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cassian andor

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By the time she leaves Lincoln, Jyn is a little dazed, her head spinning as she makes her way towards the edge of the city and back to the house. It is, in all fairness, a lot to take in. He's left her with a lot to think about. He would have even if she hadn't already said yes — something that she can't help wondering about, in retrospect, if it was the right decision after all — but she has, which means she also has to figure out how she's even going to do this. She doubts she'll ever be organized enough for lesson plans or anything like that, but she ought to at least have some sort of approach in mind.

Of course, every time she thinks that, she also goes back to thinking that she's crazy, that there's absolutely no way she could possibly teach children even just how to fight, so it's probably better that she stop trying to consider it on her own. She'd want to tell Cassian anyway. Something like this, she couldn't just keep to herself, and though she suspects he might be somewhat biased in the matter, always seeming to be willing to see her as better than she is, maybe he'll be able to help, or at least talk a little sense into her. If there's anyone who'll get it, it's him. He was brought up as a soldier, too.

"I'm home," she calls when she opens the door, quickly closing it behind her so she can crouch and pet Sprinkles, who's already come running over, the little dog eagerly jumping up against her. "Cassian, you in?"

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It isn't until he's said it that Jyn realizes just how much she doesn't want him to apologize. She's the one who started it, who attacked him first, cornering him as soon as they were safely out of orbit. Maybe she did so with good reason, but she was still deliberately cruel, and she still blames herself as much as she blames him for that perceived betrayal. That's strange now, when she'd thought then that she was foolish to trust him and now would do so with anything, unhesitating, but she's had a lifetime's worth of reasons why she should go it alone and not let anyone else in, and it seemed nothing short of stupid to go against that. She's not sure how to explain that, though, without adding insult to probable injury. So much has changed since then. Going back there now feels perhaps all the more awkward and uncomfortable for how long it's been. But it still happened — it was still significant enough to be relevant now — and it's probably better to get it out in the open than leave it quietly overhead.

"I had no one," she says, her voice low, almost like she's speaking to herself, gaze fixed determinedly on her hands. "For years. No commanding officer, no droid to go with me, no one to call for backup. If I didn't look out for myself... No one else would." It still seems like a thin defense, like maybe that shouldn't have mattered, maybe she should have thrown herself into the cause anyway, but abandoned at sixteen, that hadn't been an option. She wasn't going to go back to the same people who cast her aside and never did a thing for her. Even now, she's not sure if she would have been safe if she had, between what Saw told her on Jedha and the way the Alliance was so quick to use her when they found out who she was and then discredit her.

Her fingers curl a little more tightly around her fork, tension still coursing through her. "And I know it might have seemed like I did, but I never had a choice, not in any of it. Joining the fight, or leaving it, or everything that led to that in the first place."

The weight of having said too much hits her suddenly, as uneasy as ever trying to express herself in words or using so many at once. There's one thing, though, that she still has to add, swallowing hard before she does. "I'm sorry, too. I took it out on you. I shouldn't've."

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."

It's almost a relief when he doesn't say anything specific about her response, her attempted defenses. With what he said a moment before, it isn't as if she would have expected him to argue, but regardless, it gives her a moment to try to collect herself again, to sort through her own thoughts in the hopes of finding some sort of coherency. Over the past year and change, she's learned to become somewhat more open, her guard lower than it ever has been with Cassian especially, but she still isn't very good at talking about herself or her feelings, least of all with a subject like this at hand. For years, she was taught to hide any vulnerability, any weakness, lest someone use it against her. Cassian never would, but those old habits die hard, and her instinct is always, after such openness, to retreat again. Although Jyn doesn't want to do that now, she still can't summon up any kind of eloquence this soon, or find some way to verbalize the tangled mess of thoughts running through her head.

Besides, what Cassian does say next overrides any continuation she could have given. For the first time since this subject unexpectedly came up, she turns to look over at him, her eyes wide with worry and remorse. It shouldn't be a surprise, probably. She's heard him say plenty of disparaging things about himself, knows full well that he doesn't consider himself to be a good man even though she's never known a better one. In the shuttle, still drenched with rain and unable to shake the memory of watching her father die, she'd struck at what she thought might be an exposed nerve, trying to make him hurt the way she was hurting. The viciousness in his response made clear enough that she'd succeeded in that; even then, it wasn't as satisfying as she'd hoped. This is different, though. Despite having already just apologized, her stomach twists with guilt, and she flounders, again, as she tries to find a way to verbalize what's in her head.

She could tell him about the 'trooper who shot her mother, how she considers not him but the man in white who gave the order to be Lyra's murderer, but that could too easily go over too badly. She could tell him outright, too, that it was the fact that she trusted him and he lied to her that brought her to that point, but that might just make things worse.

"I don't think that about you," she says, the simplest and truest thing she's got and therefore what seems like the best place to start. "I didn't then. I don't now. I don't blame you, either. Not for any of it." Of course she wishes he'd believed her sooner, that he'd been honest with her about what he was there to do, but he had every reason not to. There's no telling what might have been different, anyway, so there's no sense in getting hung up on it. "If... If he'd been someone else's father, and you'd told me what you were there to do, I wouldn't have thought twice about it."

Granted, they would never have been in that position if that were the case, but she thinks — she hopes — that her point will be clear enough.

He knows that. Logically, Cassian knows that. It doesn't change the way his chest unknots a little. Sometimes, Cassian thinks he's forgotten what forgiveness feels like. Draven had certainly never given it, hadn't really believed in the concept. There were orders and they were followed. Every action, every mission, was that cut and dry to the man. The General had seen everything as a chessboard, remote star charts in an office, removed from the act of killing by experience and rank. Maybe if Cassian had lived long enough, gone through the ranks, he might have become that too. It's an unsavory thought.

What he doesn't know is what to do with the look in Jyn's eyes. Jyn, who still tries to guard her emotions and convictions, is looking at him with an undeniable sadness. He lifts his eyes to her, expression drawn. "I wish I'd listened to you," he says. If he had, then maybe...but that's not what happened. He'd finally seen a spark of hope in Jyn Erso's eyes and ignored it, ready to believe the worst of her, her father, of everyone.

"Maybe," he says. "But that was your father. I was ordered to lie. Say it was an extraction." Cassian doesn't say out loud, again, how sorry he is. He thinks Jyn must already know.

"Neither of us really got to choose our ideals, growing up," he finally says. "I shouldn't have judged you for that."

True as it might be, Jyn doesn't tell him that she wishes he'd listened to her, too. It would feel needlessly cruel now, like salt in a wound — maybe not one that she inflicted in the first place, but certainly one that she worsened. They can't go back and change it. She can't think to grab her father's message as they ran out of the crumbling catacombs on Jedha or unsay any of what she said to him on the shuttle away from Eadu any more than he can decide sooner to believe her or tell her what he'd actually been sent to do. What happened is immutable, set in stone now. All she can do is try to make as much right as possible.

It's not an easy thing to consider for someone who's more used to running away from unpleasant situations than working through them, who's better with her fists than with words. Apologies don't come easily; she has too little experience with them, at least the genuine, serious kind, the sort Cassian deserves. He hurt her, yes, and the fact of that is impossible to get around, as is the grief that had felt so overwhelming, made her irrational and angry. None of that changes what she did in turn, or the effect it had, or how she feels about it now. She hadn't known him then, not really. Arguing with him was a bit like fighting with a blindfold on. Practice and proximity could give her a good idea of how and where to strike, but she couldn't know until after the fact just how much damage she'd done. Apparently it was a lucky hit, a knife between ribs or in the soft unguarded joints of armor. With a stranger, she wouldn't have cared. With Cassian, then, she at least told herself that she didn't. Knowing him like she does now, and that she could only have reinforced beliefs he has about himself that she would give anything to change if she could, it matters a hell of a lot.

"I get it," she says, looking down at her lap again. "Why you did what you did. I probably wouldn't have believed me, either. Or trusted me." He did believe her, finally, when it counted. Even knowing how things ended, that still means a hell of a lot. She pauses a moment before carrying on, stilted and clearly unsure of herself but determined to get this out. "I mean it. I... I shouldn't have said what I did to you. It was too cruel, and it wasn't fair to just take it out on you."

She shrugs, a thin, grim smile curving her mouth, one without any mirth or lightness behind it. "I guess maybe we were both wrong about some things."

Edited 2018-09-13 22:38 (UTC)

It would just be another repetition of what he's thought so many times. If only he'd listened. If only he'd communicated with the base to stay any attacks. If only they'd arrived in Jedha with a little more time. Over and over. He can wish as much as he wants but there's no undoing what's happened. If that were possible, he'd go further back than that. Instead, he'd looked at the future and tried to find a little bit more hope, to make Jyn understand that at least one person had believed her. More than one, actually.

"You threw all my instincts off," he admits, smiling a little ruefully. "I'd never formed any really close attachments. I'd never just trusted people, except maybe Kaytoo." And that's a little pathetic in and of itself. He'd had allies, contacts, backup, superior officers, but not friends. Jyn should have been a means to an objective. Their flight to Jedha had done nothing to inspire friendliness and yet, when it came down to the moment, he'd never really thought of leaving her behind.

"My whole life, my job was taking intel, figuring out how good it was, and moving on to the next source. The next mission." As soon as they'd made it off Jedha without the message, he should have scrubbed the rest of the plan and gone back to Yavin IV. "That's how I was supposed to see you, I think. But I never could. Even when you didn't trust me, even when you wanted to hurt me."

Slowly, he reaches over and gently tucks a wisp of hair behind Jyn's ear. "I've got the rest of my life for you to prove me wrong, at least."

Jyn takes in a breath when he reaches out, staying still and letting him touch her, savoring the slight brush of his fingertips against her skin. Somehow that seems to say as much as anything he could put into words, like proof that they're alright, or are going to be. It probably shouldn't even be a concern. They've both known all this time about the fight in the shuttle, and it hasn't made any difference, hasn't stopped them from taking these steps together. She may have worried that he meant what he said about her, but that worry wasn't so consequential that she wouldn't have moved in with him or married him or even wanted him in the first place. Still, she knows that she wasn't fair to him, and she's spent most of a lifetime being left by the people who mattered to her most. Some part of her will probably always be afraid that he'll leave her, too, despite all evidence to the contrary. With that being the case, venturing back into a subject like this, prodding at a wound that's still so raw, could have been dangerous.

"You threw mine off, too," she admits, staring at her hands again, absently twisting her fork between her fingers. "I did trust you. Not at first. But on Jedha. After you shot that Partisan whose grenade would have taken me out." It was enough, at least. Enough for her to count on him to have her back as they fought their way through the streets, enough for her to trade her dearest currency — her identity — to keep him and the others they'd picked up along the way safe. Enough to make what happened after feel so much worse. "I was so mad at myself for that, after. And mad at you, but mostly me. So I took that out on you, too."

His almost killing her father on Eadu wouldn't have mattered half as much if she'd expected it, if she hadn't let herself trust him and had that fragile trust betrayed. She should have known better, or so she'd thought. Now, of course, she would trust him with her life and not hesitate for a moment. Jyn hopes, at least, that he knows that.

"I'd take it back now. If I could. Instead, I'll just try to prove you wrong about yourself."

The fact that he'd earned her trust before Eadu means that it must have hurt her all the worse and Cassian screws his mouth up, thinking Jyn won't tolerate another apology, another 'if only,' but thinking she must recognize it on his face. There's so much of his past that he'll never forgive in himself but they also have a future now. They've already begun it, long before getting married, and if he lets it be a stone around their necks forever, they won't get far.

The future.

"I promise," he says. "To always believe you." It feels a little like he's concocted a new wedding vow right on the spot but why not. If Jyn is going to prove him wrong then he can do better too. He'll never feel like a good man and he's had a hard time even believing that someday he'll be good enough but if Jyn says it and he promises to believe her...

"And," he adds, thinking of the earlier topic. "I think you'll make a great teacher."

Instinctively, Jyn wants to quip that he shouldn't. Under any other circumstances, she probably would have, if only because she thinks he knows that she wouldn't actually lie to him, no matter how dishonest she may have built a life out of being. She might choose her words carefully or decide she doesn't want to talk about something, but she wouldn't give him any cause not to believe her that he wouldn't have already. Of course he didn't trust her at first, considering that what he knew of her was that she was a criminal with a long list of aliases and an even longer rap sheet. Like she just told him, she wouldn't have trusted herself, if she'd been the one in his position dealing with someone like her. At least he did when it counted, when it made the most difference. At least he does now, which matters far more than anything in the past.

It isn't worth holding a grudge, not against him, not when she understands why he did what he did, and especially not with everything that's happened since. She's not sure how to say that in a way that will sink in. She's not sure how to agree with what he's said about her, though, so maybe that's just as well.

"I'm not anyone people should look up to," she says, shrugging uncertainly. "I don't know why either of you think I would be." She doubts she'll get Cassian to agree with her, though, even though he probably knows better than anyone why that should be the case. "You would tell me, though, right? If you thought it was a terrible idea?"

It's perhaps overly sentimental and in another conversation, he thinks Jyn would call him out on it. This has gotten so raw and honest in ways they didn't expect and Cassian prefers to be serious, sincere. Dwelling on what can't be changed leaves him going in circles that eventually turn out to be a downward spiral. It's what tonight threatens to become if not for the choice he's making now, shaped as a promise to Jyn. Promising to believe her means promising to believe it when she says he's not a bad man. Or that she doesn't blame him.

She doesn't say anything in response but Cassian thinks she doesn't really need to. Jyn's never wavered in her assessment of Cassian. He's just the one who's struggled to believe it.

Somewhere, beneath all of the fears and worries, Cassian marvels at Jyn. It's the same kind of awe that he felt for her in Jedha, taking out all those stormtroopers on her own but now it's a quieter, more personal thing.

"I don't think it's a terrible idea," he promises her. It's his turn, maybe, to build Jyn up to try and believe what he thinks of her. "I think the fact that you're worrying about it and want to do right by them means more than someone who's completely certain in their abilities without caring." And Jyn has always cared so much more than she lets on, has ever been given the chance to show.

It's probably somewhat hypocritical, Jyn knows, to wish that he would believe what she says about him but completely fail to understand how he can hold her in such high regard. If anything, the conversation they've just had seems like proof that he shouldn't. No kind person would say the things she said to him, for the reasons she said them. They definitely wouldn't wait nearly a year and a half and only bring it up then by accident. She doesn't want to start talking in circles, though, and she doubts that any amount of reassurance will convince her that taking this on isn't crazy. Knowing that he thinks it isn't will have to be enough.

"I made Lincoln promise to tell me if he thinks I'm terrible at it," she says, "so there's that, at least." That vote of confidence helps, too, as much as anything can. Short of Cassian, of course, Lincoln is the person here she trusts the most. She thinks they're both crazy, but it is, as least, nice to know that the people who mean the most to her think well of her. As dishonest as it feels, she would much rather they be wrong and like her than they be right and write her off entirely, well within his rights as Cassian would have been to do so.

She can't let herself keep thinking about that, though, can't wonder how much damage she did by reinforcing what he already believed about himself. She'll drive herself crazy, and she won't be able to let it go, and neither of them needs that.

Instead, she seizes on something Cassian has just said, the implication in that unearned trust. "You know," she adds, "you might want to reconsider always believing me, or you'll have to believe what I say about you."

Kindness and brokenness aren't mutually exclusive. Jyn has her reasons to be defensive, to keep her hand close to the chest. The world is very rarely kind to those people in return and they've both had to but walls up inside of themselves to survive places and moments that would otherwise strip it from them. Cassian feels as though he's got less goodness left in him than Jyn, though he doesn't say that aloud after what they've just talked about.

"When you care about something, it's impossible not to see it," he says, thinking about the council meeting and then the speech she gave onboard. If she commits to teaching, Cassian has no reason to think she won't bring the same attitude. "Maybe I'm biased but I don't think that makes it untrue."

The subject changes back to him and Cassian makes a face. "I knew you'd find a loophole," he says, even though it's one he'd expected her to take. "I don't believe in myself, but if I have to believe you and you believe in me..." He smiles, though there's still self-deprecation in his eyes. Cassian wants to be the man Jyn sees in him, the man he doesn't believe he can be. But Jyn believes it and so he must believe her. Or try to be what she thinks is true.

As much as Jyn would like to push, she knows she's not likely to get any more than that from him. It's enough, at least for now. It has to be. Besides, it's probably fair that this loophole comes with an inherent compromise. She doesn't think he should put that much faith in her; he doesn't agree with her belief that he's a good man. They both have to make a concession of sorts here. Reluctant as she may be, she'll accept that trust, far more than she deserves, if it means he'll at least try to take her at her word.

Her own smile in response is a little sad, a little reluctant, though she doesn't know if that's specifically to do with what he's said or the weight of this conversation hanging over her. None of this is anything she really intended to revisit. Jyn isn't entirely sure what that says about her, but given the circumstances, there's probably no sense in trying to say that. Chances are, he would just tell her that he didn't bring it up, either, which is true enough, even if she's more inclined to let him off the hook than herself.

"If you knew I'd find one, you shouldn't have given me such an obvious one," she says, making a face in turn. It's a little halfhearted, but at least she's trying to get out of her own head. "You don't have to agree with me. Just... maybe trust that I'm not wrong. That I feel the way I do for a reason."

"I always trust you now," Cassian says. He's trusted her implicitly since Scarif. It's strange to think that he also fell a little in love with her then too, though the first he noticed far before the second. It's his own judgment, his own merits he doesn't trust but it's too late by far to say Jyn shouldn't trust him. It'd be callous, given that they're married. He just needs to turn that allowance inward.

"You're the only one I trust with all my loopholes." He scrunches up his face, realizing that it sounds suggestive out loud rather than sincere, but he hopes Jyn understands.

To make up for it, he leans over to kiss the top of Jyn's head and spends a moment with his arm around her, just holding her close for the simple fact that he can. The hardest words have already been exchanged, though he doesn't expect everything to lighten back to the conversation they'd had before dinner. "The food's gone cold. Want me to heat it back up?"

Jyn stays still, again, when he pulls her in close, taking a deep breath to try to pull herself together. It isn't a rejection, or at least she hopes he knows it isn't meant as such. She'd be pushing him away and walking off somewhere if it were. Before, when they first started sleeping together and she started spending days on end in his apartment, she would put physical distance between them when she started to feel like she was getting too close or like she made herself too vulnerable. She has no desire to do that now, but it still isn't easy for her to talk about things like this. That would be the case under normal, equally serious circumstances, but it's even more so with the weight of something they've been carrying around and leaving undiscussed for a year and a half. She's left feeling strangely raw now, sad in a way she wouldn't have the first idea how to articulate. Even if she tried, it would probably just bring them back in circles and not help anything.

She just has to pull herself together. Easier said than done when Cassian has long since become the person around whom she lets her guard down the most, but she still ought to try.

"Yeah, alright," she agrees with a nod. With her stomach in knots, she doesn't feel half as hungry as she did when she first got here, but she's too much in the habit of not letting herself turn down food. Especially after Cassian cooked for her, she doesn't want to let that go to waste or to seem unappreciative just because of an unexpected turn of conversation. Instinctively, she thinks that it shouldn't even matter now, except she thinks the fact that it's always mattered might be at least part of what's stopped her from bringing it up. "Sorry. That would be great. It really is good, I just got... sidetracked."

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