Sure has been awhile since I've posted anything here. Technically I should be working on my other, larger fic (Ortus, you little bugger, damn you), but this wouldn't let go of my brain til it was put into words. So this is kind of a little AU spin-off, cause I'm mixed in with everyone else who wasn't completely satisfied with the ending of Rogue One. I mean it was fantastic, but Jyn and Cassian...! Anyhoo, this is an idea of what it would be like for them upon hearing the Death Star is really gone. And the whole idea is Jyn is a bit Force-sensitive. I personally feel the movie reinforces that idea over and over again, so I'm playing off of that a bit too.

Where Hope is Found (In Your Eyes)

It happens in a split second in between breaths, air stale and frozen somewhere between her lungs and mouth. Hands resting on wires and data chips and so much more, and then tightening, tightening, tightening-

K2 is speaking now. She can hear him mutely, like there's a thousand pounds of water separating her from the exasperated droid. Even the nuances of his otherwise emotionless voice have faded away.

In that single moment all Jyn Erso can feel is heat.

Death.

Hope.

Her hands drop away from the exposed panel, wires jutting out in a tangled web of color. K2 falls silent. Jyn blinks, turns. Her body is on autopilot, she feels. There's nothing now, just a vast emptiness settling in her chest close to her heart. It feels...light.

Across the crowded hangar she meets a familiar gaze. Brown eyes stare straight through her in a way that makes her shiver and smile in pleasure. The feeling in her chest expands, filling her with light, with hope.

The news spreads like a ripple through the entire base. Jyn could feel it as easily as a strengthening of wind across an empty plain. One moment the mundane and the next, the crackle and exhilaration of the news.

The eyes she knew so well were alight now, the eyes who saw her. Not the skinny adolescent with thieving hands and a tarnished name. Not the woman in chains for crimes upon crimes against a broken system. Not even the one who pushed for the impossible when everyone else backed down. These brown eyes, this gentle gaze which stripped her bare and saw her and knew her. They were alive and dancing with an excitement, a life she had witnessed only once before, light drawn from a well of hope dug deep from a withered soul.

They were together before either of their minds could register moving. Cheers and hollers around them, a base alive with hope hope hope. His hands are on her waist, on her back, hugging her tight to him. Her fingers are in his hair, her feet leaving the floor. And they are spinning, the room blurring around them in whirls of gray and black and orange.

And they are laughing.

In that moment, the feeling in her chest explodes. She feels breathless, weightless. She can't breathe, but Jyn Erso has never felt more at peace.

Yes, this is what we wanted.