#couriersixs

K-2’s head curled around the edge of his chair. There was nothing remarkable about his expression; there couldn’t be. But his eyes moved more than usual, back and forth, back and forth. “Have you stabilized his temperature?”

She gritted her teeth. “We only just got here.”

“If he’s not stabilized immediately, then his odds of survival are…”

“K.” What an awful word, survival. What an awful, hateful, crushing word. “Just...fly us back to base. Please.”

He hesitated. His eyes moved again. They focused on Cassian, telescoped. “Listen to her, K.” The words slurred and ran together.

The engine hummed. The ship lifted, lurched. Jyn tore off her gloves, her coat. She hadn’t gotten caught in the snowslide, but her outer layers were still damp, and she’d be no help to either of them if she kept them on. She watched him reach up to the side of his parka. The tremors in his hands made them useless; his fingers slid over the clasps, gripped, released, bounced away. She felt a pang of fear.

“Let me.”

His arms dropped. Her hands were shaking, too -- she was surprised by how much -- but she slid the parka down and off of him, tossed it aside; knelt before him, tugged off his boots. Did they have blankets? She thought back, rifled through their inventory: yes. Yes, of course they did. And there were heat packs in the medkit. Would it be too early to use them? Maybe not, if she arranged them over the blankets. A barrier, between them and him.

She pulled his shirts from his trousers. His skin was cold and pale, underneath. His breaths were shallow. The fear swelled.

“I want to make it clear that I ordinarily do not approve of you doing this while I’m present,” K-2 called, “but you should remove his clothing.”

Jyn squeezed her eyes shut, opened them again. “Already on it.”

There was a pause. “Just so we’re clear.”

“Yes.” It had only happened once. They were discreet, otherwise. “We are.”

He’s worried, she told herself. He had cause to be.

It had caught them off guard. The day was clear, and their recon had been going fine, uneventful, and then the ground had rumbled. She’d been up ahead of him, by only a handful of meters, but that had been enough -- enough for him to be bowled over, and for her to have to watch, helpless. His name had been torn from her throat, harsh and hoarse. She’d fallen flat on her face, trying to get to him.

This is why.

It had taken her months to act, post-Scarif, because they were at war, and it was a war that had already nearly claimed him, and she didn’t want that pain again. Force, if she had to have it now…

The blankets were in her arms. There was a thermos in her fist, its heating coils activated, and a medkit hanging from her thumb. He was down to his under shorts. Curled in on himself. He met her gaze. His lips curved upwards. “We did it.” He sounded so tired. “Didn’t we, Jyn? The message…”

It was hard to breathe. Her legs felt weak. That was almost three years ago, she didn’t say. She piled the blankets on top of him, folded them around him. Placed the thermos on a ledge behind him. Bent and shook the heat packs. Her thoughts drifted. Her memories collided with the present.

She’d held him, still, as they’d fled the Death Star’s destruction. Held him so that he wouldn’t be jolted by the jump to lightspeed. Held him because he was shaking and gasping. Accepted something from someone and pressed it to his lips and told him to drink (it’s sugary. It’ll restore the blood). Touched his face, when he’d touched hers, and stayed with him, her heart so heavy she’d felt it in her legs. When he’d been taken from her, when they’d been separated by the simple fact of them having different medical needs, it had felt like the dissolution of purpose.

She’d spent time trying to figure out what had happened to the plans, because why wouldn’t she, and she’d spent time being angry that no one would tell her. And every second she hadn’t spent doing either of those things had been spent trying to convince someone to let her see him.

Her shirts were dry, but her pants were not, so she discarded them. She straddled the bench and nudged him into changing his position. The bench was in an alcove, and she leaned back against the partial wall that formed its end, wrapping her arms around him, pulling him close. One of the heat packs slipped; she caught it and moved it back up, settling it against his chest, with the others. He was so cold.

There had been so much snow. It had taken her so long. She should have been faster. It wouldn’t have been so bad, if she had been faster.

All over again.

She brought her hands to his arms, under the blankets, and pressed her fingers into his flesh, starting at his biceps, working her way down. Moving back up again. Pausing, before she did so, to check his pulse. Low, lower than it should have been, but not in dangerous territory, not yet. His head was nestled between her shoulder and neck. He pressed it against her. She could smell his hair, through the blanket she’d draped over his head. The scent was a cross between ice and shampoo.

It was a wonder he hadn’t broken something. Then again, maybe he had, and she’d missed it, and the shock had kept him from noticing.

She reached for the thermos. She tested the water; it wasn’t hot, not yet, but it was warm, a decent handful of degrees above tepid. It would do. She deactivated the coil and shifted again, cupping his chin with one hand, profferring the drink with the other. He sputtered. Her hand grabbed at a blanket, lifted, dabbed.

She thought of Chirrut. Chest heaving, breaths labored. Back to the ship’s wall. Baze hovering. It had been him, hadn’t it? He’d been the one to pass the drink.

“I am one with the Force…”

Cassian, Cassian.

He gulped, and opened his mouth, wide. Breathed erratically. Tilted his head forward and gulped again. She clutched at him, holding him fast while he drank. Purpose, purpose. Her mind raced -- half-realized ideas, memories; the image and concept of an anchor. Her nose struck the top of his head.

“Do you remember Aquilae?” she asked.

They had gone there a year after the Battle of Yavin, after the irony of having to go on the run; and only five months after they’d had a conversation, crackling with tension, in a side chamber, on the bright sterile expanse of Home One. After she’d gotten reckless, as she was wont to do, and kissed him. It had still felt new, between them. Breathless. “Your contact was held up, and we stayed at that inn in Gordon, in the packing district.” Nondescript, out of the way. Dirt cheap.

Silence, apart from the ambient. She worried, for a moment, that he didn’t remember, that it had all been blacked out by the hypothermic confusion. That it was worse than she thought. But then, he breathed in, and released an amused sigh. “I do.” There was still a slur to his voice. “Sand came in through the cracks in the wall, every time the wind blew.”

“Our blasters were clogged to hell.”

“Mm.” He took another gulp, and then another. He knew, about his state. There wasn’t any way he wouldn’t, even if all else had vanished. “And that man, in the room next to ours…”

She almost smiled. “Should’ve complained.”

“Would’ve drawn attention.” He shook his head. The movement was jerky. “What was it he was doing, again?”

“Never found out.” Probably for the best that they hadn’t.

Cassian shifted, and she shifted with him. Her leg was pushed to the edge of the bench. She let it drop, pressing the ball of her foot into the floor, its texture palpable even through her thermal sock. “There was…” The words got stuck on the way up. The two of them had spent an entire day, and then some, waiting and finding ways to pass the time. “For a little while, it felt like…” Like they were normal. Like there was no Empire; like they were there, together, for its own sake. Not as operatives, or as soldiers, or as rebels, beholden to cause and lost to war, but as something more akin to proper lovers. They had talked, laughed; pulled the sheets high, to ward against the sand, and wrapped themselves around one another, digging in to each other’s skin. For a handful of hours, she had almost forgotten the looming threat of survivorship.

He touched her bare thigh. His hand was cold, jittery. “Jyn.”

“Yeah?”

“Why are we talking about this?”

She wasn’t entirely sure, if she was being honest. It had just popped in there. “Eh, you know. Thought it might help.”

“Which one of us?”

She sighed. “Of course you’d go and say that.” Seeing right through her, even now. Catching on to her own shit, heartbeats before she did herself. Her chest ached. Her voice dropped, and into his hair, she breathed, “both of us.”

He took another gulp and emptied the thermos. It slipped from Jyn’s fingers, clattered against the durasteel. She wrapped her arms around him again -- over the blankets, this time. Some of the cold from his body had leached into her thighs, and she shivered, and clutched him more tightly to her. Her mind walked back through the day, through the event. Through the moment, right before, when her flesh had vibrated. When her brow had furrowed and her mind had grappled for an explanation.

She should have been faster.

It was always this way. There were always things that she could have, should have done. Loss was a constant, and there was a reason for that. He had given her an excuse to think differently. So many times, over the years. But here he was, now, bundled up against her, in dire straits. Again.

Force, she couldn’t take it. She was fairly certain she’d shatter, if he was gone.

“K,” she called. “How long until we’re on base?”

“We’ll arrive in approximately nine minutes.”

Not so long.

“Would you like to know the seconds?” he said.

“That won’t be necessary.”

A beat. “Cassian would want to know.”

Cassian’s body shook. He turned his head. “No, I wouldn’t.”

A much longer beat. Jyn thought she heard something, like servos rotating, or metal fingers tapping.

“Well, pardon me for valuing precision.”

Cassian pushed himself up. The side of his head connected with her cheek, and he sagged, and exhaled. Through the blankets, he grabbed her wrist. His body’s tremors flowed upward and outward and passed into her arm.

He said her name again.

“Hmm?”

“It’s going to be alright. You know that, don’t you?” He squeezed her wrist. “It’s going to be alright.”

The engine’s hum was a long, low note. The ship banked, and the Gs were light, compared to what they could be, but they tugged at her, nonetheless. There were no windows nearby; she couldn’t see outside. But she could picture it. Endless plains of ice and snow, broken by the occasional ridge or range, the sort of unforgiving, sky-reaching range that could take a bright, burning locus of hope and bury it in pounds of powder. It was a world bursting with strategic potential. She had learned, over the course of her life, that strategic potential was double-edged.

It was fewer than those nine minutes, now. It was possible to believe him. It was impossible not to hope.