ohstardustgirl:

‘Lullaby’ – Rebelcaptain Fic

A gift for @thegiddyowl – Happy May 4th!

Prompt: Jyn catches Cassian singing to himself when he thinks no one is around.

I went for ‘Two times Jyn catches Cassian singing to himself when he thought no one was around, and one time he kept singing anyway’. These vignettes take place over a few years, from post-Scarif to post-Endor.

Read it at AO3!

1.

Jyn feels herself resurface into consciousness, like slowly rising from the bottom of the sea into daylight. She’s warm and dry, beneath her there is the solid, steady thud of a heartbeat and arms heavy around her. The air smells of bacta and the chemical sweetness of antiseptic, and beneath her there is Cassian.

Heat blooms on her cheeks when she remembers where she is – not the ship that she’s on, the one that’s carrying them away from Yavin IV even though the Death Star is gone. It’s the bed, and the man in it, that makes her blush, makes her bite back a smile. Beneath her, around her, Cassian is warm and alive.

And he’s singing.

Or mostly singing. His voice is weak and scratchy after days of intubation, and he hums whenever he can’t form the words. It’s a lovely tune, repetitive and soothing, like something that a mother would use to nurse a child to sleep. What words she can make out aren’t in Basic and she can’t grasp its meaning beyond the softness of the rhythm.

But even if she can’t translate the words, the fact that Cassian is singing it to her means everything. His arms are still holding her from when she climbed into the medical cot beside him, overwhelmed by their victory and exhausted from their injuries. Seeking out his comfort and closeness had been her own show of vulnerability. She thinks this might be his. They’re cut from the same cloth, and she thinks his scars might match her own.

Jyn steals the moment for herself, pretends she is still asleep so that he will keep singing. It feels precious and something sharp and bright and vibrant wraps itself around her heart.

His voice grounds her, ties her to the here and now so that she can’t think of running away. His body is so solid and alive, and the feel of his lips moving against the top of her head is enough to drown her in want and need. She has never felt so safe and so wanted, not in as long as she can remember, and so she lays still and resists sleep as long as possible, until the cadence of his voice pulls her under.

2.

They visit Fest, because the Outer Rim is hotly contested territory and every ally helps. It’s bitterly cold, but it hasn’t snowed much yet this season, making it all the easier to see the devastation left behind from the previous occupation. Cassian is quiet on the journey, but Jyn can read the tension in his shoulders and the furrows in his brow.

The first day is long, and the people of Fest are rightly suspicious. We’ve done our fighting and it destroyed us, they say. What chance do we have against the Empire? What if they come back? Cassian handles it all with grace, and Jyn thinks she has never been prouder to call him hers.

He doesn’t tell her where he’s taking her when they go walking later, but when he stops in front of the broken down shell of a stone and clay house, she knows where they are from the tightness of his posture and the thin line of his mouth. She’s a little jealous that there is a physical place he can visit to evoke memories of love and safety (all she has left is him).

That night, she wakes to find him gone from their shelter on the edge of the village. She quells the immediate panic with deep breathing. He has not left her behind, would not leave without her, and there’s no sign that anything happened. He has been restless since the mission was assigned to them and this isn’t his first sleepless night in the last few weeks. Still, she needs to see him to quieten her fears. She stuffs her feet into her boots without tying the laces and wraps a coat around her against the biting chill of the night. The stars sparkle above in the cloudless, black sky.

She hears him before she sees him, not far from their tent. The quiet humming of a familiar tune gives him away. Cassian sits at the edge of the hill they’re on, looking down on his homeland. His shoulders are drooped, and his voice breaks on words she can’t make out. She understands now where that lullaby comes from, and who might have sang it to him when he was very young. Jyn longs to make a noise and step towards him, to comfort him, but she knows Cassian will let her see this side of him only when he is ready. He takes time, much like herself, she knows -when the right words come to him he will share his memories with her, and she will wait patiently until then. Jyn returns to their bed, and holds him a little tighter when he finally joins her.

3.

Calix Erso-Andor is an easy baby, but like his parents he is careful of who he trusts even at only a few weeks old. When he is upset or restless he wants only his parents to hold him, and after a few days of dealing with their son’s demands by herself while Cassian was on a diplomatic mission to Fest, Jyn is exhausted by the time he arrives home. Rather than giving her husband the warm welcome she had planned, Jyn passes out on their couch after dinner content that Calix is in the safe hands of his father.

She wakes a few hours later, warm and dozy in the lamplight. There’s a soft blanket over her and outside the sky is full dark. She can hear Cassian, recognises the timbre of his voice singing softly, hears the door to the ‘fresher open. She pads across the hall, and stands silent at the door to their bedroom. Cassian stands, slowly swaying in the dim light, a towel around his waist and dark hair wet from the shower. Calix is in his arms, bundled in a big soft towel against his father’s chest with his thick hair sticking up in unruly spikes. He is so much his father’s son, dark hair and olive skin and big brown eyes and Jyn knows how blessed she is to have them both.

Cassian sings, the same song from years before, the one that made Jyn feel so safe after Scarif. Jyn understands most of the words now at least. Cassian was singing it to Calix before she had even felt his first kick, and knows that it is a lullaby of love and peace. Calix gives an almighty yawn fit for a wookiee, and Cassian struggles to keeps singing through his laughter.

He sings even when he realises Jyn is watching at the doorway, and still sings the lullaby even when she’s folded in his arms alongside their sleeping son.