#nyfic

I was tagged by the wonderful @cornholius and @ruby-red-inky-blue — merciii!

Okay, some of you who have read my New York Songfic on AO3 (Angst ©Snow Patrol) might be happy to know a sequel majorly in Jyn’s POV is in the works:

For those who missed or don’t remember it, Kay, Chirrut and Baze died in a car crash. Jyn left, Cassian sank into depression until Kes Dameron convinced him to get her back in NY. Now RebelCaptain is in one place but at odds still…

“He was the one smoking during his rebel teens with Kes Dameron, but didn’t indulge since — Draven had a strict anti-tabac policy, the bastard — whereas she’d been too much of a goody two shoes at the time.”

New York — a RebelCaptain songfic

Read on AO3

Cassian and Jyn loved each other. They lost friends in a car crash. She went to New York City. He’s a mess.

Read on AO3 

If our hearts are never broken and there’s no joy in the mending

There’s so much this hurt can teach us both

There’s distance and there’s silence, your words have never left me

They’re the prayer that I say every day

New York, Snow Patrol

As always, he feels somewhat better in the morning, at least reality takes back its grasp once the first rays of sunshine illuminate his window.

They didn't put curtains. She loathes the darkness and they weren't attached to decoration of any kind, so he didn't see the point. There's a lot of things he finds pointless these days.

If only they didn't take two cars that night. They had all piled up in one countless times before: Bodhi at the wheel, Kay as copilot (both never drank a single drop of alcohol and thus were always the designated drivers), then in the backseat were Chirrut, Baze next to him in the middle while Jyn was usually perched on his knees in the remaining place.

That was how it was supposed to be.

Instead they had split, Bodhi, Jyn and him headed first and the “older ones” would join them later at the restaurant. They never made it. It was a celebratory dinner for Bodhi finally getting his pilot license, but the sirens were the only chant they heard that night. It happens everyday, Cassian knows that. As an analyst, Kay had spent enough time advising against their usual car pooling arrangement, even though he didn't stop it.

In the end, it was the safer way that stopped everyone, leading half of their group, their family to death and the rest of them to their doom.

He decides to remain alone today — his second day of layoff, sorry, ‘suggested vacation’ — knowing that it would be a mistake to spend time around any living soul. He knows Draven is worried about him, that Monica Mothma tries to get him help, but he cannot stand their presence, anyway. Draven thought he isn't quite fit to work yet but it doesn't prevent his superiors from asking about his wellbeing once a day via phone calls, and this prodding is more than enough, already.

He doesn’t need anyone but Jyn, even if she's in New York.

Among those of his late friends, her face swims behind his eyelids every time he blinks. If he has to be in a certain state of mind to delude himself enough with Kay, Chirrut or Baze, she haunts him like a ghost. When he isn't reliving her tears and departure that last night, her mesmerizing green eyes and soft skin are besieging him. He doesn't know which torture is worse, her pain or her pleasure.

“Cassian, this isn't working, I love you but I can’t settle for this if I want to move on. Forgive me, but I gotta go.”

After living a good twenty dismal years, Cassian has honed innate loneliness into an cast-iron ideology. He goes to the washroom like an automat, and stares blankly at his reflection when he should wash himself.

His agonizing grief is plainly marked on his face. He has let his beard untrimmed and his hair go uncombed, and both are matted. His eyes are pouched and bloodshot, but alert and strangely gleaming in his too pale face. Cassian looks as haunted as he feels, and he cannot bring himself to care in the slightest.

After the drama, he tried to tell her there was so much this hurt could teach them both. He had believed that. No matter what, they still had each other, so their home, albeit shaken to its foundations, was still standing.

But Jyn Erso always was on the run, has been she was eight. Fleeing and surviving was all that she has ever known. In the end, he couldn't make her stay.

There’s distance and there’s silence now, but her words have never left him. They’re the prayer that Cassian says every day, since the catholic god of his childhood has long forsaken him.

“Come on, come out, come here, come here.”

She had liked to repeat these words to him, to the point they had almost became nonsensical. He is convinced she liked the musicality of them together, like some kind of battle cry. When they met, they were actually the only words they exchanged, they learned each other's name only much later, when they were granted a moment of peace.

As they had met in a town in Himalaya that has been about to blow, there was no time for triviality. Maybe that's why they'd always failed to communicate from the start. The pull has been here from the very beginning but they've never taken the time to speak to each other, never pausing to reflect on what they were doing.

It's surely why she ran away from him to go to New York.

He wonders if she stares at the lone neon nights like he can feel the ache of the ocean, coming undone outside the window. Most of all, he misses the fire that was starting to spark when the accident ripped everyone apart.

They are missing everything, from the love to the lightning and the lack of it snaps them in two — quite literally.

Read on AO3

If you were here beside me instead of in New York If the curve of you was curved on me I’d tell you that I loved you before I ever knew you ‘Cause I loved the simple thought of you

New York, Snow Patrol

“Cassian Jeron Andor, stop this at once, it’s getting out of hand!”

Through his dazed mind and sandpaper eyelids, the guy tries to assimilate the sight of his best friend, arms crossed on his chest — kind of like a father catching a wayward son in the middle of the night when he should have been in bed. The imagery seems accurate, that is if his Papá were still alive and not buried along his six years old self, Cassian guesses he would have looked like this.

“Leave me alone Kay, you shouldn’t be here.”

His voice has gone rough with disuse, his tongue unusually made slack by the Mescal he had drunk, but of course James Kay gets the message: the tall figure gets hazier but his words, as always, ring as clear as a bell:

“I certainly don’t have to, but your brooding leaves me no choice: as I said, it’s getting out of hand. Sleep is a biological requirement, you know? You can’t go on not sleeping like this, it’s not going to improve your heath.”

“I can’t. You should understand that. Why do I always have to listen your sermons when I fuck up?”

“Would you have preferred Chirrut Îmwe’s platitudes instead?”

“Maybe. It’s easier with him than you, Kay.”

“If you took better care of yourself, you’d be left alone Cassian.”

“Maybe I don’t want that, being alone, even though it’s what I deserve.”

Kay sighs but doesn’t find anything to retort for once. Figures. Cassian closes his eyes again, knowing it’s usually easier like this. He’s drunk anyway, and has’t really slept for days. His body isn’t his own anymore, it felt so much better when he had her in bed next to him, when the curve of her could curve on him…

“You know it actually wasn’t any better, right,” comes his friend’s monotonous voice, out of the blue.

“Can’t you let me pretend?”

“Do you really have to ask that? Whether I like it or not, we’re playing by your rules here.”

“I miss her.”

“Of course you do.”

“I should have told her how I felt, seeing her from time to time isn’t enough. Why won’t she speak to me?”

“Cassian, Jyn Erso isn’t dead. She can’t speak because you don't… you don’t get to decide what she would say, if she saw you like this. The dead belong to you in a way she doesn’t yet, so you can only love the simple thought of her.”

“It’s hard,” Cassian whispers brokenly, referring to the way it was phrased as well as the fact that it was Kay who just stated the matter of his heart so carelessly.

“Yes, but you can’t deny that even if she’s not here, you’re glad she’s alive?”

“We don’t even know if she’s okay.”

“Considering your current state, I doubt it.”

“Bodhi will look after her.”

“That affirmation is not quite reassuring, but all right. I least I hope they’re spared your destructive tendencies and your inclination to sleep deprivation.”

“It’s not so bad, Kay, I manage.”

“Oh, really,” his friend retorts wryly, his features in focus to convey all his disdain, “you call this managing? Indulging yourself in liquor, barely eating, barely sleeping — not to mention holding an entire conversation with a friend that has been dead for months? Don’t make me laugh!”

“You can’t laugh anyway, I never heard the sound of it.”

“Use your imagination then, Captain Andor, you’re usually good at improvisation.”

“Not tonight Kay, I’m sorry.”

“I am too.”

After that, all is silent and Cassian doesn’t have the strength to summon his friends again. He’s exhausted. Almost crawling to the bed, he lays down, and stares at the empty space next to him. He wills her to appear but it’s no use tonight:

okay like. it's 5 am and i need to snz but i'm thinking abt nyfic again. since it sticks to canon up until s7 it's post-cage but sam's memories of the cage are unreliable bc he blocked out a ton of stuff and he doesn't really know that the cage itself was torturing him and lucifer usually didn't have anything to do with it, esp later on, and sam's obvs reluctant at first but eventually is okay with talking to lucifer. BUT if i were to change it to the scenario i talked abt the other day, lucifer wouldn't have interacted with sam at all in the cage, the lucifer sam interacted with was a complete fabrication created by the cage (and the cage creates shit in both scenarios, like visions and voices that aren't real or are distorted versions of real events). and in this scenario sam is initially very reactive and traumatized by cage!lucifer (who is essentially the same as canon hallucifer) while lucifer is completely bewildered bc he was being tortured on his own in ways that would uniquely hurt him, so when sam says he did all this horrible stuff, he didn't do any of that, he probably wouldn't have interacted with sam at all in the cage (tho i like the idea that lucifer knows the cage since he was there for so long and maybe he was able to at least look at sam somehow). and he has to somehow convince sam of this fact bc sam very easily believed that lucifer would torture him. lucifer eventually does get through to him that that wasn't him, that was just one way the cage tortured him, and that would be how sam starts actually talking to him.