Work Text:
Jyn is no stranger to scars. She’s covered in them.
There’s old blaster burn on her leg and her arm. There’s shrapnel marks along her back, in her thigh. She’s got a few knicks from vibroblades littered across her skin, and one of her toes is disjointed from breaking it a few times. Her palms are hard and lined with callouses, and one of her fingers has a jagged slice across a knuckle. A good portion of them hail from her time with the Partisans, but not all. Her body is a war. Her body was a tool like any other, just squishier.
She hadn’t expected to make it off Scarif. She stares at herself in the mirror about a week after her hospital release and runs her finger along the burn mark that crawls along the right side of her jaw and flicks at her ear. There’s another one on her shoulder, overlapping with some of the shrapnel. It’s much more obvious on her face than the line that runs down near her temple. The bacta healed it fast, making it look more faded than it should be for something so fresh.
Her hair hangs lamely, uneven and partially singed. She’ll have to cut it, probably up to her chin, but in the meantime she ties back what she can out of her face. She hates having it loose. It’s a liability. It doesn’t all stay up with the damage, which is the most annoying part.
She blows out a puff of air at her own face and then leans over the sink to wash it.
She has two weeks before she’s expected to report back, should she choose to continue in the Rebellion. She already knows she’s going to stay. It’s the downtime that’s making her feel more uncertain.
Bodhi is out of the medbay too. He’s lost a leg, but his prosthetic is fancy for the level of equipment available on Yavin. Baze’s ribs are bruised and his arm is broken – they hadn’t wanted to use excessive bacta, knowing it would heal on its own, so he's been sulking in a cast. Chirrut has a matching burn scar across his cheek, and it disappears down under his collar. She laughed when he told her it looked just like hers, even after she realized she hadn't told him about her own.
Jyn hasn’t seen the full extent of Cassian’s wounds, but she imagines he’s got the worst of them all. She felt how weak he was in her arms. She watched him fall and the sound of it still echoes. He just got out of the medbay a few days ago. Scarif itself was two weeks ago. Maybe a little more. Time’s been a little nebulous lately, and the quicker nature of bacta messes with her sense of it too when she can’t judge based on the healing process.
She catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror, eyes flickering down to the bruise at her shoulder, and the thick purple line across her chest. She thinks it’s from when she slammed into the platform, at the antenna. Mostly she's just surprised her arm didn't dislocate. They hadn’t given her bacta for that, so she supposes that can be her time stamp.
More of her hair falls out of the bun and she huffs an annoyed sigh, ready to yank it out of her head. Instead, she pulls her shirt back on and wanders out to find Cassian.
She’s been spending a lot of time with Cassian.
*
Cassian walks with a small limp now. It’s barely perceptible. Jyn’s not sure anyone else has noticed. There’s a certain newfound straightness in his posture, like he’s afraid to move too fast. His face is remarkably clear of wounds, save a bandage across his eyebrow. She hadn’t even asked about it before he reported to her it wouldn’t leave a lasting mark, and she just nodded.
She kind of likes that he’s still treating her like she’s part of a team. His team, specifically. He defers to her even about minute things and all it does is echo his welcome home in her head, repeatedly. He knows she’s decided to stay and he seeks her out just as much. They eat lunch and dinner together every day. Sometimes her thigh brushes his and she very pointedly doesn’t look at it, but she doesn’t move it either.
She doesn’t ask about his leg. She doesn’t ask about his back either, even though she desperately wants to because the memory of him falling still makes her feel sick to her stomach.
But then he catches her eye and tentatively smiles at her, which feels like medicine.
She blows again at the hair in her face, shoving it aggressively behind her ears. No matter where she places the bun, it fails to wholly serve its purpose. She even tries to braid it back instead, but the damaged ends are so brittle it still doesn’t stay put.
Cassian raises his eyebrow at her. She rolls her eyes and shakes her head to brush off the question, before she realizes she knew exactly what he was asking.
“We can eat in my room later,” he says. “If you want something quieter.”
He thinks it’s the noise. Sometimes it is very loud in here, but no, her biggest irritation continues to be her hair. It doesn’t stop her from being blindingly curious. He’s been to her rooms, because they play Sabacc with Bodhi sometimes to kill time none of them know what else to do with. “Yeah, all right. Meet you there later then.”
He nods, explains where it is, and she absently squeezes his shoulder in farewell. She can feel him freeze at her touch, startled, but then he grins a little bit again and her stomach swoops. It’s not like she’s gonna vomit. The food wasn’t that bad. It lingers like a butterfly in her gut. Her hair again tickles her neck, like it’s teasing her about something.
Jyn grins back. Then she slips out of the mess hall and slips back into medical, but not for any sort of check up.
*
A couple hours later, Jyn finds his quarters, knocks, and he lets her in easily. She tries not to be too obvious about her snooping, but he’s got a private space, and she’s been crammed into a room about the same size, with Bodhi. He told her where it was and told her she could stop by. They agreed to meet here. He wanted her here. So here she is, stopping by. She cycles through the logic in her head so she doesn’t feel like she doesn’t belong here. He stands a little awkwardly and gestures to their waiting dinner on the side table. There’s only a single chair, which he offers to her as he sits on the bed with a sigh.
There’s not a lot to see. There’s a recognizable lack of personalization that oddly puts her at ease. He makes idle conversation, though Cassian’s version of idleness is speaking of the latest news about Hoth, a base they’ve been developing lately. Jyn thinks it sounds terrible. Snow and ice and subzero temperatures? Count her out. They fake argue about the merits of an ice planet base, something Cassian implies he has some experience with. She wants to ask him one day.
It’s calm and quiet in this room. The noise mostly comes from outside the walls, from the bustle of an ever busy, newly energized rebel base.
She picks at her rations and tries not to study him as he does the same. Some of her hair once again falls into her face, curling around her chin. She bites her cheek, then looks at him, finding he’s already watching her too.
“Can I –” she starts, trying not to let it feel like weakness. “Can I ask you a favor?”
Cassian blinks at her. “Sure.”
He agrees without even asking what it is. It doesn’t mean he’ll do it, but it reminds her of how frequently he would appear before her every time she thought he was long gone. It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with favors on the upfront, but she’s not thinking too hard about it.
She reaches out and tugs on the strands hanging by her face. “Can you cut my hair?”
He stares at her again. Not what he was expecting, and part of her feels pleased to catch him. “You want me to cut your hair?”
She wrinkles her nose. “It’s literally burnt in weird spots. And I can’t see behind my head to get them all. Besides, who else would I ask?”
Cassian looks like he has an answer on his tongue. “Chirrut,” he says dryly.
She snorts, despite herself, and his eyes flicker with amusement. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a small pair of scissors. “I borrowed them from medical.”
“Do you have any intention of returning them?”
She thinks her silence speaks for itself. Cassian rolls his eyes, but it seems almost fond. She’s not sure what to do with his fondness, so she just shoves the scissors at him. “Get it above where it’s singed. I don’t really care how much has to go.”
With silence and easy maneuvering, they settle down on the floor, Jyn with her back to him and feeling antsy for it as she yanks out the messy bun. She can feel him behind her, though she doesn’t hear him; he sits so quietly, like his default is making no noise. She nearly jumps when he tugs at her hair, pulling it all back over her shoulders. There’s a line of tension down her spine and blooming into her aforementioned shoulders that he can undoubtedly see like the sharpshooter he is.
She could have just done this herself. No one else has cut her hair for years, and mostly she just slices off the split ends with a knife. She wanted him to anyway. It feels like a test, though for herself or him she doesn't know.
Cassian’s hands are careful and precise, and he neatly avoids touching her back as he holds her hair out and drags the scissors across. The clipping is the only noise in the room, both of them breathing in a strange but comfortable silence. He has a blade dangerously close to her neck and she wants to scream for it, but with each snip she feels a little easier.
By the time he’s done, some of the strands are falling forward; it’s about two centimeters below her chin.
“Do you –” he starts, and there’s something off about his tone, but she can’t see his face. “Do you mind if I wipe it down from your shirt?”
Jyn pauses. “Yeah. Whatever.”
There’s about three seconds before his fingers swipe carefully over her shirt, brushing the hair off. He seems to be trying to catch it in his hand from the way it presses into her, but mostly she’s trying not to actively shiver from the casual way he touches her back. Perhaps it is not very whatever but she will simply force it to be.
“Okay,” he says, after about a minute of her trying not to think about his hands.
She shakes her head to shake off the excess, and he sputters a little.
“Maybe you should have done that earlier,” he adds.
Jyn finally turns to look at him, and he’s trying to wipe down the front of his own shirt. He picks a strand of hair away from his lips. She bites on a grin. “Forget it. Let’s just throw ‘em in the wash.”
He looks at her, and after a moment, his mouth threatens its own grin. There’s a lightness to his face she’s not very used to seeing on it. There’s a gap in his eyebrow, from the healing wound – he was right, it’s superficial. His skin is surprisingly clear of old wounds, but she supposes it would be a terrible spy tactic to have notable marks on his face.
Despite the agreement to wash their clothes, they remain seated and watching each other. Cassian’s stillness is almost eerie. His chest barely moves, but every now and then she feels his breath hit her.
His eyes are very warm.
Two seconds later, Jyn abruptly shoots to her feet and nearly kicks him over in the process. “You got something I can borrow then?”
Three more seconds, before Cassian is shaking his head at some internal thought and climbing much more gracefully upright and once again towering over her. “I will check.”
Then he’s rummaging through the small closet and allowing Jyn a moment to take a deep breath and regain her bearings. She feels unmoored, and she’s not sure why. He does not seem concerned about having his back to her, for yet another mindless task as he digs around. She sticks the scissors back in her pocket and appreciates the comfort of them close, because she still hasn’t gotten another blaster, and she’s trying for Cassian’s sake not to just find another one.
“Here,” he says. He’s holding out some old brown shirt. It’s wrinkled and has a stitch up the side, ripped once upon a time and haphazardly fixed. She wonders if he repaired it himself.
She takes it. It’s a little too long before she says, “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” he says, with the all too familiar tone of feeling weird about gratitude.
There are a lot of ways Jyn differs from Cassian, but sometimes she thinks she found him so irritating at first for all the pieces they share.
She turns around and yanks her shirt off to avoid that thought process, hearing him hurriedly stumble to turn away. Jyn doesn’t particularly have a lot of self-shame and she’s used to quick changes on the go, but it’s only after she’s standing there shirtless does she recognize that she is shirtless with Cassian in the room, and suddenly it doesn’t feel quite like a war-bound locker room in the barracks anymore.
She hurriedly tugs the brown shirt on. It hangs loosely, almost halfway down her thighs. The collar is stretched out, exposing far more of her shoulder burn than she anticipated. She crumbles up her old shirt in a ball, mostly to avoid any other hair from burrowing into the ground, and only then does she turn back around to – well, not apologize. Maybe just go back to trying to be cool. She’s preparing a stupid joke about the laundry to smooth everything back to normal.
She’s met with the sight of Cassian shirtless instead, and she is met with the fresh scar that runs up his back, as he rummages through his clothes for a new shirt of his own.
Jyn doesn’t gasp aloud, but it’s a close thing. She’s seen a lot of injury, a lot of death, but the criss-cross and patchwork of gnarled skin that crawls up almost the entirety of Cassian’s spine is full of reminders. She still sees it, the way he fell from the tower. She still hears the crunch of bones. She understands exactly why his back looks like that and knows there was extensive treatment.
Perhaps the most surprising part is he displays it so casually with her in the room.
She’s not particularly shy of her own scars. They exist, like she does. There are some she would prefer to hide if only because she hates being asked, but in a cadre full of rebels also full of scars, it’s hardly worthy conversation. That much reminds her of the Partisans too, so it’s a little comforting.
This one feels really big. Given what she knows of him, Jyn imagines he’d want to keep it hidden. He doesn’t hide it from her, though.
As though he can suddenly sense her eyes on him, Cassian freezes. She watches his neck move, like he’s swallowing some nerves, and that’s strange on him, because Jyn might not have known him very long all things considered, but he doesn’t strike her as someone who gets particularly nervous. Or maybe he’s very good at hiding it. She just knows how to look now.
“Can I ask a question?” she says, breaking the silence, both in her own curiosity and to spare him the uncertainty.
“Something tells me you are going to ask anyway.”
Jyn huffs. “I wouldn’t. Not if you said no.”
Cassian pauses, then turns. On his face is a neutrality she’s come to recognize as a mask. “Okay,” he says, tone far too blank, a blue shirt hanging limply in his hands.
“Do you feel it?”
She doesn’t have to clarify, with the way the mask slips off and his eyebrows scrunch just so. “Not always. Mostly when I move too fast or twist too much. There is a lot… I am still adjusting to.”
Jyn absently touches her jaw. “Sometimes it feels like it’s stretching when I’m chewing. Like it’s stiff.”
“Stiff,” he repeats, an agreement. “Yes. I feel far more stiff than I did before.”
Her follow up question is spoken much more quietly: “Does it hurt?”
Cassian hums. “When I wake up in the morning, there is soreness. My leg –” he stops himself, like he’s just realized how much he’s sharing.
She wouldn’t blame him for stopping. He continues.
“My leg hurts more,” he admits, not looking at her.
“I thought so,” she says, thoughtlessly.
He stares at her.
Fuck, she says, this time internal. “I just noticed you walking on it differently.”
He keeps staring at her, though this time he looks a little befuddled. He’s not a man who is used to being the one observed. “There’s some metal in it now,” he explains, though he doesn’t need to. “The weight is off. They tell me I will adjust, but it’s taking longer than I hoped.”
“It’s been like a week,” she says, incredulous.
He huffs out a self-deprecating noise, at himself. “I will give it one more week then.”
Jyn rolls her eyes.
He ricochets back to her, undoubtedly to avoid talking about himself. She recognizes the tactic. “Does yours hurt?”
She mindlessly touches her face again, and his attention follows the movement. It makes her cheeks feel warm. “Not really. It feels older than it is.”
“It feels like yesterday and a year ago,” he replies.
Jyn can only nod. He nods too, even though he’s the one who said it. She bites her cheek and hears the crunch of his body echoing in her head, and before she can think better of it, she asks, “Can I see it again?”
He hesitates, but ultimately turns back around. There’s no blood, just a smattering of healing bruises and a hardened brutal reminder. She wonders if it’s better for him that he can’t see it himself. It should really make her feel nauseous, but instead she’s just glad to see it, because it means he’s alive.
Without thinking, she reaches out and runs her fingertips along the top of it, lightly. Cassian starts and hisses, probably because her hands are cold, but he doesn’t tell her to stop. She steps in closer and presses her palm flat to his skin, then closes her eyes. There’s a slight tremble in his body she hadn’t noticed before, but she grants him the grace of ignoring it.
Instead, what slips out of her is a little more revealing than she usually allows. “I’m really glad you’re alive.”
He doesn’t respond to her at all, and the trembling doesn’t stop. She worries she’s crossed a line, so she abruptly pulls her hand back.
“Sorry,” she mumbles.
Cassian turns and meets her gaze, his eyes both bright and startled, dare she say flummoxed. He reaches out and tucks her hair behind her ear, then curls his palm around her cheek, around the burn. She swallows, but doesn’t shove him away.
“I am glad you are here,” he says. It’s an offbeat echo, and from the way it strikes her like an X-Wing, she imagines he’s tumbling through the same uncertainty. Her, specifically. He’s glad she’s here, and it’s been a long while since anyone has been glad for her that way.
He drops his hand, then shifts sideways enough to tug his shirt on at last. Jyn looks away and wonders if she should shove the rest of her dinner in her mouth to avoid the insanity of her emotions right now and how much she just wants his hands back.
“Hey,” he says.
She looks back at him.
He steps in closer and cups her face in both his hands. She shivers. “Push me away,” he says. It’s a command and a question.
Jyn can’t bring herself to. She’s always been bad at listening to orders. Instead, she snakes an arm around his back and lightly touches the scar again, lower this time.
Cassian draws in a surprised breath, then he leans down and kisses her. She all but collapses up against him as she hurries to kiss him back, because this is it. This is exactly what she’s wanted. It’s been so hard to let herself want things, and there is so much about Cassian she wants.
When she doesn’t reject him, it seems to spur something in him, and he erases the space between them, cradling her face with a gentleness and almost possessiveness she doesn’t know what to do with beyond drown in it. Well, she knows how to kiss him, even if it’s been a while. His lips are chapped, but so are hers.
She wraps her other hand around his waist and pulls him in closer, earning a startled laugh that vibrates against her mouth. After another moment, he breaks, but he stays in close, and his breath is even warmer now. She can see his chest moving too, the free stretch of his lungs.
“Okay,” she says, a little stupified and not sure what else you’re supposed to say to that.
“Okay?” he asks, both bewildered and checking in.
She doesn’t let him go or answer him. Instead she adjusts her arms and hugs him, tucking her face against his chest, because he is too tall to rest on his shoulder this time. She wants to reframe what it’s like to hug him, like she’s reframed the memory of broken bones. His arms drop, curling around her shoulders, and she feels tucked in.
She feels safe.
She closes her eyes.
“Thanks for cutting my hair,” she says, absurdly.
Cassian lets out a surprised laugh, the sound shaking his chest and she can feel every second of it. “You are welcome.”
She tilts her head to look at his face and thinks he looks younger than ever. He looks handsome, his eyes bright and practically dancing, and it’s kind of mind-boggling that he looks like that because of her.
“Will you cut it again next time too?”
It sounds silly on the upfront, but she knows there’s an undercurrent of uncertainty in it, just like she knows he’s going to pick up on it.
His expression softens. “I will cut it for you any time you ask.”
Jyn bites her lip before she can smile too widely. “I might not always ask.”
“I will be here anyway,” he says, and she knows it isn't just about her hair. Maybe it never was.
She stares at his face and wants to kiss him again. If his own expression is any indication, she thinks it’s mutual. “Maybe I’ll get you your own pair of scissors. You know. Just in case.”
He pauses. “You can always keep yours here.”
She idly slides her thumb over his waist. It’s thoughtless. “I could,” she hums. “But only if you get me a knife.”
The softness in his face doesn’t disappear, but bemusement mixes in. She grins, because she’s starting to get a kick out of surprising him. Flatly, he says: “A knife.”
“A kitchen knife and a pair of scissors doesn’t cut it.”
“I do think they both cut.”
She huffs a laugh and lifts her hand to idly hit his chest. “Can you get me a real knife or what?”
His thumb sweeps over her shoulder, where his hand sits. “There is one in the drawer you can have for now.”
It soothes her. She will not be giving it back, but she thinks he knows that. “Okay.”
“Okay,” he replies, still sounding a little thrown, but he’s also still holding her.
“I have another favor,” she says. She doesn’t think she’s ever going to push him away. She doesn’t want to step out.
He raises an eyebrow at her. She likes that she can understand him. She likes so many things about him, even though she shouldn't risk it, even though it’s been a long time since she opened herself up to someone like this. She likes his arms around her. She likes how easy it is to reach for him and know he’s there.
He’s so tangible. No wonder she can’t stop touching him.
“Kiss me again,” Jyn says plainly, trying to be careless but it comes out breathless.
Cassian doesn’t answer her. He just leans in and once again eagerly, expertly completes the designated task. He takes her face in his hands and Jyn dares to hope he won’t ever let her go.