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.
Jyn frowned slightly, wishing she hadn't said anything after all. She wouldn't have, if she had known he would take it as something he'd done wrong rather than something he'd done right. Maybe she was biased in his favor (no, she was definitely that anyway) or maybe she was too far removed to have an accurate perspective; maybe it was just that she'd so long since made her peace with the orders he'd kept from her but hadn't followed that she didn't have it in her to hold any ill will against him because of it. They'd had it out in the shuttle after, and discussed it several times over here. That didn't mean she was all right with it, but that wasn't on him.
Neither, she assumed, was the way the Alliance treated her, but that wasn't a mental road she wanted to go too far down. All of it was so long ago, anyway. His being here, and fresh from all of that, just brought a lot of it back to the surface again.
"So you let me keep it even knowing how badly I would react to that," she said, half a question, as close to amused as the subject would allow. (It wasn't very, but she hoped he would see it as her lack of a grudge.) Any levity was short-lived. She propped herself up on one elbow so she could get a good look at him, expression serious. "Cassian... I know I've had a lot longer with it all than you have... but believe me when I say I get it. Not saying that it was right, or that I agree with it, but I do get it. I don't want you to beat yourself up over it."
He propped himself up too, to meet her, eyes searching hers, their edges crinkling. "I wasn't… I wasn't worried about that. I was worried about ruining a good moment in memory for you." Breath-laugh and free hand coming up to trace her hair. "I think we're both okay except for worrying about each other."
Exhaling a laugh of her own, Jyn let her free hand curl gently around the back of his neck as she leaned in for a brief kiss. "You didn't ruin it," she promised. Given that she knew he'd gotten that order at some point, it wasn't even entirely surprising. Maybe those last few days weren't something that could be ruined. Plenty else was — losing him the first time had cast an unpleasant shadow over her memory of the time they'd had together, causing her to regret things that she wouldn't have wanted to regret — but those few days and the way they ended were immutable. "So, yes. You can't stop me from worrying about you, though. That's just going to happen anyway."
They'd said it so many times since she first did so, but still, Jyn felt her heart skip a beat, her inhaled breath a little sharper. She could reason through it well enough — she'd known so little love, except for him — but that made it no less powerful. She wasn't sure she would have wanted it to.
"Yeah, I guess it is," she agreed, as if realizing it for the first time. "And there's definitely nothing that could get me to stop doing that."
He raised his eyes to hers, both back in the present and like in the elevator: pupils so big and dark you could fall in, and they welcomed her, wanting her, wanting for her—the world, all of time; and he leaned in again for a longer kiss.
At last, he drew back with a small, heartfelt smile and murmured, “We might get dressed sometime.”
"I don't know, I sort of like you like this," Jyn teased, smiling in turn. There was no intent in it; he was right, after all. At least they'd been lying here in the grass and dappled sunlight long enough that she had sufficiently dried off. Next time they went on this sort of excursion, she was going to bring a towel.
“I like you like this,” he repeated, eyes brightly smiling, as he touched her lips. Yes, he meant naked, but clearly also at ease, playful, happy.
He abruptly grabbed her in his arms and crushed her into a kiss, rolling them so she was on top of him. When he released her, he was already half sitting up.
Jyn got what he meant, or was pretty sure she did. It was strangely touching, maybe just because, before this place, before him, there had been so little room in her life for any significant levity. There certainly hadn't been anyone who'd encouraged it, not since she was almost too young to remember.
Leaning into the kiss was easier than trying to say any of that. She, again, let him roll them over, still smiling close against his mouth when he drew back. "Yeah, see, not helping me want to get dressed," she said. All teasing aside, though, she did, somewhat reluctantly, sit back further. "Good thing no one else has come through here. This was definitely a good spot to find."
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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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Neither, she assumed, was the way the Alliance treated her, but that wasn't a mental road she wanted to go too far down. All of it was so long ago, anyway. His being here, and fresh from all of that, just brought a lot of it back to the surface again.
"So you let me keep it even knowing how badly I would react to that," she said, half a question, as close to amused as the subject would allow. (It wasn't very, but she hoped he would see it as her lack of a grudge.) Any levity was short-lived. She propped herself up on one elbow so she could get a good look at him, expression serious. "Cassian... I know I've had a lot longer with it all than you have... but believe me when I say I get it. Not saying that it was right, or that I agree with it, but I do get it. I don't want you to beat yourself up over it."
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"Yeah, I guess it is," she agreed, as if realizing it for the first time. "And there's definitely nothing that could get me to stop doing that."
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At last, he drew back with a small, heartfelt smile and murmured, “We might get dressed sometime.”
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"No, we should."
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He abruptly grabbed her in his arms and crushed her into a kiss, rolling them so she was on top of him. When he released her, he was already half sitting up.
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Leaning into the kiss was easier than trying to say any of that. She, again, let him roll them over, still smiling close against his mouth when he drew back. "Yeah, see, not helping me want to get dressed," she said. All teasing aside, though, she did, somewhat reluctantly, sit back further. "Good thing no one else has come through here. This was definitely a good spot to find."
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