases his other hand and tips backwards as she steps back, letting the water catch her. It's strangely gentle, she doesn't make much of a splash and catches herself quickly enough that her hair doesn't even get wet. It's odd, made all the more odd by the darkness of the water seeming to swallow up her pale body.

She treads water slowly, keeping her eyes on Cassian.

"Turn around, I'll catch you." A beat, her head tipping to the side as her eyebrows creep up. "You trust me, don't you?" She's not going to make a fuss about his hesitance, she's going to turn it into a challenge instead.

"I know you won't," he says quickly. "I do trust you."

He does. Absolutely. Which feels more terrifying than his leg not working right in the water. It galvanizes him, so maybe the challenge did work out, somehow.

Cassian turns around slowly, counting the seconds in his head. He runs his hands through the water and takes a breath, before letting himself finally fall backwards, his clothes soaking through instantly. He really should have taken some of them off, if only to be lighter.

There's an immediate sense that he won't be able to properly swim, but that isn't what he's setting out to do right now. He thinks about Jyn behind him. Relaxes. His leg cannot support him, but his arms don't have that issue. "I cannot kick with it," he admits, finally. His tone is is quiet but no less matter of fact.

Jyn swims up behind him immediately, not reaching out to hold him but close enough that when her legs kick as she treads water, they brush against his. The water is so thick with whatever it is that makes the water dangerous to drink that she barely has to kick. Usually she keeps herself up with just her arms, but she's too close to Cassian right now for that.

"You've got arms, they can do all the work." She's not going to offer him pity now. Eventually his leg will be strong enough to kick, but he doesn't need it to be, not right now.

She twists around like a space mermaid to bob in front of him, reaching up to push her hair back from her face. There's an ease to Jyn in the water that isn't there anywhere else. She's a brawler, lacking any of the graceful movements that Chirrut had when he fought, but in the water she's a fish.

"You climbed all the way up the radio tower half dead, you can tread water."

He snorts. It helps. He'd probably be irritated if she gave him pity.

"Adrenaline is almost like magic," he says dryly. The climb up the tower probably only added to how much he fucked up his leg. He knows he did it, but even now he's still impressed with himself for doing so.

It's different watching her in the water, like her body reacts in an entirely different way. It's strange, but interesting, another new fact he's discovered about her tonight. It's almost graceful, which is a word he would have never even considered in her direction.

The longer he floats, the better he feels. It'd be useful, he thinks, to come out into the water more often, rebuild his muscle strength. Get Jyn to come with him. He likes that last bit most. But first, time to be an adult. "Are you sure you don't have gills?"

She's impressed with him, too. She'd taken the same path at full power and she'd barely made it. Of course, she'd also just watched Krennic kill Cassian the same way he'd killed her mother and warred with her own urge to let go and give up, so maybe her emotional distress had more of an impact on her than she'd like to admit.

God, she'd never been so happy to be wrong when he'd just appeared from the shadows and finally ended her nightmare that had started here all those years ago.

"Nothing can survive in this water so you better hope not," she tells him instead of maybe finally thanking him. Nothing can survive in the water they're currently in. I'm sure that's not mildly distressing to hear.

She kicks back a little so she can tread water with her arms, feeling the exhaustion from her earlier foray in the water creeping up her spine now that she'd achieved her objective of getting Cassian in the water. "Is it weird, being here?"

Scarif as a whole felt like one impossibility after another, and they should probably be very impressed by themselves for being here now. But Cassian doesn't like to think about that much, because then he has to think about everyone who isn't here.

If you could give suspicious looks to water, Cassian would. "Should I be relieved I won't be bitten by any creatures or worried it's going to poison me?"

He moves through the water slowly, testing how well his arms can hold him up. The water lets him practically float. If it didn't, he's not sure he would trust himself with it. Whatever minerals are in here are useful on that end.

"The only weird part is how quiet it is." Okay, that's not the only weirdness. "I feel like I should be doing more. The planet itself is not strange."

"Maybe don't drink the water."

She's silent for a long while after that, swishing this way and that restlessly, never getting too far from Cassian that she wouldn't be able to drag him to the surface if his head went under the dark water. She's hovering without realizing, which was one of the less emotionally charged reasons she forced herself out of the house every morning. She can't stand the sight of him injured and being impotent to help him.

"You can help me with the condenser if you need something to do," she offers, knowing full well that isn't the more he wants to be doing. He is safe here and she is, at her very core, selfish. She's not going to call Mon Mothma and ask to be assigned back to Base One because she's not going to put Cassian in danger.

She can't.

"I wasn't planning on it."

He isn't sure what he expected her to say, but maybe the silence isn't much of a surprise either. They've been talking a lot, but they don't always have to. Cassian finds it's just as easy to sit in the quiet with Jyn as it is to talk to her (usually).

As much as he would rather be back on base, he also knows it'd be detrimental. He would feel as useless there as he does here, and at least here there is Jyn and time to recover. He isn't used to either being such a blessing.

"Is that what you get up to all day?"

She leaves the house a lot, okay. He's noticed. Just like he's noticed she isn't going too far from him, but he quietly appreciates it, should his strength give out and the water suddenly not support him.

She needed a reasonable excuse to ignore him.

She's a terrible person.

Her breath comes out on a sigh, shoulders lifting in a silent shrug she doesn't know if he even sees because she's avoiding looking at him again. "Sometimes."

He doesn't see it, but the water ripples with the movement and he can see her shrugging in his head as she sighs. He turns himself in the water, looking to catch her face at a better angle.

There's something cagey in her posture again. She's not looking at him.

"And the rest of the time?"

"Walking, farming, visiting my mother. Avoiding you." Like now, when she ducks under the water like a startled mermaid, feet kicking at the surface before they too disappear. She pops up like a buoy a moment later, hair plastered to her cheeks before she shoves it back with wet fingers.

"You make me nervous," she blurts out like she's expelling sea water after CPR. The water is apparently better at getting her to open up than expensive therapy. "Not you, but the idea of you? I lose everything I care about so I wanted to keep you-- away. So if you decided to leave, it wouldn't. Hurt. And I thought if we were on Lah'mu when you decided to wash your hands of all this, it would just be one less planet I'd try to avoid."

He's not surprised she was avoiding him, but he is surprised she admits it, even if she literally dives underwater two seconds after.

Cassian keeps his eyes on her while she continues. It's not a heavy stare, but it is an understanding one. He wants to take her hand to keep her from running - or swimming - away again, but he also needs both his to stay afloat.

So instead he just swims himself closer to her. Jyn's life is full of abandonment, and he knows that. It doesn't mean he agreed with her views on the Rebellion at all, but he does understand it. "Any desire or want to leave this planet is not because of you. You being here makes it easier to stay."

It feels like the water is keeping his emotions afloat as much as his body. "I found myself wanting to follow you far more than I was comfortable with. You are not the only one made nervous by ideas. I have spent a lot of time here worried you were going to leave without a word, that you would not come back one day." He's been just as afraid of her leaving, if he's being honest. "It would be nice if you could stop avoiding me now, if we are going to try - this."

Whatever this is. They still haven't really clarified.

"I can try." She's not going to promise she will immediately be better because that is just a huge lie. Which doesn't seem useful right now. A frown settles more firmly on her stubborn mouth, how was he worried about her leaving? Honestly. She doesn't have anyone or anything left in the galaxy, just him.

"What... is this?"

He smiles. "Thank you."

Jyn likes to run, okay? If she saw him and was scared of what they could be, Cassian wouldn't be surprised if she left to avoid dealing with it.

Or at least, he would have been afraid of it yesterday. Today feels better.

He opens his mouth, closes it. "I think it is just... us. Together." He makes a face, because that feels like too little, but on the other hand he's worried about making it sound like too much. Cassian feels nervous, like no matter what he says is going to make her dive underwater again. "I want you. I want to be with you. If that makes it a relationship, I'm willing to try one."

Phrases and words he'd never thought he'd use, right there.

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