“No,” she says, and his heart unexpectedly aches for her. By any standard, Cassian should be as lost and angry as she. He has experienced hurt after hurt, even died twice in the bare decade of his existence. He has known loneliness, and he has known times where despair should have filled him. Despite all that, Cassian has never been able to find it in himself to be angry at the world.
If he were a more reflective sort, he would say it is because there is already too much anger in the world. The world did not need his adding to it. But he is not the reflective sort, and so instead he simply lives each day by choosing to find the things that make him happy. By remembering the good rather than the bad. By filling his heart with love instead of hate. A foolishly naive sentiment perhaps, but one it seems he wouldn’t grow out of.
So when she buries her face against him, he reacts by instinct, neck curling around her to hold her close. In that moment, he wishes he could do more, could be more. Wishes that he could take all of her hurts as his own. Wishes he could let her know happiness as he has known it. He might not know the details of her history and the pain it wrote across her skin, but he can see the truth of it clearly in every line of her.
“For now,” he agrees, soft voice barely more than a rumble in his throat. Pressing his lips to the galaxy winding over her shoulder, he traces a rhythmic trail along the slope, doing his best to show her, in one small way, that she is as real as the trees around them. “And maybe one day we won’t have to pretend.”
@[Beryl]