He accepts her help clambering to his feet, dividing the balance of his weight between the tree and her strength. Once up, he kept ahold of her hand. He reaches also to claim her other. Each of her hands in either of his, he stretched them out at arms length, grinning, to look at the state of them both.

For just a moment, the smile freezes on his face.

A glass shard
a bolt of wire
electroconvulsing optic nerve to brain

mud of different colors
different mineral and chemical composition from different worlds
mixed with machine oil or crystal fuel or carbonization or blood

covering bare feet, boots, rags, uniforms, hands, faces
of insurrectionists on the fringe
of spectrum in the core
of rebels everywhere
Ayuda Ksoros Qw'xy Khroiu Dorosz Narede Xilo Syndulla Kallus Calfor Sefla—

Jyn

Jyn

He closes his eyes with the abruptness of readjusting a rifle sight.

He reopens them.

It's hard to tell in his dark eyes. But his pupils have indeed changed their dilation. Refocused. Stopped seeing the past. He made them.

He fixes them firmly on Jyn to anchor himself here.


It was just mud.

They haven't been in combat. Quite the opposite.


And the mud was cold and not terribly comfortable…

And he suddenly thought of a much better way to proceed than let himself slip into horrible flashbacks.


Breaking the moment with deliberate suddenness, Cassian pulled himself and Jyn together by their linked hands and gave her a deep, intense kiss. —Or starts to. But catches himself from being too forceful or one-sided and turns it lighter, more tender. Less needful. More grateful.

Then let her go, stepping back. "Sorry, hang on. Let me just finish bringing down this bough and gather what I'd cut earlier. I have an idea."