A/N: This is sad. I was sad writing it. Putting Jyn and Cassian through these things is never easy, but always rewarding. I hope the dark tone of the story will not stop those of you who decide to read this from enjoying the story. I put a lot of work into it.

Enjoy.

No, I don't wanna talk about it

I just wanna hold your hand

Rhodes | "Your Soul"

Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You

She puts the phone down quietly. The world has gone black around her. All noise has turned to static. All light has been snuffed out. The air is stale and insufficient; she can't breathe. Clutching her chest, Jyn blindly stands and stumbles around her kitchen, looking for the sink. When it is found, she bows her head and empties the contents of her stomach. Bile slithers up her throat, lashing at her oesophagus. It sizzles and she rests her spinning head on the faucet, shutting her eyes as the stale stench of her sick reaches her nostrils.

One word is playing in loop inside of her head: no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. She heard wrong. It hasn't happened. Not yet. Not now.

Not again.

Galen Erso is dead.

But he can't be. It isn't possible. Maybe the doctors got it wrong. Maybe it was some other man who looked so like her father they wrongfully concluded Galen Erso had died. She is faintly aware of how ridiculous this suggestion is—her father works (worked) at the hospital as a haematologist. He drew his final breath inside the walls of Queen Elizabeth. They would know it was him. But Jyn Erso cannot believe it. It is not true. Her father is alive and well. He is not dead.

Jyn chokes on air. She grips the faucet tighter as images—silly images, ones she has not conjured up for years—fill her head. Her father's rough fingers on her back as he pushed her on the swings. The way his Danish accent came out in full force when she accidentally smashed her mother's favourite vase trying to reach the chocolates he had hidden in the cupboard. The scent of his cologne as he came to her room later, apologising for raising his voice. She had understood, though, why he was so angry.

Next, she thinks back to the moment Galen Erso fell to his knees in front of her as the policeman told him Lyra Erso had been in a fatal car accident. She finds in her memory bank the sounds of his agony, the wetness of his tears as he held onto Jyn, the picture of a broken man.

It takes Jyn a moment to realise she has been crying. Silent tears stream down her face and run down the faucet.

Her father is dead. How terribly sad.

She is unaware how long she spends with her forehead pressed against the metal faucet. She only knows that when she pulls away, the sun has disappeared and her head aches. Switching the tap on, a fog densely packed in her mind, Jyn splashes cold water on her face. She scrubs at the twelve-hour old makeup covering her skin. Rubs her eyes until they burn.

Turning the water off, Jyn reaches for a tea towel and dries her face. The world has regained some of its colour. The music she had been listening to as she ate her dinner—which is now sliding through the pipes—filters through her ears. She immediately shuts off the sound. It is The Jam. Too happy. Too grating.

Jyn looks around her kitchen. The spacious flat is hers and hers alone. She has nobody to lean on. Well, she has someone, but he asks to stay out of her private life. He would not take too kindly to her showing up, mascara running down her blotchy face, asking to be held. Tonight, she must comfort herself. Gerrera, her father's boss and the man who phoned her, said there was a funeral already being planned by the hospital. All she has to do is show up on Thursday and deliver the eulogy. She had been too shocked to say no. She had said nothing at all, but Saw Gerrera took her silence to mean yes.

Two days. In two days she will drive herself up to Bournville from Islington with a suitcase filled with black clothes. She never thought she would return to her hometown. Once she left, she swore she would stay away for good. But then, she never thought her father would die at 51, leaving her parentless and alone.

Jyn Erso is too much of a hard worker to stay down for long. She wakes the next morning feeling dull and lifeless, but she climbs out of bed anyway, insisting to herself she will not slip into the cold arms of depression and sadness. She will combat her grief until it backs down by getting as much work done as she can before she needs to leave. She is master of swallowing her feelings. Her therapist says it isn't healthy, but Jyn would rather pretend to be happy until she herself believed she was happy than experience the storm of emotions attempting to claw their way out of her system.

Once she is dressed and caked in enough makeup to cover up the grey and purple bags beneath her eyes, Jyn heads into central London, a stack of unpublished, rough copy books sitting in her passenger seat. She weaves through the hectic traffic, thinking solely about work. There is a lunch meeting at twelve where they will be discussing which of the six books beside her should go into production. If her and her colleagues can agree on at least one, then it is her job to phone the author and set up a meeting where she and they will talk plot holes, grammatical errors, and deadlines.

The moment she steps through the door to the publishing house, Jyn is accosted by her boss, Leia. A transfer from the house's American counterpart, Leia has been Jyn's favourite boss. No contest.

Putting on a smile, her chest aching, Jyn hands Leia the one book she thinks one-hundred percent deserves publication.

Leia looks at the book's title. "Money Shot?" she says. There is a hint of doubt in her voice.

"Obviously it needs some work," Jyn says, "but it's good. It's about a porn star. Hence the title."

"And why do I want to publish a book about a porn star"

"Because it's empowering and a genuinely thought provoking romance."

The older woman flips through the book. "Romance? Who does she fall in love with?"

Jyn is happy to spend all day talking about this one book. Anything to distract her. "Well, she's a straight girl doing mainly lesbian porn because it pays more. She falls for this"—

—"Straight guy who discovers she's a porn star and can't live with it?"

"No. That's what's great. She falls for another porn star. It's really quite deep, even if it sounds crazy."

Leia raises her eyebrows. "It's got sex and romance. People will love it, I'm sure."

"Fifty Shades of Grey really changed everything, didn't it?" Jyn joked.

"Yeah, in an awful way."

They go with her pick at the meeting. Everyone else has the same idea as Leia. Sex sells. Jyn spends the rest of the day on a cloud, shoving down that dark, purple and black cumulonimbus threatening to take its place in her head. She calls the author, who is ecstatic to hear the news. This is her first book to be published. Jyn is happy to make the woman's lifelong dream come true. They set up an appointment for the following week to go over everything.

By the time five o'clock rolls around, Jyn is exhausted. But she has been tired all of her life. She can make herself look believably well-rested and content. Instead of leaving like most of her workmates do, Jyn decides to stick around and get started on another project. There is a ten-book pileup in the to-be-read bin. Leia pokes her head out of her office at eight, asking what Jyn is still doing there.

"I always work late," she says, which is true. Usually Leia is gone by now. "What are you still doing here?"

Leia exits her office and comes to Jyn's desk. Jyn caps and sets down her red pen, waiting for her boss to speak.

"My husband is away on a work trip. I've always hated being home alone."

Jyn nods, though she has no idea what it feels like to not enjoy an empty home. But she has lived by herself for nine years. She is accustomed to the loneliness.

It hits Jyn as Leia stands before her that she needs to request tomorrow off.

"Leia," she begins, "I have to go out of town tomorrow. I have some vacation days I've never used up."

"This is bad timing, Jyn. Is it something you can get out of?"

"Not really," Jyn says, shooing Saw Gerrera's words from the previous evening away. "It's a . . . a family emergency. I'll be back by Friday."

Leia takes a moment to think Jyn's request over. If she doesn't allow it, Jyn will simply have to get in contact with Saw and tell her she is just too swamped with work to get away.

Sorry, Gerrera, but work is important.

"If you've got the vacation days," Leia says eventually. "Bring some work along if you can."

Jyn had cruelly been hoping for Leia to refuse her. What an awful desire. With her boss's approval, Jyn gets back to work. She does not leave the office until the clock strikes ten.

Heat streams through Jyn's windshield as she drives down the quiet, familiar street. Billy Joel—her father's favourite musician—is playing. She swallows down the golfball-sized lump in her throat, tapping cheerily on the steering wheel to "Entertainer," trying her best to hum along. It isn't long before she reaches the detached complex with its two Japanese cherry blossom trees in full bloom. Wind whips through the air, sending some of the petals flying from their homes. Jyn adores these trees. They are the only ones of their kind down this entire street. Her father cared deeply for them.

Jyn presses her foot on the break and shifts gears into park. She turns her head to the side. The house looks empty. She feels like Nick Carraway seeing Gatsby's home after the titular character has been found floating atop his swimming pool, a bullet hole in his undeserving chest. There are no lights on. There is no life inside of the walls. Switching off the car, silencing Billy Joel's voice, Jyn swallows, the tennis ball lodged in her windpipe sliding down painfully. She checks her watch, blinking fuzz from her eyes. 11:00 exactly. The funeral starts in two hours. She eyes the passenger seat, upon which lies the eulogy she scribbled last night after she returned home from work.

Soon, there is a rumbling behind her. Looking in her rearview mirror, Jyn spots Saw Gerrera pulling up behind her car in his expensive-looking vehicle. He is her ticket inside as she has not held a key to this house in nearly a decade.

"Gerrera," Jyn greets, climbing out of her car and meeting him on the front lawn. He looks at her suspiciously. "How are you?"

"Probably better than you," he says. "I may have lost a dear colleague, but you have lost a father."

Jyn ignores his words and follows him inside the house. It smells stale. Lifeless. Despite the abnormal warmth of Birmingham's April, it is chilly, as if there is a large fan blasting cold air throughout the entire structure. Jyn holds her head up, her heart thumping desperately into her ribs like it's trying to make her feel something. Her eyes catch the various photographs on the walls, but she forces herself to look away. They are an amalgam of pictures of her, her mother, and her father. They stretch on and on throughout the lower level. She must stare only straight ahead.

When she was a child, she adored this house. It was big enough that she could go on long adventures inside of its walls, small enough that she never got lost. She remembers, as she walks towards the kitchen with Gerrera, how enjoyable her life was until the day the policemen came. Things became less enjoyable after that. She no longer desired the open space of the house. She would crawl into the smallest closet and lie there until her father, weary and sad, came to find her.

Gerrera and Jyn stop when they reach the kitchen table. He takes a seat and invites Jyn to do the same. She sits, focusing on the back garden through the large window above the sink.

"It was quick," Gerrera explains, and she knows he is talking about her father's death. Still, she looks only at the green grass and budding flowers. "A heart attack. Over in seconds. We tried our best to revive him, but he was already gone." Saw reaches out and touches her arm. She jerks her head in his direction and sees the old man's eyes are wet. "I am so sorry, Jyn. Your father was a great man."

"He was," she says firmly.

Saw removes his hand and stands. He clears his throat. "I must go make sure the seating arrangements are in order. I'll be back shortly."

Jyn only nods. Before Gerrera has even left the kitchen, she has returned her attention to the window. There is a body blocking her view. Someone is there, crouched by the tulips, their gloved hands patting down soil around the vibrant flowers.

She knows instantly who it is. There is only one person it could be. Years have passed, but Jyn would know this body in the pitch black.

As she stares, wide-eyed, he picks himself off of the ground and turns around, their eyes catching. It is like being transported back in time. She feels seventeen again, sitting in this exact spot in a revealing top, sipping on a gin and tonic, watching a shirtless boy run their lawnmower over the grass.

Cassian Andor. A face she never thought she would see again.

He is covered in dirt. As they watch each other, he swipes the back of his hand across his forehead and leaves a streak of soil in its place. He looks different now. Older. Wiser. There is a beard dotting his chin. There is a hardness to his eyes.

Then, he is gone from her view. She hears him enter the house the next room over and she is not prepared for the moment when he comes into the kitchen. Sweat beads on his tanned skin. How long has he been out there?

"Jyn." He says her name, the J soft, and she nearly falls to pieces right there. "I'm glad you could make it."

Jyn is aware of the bitterness in his words. He has not forgiven her. Not that she blames him. She hasn't forgiven herself, either.

Getting to her feet, Jyn holds out her hand in a formal greeting. Reluctantly, Cassian removes his gloves and takes the offer, letting go after only a heartbeat.

"How are you?" Jyn asks, knowing how ridiculous all of this is. But she wants to hear him talk. Just for a moment.

Cassian looks at her for a split second like she's mad. His eyebrows crowd in the centre of his forehead, his eyes squint, his nose pulls upwards. Then, his face returns to normal. Stoic. "I'm okay. Processing. It's difficult, of course. Galen and I were supposed to go to a football match on Saturday."

Galen. She has never heard Cassian refer to her father as Galen before. But it has been a long time since she has been here.

Cassian is sad. She knows it. It is written clearly across his face, though he is trying his best to appear impassive. He lost both of his parents when he was young. He was adopted from a Mexican orphanage at age six by a family who lives just down the road. Their shared sorrow is what drew them to each other when he was hired by her father one summer to tend to the garden, as his work hours were so hectic he couldn't handle the upkeep. She was not the only one who found herself fascinated by Cassian. Her father and him struck up a friendship that seems to have lasted all this time.

Losing him must be taking its toll on Cassian.

"Thank you for helping with the garden," Jyn says, pushing down the rugby ball trying to rise in her throat.

"The least I could do, mi amor."

Jyn's breathing stops. Cassian looks confounded as well. He is quick to apologise for the slip. Jyn is about to reply when the front door opens, announcing Garrera's return.

The pair startle and move away from one another.

"Jyn, I think it would be best if you went upstairs and picked out a suit for your father. I had one lined up, but there appears to be a large stain from some solution on the front. The church wishes to use another one."

Anything to escape from this tense situation. Jyn slips through the kitchen and heads upstairs, walking down to the farthest room. She enters, closing the door and leaning against it, eyes closed. Breathing out slowly, Jyn opens her eyes, wishing at once she had kept them shut.

The room is spotless. Her father was always cleaning. It helped him think, so he said. Like the rest of the house, the room is cold. Jyn shivers in her black dress, cupping a hand over her mouth as the rugby ball turns into an exercise ball. There is so much of her father in this place, but she can't allow his presence in the room distract her from her task.

Jyn walks slowly to the large closet in the bedroom and opens the doors, revealing a large collection of suits. She thumbs through them, noticing that, like the one Gerrera had chosen, many have stains from the lab. Her chest tightens as she comes to the final suit in the wardrobe. It is hidden inside of a garment bag, but Jyn knows what it is. She pulls it out and unzips the bag, revealing a gorgeous, pristine three piece suit.

The suit appears in numerous photographs inside the house. Her father has worn it only twice—the day he got married, and the day he buried Lyra Erso.

Jyn, in a rush of emotions, holds it to her nose and breathes in, hoping her father's scent lingers. Perhaps it is her imagination, but there is a slight hint of pine needles and citrus.

Zipping the bag up again, Jyn returns downstairs. She hands the suit to Gerrera. Cassian has disappeared, probably to change into his own suit.

"This one," she says, reminding herself to keep her face blank.

Gerrera takes the garment bag and points to the living room. "There is a lawyer in there. He wants to speak to you."

"Now?" Jyn asks. She checks her watch. One hour until the funeral starts.

"It will be quick, I promise."

Gerrera nudges her in the direction of the lawyer. He is sitting at the head of the table, where her father would always sit. A part of her wants to run to him and throw him out of the chair, but she refrains and takes a seat beside him. His dark face is young, but if he has been put in charge of her father's will, he must be trustworthy and able.

"Bodhi Rook," he says when she is comfortable. "You look very much like your mother."

She hears this all the time. It hardly makes her flinch anymore. "Yes," she says.

Bodhi Rook flips open the binder in front of him. "I'm here to read your father's last will and testament," he says. "Are you ready?"

No. She isn't.

Jyn nods.

. . .

He left her almost everything. What money he didn't leave to the hospital, he gave to her. The house. The things inside of the house. His car. His lock boxes. Everything. She is still thinking about it when she pulls up to the sandy-stoned church.

She does not want all of his possessions.

She wants him.

Inside of the church, there are dozens of people already there, waiting to be led to the cemetery, holding handkerchiefs to their eyes and noses. Jyn does not recognise the majority of them. She spots Saw near the front, conversing with a priest. He beckons her over.

"Jyn, this is Chirrut Îmwe. He will be conducting the funeral," Gerrera says, as though this is an orchestral concert and not the day they are burying her 51 year-old father.

Jyn shakes the priest's hand and thanks him. "When will I be giving the eulogy?" she asks, the folded piece of paper burning a hole through her purse.

"Just before we lower your father," he responds gently, hands clutching a bible. Jyn notices a bookmark poking out from the far end of the book.

"Okay," she says.

Jyn retreats, allowing the two men to discuss in private. Like clockwork, she finds Cassian standing near her old neighbour, Ben. He is smiling, but Jyn knows it's fake. A ruse, similar to her own.

Finishing his conversation, he looks around, focus landing on her. Clockwork. They stare at each other like they had done earlier. Like they have done countless of times before. Before Jyn can run to him, beg him to take away the pain she has locked inside of herself, Chirrut Îmwe announces the beginning of the funeral. Everyone streams outside and into the warm April air.

Jyn manages to keep hold of her emotions as the priest gives his sermon. He goes through scripture and speaks of heaven, where her father is looking down upon them all with a smile on his face. In no time, it is Jyn's turn to speak. She finds her way to the front of the casket on shaking legs and pulls out the sheet of paper from her bag.

She reads over the words hastily before beginning, a smile like the one Cassian gave Ben earlier spreading her aching cheeks. "When I was five, I lost my mother to a drunk driver." She drops the smile. People are giving her odd looks. "It hurt . . ."

Jyn trails off. These words are meaningless. There is no feeling in them.

Crumpling the paper, Jyn whips her head up and faces her audience. Her father's audience. "It didn't hurt, actually," she says. "It didn't feel like much when I lost my mum. I was only five. I knew I loved her, I knew she cared for me, but I was too young to understand that she was never coming home. I cried, but only because my father did. When I was old enough to really grasp what had happened, I was beyond being able to cry about it. There was this cavern in my heart, yes, but I only felt a slight emptiness. A jealousy when I saw other girls with their mums."

Jyn's vision is blurring. Her throat is closing.

No.

She balls her hands into fists, fighting the acidic tears.

"If anything, I felt sad about my mum not being there simply because I didn't know what having a mum was like. Not because I missed her. But this," she says, a sharp sob escaping, "this hurts. This was my father. My best friend. M—my everything. I keep thinking I'm going to wake up any second. I keep pinching myself, hoping this is all some horrific nightmare. But it isn't, is it? He's gone. The most amazing man in the entire world, who was so dedicated to his work and his daughter, is gone. And he's never—he's never coming back."

She has lost it. Her control. Her will to keep herself up.

She collapses to the ground, knees slamming into a pile of dirt. She is in too much agony to cry. She only wails through her tight throat as her body heaves out empty sobs.

Galen Erso is dead. Her father is dead.

Seconds after she falls, somebody is pulling her up. She allows herself to be dragged away. She rests her heavy body against her saviour. Although her eyes are misted, she knows it is Cassian. His arms have been around her enough times; his touch is singed in her memory.

He is whispering things in her ear as he takes her outside and to his car. They drive to her house, where he helps her inside and upstairs. Eventually, they reach her old bedroom.

She is crying now. Tears cascade from her eyes as Cassian continues whispering comforting words, helping to remove her uncomfortable heels. And then they are lying together, his arms wrapped so tightly around her she feels she could accidentally slip inside of him.

Cassian holds her as she finally allows herself to break. He speaks to her. Some of the things he says she doesn't understand. Either she can't hear them, or he's speaking some strange concoction of Spanish and Yiddish, but either way she does her best to focus on his comforting voice. It is the only thing keeping her from being swallowed whole by the vacuous space she has opened.

"You are safe, mi amor," he says. "I'm here."

That first summer Galen Erso hired out Cassian to help with the garden, Jyn fell madly in love. How could she not? She was thirteen when they met, though she had seen him plenty of times before then. Her age mixed with his gorgeous face meant she was doomed from the start. Unlike the other boys their age, he was nice. Caring. Already, he knew of heartbreak. He understood the value of kindness.

She tried for years to get his attention. For a little while, she thought maybe he was gay. He hung out with Kay, another boy in their class, all the time. Maybe there was something more than friendship to their relationship.

Following nearly four years of putting herself out there to no avail, Jyn gave up on ever catching Cassian's eye. That summer, when he began working again, she would still do her best to lure his attention, but she let go of all hope she would come out victorious.

Except that summer, everything changed. Jyn would feel his stare as she cooked or made herself a cup of tea. He would leave the sweetest messages beneath her door day after day until one afternoon he asked her to meet him at the golf course behind her house at ten o'clock. Excitedly, she dressed in what she felt at the time was her sexiest outfit and met him on the illuminated green.

They kissed beneath the moon that night. His tongue prodded her lips until she moaned and granted it entrance. When they pulled away, both panting and blushing furiously, he explained that he was too afraid of her father to ask her out properly. She laughed, insisting her father was a saint. He agreed. Galen Erso had given Cassian his blessing at the start of summer.

Their relationship burned bright. It felt everlasting. Timeless. She quickly fell in love—properly, this time—and he did too.

They unravelled each other slowly. He bared his soul to her. Cried in her arms about his parents.

He took her on adventures to places she had never been. They visited National Trust properties, toured castles, spent a night in Paris. They made love every place they went, assuring they would never forget these days.

Jyn discovered she was pregnant days before Cassian's nineteenth birthday. She had been terrified of his reaction, but when she told him, he kissed her and said they could do anything together. It took her father some time to come around to the idea of Jyn and Cassian leaving Bournville to raise a family together, but he had been not much older than them when he and Jyn's mother had Jyn.

There was no talk of a wedding. Not yet. They would be patient. Wait until they had some semblance of a life before they jumped into such a commitment. Their baby would know them both always, but what if Jyn and Cassian decided to go their separate ways?

Only it wasn't to be. One morning, mere weeks into the pregnancy, Jyn awoke in a pool of blood. Cassian begged her to stay. He said again they could do anything together.

You're safe, mi amor. I'm here.

But the pain was too much. She took her seat at Cambridge, not knowing at the time it would be nine years before she returned to Bournville.

Jyn left Galen Erso and Cassian Andor behind. How she wishes now she could transport herself to that time. She would listen to Cassian. She would stay despite the aching loss. She would go to her father every day and tell her she loved him.

Jyn isn't entirely sure how long she has been sleeping when her eyes slide open. The sun is still hanging among the clouds. She still feels exhausted. Cassian is still holding onto her.

She knows what she must do. Carefully, she extracts herself from Cassian and finds her bag. She fishes out her mobile.

"What are you doing?"

Jyn nearly drops the phone. "I need to call my boss," she says, her lips puffed from crying.

Cassian gets up and takes her hands in his. "No, you don't."

Looking up at him through her swollen eyes, Jyn sees the boy she once loved. "I need to tell her I won't be back until next week."

"Oh. Good. Good."

In spite of everything, Jyn smiles. It is small and it hurts, but she does it.

"You know I'm here for you," he says. "I've been cruel to you since you arrived, and I'm sorry. Looking at you is painful."

Jyn lets her mobile fall to the floor between them. She grips Cassian's hands. "You have every right to be upset with me. I left. I wasn't the only one who lost something that day. All of this," she says, gesturing around them, "has helped me see that. I know you're here, Cass."

"I've always been here."

"I'm sorry it took this long for me to see that."

They are dangerously close. Jyn only needs to tilt her head upwards a tiny fraction for their lips to collide.

"Jyn," Cassian warns, "you're emotionally compromised."

Jyn sighs. "I know. We both are. But . . . I think this will help. We need each other, Cassian."

"And what happens when you aren't emotionally compromised? You left once before. I can't—I won't go through that again."

"I won't give up. Cassian." He looks at her. His eyes are filled with oceans of sorrow. She imagines hers are, too. "I promise."

Jyn tilts her head upwards a tiny fraction. Their lips collide, and it feels like heaven.

It feels like coming home.