You live for the fight when it's all that you've got
DISCLAIMER: I do not own a thing, this text was written for the purpose of entertainment only. Everything is with their rightful owners.
*Author's Note* The lyrics and the title are, obviously, from "Living on a Prayer"by Bon Jovi. It was on the radio as I drove home from the cinema (right before the news of Carrie's passing, God rest her soul...).
Anyway, it fit them so well and I had to write this.
Her nights - well, most of them - are the good part.
Their days are long, and exhausting, and full of screams; but the nights are quiet.
Usually, they end up driving on for at least half of it. She likes it better when he's driving, but she never tells him that - it would only get to his head. He's calm, then, focused, relaxed, and she sits curled up on the passenger seat, the window opened ever so slightly to let in the cool breeze, and watches him.
Almost everything she knows about him she knows from these drives, but she feels like they hardly talk. They just enjoy the silence, the serenity of routine and quiet.
Sometimes they end up sleeping in the car, too. She doesn't mind. She craves a different kind of comfort these days, and she has that; his arm around her as they fall asleep, tangled and pressed against each other to fit them both on the narrow seats. No sound but their breathing.
They sleep with their guns in hand, without exeption, but still, at night Jyn Erso doesn't feel like she is fighting a war, and that's half a miracle.
He was the one who taught her how to drive - well, when she says "teach".
One day, they're being shot at and there's a huge frayed gaping hole in his leg soaking his jeans with blood, and still, being who he is, all he yells as he limps alongside her and shrugs off her helping hand is "I can't fucking drive like this".
He collapses onto the passenger seat at an unhealthy angle, looking very white and very dazed and trying really hard to wipe the pain from his face.
"Drive, Jyn!" he bellows.
"You know I can't drive!" she yells back but gets in the driver's seat, a bullet or five bouncing off the door when she pulls it shut.
"Turn the key," he says, a little quieter, his face slowly going from white to green.
She does as he says, and the motor springs to life.
He reaches over and jams the gear in place. His hand leaves a smear of blood on the lever.
"Pedal on the far right. Just... step on it."
She's sure there's more to it, but does as she's told. The car takes a leap forward, not quite in the direction she meant for it to go.
"Steering wheel!" he yells, his feverishly bright eyes wide, as the car bolts across the square like a young deer. "Keep your foot on the gas!"
Jyn adorns him and the car and the Stormtroopers on their heels with every swearword she knows - some of those are Spanish, she has those from him and only a very faint idea of what they even mean - and tries her best to avoid collision with buildings.
He has turned around in his seat, smearing blood all over. He looks very distinctly sick now. "Stop screaming and drive!"
"I can do whatever the fucking hell I want, Andor!" she gives back, not a bit quieter, and fights to keep her eyes ahead. "Sit down. Seatbelt. You'll pass out."
"I'm fine," he says faintly, and reaches for the seatbelt very slowly. "Just lose them."
"We will. We always do." There is far too much blood in the corner of her eye. "Just stay still."
"I'm fine," he repeats, and falls silent for a while. A while too long.
No, this isn't it. This is wrong, don't you dare -
"Cassian? Cassian, goddamnit -" Her fingers clutch the steering wheel so tightly it hurts, and she desperately wants pull over and shake him awake, Stormtroopers be damned, but that would kill them both, and also she has no idea how to stop the car.
He shifts just a little. " 'mfine."
She exhales slowly. "I think we've lost them. We'll be there soon, they'll fix you. You'll be fine."
He doesn't look like he'll ever be fine again, but he nods. "I know."
"It's not far. Just stay with me."
Somehow, he manages to throw her a smile. "Always."
She smiles back; there's no need to answer.
(The thing with them is, they will die. They're bound to die, at some point, at the pace they're going. But it'll be both of them. No one's ever questioned that, not Cassian, not her and none of the others. They never make her second in command, because if he goes, so will she. That's a certainty, and she finds that strangely comforting.)
The radio's on, turned down until it is only just audible over the motor, and Jyn studies his hands tapping on the steering wheel and listens.
We're halfway there, living on a prayer,
take my hand, we'll make it I swear -
(That sure sounds nice, but no. They won't. They fight for a future they will never get to see, and that's sad but it's okay. At least she's not alone anymore.)
She wonders about that, sometimes, what would happen when they die. If there will be a point to them, to these nights in the car, all of it.
So much between them has gone without saying, but sometimes she wonders if that means that once they're dead, all that will disappear. If it is real to anyone but them if they never really say it.
Sometimes she's scared there'll be a bomb and they'll both go up in smoke, and they'll just be a collossal "what-if" to the rest of the world.
An incomplete sentence in a history book.
She tells him that, in the middle of the night, and she can't see his face but she imagines he's smiling.
Because she didn't say it, they never say it, but she almost did just then and he's heard it.
"Just because you don't know how the sentence ends doesn't mean it really doesn't go on," he says and laces his fingers with hers.
"That makes no sense," Jyn whispers and smiles into the dark.
"We know the rest of it. I've known for a damn long time, and even if we don't get to live all of it that doesn't mean it wasn't there."
She pulls him a little closer and looks out at the stars in the sky.
They're both broken and messed up and full of anger, but they've managed to bring each other a little bit of peace. He has given her the one thing she'd thought she'd lost forever, and no matter what the next morning brings, she falls asleep feeling safe and whole and alright.
Strange though it still is to even think it, Jyn Erso is home.
And that's the real miracle.
We gotta hold on to what we've got
It doesn't make a difference if we make it or not
We've got each other, and that's a lot for love