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There aren't a lot of comforting places to spend time on a rebel base, Jyn is starting to realize. She supposes the point of military bases is not to be cozy, per se, but it's still fairly inconvenient on occasion. Her quarters are fine--better than Wobani any day--but they're designed for practicality rather than warmth, physical or emotional, and she shares them with a perfectly nice Twi'lek pilot who is almost always off on one mission or another, so they’re not really hers by any stretch of the imagination and thus lack a certain feeling of home. Even the mess hall is not a particularly welcoming place, for all she's had her fair share of nice memories there by now, sharing meals and catching up with the crew when they're all on base at the same time. Still, it's not exactly the sort of place she'd choose to spend time if it also wasn't where the food was.
She'd much prefer to be in any one of those places rather than where she is now, though. In fact, if she had to pick a least favorite spot on the entire base, she'd pick the med bay, hands down. It's bad enough on its own, with its general air of hushed crisis and the cloying, repetitive sound of medical machinery beeping and droids humming about from bed to bed checking on patients, but it is much worse now, because all she's doing is waiting, which is a thing that she hates, mostly because she is terrible at it.
The smell of bacta freaks her out pretty bad these day, after Scarif and all. It turns out you don't come out on the other side of the evisceration of a whole planet with just minor cuts and bruises. The medics did a good job with an extremely bad situation and most everyone who survived had only a few scars to show for it, but it had been touch and go for a while there, so much so that none of the original Rogue One crew had even been conscious for the Battle of Yavin, let alone fighting in it. It would be another several weeks before the first of them was released from medical observation, and several months before the last of them was. Jyn landed somewhere in the middle there, not bad all things considered, but the scent of bacta lingered on her skin for what seemed like ages and it clung to her sheets and her clothes in spite of her best efforts to remove it.
The smell of it is everywhere now, and that combined with the steady beeping of monitors nearby is driving her slowly insane, but she still can't bring herself to leave. If it were anyone else, she would. It's sentimental and frankly stupid to think that sitting by someone's bedside while they're unconscious will have any impact on their recovery, but here she sits anyway. It's not that she thinks Cassian will care if she's there when he wakes up, it's just that she wants to be there. She wants to know the moment things are going to be alright and she won't trust anything but her own eyes.
The medic she spoke to said he would be fine and, while Jyn knows the basics of first aid, she should definitely trust the medical opinion of someone with more training over her own instincts. It’s not easy, though; she's a bit of a cynic thanks to her lifetime of experience with things not working out the way she was promised they would, so she's going to stay right here until she actually sees that Cassian is fine with her own eyes. The medic hadn't seemed offended by her insistence and just gestured to a chair next to Cassian's bed before swanning away to deal with, presumably, less annoying patients. The 2-1B unit accompanying them had stuck around a little longer, to get some readings off the monitor and to inform her that he should be awake sometime in the next three hours or so before scooting off.
That had been three hours and fifteen minutes ago now, and Jyn's patience is well past worn thin. She thinks about summoning the droid back or bothering a passing medic, but there's been no change in Cassian's condition, for better or worse, so she imagines they won't see the urgency. After what she hopes is a surreptitious look around to see if anyone is paying them any attention, she decides to take matters into her own hands.
"Cassian," she whispers, and receives no response. She tries saying his name a little louder with the same disappointing result, but she doesn't dare to raise her voice any more for fear of being sent away.
With another check to make sure the coast is clear, she leans over and shakes him by the shoulder. "Cassian, come on," she hisses under her breath. No response.
She pokes her finger into his chest, once gently and then again with all her might. "Seriously, it's time to wake up," she says, and it somehow comes out gentle in spite of her impatience. It makes no difference.
Jyn bites her lip as she thinks about what to do next. She doesn’t have a lot of opportunities to just look at Cassian without interruption or self-consciousness in the normal course of their lives together. Not that they’re together, in that sense, but they work closely with one another and even on the rare occasions they’re not working, they’re still usually together in some fashion. She didn’t intend, when she’d semi-reluctantly joined the Rebellion, to build her entire life around him but it had happened regardless. In spite of all that, watching him sleep is a new experience for her and it makes her feel itchy in her own skin.
He looks more peaceful like this, which makes sense, of course, but she still finds herself relieved he’s getting some rest untroubled by bad dreams. She doesn’t want to ruin that, but the urge to touch him in some way, just to wake him up, is still strong. She has a few vague memories of being woken up by one of her parents with a kiss on the forehead, but after dwelling on those recollections a moment, she remembers that those instances were usually followed by them telling her to pack her things because they needed to run off to some new planet in the middle of the night.
That mental association offers a pretty good reason not to kiss Cassian on the forehead right now, though she has plenty of others if she needs them. In fact, she’s had a lot of practice thinking of good reasons not to kiss him anywhere, so she abandons this idea readily and tells herself what she always does when these inconvenient feelings arise: what she has now with him and with their team is the best part of her life and she wouldn't risk complicating it for anything. The two of them, with their trust issues and their scars, could never make it work in that kind of relationship. It's better to have less than she wants than to have nothing at all.
In spite of this, she finds herself reaching out to him again. She hesitates at the last second, suddenly panicked at the idea of touching his face with even her hand. It still feels too intimate and familiar somehow for what they are to each other. Then again, she's been watching him sleep for hours now, so maybe she's past the point where she can reasonably worry about such things. She brings her hand to rest on his jaw and, before she can get used to the feeling, she jabs a finger into the soft skin below his cheekbone.
"Wake up, wake up, wake up," she whispers furiously, punctuating each command with a poke. When that does nothing, she pinches his cheek as hard as she can and then squishes the other between her fingers for good measure. She sighs when that has no effect either. After a final glance over her shoulder to see if anyone is watching, she pulls her arm back and brings her palm against his cheek in a firm slap. It's hard to tell if any of the other people in the med bay notice this, because it’s also the moment that Cassian wakes up and immediately begins coughing loudly, and suddenly she doesn’t care about anything else.
“Cassian,” she says, hands fluttering about uselessly as she tries to decide what to do with them that won’t be awkward. “Are you alright?”
“Probably not, based on our location,“ he replies, with considerable effort. He reaches up to rub his jaw. “Did you hit me?”
“What? No! You…must have dreamed that,” she says, quickly. “Do you need me to get someone? Are you in pain?”
“Not as much as I should be, I’m guessing,” Cassian says, closing his eyes as he leans back. “What happened?”
“You don’t remember?” Jyn asks, and he replies by miserably shaking his head. “I should really get someone to look at you, then.”
She turns to go, but even in his injured state, Cassian’s reflexes are enviably quick. He catches hold of her wrist before she can get away, and says her name, just once, very gently. She tries to swallow the emotions that try to climb up her throat at the mere sound of his voice, but she’s not exactly in the best shape right now either. She has a few minor injuries and zero hours of sleep to her name, and she just doesn’t have the power to resist him like she might have otherwise.
Cassian must sense her acquiesce, because his grip on her slackens and he sits back with a sigh. “Don’t go,” he says. “Just—I want you to tell me what happened.”
“You almost blew the entire mission, Cassian! That’s what happened!”
There were nicer ways to say that, or gentler explanations of what went down on their mission, but Jyn’s a little hurt and a lot tired, so she doesn't really have it in her to mind her manners. She also doesn’t appreciate being outmaneuvered like this, and she wants Cassian to take his damn hand off of her. She should have owned up to that slap; it was the smartest thing she’s done all day.
He has the grace to at least look ashamed of himself. “Jyn, I—”
“No. Absolutely not,” she warns him. “If you think I sat by your bed, waiting for you to wake up so that I could hear you make excuses, or try to defend yourself, you’re out of your mind. You almost certainly have a concussion, which is the only reason I’m not punching you in the face for that stunt you pulled back on Kaddak.”
Cassian groans, letting his head flop back on the pillows. “Oh, right. It’s starting to come back to me.”
“Good, because I’d love to know what you were thinking,” Jyn says, sharply. “I gave you the kriffing signal, Cassian. I told you to get out of the warehouse, and you didn’t listen!”
“I couldn’t leave without the asset, Jyn,” he says, eyes pleading with her to understand. Normally, they’d be lit up with anger at her questioning his judgement, but the circumstances he woke up in must have impressed the recklessness of his own actions on him, for once. “It would have been destroyed in the blast and then the whole mission would have been for nothing!”
“You could have died,” she shouts. “Don’t talk to me about the mission!”
Belatedly, she realizes she’s gone ahead and done the thing she was trying to avoid: capturing the attention of a medical droid. One immediately winds its way over to Cassian’s bed and begins taking his vitals diligently, effectively ending their conversation for the time being. It’s just as well, she thinks; she was starting to get emotional and that’s the last thing she needs when she’s dealing with Cassian. She needs to keep her feelings neatly stored in a box, preferably one with a padlock and maybe a deadbolt or two, when he’s around, or she’ll surely break something she can’t bear to lose. She folds her hands in front of herself and attempts to regain her composure while the droid works. The mechanical whir of its limbs moving about, extending and retracting, is oddly grounding and she closes her eyes for a brief moment while it asks Cassian some routine questions.
“I am satisfied with your recovery so far, Captain Andor,” 2-1B finally says. “I’m administering additional pain medication. You may experience some drowsiness, as a side effect. I advise you not to fight it, and to sleep if the opportunity presents itself.”
Cassian grumbles his thank you to the droid, before it swivels to address Jyn. “Guests are invited to stay at the discretion of Chief Medic Myreen. Further disruptions could result in your removal from the med bay. This is your last warning,” it says, before lurching off in the direction of another patient.
“Uh-oh, someone’s in trouble,” Cassian says, under his breath.
“Once again,” Jyn replies tersely, “you are very lucky you have a concussion right now.”
“You’re making me long for Kay’s bedside manner,” he says. “Where is my droid, anyway? Don’t tell me he couldn’t be bothered to stay.”
“You know the only thing he hates more than dealing with me is dealing with medical droids. The medbay just happened to have both,” she says, taking a moment to crack her neck. She winces at the loud pop it makes—hours of sitting in the same spot, tensed up and lightly injured is not good for the body. “I can go find him for you, if you want. Now that you’re awake, that is.”
When she looks at him again, Cassian is now staring at her, wide-eyed with…confusion? Horror? It’s not actually clear. “What?” she snaps, her defenses rising against her better judgment.
“You haven’t been here the entire time, have you?” he asks, and now it’s very clearly horror that he’s feeling.
Jyn feels her cheeks warm, and she fights the urge to snap at him again. “It hasn’t been that long,” she says, instead, looking down at her boots and scuffing them gently on the floor. “I was kidding before about K2. He would have stayed, but with you out of commission, Bodhi had to report to Draven and he wanted Kay’s help, so I offered to wait here. The droids take the ‘one guest at a time’ rule very seriously.”
“You didn’t have to wait for me to wake up, though. I would have been fine.”
“I didn’t want to miss out on the chance to be the first person to tell you what an idiot you were. If I’d let Baze or Chirrut stay, they might have gone easy on you.”
“Couldn’t have that,” Cassian says, his head drooping to the side as his eyelids briefly drift closed before he startles awake again. “You get that looked at?” He asks, in a casual way that implies he thinks there’s been no lull in their conversation.
“What?” Jyn asks.
“Your head,” Cassian replies, gesturing weakly. The pain meds must be really kicking in now, and against medical advice, he’s fighting the urge to drift off the sleep. She could set her watch by Cassian Andor’s stubborn streak, she thinks.
“My head’s fine,” she snaps, irrationally annoyed at him for caring about a minor injury when he’s literally in a hospital bed.
“No, s’not,” he protests, feebly and narrows his eyes at her. “There's a…cut.”
“It’s barely a scrape,” she lies.
The medic she spoke to said she didn’t need stitches, but that it would need to be bandaged at least, if she didn’t want bacta fluid. And she most certainly did not. By tomorrow, all her bruises will come up to the surface, but for right now, she looks a lot heartier than she feels, which is good for the purposes of this conversation. Cassian would normally be sharp enough to catch a lie that obvious, but the medication’s effects are also working in her favor. He’s doing a creditable job glaring at her despite that, though.
“I promised to see the medic on my way out,” she says, relenting.
“Okay,” Cassian says, relaxing slightly and letting his head rest back against the pillows. “I’m not gonna remember, am I?”
“Remember what?” Jyn asks, feeling panic rise inside her again. She doesn’t want to summon the droid again but she will, if she has to. If something is wrong.
“This…conversation,” he answers, with enormous effort. “Because of the pain meds.”
“Oh. I’m not sure. Maybe not.”
He reaches out for her again, this time capturing her hand instead of her wrist. He twines their fingers together and then contemplates this for a moment. Jyn’s breath catches in her throat, and she finds she couldn’t speak even if she knew what to say.
“You’ll tell me, though, right?” Cassian finally asks, after a long stretch of silence. She’d kind of hoped he had fallen asleep with his eyes open, but no such luck.
“You mean, what the droid said?” She asks, confused. “I can try to remember, but I think they—”
He shakes his head. “Not that. I don’t care about that. I want you to tell me about you.”
“About me? I don’t understand.”
“When I wake up again, you should tell me that you stayed,” he says, looking at her seriously, probably so she doesn’t blame this outburst on the medication. “I don’t want to forget that.”
“Okay,” Jyn says, even though she feels like her heart is beating loudly enough to drown out the word. “I’ll tell you. I promise.”
“Good,” Cassian says, finally allowing his eyes to drift closed. He falls asleep immediately, it seems, still holding Jyn’s hand in his own.
“I guess I’m staying a bit longer,” she says, under her breath, as she settles back into her uncomfortable chair. She doesn’t know who she’s trying to fool, anyway. She never intended to leave his side.