As soon as the ship landed on the hangar's ground, Cassian jumped out of his seat in the cockpit, leaving Kay to fend for himself. He couldn't wait to see a certain face he'd missed fiercely, a face that had guided him like an anchor throughout the whole battle.
The hangar was in full effervescence, with pilots getting out of the ships and running to their dear ones. Everywhere, people were hugging, crying, laughing and cheering.
He would have distinguished her lovely face anywhere. She was waiting in the middle of the feverish crowd, next to Galen, Leia, Chirrut and Baze. The four of them soon spotted him and Kay at his heels, as well as Luke, Bodhi, Tikus, Han and Chewie, who had all arrived almost at the same time. Everyone was beaming so widely that the vast space around them would have hardly needed spotlights to illuminate it.
Cassian and Jyn stayed still and locked gazes silently while around them the others ran to hug each other effusively or, in Galen's case, pat shoulders in congratulations. Then Jyn broke the spell by striding to him, encircling his neck tightly with her arms, resting her cheek on his chest. He drew her slim waist to his own body and placed his chin on her shoulder, breathing in her sweet scent and experiencing a feeling of peace he'd never known before.
"Welcome home," she said softly against his flying suit, and he couldn't agree more. You're my home.
"There's no other place I'd rather be," he whispered against her ear, letting himself be carried away by the strong emotions enveloping his troubled soul.
Just then they had to break apart because their friends were already demanding their attention. Leia hanged from his neck. She was even shorter than Jyn and her toes didn't reach the ground by a long shot. "You're lucky you've come back, or otherwise Jyn and I would chase your Force ghost in the afterlife, and I assure you it wouldn't be pleasant," Leia threatened, and Cassian didn't doubt that she would make good on her threat if only to torment him for failing to stay alive. He smiled, squeezing her deceptively narrow back. "I'm sure it wouldn't," he agreed, chuckling.
"Well done, Captain. I knew that the Force would guide you," Chirrut commented with his enigmatic grin.
For once, Baze didn't argue his partner's unwavering faith, and he looked the most unguarded and gleeful Cassian had ever seen the gruff man.
At last, it was Galen's turn. Both men shook hands as a tacit deal. As a promise fulfilled.
On his part, Kay was bragging with his usual lack of tact before an unimpressed audience. Cassian could almost hear their groans and was about to burst in laughter at their eyerolls.
Then the boisterous crowd dragged them all to an improvised party at the mess hall, where someone put a glass of beverage in Cassian's hand. He'd been momentarily separated from Jyn, and he scanned the spacious room for her, for the only person whose company he craved in those moments. He wasn't very much in the mood for celebrating with a bunch of revelers. He didn't wish to hear endless retellings of the others' versions of the tale. Every time the Rebellion achieved a victory, he just humored the rest of the partygoers because he didn't want to be a spoilsport, but he very rarely felt like celebrating. Every victory came with a high price. Every time he killed, lied, deceived, betrayed, blackmailed, tortured and used someone, he lost another bit of his soul, he got a bit muddier. He had come definitely to terms with all that since he'd sought Luthen Rael to offer himself for the rebel cause. He assumed all his terrible deeds. It was the darkest part of his duties and he didn't believe he deserved to enjoy any festivities for achieving that.
Along with the Death Star, hundreds of thousands of people had died, not all of them evil. Blind perhaps, or persuaded that their vision of the galaxy was the rightful one, like most people everywhere. But that didn't necessarily turn them into monsters. Many of them were just guilty for looking the other way. Cassian had always that in mind and didn't even try to justify himself with excuses. He knew that perfectly well when he'd flown behind Luke Skywalker, helping clear his way so the young man could launch the decisive shot.
That knowledge had never diverted him from his goals. The knowledge that he sometimes swept away innocents. Or, if they weren't exactly innocents, they at least weren't worse than he was, and they were just unlucky to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Now, Jyn was changing something within him. She had penetrated the implacable armor he'd painstakingly built around his heart and he knew he would never be the same man again. She'd digged up his heart, almost turned into stone inside his chest, and made it beat again.
He didn't deserve her, he'd never do, but he needed her like he needed to keep breathing. She was like a magnet and he, a piece of iron. She was like a flame and he, a moth. He'd never been the most selfless of men, not by a very long shot. When he'd given himself to the cause, he hadn't done it for altruism or selflessness, nor for a naive idealism. He'd done it because of his hatred toward the Empire, because it had taken from him everyone and everything he'd loved. He'd buried what remained of his heart and forged ahead like an automaton, like a killing machine.
But the moment he'd seen Jyn on Kafrene that first time, facing up to that gang of brutes, something he'd believed dead a long time ago had aroused in him. The longing for much more than a female body. The longing for love.
Cassian spotted Jyn again among the loud crowd, and she looked as overwhelmed as he felt. He knew how it was to feel out of place. Galen suddenly was nowhere to be seen, and their friends were scattered around the hall with other groups of people.
Their gazes met and locked in the distance. Cassian didn't even remember his feet taking him to her, threading his way through the merry roisterers, but somehow he was right in front of her in an instant.
And he found that his tongue was suddenly tied. Her mesmerizing eyes were taking him in with an intensity that was most probably matched by his own.
It was like the culmination of weeks of growing desire, of seeking small excuses to cross paths. Them sharing some meals at the mess hall. He going to see her before leaving for a mission and having, for the first time since joining the Rebellion, a purpose to come back. He hadn't cared before about his own survival as long as he did everything he could for the sake of the assigned missions.
Their chats during his rare spare moments, talking more with their gazes than with their words.
The uncertainty. He was a rebel spy, she was a temporary refugee. A wanderer with no true home. He had promised her father that he would protect her to his last breath, and the destruction of the Death Star had been a huge step in the fulfilment of that promise. But he didn't know if from then on, she would want him in her life to go on caring for her.
I want to give her a home. She's my home now.
Probably, if her father was cleared of any obligations to the Rebellion after his inestimable help in landing a hard blow to the Empire, and the small family decided to search for a new place to settle in, Cassian would be left behind. He hadn't even told Jyn about his feelings for her, for the Force's sake. He wasn't even sure if he should allow himself to confess them, or if she truly requited them. He was very good at reading people, and at reading females' reactions to him, but with Jyn, he felt insecure. It was very easy to deal with simple physical desire, but with love? He'd been as foreign to love for so long that he wasn't even sure anymore how to cope with such an all-encompassing emotion.
And in the case she requited them like he wished and feared she would, was he truly ready to embrace that kind of life with her? Would she accept him as he was, a broken man with a wretched past?
Don't fool yourself anymore. You know she's your home. But can you be her home? Does she want you to be?
But then Jyn surprised him, like she'd done since their first meeting on the streets of Kafrene. She seemed to be reading the silent plead in his eyes, and there was a shy but hopeful confidence in her pupils that set his heart in a wild pace.
"You want to go to a quieter place? This is too noisy. I can't even hear my own thoughts," she teased loudly.
"Yeah, I was thinking exactly the same. I don't feel like being dragged to a drinking contest or to a dirty jokes' competition," Cassian agreed heartily.
Jyn grabbed his hand boldly and led him out of the ruckus. Cassian's head was suddenly spinning in euphoria, as if he'd partaken in the alcohol flowing throughout the party.
Jyn's hand in his was more intoxicating than the strongest Corellian whisky Han, as a Corellian himself, liked so much to boast about.
