I will actually post other things
Jun. 20th, 2018 10:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghraine...eventually.
title: per ardua ad astra (15/?)
verse: Death Star
characters: Cassian Andor, Jyn Erso; General Tagge; OCs—Efrah Bain, Mihal Zekheret, an unnamed sergeant; Jyn/Cassian
stuff that happens: Jyn is not interested in friendship muffins and Cassian is not interested in dying.
previous chapters: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen
“Traitors are too nervous to get away with it, most of the time—they’re twitchy and they make stupid mistakes. But they’re desperate, too, and they’ll do anything. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of one who didn’t leave a trail of blood behind him.”
He gulped. “Somebody’s got to stop them, though. If they’re there. We don’t even know that.”
“Governor Tarkin has plenty of people to keep an eye on problems,” said Efrah. “There are spies, strategists, all that sort of thing.”
“You’re sure?” Zekheret asked, brows still knit in what went for thought with him.
“Yes, I’m sure. And I’m sure he knows that there are people who might be mad, or go mad, over this. You don’t need to get in the way of some crazed Alderaanian with a blaster, okay?”
“What a fucking disaster.”
Zekheret’s eyes went wide. “What are you talking about?”
After two hours of silence from Cassian, Jyn’s patience with everyone but Bodhi had dropped to its nadir. Two hours—it would take him more time than that to get here, even if the meeting were entirely benign. But he would have contacted her, wouldn’t he? At the moment, his datapad lay beside Jyn, but he had both of his comlinks. Whether he had the presence of mind to use them, she didn’t know.
Jyn felt sure, though, that Cassian wouldn’t want her to panic yet, pragmatic as he was. Very probably, Cassian wouldn’t want her to ever panic, least of all for him. Not that he’d said … well, he didn’t think about himself much, beyond his convictions and instincts, and his role as an agent of revolution. If he were dead—something in Jyn recoiled, but she couldn’t deny the possibility—if he were dead, spying on Imperials and carrying codes to the Rebellion had to be the best way to honour his memory.
He would expect her to keep slogging through this charade, carrying on the fight in her own way. As she expected of herself.
So she’d dragged herself to dinner, sitting with her not-friends and trying to look less murderous than she felt. Better than sitting in the quarters and tormenting herself.
“Alderaan,” said Efrah.
“Wasn’t it a Rebel planet?” Zekheret asked.
“Stars, you’re an idiot,” she told him. That sentiment, at least, Jyn could wholeheartedly agree with. “There’s no such thing as a Rebel planet. Every planet has loyal Imperial citizens and Rebel scum.”
He frowned, perplexed. Jyn silenced herself with a gulp of protein water.
“Are you sure?”
Efrah rolled her eyes. “Of course I am. You’ve already forgotten that Captain Willix is Alderaanian?”
“Oh.” With an expression of discomfort, he shifted on his bench. “He’s probably not a Rebel.”
“Probably?” She shook her head. “Sure, he might be plotting against the Empire between getting shot by Rebels. Right, Lyr?”
“It’s … possible?” said Zekheret uncertainly.
“No, it isn’t,” said Jyn, letting some of her fury touch her voice. “He’s a hero. He almost died for the Empire.”
“That’s true,” he said, and chewed his lip.
“I can’t believe—” Efrah just gave an exasperated sigh. “Look, Lyr would see it if anyone would. They’re in the same quarters, remember? And he couldn’t even walk until a couple of days ago. I’ll take a wild guess that you haven’t seen him transmitting any files, Lyr?”
“Of course not.” True enough. She’d transmitted the plans, after all.
“There you go.”
Jyn still had no idea whether she thought Efrah what she seemed, or not. As she and Cassian had agreed, it made no difference in the end; they had no choice but to regard her every word with suspicion. Still, if it weren’t all an elaborate trap, Efrah’s bizarre infatuation with Cassian likely had something to do with her faith in his loyalties. Jyn almost hoped they’d escape unscathed just so she could report that to Draven. We were saved by Captain Andor’s bone structure, sir.
“But seriously, Zek,” Efrah went on, “don’t you see how this must look? Maybe if it’d been some Outer Rim backwater, Tatooine or something, but it was a Core planet, a popular one. People will be angry—you have no idea how angry.” Her thin face turned grim. “I don’t know what they were thinking. For every Rebel who died today, we just made ten more.”
He flinched.
“There must be a reason,” said Jyn. “Even Captain Willix said so.”
“Where is he?”
Jyn shrugged. “No idea.” Quadrant G North, Floor 18, Council Room 11872. “Governor Tarkin called all the Alderaanians onboard for some sort of meeting. I’m guessing they’ll be done soon.”
“Governor Tarkin?” repeated Efrah, eyes narrowed. “That’s … that’s bad. Maybe.”
“Now I really don’t understand,” Zekheret said.
Both women ignored him. Jyn, attention solidly fixed on Efrah, ate with little consciousness of her food and waited for her to process whatever was going through her mind. It took a good minute.
“Risk assessment,” Efrah said at last. “It’s got to be.”
Zekheret asked, “What?”
She exhaled through clenched teeth. “Every fucking Alderaanian on this station just lost property, at the least, and probably their homes, families, friends. Their whole world, as it were. People have betrayed the Empire over less.” Efrah considered that. “In fact, everyone who has betrayed the Empire did it over less.”
“Well—I guess,” he conceded. “So they think all of them are going to defect?”
“No,” said Efrah, summoning up patience from only the Force knew where, “but Command is going to want to evaluate them, I bet. There are people up there who can read a face like a datapad.”
“But traitors wouldn’t just show it,” he replied, a glimmer of sense in his eye. “I mean, I wouldn’t. Nobody’s going to go around saying ‘fuck the Empire’ to Governor Tarkin, right? Unless they want to die.”
“They won’t be evaluated in person.” Efrah picked up her spoon and began to eat, with considerably less enthusiasm than Jyn had manufactured. “Not primarily, anyway. I bet anything there’s some kind of surveillance.”
Surveillance. Force, of course there would be. A meeting with both Tarkin and the Alderaanian Imperials had seemed terrible enough. But the real danger would come before it. Cassian, though, he’d realize that. Wouldn’t he? He was always so much on his guard. But he hadn’t been in the immediate wake of Alderaan's destruction, clinging to her hand and readily carrying her kyber crystal into a high-level meeting on the Death Star. She hadn’t thought of that danger at the time, either, no more than he—
No, he’d realize that much. However overwhelmed in that first moment, he’d recovered himself enough to sneer at the droid, and approximate Willix to that private he’d tugged in his wake. And the Empire had no subtlety about surveillance, after all. Or about anything.
“There’s always people watching, aren’t there?” said Zekheret. “Even the entrance to the prison has two or three cameras.” He brightened up. “The prison! I know how I could help!”
Jyn and Efrah eyed him, united by doubt.
“There are tons of Alderaanians working there. I could spy on them and find out if any of them are plotting against the Empire.”
Efrah coughed. “Uh—”
“I know what you’re going to say. I’m too loud and stupid.”
She looked slightly abashed. “I wasn’t going to—”
“But I’m not loud when I don’t talk. On-duty and such,” he said. His expression edged towards sulky. “Nobody ever notices me.”
Not for the first time, Jyn tried to wrap her mind around the fact that he was older than Cassian.
Efrah had already dropped her fork and pressed her fingers to her temples. “I wasn’t going to say that. It’s dangerous, that’s all. Traitors are too nervous to get away with it, most of the time—they’re twitchy and they make stupid mistakes. But they’re desperate, too, and they’ll do anything. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of one who didn’t leave a trail of blood behind him.”
He gulped. “Somebody’s got to stop them, though. If they’re there. We don’t even know that.”
“Governor Tarkin has plenty of people to keep an eye on problems,” said Efrah. “There are spies, strategists, all that sort of thing.”
“You’re sure?” Zekheret asked, brows still knit in what went for thought with him.
“Yes, I’m sure. And I’m sure he knows that there are people who might be mad, or go mad, over this. You don’t need to get in the way of some crazed Alderaanian with a blaster, okay?”
His features smoothed over, the customary smile reappearing. For a reason that Jyn couldn’t begin to fathom, it heightened his faint resemblance to Cassian.
Grinning, Zekheret replied, “Sounds like you want me after all.”
“What?” Efrah looked both appalled and shocked. “Speaking of crazy—”
The grin grew into a smirk. “Suddenly, you care an awful lot about me staying intact. I bet you can’t stand the thought of anything damaging a gorgeous guy like me.”
At another time, Jyn might have been genuinely entertained by either Zekheret’s impenetrable smugness or Efrah’s incredulity. In this one, she felt no more than a tickle of amusement in some remote corner of her mind. She’d suddenly remembered the message that Cassian left on her datapad all those weeks … no, days ago. His comlink, and the codes to send if either landed in a difficult situation. She’d committed those codes to a much more permanent memory than the Imperial ones. 975 for clear, 615 for uncertain. And 248 for disaster.
Beside her, Efrah picked up an inflatable muffin and threw it straight at Zekheret’s head. “It’s called friendship, you ass.”
Surreptitiously, Jyn checked the comlink at her wrist. The tiny digital screen showed nothing.
Laughing, Zekheret caught it in mid-air. “A friendship muffin? Is that what we’re doing now?” He turned the muffin in his hand. “Um, I’m still hungry, actually. Am I allowed to eat it? Because—”
“Fuck off,” she said.
“Right.” Jyn got to her feet, doing her best not to fiddle with the comlink. It all but burned on her wrist. “I’m feeling a bit unwell, so I’ll just leave you two to your … friendship. Have a fun night.”
Efrah looked tragic.
“Sure thing,” said Zekheret, with a wink that thankfully eradicated all trace of Cassian from his face.
“I’m going to clobber you on the mat,” Efrah informed him. “Yeah, should be fun.”
He beamed. “I guess you’ve got to let out that tension one way or another.”
“Keep on going, and you won’t have to wait for a mad Alderaanian to kill you—”
Ignoring them, Jyn tossed aside the remains of her meal and hurried to her quarters. Cassian’s. Whatever it was. Regardless, she felt almost like she had the first time she entered, exhausted and anxious and desperate. With the closet of supplies shut, it looked very much the same, too. Stark, pristine, flawlessly neat: a place altogether empty of signs that any actual beings made any sort of home here.
No more so on his side than her own, however. As usual, Cassian—who remained fastidious in himself and inflexibly painstaking as to their cover—had adjusted everything before they left that morning. He still seemed convinced that disaster might follow if every centimeter of the room were not restored to exact military correctness each day. Just as it was now: a stronger sign of Cassian’s presence than any mark of character could be.
Half in a daze, she walked across the room and slid his datapad under her spare clothes, alongside the knives and extra blasters. The clothes were her uniforms, made to exactly fit her body, and the weapons the ones Cassian ordered for her, specifically. This was their space, as far as any space on the Death Star could be. It would not look one iota different if Cassian had already returned, sulking on his bed with a quarter-dose of analgesics down his throat.
Jyn’s eyes burned all over again. Her hands, too, where her fingers clenched into fists. She hadn’t hauled him this far to lose him now, to something so unbearably stupid.
Horrible beyond description, yes. But Efrah had been right. It was so very, very stupid. Almost as stupid as Cassian dying as Willix would be. To die in the course of gathering information was one thing, however awful; to die for something that didn’t even follow from spying was just nonsensical. It couldn’t happen, not to Cassian. She’d seen his chest, unscarred but for the obvious—the same with his face and hands. And this might be the end?
Jyn assured herself, yet again, that it wouldn’t, that she knew it wouldn’t, that the worst possibility was not possible at all. She knew the truth, but didn’t need to repeat it to herself.
The real truth was that the people who cared most for her always left, in some fashion or another. They chose separation, voluntary separation, and presented it as the expression of their love, without giving her any choice in the matter. Without giving her even an explanation, until long after the fact.
Cassian had explained himself. He almost always did, except on Eadu. Even then, he’d provided a false one, rather than not bothering with anything at all. And he’d come back so many times, every time, and if she’d known his faith and respect for little more than a month, that was a month more than she had from anyone else. He had explained this last departure as well as he could, too—she understood, she saw the necessity for all of them, and particularly for her—she—
After everything, the universe couldn’t take this from her, too. It couldn’t take everything and everybody she ever loved, except at the very end, and then snatch that last away too. Surely she was allowed one thing of her own, inviolate.
Raw exhaustion swept over her, so heavy that she felt light-headed with it. Her leg gave a convulsive twitch, and everything out of her direct line of sight grew blurrier. Struggling to kick off her boots, she sat heavily on a bed, not paying much mind to which. But it seemed suitable that it was Cassian’s.
Once again, she missed her crystal, while regretting nothing. She wanted it around her neck, and wanted it safely with Cassian—safely?—as some fragment of herself. She’d gone back for him, too, protected him as far as she could, from Jedha to here, she’d … she didn’t want him to be alone, down there. Literally alone: fine, she couldn’t help that. But not cut adrift from the galaxy, with no one to mourn anything but the valuable operative or respected leader. She couldn’t let him think that. He might be those to others, but not Jyn. He was her partner, her—her—her person.
It sounded ridiculous, even to her.
Undoubtedly it would sound even more so to Cassian, who could make anything seem reasonable and right. And that in Basic; Force knew how he sounded in his native tongue.
For herself, though, it was no less true for its inanity. At her most articulate, without tiredness and fear pressing on her, Jyn didn’t think she could have found any better term for it. Cassian was a person beyond this role or that, beyond the Rebellion, and the person she cared about the most, who also cared the most about her. She didn’t need to wrap it in words to feel the importance of that.
Jyn lay down on his bed, too weary to think anything of it beyond the fact that she wanted to be there. Curling up, she turned her face into his pillow and closed her eyes.
By some grace of the universe, she neither tossed or turned, nor terrorized herself with nightmares. She slept easily and pleasantly, only jarred awake by some slight motion near her hand.
Her eyes flew open. But the room was entirely empty. Pulse picking up, Jyn blinked sleep away and tried to figure out what must be very obvious—
The comlink vibrated again. A message, not a call.
Jyn caught her breath. At this point, she couldn’t even blame herself for the don’t be Bodhi, don’t be Bodhi that stampeded through her mind. Forcing herself to exhale, she twisted her wrist so that the comlink fell right before her eyes, then activated the screen with her other hand.
It flashed a confirmation request—yes, yes, fine—and a sender code—Cassian’s, that was Cassian—and then, at last, the message.
6 1 5.
He was alive.
Cassian started to wish that Tarkin would just show up and be done with it. He and Tagge had managed to discourage anything like open sedition, but they couldn’t discourage grief. He didn’t try, didn’t want to, it was only—he didn’t deal well with weeping, except when entirely divided from himself, and it never stopped. Even the quieter second hour passed in a blur of vacant faces and stammered languages and shaking bodies, all against the white noise of that ceaseless sobbing.
Now and then, he thought it might seriously drive him mad. Cassian wanted the sound to go, and everything else too—but the sound was worst—and of course it didn’t and couldn’t. He should be the one to leave, but he couldn’t get away. There was no escaping each other, however much he wanted it.
Desperately, Cassian wanted Jyn, though she was Jyn and not a crutch. He couldn’t help it. He wanted her as herself, reflective and furious and solemn and unrelenting. And reliable, which sounded ridiculously tepid, but it mattered. She was just about everything that could matter in another person. He’d already leaned on her too much, but even so, he occasionally let himself entertain the idea of calling her comlink. Not for anything foolish, just to hear her even voice cutting through the clamour. But that was foolish in itself.
Cassian sent off the silent code, instead, for unsure of risk, no emergencies. He could give her some relief, if not himself.
“—sir, I know, but—what’s the point, if there’s nothing to go home to?”
He focused on the boy in front of him. Older than Zelin, perhaps closer to his own age. Definitely a man, but they all seemed—
“The galaxy is not Alderaan alone,” he said sternly. “There are countless beings on countless worlds who depend on the Empire’s strength, and suffer in this endless war.”
This one, a sergeant, bit his lip but gave no other sign of emotion. A danger. Perhaps to others, perhaps himself. It was the quiet ones that Cassian worried about, insofar as he did at all.
“I know. But they’ve still got their world.”
“Listen to me,” said Cassian. “Our planet is gone. Nothing can change that; we can only discover the reason it had to die. But Alderaan was not just its soil. It was its languages, cultures, principles—the people were always the truest Alderaan. Now, we are the only Alderaan. Every one of us who draws breath keeps some part of it alive. That is the point, sergeant.”
The other man gulped. “But what about the ones who aren’t … good? Most of the survivors, aren’t they going to be criminals and Rebels and such?”
“I don’t advise you to concern yourself with traitors,” Cassian said coolly. “They aren’t just betraying the Empire, you understand. Alderaanians are a people of peace. Those ones have turned from what makes us who we are.”
At this, the sergeant nodded thoughtfully and drifted away. The fact that they were soldiers on the Death Star appeared to have altogether eluded him.
“A people of peace, are we?”
The thud of General Tagge’s boots had already grown familiar. Not a man much given to subtlety.
Cassian’s brow quirked. “As it were, sir.”
For several long moments, they stood together in silence—long to Cassian, anyway. Then the general said,
“How many here answer to you? Directly.”
“About a quarter,” replied Cassian, taken aback. “Maybe a third. The men stationed in the quadrant’s prison.”
“Ah, explains it.” At his open bewilderment, Tagge gave a shrug. “You take a remarkable interest in the … general welfare, captain.”
Cassian’s entire life had been dedicated to the general welfare. He managed a respectful inclination of his head.
“I don’t want to lose good men because they’re shocked and upset where almost anyone would be.”
“Not you,” observed Tagge.
Go away.
It was a childish thought, indulgent. But Cassian just wanted everyone to go away and be quiet and let him crawl into his bed for a good few days. He’d never been one to turn his face from reality, he … only for a little while. He’d never been quite this tired, either.
“I came from nothing, sir,” he said at last, struggling to care. Jyn, he reminded himself. Jyn, and the codes, and Leia, and Bodhi. And he wanted to live. “I was nothing, until the Empire provided me with opportunity. I have not lived on Alderaan in a long time—it is different for me, I think.”
“I see.” The general’s face cleared further. “You might be the only one here who did not lose your world today.”
I lost it twenty years ago.
“Probably so,” said Cassian. “I don’t mean that I am not Alderaanian. Only that it has been the people, and not any particular place, for many years now. That much was true. I am doing what I can for the Alderaan I know.” He looked thoughtful. “I might also say, general, that while the event is, ah, a disturbance, I am hardly shocked.”
Tagge studied him with shrewd, narrowed eyes. “You had been informed?”
“Not as such.” Cassian visibly hesitated. “My orders, sir, come from Commander Tor. Of—”
“I’m familiar with the commander,” said Tagge, the probing glance settling. “And his division. I understand.”
Hopefully. It was perhaps the only time in Cassian’s life that he wished he could just announce that he was a spy.
“I was not told much in particular, but enough to guess that some action was coming,” Cassian went on. “Something monumental, in relation to Alderaan. So this was not altogether a surprise. That helps, I’m sure.”
Not that he’d noticed it helping, but who knew, really? Maybe, if he had stronger attachments to his homeworld, if he and Jyn hadn’t waited in dread for days, he would have shattered apart with Alderaan.
Or maybe not. Leia seemed to have kept her head and her priorities straight. They were trained to that, to the Rebellion above all. Not in itself, precisely, but what it meant, what it stood to achieve. The dream of freedom, and the countless tiny chances and hopes that sustained it. Liberation for the galaxy in its entirety, system upon system and sector upon sector, came before any single person’s life or family or home, always.
Always, always, always.
He didn’t imagine what the choice must have been for Leia. A near impossibility, or simple for all of its horror—Cassian didn’t know. For himself, the metal plates of the floor felt a bit steadier under his feet, more real. He was Cassian Andor of the Rebellion, sometimes a soldier and always a spy, a captain who had gone rogue because he believed it necessary and he believed in Jyn Erso. And once, long ago, he had also been a refugee of Vaesda on Alderaan, a murdered city become a murdered world. That was the Empire, beginning to end, what every willing agent of it upheld.
“I imagine,” said General Tagge. He was still ashen.
Something clattered outside. People, more people. They both glanced towards the entrance.
“That’ll be our lord and master,” Tagge muttered. He clasped Cassian’s shoulder as he headed to the door. “Keep an eye on these fools, Willix.”
“Yes, sir,” Cassian said blandly.
If he’d left well enough alone, he wouldn’t have to string together more lies now. He could just cower in a corner somewhere, like so many others were doing, and look shell-shocked. That might not be much of a stretch. He’d be as safe as anyone in this room could be. Still, if he left other Alderaanians to get themselves killed in unthinking rage, even Imperial ones, he’d be—
Not the same as an Imperial. Jyn had been wrong about that. But not as much better as he should be. If he lived, he could say that he’d done what he could.
The door opened, and a tall, bony man strode through, flanked by two aides and a half-dozen stormtroopers.
Governor Tarkin.
title: per ardua ad astra (15/?)
verse: Death Star
characters: Cassian Andor, Jyn Erso; General Tagge; OCs—Efrah Bain, Mihal Zekheret, an unnamed sergeant; Jyn/Cassian
stuff that happens: Jyn is not interested in friendship muffins and Cassian is not interested in dying.
previous chapters: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen
“Traitors are too nervous to get away with it, most of the time—they’re twitchy and they make stupid mistakes. But they’re desperate, too, and they’ll do anything. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of one who didn’t leave a trail of blood behind him.”
He gulped. “Somebody’s got to stop them, though. If they’re there. We don’t even know that.”
“Governor Tarkin has plenty of people to keep an eye on problems,” said Efrah. “There are spies, strategists, all that sort of thing.”
“You’re sure?” Zekheret asked, brows still knit in what went for thought with him.
“Yes, I’m sure. And I’m sure he knows that there are people who might be mad, or go mad, over this. You don’t need to get in the way of some crazed Alderaanian with a blaster, okay?”
“What a fucking disaster.”
Zekheret’s eyes went wide. “What are you talking about?”
After two hours of silence from Cassian, Jyn’s patience with everyone but Bodhi had dropped to its nadir. Two hours—it would take him more time than that to get here, even if the meeting were entirely benign. But he would have contacted her, wouldn’t he? At the moment, his datapad lay beside Jyn, but he had both of his comlinks. Whether he had the presence of mind to use them, she didn’t know.
Jyn felt sure, though, that Cassian wouldn’t want her to panic yet, pragmatic as he was. Very probably, Cassian wouldn’t want her to ever panic, least of all for him. Not that he’d said … well, he didn’t think about himself much, beyond his convictions and instincts, and his role as an agent of revolution. If he were dead—something in Jyn recoiled, but she couldn’t deny the possibility—if he were dead, spying on Imperials and carrying codes to the Rebellion had to be the best way to honour his memory.
He would expect her to keep slogging through this charade, carrying on the fight in her own way. As she expected of herself.
So she’d dragged herself to dinner, sitting with her not-friends and trying to look less murderous than she felt. Better than sitting in the quarters and tormenting herself.
“Alderaan,” said Efrah.
“Wasn’t it a Rebel planet?” Zekheret asked.
“Stars, you’re an idiot,” she told him. That sentiment, at least, Jyn could wholeheartedly agree with. “There’s no such thing as a Rebel planet. Every planet has loyal Imperial citizens and Rebel scum.”
He frowned, perplexed. Jyn silenced herself with a gulp of protein water.
“Are you sure?”
Efrah rolled her eyes. “Of course I am. You’ve already forgotten that Captain Willix is Alderaanian?”
“Oh.” With an expression of discomfort, he shifted on his bench. “He’s probably not a Rebel.”
“Probably?” She shook her head. “Sure, he might be plotting against the Empire between getting shot by Rebels. Right, Lyr?”
“It’s … possible?” said Zekheret uncertainly.
“No, it isn’t,” said Jyn, letting some of her fury touch her voice. “He’s a hero. He almost died for the Empire.”
“That’s true,” he said, and chewed his lip.
“I can’t believe—” Efrah just gave an exasperated sigh. “Look, Lyr would see it if anyone would. They’re in the same quarters, remember? And he couldn’t even walk until a couple of days ago. I’ll take a wild guess that you haven’t seen him transmitting any files, Lyr?”
“Of course not.” True enough. She’d transmitted the plans, after all.
“There you go.”
Jyn still had no idea whether she thought Efrah what she seemed, or not. As she and Cassian had agreed, it made no difference in the end; they had no choice but to regard her every word with suspicion. Still, if it weren’t all an elaborate trap, Efrah’s bizarre infatuation with Cassian likely had something to do with her faith in his loyalties. Jyn almost hoped they’d escape unscathed just so she could report that to Draven. We were saved by Captain Andor’s bone structure, sir.
“But seriously, Zek,” Efrah went on, “don’t you see how this must look? Maybe if it’d been some Outer Rim backwater, Tatooine or something, but it was a Core planet, a popular one. People will be angry—you have no idea how angry.” Her thin face turned grim. “I don’t know what they were thinking. For every Rebel who died today, we just made ten more.”
He flinched.
“There must be a reason,” said Jyn. “Even Captain Willix said so.”
“Where is he?”
Jyn shrugged. “No idea.” Quadrant G North, Floor 18, Council Room 11872. “Governor Tarkin called all the Alderaanians onboard for some sort of meeting. I’m guessing they’ll be done soon.”
“Governor Tarkin?” repeated Efrah, eyes narrowed. “That’s … that’s bad. Maybe.”
“Now I really don’t understand,” Zekheret said.
Both women ignored him. Jyn, attention solidly fixed on Efrah, ate with little consciousness of her food and waited for her to process whatever was going through her mind. It took a good minute.
“Risk assessment,” Efrah said at last. “It’s got to be.”
Zekheret asked, “What?”
She exhaled through clenched teeth. “Every fucking Alderaanian on this station just lost property, at the least, and probably their homes, families, friends. Their whole world, as it were. People have betrayed the Empire over less.” Efrah considered that. “In fact, everyone who has betrayed the Empire did it over less.”
“Well—I guess,” he conceded. “So they think all of them are going to defect?”
“No,” said Efrah, summoning up patience from only the Force knew where, “but Command is going to want to evaluate them, I bet. There are people up there who can read a face like a datapad.”
“But traitors wouldn’t just show it,” he replied, a glimmer of sense in his eye. “I mean, I wouldn’t. Nobody’s going to go around saying ‘fuck the Empire’ to Governor Tarkin, right? Unless they want to die.”
“They won’t be evaluated in person.” Efrah picked up her spoon and began to eat, with considerably less enthusiasm than Jyn had manufactured. “Not primarily, anyway. I bet anything there’s some kind of surveillance.”
Surveillance. Force, of course there would be. A meeting with both Tarkin and the Alderaanian Imperials had seemed terrible enough. But the real danger would come before it. Cassian, though, he’d realize that. Wouldn’t he? He was always so much on his guard. But he hadn’t been in the immediate wake of Alderaan's destruction, clinging to her hand and readily carrying her kyber crystal into a high-level meeting on the Death Star. She hadn’t thought of that danger at the time, either, no more than he—
No, he’d realize that much. However overwhelmed in that first moment, he’d recovered himself enough to sneer at the droid, and approximate Willix to that private he’d tugged in his wake. And the Empire had no subtlety about surveillance, after all. Or about anything.
“There’s always people watching, aren’t there?” said Zekheret. “Even the entrance to the prison has two or three cameras.” He brightened up. “The prison! I know how I could help!”
Jyn and Efrah eyed him, united by doubt.
“There are tons of Alderaanians working there. I could spy on them and find out if any of them are plotting against the Empire.”
Efrah coughed. “Uh—”
“I know what you’re going to say. I’m too loud and stupid.”
She looked slightly abashed. “I wasn’t going to—”
“But I’m not loud when I don’t talk. On-duty and such,” he said. His expression edged towards sulky. “Nobody ever notices me.”
Not for the first time, Jyn tried to wrap her mind around the fact that he was older than Cassian.
Efrah had already dropped her fork and pressed her fingers to her temples. “I wasn’t going to say that. It’s dangerous, that’s all. Traitors are too nervous to get away with it, most of the time—they’re twitchy and they make stupid mistakes. But they’re desperate, too, and they’ll do anything. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of one who didn’t leave a trail of blood behind him.”
He gulped. “Somebody’s got to stop them, though. If they’re there. We don’t even know that.”
“Governor Tarkin has plenty of people to keep an eye on problems,” said Efrah. “There are spies, strategists, all that sort of thing.”
“You’re sure?” Zekheret asked, brows still knit in what went for thought with him.
“Yes, I’m sure. And I’m sure he knows that there are people who might be mad, or go mad, over this. You don’t need to get in the way of some crazed Alderaanian with a blaster, okay?”
His features smoothed over, the customary smile reappearing. For a reason that Jyn couldn’t begin to fathom, it heightened his faint resemblance to Cassian.
Grinning, Zekheret replied, “Sounds like you want me after all.”
“What?” Efrah looked both appalled and shocked. “Speaking of crazy—”
The grin grew into a smirk. “Suddenly, you care an awful lot about me staying intact. I bet you can’t stand the thought of anything damaging a gorgeous guy like me.”
At another time, Jyn might have been genuinely entertained by either Zekheret’s impenetrable smugness or Efrah’s incredulity. In this one, she felt no more than a tickle of amusement in some remote corner of her mind. She’d suddenly remembered the message that Cassian left on her datapad all those weeks … no, days ago. His comlink, and the codes to send if either landed in a difficult situation. She’d committed those codes to a much more permanent memory than the Imperial ones. 975 for clear, 615 for uncertain. And 248 for disaster.
Beside her, Efrah picked up an inflatable muffin and threw it straight at Zekheret’s head. “It’s called friendship, you ass.”
Surreptitiously, Jyn checked the comlink at her wrist. The tiny digital screen showed nothing.
Laughing, Zekheret caught it in mid-air. “A friendship muffin? Is that what we’re doing now?” He turned the muffin in his hand. “Um, I’m still hungry, actually. Am I allowed to eat it? Because—”
“Fuck off,” she said.
“Right.” Jyn got to her feet, doing her best not to fiddle with the comlink. It all but burned on her wrist. “I’m feeling a bit unwell, so I’ll just leave you two to your … friendship. Have a fun night.”
Efrah looked tragic.
“Sure thing,” said Zekheret, with a wink that thankfully eradicated all trace of Cassian from his face.
“I’m going to clobber you on the mat,” Efrah informed him. “Yeah, should be fun.”
He beamed. “I guess you’ve got to let out that tension one way or another.”
“Keep on going, and you won’t have to wait for a mad Alderaanian to kill you—”
Ignoring them, Jyn tossed aside the remains of her meal and hurried to her quarters. Cassian’s. Whatever it was. Regardless, she felt almost like she had the first time she entered, exhausted and anxious and desperate. With the closet of supplies shut, it looked very much the same, too. Stark, pristine, flawlessly neat: a place altogether empty of signs that any actual beings made any sort of home here.
No more so on his side than her own, however. As usual, Cassian—who remained fastidious in himself and inflexibly painstaking as to their cover—had adjusted everything before they left that morning. He still seemed convinced that disaster might follow if every centimeter of the room were not restored to exact military correctness each day. Just as it was now: a stronger sign of Cassian’s presence than any mark of character could be.
Half in a daze, she walked across the room and slid his datapad under her spare clothes, alongside the knives and extra blasters. The clothes were her uniforms, made to exactly fit her body, and the weapons the ones Cassian ordered for her, specifically. This was their space, as far as any space on the Death Star could be. It would not look one iota different if Cassian had already returned, sulking on his bed with a quarter-dose of analgesics down his throat.
Jyn’s eyes burned all over again. Her hands, too, where her fingers clenched into fists. She hadn’t hauled him this far to lose him now, to something so unbearably stupid.
Horrible beyond description, yes. But Efrah had been right. It was so very, very stupid. Almost as stupid as Cassian dying as Willix would be. To die in the course of gathering information was one thing, however awful; to die for something that didn’t even follow from spying was just nonsensical. It couldn’t happen, not to Cassian. She’d seen his chest, unscarred but for the obvious—the same with his face and hands. And this might be the end?
Jyn assured herself, yet again, that it wouldn’t, that she knew it wouldn’t, that the worst possibility was not possible at all. She knew the truth, but didn’t need to repeat it to herself.
The real truth was that the people who cared most for her always left, in some fashion or another. They chose separation, voluntary separation, and presented it as the expression of their love, without giving her any choice in the matter. Without giving her even an explanation, until long after the fact.
Cassian had explained himself. He almost always did, except on Eadu. Even then, he’d provided a false one, rather than not bothering with anything at all. And he’d come back so many times, every time, and if she’d known his faith and respect for little more than a month, that was a month more than she had from anyone else. He had explained this last departure as well as he could, too—she understood, she saw the necessity for all of them, and particularly for her—she—
After everything, the universe couldn’t take this from her, too. It couldn’t take everything and everybody she ever loved, except at the very end, and then snatch that last away too. Surely she was allowed one thing of her own, inviolate.
Raw exhaustion swept over her, so heavy that she felt light-headed with it. Her leg gave a convulsive twitch, and everything out of her direct line of sight grew blurrier. Struggling to kick off her boots, she sat heavily on a bed, not paying much mind to which. But it seemed suitable that it was Cassian’s.
Once again, she missed her crystal, while regretting nothing. She wanted it around her neck, and wanted it safely with Cassian—safely?—as some fragment of herself. She’d gone back for him, too, protected him as far as she could, from Jedha to here, she’d … she didn’t want him to be alone, down there. Literally alone: fine, she couldn’t help that. But not cut adrift from the galaxy, with no one to mourn anything but the valuable operative or respected leader. She couldn’t let him think that. He might be those to others, but not Jyn. He was her partner, her—her—her person.
It sounded ridiculous, even to her.
Undoubtedly it would sound even more so to Cassian, who could make anything seem reasonable and right. And that in Basic; Force knew how he sounded in his native tongue.
For herself, though, it was no less true for its inanity. At her most articulate, without tiredness and fear pressing on her, Jyn didn’t think she could have found any better term for it. Cassian was a person beyond this role or that, beyond the Rebellion, and the person she cared about the most, who also cared the most about her. She didn’t need to wrap it in words to feel the importance of that.
Jyn lay down on his bed, too weary to think anything of it beyond the fact that she wanted to be there. Curling up, she turned her face into his pillow and closed her eyes.
By some grace of the universe, she neither tossed or turned, nor terrorized herself with nightmares. She slept easily and pleasantly, only jarred awake by some slight motion near her hand.
Her eyes flew open. But the room was entirely empty. Pulse picking up, Jyn blinked sleep away and tried to figure out what must be very obvious—
The comlink vibrated again. A message, not a call.
Jyn caught her breath. At this point, she couldn’t even blame herself for the don’t be Bodhi, don’t be Bodhi that stampeded through her mind. Forcing herself to exhale, she twisted her wrist so that the comlink fell right before her eyes, then activated the screen with her other hand.
It flashed a confirmation request—yes, yes, fine—and a sender code—Cassian’s, that was Cassian—and then, at last, the message.
6 1 5.
He was alive.
Cassian started to wish that Tarkin would just show up and be done with it. He and Tagge had managed to discourage anything like open sedition, but they couldn’t discourage grief. He didn’t try, didn’t want to, it was only—he didn’t deal well with weeping, except when entirely divided from himself, and it never stopped. Even the quieter second hour passed in a blur of vacant faces and stammered languages and shaking bodies, all against the white noise of that ceaseless sobbing.
Now and then, he thought it might seriously drive him mad. Cassian wanted the sound to go, and everything else too—but the sound was worst—and of course it didn’t and couldn’t. He should be the one to leave, but he couldn’t get away. There was no escaping each other, however much he wanted it.
Desperately, Cassian wanted Jyn, though she was Jyn and not a crutch. He couldn’t help it. He wanted her as herself, reflective and furious and solemn and unrelenting. And reliable, which sounded ridiculously tepid, but it mattered. She was just about everything that could matter in another person. He’d already leaned on her too much, but even so, he occasionally let himself entertain the idea of calling her comlink. Not for anything foolish, just to hear her even voice cutting through the clamour. But that was foolish in itself.
Cassian sent off the silent code, instead, for unsure of risk, no emergencies. He could give her some relief, if not himself.
“—sir, I know, but—what’s the point, if there’s nothing to go home to?”
He focused on the boy in front of him. Older than Zelin, perhaps closer to his own age. Definitely a man, but they all seemed—
“The galaxy is not Alderaan alone,” he said sternly. “There are countless beings on countless worlds who depend on the Empire’s strength, and suffer in this endless war.”
This one, a sergeant, bit his lip but gave no other sign of emotion. A danger. Perhaps to others, perhaps himself. It was the quiet ones that Cassian worried about, insofar as he did at all.
“I know. But they’ve still got their world.”
“Listen to me,” said Cassian. “Our planet is gone. Nothing can change that; we can only discover the reason it had to die. But Alderaan was not just its soil. It was its languages, cultures, principles—the people were always the truest Alderaan. Now, we are the only Alderaan. Every one of us who draws breath keeps some part of it alive. That is the point, sergeant.”
The other man gulped. “But what about the ones who aren’t … good? Most of the survivors, aren’t they going to be criminals and Rebels and such?”
“I don’t advise you to concern yourself with traitors,” Cassian said coolly. “They aren’t just betraying the Empire, you understand. Alderaanians are a people of peace. Those ones have turned from what makes us who we are.”
At this, the sergeant nodded thoughtfully and drifted away. The fact that they were soldiers on the Death Star appeared to have altogether eluded him.
“A people of peace, are we?”
The thud of General Tagge’s boots had already grown familiar. Not a man much given to subtlety.
Cassian’s brow quirked. “As it were, sir.”
For several long moments, they stood together in silence—long to Cassian, anyway. Then the general said,
“How many here answer to you? Directly.”
“About a quarter,” replied Cassian, taken aback. “Maybe a third. The men stationed in the quadrant’s prison.”
“Ah, explains it.” At his open bewilderment, Tagge gave a shrug. “You take a remarkable interest in the … general welfare, captain.”
Cassian’s entire life had been dedicated to the general welfare. He managed a respectful inclination of his head.
“I don’t want to lose good men because they’re shocked and upset where almost anyone would be.”
“Not you,” observed Tagge.
Go away.
It was a childish thought, indulgent. But Cassian just wanted everyone to go away and be quiet and let him crawl into his bed for a good few days. He’d never been one to turn his face from reality, he … only for a little while. He’d never been quite this tired, either.
“I came from nothing, sir,” he said at last, struggling to care. Jyn, he reminded himself. Jyn, and the codes, and Leia, and Bodhi. And he wanted to live. “I was nothing, until the Empire provided me with opportunity. I have not lived on Alderaan in a long time—it is different for me, I think.”
“I see.” The general’s face cleared further. “You might be the only one here who did not lose your world today.”
I lost it twenty years ago.
“Probably so,” said Cassian. “I don’t mean that I am not Alderaanian. Only that it has been the people, and not any particular place, for many years now. That much was true. I am doing what I can for the Alderaan I know.” He looked thoughtful. “I might also say, general, that while the event is, ah, a disturbance, I am hardly shocked.”
Tagge studied him with shrewd, narrowed eyes. “You had been informed?”
“Not as such.” Cassian visibly hesitated. “My orders, sir, come from Commander Tor. Of—”
“I’m familiar with the commander,” said Tagge, the probing glance settling. “And his division. I understand.”
Hopefully. It was perhaps the only time in Cassian’s life that he wished he could just announce that he was a spy.
“I was not told much in particular, but enough to guess that some action was coming,” Cassian went on. “Something monumental, in relation to Alderaan. So this was not altogether a surprise. That helps, I’m sure.”
Not that he’d noticed it helping, but who knew, really? Maybe, if he had stronger attachments to his homeworld, if he and Jyn hadn’t waited in dread for days, he would have shattered apart with Alderaan.
Or maybe not. Leia seemed to have kept her head and her priorities straight. They were trained to that, to the Rebellion above all. Not in itself, precisely, but what it meant, what it stood to achieve. The dream of freedom, and the countless tiny chances and hopes that sustained it. Liberation for the galaxy in its entirety, system upon system and sector upon sector, came before any single person’s life or family or home, always.
Always, always, always.
He didn’t imagine what the choice must have been for Leia. A near impossibility, or simple for all of its horror—Cassian didn’t know. For himself, the metal plates of the floor felt a bit steadier under his feet, more real. He was Cassian Andor of the Rebellion, sometimes a soldier and always a spy, a captain who had gone rogue because he believed it necessary and he believed in Jyn Erso. And once, long ago, he had also been a refugee of Vaesda on Alderaan, a murdered city become a murdered world. That was the Empire, beginning to end, what every willing agent of it upheld.
“I imagine,” said General Tagge. He was still ashen.
Something clattered outside. People, more people. They both glanced towards the entrance.
“That’ll be our lord and master,” Tagge muttered. He clasped Cassian’s shoulder as he headed to the door. “Keep an eye on these fools, Willix.”
“Yes, sir,” Cassian said blandly.
If he’d left well enough alone, he wouldn’t have to string together more lies now. He could just cower in a corner somewhere, like so many others were doing, and look shell-shocked. That might not be much of a stretch. He’d be as safe as anyone in this room could be. Still, if he left other Alderaanians to get themselves killed in unthinking rage, even Imperial ones, he’d be—
Not the same as an Imperial. Jyn had been wrong about that. But not as much better as he should be. If he lived, he could say that he’d done what he could.
The door opened, and a tall, bony man strode through, flanked by two aides and a half-dozen stormtroopers.
Governor Tarkin.