It took only moments — faster than she could formulate a question in her head, never mind start to ask it — for Jyn to sense, or at least guess, what was happening. His heart suddenly beating harder, faster, gave it away. She knew that feeling too well not to recognize it in some capacity. Hell, some part of her had ceaselessly been there since he reentered her life. Having him here meant she could lose him, and the prospect was unbearable. Talking about a friend she'd had and lost must have brought it to the forefront for him again, making her that much more grateful that she hadn't slipped and referred to Cassian having known Lincoln before.
Right now, this wasn't about her. She held onto him in turn, as close to soothing as she could get, taking deep, steady breaths in the hopes that it might help him a little. "Yeah," she murmured. "I know."
If will and depth of feeling were enough to keep a person here, she would never have lost him in the first place. She didn't know how to say that without it somehow coming out wrong, but she hoped he knew it all the same.
He breathed with her and slowed… steadied… steady…
“I’m an asshole,” he managed at last. “I did want to hear… I still want to revive his idea. I think we could make it work. I think it could be really good.”
Taking a moment, his forehead pressed to hers, Cassian said finally, “And I’m going to get a handle on this.”
"Are not," Jyn countered, deliberately childish and contrary, hoping to give him even just the tiniest bit of levity. She punctuated the statement with a brief, soft kiss to the corner of his mouth. "To the first part. It's still new for you. I've had years to get used to it. Reacting to that doesn't make you an asshole, it just makes you human."
For her, it was sort of like she'd stiltedly tried to describe it to him some time earlier: scar tissue, a wound that was no less severe or dangerous but that couldn't be felt to the same extent anymore. She'd lost so many people. It would always hurt, but there was a numbness to it at the same time, a sense of expectation.
Of course, Cassian was an exception to that. If losing him once had wrecked her, she didn't want to think what losing him again would be like.
"I think we could, though. Make it work." Again, a tiny fragment of a smile, hopeful and encouraging. "If you're sure you won't get sick of me. Living with me, sleeping with me, and working with me, that's a lot."
It was a fair point, they had been spending literally all their time together, as if constant contact might protect them against parting.
But Cassian knew it wasn't only paranoia, keeping him rapt to her side. He loved being with her. He loved that they could spend time in the same room not talking, barely looking at each other, doing their own tasks; and then, at any moment one could make a comment and they were in sync again. He loved learning gardening from her, teaching her recipes, tinkering together with the ship, walking this little world. He loved that they were occupied with these peaceful tasks. He was addicted to holding her. He loved making love with her. He loved when one read to the other or they listened to something together. They'd yet to have a fight, which would either be very terrible or highly unlikely, because he loved that their disagreements were usually resolved with actual logic and/or Jyn's particular dry humor. He didn't love when either of them wept or screamed, but he loved that they were able to do so with each other and able to be there for each other.
"You're right," he said, pressing his grin into her hair. "Gonna be hard pressed to find more hours to spend with you."
It was strange, how two fully contradictory feelings could exist at once. Jyn knew with an almost strange certainty that behind the teasing, the sentiment was genuine. He was the one who'd suggested resuming those classes as something they could do together, and anyway, it wasn't as if she was keeping him captive on the Falcon with her. She wanted him there, of course, but she wouldn't have stopped him if he wanted to be elsewhere, to live or to sleep or just to spend time. He hadn't given any indication that he was bored or frustrated with the arrangement, and neither had she. As far as she was concerned, they had a hell of a lot of time to catch up on. They were, in some ways, still getting to know each other.
Of course, in the ways that mattered most, they already did, that instinctive understanding that began to bloom, wordless, between them somewhere between Yavin 4 and Jedha. Now they were filling in the gaps with their respective details and facts.
Alongside that certainty was the quiet fear that he would get sick of her. She had never been worth keeping around to anyone before. Maybe, once the newness wore off, he would begin to lose interest. Maybe his past here with her would be too much after all; maybe she wouldn't be able to give him the kind of life he wanted, that he'd once dreamed about with someone else.
She could drive herself crazy with all of the hypotheticals, and she didn't want to do that. This wasn't the time, with him warm beside her and at least sounding like he was smiling again, which was what she'd wanted. They couldn't promise forever, but she could take him at his word that this was what he wanted.
"Good thing the animals like having you around," she teased, and pressed a kiss to his shoulder. "Well, and good thing I do, too."
"Oh skies, if they didn't… I guess they'd get the ship," he kissed her temple, "and I'd get the apartment," he kissed the other one, "and you'd have to ferry back and forth."
He'd kept the apartment for official purposes. That was where any mail to him was sent and he picked it up once a week. He knew it was pointless paranoia—again, whatever had brought him here was so powerful, it would hardly be fooled by what was on paper, and Jyn hadn't kept the location or her habitation of the Falcon a secret—but it just went against Cassian's whole nervous system to openly state to the public and the powers that be where he was actually living.
For the self-defenses classes, there'd be a lot to figure out, but brainstorming could wait until they got home.
Yes, Jyn, home. Which is exactly what he'd wanted. And you've already achieved.
"Oh, that would get very tiring," Jyn said, letting out another soft laugh. She would, of course, never have let it come to that. She didn't know what she would have done instead, but that was irrelevant. For a moment, she nearly made a joke about cordoning off the Falcon, part for him and part for the pets, but even in jest, that did seem too much to evoke captivity. They both had too much bad experience in that regard.
She still was curious to know more about his, and made a mental note to ask later. Not right now, but soon, perhaps. It was one of the more surprising details she had learned from him this time around, and she wanted as many of those as she could get.
"I really do, though," she added, opting for sincerity instead, her voice softening. "Like having you around, on the ship. Feels... right."
"Yes…" He rested his lips on her forehead and enjoyed the feel of her, the smell of her, for a few moments.
"I had a dream one night that we'd gotten off Scarif in the Falcon—don't ask me how it was there—and flew away together. That was the whole dream. Just surviving and flying together through the most beautiful stars and nebulas, and knowing we now lived together on the ship. I hadn't had such a beautiful, peaceful dream in so long. Then to wake up on the same ship with you beside me… It was… joy."
Jyn smiled, slight and wistful, at his description of the dream he'd had. "I like that," she said. "I would've liked that." Had they actually gotten off Scarif, it was hard to imagine him actually leaving the Rebellion, and hard to imagine herself leaving him. If she'd stayed, it wouldn't have been solely for him. Whatever problems she had with the Alliance, and there were many, their cause and hers were still aligned. Without Cassian, though, there was no one there she trusted, no one to stay for.
What she really would have wanted, though, was exactly what he described. The two of them, a ship to call home, and the galaxy ahead of them. At least they had the first two parts of that here, and no Empire to contend with. She wasn't for a second about to complain when this was so much more than she expected to have again. Still, it was a nice thought.
"For a while," she admitted, because he'd asked her to say things and she really was trying, "before you got here, I'd have dreams like that sometimes. Not the ship, or Scarif, but you and me. Together. Happy." She nestled just a little closer to him. "Those were always harder than any nightmare. Getting to feel that... then waking up after."
He held her closer, adjusting to her movement, again aware of how exposed he was in terms of heartbeat. That was okay. Let her feel and know. "I understand that." Dreaming someone was alive, okay, and with him, only to wake up and they weren't could be like losing them all over again. He'd had it with Kerri, with Clem, with Maarva, with Brasso, most recently with Melshi and Kaytoo. In a way… "In a strange… maybe awful… way, I find it reassuring. That I still get those." He hoped saying that wasn't insensitive to her dreams.
Jyn hummed in quiet understanding. It was a little bit like what she had said about frequently going out to the beach, a subconscious twin of that self-inflicted pain. Harder to bear, though, when it wasn't something that she could choose or control. For a moment, she considered her words, but there was one thought she kept coming back to. It was the kind of thing she wasn't sure if she should tell him or not, that might prove to be too much, too upsetting. Those were exactly the sorts of things he'd been trying to encourage her to say, though, so she decided to take that chance.
"Can... Can I say something about before?" she asked, gaze lifting to his face. Even without specifics, she trusted he would know what she meant. "You can say no."
Again, Jyn gave him a tiny smile, this one an apology more than anything else. She wasn't going to say she was sorry when she hadn't actually told him anything yet, but there was no way to make these conversations any easier. Some part of her remained half-convinced that it would prove to be too much. If it did, she wouldn't be able to fault him. Probably better to find out sooner rather than later, anyway.
But, for now, she was going to say what she'd intended to — a sort of fact in its own right, albeit introduced outside the bounds of their usual fact-swapping game. She had promised she would try. This felt like trying.
"When I first got here," she said, "you know, with... him... we hadn't been to our apartments yet, and started joking about what they'd be like. I think we were nervous to see them. Or be separated. Or both. And didn't want to say it. So we listed off ridiculous things they might have. Floors made of hardwood from Endor. Countertops of Naboo marble. A view like the upper levels of Coruscant." She said all of this quiet and not outwardly emotional, much like the way she had first told him about her history with his previous self, a restrained quality in her voice, almost as if she was trying to pull the words back into herself even as they left her mouth. As she went on, though, her voice got a little quieter, a little less steady. She had never talked about this with anyone before. She would've tried not to think about it if her subconscious hadn't made that impossible.
"But then we started adding to it, when we thought of ideas. All of the little luxuries that people like us never got to have. A featherbed. A giant bathtub, with hot water that wouldn't run out. That sort of thing. Not a joke anymore, but a fantasy." Her teeth pressed hard to her lower lip. "In a lot of the dreams I'd have, later, once I was on my own, that's where we were. That... imaginary home. I guess I was wrong, earlier, when I said I'd never pictured what peace would look like. That was the first time I started to."
His pulse remained steady. He listened intently, then cupped her face in his hand and craned his head down to kiss her for several long heartbeats.
"Thank you for telling me," he said. "It's a great dream."
Was it was one he'd have…? (Still seeking the answer: were they the same?) Well, if not for himself, then with Jyn, going back and forth. Yes, he would go there.
There were probably better ways to respond… he wasn't sure… they didn't want to belabor the loss or regret… Finally, he said the other thing he was thinking, quite seriously—because the notion of using it together was wonderful: "I wonder how hard it would be to convert the Falcon's shower to a bathtub…"
It seemed patently unfair that it was only now, after saying all of this, that she felt a wave of emotion swell in her. She was pretty sure she had cried more in the last few weeks than in the preceding few years, and she really didn't want to do so again now. Everything was so much, though — the memories that she tried not to let herself have, the reminder of the life she'd had that he hadn't, the fact that he was thanking her for sharing what should have been too burdensome for anyone to take on. Add to that the inherent vulnerability of being unclothed, and for one horrible moment, she felt like she might break.
Instead, she ducked her head to press her face to his shoulder, using him as a shield to try to keep or regain her composure, breathing in deep the faint scent that she associated entirely with him.
"And here I've been thinking that we should probably redo the bedroom," she mumbled against his skin, aiming for wry but not quite getting there. It was true, though, something she had been thinking about even before now but just wasn't sure how to proceed with the logistics of.
A thought occurred to her, and she let herself blurt it out before she could think to do otherwise. This, at least, was easier than the story that prefaced it. "That dream, it's not like that's what I want now. Or what I was trying to get before. I think it was always about the fantasy of it. Something impossible."
Even so, when she'd bought a small house, one that was now a heap of burned-out ruins in the eastern part of the countryside, she had made sure it was one with hardwood floors and marble countertops. One tiny way of bringing that fantasy to life.
He held her firm and close, wishing he could take some of the feelings for her, recognizing that sometimes crying was a relief and sometimes you resisted the way you resisted throwing up; all he could do was stay steady for her and be here.
The crux: be here. If he believed in the Force, he’d pray to it. There was no reason to think he’d make headway where everyone else had failed, but he privately swore again to try and find some answer, some access to the powers that be, to supplicate or demand his ability, this time, to stay.
Aloud, he said with a gentle laugh, “What… two mattresses stuck together on the floor, not the height of comfort?” He’d meant to surprise her with one large one, but he balked at having it delivered (foolish) and he couldn’t carry it all the way by himself.
Something impossible. Cassian nodded.
Again, he didn’t know what to say… but saying something seemed better than not. “Sharing a ship, somewhere quiet, in nature, with a garden, and pets, and no war, with you… I think that’s all I could have dreamed.
If you found a place in the galaxy untouched by war — a quiet life, maybe with a family — if you're happy, Jyn...
The last thing she wanted or needed in a moment like this was Galen Erso's fucking voice in her head. There was enough of a weight to everything else without bringing him or his message into it. Out of everything he'd said, though, it was that line that came back to her time and again, that cut deeply and lethally. The first time she had heard it, standing in the catacombs on Jedha before they collapsed, the bitter irony was that she had never been or known anything of the sort, and that was because of him. When she heard it again, it was worse for having had that and lost it. At least before, she hadn't known what she was missing.
And now, here Cassian was, again, offering her that kind of life, again — different, because he hadn't been here the first time around, but the same, because he was himself. The person she loved so desperately that even years apart hadn't worn it away at all, the only one who had ever come back for her. Would it matter that he had come back if she lost him again? She didn't know. She did know that letting herself even entertain the notion of having that happy, quiet life meant she was putting it at risk.
Her chest tightened, breaths becoming shallow, shaky gasps before she realized what was happening. It was her turn, apparently, for silent panic. Suddenly, having her face pressed to his shoulder wasn't enough. She turned in his arms, rolling onto her other side to face away from him, but she didn't move away; one hand curled around his wrist to keep his arm in place around her, and she leaned back into him, spine pressed to his chest.
"I need a minute," she finally said, her voice strained. "Sorry."
There were times to speak and times to act. He showed it was okay and he understood by moulding his body to hers, legs bent into her legs, chest sealed to her back, forehead to the back of her head, and his arms around her, loose enough to give her air, firm enough to protect. He kissed her hair and just breathed, slow and deep, and held her as long as she wanted him to.
It was almost infuriating how understanding he was, how gentle and patient. Jyn, by contrast, clutched at his arms as if that might be enough to keep him there, face turned toward the grass, her body trembling with her shaky breaths and efforts not to cry. She couldn't do this. She couldn't not do this. She'd spent the better part of who could even tell how many years without him, so she should have been fine to continue on her own, the way she had been for most of her life, should have been able just to walk away, but she couldn't and wouldn't. In her previous life with someone who was him but wasn't, she had tried that and failed miserably. Even then, she had long since told herself that she wouldn't leave him. That still held true.
But Force help her, it was agonizing to open herself up to this, to want something so much. She would have given up all the rest of it, the ship and the garden and the pets and the quiet and the lack of war, if it meant keeping him with her and alive. She would have slept on concrete under a bridge in a combat zone if that was what it took to have him at her side.
Being in love was a horrible thing.
She repeated his words from earlier in her head, I won't lose you to fear of losing you, until her breathing began to level out again. Her face was uncomfortably sticky from tears, but at least there were no gulping sobs, just some accompanying sniffles. "That's all I want now," she admitted, feeling small and helpless in his arms. The little girl in the cave again, waiting for someone to come find her. "That life. What you said. Bed and bathtub would just be a nice bonus."
Breathing with her, Cassian didn’t want to confine but couldn’t help hugging her tighter.
Sometimes when there was no answer, the answer was hope. He wouldn’t say that to her, who’d already lived the horror. For himself, though, he’d work with it.
“I’m going to keep looking for an answer.” He breathed into her hair. “I love you.”
Jyn let him pull her closer — savored it, really, leaning back against him, her hands still clutching his arm. Even this felt pathetically weak, but it was far too late to do anything about it. He'd seen her like this and worse already, and had shown the same kind of vulnerability as well. However angry and aggressive she may have been, there was something to be said, one of her first lessons with the Partisans, for choosing one's battles. She couldn't fight this.
She couldn't fight the way she felt about him, either. If she was going to choose her battles, then she would choose trying to have a future with him. Stupid, reckless, dangerous, but doing otherwise would have been that much more so.
"I love you," she echoed, letting her eyes fall closed for a moment as she exhaled heavily. "Tell me a fact? Please?"
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Right now, this wasn't about her. She held onto him in turn, as close to soothing as she could get, taking deep, steady breaths in the hopes that it might help him a little. "Yeah," she murmured. "I know."
If will and depth of feeling were enough to keep a person here, she would never have lost him in the first place. She didn't know how to say that without it somehow coming out wrong, but she hoped he knew it all the same.
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“I’m an asshole,” he managed at last. “I did want to hear… I still want to revive his idea. I think we could make it work. I think it could be really good.”
Taking a moment, his forehead pressed to hers, Cassian said finally, “And I’m going to get a handle on this.”
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For her, it was sort of like she'd stiltedly tried to describe it to him some time earlier: scar tissue, a wound that was no less severe or dangerous but that couldn't be felt to the same extent anymore. She'd lost so many people. It would always hurt, but there was a numbness to it at the same time, a sense of expectation.
Of course, Cassian was an exception to that. If losing him once had wrecked her, she didn't want to think what losing him again would be like.
"I think we could, though. Make it work." Again, a tiny fragment of a smile, hopeful and encouraging. "If you're sure you won't get sick of me. Living with me, sleeping with me, and working with me, that's a lot."
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But Cassian knew it wasn't only paranoia, keeping him rapt to her side. He loved being with her. He loved that they could spend time in the same room not talking, barely looking at each other, doing their own tasks; and then, at any moment one could make a comment and they were in sync again. He loved learning gardening from her, teaching her recipes, tinkering together with the ship, walking this little world. He loved that they were occupied with these peaceful tasks. He was addicted to holding her. He loved making love with her. He loved when one read to the other or they listened to something together. They'd yet to have a fight, which would either be very terrible or highly unlikely, because he loved that their disagreements were usually resolved with actual logic and/or Jyn's particular dry humor. He didn't love when either of them wept or screamed, but he loved that they were able to do so with each other and able to be there for each other.
"You're right," he said, pressing his grin into her hair. "Gonna be hard pressed to find more hours to spend with you."
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Of course, in the ways that mattered most, they already did, that instinctive understanding that began to bloom, wordless, between them somewhere between Yavin 4 and Jedha. Now they were filling in the gaps with their respective details and facts.
Alongside that certainty was the quiet fear that he would get sick of her. She had never been worth keeping around to anyone before. Maybe, once the newness wore off, he would begin to lose interest. Maybe his past here with her would be too much after all; maybe she wouldn't be able to give him the kind of life he wanted, that he'd once dreamed about with someone else.
She could drive herself crazy with all of the hypotheticals, and she didn't want to do that. This wasn't the time, with him warm beside her and at least sounding like he was smiling again, which was what she'd wanted. They couldn't promise forever, but she could take him at his word that this was what he wanted.
"Good thing the animals like having you around," she teased, and pressed a kiss to his shoulder. "Well, and good thing I do, too."
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He'd kept the apartment for official purposes. That was where any mail to him was sent and he picked it up once a week. He knew it was pointless paranoia—again, whatever had brought him here was so powerful, it would hardly be fooled by what was on paper, and Jyn hadn't kept the location or her habitation of the Falcon a secret—but it just went against Cassian's whole nervous system to openly state to the public and the powers that be where he was actually living.
For the self-defenses classes, there'd be a lot to figure out, but brainstorming could wait until they got home.
Yes, Jyn, home. Which is exactly what he'd wanted. And you've already achieved.
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She still was curious to know more about his, and made a mental note to ask later. Not right now, but soon, perhaps. It was one of the more surprising details she had learned from him this time around, and she wanted as many of those as she could get.
"I really do, though," she added, opting for sincerity instead, her voice softening. "Like having you around, on the ship. Feels... right."
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"I had a dream one night that we'd gotten off Scarif in the Falcon—don't ask me how it was there—and flew away together. That was the whole dream. Just surviving and flying together through the most beautiful stars and nebulas, and knowing we now lived together on the ship. I hadn't had such a beautiful, peaceful dream in so long. Then to wake up on the same ship with you beside me… It was… joy."
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What she really would have wanted, though, was exactly what he described. The two of them, a ship to call home, and the galaxy ahead of them. At least they had the first two parts of that here, and no Empire to contend with. She wasn't for a second about to complain when this was so much more than she expected to have again. Still, it was a nice thought.
"For a while," she admitted, because he'd asked her to say things and she really was trying, "before you got here, I'd have dreams like that sometimes. Not the ship, or Scarif, but you and me. Together. Happy." She nestled just a little closer to him. "Those were always harder than any nightmare. Getting to feel that... then waking up after."
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"Can... Can I say something about before?" she asked, gaze lifting to his face. Even without specifics, she trusted he would know what she meant. "You can say no."
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But, for now, she was going to say what she'd intended to — a sort of fact in its own right, albeit introduced outside the bounds of their usual fact-swapping game. She had promised she would try. This felt like trying.
"When I first got here," she said, "you know, with... him... we hadn't been to our apartments yet, and started joking about what they'd be like. I think we were nervous to see them. Or be separated. Or both. And didn't want to say it. So we listed off ridiculous things they might have. Floors made of hardwood from Endor. Countertops of Naboo marble. A view like the upper levels of Coruscant." She said all of this quiet and not outwardly emotional, much like the way she had first told him about her history with his previous self, a restrained quality in her voice, almost as if she was trying to pull the words back into herself even as they left her mouth. As she went on, though, her voice got a little quieter, a little less steady. She had never talked about this with anyone before. She would've tried not to think about it if her subconscious hadn't made that impossible.
"But then we started adding to it, when we thought of ideas. All of the little luxuries that people like us never got to have. A featherbed. A giant bathtub, with hot water that wouldn't run out. That sort of thing. Not a joke anymore, but a fantasy." Her teeth pressed hard to her lower lip. "In a lot of the dreams I'd have, later, once I was on my own, that's where we were. That... imaginary home. I guess I was wrong, earlier, when I said I'd never pictured what peace would look like. That was the first time I started to."
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"Thank you for telling me," he said. "It's a great dream."
Was it was one he'd have…? (Still seeking the answer: were they the same?) Well, if not for himself, then with Jyn, going back and forth. Yes, he would go there.
There were probably better ways to respond… he wasn't sure… they didn't want to belabor the loss or regret… Finally, he said the other thing he was thinking, quite seriously—because the notion of using it together was wonderful: "I wonder how hard it would be to convert the Falcon's shower to a bathtub…"
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Instead, she ducked her head to press her face to his shoulder, using him as a shield to try to keep or regain her composure, breathing in deep the faint scent that she associated entirely with him.
"And here I've been thinking that we should probably redo the bedroom," she mumbled against his skin, aiming for wry but not quite getting there. It was true, though, something she had been thinking about even before now but just wasn't sure how to proceed with the logistics of.
A thought occurred to her, and she let herself blurt it out before she could think to do otherwise. This, at least, was easier than the story that prefaced it. "That dream, it's not like that's what I want now. Or what I was trying to get before. I think it was always about the fantasy of it. Something impossible."
Even so, when she'd bought a small house, one that was now a heap of burned-out ruins in the eastern part of the countryside, she had made sure it was one with hardwood floors and marble countertops. One tiny way of bringing that fantasy to life.
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The crux: be here. If he believed in the Force, he’d pray to it. There was no reason to think he’d make headway where everyone else had failed, but he privately swore again to try and find some answer, some access to the powers that be, to supplicate or demand his ability, this time, to stay.
Aloud, he said with a gentle laugh, “What… two mattresses stuck together on the floor, not the height of comfort?” He’d meant to surprise her with one large one, but he balked at having it delivered (foolish) and he couldn’t carry it all the way by himself.
Something impossible. Cassian nodded.
Again, he didn’t know what to say… but saying something seemed better than not. “Sharing a ship, somewhere quiet, in nature, with a garden, and pets, and no war, with you… I think that’s all I could have dreamed.
“But a proper bed and big bathtub do sound nice.”
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The last thing she wanted or needed in a moment like this was Galen Erso's fucking voice in her head. There was enough of a weight to everything else without bringing him or his message into it. Out of everything he'd said, though, it was that line that came back to her time and again, that cut deeply and lethally. The first time she had heard it, standing in the catacombs on Jedha before they collapsed, the bitter irony was that she had never been or known anything of the sort, and that was because of him. When she heard it again, it was worse for having had that and lost it. At least before, she hadn't known what she was missing.
And now, here Cassian was, again, offering her that kind of life, again — different, because he hadn't been here the first time around, but the same, because he was himself. The person she loved so desperately that even years apart hadn't worn it away at all, the only one who had ever come back for her. Would it matter that he had come back if she lost him again? She didn't know. She did know that letting herself even entertain the notion of having that happy, quiet life meant she was putting it at risk.
Her chest tightened, breaths becoming shallow, shaky gasps before she realized what was happening. It was her turn, apparently, for silent panic. Suddenly, having her face pressed to his shoulder wasn't enough. She turned in his arms, rolling onto her other side to face away from him, but she didn't move away; one hand curled around his wrist to keep his arm in place around her, and she leaned back into him, spine pressed to his chest.
"I need a minute," she finally said, her voice strained. "Sorry."
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But Force help her, it was agonizing to open herself up to this, to want something so much. She would have given up all the rest of it, the ship and the garden and the pets and the quiet and the lack of war, if it meant keeping him with her and alive. She would have slept on concrete under a bridge in a combat zone if that was what it took to have him at her side.
Being in love was a horrible thing.
She repeated his words from earlier in her head, I won't lose you to fear of losing you, until her breathing began to level out again. Her face was uncomfortably sticky from tears, but at least there were no gulping sobs, just some accompanying sniffles. "That's all I want now," she admitted, feeling small and helpless in his arms. The little girl in the cave again, waiting for someone to come find her. "That life. What you said. Bed and bathtub would just be a nice bonus."
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Sometimes when there was no answer, the answer was hope. He wouldn’t say that to her, who’d already lived the horror. For himself, though, he’d work with it.
“I’m going to keep looking for an answer.” He breathed into her hair. “I love you.”
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She couldn't fight the way she felt about him, either. If she was going to choose her battles, then she would choose trying to have a future with him. Stupid, reckless, dangerous, but doing otherwise would have been that much more so.
"I love you," she echoed, letting her eyes fall closed for a moment as she exhaled heavily. "Tell me a fact? Please?"