"I did," Jyn said, feeling warm all over, safer in his arms than she'd been anywhere else. "Wouldn't have known to call it that. I mean, what the hell does someone like me know about love?" She at least liked to think, or maybe just knew on some deeply buried level, that she had been loved at various points in her past. Galen and Lyra, Saw — they had loved her as well as they were able. It was just that that love never made any real difference, never amounted to anything but her alone and abandoned and increasingly bitter for it.
But Cassian... He'd come back for her time and again, risking himself and his mission when it was neither practical nor necessary. He hadn't said it back then either, and she probably would have balked at it if he had, but he'd shown it a dozen times in half as many days. She knew that on some deep level, too, and yet even with his having referred to it before (even with the relationship she'd had here with someone who was him but wasn't him), it was still breathtaking to think about him feeling that way about her.
"But when you came to volunteer... what you said." It hadn't been I love you, but to her, it had meant the same. "And on the shuttle after." Momentarily elated, she'd run to him without thinking, and had they been alone, had there been more time, maybe she would have chased that impulse— "And on the tower. You must've been half-dead already, I don't even know how you were still standing. But the sight of you there..." She felt her face heat, which made her extremely frustrated with herself, but no less determined to press on. "I remember thinking it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen in my life."
She rolled her eyes again at herself, lightheartedly self-deprecating. "We're doing this all backwards, aren't we? Falling in love first, then moving in together, then getting to know each other."
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But Cassian... He'd come back for her time and again, risking himself and his mission when it was neither practical nor necessary. He hadn't said it back then either, and she probably would have balked at it if he had, but he'd shown it a dozen times in half as many days. She knew that on some deep level, too, and yet even with his having referred to it before (even with the relationship she'd had here with someone who was him but wasn't him), it was still breathtaking to think about him feeling that way about her.
"But when you came to volunteer... what you said." It hadn't been I love you, but to her, it had meant the same. "And on the shuttle after." Momentarily elated, she'd run to him without thinking, and had they been alone, had there been more time, maybe she would have chased that impulse— "And on the tower. You must've been half-dead already, I don't even know how you were still standing. But the sight of you there..." She felt her face heat, which made her extremely frustrated with herself, but no less determined to press on. "I remember thinking it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen in my life."
She rolled her eyes again at herself, lightheartedly self-deprecating. "We're doing this all backwards, aren't we? Falling in love first, then moving in together, then getting to know each other."