[ He doesn't know anything about her world. What they were trying to win against, with victory as the ever-looming objective. What she's had to see or do. Just how much she's really lost.
But he listens. Watches her stop and push something back and start again, assess someone's mistake, switch the subject a little to the left. It's like seeing his own coping methods in a mirror that displays a different face. Something that he knows as intimately as breathing.
(She'll feel it eventually, he realizes, more than she knows what to do with. Finn doesn't even know what he's supposed to do when his own mental dams inevitably run out of borrowed time, and he lives with two people he's sure would do anything they could if he asked-- but he still finds himself wishing he could help her, somehow.)
If she was a cadet, she isn't one anymore, not really. Whether it was a choice or the forcing of circumstance, she took the next step up before she came here. Chyler Silva is a soldier. She might not realize it. ]
Not right before I got here, but... yeah. [ After a brief hesitation, soft but frank: ] I was in training since before I can remember.
[ It occurs to him that he's never mentioned that to the people he's met here, even in vague terms. Rey and Poe both knew already. Cassian and Jyn know what he turned away from, might have made their own guesses about how long he was there, which he hasn't cared to ask about. Some people know he's a soldier, or that he's had some training, but that's it.
A lot of finer details, what got taught to them, when and how, he doesn't talk about at all. He avoids the subject. Doesn't want to point arrows towards what's wrong with him. Doesn't want to lose that control over how he's perceived before he's ready, if he can help it.
But she's young enough that she might actually have to start out as a cadet in the Perimeter Guard, at his best guess. She's young and she snaps to attention like a second instinct, well-trained, officer track. He won't disrespect what she's coming from by keeping a lid on some of the things that make them the same.
Besides, he just told her she's not alone. If he can do anything to try to get across that it's the truth, then he'll do it. ]
no subject
But he listens. Watches her stop and push something back and start again, assess someone's mistake, switch the subject a little to the left. It's like seeing his own coping methods in a mirror that displays a different face. Something that he knows as intimately as breathing.
(She'll feel it eventually, he realizes, more than she knows what to do with. Finn doesn't even know what he's supposed to do when his own mental dams inevitably run out of borrowed time, and he lives with two people he's sure would do anything they could if he asked-- but he still finds himself wishing he could help her, somehow.)
If she was a cadet, she isn't one anymore, not really. Whether it was a choice or the forcing of circumstance, she took the next step up before she came here. Chyler Silva is a soldier. She might not realize it. ]
Not right before I got here, but... yeah. [ After a brief hesitation, soft but frank: ] I was in training since before I can remember.
[ It occurs to him that he's never mentioned that to the people he's met here, even in vague terms. Rey and Poe both knew already. Cassian and Jyn know what he turned away from, might have made their own guesses about how long he was there, which he hasn't cared to ask about. Some people know he's a soldier, or that he's had some training, but that's it.
A lot of finer details, what got taught to them, when and how, he doesn't talk about at all. He avoids the subject. Doesn't want to point arrows towards what's wrong with him. Doesn't want to lose that control over how he's perceived before he's ready, if he can help it.
But she's young enough that she might actually have to start out as a cadet in the Perimeter Guard, at his best guess. She's young and she snaps to attention like a second instinct, well-trained, officer track. He won't disrespect what she's coming from by keeping a lid on some of the things that make them the same.
Besides, he just told her she's not alone. If he can do anything to try to get across that it's the truth, then he'll do it. ]