Jyn and Cassian walked out of the clothes store, with a couple of bags hanging from her arms. She thought of those rich Imperial chicks who spent their days shopping at the expense of their rich daddies' bank accounts, and had everything they could wish for. Jyn was sure that not even all their riches made them as content as she felt in that moment, but not because of the cheap pieces of fabric she bought, but because for the first time in many years, she was beginning to live an ordinary life with people she was starting to appreciate. She'd enjoy those moments to the fullest while they lasted.
What was more, Peg had offered her a bedroom in her apartment above the repair shop, one of the two spare bedrooms she had available. The rent was low (Peg said that those credits would come from the salary she'd pay Jyn anyway) and both would share the household chores and expenses. The apartment was cozy and part of the furniture had small touches on them, like trinkets and holographs of people who looked like Peg's dead relatives and her absent niece.
Jyn had shared barracks and living quarters before, but since she'd left Lah'mu, she'd never felt at home anywhere or with anyone. She was only eighteen currently, an age at which teenagers with normal, happy lives were eager for adventure, for leaving their childhood homes behind and discovering the galaxy. Jyn felt as if she'd lived a hundred lifetimes, endured things no one should, and seen much more than she would be ever ready for. She would have given anything to have her childhood home back, her parents back, her innocence back, before everything had fallen apart around her. She was so tired of being alone, of feeling used, sullied, worn away, old.
"I'm glad Peg has taken you as a tenant. I know she's a softie at heart, but not even I would have dared to venture that she'd be that generous," Cassian admitted while they were heading for a nearby grocery. Peg had asked Jyn to buy a few food items for the next meals while she put to the task of getting dinner ready, and shooed her away as soon as Cassian had dropped by. She'd warned Jyn to be punctual and not to linger over returning, grumbling between her teeth that youngsters who made puppy eyes at each other were a lost cause. If the woman hadn't intended to be heard by said youngsters, she'd failed resoundingly, because both Jyn and Cassian heard her perfectly clearly and hurried away from the building with faces as red as ripe fruit and knowing by instinct that it was useless to try to contradict the stubborn woman.
Jyn hadn't felt young in such a long, long time that she'd been sure that she was incapable of reactions like making puppy eyes. Or maybe with Cassian, and in his homey environment, she was being given back what she'd never had the chance to experience.
She hadn't ever met a man she felt attracted to, and most probably that fact made all the difference. All men she'd crossed paths with since being fostered by Saw (often including Saw himself) had felt like creatures it was better to avoid, who often demanded things from her or expected things in exchange for something. Saw had submitted her to an extremely rigorous physical and mental training and expected very specific things from her, like her unwavering loyalty and obedience, an endurance beyond anything that Jyn, for a span of long, long months since being taken under his custody, thought sentients weren't designed for, although she eventually came to realize that all his brutal harshness was for his cadre's benefit, and for her own benefit also, when his methods yielded results. Jyn had gone from being a defenseless child to becoming a guerrilla soldier. When she grew up, she was too far from being an ordinary girl and besides everybody in the cadre was much older than her and she was forbidden territory, because they were all afraid of Saw's reaction if he caught any of them fraternizing with his protégée in a way his paranoid mind considered improper. He was fiercely protective of her in the only way he knew how to be, and Jyn felt both grateful and exasperated. Not that there were any chances for her of developing true friendships there anyway, because they were her comrades-at-arms and not much more. They had her back and she had theirs but she couldn't talk with them about the life she'd left behind. Saw had been very adamant that she never, never, reveal her true identity, and that was what definitely isolated her from the rest.
And when Saw ditched her, her dealings with men had been warped from the start by her occasional need to make a living through the desires of men's flesh, and also by the levels of depravity she sensed in quite a few males' eyes and attitude, males she avoided like the plague and kept at arm's length, not always successfully, like her recent ordeal with a bunch of rapist Imps had proven.
Since the age of sixteen, or probably since years earlier, all notions of romance had been cut off from her soul. No man had made her feel anything apart from mistrust, dread or disgust. If someone in her surroundings rarely looked decent enough or didn't look at her like she was just a piece of meat (she knew that of course not everyone was bad and perverted, but being a girl alone in a cruel galaxy, she was much more easily a target for the predators), she felt too dirty and used and tired to care much.
Until Cassian.
She shook her reverie and replied to his previous comment. "I'm glad too. To tell the truth, I haven't much energy left to wander around asking for lodgings. Peg has spared me the effort. I could use a bit of a respite." She wasn't fully recovered yet from her gang rape from weeks previous. Her body had healed thanks to the generous container of bacta gel and the antibiotics and other medicines the Coruscanti pharmacist had given her, but she was still emotionally shaken and that burden tired her out more than any physical wound could.
Cassian's gaze softened when he turned to stare at her. "I hope you find respite here, Jyn. This place is not much, but there are a bunch of good people here. Tough and rude and stubborn like mules, but good."
Jyn smiled wistfully. "I hope that too. I could use friends for a change."
"Then here you have one already," he offered, stretching his hand to her with his trademark smile. She shook it with a chuckle and Cassian pointed at the grocery shop which was just a few meters ahead of them.