[OOC: Will avoid overt spoilers since I know I got to see it sooner than most might… but still: potential spoiler warning!]

ONE:


They held each other tightly, eyes closed, and waited for the end.


Then she simply wasn't there.


…Actually, given what they were waiting for, that wasn't surprising. What made absolutely no sense was that he… … … remained.

It wasn't dissolution. It wasn't pulling away. One moment he felt every curve of her, wiry and taut but, despite two pounding hearts, amazingly still. She pulled in every corner of himself.

The next, his weight was balanced forward into nothing and he clunked shockingly to his knees.

The pain made him spring to his feet, directly into fighting stance, grabbing for a blaster that wasn't there either, before his brain had time to actually catch up to what was happening.

Or… not happening.

His knees sang with the pain of hitting, not sand, but a hard surface.

His arms and chest felt a wound far worse: her sudden absence.

To survive the emotionally and rationally unimaginable—most kriffingly not the first time—all his attention went to the immediate/tactical. His blaster wasn't there, but he knew exactly why his blaster wasn't there, which gave him the relatively comforting (in familiarity) concern not of where it went but what to do if attacked for lack of it. His eyes darted around him for assailants and/or weapons and/or and cover.

After Sith knew how many seconds or lifetimes, shapes resolved from simply inanimate, unmoving, big, small, solid, flexible, sharp, blunt, moveable, less, suitable, un-… into…

…okay… what…

…the kind of room he'd…

…no, really… what…?

…seen in holos but literally never been in…

…this… um…

…unless he had before he could remember, which might be why it felt homey but maybe there was just something universal about certain…

…seriously WHAT?!?!?

It was a room, not on a vessel or in a bunker, but with corners and windows and not airtight and with the unmistakable feel and look and smell of being made out of something terrestrial rather than synthetic… the woods and fibers of an arable planet… neither airborn nor submerged, unrushed air coming in from an imminent Outside… not made for defense but made to feel (superficially) secure… warmth and beauty and comfort…

As few things in the universe could make happen: he panicked.

Which for him meant standing stock, dumbly, still.

The throbbing in his knees stopped. Which meant the earlier, worse injury to his leg could reassert itself.

Without Jyn or an immediate threat to lean into, but too disciplined still to fall over in a heap, he groped like Chirrut never had, 'til he could grasp the arm of a chair of some sort and pull himself into it.

How in all of space and stars had whatever just happened… happened? And how? …And what?

If he'd died… then every religion was kinda right and weirdly wrong about the afterlife.

If he hadn't… had he been saved somehow and couldn't remember…?

But the state of his leg had neither improved nor deteriorated… And she had just been…

he felt the creases of her jacket still on his arms… the tingle and warmth of her… a hair as dark but longer than his caught on his wrist—

Stop, worthless moron, do your job. Figure out where you are. Look out the window.

Favoring his leg, he started to get up again.

Thank the Force, before he could be left a second longer alone with his thoughts, he heard movement behind him.

With the same single motion, he pushed himself upright and the chair over. It fell with a violent but less-than-satisfying muffled sound between him and who- or whatever he was facing.

Which… he probably should be relieved wasn't death…?

But where had she gone…?