Author's Note: Welcome to my first completed RebelCaptain fic. I've been in love with these two since the movie came out, but I decided publishing a little Hurt/Comfort one-shot before trying a longer fic with them would be best! As with most RebelCaptain fics, this takes place in an "Everyone Live" AU post Scarif. Enjoy! Please Read and Review
Disclaimer: I do not own anything in the Star Wars universe. To be honest, I don't even know enough about it to know if got any of the medical concepts correct here.
Jyn Erso is accustomed to being jolted awake. Saw Gerrera shaking her awake at every hour of the night, keeping her on her toes; the rough shift from hyperspace to realspace rattling the frame of a ship; Imperial guards smacking their batons against iron bars; nightmares, images of her father's last breath or the echoing smack of Cassian's back against steel bars: Jyn is accustomed to those.
A white hot grip on her lungs? This marks the first time—and hopefully the last, Jyn notes to herself, the sarcastic thought climbing above the pain—she's awoken to that.
Her whole body feels warm, too warm, insulated by Cassian's broad chest against her back, his steady breath against her neck and his arm protectively around her waist. Sweat beats along her hairline. She can hear her elevated heartrate echoing in her ears, can feel her chest rising and falling much faster than normal. Why was she so hot? Why did Cassian's arms feel more like a confining prison than a comforting presence tonight? Why did she feel like a Wookie had a vice grip on her lungs?
With a hard shove to dislodge Cassian's arm, Jyn sat up, hoping the open air and new position would sooth her clammy skin and open up her lungs. She had half a thought to claw off her shirt, just to feel the air directly against her skin, but Cassian shifted behind her, obviously waking, and she reminded herself that this was not the way she wanted Cassian to see her shirtless for the first time.
"Jyn?" Cassian's voice was rough with sleep. His hand reached out, meeting hers halfway. She desperately clutches at his hand like a lifeline, squeezing with an intensity to match the pain coursing through her chest.
"Cassian, I—" Her voice cut off with a choke as her chest spasmed. Coughs began to shake her body, shake the feeble bed beneath her, as she struggled to draw in a breath. Jyn felt more than heard Cassian scrambling to sit up and take the place beside her, rubbing her back and placing his hand to her forehead. His hands were cool, a lovely respite from the heat, and Jyn is immensely grateful that Cassian is with her.
"You're burning up," he remarks, concern coloring his voice, before standing and walking across the room. The room—Cassian's room—floods with light as Cassian reaches the lamp on his bedside table. It isn't much, but Jyn is thankful that, as long as she can't feel Cassian beside her, she can still see him moving through the room. Watching him pick up a glass and fill it with water from the small sink in the corner gives her something to focus on, as each cough sends a shock of pain through her, all the way down to her toes.
By the time Cassian returns to her side, the coughing has abated, replaced with labored breathing. Before Jyn can reach for the water, Cassian swears under his breath, grabbing at her face.
"Force, Jyn, you're bleeding."
All at once, Jyn recognizes the coppery taste coating the inside of her mouth, covering her teeth and making her tongue slimy. She can meet Cassian's eye for just a quick moment before the flavor makes her gag, prompting another coughing fit. She covers her mouth with one hand, only to pull it away a second later with flecks of bright crimson dotting her palm. Her clean hand grips her ribs, desperately attempting to manage the pain exploding from her lungs.
"That's it," Cassian says with a decisive tone. "Medbay."
No matter how little Jyn wants to go to Yavin IV's medbay—the memories of their recovery post-Scarif are still fresh in her mind—Jyn knows he's made the right decision when simply getting to her feet with Cassian's help makes the world black at the edges. When she's upright, Cassian reached away from her to pull his leather jacket over his nightshirt. She's only on her own for a matter of seconds, but it's enough for the blackness to take over her vision. In her last second before the darkness takes over, Jyn is aware of two things: a childish voice deep inside her head complaining, It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, and strong arms catching her before she can hit the ground.
Jyn looks like something out of a horror story.
Cassian should know, after all. His life has been nothing short of a horror story.
She's paler than a corpse, flecks of blood coloring her teeth, her head lulling onto his shoulder. Part of him expects to hear rounds of blaster fire, screams of TIE fighters soaring over their heads, pained groans of fellow soldiers around him, the sounds of battle. Those are the noises that accompany injuries like this, not the quiet of his barracks. He doesn't have time to question this, he reminds himself, pulling his eyes away from the line of blood escaping from the corner of Jyn's mouth. He scoops her into his arms, one hand holding her shoulders and another her knees. Bridal style, an unbidden voice in the back of his mind reminds him, a voice that Cassian fiercely ignores. He opens his door with some difficulty, refusing to move Jyn out of the safety of his arms, and moves down the corridors towards the medbay.
The corridors are mainly silent, rebels either asleep in their bunks or working hard in their third shift duties. Cassian isn't sure if he's thankful there's no one to question why he's carrying a bleeding Jyn Erso out of his quarters at such an odd hour or annoyed there isn't anyone to help him transport her faster. Her weight—not dead weight, he reminds himself, he can feel the shallow rise and fall of her chest against his—gets heavier the longer the journey takes. He takes a right turn into the medical wing, jogging the last few steps into medbay.
One human medic and two droids are milling around the entrance as he bursts through the door. All three pause in their conversation, clearly not expecting anyone else to be admitted tonight. They stare too long for Cassian's liking, taking in the strange sight of the intelligence officer cradling the bleeding sergeant to his chest, before the medic –Dr. Espino according to his tag—hastily correct his mistake.
"What happened?" He demands, motioning for Cassian to place Jyn on a stretcher one of the droids has brought.
"I'm not sure," Cassian admits, watching the doctor shine a light into one of Jyn's unresponsive eyes. "She woke up coughing, spitting up blood, and passed out when she tried to stand."
The medic nods, murmuring instructions in a medical language Cassian has never learned to understand before grabbing a blank folder and turning back to him.
"Her name and rank?"
"Sergeant Jyn Erso."
"Your name and rank?"
"Captain Cassian Andor."
The medic raises an eyebrow, clearly familiar with the names of the Rogue One leaders, or possibly the gossip that followed them around post-Scarif. Cassian scowled, annoyed that the rebellion's scuttlebutt on their relationship was interfering with the man's medical duties to Jyn.
"Any extreme physical activity in the last twenty-four hours?"
Were you having sex? Cassian translates and the scowl deepens.
"No, sir, not that I'm aware of." Let him take that however he wants.
Dr. Espino continues down his checklist, asking all the standard questions, age and medical conditions and the like. Cassian quickly loses focus, choosing instead to stare down the hallway that the droids wheeled Jyn down, wondering what was happening now. Had she regained consciousness? Was she losing more blood? What if she couldn't breathe properly and the medic was standing here, wasting time wondering about allergies when he could be in there, helping Jyn?
As if hearing Cassian's thoughts, he snaps the folder shut. "I'll go check on her. You're welcome to stay here, if you desire," he says, indicating a row of chairs along the wall before disappearing down the same hallway as Jyn.
Finally left alone with this thoughts, Cassian sinks into one of the chairs. Fear, worry, all the emotions he had been holding back in the rush to get Jyn the medical attention she needed came rushing forward. What had he done? What had caused internal bleeding like that, especially since she had been grounded since the Scarif mission? He escaped Scarif with internal damage, but not her. Her wounds from Scarif were all external: a twisted knee and a sprained ankle along with some minor burns. Nothing that required overnight observation.
Cassian reached back into his memory, back to three nights previous, the first time she had shown up at his door. He was recently released from medbay, and she had come to check on him. If her intent had been to stay the night, she didn't say, but she ended up in his bed, snuggled up to him anyway, her hair tickling his nose when he awoke the next morning. This feeling between them—it couldn't be love, not yet—went unspoken as Jyn left his room in haste, barely speaking to him.
That morning he sat through intelligence briefings on the possible locations of Princess Leia, and, therefore, the Death Star plans, and if an extraction was possible at this point. Memories of his night with Jyn were shoved to the back of his brain. When the meeting broke for lunch, Cassian met Bodhi, now bearing the markings of a rebel lieutenant rather than an Imperial cargo pilot, in the canteen, Jyn nowhere in sight.
The men were having a sparse yet pleasant conversation when Kaytoo sat down in the seat next to Cassian. The droid almost never entered the canteen unless he was desperately in search of Cassian, so, almost without a second thought, Cassian jumped to attention, certain the high command had some new information, that the princess had been located and now needed to be retrieved immediately. What he hadn't expected was the greeting Kay gave instead.
"Why does everyone keep repeating that you are sleeping with Jyn Erso?"
Cassian's cheeks colored instantly and his hand froze awkwardly in mid-air; Bodhi's eyes widened, glancing between the droid and the captain quickly before deciding keeping his eyes on his plate was probably much better for his overall well-being; eyes from the surrounding tables seemed less inclined to save Cassian's dignity than Bodhi was, for it suddenly seemed like the entire room was staring at him, waiting for his response to the droid.
Well, if they weren't saying he was sleeping with Jyn before, they were going to now.
"Kay," Cassian hissed, hoping to keep his voice low enough that only the droid could hear him. "What are you talking about?"
"I have heard at least six conversations about the topic this morning," Kaytoo seemed completely oblivious to Cassian's attempt to keep the conversation under the radar as his voice remained at the previous level. "I was merely seeking clarification from you."
Jyn chose this moment to slid into the seat next to Bodhi's, blissfully unaware of the mortifying conversation. She began munching on a roll before noticing the awkward silence surrounding the table, broken only by Kaytoo's squeaky joints as he looked from Cassian to Jyn.
"Alright," Jyn began hesitantly, glancing at Cassian's pink cheeks and Bodhi's avoidant eyes, "What did I miss?"
"Nothing," both Bodhi and Cassian jumped to respond. Jyn did not look convinced, instead turning towards the droid, taking advantage of his lack of verbal filter.
"I was asking Cassian why I heard people saying the two of you were sleeping together," Kat answered honestly, obviously still bothered that his explanation had not been provided.
Cassian wanted to melt into the floor, or at least erase this conversation from everyone's memory. Jyn had enough judgements around the rebellion—most people weren't taking well to the idea of an Imperial scientist's daughter openly defying orders and still being welcomed back with open arms—without any ideas about her sleeping around. He braced himself against her sheltering herself off emotionally, leaving whatever their relationship could have been in the dust.
"Oh, probably because I ran into a few other officers while leaving his room this morning," Jyn said casually, taking a sip of water. "It was a bit early for someone to just pop by for a chat."
"Now why couldn't you have just said that?" Kaytoo asked Cassian.
"I didn't know you ran into anyone," Cassian directed his answer back at Jyn, chastising himself for not making sure the hall was clear this morning.
Jyn simply shrugged. "Didn't seem like a big deal to me."
She reiterated that point when she knocked on his door that night, and the night after.
"If they're already talking about us, we may as well give them something to talk about," she said with a grin when he let her in last night and he had smiled. He had fallen asleep, Jyn tucked neatly into his side, her presence warming him inside and out… And awoken to her coughing up blood.
"Captain Andor?" A gentle hand on his shoulder startled Cassian. The crick in his neck proved he had fallen asleep.
He jumped to his feet immediately, demanding, "How's Jyn? Is she awake?"
"She's not awake," Dr. Espino answered, "But she's going to be fine. She just caught a couple of these." In his hand, the medic held a small plastic jar, with a handful of small, wormlike creatures Cassian wasn't familiar with.
"A couple of worms? Those are what made Jyn cough up blood?"
The doctor sighed at Cassian's obvious confusion. "You must have been off base when the announcement about these were made. Your quarters are in Sector C, aren't they?" Cassian nodded, unsure how the doctor knew this. "We named these little buggers klene. Seem to mainly be on that side of base. I've never heard of them before Yavin, so I assume they're native here. They crawl inside the body, through the mouth or nose or wherever, and attach themselves to you. Survive off their host's blood, eventually draining them dry. A couple almost made it to Sergeant Erso's lungs."
Cassian stared at the jar with renewed disgust.
"However, Captain Andor, since they were most likely in your mattress, that means I'll need to give you a quick examination before you can see her. And suggest you visit the supply room to replace the infected mattress."
Cassian followed without complaint when the doctor pointed him forward.
When Jyn woke, her first thought centered around the annoying beeps of the surrounding medical equipment. Her second thought was the memory of the blood and sharp pains and Cassian's worried face. She calmed when she saw Cassian slumped over in the chair beside her bed.
"Cassian?" She croaked, her voice obviously still wounded from her freak medical experience. She reached her hand towards him, just barely brushing his knee. Cassian's eyes flickered open, immediately at attention when he saw her open eyes.
"How are you feeling?" He asked, taking her outstretched hand in his, brushing his lips against her knuckles. "You had me scared."
"What happened?" Jyn demanded, "What made my lungs rebel against me in my sleep?"
Cassian chuckled and pointed to the jar next to her bed. "Those klene decided to invade," he explained, adding in the medic's explanation about how the bugs would attach to people and feed on their blood, finishing with a smug recount of his clean examination. Of course the lucky bastard had managed to sleep in the same bed as her and walk away unscathed.
She wanted to keep asking questions, wanted to revel in the fact that he stayed by her side, but his soothing voice made her eyelids begin drooping.
"Sleep," Cassian commanded gently, brushing her hair out of her face. "I woke let the bloody little worms get to you here."
She tried to glare, but Cassian's half smile told her she failed. She settled for shaking her head as she drifted off.
Jyn had just one more thing to say before succumbing to slumber: "Oh, Cassian? Resources of the rebellion be damned; I'm burning your mattress."