Human hearts aren't made of stone, thank God. They can break and heal and beat again.
Jyn had experienced the breaking a whole lot. But it wasn't till she reunited with Saw on Jedha that her heart started to really heal, despite how mad she'd been at him. Despite how mad she'd been at her father, watching his holomessage about the Death Star's weakness.
Even speeding away from Jedha in the U-wing, watching the city crumble apart from their place outside the planet, tears streaming down her face, Jyn felt her heart starting to stitch itself back together. Maybe her tears were a sign she was starting to feel again, she figured.
Yelling at Cassian in the hull of the stolen Imperial freighter, glaring at his muddy, rain-soaked face, she thought her heart was broken again. He'd lied to her, gone up on that ridge to shoot her father from afar. And while he didn't pull the trigger, Galen Erso had died anyway in the fire of Rebel bombs.
Cassian might as well have pulled the trigger, Jyn cried in his face. His expression was cornered and guilty and angry and as he got too close to her to growl that he'd been in this struggle for triumph over evil since he was only six Jyn realized that impossibly, against all odds, her heart was still healing.
Maybe a little battered, a little bruised, but it hadn't shattered apart again.
Even during the briefing and even when Cassian and a whole troop of soldiers approached her like they were going to arrest her, her heart held strong.
And then Cassian got close, too close again, and told her, "Welcome home" with a tone to her voice she wasn't used to, a kindness she hadn't known since she was eight and with a start she realized her heart had begun to beat again and she felt warm.
Now, staring down the barrel of the man in white's pistol, she felt more alive than ever. A wild, living, thriving fury coursed through her pumping veins and she dared him in her stance, in her eyes, in her words, to shoot her.
"You've lost."
Jyn was burning, crackling, her electric heart beating and stoking her flame and she knew the man wouldn't shoot her because she'd told herself her whole life the man was a coward. And she believed it here and now and as she watched his trembling hand threatening her emptily she smiled without fear.
The loud pop! of a gun firing rang in her ears and for a second she wondered if she'd underestimated the man in white before he crumpled to the ground, the acrid smell of burning fabric and flesh wafting up to her nose. Cassian stood there against a pillar, bruised and bloodied and alive and Jyn felt her heart speed up and as she plugged the data tape into the slot she realized he'd made her heart beat again.
Cassian may not have sewn her heart back together but even if he had it wouldn't have meant anything if it didn't beat. He didn't mend it but he'd jump-started it back into life and she gave him a tired smile in the turbolift.
"Thank you," she told him softly.
"He was going to shoot you, I couldn't just-"
"Not just that," Jyn interrupted him. "For sticking with me. For everything you've done these past few days."
Cassian's tired eyes crinkled up in a small grin. "Mothma said I had to," he shrugged jokingly.
Jyn smacked him lightly on the shoulder and he winced. "Sorry," Jyn said guiltily. Cassian only laughed.
There was a silence and a jarring impact as the lift stopped on the ground and Jyn stared at the rumbling explosion of the main base across the lagoon. Cassian's arm around her tightened and she could hear his heart speed up in fear despite his breezy, uncaring expression. Jyn, however, had been ready to die for a long time and even in the flaming height of her life where she felt so alive she wasn't scared of the billowing death ahead of them.
"Thank you," she whispered again. "I forgot what it was like to feel alive."
Cassian's expression was unreadable but for the most part he looked happy, content.
"I did too."
Jyn beamed at him and looked back at the explosion before taking a deep breath and helping him make the journey with her to the beach to watch the horizon.