Tarkin wasn't entirely as confident as usual when he had Erso and his wife brought to him. He looked only at the man he had worked with, and hesitated. Actually hesitated.
"We've found trace of your daughter," he said. There was no bite to his words. That was when both understood. Their daughter, braver than they had ever been. "She was part of a rebel crew on Scarif."
Lyra's tears started flowing. She had never cried that way, not when they had been caught, not when, after that, she found Krennic's mouth against her husband's. Despite it all. Erso tensed and he fisted his hands, trying hard not to show what he thought Tarkin wanted to see. Lyra turned toward him, but he was looking in front of him, statue like.
"For what it's worth - the Director was on the planet." His tone was almost softer, for a soldier like him, if it was even possible. That was when she heard it. Galen gasped. She frowned, half blinded through her tears.
"Orson?" Erso asked, almost the tone he had used when they had kissed. He shivered and made some type of wet noise, like a grown up who will not cry, but does anyway.
Tarkin looked at her, then. Maybe for the first time, certainly a first in decades. She was scared, without reason as nothing worse could happen. In fact it would be relief if it did. But she didn't have to be. He was looking at her with much, much more pity than disdain. A first indeed. She had the Grand Moff's pity. Her daughter was… Her husband was crying over Krennic, having lost his daughter and his lover, the second one a blow he couldn't apparently handle. And Tarkin experienced the closest he could to human feelings for her, who had absolutely nothing left but endured.