He leaned his face slightly into her touch, eyes staying on hers. The canyon… She didn't mean their new world… he felt a pang realizing what she did mean. But held her gaze.
He would have followed the trajectory of her touch—all the way—to her: to frame her face the way she was his and let himself go fully to kiss her. But something in her expression and pose said she wasn't finished thinking or speaking or deciding, so he waited and watched.
He wasn't expecting… the story (…at last; the importance of the necklace to her being had been obvious from first sight of it; but it had been irrelevant to their work, so he hadn't tried to find out; even as his interest in her beyond the mission had grown, it would never have occurred to him to be remotely his business; hadn't thought to dream it ever would) of the crystal necklace.
To be offered the object itself…
Cassian had lived out of one duffel or another all of his life. …Not even the same one. Forget about personal talismans: he hadn't even owned the bags themselves, let alone the gear in them. He packed impersonal and he packed light. Anything he'd had as a child was from the Empire and been left with them. Anything he'd actually kept or brought with him from the Insurgency had been antibiotically cured or surgically cut out of him on joining the Alliance. Anything after that was on loan for and from the Rebellion.
He supposed his BlasTech, concealed sidearm, compact security kit, captain's insignia, identifier transponder, and its hidden suicide pill had been his. The things that never left him even as everything else was constantly used up or swapped out. He hadn't felt exactly emotionally attached to them. For all the acquisition of each marked a certification, an achievement, and had been given to him by Draven, that hardly made them fatherly tokens.
It might not be the actual crystal from Jyn's mother. But it wasn't the object itself that carried the meaning. And Jyn had just imbued this one with that meaning. (A last gift from a parent. Deathless protection and love. How he'd raged for a while against the utter absence of such things from his own.) And she wanted to give it him.
Slowly, almost nervously, Cassian reached his hand to hers, resting the very ends of his fingers on her crystal in her palm.
Her joke betrayed an important concern… and partly because it absolutely should be addressed, but more partly because he hadn't yet formed what on Fest he was going to say in answer to the rest of this, Cassian said, in a slightly (not bad, just) strange voice, "Don't worry that I won't make my own choices from now on. The rank thing… think of it as an escape code to break out of a feedback loop." (Droid programming terminology probably not too helpful; rephrased—) "A reverse safeword. It won't have effect unless you invoke it specifically. You know… start by calling me by my formal title and it'll activate yours. It's you giving me a safety net to stop when I'm falling, when I try to anticipate your decisions regarding yourself in relation to me. My decisions regarding myself in relation to you… those will still be my own. I know you'd never try to make them for me. And I know you want to trust them when I do."
His fingers remain suspended a moment, then close around the crystal. But keeps it and his grip on it in her hand still, running his thumb along her skin.
"I've never had anything like this before. It's a precious gift. I'll treasure it. …It might even help me. Thank you."
no subject
He would have followed the trajectory of her touch—all the way—to her: to frame her face the way she was his and let himself go fully to kiss her. But something in her expression and pose said she wasn't finished thinking or speaking or deciding, so he waited and watched.
He wasn't expecting… the story (…at last; the importance of the necklace to her being had been obvious from first sight of it; but it had been irrelevant to their work, so he hadn't tried to find out; even as his interest in her beyond the mission had grown, it would never have occurred to him to be remotely his business; hadn't thought to dream it ever would) of the crystal necklace.
To be offered the object itself…
Cassian had lived out of one duffel or another all of his life. …Not even the same one. Forget about personal talismans: he hadn't even owned the bags themselves, let alone the gear in them. He packed impersonal and he packed light. Anything he'd had as a child was from the Empire and been left with them. Anything he'd actually kept or brought with him from the Insurgency had been antibiotically cured or surgically cut out of him on joining the Alliance. Anything after that was on loan for and from the Rebellion.
He supposed his BlasTech, concealed sidearm, compact security kit, captain's insignia, identifier transponder, and its hidden suicide pill had been his. The things that never left him even as everything else was constantly used up or swapped out. He hadn't felt exactly emotionally attached to them. For all the acquisition of each marked a certification, an achievement, and had been given to him by Draven, that hardly made them fatherly tokens.
It might not be the actual crystal from Jyn's mother. But it wasn't the object itself that carried the meaning. And Jyn had just imbued this one with that meaning. (A last gift from a parent. Deathless protection and love. How he'd raged for a while against the utter absence of such things from his own.) And she wanted to give it him.
Slowly, almost nervously, Cassian reached his hand to hers, resting the very ends of his fingers on her crystal in her palm.
Her joke betrayed an important concern… and partly because it absolutely should be addressed, but more partly because he hadn't yet formed what on Fest he was going to say in answer to the rest of this, Cassian said, in a slightly (not bad, just) strange voice, "Don't worry that I won't make my own choices from now on. The rank thing… think of it as an escape code to break out of a feedback loop." (Droid programming terminology probably not too helpful; rephrased—) "A reverse safeword. It won't have effect unless you invoke it specifically. You know… start by calling me by my formal title and it'll activate yours. It's you giving me a safety net to stop when I'm falling, when I try to anticipate your decisions regarding yourself in relation to me. My decisions regarding myself in relation to you… those will still be my own. I know you'd never try to make them for me. And I know you want to trust them when I do."
His fingers remain suspended a moment, then close around the crystal. But keeps it and his grip on it in her hand still, running his thumb along her skin.
"I've never had anything like this before. It's a precious gift. I'll treasure it. …It might even help me. Thank you."