A/N: Because a kiss SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED.

Jyn kisses Cassian on the shore of a dying sea, and she might grieve for never remembering it, if there were not so little time that she would never remember anything else.

Life begins and ends at shorelines, as do stories. Stories, Jyn knows, last longer than lives. This was a truth her father told her, and this was a truth she learned on Rogue One's virgin, final voyage. The laughter of heroes when they were frightened is the brightest in all the world.

(Cassian holds her closer.)

(They are both bleeding.)

("You," he breathes against her neck, and the one word is enough.)

Jyn kisses Cassian after she had thought of doing so a dozen times. Half of those times were before she even trusted him. Her soul liked him better than she did; it was tugging at her fingertips, for too long (so little time), and when he had been the one to nearly betray—oh, but that thought had been unbearable. She had been so, so angry.

And so was he.

And then they saved a world.

(Not their world, but that is never what matters in the stories.)

Jyn kisses Cassian, and his lips are softer than she expected. He is near death, and if the ground were not shaking and breaking beneath them she would weep for that, but death is near to both of them and so she does not have to.

Hope, hope, hope. It is like a heartbeat, but dreams last longer than lives, and the heartbeat will not stop, now.

She thinks of her father. She used to hate how bent her little Stormtrooper doll looked when dropped, all twisted fabric limbs, and that was how her mother looked when she fell, endlessly still and all the sound and flurry of movement inside Jyn's own head.

But Galen—oh, she would weep for Galen, the star to her stardust, the father she loved. There is no time. No time at all, and Galen had not looked like a twisted, broken thing when he died. He had been peaceful, and the whole world had seemed to fold in around him, and Jyn—she had wept for Galen.

No one would see how she looked when she died.

It is coming. Everything destroyed, everything over, and hope like a bird on the other side of the broken shield, up, up, up.

Jyn kisses Cassian. He does not let her go, and she does not want him to.

This story lasts longer than life.