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The moons of Abafar were once mining colonies, abandoned and as good as forgotten now.
The base on Abafar VII isn’t large—understaffed and ramshackle—with the command center and most of the sensitive equipment in the orbiting cruiser. Cassian never had a reason to visit the surface before on his few stops in the system. But Jyn was here four days ago and she hasn’t shown up on the outbound lists, so he hopes.
Broken hills curve along the horizon, stripped open and left exposed by some final desperate mining company. Beyond the blown clear area used as landing pads, the gritty byproduct left by centuries of mining is inescapable. Trails in the gray dust mark the routes of frequent traffic towards the main building and wandering out to sentry points. The clear paths turn into a confusion of boot prints at the edges. The low-slung buildings of the former industrial complex blend into the landscape. And hanging above everything, the sky is a washed out blue interrupted by the looming surface of Abafar.
Cassian finds her just outside the hangar where ingoing and outgoing cargo piles up, seated on a crate of explosives with a jumble of old remote detonator switches scattered beside her.
He pauses to watch her—the line of her nose in profile, the delicate arc of her ear with the tiny missing notch, the stiff set of her shoulders as she bends forward to examine the pulled apart switch in her hands. The crate is tall enough that her feet don’t reach the ground.
“Jyn.”
She stills and closes her eyes in a slow, tight blink. Her expression is half-hidden by the loose pieces of hair that fall forward until she takes a deep breath and looks over.
He’d forgotten how gray her eyes can seem in real sunlight.
Jyn sweeps a glance over him for injuries and only then gives a slow-breaking smile.
“You’re back.”
“I’m back,” he echoes, closing the distance and settling his pack down in the dust at his feet.
He leans against the crate of explosives, within arm’s reach. Her face has more color on her cheeks and temples as though she has spent some time under a brutal sun.
The hangar behind them isn’t busy. A few dozen droids fight a losing battle to keep grit out of engines, but enough ground crew are around to make the space feel exposed and public.
Jyn brushes her knuckles against his shoulder and drops the rusted out shell of a detonator switch back on the pile between them. The faint freckles across her nose set off a sharp wave of tenderness he’s learned to ride out.
“What are you blowing up this time?”
She pats the warning symbol stenciled in red on the top of the crate the way he has seen street children treat a loyal but half-feral Akk dog.
“Walker factory. Supposed to be fully automated.”
Seeing a slave labor factory from the inside isn’t something anyone can forget.
She lets the motion of reaching for another remote detonator turn into leaning closer and he shifts towards her in reply. When she pauses, studying him rather than the detonator, Cassian makes the effort to not close down his face or look away until she goes back to the equipment salvage.
“All right?” she asks, but her tone is cautious, which makes him glance over again to read the real question. How bad?
Even a few months ago he would have approximated and said he was fine, but he’d rather not see the wash of dark, defensive humor cross her face as she lets the lie go. (You're fine, I'm fine, we’re all fine.) Echoes of her words overlap with the sound of a silenced blaster bolt and the soft thump of a body hitting the floor.
They are so close already that only a small turning motion is needed to press his forehead against her shoulder. He breathes in the familiar smell of her like that’s an answer.
Jyn holds steady for him until he straightens again. This time he stays near enough that his arm touches her thigh.
Her hand is curled around a corroded detonator casing.
“Let me finish up here.” She shoots him a fast sideways look. “Won’t take long.”
He watches her work, taking in the details of her hands, mostly hidden in old gloves, and the occasional flash of skin at her wrist that shows when the twist or lift of her arm tugs her shirt sleeve back.
She examines and discards a few more components before finding what she needs. He leans away on instinct as soon as he feels her leg tense and she drops to the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust.
Jyn tosses the equipment into her bag that is tucked next to the crate and then sweeps all the rest back into the salvage bin, sealing the lid. She swings the duffel up over her shoulder by the short handles and turns, taking a small step backward.
“Reported in?” she confirms.
He pushes off the crate, grabbing the strap of his backpack and moving closer as she takes another step back towards the hangar.
“I have.” He jerks his chin up at the orbiting ship.
She keeps walking backward, one step for each of his.
“Eaten? Mess is still open.”
He shakes off the question and Jyn tsks in mock-disapproval at trading a hot meal now for some ration bar later, before she lets the distance close and turns to walk in step. Her arm brushes against the front of his jacket and knocks gently against his elbow.
Cassian trails after her to the nonresident barracks, which is nothing more than a short row of identical, unmarked doors. He crowds her a little, watching the code she enters but preoccupied by her hair in its usual tight bun at the nape of her neck.
The door opens with a stuttering drag from grit accumulated in the track. Jyn swings her bag down just inside, stirring up another puff of dust.
Her fingers catch one of his belt loops, tugging him clear of the door sensor. She pushes him back with the heel of her palm on his hip as the door grinds close, bats at the lock with her free hand and leans up to kiss his throat.
The kiss fades into her face pressed against the point where his shoulder meets his neck as he wraps his arms around her. His pack is pinned between his back and the door, bulky and awkward. But when he feels the taut set of her shoulders loosen a little, everything drops away except for how her body untenses.
He can never bring himself to expect that.
“I’ve missed you,” he murmurs against the top of her head. The words are uncalculated—truthful, but the wrong thing to say as she stiffens again. He traces backward along the misstep: missing, leaving, left.
She has never asked for more than he could give. (He keeps on waiting for her to ask him for something, anything.)
He kisses the delicate skin at the top of her cheekbone and admits instead, “I think of you.”
Her hands slide under his jacket, dragging at the material of his shirt.
“You think of this?” she asks, glancing up with a quicksilver challenge.
Cassian runs his thumbs along the line of her jaw and kisses her, feeling her mouth open and the tilt of her head as she finds a better angle. He pulls back enough to whisper, “Sometimes.”
Her lips tick up at the corners as he kisses her again.
He pushes the battered vest off her shoulders and she lets it fall to the floor behind her with a dull clink: knives, lock picks and, lately, brass knuckles with spikes that fit over her gloves—the sharp pieces she keeps between herself and all the universe.
(Almost all, he corrects. Almost everyone.)
Cassian sets down his pack by the door and starts in on the buttons of her shirt while he debates how much more to reveal. A rush of adrenaline makes him tense when he finally adds, “Sometimes this. But mostly ordinary things.”
Kissing down her neck helps ease the raw feeling of exposure. Jyn lets the comment pass uninterrogated so he doesn’t have to surrender how he is just as likely to picture her blank, motionless boredom in long-winded meetings or the way she blinks hard to wake herself up fast even when she feels almost safe or the tightly contained happiness that transforms her face each time anyone who matters to her manages not to let her down.
She slides out of the open shirt and tosses it onto her duffel before tugging off her gloves.
He bends her arm to examine a new mark, ragged and only half-healed, near her elbow.
“Blocked a knife,” she explains with a shrug.
He doesn’t want to think about the trail of bodies that gets them back to each other, so he narrows in on his gratitude that she can throw herself into danger, over and over, and pull herself out alive.
Jyn reaches behind her to open the hooks of her breast band as he fits his hands to her waist.
She tugs at his jacket—“off”—and steps back to watch him undress.
Without looking away she finds the edge of the bed and sits, naked from the waist up except for the crystal she never takes off. (He wants to fix that image in his mind: her half-revealed body, her posture open and unguarded.)
In the distance, an engine kicks in with a whine that carries through thin walls thrown up cheap and fast for spaces meant to be abandoned without much regret.
I’d find you anywhere in the galaxy, he wants to say, but doesn’t because the galaxy is a big place and people are too easily lost.
There’s nowhere to set his clothes in the makeshift room other than a folding chair by the door.
Jyn unties and kicks off her own boots, but lets him kneel next to the bed and strip her naked. She lifts her hips and balances back on her hands—permission, encouragement—but lets him have this. Her gaze is intent as he kisses down her bared skin, hip to thigh to the bony edge of her knee.
She tosses her clothes somewhere behind him. Cassian pauses, still holding the heel of her foot, looking up.
She touches his cheek and he turns his face into her hand to get his lips back against her body.
“Come up here,” she whispers.
How is it that he gets to see all of her, scars and pale skin and the pink flush that spreads from her throat down her chest as he settles close to her? What span of distance separates the easy way a body drops—the vicious undertow that follows after—from here, this, the sweep of his thumb over her breast with pressure just firm enough to draw her brown-pink nipple into a peak?
Jyn stares up at him with eyes that hook into places inside him that shouldn’t have any feeling left.
Her knees touch either side of his ribcage. His hand skims down her throat, traces the curve of her breast, brushes over the fine lines of raised scars at the flare of her hip. He gets to bend closer to swallow her breathy hum of pleasure when he slides his palm up the inside of her thigh and presses his thumb against her clit in the slow, tight circles that she likes until she can’t keep from arching up off the bed.
Jyn cups the back of his neck, running her fingers into his hair, and pulls him into a messy press of mouths that slips between half-formed kisses and her breath, fast and warm, against his lips.
Her fingertips drag across his shoulder and her calf slides along his lower back when he leans away, boxing her in with his arms on either side of her head. Her eyes stay fixed on his, despite how much she knows of what he is, what he’s done. What he keeps on doing.
How? he thinks in hazy wonder as he sinks into the hot, soft welcome of her body and watches the pink flush spread further down her chest.
Her fingers fumble along his arm, blindly reaching. He catches her hand, sliding his fingers between hers, as he hides his face against her neck and loses himself for a while.
After, the innumerable outside worlds settle back into place. Curled around her and half-asleep, Cassian whispers her name and presses his mouth against her loose hair. He drops everything else he’d like to say on the pile of words locked up safely in his chest.
Jyn ships out the next morning.
Her mouth tastes of burnt caf when he leans down for one more kiss in this cramped room that neither of them will ever see again. He likes to imagine that her body is still warm from their shared bed under all her usual layers.
His last glimpse of her is beyond the edge of the hangar and turning a corner towards the tarmac, silhouetted against the patchy, broken down foothills under an ordinary dawn.
He catches up to her again fifteen days later halfway to the other side of the galaxy.
(And again and again and again. He’ll keep finding her for as many chances as they have left.)