He felt wretched he'd set her up to possibly think he was going to… but he'd partially undressed, himself, so that if anyone were to barge into the grove, it would look to them like they were interrupting not a search but a tryst.
He finished draping his coat over his blaster-hand and arm. "Let's go talk."
He hadn't ever checked the apartment for listening devices. If there was one, removing it would be out of character. And his staying in character while in presumed 'private' would be all the more convincing. But, now that he was satisfied Jyn wasn't wearing a wire either, that meant they weren't going to have this conversation in the apartment.
He didn't take the lead this time but walked beside her. Clearly, so he could direct their steps while not letting her behind him where she might attack him in turn (would be more than fair) or make a break for it.
He had a feeling she wouldn't. But when had he ever been able to let his feelings guide his life?
They left the grove and the gazebo and the garden behind and walked out into the main, open sweep of meadow. In the middle of the grass, Cassian stopped them, looking in all directions.
"Okay," he murmured. "Nothing in ear's reach for anyone to hide behind." He gave a (laughably, uncomfortably, sincerely) courteous gesture for Jyn to sit. Cassian did after her. They were close enough to each other to look, to any observer, like two lovers enjoying the sunlight. They were far enough from each other for no part of them to be touching.
Without further preamble, looking at her from under hooded eyes, Cassian said low-voiced, "Where did you hear that name?"
For a moment ... Jyn hadn't been certain of Cassian's intentions at all, but it had become clear enough that he wasn't interested in her more than he was any potential listening devices she might have carried upon her person.
Still, even after redressing, her sense of uneasiness did not begin to wane. It was hard to feel anything but knowing that a blaster was still being pointed in her direction underneath the jacked draped casually over Cassian's arm.
Even if she wanted to, there was no other choice she could have made but to accept.
Her neutal expression belied nothing, though, as they left the copse of trees and passed the gazebo and garden, both empty of anyone who might notice them or pay them any attention. With no witnesses, she had no idea what lied ahead for her. He could say talk all he wanted - Cassian was the one with the weapon, not her. For all intents and purposes, he was in charge of this situation.
He directed her to sit, and she complied, keeping still as he sat next to her, a slight distance between them. No, there was no one to overhear, but that was no reason to tempt fate just in case.
Jyn knew the question was coming, but it still took her breath away. There was no point in trying to lie, he already suspected her, he'd know if she tried to deceive him further. Truth it was.
She could only mean one thing. There was only one place he'd gone (a) without her and (b) where that name had been spoken.
Which meant she also knew…
For a protracted silence, Cassian just looked at her. Behind his steady eyes, gears whirred furiously.
It was simple, really. His cover was blown. He should evacuate immediately. Take Jyn with him again to the ship where Kay waited, already knowing she had no commlink, so that by the time she could walk back to reach any communications device to report him, they'd already have taken off and jumped to hyperspace.
(…Leave her a blaster to defend herself in case anyone tried to jump her out there again. …Dear Force, even now that she must be reclassified as an adversary, he couldn't think of her as an adversary…!)
But still he sat there, blaster invisibly drawn, gazing at her face, trying to read her. And then asking an unbelievably stupid question (because how would she not simply respond with what he wanted to hear and how could he verify either way) like: "Have you turned me in?"
Jyn wanted to try to explain that she hadn't been thinking, that it hadn't been a deliberate action to follow and eavesdrop and overhear things that hadn't been meant for her to learn, but she knew it would be of no use.
They were enemies.
He would never believe her.
Cassian just stared at her, and Jyn couldn't even begin to gauge what he might have been thinking. She was still breathing, although she didn't know how much longer that would be true. He was the one with a blaster trained on her, after all, and now he knew that she knew that he was a spy. It made sense that he would assume that she had turned him in, but as he asked the question, Jyn began to shake her head no, her expression pained, totally heartbroken. "No. No! If I had, you would have already been taken into custody."
Or worse.
"Could you stand down, please? I'm afraid that you're going to shoot me and that's not the way that I want to die", she asked, steady as she could manage, even though she could not hold her trembling at bay forever. "Please, Cassian."
He sat still another moment. Then, he quietly handed her his jacket. Under cover of that exchange (from, again, any outside eyes) he reholstered his blaster.
"Having just seen you fight," he said softly, "I knew I wouldn't be able to hold my own against you, hand-to-hand."
Admitting which was potentially a surrender. They were equally unarmed now.
He was going against every protocol he'd ever had.
His hands, now empty, rested on his knees. He turned one over palm-upward, toward her, silently asking for his jacket back.
Jyn wasn't expecting the outright relinquishment of the blaster - but she was still surprised when Cassian handed her his jacket and did as she asked. For the moment, her biggest fear was put to rest, although she could hardly anticipate what would happen next.
"I don't want to fight you", she murmured, a soft shake of her head. "And I'm not planning to."
I told you I loved you - she thought, aching to say so out loud, and I meant it.
Wordlessly, he gestured for his jacket, and Jyn handed it back, every nerve ending in her body on edge, waiting. He had no real reason to trust her, and yet, here they still were.
Again. Shouldn't be enough to make him betray his own protocols, experiences, directives. But he'd told her I love you, too. And also meant it.
His fingers curled a bit, crushing the jacket material, for want of touching hers. He didn't try. He just pulled it back on—acutely aware of the transponder at his breast, with its mark of insignia (lying) visible, and its lullaby (suicide) pill not so.
Still, he kept his eyes on her. The one protocol he wouldn't let up, no matter how increasingly painful. But maybe that was part of it, too. It was a pain he'd earned, from the precise manner of lying he'd done to her.
"What exactly do you know?" he asked softly. Again, stupid, stupid; what reason could she have to tell him, in light of all the reasons not to?
Jyn nodded her understanding and finally allowed herself the opportunity to take a real breath.
They had no real reason to trust each other after ... everything, but the more emotional side of her - the side that was at war with the more logical side was screaming at her not to give up hope just yet.
Hope for what, she wasn't yet sure.
The last thing she wanted was for him to think that she was lying, so Jyn kept her gaze firmly locked on him. Her heart thudded dully in her chest, but she knew it was a necessary hurt in order to prove that she wasn't a threat - or an enemy.
"What you told your droid friend. That you couldn't do this - didn't want to lie to me anymore because of how close we were getting. That - that you want this ... you wanted us to be real. That ... you thought you loved me. That's all I heard. I moved and made a noise, he told you to quiet, and I ran."
She paused, her brow furrowing all the more. "You have to know - whatever you're here to do, the longer you stay, the more you put yourself in danger. They always find the spies, always. And they're not very kind when they do."
…what was the right word. Flummoxed? Stupefied? Speechless, for sure.
She'd skated right over your droid friend. The tactical, strategic point of having a killdroid, with Imperial markings, at his disposal. The fact that he had a hidden ship in the city. The fact of his false identity and that he was spying on them, full stop. Only mentioned to warn him.
No, all the prioritizing was on… them. Precisely the things he'd been dying so desperately to tell her voluntarily, were the things that seemed to be her dominant takeaways.
"It's all true," he said at last. "I've never felt in more danger on an assignment than I have with you. Being in physical peril was never as risky because I've never been so tempted to betray my own protocols before. …And I'm doing it right now."
His gaze on her became a little less piercing, flickering slightly away to gather himself, find the strength to keep looking directly at her. "You don't… want to know… who I really am? What my assignment is? You… don't… want to be the one to capture me? Or worry what I might do to make sure you don't?"
There was a lot to unpack, including the fact that his partner seemed to be a droid that had been made for murder, the hidden ship, his true identity and what he had been sent here to accomplish in the first place.
But he had asked what she had overheard, and what she had overheard was precisely what he'd told the droid - Kay, as he'd called it, the he didn't think he could continue lying, that he wanted what they had to be real, that he thought he loved her.
All the things she had laid awake and wondered about. How could any of it have been real when it had all been based on lies? How naïve and stupid was she to still want something between them to be genuine? If she was loyal to her uncle, to the only life that she had ever known, she would've turned Cassian in the moment that she had gotten far enough away from the ship to do so safely.
But here they were. And even though there was only inches between them, Jyn felt like she would never be able to bridge the distance ever again ... or even if Cassian wanted her to. In her lap, her fingers flexed, but Jyn did not reach out to him, no matter how overwhelming the desire was.
The little knot between her brows furrowed all the deeper and she shook her head from side to side. What's changed, she wanted to ask, what makes me so different?
"Of course I want to know who you are", she replied thickly. "But I don't think that I'm necessarily a part of your assignment. I think I'm incidental to it - I'm no Admiral - and that anything you find out from me or because of me is in addition to the mission at hand. Am I wrong?"
She took a shaky breath before continuing. "Do you really think I'm so evil as to want to turn you in knowing that they would torture you for information and then kill you? Do you think that I'd take pleasure in knowing it? I'm not that cold-hearted, Cassian."
"I don't think we'd be having this conversation if your intent was to harm me. I think you would have done it back in the trees, not out in the open. What I do wonder is why you even came back if you knew that you were compromised."
Another pause. A heartbeat, another -
"I wonder if anything I thought we had or were beginning to have was real. I wonder if the person I thought I loved ever really existed at all. Why are you still here, Cassian?"
He watched her levelly, unreadably, another long moment.
It was the same face he'd had all along. Shorn hair, clean-shaven, eyes that crinkled irresistibly, nose that had once been broken. But with no outward change, he looked now so much older.
Three choices.
At last, in a voice that didn't seem it could get any quieter, doing so anyway:
"Cassian Andor. Intelligence officer. Lieutenant, Special Forces, Alliance to Restore the Republic. Former child soldier, Confederacy of Independent Systems. No homeworld. No family.
"Assignment: spend a year embedded with Admiral Grendreef. Gain his confidence; be brought into the loop of certain plans already in motion to which he is instrumental. Learn any additional information from his social and personal life. Also of interest: connections such as Orson Krennic; so when given an opportunity to share familial bonds… take them.
"Assignment would have been better served by immediately treating you the way Imperial men customarily treat women. Demand immediate physical intimacy followed by complete disregard. I've been failing to stick to assignment on that front since I met you.
"Now you know. My cover is blown. I have three choices. One: abandon mission by evacuating immediately. Two: continue mission by neutralizing you." He said it flatly, but there was a sudden stab of pain in his eyes. "Three: continue mission by conscripting your aid; to preserve my cover."
Another moment just looking. But at last: "I reject option Two. So. Will it be One or Three?"
Jyn felt so uneasy - sitting in the silence, unsure of what Cassian was thinking, what he would ultimately end up doing. And it was disconcerting to see the face that she knew look so very different, so burdened and hardened, almost totally unfamiliar to her.
Then he spoke in that soft voice, and all Jyn could do was listen, her heart falling a little more with each detail that he shared, lower and lower and lower until it plummeted into the pit of her belly and bottomed out, taking her breath with it.
She truly was nothing more than a means to an end. But at least he admitted to failing at (purposely?) treating her in all the ways that a wife would have been treated, like a piece of property and little more.
If she was grateful for anything, it was that ... even though loving him hurt just as badly as being treated indifferently would have hurt. It seemed that neither of them could win, either way.
She dropped her head as he laid out his three options, her breath catching in her throat as he rejected the worst possible outcome of them all, her throat burning as she replied - "Three."
She was selfish - so kriffing selfish - but option three would give them more time, for better or worse. One would be the safest option, and it she were less selfish, that's the word that would have left her lips. He could reject it outright and decide to leave anyway, but she tried, anyway.
He lost all breath. For long, long moments, he had to sit very, very still. Waiting for it to come back.
While in his mind, he grabbed her in his arms and held her as they wept until they stopped and at long last kissed.
"You don't have to," he said at last. Still short on breath. "I'll not harm you either way. And we can mock something up, if One, so no one could think you complicit.
"Where if Three…"
He couldn't let show, couldn't allow, how much, how badly, he wanted…
"…there'd have to be oaths. Assurances.
"…To start… what you'd intend to do… after I left."
He had to know that whatever way they chose to move on from here - whether he cut and run or whether he stayed and tried to complete his mission, suspicion would be placed upon Jyn's shoulders nonetheless. They lived together, after all, how could she not know that her husband was the enemy?
No, she didn't have to offer her assistance, and she knew that she probably should have chosen the first option - to walk away now and never look back, but her terrible, selfish heart didn't allow her to suggest it.
Jyn waited for Cassian to say something - anything - her pulse fluttering nervously as she watched him, the emotion that he was choosing to share with her, how conflicted he seemed to be about everything, too.
"What will it take for you to trust me?", she managed to ask, her voice soft, teetering on steadiness. "I'll do it."
He could take her to his ship, take her to talk to the droid, who had said, after all, that it had been monitoring his vitals. It could monitor hers, as well, interrogate her if necessary to prove that she was not lying.
"If they caught wind of who you truly are ... they would suspect me. So unless you created a scenario that proved that you were convincingly dead and they did not question my loyalty ... I'd probably have to run, too. I ... don't have anyone or anywhere to run to, but I'd run."
She took a shaky breath, shrugging her shoulders. "I don't belong here, anyway. I don't - "
Too much. He didn't know that her loyalty had been wavering for quite some time. He didn't know that she had been speaking to others who felt the same way. How could he know - she hadn't been part of his original mission.
Her eyes widened and her heart nearly beat out of her chest, and she wondered ... had he really asked the question or had she simply imagined it instead?
Her throat dry, she finally found enough composure to ask -
Jyn's expression mirrored Cassian's - the undeniable want, the barely restrained holding back, but it shifted and changed and for a moment, her uncertainty clouded her wide eyes.
He loved her. But did she love Cassian ... did she know him, or were her feelings for Joreth, a man who had never really existed in the first place, who had been fabricated to be nothing more than another perfect cog in the Empire's machine?
But she didn't drop her gaze, as much as she wanted to hide for a moment and try to figure things out. She watched and listened and welcomed the touch of his hand even though she was well aware that it was not meant to reassure - it was meant to feel whether or not her pulse jumped as she spoke ... to tell if she was lying.
Jyn's heartbeat - and her gaze - remained steady as she nodded, took a breath, and answered.
"Krennic is right to suspect me of wavering loyalty. Lording power over people who can't fight back - and it's not because they are incapable of governing themselves, it's not because we're benevolent and good. It's because they've got something that we want. I've ... begun speaking with others like me, others who are starting to see that the work we're doing is for the wrong things, and I -
I know I was married off to trap me here, to keep me quiet and complacent and content enough with my duties to stop asking questions. I don't know that your Rebellion is going to be successful at toppling them, Cassian, but I know someone's got to do something.
And I ... I want to do something. I can't sit back and watch my work hurt people anymore."
He was motionless as he attended to her. Eyes steady, monitoring her eyes (movement, focus, dilation), her breathing, any change in perspiration or tension or other visible body language. His hand was also steady, monitoring her heart rate.
…until she finished speaking… and several heartbeats later, his thumb moved, running a gentle line along her skin. The tiniest gesture, expressing so much… wanting.
Finally, he broke the stillness with a flicker of eyes. And removing his hand from her wrist—though it came to rest on the grass between them, like it couldn't bear to go too far from her.
"What's your experience with espionage?" he asked softly. "If I tell you more of the truth, will you be able to keep it secret, or is it best, for now, to only stick with the story?"
Jyn finished speaking and sat back a little, even though all she wanted was to find a way to be closer. She watched and waited and wondered what he must have been thinking about her, about them, about whether or not there was still some semblance of a future.
Cassian didn't say anything for a time, but he continued touching her so gently that she didn't want it - any of it - to come to an end.
Unfortunately, it did, and she briefly considered making contact once more, tangling their fingers together in some sort of affectionate, comforting gesture, but she managed - barely - to keep her hands in her lap.
"I won't tell a soul", she replied, just as softly. She didn't know yet if she should admit to gathering intel on Krennic a little at a time for the past year and a half, but if she were to share that information with anyone, it would be with Cassian.
"Yes", she replied, once he'd broken another too-long silence. "I'm sure I could make that happen."
She felt disappointed, a little, that that was what he had asked of her. But given the circumstances, and given what she had just told him, maybe she should have expected it.
It was Jyn's turn to take a moment to consider her options. There was so much she wanted to know, so much that she wanted to ask, but when she finally opened her mouth again, it was to quietly ask -
"You and I ... was there anything real? Or ... was it all to keep your cover up?"
She shook her head, finally glanced down and swallowed hard and tried to keep from getting too emotional. They were too exposed, too out in the open, she didn't want to bring attention to them should anyone breach their privacy.
In the grass between them, his fingers flexed, his hand wanting to take hers. But didn't think it had the right.
So it didn't try—but it did close the distance between them. So his fingertips could barely brush hers.
"I've been a spy since I was sixteen," he said quietly. "I'm very good at what I do. It's not because I'm a good liar. It's because I know to rely mainly on truth.
"My record, my papers, my rank: lies. Most of what I've said, especially to you: real.
"Everything we've done…"
—and not done, because he couldn't bear it under auspices of a lie—
Jyn blinked rapidly, her breath catching in her throat. Sixteen. That was so young, so when the droid had said that Cassian had been lying for most of his life ... he had meant it.
She couldn't even imagine what he had done and seen and had to endure. But her heart went out to him nonetheless. Jyn still did not take Cassian's hand, but she also did not pull her own away, as needy for the touch as he seemed to be.
So young. Wait 'til she found out when he'd become a soldier.
Why am I so different?
He hadn't wondered that. He hadn't articulated thoughts about it. He hadn't had to. It just was.
Different. What was different. "You're intelligent. You're strong. You're beautiful. You're capable. You keep your own mind. You show care and mutual attraction to me. All my senses react to you. We can speak and not speak together longer than I can stand myself. But… different…" To varying degrees, so was and so had Xilo, Farir, d'Djiera.
Different?
"…I recognized you," he said at last. "And felt like you recognized me."
Jyn hadn't wondered, either. He had just felt different than anyone who had tried to get close to her before. Different in a good way. Different enough to allow her to open up - and to want to open up - and to be honest in ways that she had never done with another person before.
At first, the answer didn't satisfy her. Calling her intelligent and strong and beautiful and capable didn't mean much to Jyn in the slightest, but the more deeper under the surface Cassian went, the more she began to understand -
He wanted to take her hand. Touch her face. Move them together to rest and embrace.
But he'd not presume physical contact again. If it were to happen, it would have to be at her initiating.
He was suddenly so very tired.
His head throbbed. There was too much in it. All he could do was narrow and sort it into options.
"Should I still go home with you? We could search for listening devices, see how much more we can talk there. Or you can go there and I can go to my ship and we can take some time, reevaluate later. Or you could come with me to the ship and I'll introduce you to Kaytoo. I'm not up for anything more public right now, but. I'd do whichever of those you want to do."
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2019-08-24 10:50 am (UTC)He finished draping his coat over his blaster-hand and arm. "Let's go talk."
He hadn't ever checked the apartment for listening devices. If there was one, removing it would be out of character. And his staying in character while in presumed 'private' would be all the more convincing. But, now that he was satisfied Jyn wasn't wearing a wire either, that meant they weren't going to have this conversation in the apartment.
He didn't take the lead this time but walked beside her. Clearly, so he could direct their steps while not letting her behind him where she might attack him in turn (would be more than fair) or make a break for it.
He had a feeling she wouldn't. But when had he ever been able to let his feelings guide his life?
They left the grove and the gazebo and the garden behind and walked out into the main, open sweep of meadow. In the middle of the grass, Cassian stopped them, looking in all directions.
"Okay," he murmured. "Nothing in ear's reach for anyone to hide behind." He gave a (laughably, uncomfortably, sincerely) courteous gesture for Jyn to sit. Cassian did after her. They were close enough to each other to look, to any observer, like two lovers enjoying the sunlight. They were far enough from each other for no part of them to be touching.
Without further preamble, looking at her from under hooded eyes, Cassian said low-voiced, "Where did you hear that name?"
no subject
Date: 2019-08-24 10:36 pm (UTC)Still, even after redressing, her sense of uneasiness did not begin to wane. It was hard to feel anything but knowing that a blaster was still being pointed in her direction underneath the jacked draped casually over Cassian's arm.
Even if she wanted to, there was no other choice she could have made but to accept.
Her neutal expression belied nothing, though, as they left the copse of trees and passed the gazebo and garden, both empty of anyone who might notice them or pay them any attention. With no witnesses, she had no idea what lied ahead for her. He could say talk all he wanted - Cassian was the one with the weapon, not her. For all intents and purposes, he was in charge of this situation.
He directed her to sit, and she complied, keeping still as he sat next to her, a slight distance between them. No, there was no one to overhear, but that was no reason to tempt fate just in case.
Jyn knew the question was coming, but it still took her breath away. There was no point in trying to lie, he already suspected her, he'd know if she tried to deceive him further. Truth it was.
"I followed you."
no subject
Date: 2019-08-25 02:54 am (UTC)She could only mean one thing. There was only one place he'd gone (a) without her and (b) where that name had been spoken.
Which meant she also knew…
For a protracted silence, Cassian just looked at her. Behind his steady eyes, gears whirred furiously.
It was simple, really. His cover was blown. He should evacuate immediately. Take Jyn with him again to the ship where Kay waited, already knowing she had no commlink, so that by the time she could walk back to reach any communications device to report him, they'd already have taken off and jumped to hyperspace.
(…Leave her a blaster to defend herself in case anyone tried to jump her out there again. …Dear Force, even now that she must be reclassified as an adversary, he couldn't think of her as an adversary…!)
But still he sat there, blaster invisibly drawn, gazing at her face, trying to read her. And then asking an unbelievably stupid question (because how would she not simply respond with what he wanted to hear and how could he verify either way) like: "Have you turned me in?"
no subject
Date: 2019-08-25 04:35 am (UTC)They were enemies.
He would never believe her.
Cassian just stared at her, and Jyn couldn't even begin to gauge what he might have been thinking. She was still breathing, although she didn't know how much longer that would be true. He was the one with a blaster trained on her, after all, and now he knew that she knew that he was a spy. It made sense that he would assume that she had turned him in, but as he asked the question, Jyn began to shake her head no, her expression pained, totally heartbroken. "No. No! If I had, you would have already been taken into custody."
Or worse.
"Could you stand down, please? I'm afraid that you're going to shoot me and that's not the way that I want to die", she asked, steady as she could manage, even though she could not hold her trembling at bay forever. "Please, Cassian."
no subject
Date: 2019-08-25 05:47 am (UTC)"Having just seen you fight," he said softly, "I knew I wouldn't be able to hold my own against you, hand-to-hand."
Admitting which was potentially a surrender. They were equally unarmed now.
He was going against every protocol he'd ever had.
His hands, now empty, rested on his knees. He turned one over palm-upward, toward her, silently asking for his jacket back.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-25 06:48 am (UTC)"I don't want to fight you", she murmured, a soft shake of her head. "And I'm not planning to."
I told you I loved you - she thought, aching to say so out loud, and I meant it.
Wordlessly, he gestured for his jacket, and Jyn handed it back, every nerve ending in her body on edge, waiting. He had no real reason to trust her, and yet, here they still were.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-26 02:22 am (UTC)Again. Shouldn't be enough to make him betray his own protocols, experiences, directives. But he'd told her I love you, too. And also meant it.
His fingers curled a bit, crushing the jacket material, for want of touching hers. He didn't try. He just pulled it back on—acutely aware of the transponder at his breast, with its mark of insignia (lying) visible, and its lullaby (suicide) pill not so.
Still, he kept his eyes on her. The one protocol he wouldn't let up, no matter how increasingly painful. But maybe that was part of it, too. It was a pain he'd earned, from the precise manner of lying he'd done to her.
"What exactly do you know?" he asked softly. Again, stupid, stupid; what reason could she have to tell him, in light of all the reasons not to?
no subject
Date: 2019-08-26 02:54 am (UTC)They had no real reason to trust each other after ... everything, but the more emotional side of her - the side that was at war with the more logical side was screaming at her not to give up hope just yet.
Hope for what, she wasn't yet sure.
The last thing she wanted was for him to think that she was lying, so Jyn kept her gaze firmly locked on him. Her heart thudded dully in her chest, but she knew it was a necessary hurt in order to prove that she wasn't a threat - or an enemy.
"What you told your droid friend. That you couldn't do this - didn't want to lie to me anymore because of how close we were getting. That - that you want this ... you wanted us to be real. That ... you thought you loved me. That's all I heard. I moved and made a noise, he told you to quiet, and I ran."
She paused, her brow furrowing all the more. "You have to know - whatever you're here to do, the longer you stay, the more you put yourself in danger. They always find the spies, always. And they're not very kind when they do."
no subject
Date: 2019-08-26 09:33 am (UTC)…
…what was the right word. Flummoxed? Stupefied? Speechless, for sure.
She'd skated right over your droid friend. The tactical, strategic point of having a killdroid, with Imperial markings, at his disposal. The fact that he had a hidden ship in the city. The fact of his false identity and that he was spying on them, full stop. Only mentioned to warn him.
No, all the prioritizing was on… them. Precisely the things he'd been dying so desperately to tell her voluntarily, were the things that seemed to be her dominant takeaways.
"It's all true," he said at last. "I've never felt in more danger on an assignment than I have with you. Being in physical peril was never as risky because I've never been so tempted to betray my own protocols before. …And I'm doing it right now."
His gaze on her became a little less piercing, flickering slightly away to gather himself, find the strength to keep looking directly at her. "You don't… want to know… who I really am? What my assignment is? You… don't… want to be the one to capture me? Or worry what I might do to make sure you don't?"
no subject
Date: 2019-08-26 04:56 pm (UTC)But he had asked what she had overheard, and what she had overheard was precisely what he'd told the droid - Kay, as he'd called it, the he didn't think he could continue lying, that he wanted what they had to be real, that he thought he loved her.
All the things she had laid awake and wondered about. How could any of it have been real when it had all been based on lies? How naïve and stupid was she to still want something between them to be genuine? If she was loyal to her uncle, to the only life that she had ever known, she would've turned Cassian in the moment that she had gotten far enough away from the ship to do so safely.
But here they were. And even though there was only inches between them, Jyn felt like she would never be able to bridge the distance ever again ... or even if Cassian wanted her to. In her lap, her fingers flexed, but Jyn did not reach out to him, no matter how overwhelming the desire was.
The little knot between her brows furrowed all the deeper and she shook her head from side to side. What's changed, she wanted to ask, what makes me so different?
"Of course I want to know who you are", she replied thickly. "But I don't think that I'm necessarily a part of your assignment. I think I'm incidental to it - I'm no Admiral - and that anything you find out from me or because of me is in addition to the mission at hand. Am I wrong?"
She took a shaky breath before continuing. "Do you really think I'm so evil as to want to turn you in knowing that they would torture you for information and then kill you? Do you think that I'd take pleasure in knowing it? I'm not that cold-hearted, Cassian."
"I don't think we'd be having this conversation if your intent was to harm me. I think you would have done it back in the trees, not out in the open. What I do wonder is why you even came back if you knew that you were compromised."
Another pause. A heartbeat, another -
"I wonder if anything I thought we had or were beginning to have was real. I wonder if the person I thought I loved ever really existed at all. Why are you still here, Cassian?"
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Date: 2019-08-27 04:06 am (UTC)It was the same face he'd had all along. Shorn hair, clean-shaven, eyes that crinkled irresistibly, nose that had once been broken. But with no outward change, he looked now so much older.
Three choices.
At last, in a voice that didn't seem it could get any quieter, doing so anyway:
"Cassian Andor. Intelligence officer. Lieutenant, Special Forces, Alliance to Restore the Republic. Former child soldier, Confederacy of Independent Systems. No homeworld. No family.
"Assignment: spend a year embedded with Admiral Grendreef. Gain his confidence; be brought into the loop of certain plans already in motion to which he is instrumental. Learn any additional information from his social and personal life. Also of interest: connections such as Orson Krennic; so when given an opportunity to share familial bonds… take them.
"Assignment would have been better served by immediately treating you the way Imperial men customarily treat women. Demand immediate physical intimacy followed by complete disregard. I've been failing to stick to assignment on that front since I met you.
"Now you know. My cover is blown. I have three choices. One: abandon mission by evacuating immediately. Two: continue mission by neutralizing you." He said it flatly, but there was a sudden stab of pain in his eyes. "Three: continue mission by conscripting your aid; to preserve my cover."
Another moment just looking. But at last: "I reject option Two. So. Will it be One or Three?"
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Date: 2019-08-27 04:46 am (UTC)Then he spoke in that soft voice, and all Jyn could do was listen, her heart falling a little more with each detail that he shared, lower and lower and lower until it plummeted into the pit of her belly and bottomed out, taking her breath with it.
She truly was nothing more than a means to an end. But at least he admitted to failing at (purposely?) treating her in all the ways that a wife would have been treated, like a piece of property and little more.
If she was grateful for anything, it was that ... even though loving him hurt just as badly as being treated indifferently would have hurt. It seemed that neither of them could win, either way.
She dropped her head as he laid out his three options, her breath catching in her throat as he rejected the worst possible outcome of them all, her throat burning as she replied - "Three."
She was selfish - so kriffing selfish - but option three would give them more time, for better or worse. One would be the safest option, and it she were less selfish, that's the word that would have left her lips. He could reject it outright and decide to leave anyway, but she tried, anyway.
"I choose Three."
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Date: 2019-08-28 11:22 am (UTC)While in his mind, he grabbed her in his arms and held her as they wept until they stopped and at long last kissed.
"You don't have to," he said at last. Still short on breath. "I'll not harm you either way. And we can mock something up, if One, so no one could think you complicit.
"Where if Three…"
He couldn't let show, couldn't allow, how much, how badly, he wanted…
"…there'd have to be oaths. Assurances.
"…To start… what you'd intend to do… after I left."
Leave her to suggest it, or say it first…?
"…For instance. …Would you want to come with me?"
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Date: 2019-08-28 11:16 pm (UTC)No, she didn't have to offer her assistance, and she knew that she probably should have chosen the first option - to walk away now and never look back, but her terrible, selfish heart didn't allow her to suggest it.
Jyn waited for Cassian to say something - anything - her pulse fluttering nervously as she watched him, the emotion that he was choosing to share with her, how conflicted he seemed to be about everything, too.
"What will it take for you to trust me?", she managed to ask, her voice soft, teetering on steadiness. "I'll do it."
He could take her to his ship, take her to talk to the droid, who had said, after all, that it had been monitoring his vitals. It could monitor hers, as well, interrogate her if necessary to prove that she was not lying.
"If they caught wind of who you truly are ... they would suspect me. So unless you created a scenario that proved that you were convincingly dead and they did not question my loyalty ... I'd probably have to run, too. I ... don't have anyone or anywhere to run to, but I'd run."
She took a shaky breath, shrugging her shoulders. "I don't belong here, anyway. I don't - "
Too much. He didn't know that her loyalty had been wavering for quite some time. He didn't know that she had been speaking to others who felt the same way. How could he know - she hadn't been part of his original mission.
Her eyes widened and her heart nearly beat out of her chest, and she wondered ... had he really asked the question or had she simply imagined it instead?
Her throat dry, she finally found enough composure to ask -
"Would you want me to?"
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Date: 2019-08-30 09:55 am (UTC)At that, he could only look at her. His eyes tense, torn, wanting, so much…
I already trust you. I'm not supposed to. I do.
Then Would you want me to?
The amount of want in his dark eyes had to be blinding. How could he ever have fooled anyone, kept any semblance of a cover identity at all?
"I'm in love with you," he said at last. "So yes. I want you to.
"But… coming with me for that reason isn't enough, and it's my duty not to… just go with what I want.
"You know…?"
Of course she did.
What will it take for you to trust me?
"Tell me what you think," he said, voice so soft.
As, very lightly, he rested the tips of his fingers on her wrist. Where he could feel her pulse.
"What you really think of the Empire and the Rebellion."
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Date: 2019-08-31 01:59 am (UTC)He loved her. But did she love Cassian ... did she know him, or were her feelings for Joreth, a man who had never really existed in the first place, who had been fabricated to be nothing more than another perfect cog in the Empire's machine?
But she didn't drop her gaze, as much as she wanted to hide for a moment and try to figure things out. She watched and listened and welcomed the touch of his hand even though she was well aware that it was not meant to reassure - it was meant to feel whether or not her pulse jumped as she spoke ... to tell if she was lying.
Jyn's heartbeat - and her gaze - remained steady as she nodded, took a breath, and answered.
"Krennic is right to suspect me of wavering loyalty. Lording power over people who can't fight back - and it's not because they are incapable of governing themselves, it's not because we're benevolent and good. It's because they've got something that we want. I've ... begun speaking with others like me, others who are starting to see that the work we're doing is for the wrong things, and I -
I know I was married off to trap me here, to keep me quiet and complacent and content enough with my duties to stop asking questions. I don't know that your Rebellion is going to be successful at toppling them, Cassian, but I know someone's got to do something.
And I ... I want to do something. I can't sit back and watch my work hurt people anymore."
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Date: 2019-08-31 03:26 am (UTC)…until she finished speaking… and several heartbeats later, his thumb moved, running a gentle line along her skin. The tiniest gesture, expressing so much… wanting.
Finally, he broke the stillness with a flicker of eyes. And removing his hand from her wrist—though it came to rest on the grass between them, like it couldn't bear to go too far from her.
"What's your experience with espionage?" he asked softly. "If I tell you more of the truth, will you be able to keep it secret, or is it best, for now, to only stick with the story?"
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Date: 2019-08-31 03:43 am (UTC)Cassian didn't say anything for a time, but he continued touching her so gently that she didn't want it - any of it - to come to an end.
Unfortunately, it did, and she briefly considered making contact once more, tangling their fingers together in some sort of affectionate, comforting gesture, but she managed - barely - to keep her hands in her lap.
"I won't tell a soul", she replied, just as softly. She didn't know yet if she should admit to gathering intel on Krennic a little at a time for the past year and a half, but if she were to share that information with anyone, it would be with Cassian.
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Date: 2019-08-31 04:02 am (UTC)Another moment or few passed.
"These 'others like you' you've been speaking to," he said at last. "Are there any I could meet?"
And in the meantime… his eyes flickered back to hers. "…And is there anything you want to know?"
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Date: 2019-08-31 04:14 am (UTC)She felt disappointed, a little, that that was what he had asked of her. But given the circumstances, and given what she had just told him, maybe she should have expected it.
It was Jyn's turn to take a moment to consider her options. There was so much she wanted to know, so much that she wanted to ask, but when she finally opened her mouth again, it was to quietly ask -
"You and I ... was there anything real? Or ... was it all to keep your cover up?"
She shook her head, finally glanced down and swallowed hard and tried to keep from getting too emotional. They were too exposed, too out in the open, she didn't want to bring attention to them should anyone breach their privacy.
"Do I know you at all?"
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Date: 2019-08-31 04:26 am (UTC)So it didn't try—but it did close the distance between them. So his fingertips could barely brush hers.
"I've been a spy since I was sixteen," he said quietly. "I'm very good at what I do. It's not because I'm a good liar. It's because I know to rely mainly on truth.
"My record, my papers, my rank: lies. Most of what I've said, especially to you: real.
"Everything we've done…"
—and not done, because he couldn't bear it under auspices of a lie—
"…real.
"Too much so. For me."
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Date: 2019-08-31 04:37 am (UTC)She couldn't even imagine what he had done and seen and had to endure. But her heart went out to him nonetheless. Jyn still did not take Cassian's hand, but she also did not pull her own away, as needy for the touch as he seemed to be.
"Why am I so different?"
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Date: 2019-08-31 04:56 am (UTC)Why am I so different?
He hadn't wondered that. He hadn't articulated thoughts about it. He hadn't had to. It just was.
Different. What was different. "You're intelligent. You're strong. You're beautiful. You're capable. You keep your own mind. You show care and mutual attraction to me. All my senses react to you. We can speak and not speak together longer than I can stand myself. But… different…" To varying degrees, so was and so had Xilo, Farir, d'Djiera.
Different?
"…I recognized you," he said at last. "And felt like you recognized me."
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Date: 2019-08-31 05:10 am (UTC)At first, the answer didn't satisfy her. Calling her intelligent and strong and beautiful and capable didn't mean much to Jyn in the slightest, but the more deeper under the surface Cassian went, the more she began to understand -
At least somewhat.
"I felt it, too."
Or -
She thought she had.
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Date: 2019-08-31 05:26 am (UTC)But he'd not presume physical contact again. If it were to happen, it would have to be at her initiating.
He was suddenly so very tired.
His head throbbed. There was too much in it. All he could do was narrow and sort it into options.
"Should I still go home with you? We could search for listening devices, see how much more we can talk there. Or you can go there and I can go to my ship and we can take some time, reevaluate later. Or you could come with me to the ship and I'll introduce you to Kaytoo. I'm not up for anything more public right now, but. I'd do whichever of those you want to do."
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From:LMK if I should break this into multiple tags!! Wanna leave room for Jyn to react, but overeager…
From:Haha, no worries, it's more than fine :0D
From:Yay! Thank you; you indulge me so nicely >^•^<
From:And happily so!
From:/feels and sends much love ^_^ ^_^ ^_^
From:<3 <3 <3
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