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Cassian knew that checking the U-wing again was just his anxiety kicking in. The crew chief had signed off last night, and he’d already done a full preventive maintenance check alongside Bodhi in the morning. The U-wing was fine, and it wasn’t like this was going to be Jedha or Scarif again. Draven had given him and Jyn the easiest of milk runs for their first mission together - just a circuit of dead drops in the Seswenna sector, relatively friendly ground without much of an Imperial Navy presence. Maybe three days total on six worlds, collecting reports of the growing Rebel cells inspired by the Alliance’s recent victories.
But he couldn’t sleep, as usual since arriving on Hoth, and he might as well do something useful. So he was here in the freezing cold of Hangar 2 of Echo Base, past midnight and all alone with a maintenance checklist and only the chirping of a single patrolling astromech to keep him company.
Solitude had been his friend for a long time before Scarif, although he had rarely been ever truly alone. Melshi and K-2SO had been with him off and on for months; Melshi because he’d been semi-assigned by Draven and Vel, while K-2SO had simply refused to stop following him around ever since the re-programming. But Melshi had his own duties now, helping to rebuild the Pathfinders and running his own platoon with Sefla gone, and Kay …
Cassian blinked away the memory of Kay’s “Goodbye”. He regretted that it had been Jyn who had turned back to give Kay her blaster, and that final measure of trust. Kay had saved his life multiple times since Ghorman, had saved the mission in the vault, and only in the moment of his death had Cassian realized just how deeply the droid had become part of him.
Another one you left behind.
Cassian took a breath, closed his eyes, and willed the ghosts away. He had no time for them, he had a job to do. Not much of one, but it would do for now.
It took Cassian an hour to finish with the external checks on his own, and the cold of Hoth had settled painfully into his bones. He was grateful to hit the U-wing’s door release; the interior wasn’t going to be much shelter against the cold, but at least he could pretend –
The whine of a blaster battery priming made him spin away from the hatch, his hand snatching his own weapon from his belt. Pain skittered up his rebuilt spine, but he ignored it as he took cover by the edge of the door.
“Fuck, Cassian? Is that you?”
“Jyn?” Cassian slid his weapon back into his holster and forced his breathing to slow. “What are you doing here?”
The U-wing’s cabin light flickered on. He saw that Jyn had laid out her sleeping pad and bag atop the U-wing’s long bench, using her pack as a pillow, but she had somehow flipped out of it and made herself skinny against the end of the bench, squeezing her tiny shape behind the closest cover.
Cassian couldn’t help a small smile of admiration. What a soldier she is.
Her voice was short, defiant. “I’m trying to sleep. What are you doing here?”
Cassian bent carefully at the knees as he scooped up the datapad he’d dropped. He suppressed a grimace as he straightened. "Sleep? Without the engine on, in this?"
Jyn's jaw set in a stubborn line that made Cassian want to smile again. "It's not that cold," she insisted, even as her breath frosted the air. She couldn't hide the tiny shake in her shoulders as she wrapped her scarf tighter. "What's your excuse?"
Cassian gestured with the datapad. “Pre-flight checklist.”
Jyn gave him a curious look. “The crew chief did those last night. It’s –“ she checked the ship chrono “- two in the morning.”
Cassian shrugged. “Better safe than sorry.”
Her face was disbelieving, but then her eyes - those green eyes, flecked with gold, they still were like nothing he'd ever seen - met his own. He could see her expression soften, and suddenly the air felt thick and warm in his lungs.
She understands.
But of course she would. Ever since Scarif - or even further back, if he was being honest with himself - she'd never been far from him, always in arm's reach. On the beach they'd been as close as any two people could be.
He thought about the beach every day. The feel of her strength supporting his collapsing body, her shoulder the only sure thing in a world falling apart around them. When they'd left the turbolift and faced the glowing, bright corona racing towards them, he had known that he was going to die. Yet there had been no fear, no doubt. His mind had been clear for perhaps the first time in his entire life, filled with the certainty that he had finally arrived at the place he was always meant to be.
For once, Cassian Andor had come back in time.
Jyn had laid him down on the sand as gently as she could, then reached for his hand as they stared at the cloud of fire that would take their lives. The feel of her fingers intertwining with his had been like a key turning in his chest. Everything he'd been carrying since Maarva had taken him from Kenari had fallen away, and the only thing he felt was a deep, welling need to share everything with her, to tell her how free he'd become because he had followed her here.
But then he'd stared into her eyes and the words had caught in his throat. He couldn't make their last moment together be about him. She deserved so much more.
"Your father would have been proud of you, Jyn," he'd said instead, which was just as true as anything in his own heart, and from the look of gratitude on her face he knew he'd made the right decision.
She had reached for him then, wrapping her arms around him. Her heartbeat against his own had given him a peace like nothing he had ever known.
They’d won, and he wasn’t alone at the end. It would have been a good death. But the galaxy had different ideas.
After Bodhi had scooped them and the last remains of Rogue One from the beach, Jyn had stayed with him through it all - from the medbay to the recovery ward on the medical frigate after the Yavin evacuation. She had not been injured as badly as him, had not required multiple back implants or weeks of recovery, yet she had never left his side. She'd even slept in the recovery room near his bed, curled up in an uncomfortable low-backed visitor's chair until Melshi had brought in the couch from his cabin.
Jyn had forced him to eat when the pain meds robbed him of any appetite, then taken away his vomit when the inevitable happened. She'd walked him to the refresher when he could barely stand; rubbed his aching leg as the bacta sleeve stitched his flesh back together. She held his hand when he awoke in pain or terror in the middle of the night, her presence soothing him as much or more than the bacta and medication. She told him stories about her Partisan days and her more interesting jobs, usually when they went wrong. She listened with rapt attention as he talked about Ferrix, about Maarva and Clem; even about Kerri and Mimban and Ghorman, things he'd never told anyone.
It was as if the fires of Scarif had melted them both down and reforged them into something new, something that Cassian didn't understand. But he knew that Jyn Erso was part of him now, as much as his gun hand or Maarva's voice or the heartbeat in his chest. He had followed her to Scarif; he knew now that he would follow her anywhere.
“You need help?” she asked, taking a step towards him and grabbing the datapad out of his hand. His gut lurched at the sudden closeness, snapping him out of his reverie.
She scanned the list and grimaced. “This is why I never became a pilot.”
“You should learn,” Cassian said, willing his stomach to calm. “Would be good for the team, just in case.”
Jyn cocked her head to one side and handed him the datapad back. “You planning on dying on me?”
He snorted. “Anything can happen, you know that.”
“Not with me watching your back,” Jyn said, her lips curling slightly upwards. Cassian's stomach flipped again at the casual protectiveness in her voice.
She ignored him and turned back towards the co-pilot's chair. “Preflight checks, then.”
He sat down next to her and let himself get lost in the monotony of the list. Despite her complaint, she’d definitely been paying attention along the way - she was almost as efficient as Bodhi or Kay would've been. It only took them twenty minutes to redo everything the crew chief had already taken care of.
They sat in companionable silence as the power cycle finally wound down and the engines rattled to a stop. Cassian glanced at Jyn and realized how comfortable he was just sitting with her, even in the cold of Hoth. He could tell that her shoulders had relaxed, and she was leaning slightly towards him. Her forearm rested against the console and her index finger was brushing casually against the fold of his knee. He didn't move.
He wasn't sure how much time passed before Jyn finally looked up at him. “You going back to sleep?” she asked, a slight tremor in her voice.
“No,” he said, his mind suddenly made up. “Not if you're here.”
“It's too cold for you in here,” she said, her voice becoming insistent. “Your back.”
He gave a small huff. “I'm cleared for the field. If it's good enough for you, it's good enough for me.”
“I don't want you here, Cassian,” she said. “I don't want your implants locking up on you when we're out there.”
“Then why are you sleeping here, Jyn?” he asked.
She looked away, studying the blank console as if it held a great secret.
Cassian settled back into the pilot's chair, confident in his ability to outwait her. He'd always had more patience than most people he'd ever met.
“I can't sleep,” she said finally. “Not with other people in the room.” Her barracks room had three other women assigned to it, he knew; the tunneling machine the Rebellion had brought to Hoth had broken down three weeks ago in the midst of expanding the women's quarters, and no one knew when repair parts might come in.
“You slept okay in the medbay,” he said.
She didn't look at him, just kept staring at the console. Her hand fluttered near his knee, like she was unsure if she should draw it back. “That was you,” she said.
Cassian felt his mouth go dry. He carefully looked away and swallowed as quietly as he could.
It wasn’t a conscious thought, just a simple declaration of fact. She could not stay here, and that was that.
He got to his feet and went to the back of the U-wing as she looked after him quizzically.
“Come on,” he said, and for once, Jyn Erso listened to him.
They repacked her sleeping gear together. He went to pick up her pack and she stopped him with a sardonic look, hefting it over her shoulder.
Cassian led her out of the freezing cold of the hangar and they walked in the bare silence of the night towards the officers’ quarters. When they arrived at his door, he made sure she was watching as he keyed in the code.
Jyn took a deep breath inside his room; it was at least thirty degrees warmer here than in the hangar. She went to the corner and dropped her pack next to his own, then began pulling out her sleeping bag.
“No,” he said. “The floor's freezing.”
She looked uncertainly at his bed. It wasn't much bigger than the bench in the U-wing.
“Go on,” he said, gesturing at it. “You need it more than me.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Back to the ship,” he said. “I've slept more in the pilot's chair than I have in any bed, it'll be fine.”
“Cassian,” she said, her voice firm. “Don't be stupid. I didn't take care of you in the medbay so you could wreck your back trying to sleep in that hangar.”
“Jyn -”
“Cassian,” she said, taking a step towards him. “Don't make me.” She raised a hand to his jacket. “Just get in bed.”
The lizard part of his brain wanted to lean close to her, to breathe in her scent and challenge her: “Make you what?” He imagined her small, strong hands on him, jerking him close, pulling him down to her lips –
The rest of him wanted to bolt out of the room. It felt like something was blooming out of his chest, swelling above and beyond him, threatening to smother everything left of whatever he was. It was too big, too overwhelming; the hollowed-out remnants of his heart surely couldn’t hold it.
Some of the hesitation must have shown on his face. Jyn's expression froze, and she turned away, going to her pack. She picked it up. “I'll go -”
An even greater panic seized him. The thought of Jyn alone in the cold was unbearable; for a moment he was back on Eadu, watching Alliance fighters firing on the platform where Jyn was, and the horror of betrayal grabbed him through the chest again.
His hand shot out, just barely touching her wrist, and he drew back as she looked up in surprise.
“Please,” he choked out. “Please stay.”
Jyn was looking at him with wide eyes. His stomach sank. He’d done the worst thing possible, he’d made her feel unsafe –
But then her face softened, and she gave him a short, nervous nod. She turned and sat on the bed and unlaced her boots, then shrugged off her jacket and threw it on his desk.
“What are you waiting for?” she asked.
He took off his jacket and laid it next to hers on the desk, then stepped out of his boots as Jyn crawled under the blankets. She scooted back to the wall, making room for him.
There wasn’t enough room for him to lay flat on his back. Cassian slid into bed, facing away from her. She threw the blanket over him.
The next few minutes were some of the most awkward of his entire life as they tried to arrange themselves, Jyn sliding around behind him and their legs and knees and shoulders banging together as his imagination raced through a dozen different scenarios.
“Cassian, just relax,” she said. “You’re falling off the damn bed.”
“It’s fine,” he said, trying to stay as close to the edge as possible. The thought of pushing against her, of replaying the near-disaster of almost grabbing her wrist, was burning a hole in his mind.
“Dammit, Cassian –” Her hand was snaking around his waist and then she was pulling him back against her. He jerked reflexively away, but she held him firmly in place. “Just - there. I’m fine if you’re fine.”
He absolutely was not fine. Her hand left his belt but was traveling lightly up his stomach, slowly exploring his torso and chest, and Cassian could not have been more grateful that she was behind him.
Her breath was light against his back, and he could feel her press her face between his shoulder blades as she experimentally pulled him tighter against her. “Is your back okay?” she asked, her voice soft, almost anxious.
Cassian swallowed. Her hand was still moving on his chest; she was petting him like he was a frightened loth-cat. “I’m okay,” he said, proud of how controlled his voice sounded. He could almost make himself believe that he wasn’t painfully hard, that her touch wasn’t setting his body alight.
He brought his hand over hers, trying to guide it away from his chest to hide how fast his heart was beating. But she intertwined her fingers with his, sighing and snuggling herself even closer.
His heartbeat began to slow, and the tension dissolved out of his muscles as their shared body heat warmed them both. The feel of her breathing was like a gentling balm, a soft caress on the scars of his back. She gave a sigh of contentment that somehow sent his heart into his throat. How many nights had Jyn ever felt safe enough to sigh like that?
Cassian closed his eyes and held her hand just a little tighter.
She feels safe with you.
There was no reason why that should be the case. During the first week they’d known each other, during the mad scramble from Jedha to Eadu to Scarif, she’d almost died a half dozen times. It had been nothing more than pure luck that had saved them both, over and over.
Jyn was a burning star, her passion able to ignite the emptiest hearts. Next to her he was just a shade, a shadow who’d hollowed himself out long ago. That he cared for her as much as he’d ever cared for anything didn’t matter. He couldn’t protect her, not in a way that could truly keep her safe.
But he at least had a semi-warm room on a cold night. And somehow, somewhere along the way, Jyn Erso had decided she trusted him. Maybe that was enough.
“Cass’n,” she mumbled into his shirt. “Thanks.”
He squeezed her hand gently, cradling it to his chest. She rewarded him by burrowing closer. His breath caught in his throat.
Tell her. Soon.
“Good night, Jyn.”