It's something that Cassian's thought about, all the times he's revisited that conversation. In his mind, it always changes with every piece of new information. What Jyn tells him now is something that they both already know. It's something he should have understood the first time she said she didn't have the luxury of political opinions. At the time, he'd dismissed it as flippant, something completely foreign to someone whose whole life had been given over to the cause. But she's right. She never had a droid, no Rebel agents to call for extraction. Cassian may have been tasked with some of the darkest, messiest tasks of the Rebellion but he'd had back up. He'd had someone to call.

Jyn had...nothing. How hard is it, he wonders now, to hang onto any ideals when the only priority you can meet is staying alive and, maybe, staying fed? What would Cassian be if he'd been like that? The Rebellion had already made him tired, lonely, and amoral. He'd probably be a lot more like Jyn too, without her better qualities.

Cassian's whole life had been swallowed up by the Rebel Alliance. At first it had been a roof over his head and a belly full of food. Then it had been accomplishment and pride. Then it had been killing and spying. For Cassian, it was the opposite that had been a luxury. Not caring was for people who hadn't been entrenched, hadn't stained their hands with blood for the ideal. If he stopped caring, every horrible thing he'd done would've amounted to nothing. He wouldn't be a Rebel spy. He'd just be a murderer.

But how does he put any of that into words?

"I didn't pull the trigger," he says. "That doesn't mean I'll ever stop thinking I share the blame." If he'd just listened to Jyn, if he'd just believed her. If they'd managed to extract Galen Erso, how many lives could have been saved, including their own? Instead, he'd reported as Draven asked, never considering how much the warhawk wanted an excuse to strike.

"You only told me what I already felt about myself."