"First out means first to grab the bags, mija!" Jyn calls out before Sofia can scamper over to her father and uncle without helping with the groceries. She pops the trunk before she climbs out of the car after the little girl, giving Kay a little wave.
"Bold move to stay when it's my night to cook." Bold or dangerous, really, since she is still not an exceptionally accomplished cook. She flashes them a bright smile, jerking her head toward the trunk. "But since you're here, you both have to help with the groceries too."
They both should have fled when the car rolled up.
Jyn heads to the trunk to find a couple bags for Sofia to handle, the chips and snacks and bread, things not too heavy or fragile. The long handles make the reusable bags almost drag against the ground, even settled on her shoulders, as Sofia brings both bags in at once and Jyn knows from experience that she's going to hit them on every step but it's too cute to find a different way to carry them. It's precious.
It's hard to stay completely angry when his daughter is carrying the grocery bags like that. Neither he nor Jyn can bring themselves to teach her something else. It soothes him a little, but that frustration is still there because - because how dare they? Sofia belongs here, with him and Jyn and the rest of their wonderful family and the adorable way she determinedly carries those grocery bags.
"Do not say anything in front of her," he hisses out, before jogging down the stairs to help. Kay huffs, affronted, mumbling something about low expectations.
Cassian might be better at hiding he's irritated and upset, but Kay clomps unhappily to the car and yanks out three bags. He is not subtle. "I am not going to die from your cooking," he says. "It's adequate." Which is much better than when he told her it was terrible. He doesn't wait for a reply before heading off to the house, passing Sofia along the way.
She giggles at him. "Hi Uncle Kay!"
"Hello, Sofia." At least he sounds much less hostile in her direction. He is secretly her biggest fan since day one.
Cassian kisses Jyn distractedly on the temple, gathering up a couple bags too. "Hi."
Abuelita tsks after Kay and Sofia, having zero bags because she's the oldest and doesn't ever have to carry bags anymore, leaving Jyn and Cassian alone by the car.
"Hi." She hums into the kiss, scooping up her own bags. "He's a grump today. So the line was so long I read almost an entire magazine and did you kn-- hey. You okay?" Her forehead wrinkles up in concern when she really stops to look at him, frown slanting down her mouth.
He was fine when they left, albeit slightly annoyed that the front door is still squeaking no matter the amount of WD-40 they've put on the hinges, but it's not the same disquiet she sees now.
Cassian closes the trunk because between all of them, that's all of the grocery bags. It's great, multiple trips are annoying.
He's quiet for a few seconds, unsurprised she could read it in him so quickly no matter how well he masked it. In some ways it makes it easier to bring it up. "No."
She can tell, there's no point to lying, especially when he's going to explain it all as soon as he can anyway. "Let's take the bags in first. I do not want Sofia to interrupt."
If they go inside, he can make sure his friend and his grandmother keep her occupied. There's a good chance she would just come running outside if her parents took too long.
"Yeah, of course. They can take her out back in the garden while we cook." Abuelita will catch on considering that she was meant to finally be teaching Jyn some secret family recipe for chiles en nogada, but they can push that off. "I got stuff for tostadas."
She sets off before Cassian, loping up the steps, and pushing open the door, striding inside and into the kitchen where Sofia is bossing around her grandmother and uncle around like a tiny dictator. "No, that's not how Papi does it!"
It probably isn't, but a. no one does anything the way Cassian does it and b. that doesn't excuse bad manners.
Abuelita will be the next to know, but he thinks he needs to just... talk about it with Jyn, before he goes to his grandmother. He needs to have more of a gameplan before he does that.
The sound of Sofia attempting to boss around her family does bring a smile to his face, even though it shouldn't, because it's rude.
She scrunches her nose when Jyn chastises her. She makes her voice a lot quieter before she tries again. "No, that's not how Papi does it, please?"
Cassian tries very hard not to laugh. It does get stunted when he remembers her other grandparents and how poorly they might respond to her totalitarian grip on the kitchen. He walks over to her and squats down so he can kiss her on the head. "Sofia, will you take Uncle Kay and Abuelita outside? Show them the flowers you and mama planted yesterday."
Abuelita's eyes narrow, because Jyn was right and she immediately catches on to something else going on, but she recognizes the push for privacy. She walks over and takes Sofia's hand. "It sounds like you are just letting her get out of putting the groceries away."
"Just this once," Cassian says. "Jyn and I will start dinner."
Jyn busies herself in putting said groceries away while Sofia leads them out the back door, taking her time and being too methodical about it. Only the spices are left on the counter as the folds up the bags, but that is simply because she can't make heads or tails of Cassian's spice organization still and it's been over five years together in this kitchen. Maybe he sorts them in Spanish, she doesn't know.
Briefly she watches Sofia and her two babysitters through the window over the sink before she turns to face Cassian, twisting her engagement ring nervously around her finger.
"You're not breaking up with me right? I feel like you're not because you wouldn't volunteer me to make dinner and then ditch me, but that's literally all I'm going to be thinking about the whole time so just tell me now and I'll go to Bodhi's once Sofia's asleep so she doesn't know anything is wrong."
Five years with him and a new engagement but it's the worst news she can imagine so that's what she immediately jumped to.
He can hear Sofia's idle chatter from outside. She loves that garden, it will keep all three of them busy for hopefully enough time to tell Jyn what's up. They spend a few minutes in silence putting the groceries away, and he moves towards the spices to begin that process (she doesn't even bother trying anymore). He picks one up to put it away, when Jyn speaks up.
Cassian looks over at her, eyebrows scrunched and completely taken aback. Confused. So much so that it takes him a few long seconds to even respond, because it's unfathomable that he would want to break up with her.
"What? No!" He immediately abandons the spice and moves towards her, grabbing her hands and pulling her in. "No, no, no. I am sorry to have made you even think so."
He kisses the top of her head and lingers there. He still doesn't know how to do this, but it's better than her thinking they are over. "Marisol's parents came to visit."
He specifically calls them parents and not grandparents, because maybe they are biologically, but they aren't in any other way, and he's still mad about it.
She recoils, face twisting in confusion as she pulls back from him.
"Why?" A beat, confusion turning to nerves. "Is Marisol alright?" Why else would Marisol's parents come and not Marisol herself. Not that Marisol visits very often but a sight more often than her parents whom Jyn has never met even the once even the past five years.
They don't text that often either but she hasn't heard from Sofia's mother in some time, maybe...
"It had nothing to do with her. She is fine, as far as I can tell."
Which would have been a good assumption! It reminds him that he needs to... ask her, if she's heard of this. Her parents had barely mentioned her, and he likes to imagine they're on good enough terms that she would have warned him they were coming, if she knew.
Cassian steals a glance out the window, jaw setting in a tight line.
"They told me they want her." As if on cue, Sofia's laugh filters in. "They came all this way just to tell me they plan to seek custody."
Of course they want her. She is amazing and incredible and wonderful and irritating and stubborn and demanding and too damn smart and perfect. Except they don't even know that because they've never been around, ever.
"They can't have her. Marisol gave her to you. You're her father. They can't have a case, there is no way." But they have money and Jyn knows it and there is a way, money is the way.
Jyn's instant reaction is just what he imagined it might be, which is a comfort. Not everything about today is going off the rails. It's reassuring. It's a reminder that yes, Marisol relinquished her rights, and Cassian has more right than grandparents. Maybe he's not as wealthy, but he has Jyn's salary with his own. They make it work.
"I asked. It took them six years, what made them suddenly change their mind?" He feels so angry all over again. "They did not answer me. They only said it was nothing against me, they are just thinking of Sofia. Which would be a first, since I doubt they think of her more than once a year."
He pinches the bridge of his nose. "I don't know what would make them decide now, after all this time. They didn't want her when she was born, why now? Is it because she is school age?"
It's a different kind of responsibility, between infant and kindergartner.
Jyn shakes her head, making a noise of frustration before she drags out the pans to fry the tortillas. Everything is put down a little too hard, a little too unhappily.
"They can't have her. They can't take her away from the only support system she has ever known and the only parent that has ever parented her. I will not--" She points a wooden spoon at him suddenly, looking furious. "--let them take her away from us. They offer her nothing that you can't give her. She knows her heritage, she speaks Spanish fluently, she is immersed in her culture. They have nothing that you don't already give her every single day."
Jyn will fight a senior citizen, she doesn't care.
They will definitely need to cool down before Sofia comes back inside, but right now he's just glad to feel so justified in his own anger witnessing hers. Cassian's always been a lot more controlled when he's mad, right now he just wants to be like Jyn.
He's still angry, but he finds himself more at ease too. Jyn was always a little bit ruthless, and it's always a relief when it's on his side. Whatever happens, she's there and she would fight a senior citizen. "I told them no. I told them I would never agree to it, would never stop fighting it. She is happy here, provided for, and we may not be as wealthy as they are, but that cannot be the only factor."
He runs a hand through his hair, messing it up. He likes being a team with Jyn, yes, but he's still simmering. "All they said was they would be in touch again. Nothing makes sense - Sofia would not recognize them! Does Marisol even know?"
It's a rhetorical question, but it reminds him he definitely needs to call her. "They cannot win, right? Whatever they try, she is always going to be with us."
They have money though, which is the problem, and Jyn deflates a little at Cassian's question because they might win.
"It's me." She turns back to the pan, determinedly setting to work to fry the tortillas and feeling her frustrations rise because that is what changed. Jyn. Her father was acquitted of all of his charges, which is why he was allowed to die peacefully of his illness in the town of his children's childhood, but that doesn't mean he was absolved of the public scrutiny for his part in designing (and destroying) better post-nuclear weapons.
People hate Edward Snowden too and he did the right thing.
Now Cassian is engaged to Galen Erso's daughter and suddenly his daughter's mother's parents want to take her away? It's not a huge leap to make. She bristles.
"We're engaged, that is what changed. But we have money now, too. They can go fuck themselves. Leia's parents can find us a lawyer. We'll get letters from her teachers and the girls in that little baby sitter's club that have been taking turns with her on Fridays. Luisa, your old landlord, she can speak to how you provided for her." She shakes her head again as she splashes oil into the pan to heat up. "Marisol can't have known, she would have said something. But you should call her. I don't want her to have to fight against her parents but she gave Sofia to you, she has a say in this as well."
Jyn is not the only one circling back to the money issue. He knows Marisol's family is wealthy, he's known that from the start. But they haven't given a single fuck about Sofia, he doesn't care how much money they have. Jyn's list of rational steps helps settle him, even if he frowns when she brings up her father. He can follow the train of thought, even from a logical standpoint, but he doesn't abide by it. Maybe it's just out of pure stubborn refusal.
"No. No. If your father is their concern, any argument will be thrown out the window. There is no basis." Galen and Jyn had minimal contact in the years before he died. Honestly the more concerning parent should probably be Saw, but he's not about to bring that up.
He and Jyn are stable. They have a house together! Even if Galen is the reason, a good lawyer will see it as poor evidence when he died before Sofia was even one.
"You are Sofia's mother, you have raised her with me, and I know Marisol will agree. I will call her, but just - not now. I do not think I can speak to her right now. I do not even know how you can keep cooking right now."
"I burned my fingertips already, it is keeping me from leaving and committing a double murder."
That is how she can keep cooking, the stinging of her fingers as she flips the tortilla and pats it down into the pan again is keeping her from acting on her rage. Now that she has admitted to her burns however, she lifts her hand so Cassian can look at her fingers before he asks. She knows him very well.
They're not that bad anyway, barely pink. Just enough to sting.
"They can't take her," Jyn reiterates, firm despite the fear shimmering in her eyes.
As soon as she says she burnt her fingertips, she is correct, his attention is looped down to them, and he immediately reaches for her hand when she offers it out. They're more red than pink especially for her skin, but no blisters - it doesn't stop him from gently guiding her to the sink and sticking her fingers under cool (not cold) water. "I will take the tortilla briefly, rinse."
He moves back over to make sure nothing goes wrong with the food, idly glad to have something to focus on. "They can't," he reiterates too. He'd wanted to hear it from Jyn, and despite the fear in her eyes, he believes it. He has to. It doesn't silence his own fear, but they're coming at this as a team - a whole team of people who love Sofia, not just he and Jyn.
"We will eat dinner. I will tell Abuelita after, then she can watch Sofia and we just... start calling people, figure out the next best step. They will not take her. I will not stop fighting them as long as they try."
Jyn looks out the window over the sink, watches Sofia in the garden with her hands on her hips, still being a tiny dictator if the slight arch of Kay's eyebrow is any indication. Jyn wonders what completely ridiculous child logic Kay is biting his tongue to not refute. Yesterday she told Jyn if they watered the garden with purple water, all the flowers would be violets. Not violet, but violets. Despite knowing full well that they just planted daisies.
They can't lose this little girl, she is Cassian's daughter, she belongs with him.
Jyn can't help but feel guilt still, but she pushes it down, tearing her eyes away from Sofia to look back at her fingers.
"They might be rich, but I'm angry and motivated and if your very charming speeches to the choir about unionization has taught me anything, it's that anger and motivation win." And Jyn is very, very angry.
Jyn's anger is weirdly... reassuring. She has weaponized her anger on too many occasions to count, and Cassian would never want to be on the receiving end of it. It's a comfort.
He reaches out and winds their fingers together again (with one hand, he is still multitasking with the food). "We are a very deadly combination," he says, feeling far better suited to take this on with Jyn back at his side. "And they did not factor in the Organas. They are not the only ones with resources just because they come from old money."
He brings her hand up, kissing her burnt fingertips. "I love you. This is not your fault. There is no one I would rather have at my side for this." For all of this - for Sofia, for this battle, for life in general.
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ohnofeelstho2017-11-27 11:07 pm
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"Bold move to stay when it's my night to cook." Bold or dangerous, really, since she is still not an exceptionally accomplished cook. She flashes them a bright smile, jerking her head toward the trunk. "But since you're here, you both have to help with the groceries too."
They both should have fled when the car rolled up.
Jyn heads to the trunk to find a couple bags for Sofia to handle, the chips and snacks and bread, things not too heavy or fragile. The long handles make the reusable bags almost drag against the ground, even settled on her shoulders, as Sofia brings both bags in at once and Jyn knows from experience that she's going to hit them on every step but it's too cute to find a different way to carry them. It's precious.
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"Do not say anything in front of her," he hisses out, before jogging down the stairs to help. Kay huffs, affronted, mumbling something about low expectations.
Cassian might be better at hiding he's irritated and upset, but Kay clomps unhappily to the car and yanks out three bags. He is not subtle. "I am not going to die from your cooking," he says. "It's adequate." Which is much better than when he told her it was terrible. He doesn't wait for a reply before heading off to the house, passing Sofia along the way.
She giggles at him. "Hi Uncle Kay!"
"Hello, Sofia." At least he sounds much less hostile in her direction. He is secretly her biggest fan since day one.
Cassian kisses Jyn distractedly on the temple, gathering up a couple bags too. "Hi."
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"Hi." She hums into the kiss, scooping up her own bags. "He's a grump today. So the line was so long I read almost an entire magazine and did you kn-- hey. You okay?" Her forehead wrinkles up in concern when she really stops to look at him, frown slanting down her mouth.
He was fine when they left, albeit slightly annoyed that the front door is still squeaking no matter the amount of WD-40 they've put on the hinges, but it's not the same disquiet she sees now.
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He's quiet for a few seconds, unsurprised she could read it in him so quickly no matter how well he masked it. In some ways it makes it easier to bring it up. "No."
She can tell, there's no point to lying, especially when he's going to explain it all as soon as he can anyway. "Let's take the bags in first. I do not want Sofia to interrupt."
If they go inside, he can make sure his friend and his grandmother keep her occupied. There's a good chance she would just come running outside if her parents took too long.
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She sets off before Cassian, loping up the steps, and pushing open the door, striding inside and into the kitchen where Sofia is bossing around her grandmother and uncle around like a tiny dictator. "No, that's not how Papi does it!"
It probably isn't, but a. no one does anything the way Cassian does it and b. that doesn't excuse bad manners.
"Ballenacita. We are gentle with our words."
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The sound of Sofia attempting to boss around her family does bring a smile to his face, even though it shouldn't, because it's rude.
She scrunches her nose when Jyn chastises her. She makes her voice a lot quieter before she tries again. "No, that's not how Papi does it, please?"
Cassian tries very hard not to laugh. It does get stunted when he remembers her other grandparents and how poorly they might respond to her totalitarian grip on the kitchen. He walks over to her and squats down so he can kiss her on the head. "Sofia, will you take Uncle Kay and Abuelita outside? Show them the flowers you and mama planted yesterday."
Abuelita's eyes narrow, because Jyn was right and she immediately catches on to something else going on, but she recognizes the push for privacy. She walks over and takes Sofia's hand. "It sounds like you are just letting her get out of putting the groceries away."
"Just this once," Cassian says. "Jyn and I will start dinner."
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Briefly she watches Sofia and her two babysitters through the window over the sink before she turns to face Cassian, twisting her engagement ring nervously around her finger.
"You're not breaking up with me right? I feel like you're not because you wouldn't volunteer me to make dinner and then ditch me, but that's literally all I'm going to be thinking about the whole time so just tell me now and I'll go to Bodhi's once Sofia's asleep so she doesn't know anything is wrong."
Five years with him and a new engagement but it's the worst news she can imagine so that's what she immediately jumped to.
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Cassian looks over at her, eyebrows scrunched and completely taken aback. Confused. So much so that it takes him a few long seconds to even respond, because it's unfathomable that he would want to break up with her.
"What? No!" He immediately abandons the spice and moves towards her, grabbing her hands and pulling her in. "No, no, no. I am sorry to have made you even think so."
He kisses the top of her head and lingers there. He still doesn't know how to do this, but it's better than her thinking they are over. "Marisol's parents came to visit."
He specifically calls them parents and not grandparents, because maybe they are biologically, but they aren't in any other way, and he's still mad about it.
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"Why?" A beat, confusion turning to nerves. "Is Marisol alright?" Why else would Marisol's parents come and not Marisol herself. Not that Marisol visits very often but a sight more often than her parents whom Jyn has never met even the once even the past five years.
They don't text that often either but she hasn't heard from Sofia's mother in some time, maybe...
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Which would have been a good assumption! It reminds him that he needs to... ask her, if she's heard of this. Her parents had barely mentioned her, and he likes to imagine they're on good enough terms that she would have warned him they were coming, if she knew.
Cassian steals a glance out the window, jaw setting in a tight line.
"They told me they want her." As if on cue, Sofia's laugh filters in. "They came all this way just to tell me they plan to seek custody."
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Of course they want her. She is amazing and incredible and wonderful and irritating and stubborn and demanding and too damn smart and perfect. Except they don't even know that because they've never been around, ever.
"They can't have her. Marisol gave her to you. You're her father. They can't have a case, there is no way." But they have money and Jyn knows it and there is a way, money is the way.
"Why? Why do they want her?"
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"I asked. It took them six years, what made them suddenly change their mind?" He feels so angry all over again. "They did not answer me. They only said it was nothing against me, they are just thinking of Sofia. Which would be a first, since I doubt they think of her more than once a year."
He pinches the bridge of his nose. "I don't know what would make them decide now, after all this time. They didn't want her when she was born, why now? Is it because she is school age?"
It's a different kind of responsibility, between infant and kindergartner.
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"They can't have her. They can't take her away from the only support system she has ever known and the only parent that has ever parented her. I will not--" She points a wooden spoon at him suddenly, looking furious. "--let them take her away from us. They offer her nothing that you can't give her. She knows her heritage, she speaks Spanish fluently, she is immersed in her culture. They have nothing that you don't already give her every single day."
Jyn will fight a senior citizen, she doesn't care.
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He's still angry, but he finds himself more at ease too. Jyn was always a little bit ruthless, and it's always a relief when it's on his side. Whatever happens, she's there and she would fight a senior citizen. "I told them no. I told them I would never agree to it, would never stop fighting it. She is happy here, provided for, and we may not be as wealthy as they are, but that cannot be the only factor."
He runs a hand through his hair, messing it up. He likes being a team with Jyn, yes, but he's still simmering. "All they said was they would be in touch again. Nothing makes sense - Sofia would not recognize them! Does Marisol even know?"
It's a rhetorical question, but it reminds him he definitely needs to call her. "They cannot win, right? Whatever they try, she is always going to be with us."
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"It's me." She turns back to the pan, determinedly setting to work to fry the tortillas and feeling her frustrations rise because that is what changed. Jyn. Her father was acquitted of all of his charges, which is why he was allowed to die peacefully of his illness in the town of his children's childhood, but that doesn't mean he was absolved of the public scrutiny for his part in designing (and destroying) better post-nuclear weapons.
People hate Edward Snowden too and he did the right thing.
Now Cassian is engaged to Galen Erso's daughter and suddenly his daughter's mother's parents want to take her away? It's not a huge leap to make. She bristles.
"We're engaged, that is what changed. But we have money now, too. They can go fuck themselves. Leia's parents can find us a lawyer. We'll get letters from her teachers and the girls in that little baby sitter's club that have been taking turns with her on Fridays. Luisa, your old landlord, she can speak to how you provided for her." She shakes her head again as she splashes oil into the pan to heat up. "Marisol can't have known, she would have said something. But you should call her. I don't want her to have to fight against her parents but she gave Sofia to you, she has a say in this as well."
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"No. No. If your father is their concern, any argument will be thrown out the window. There is no basis." Galen and Jyn had minimal contact in the years before he died. Honestly the more concerning parent should probably be Saw, but he's not about to bring that up.
He and Jyn are stable. They have a house together! Even if Galen is the reason, a good lawyer will see it as poor evidence when he died before Sofia was even one.
"You are Sofia's mother, you have raised her with me, and I know Marisol will agree. I will call her, but just - not now. I do not think I can speak to her right now. I do not even know how you can keep cooking right now."
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That is how she can keep cooking, the stinging of her fingers as she flips the tortilla and pats it down into the pan again is keeping her from acting on her rage. Now that she has admitted to her burns however, she lifts her hand so Cassian can look at her fingers before he asks. She knows him very well.
They're not that bad anyway, barely pink. Just enough to sting.
"They can't take her," Jyn reiterates, firm despite the fear shimmering in her eyes.
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He moves back over to make sure nothing goes wrong with the food, idly glad to have something to focus on. "They can't," he reiterates too. He'd wanted to hear it from Jyn, and despite the fear in her eyes, he believes it. He has to. It doesn't silence his own fear, but they're coming at this as a team - a whole team of people who love Sofia, not just he and Jyn.
"We will eat dinner. I will tell Abuelita after, then she can watch Sofia and we just... start calling people, figure out the next best step. They will not take her. I will not stop fighting them as long as they try."
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They can't lose this little girl, she is Cassian's daughter, she belongs with him.
Jyn can't help but feel guilt still, but she pushes it down, tearing her eyes away from Sofia to look back at her fingers.
"They might be rich, but I'm angry and motivated and if your very charming speeches to the choir about unionization has taught me anything, it's that anger and motivation win." And Jyn is very, very angry.
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He reaches out and winds their fingers together again (with one hand, he is still multitasking with the food). "We are a very deadly combination," he says, feeling far better suited to take this on with Jyn back at his side. "And they did not factor in the Organas. They are not the only ones with resources just because they come from old money."
He brings her hand up, kissing her burnt fingertips. "I love you. This is not your fault. There is no one I would rather have at my side for this." For all of this - for Sofia, for this battle, for life in general.