Yes, he'd gone through different kinds of loving her in that short time. Needing to keep her alive and with him, being constantly surprised by how they complemented each other, respecting who she was and what she could do, growing to trust and rely, recognizing that where she walked was where he wanted to go, even caring enough to fight; seeing in one another a humanity they thought was lost, and, in reflection, accepting and healing their own… But more, so much more… the blazing admiration and attraction and everything else that could be in the word 'love'.
And yes, he'd literally been half dead: the fall hadn't killed him but the climb had, he'd just known he'd be able to run out the clock enough to do what he needed to, to help Jyn, which was all he'd wanted to do with literally the rest of his life. He didn't want to say it even now, though, to cast that darkness over the moment. Because he'd, they'd survived after all and that, no matter what other dreads he had about this place, was the ultimate gift.
Something else struck him as she spoke, now… everything she'd just said, going back to the beginning, and the lightness with which she was saying it… She was speaking as if this was their first time around. Like it was for him. No way in hell was he going to comment on it; it was just a moment, not a contract, but he found himself storing it as a precious, welcome ache in his heart. Navigating the Other was going to be an endless challenge, never to be willed away or forgotten, but this felt like some kind of… moment of… healing?
So Cassian hugged her and kissed her face, quick and intense, and said, "This might be a problematic way to think about it. It was only a few days. Try to believe me, I know how important time is, how it takes a while to learn anyone, for enough situations to happen… But the situations we did go through… it did feel like I knew you, in actions. Felt like why I fell in love. Every act you took, every choice I saw you make—not just the correct ones but the right ones. Not a lot of people get to prove themselves in a lifetime as much as you did to me, and I hope I did to you. Learning more is a gift, would become a problem if we didn't do it over time, but I think we—we recognized each other."
It probably was problematic. Unsurprisingly, though, it was so much in line with Jyn's own thoughts on the matter that she didn't care. She may not have known all of the precise details about his life, as evidenced by the fact that she was still learning them now, but in the ways that mattered most, she knew him, deeply and instinctively. Whether it was recognition, projection, some inexplicable sense of connection, or probably all of the above...
She knew that he gave his life to and for the cause, that she'd never seen anyone so fervently dedicated to it in a way she'd long since lost sight of for herself. She knew he spoke of hope even when it didn't sound like he had much of that left himself, and that from the moment he let her keep the stolen blaster, he was the first person there with the Alliance to treat her like a person rather than a prisoner. She knew he reprogrammed and befriended an Imperial droid that most probably wouldn't have wanted to get within five feet of, that he gave as good as he got in an argument (angry as she might have been after Eadu, she respected that), and that was even before getting into all of the things he'd done for her, specifically. Risking himself and the mission by shooting one of Saw's people in order to save her. Running into the crumbling catacombs, onto the bombed-out and covered with stormtroopers platform, not judging her for being an emotional wreck barely aware of her surroundings in either case. Knowing the council wouldn't listen to her, but not deterring her from trying — just gathering an army for her, despite the venom she'd spat at him in the shuttle back to Yavin.
Climbing up the tower when he should have been dead, and it couldn't have been just for the mission when she was the one with the data tape but also for her—
The way he looked at her in the lift going down to the beach, not saying anything but not needing to, a lifetime and then some between them—
Yes, she knew him. In every way that counted, she knew him. And it wasn't surprising, exactly, but it was goddamn powerful to hear him put it so simply now, looking at her with that breathtaking warmth in his dark eyes.
"You did," she promised, the words an exhale between them as she nodded. "So many times over. And... yes." She didn't know how better to agree than that. Everything he said, she felt the same. "Don't get me wrong, I want to know anything you'll tell me. But I know you now. And I knew you then." One corner of her mouth twitched up slightly. "Might've only been a few days, but a lot did happen in those few days."
His mouth twitched up in answer. Still sincere, much more light, agreeing: "After all that, it's hard to imagine minding too much if we didn't like the same holos or wanted to sleep on the same side of the bed. Pretty much everything can be worked out. …As long as your pets like me and you like my cooking."
He did sober a little, thinking of all the things they still didn't talk about. That did eat at him… but he'd determined not to push.
Still, he could, more somberly, say: "And the heavier things… the… aftermaths. I think we're doing okay there. There are things I worry about, but I trust you'll tell me if… I trust you."
Jyn nodded again, once more turning to her usual means of meeting his gaze so he would know she meant it. She didn't really think he would doubt her anyway — as he'd just said, he trusted her, and it was crazy that she so readily trusted that in turn — but some things were too important to brush off. This was one of them, even if a part of her wanted to seize on that first part and talk about holos and sleeping arrangements and his cooking.
She would double back, she decided. For now, her hand lifted to his face, thumb gently stroking his cheekbone. "I think we're doing okay there, too," she said. Those heavier things, the aftermaths, were innumerable, and there was no easy way through them. So far, they'd been facing them as those subjects arose, which seemed like the best thing to do. That was exactly why she felt she needed to respond more directly to what he said, rather than letting it go. "Anything you're worried about, you can tell me. I'd rather know than have you keep it in. Like you said to me, right?"
He regretted bringing it up—I fear you don't say anything because you don't want to ruin my day—but knew, if she'd done so, he'd want her to answer completely.
"It's nothing tangible," he said. "Not necessarily real. Just… are you sure you want to be bogged down now with things that have all to do with me, not you, not really us?"
He knew what she'd say but he needed to put it that way.
Maybe he could hope it wouldn't burden her but instead free her to tell him hers.
"Of course," Jyn replied without hesitation, leaning in to press a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth. It was probably insane, actually, how much she wanted that. She liked all of the lighter things they could do and share together, ones there had been so little of in the rest of her life. Being able to talk and laugh with him, fall asleep in his arms at night and wake up there in the morning, watch him while he cooked, help him get used to reading English characters and try to pick up words in the other languages he knew — those were all like tiny miracles. If that was all she was looking for, though, she wouldn't be trying to get it with someone who she knew had as many jagged edges as she did.
He wasn't the person she had married, and yet some of those vows still held true. For better or for worse. She wanted the good and the bad. Wanted to know him in all the ways those few days spent together in their galaxy hadn't given them a chance to. Wanted him to be able to turn to her — not just as a romantic partner, but as a friend. Somehow, that felt like something even more vulnerable.
"You can tell me anything. Always. And I'll always want to hear it."
He wondered if he'd died after all, to be able to talk like this. But of course, it wasn't that, it was her.
He closed his eyes, breathed her in, and, with as great an effort as he'd ever made, lowered the partitions. And, very deliberately, spoke.
"I worry that right now I'm doing to you something I used to think my ex wife did to me. That I keep picking things apart. Which makes me worried that things that made me unhappy in my marriage were just me after all and I'm going to carry them through to you.
"I'm worried of talking about her too much and making it seem like I'm comparing, when I'm not. Or if I am, it's myself I compare. Never you.
"I'm afraid that I'm him and afraid that I'm not. I'm afraid of hurting you the way he did.
"I don't believe it's true, but if this was only trauma-bonding or infatuation, what a horrible betrayal of you that would be.
"I don't believe this is true either, but if my need to serve and believe in something shifted from the Rebellion to you, that would be a burden and a distortion, not letting you be… a person.
"I'm still afraid of hurting you in my sleep, even though I know you can stop me. But I don't want you to have to.
"I'm afraid you'll die or disappear, and my fear of that will put too much pressure on you when the only way of coping with it I can imagine is… to follow you.
"…But I'm not afraid of finding something in my past that I can't share with you and think you won't accept, and that's remarkable.
"And I think, I hope, sharing this was correct, and that's… that I even could… thank you."
Jyn listened, eyes wide and attentive, taking in everything he had to say. It was all she really could do — hear him out, show him how much she did want to hear these things, even when it wasn't easy, even when it hurt. More than once, she was tempted to interrupt and had to bite her tongue; just as often, she was struck speechless, grateful he continued and in so doing gave her a few moments more to consider her own words. At least the last thing he said provided her with an easy response, one she didn't need to think about at all before offering.
"Don't thank me," she said, a ghost of a wry smile on her face. She hadn't done anything, after all. From her point of view, there was nothing to thank her for. "Thank you. For telling me."
This, too, she meant utterly. Deciding what to say next took a bit more thought, her expression scrunching slightly in a way she suspected he would already have come to recognize as being indicative of her weighing her words, trying to determine what she wanted to say and how to say it.
"I didn't say this a few minutes ago, but I guess maybe I'll say it now," she settled on. Her hand was still on his cheek, his skin warm against her palm. "The other moment that I must've already loved you, even if I didn't know it. When you fell—" Her fingers dropped lower, grazing the scar from that blaster shot again. "There was a moment I almost let go and went after you. I couldn't, obviously. The plans. And you'd said keep going. But almost."
I get it, is what she meant. She still didn't entirely know how she had survived losing him before except through sheer stubborn force of habit, and too many sunrises sitting out on the beach, wishing she'd had the end with him that she was supposed to.
"There's a lot here to answer. But here goes. I do know there's nothing in your past that would change how I feel about you, or run me off. And I think you'd say the same about me. I honestly could not care less if you hurt me in your sleep because I know you would never hurt me consciously. I think you'd say the same about that, too. I only worry about what it would do to you if that happened. I think you'd never forgive yourself, and that scares me."
Already she'd gone in a direction she hadn't intended. Frowning slightly, she bit her lip as she tried to reroute herself. "I don't think you need to worry about talking about your ex too much. I think... It's not easy to hear, but... I think it might help. To know more. And maybe not... feel like... worry that..." Now, finally, she looked away, insecure in a way she hated expressing, but sort of thought she had to. "That I'm a second choice."
Maybe, in spite of everything they'd both just said, she already was. Force knew she had been for everyone else, throughout the entirety of her life.
"As for him... I stand by what I said before. You're sort of the same, because you're still you, the person I fell in love with, and you're also not, because you didn't live any of that. Somehow that's still the one thing that makes sense to me."
His dark eyes widened at the idea of her letting go on the data tower. He didn’t interrupt but just held her tighter.
“That makes sense to me, too.” And it did relax his shoulders.
“And you’re not second choice,” he said at once. “That relationship ended. My biggest regret on that beach was that you and I would never get a chance to begin. I’ll tell you anything you want to know about her. Her name is Bix. We knew each other from childhood. Without that history, I don’t know if we would have been friends or lovers, on and off, at later times. I think maybe not. Especially the last time; she’d been seeing someone else who was killed and we escaped a massacre on our homeworld together… I kind of think a lot of it was driven by worry, wanting each other to be saved, which neither of us could really provide. We argued a lot. She left me because I was so tired, I talked about leaving the Rebellion for her and she disagreed. Maybe I agree with her but I don’t have to like how she did it. But all you really need to know is that you have nothing to prove. And where I arrived by the time I met you was completely different from where I’d ever been with her. I never… interrelied with her in fourteen years the way you and I did in five days.”
Immediately, Jyn wished she hadn't said that, although she tried to stop that thought before it could fully take root. He'd asked her to say things, even if they were difficult or upsetting. Doing so didn't come naturally to her, but she was making an effort. Still, she wasn't sure it had come out right, and though she didn't interrupt, letting him finish as he had done with her, taking in what he had to tell her, she was quick to offer a clarification when he finished.
At the same time, she tried not to feel a little dizzy at the prospect of fourteen years. How the hell could she ever live up to that?
"It's not because of you that I'd worry about it," she assured him. This time, she couldn't quite look at him, mouth pulled into a frown. Talking about him was easier than talking about herself. Talking about them was easier than talking about anyone in her past. She could reason herself out of having to do so by thinking that he knew all of this already, but that wasn't the point. If she wanted him to know her, she couldn't just take all of that as a given. "It's... You know. Everyone else. Historically speaking—" Here her voice turned cuttingly wry, although the sharp edge of it was directed at herself, not at him. "I've always been second. At best."
He'd been the first person to show her otherwise. It wasn't really a surprise for him to be telling her that was the case now; it was just difficult to switch off a lifetime's worth of expectation. "And I know that's not you. Obviously it doesn't bother me that you were with someone. We both had lives before we met each other. Just... habit, I guess. And not knowing making it all seem bigger."
He simultaneously felt he'd said something wrong, and was so glad that she said what she did. It was talking about herself and he knew that was the hardest thing for her to do. He decided not to reiterate things she already knew, and said she already knew, with reassurances, because that would be trying to talk her out of her feelings. (He had learned some things as trainer and recruiter.)
It was tempting. But instead he just kissed her forehead again, cupping her face, and murmured, "I can understand that. We'll keep saying what we need to, doing what we're doing, until we can believe it."
Take all the time we need, Darrow-willing. He was going to start researching, maybe the religious route in spite of his own skepticism, to find whatever, whoever, he needed to find to get some kind of assurance of duration. If anyone ever could.
There was little Jyn hated as much as feeling like this, all raw and exposed, the abandoned little girl she'd tried so hard for so long to armor herself against being. It had nothing to do with Cassian, who was saying and doing everything right, and everything to do with her. She'd been taught — by the man who raised her, and then by life – that these were weaknesses that she couldn't afford.
And yet, she knew Cassian would never judge her for it. He would give her all of the space and understanding she needed to process how she felt, and she hoped he would know that it had nothing to do with any doubts about him. It would have been downright infuriating if it weren't so wonderful of him.
"Yeah," she agreed quietly. "And... I did mean what I said before. You can always tell me anything. Even if I'm... a total mess, or even if it's something hard, I do want to hear it. Just like you said to me." What would have followed, this time, she only held back because she truly didn't know how to explain it: that entirely separate from her feelings for him, she wanted to be someone he felt like he could turn to, that she wanted to offer him the same support he'd been offering her. However much it might not have come naturally to her, a skill she never really had a chance to learn, he was, in this and every other way, worth the effort.
"I was thinking earlier. I wish I could remember all of it… how much I love just being with you, near you… part of it was: of course I don't love when either of us is a mess, but love that we can be it with each other."
Jyn smiled faintly at that, nodding in another agreement. "I'm still not used to that," she admitted. "Being able to be, I mean. Having that be... safe." Over the years, she'd found a few others here she could let her guard down like that around. The day Cassian arrived, she'd gone to Spike's while he slept. Joel saved her life when she was trapped in the burning wreckage of a train car. Still, there had never been anyone like him, and she doubted there ever would be. "But I know it is, with you. That anything would be. I—"
She bit her lip. This may not have been quite what she was thinking a moment ago, but it was close enough to it. "I hope you can feel like that with me, too."
"I do." He knew there were still things she held back, but he knew it wasn't because she didn't trust or feel safe with him. Sometimes one just wasn't ready to relive things.
A few moments just resting with her. Then he huffed a laugh. "And I'm glad we can have all this positivity. I know people who wouldn't be able to trust without some snipes. But that never really worked for me. Much harder to relax. …I don't have any, by the way. It'd be hard work."
Jyn let out a short, soft laugh of her own at his phrasing. "I don't think I've ever been accused of being positive in my whole life," she said, teasing but truthful. It wasn't such a surprise that he brought that out in her, though. He had a way of unearthing aspects of her that she didn't even know she was capable of having — letting her see glimpses, perhaps, of the person she might have been if life had dealt her a different hand of cards, without ever feeling like she should be anyone other than she was.
"But yeah. I know what you mean. ...Then again, I don't think anything would have gotten me to trust anyone before you came along. And then I did within, what, a day?"
"I did let you keep a blaster you stole from my own pack," he answered, teasing back.
…She'd been wrong to do so, in light of his secret orders… but no, she hadn't, because as soon as he got to know her in any meaningful way, those orders were null. Eadu really couldn't have played out differently. Anyway, they'd settled this between them, and he actually felt all right not raking it up again.
—And again, very interesting how she'd started going back to the beginning like this… like this was a fresh start, for her as well as for him. He wasn't going to throw it back at her, but it did make his heart speed a bit.
"Finders, keepers," Jyn said with a shrug, her smile just barely restrained. It was strange, but not unpleasantly so, being able to talk about that part of the past — those last few days of her life before she wound up here, so many years ago now — in a remotely lighthearted way. In his absence, she'd tried to put so much away, not to let herself think about him in any real detail. She couldn't and wouldn't ever pretend him away, because as Scarif's lone survivor, she owed it to all of them but especially him to remember, but much like her memories of her childhood, she'd locked them away in her mind. Some would seep out from time to time, mostly in dreams, but she hadn't let them be consciously present.
With him here now, she could think of it all with something other than grief. There still was and always would be plenty of that, but there was room for this, too, the kind of easy banter they'd likewise quickly fallen into, albeit had little time for.
"Besides," she added, a touch of self-satisfaction in the words, "what do you expect when you leave a known thief alone with your stuff? You're lucky the blaster's all I took."
"And risk him almost breaking my entire spine again?" Jyn retorted without missing a beat, brow arching, just barely managing to keep a straight face. She'd made no secret of the fact that she'd come around to Kay in their time together, but that didn't lessen how terrifying, and painful, that first encounter had been. "No thank you.
"No thank you. Might've taken a shirt if I'd had somewhere to put it on, though."
"Yeah, why not?" Jyn said, letting out a short, surprised laugh. "Anything I could've gotten my hands on." She tipped her head up to give him a pointed look, brow arching and a hint of amusement in her expression. Again, she didn't want to darken the mood by directly mentioning something too unpleasant, but she was trying to do as he had asked her earlier. "Would you have wanted to stay in prison-issue clothes after breaking out? I'm guessing no."
Again, Jyn gave him a look, this one a bit more skeptical. "You did see the binders they had me in, right?" she asked. "No one was exactly giving me a warm welcome." Yes, in fairness, she had put up a fight, but it wasn't as if she could have known that the rescue was, in fact, a rescue. Given the threat levied at her during her interrogation — we'll put you back where we found you — she wasn't entirely sure it would have made a difference even if she had been willing and eager to go with them.
It occurred to her that maybe she should tell him what she had been thinking a few minutes ago, something she had long since known instinctively but never managed to put into so many words. Her expression softened the slightest bit as she added, "You letting me keep that blaster... was the first time someone there treated me like a person and not just a prisoner."
"I also saw Melshi's broken nose," he said wryly. "But you're right. The time to clean up and change should have been between the meeting and take-off for Jedha, so that's on me."
…the first time someone there treated me like a person… A line of cold ran through him. He didn't want to disprove that memory… but the post-Eadu never lie to her again, including by omission oath was especially relevant here.
"I'd just received my secret orders," he said. "To assassinate your father. I had to keep you safe and keep your trust while hiding that from you. My personal scales might have been tilted."
Thawing a little, because he realized it was true, he finished, "But I did think trust goes both ways was right." Even as he was betraying it.
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And yes, he'd literally been half dead: the fall hadn't killed him but the climb had, he'd just known he'd be able to run out the clock enough to do what he needed to, to help Jyn, which was all he'd wanted to do with literally the rest of his life. He didn't want to say it even now, though, to cast that darkness over the moment. Because he'd, they'd survived after all and that, no matter what other dreads he had about this place, was the ultimate gift.
Something else struck him as she spoke, now… everything she'd just said, going back to the beginning, and the lightness with which she was saying it… She was speaking as if this was their first time around. Like it was for him. No way in hell was he going to comment on it; it was just a moment, not a contract, but he found himself storing it as a precious, welcome ache in his heart. Navigating the Other was going to be an endless challenge, never to be willed away or forgotten, but this felt like some kind of… moment of… healing?
So Cassian hugged her and kissed her face, quick and intense, and said,
"This might be a problematic way to think about it. It was only a few days. Try to believe me, I know how important time is, how it takes a while to learn anyone, for enough situations to happen… But the situations we did go through… it did feel like I knew you, in actions. Felt like why I fell in love. Every act you took, every choice I saw you make—not just the correct ones but the right ones. Not a lot of people get to prove themselves in a lifetime as much as you did to me, and I hope I did to you. Learning more is a gift, would become a problem if we didn't do it over time, but I think we—we recognized each other."
no subject
She knew that he gave his life to and for the cause, that she'd never seen anyone so fervently dedicated to it in a way she'd long since lost sight of for herself. She knew he spoke of hope even when it didn't sound like he had much of that left himself, and that from the moment he let her keep the stolen blaster, he was the first person there with the Alliance to treat her like a person rather than a prisoner. She knew he reprogrammed and befriended an Imperial droid that most probably wouldn't have wanted to get within five feet of, that he gave as good as he got in an argument (angry as she might have been after Eadu, she respected that), and that was even before getting into all of the things he'd done for her, specifically. Risking himself and the mission by shooting one of Saw's people in order to save her. Running into the crumbling catacombs, onto the bombed-out and covered with stormtroopers platform, not judging her for being an emotional wreck barely aware of her surroundings in either case. Knowing the council wouldn't listen to her, but not deterring her from trying — just gathering an army for her, despite the venom she'd spat at him in the shuttle back to Yavin.
Climbing up the tower when he should have been dead, and it couldn't have been just for the mission when she was the one with the data tape but also for her—
The way he looked at her in the lift going down to the beach, not saying anything but not needing to, a lifetime and then some between them—
Yes, she knew him. In every way that counted, she knew him. And it wasn't surprising, exactly, but it was goddamn powerful to hear him put it so simply now, looking at her with that breathtaking warmth in his dark eyes.
"You did," she promised, the words an exhale between them as she nodded. "So many times over. And... yes." She didn't know how better to agree than that. Everything he said, she felt the same. "Don't get me wrong, I want to know anything you'll tell me. But I know you now. And I knew you then." One corner of her mouth twitched up slightly. "Might've only been a few days, but a lot did happen in those few days."
no subject
He did sober a little, thinking of all the things they still didn't talk about. That did eat at him… but he'd determined not to push.
Still, he could, more somberly, say: "And the heavier things… the… aftermaths. I think we're doing okay there. There are things I worry about, but I trust you'll tell me if… I trust you."
no subject
She would double back, she decided. For now, her hand lifted to his face, thumb gently stroking his cheekbone. "I think we're doing okay there, too," she said. Those heavier things, the aftermaths, were innumerable, and there was no easy way through them. So far, they'd been facing them as those subjects arose, which seemed like the best thing to do. That was exactly why she felt she needed to respond more directly to what he said, rather than letting it go. "Anything you're worried about, you can tell me. I'd rather know than have you keep it in. Like you said to me, right?"
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"It's nothing tangible," he said. "Not necessarily real. Just… are you sure you want to be bogged down now with things that have all to do with me, not you, not really us?"
He knew what she'd say but he needed to put it that way.
Maybe he could hope it wouldn't burden her but instead free her to tell him hers.
no subject
He wasn't the person she had married, and yet some of those vows still held true. For better or for worse. She wanted the good and the bad. Wanted to know him in all the ways those few days spent together in their galaxy hadn't given them a chance to. Wanted him to be able to turn to her — not just as a romantic partner, but as a friend. Somehow, that felt like something even more vulnerable.
"You can tell me anything. Always. And I'll always want to hear it."
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He wondered if he'd died after all, to be able to talk like this. But of course, it wasn't that, it was her.
He closed his eyes, breathed her in, and, with as great an effort as he'd ever made, lowered the partitions. And, very deliberately, spoke.
"I worry that right now I'm doing to you something I used to think my ex wife did to me. That I keep picking things apart. Which makes me worried that things that made me unhappy in my marriage were just me after all and I'm going to carry them through to you.
"I'm worried of talking about her too much and making it seem like I'm comparing, when I'm not. Or if I am, it's myself I compare. Never you.
"I'm afraid that I'm him and afraid that I'm not. I'm afraid of hurting you the way he did.
"I don't believe it's true, but if this was only trauma-bonding or infatuation, what a horrible betrayal of you that would be.
"I don't believe this is true either, but if my need to serve and believe in something shifted from the Rebellion to you, that would be a burden and a distortion, not letting you be… a person.
"I'm still afraid of hurting you in my sleep, even though I know you can stop me. But I don't want you to have to.
"I'm afraid you'll die or disappear, and my fear of that will put too much pressure on you when the only way of coping with it I can imagine is… to follow you.
"…But I'm not afraid of finding something in my past that I can't share with you and think you won't accept, and that's remarkable.
"And I think, I hope, sharing this was correct, and that's… that I even could… thank you."
no subject
"Don't thank me," she said, a ghost of a wry smile on her face. She hadn't done anything, after all. From her point of view, there was nothing to thank her for. "Thank you. For telling me."
This, too, she meant utterly. Deciding what to say next took a bit more thought, her expression scrunching slightly in a way she suspected he would already have come to recognize as being indicative of her weighing her words, trying to determine what she wanted to say and how to say it.
"I didn't say this a few minutes ago, but I guess maybe I'll say it now," she settled on. Her hand was still on his cheek, his skin warm against her palm. "The other moment that I must've already loved you, even if I didn't know it. When you fell—" Her fingers dropped lower, grazing the scar from that blaster shot again. "There was a moment I almost let go and went after you. I couldn't, obviously. The plans. And you'd said keep going. But almost."
I get it, is what she meant. She still didn't entirely know how she had survived losing him before except through sheer stubborn force of habit, and too many sunrises sitting out on the beach, wishing she'd had the end with him that she was supposed to.
"There's a lot here to answer. But here goes. I do know there's nothing in your past that would change how I feel about you, or run me off. And I think you'd say the same about me. I honestly could not care less if you hurt me in your sleep because I know you would never hurt me consciously. I think you'd say the same about that, too. I only worry about what it would do to you if that happened. I think you'd never forgive yourself, and that scares me."
Already she'd gone in a direction she hadn't intended. Frowning slightly, she bit her lip as she tried to reroute herself. "I don't think you need to worry about talking about your ex too much. I think... It's not easy to hear, but... I think it might help. To know more. And maybe not... feel like... worry that..." Now, finally, she looked away, insecure in a way she hated expressing, but sort of thought she had to. "That I'm a second choice."
Maybe, in spite of everything they'd both just said, she already was. Force knew she had been for everyone else, throughout the entirety of her life.
"As for him... I stand by what I said before. You're sort of the same, because you're still you, the person I fell in love with, and you're also not, because you didn't live any of that. Somehow that's still the one thing that makes sense to me."
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“That makes sense to me, too.” And it did relax his shoulders.
“And you’re not second choice,” he said at once. “That relationship ended. My biggest regret on that beach was that you and I would never get a chance to begin. I’ll tell you anything you want to know about her. Her name is Bix. We knew each other from childhood. Without that history, I don’t know if we would have been friends or lovers, on and off, at later times. I think maybe not. Especially the last time; she’d been seeing someone else who was killed and we escaped a massacre on our homeworld together… I kind of think a lot of it was driven by worry, wanting each other to be saved, which neither of us could really provide. We argued a lot. She left me because I was so tired, I talked about leaving the Rebellion for her and she disagreed. Maybe I agree with her but I don’t have to like how she did it. But all you really need to know is that you have nothing to prove. And where I arrived by the time I met you was completely different from where I’d ever been with her. I never… interrelied with her in fourteen years the way you and I did in five days.”
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At the same time, she tried not to feel a little dizzy at the prospect of fourteen years. How the hell could she ever live up to that?
"It's not because of you that I'd worry about it," she assured him. This time, she couldn't quite look at him, mouth pulled into a frown. Talking about him was easier than talking about herself. Talking about them was easier than talking about anyone in her past. She could reason herself out of having to do so by thinking that he knew all of this already, but that wasn't the point. If she wanted him to know her, she couldn't just take all of that as a given. "It's... You know. Everyone else. Historically speaking—" Here her voice turned cuttingly wry, although the sharp edge of it was directed at herself, not at him. "I've always been second. At best."
He'd been the first person to show her otherwise. It wasn't really a surprise for him to be telling her that was the case now; it was just difficult to switch off a lifetime's worth of expectation. "And I know that's not you. Obviously it doesn't bother me that you were with someone. We both had lives before we met each other. Just... habit, I guess. And not knowing making it all seem bigger."
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It was tempting. But instead he just kissed her forehead again, cupping her face, and murmured, "I can understand that. We'll keep saying what we need to, doing what we're doing, until we can believe it."
Take all the time we need, Darrow-willing. He was going to start researching, maybe the religious route in spite of his own skepticism, to find whatever, whoever, he needed to find to get some kind of assurance of duration. If anyone ever could.
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And yet, she knew Cassian would never judge her for it. He would give her all of the space and understanding she needed to process how she felt, and she hoped he would know that it had nothing to do with any doubts about him. It would have been downright infuriating if it weren't so wonderful of him.
"Yeah," she agreed quietly. "And... I did mean what I said before. You can always tell me anything. Even if I'm... a total mess, or even if it's something hard, I do want to hear it. Just like you said to me." What would have followed, this time, she only held back because she truly didn't know how to explain it: that entirely separate from her feelings for him, she wanted to be someone he felt like he could turn to, that she wanted to offer him the same support he'd been offering her. However much it might not have come naturally to her, a skill she never really had a chance to learn, he was, in this and every other way, worth the effort.
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"I was thinking earlier. I wish I could remember all of it… how much I love just being with you, near you… part of it was: of course I don't love when either of us is a mess, but love that we can be it with each other."
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She bit her lip. This may not have been quite what she was thinking a moment ago, but it was close enough to it. "I hope you can feel like that with me, too."
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A few moments just resting with her. Then he huffed a laugh. "And I'm glad we can have all this positivity. I know people who wouldn't be able to trust without some snipes. But that never really worked for me. Much harder to relax. …I don't have any, by the way. It'd be hard work."
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"But yeah. I know what you mean. ...Then again, I don't think anything would have gotten me to trust anyone before you came along. And then I did within, what, a day?"
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…She'd been wrong to do so, in light of his secret orders… but no, she hadn't, because as soon as he got to know her in any meaningful way, those orders were null. Eadu really couldn't have played out differently. Anyway, they'd settled this between them, and he actually felt all right not raking it up again.
—And again, very interesting how she'd started going back to the beginning like this… like this was a fresh start, for her as well as for him. He wasn't going to throw it back at her, but it did make his heart speed a bit.
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With him here now, she could think of it all with something other than grief. There still was and always would be plenty of that, but there was room for this, too, the kind of easy banter they'd likewise quickly fallen into, albeit had little time for.
"Besides," she added, a touch of self-satisfaction in the words, "what do you expect when you leave a known thief alone with your stuff? You're lucky the blaster's all I took."
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"No thank you. Might've taken a shirt if I'd had somewhere to put it on, though."
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It occurred to her that maybe she should tell him what she had been thinking a few minutes ago, something she had long since known instinctively but never managed to put into so many words. Her expression softened the slightest bit as she added, "You letting me keep that blaster... was the first time someone there treated me like a person and not just a prisoner."
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…the first time someone there treated me like a person…
A line of cold ran through him. He didn't want to disprove that memory… but the post-Eadu never lie to her again, including by omission oath was especially relevant here.
"I'd just received my secret orders," he said. "To assassinate your father. I had to keep you safe and keep your trust while hiding that from you. My personal scales might have been tilted."
Thawing a little, because he realized it was true, he finished, "But I did think trust goes both ways was right." Even as he was betraying it.
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