Once, she heard of someone mentioning a slave queen. She didn't understand how it was possible to be both. They were opposite. Maybe it had something to do with Leia's… episode at the Hutts. But the person swore it wasn't that. So Jyn asked if she meant slaver instead, some kind of crime queen. You will understand one day, was the reply.
Now she understands. In society, in public, she is a queen most of the time. Though he sometimes is ashamed of her, she knows, he does his best to give instructions before so she behaves as he likes. Young, impulsive, naive, this may be attractive in the bedroom, but this doesn't suit a Lady Krennic and as such has to be kept away, as she should. Krennic wouldn't have it any other way. A slave doesn't carry your line, doesn't mix her blood with yours, red on white. She rolls her eyes at the thought. But at home… He was the master of every big decision, and many small ones. She had free reign over dinner and droids and dresses - among those he vetted.
Had she married someone poorer, younger, the power balance would be different. Granted the man would have no money, no experience, a mere boy as Krennic reminded her, once. To which she replied that his experience was useless with her and he snarled, because she was right. Mostly…
He wasn't the same out of the house either. She sometimes got a glimpse of weakness in the bedroom. At those moments she clung to hatred because it was not weak; she told herself, then, that he thought of her father in order to feed this feeling...
The holonet claimed the director fucked around and tortured resistants, as two pastimes almost. When she brought it up during a fight, he swore that he never as much as willingly set foot into a brothel. Nor did he, when he had to because some superior officer had decided so, ever been upstairs. In time she came to believe it, imagining the younger man defending his virtue against temptations that weren't quite tempting because the right place wouldn't have been somewhere men went together but in shame. In time she came to realize he never defended himself against the second accusation as if it didn't matter, or was so obvious… Or was right, in a way that didn't shame him. In a way that didn't quite taint his honor as a gentleman officer, but was merely an unsavoury consequence of the war. Perhaps it was easier for him to find his fun in an interrogation cell than in a brothel. Certainly than in a girls' house, she thought.
One time, one only, she asked again about this. He smiled, half warning half provoking. Then he said they were working on some breakthrough, some new method involving a newfangled drug shot, and that he just needed the occasion. She had averted her face entirely, hatefully shaken, and he laughed again and announced they were retiring to bed early. He didn't take long to be close then, and somehow felt the need to talk about that new method until he peaked. Jyn cringed, disgusted, shrieked something aking to Shut up, yet managed to finish and hated herself. She tells herself the details were blurry.
Later, when she calls her parents on the holopad, she pretends nothing has happened as she always does. Wouldn't do to have them hear that she goes to bed with a man who is likely to bring up men, or torture, or genocide. She doesn't tell them she flattered her husband into allowing this, and doesn't tell him not to mercilessly taunt her mother about an invisible gain weight.
"Are we expecting some good news, Lyra dear?", he minces. She bites off a groan. "Oh, of course not. Not getting much, Erso?". Lyra doesn't know if he's addressing her husband or herself and loathes his involvement in their private life - decades of that. "You would do well with a new daughter, now that you sold the older one away to the enemy. Hurry. You aren't as fresh and… ripe as the one you bought your freedom with. Ah, to have the energy of youth". She startles hard and she is sure her parents can hear her gaudy jewelry clicking. The Empire crest, adorned with the Krennic heraldry, the mark of high end slavery on her fingers, around her neck and wrists, pearls and diamonds and stones with odd exotic names she cannot memorize, priceless and degrading. She wears it always now, so much so that she forgot about it and didn't understand her parents' gazes on those body parts. She has seen the envious glares of women. Women yearn to yield, the Director said, and she suspected his own father taught him that. She can vaguely, hardly see her mother's expression. Jyn averts her face so brutally her hair doesn't quite follow, her eyes suddenly obscured. It is for the best. The Director is obviously getting everything he wanted from this interaction, this marriage, this life. His smile cuts, cuts, cuts. The girl is young still. She doesn't understand that it wouldn't be the case if he hadn't shed tears over Galen - meager tears, yet more than for billions.
Jyn has grown somber, so have her thoughts, she doesn't feel like she is barely out of her teens anymore. Maybe it is an older husband. Maybe it is being married to a man planning mass murder. He cries out her name when he comes but there is nothing like love between them, she hopes.
I love him he betrayed me. I love him. Not even past tense, he didn't bother using a past tense. She tells herself she is the only woman he has a remote interest in, barring Lyra but for entirely other reasons. He has more than hinted that he pleasured himself to thoughts of taking her before they were married, and it translated, in her mind, as something like being his only female, half normal in his standards, fantasy. He was probably the first surprised. It works, Jyn. She wonders if he still does it occasionally now that he has her, and wishes she knew if he does it thinking of her father. They do not discuss Galen because when they do, she yells and rages and cries and he fucks her with Force knows what in mind. She should ask him, she thinks. Once.
Serge Gainsbourg can claim the reference to the mark of slavery on fingers (as a hint wedding and engagement rings and basically every jewel a possessive husband adds)
(search for Initials BB)