this hope is treacherous

perfectlyrose:

Jyn is running from her nightmares of what happened and could have happened on Scarif. She eventually runs straight into Cassian.

RebelCaptain, all ages

AO3

The middle of the night always feels so fragile.

The base is never silent but when darkness falls people walk quieter and lower their voices to whispers. The line between light and shadow seems to blur in these handful of hours.

Jyn tugs her blanket closer around her and leans back against the stack of cargo crates. She hopes that the deeper shadows here will keep her hidden from anyone who walks by. She isn’t used to the way people stare at her, the way she attracts attention as she shuffles down the base corridors on her way to visit her crewmates in the infirmary. They’d limped back to Yarvin IV on a stolen shuttle four days ago and now whispers follow them everywhere. Or rather, they follow her and Bodhi since they are the only ones up and about.

Most of the time she can handle it. A scowl and the limp and the cuts still littering her face keep most people from actually trying to talk to her.

Most of the time does not extend to these too-quiet moments when the night hangs heavy around her. The last two nights she’s woken up in her bunk, screams stuck in her throat as the image of Cassian falling, of the horizon disappearing, of her newfound friends dying in her arms play on repeat behind her eyelids. On those occasions she slips out of her room, needing to escape the close quarters, needing to move.

Tonight the hangar is her sanctuary as she tries to find some measure of calm. She’s found a nook in amongst the cargo crates in a corner. Jyn wraps her arms around her middle and bites down on her bottom lip, willing it to stop trembling.

The metallic taste of blood blooms on her tongue as she reopens a cut on her lip.

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