Chapter Text
4 ABY
Cassian's back on Coruscant. It's not pleasant. He's sitting at one of the cafes right outside the Federal District, a kilometer or so from the Inspectorate HQ. When he was living here, seven years ago, he would've never dared linger anywhere this long. But he's not out for a grocery run with Bix, or a meeting with Luthen or Kleya.
He's got a detonator in his pocket and an airspeeder waiting a few steps away, ready to spring into action at Eest's word. Cassian had wanted to take point on this mission, having had been inside a Imperial building on Coruscant before, and having Kleya's old reports from Lonni, but Eest refused. The Spynet members taking part in this mission knew them already, and trusted Eest as much as they could, which is two more things than they could say of Cassian. Besides, a lone Bothan lingering on the upper levels of Coruscant would draw more suspicion than he would.
Two hours in, his comm starts buzzing with static. Cassian waits, hands in pockets. There's three short bursts, then a pause, then another three bursts. He waits for the cycle to start again before pushing the button.
On the opposite side of the Federal District, the Senate Plaza explodes.
Cassian's up and moving before the dust has time to settle, jumping into the speeder and flying down, into the where the upper levels met the undercity, ignoring the skylanes altogether. He reaches the rendezvous, an opening to a maintenance tunnel on level 3000. Eest and Grir are waiting, leaning on each other. Cassian can see the blood on their clothes from here.
"Get in!" He says, opening the door. They fall into the speeder, collapsing into the seat. "Is anyone else—"
"Go," Eest hisses. Cassian waits a half-second more for any of the other four Bothans that came with them to appear. None do. Cassian shuts the door and they speed off into the city.
Six hours later, Cassian leaves Eest and Grir's bodies in a crematorium on a planet during a stopover. There won't be anyone there to pick them up. Cassian chafes at it, wanting to give his fallen friends more than ash on an unknown planet, but Eest would have his head if he wasted time with a proper send off. Bothans hardly trust one another in life, they told him after the first mission with a casualty. They don't trust in death, either.
It takes another six hours to make it back to Home One, taking out of the way hyperspace lanes and changing his ship's code at least twice. It's nearing the middle of the night, ship time, and the hanger is mostly empty when Cassian arrives. He does the landing checks himself then heads up.
"We've got the codes from Cracken's people," Kleya is saying as Cassian enters her office. Mon Mothma and Erskin are there, crowded around the screen. "They might be slightly outdated, but they should work."
"Location and layout of the shield generator," he says, handing the files to Kleya. He's done his best to clean the blood off them.
"Good." Kleya takes them, brings them up on the screen, diagrams of Endor filling the room for a half second before they're shuttled into the briefing documents. "Bwi'rav and the others?"
"Didn't make it." Cassian watches as Kleya just nods, resigned. Erskin looks down, not meeting Cassian's eyes as he glances at him. "You'll tell everyone, at the briefing?" He looks at Mon. "They need to know what's been sacrificed for this."
"I will." Mon meets his eyes and nods. "Tomorrow."
"Anything else to report, Cassian?" Kleya asks. He shakes his head. There's nothing else that would matter if they didn't win the battle in the next few days.
"Get some rest, Captain," Mon says, and Cassian leaves. His part of this is done.
He moves through the quiet halls of Home One, heading towards his room on autopilot. The most direct route would be through the central atrium, but Cassian takes the side halls instead. The artificial trees and vegetation would only serve to add to his unease.
There's light leaking out from under his door as he approaches. Jyn's room next door is dark, so ideally one of them is getting a good night's sleep. When he gets to their room, Melshi's sitting up on the bed, reading.
"You should be asleep," Cassian says, going through the familiar motions of getting ready for bed.
"Wanted to make sure you got back alright." Out of the corner of his eye, Cassian can see Melshi put the book on the nightstand.
"They'll need you at your best, tomorrow."
"I'll be fine." Melshi shifts on the bed, making room for Cassian to collapse into him. "Did the mission go okay?"
"I'm tired of losing people," Cassian mumbles into his chest. The price of rebellion is high, he knows—he's nearly paid it himself several times—but it doesn't make it hurt any less.
"I know." It's silent then, just the hum of the ship, as Melshi holds him tight. Cassian waits until he's no longer in his ship, trying desperately to stop Eest's bleeding, until Melshi's arms relax around him, then reaches for the light. Sleep claims him soon after.
The next day, Cassian files into the back of the briefing room with what feels like half the ship. Jyn and Melshi are down with the rest of the Pathfinders, sitting behind Solo and Organa. Kleya's talking with Crix Madine and Mon, and Cassian ends up on the balcony, standing next to Erskin and Vel.
"Are either of you actually supposed to be here?" Erskin asks them.
"I wasn't about to miss it," Vel says.
"Fair enough." Erskin scans the crowd, notes what looks like attendance on his datapad. "We've come a long way from secrets in an antique shop, haven't we?"
"Yeah," Cassian says, but sometimes he thinks they haven't gone far enough. The tone chimes, the room quiets. Mon Mothma steps forward, a diagram of Endor appearing in the center of the room. The briefing begins.
All told, its a relatively simple mission. The Pathfinders, led by Han Solo, would land on Endor and disable the shield generator. Then, the pilots would move in and engage with the fleet, and fly into the Death Star's ventilation shafts to destroy it using the main reactor. It's the culmination of Cassian and the rest of the Intelligence Division's work from the past year, and it's summed up in three minutes.
Mon, true to her word, tells everyone about the Bothans, but it's soon lost in the finer details of the mission. Cassian knows it's different when it's just names on a page or a sentence in a briefing, but it still stings to see the room barely reverberate with the words.
After the briefing, he falls in with Jyn and Melshi on their way to the hanger.
"Ready to help blow up another Death Star?" he asks.
"Always," Jyn replies. "Just wish I didn't have to take orders from Solo."
"Would you rather be in charge?" Cassian asks.
"Maybe," Melshi says. "Don't know if I would want to deal with the entirety of High Command, though."
"I would've done it." Jyn's been annoyed about the command of the mission going to Lokmarcha and then Solo for weeks. "It's not even that complicated of a job."
"Just be careful," Cassian says as they enter the hanger. "Kleya looked over the shuttle and the codes last night, so they should work fine. On Endor, stick together, stay with a pilot if you can. There's other ships at the station you can take if you can't get back to—"
"Cassian." Melshi stops, grabbing his hand and pulling him off to the side as the rest of the Pathfinders start filing into the shuttle. "It's not going to be Scarif again."
"They wouldn't fire on Endor, not when it's still generating the shield," Jyn adds. "And once the shield is down, they're going to have bigger problems."
"I know," Cassian says, and it makes sense. The Empire was ruthless and didn't care about firing on their own, but they weren't stupid. "But come back."
"Will do." Melshi squeezes his hand. Cassian pulls him into a hug, feeling Jyn fold around them. The three of them stand frozen, a moment of stillness in the ever-bustling Alliance. And then Jyn disentangles her arms, and Melshi steps back, and they're gone, disappearing into the Imperial shuttle. Cassian stays rooted to the spot until they take off, then turns on his heel. He needs to go find Kleya.
Kleya and Vel, it turns out, are not all that far away. They're on the opposite side of the hanger, gathering with High Command and all other non-essential crew leaving Home One for the battle. Cassian is, technically, supposed to leave with them.
"There you are," Vel says as he approaches. "We're leaving in ten minutes, they want to give the Pathfinders time to get clear."
"I'm not going," he tells them.
"Cassian—" Vel sighs, but Kleya just nods, as if she's already guessed as much.
"Melshi and Jyn?" Kleya asks.
"And Wil and Dreena," Cassian replies. Melshi and Jyn are down on Endor, Wil and Dreena staying on Home One. The thought of leaving, of being halfway across the galaxy while they were fighting, sat like poison in his stomach.
"You can't help them from here," Vel continues. "You've done what you can for this mission."
"I can't just—"
"And if Home One goes down? We'll lose all of you at once." Vel steps forwards, towards Cassian, and he takes a half step back. "They'd want you safe. I want you safe."
"I know." And he knows that if their positions were reversed, he'd be telling Vel the same thing she's telling him.
"But you're still staying."
"Yes."
"Fine." Vel throws her hands up, starts to stalk towards the evacuation ships. "If the mission fails, I'm blaming you."
"I would expect nothing less!" Cassian calls after her. The silence lingers until he turns to Kleya. "Are you going to try to change my mind?"
"No. But they're not going to like it."
"That's fine with me." He couldn't care less about what High Command thought about his decisions. He knows how to stay out of the way so he won't jeopardize the mission, and that's what matters here.
"Of course." Kleya looks back to where Vel is gesturing at her to come over, a soft smile ghosting across her face. "Stay safe, Cassian."
"Stay safe." Cassian watches as she goes to join Vel, then decides to leave before anyone starts to check attendance.
His first stop is the comms center just outside of the command room, with Dreena and the other technicians. It's a long, narrow room, filled with computers, call boards, a few old radios, and around eight techs.
"Not much is going to happen until tomorrow," Dreena says as he enters, sounding entirely unsurprised. Cassian wonders if Kleya messaged her, or if she just expected this to happen. "They went through the deflector shield about ten minutes ago. We're trying to avoid unnecessary comms." She fixes him with a dry glare. "Which you know."
"I just want to know if anything happens," Cassian says.
"Well, you can know and stay out of my way at the same time."
It's easy, to fade into the background of the comms office. One of the other technicians confirm the launch of the other shuttles, with a side glance at Cassian, and the rest are monitoring chatter, keeping the lines clear and off the Empire's radar. It's business as usual, until the ground crew's frequency lights up.
"Ground to H1, ground to H1," Melshi's voice crackles out of the comm. The room goes silent, the only movement Dreena checking if the signal to the bridge is operational.
"Go for H1," Admiral Ackbar says.
"The command crew's gone miss—" Melshi's cut off by shout that sounds suspiciously like Jyn. "Is gotten lost better?" Another indecipherable shout. "Semantics. They're not with us at the moment. Don't think they're compromised." There's another pause, Cassian can hear the sound of speeders flying past in a rush, Melshi's breath. "We're proceeding to the location as planned, just wanted to let you know."
"Acknowledged," Ackbar replies. "Do not try to locate them. Complete the mission."
"Will do. Ground out." The line goes dead.
"If he survives this, I'm going to strangle Solo in his sleep," Cassian mutters to Dreena as the rest of the room erupts into chatter.
"And deal with the paperwork after?" Dreena asks. "Now get out. I need to make sure they didn't notice that exchange." Cassian lets her push him towards the door and back out into the ship.
He heads back down to the hanger, now that there's no danger of him getting pulled into the evacuation. As expected, Wil is there, sitting on his retrofitted lift by one of the X-wings that was damaged in the mission to Hudalla systems a few weeks ago. Improvised pockets hang from the remaining railing, holding tools, spare parts, and Wil's crutch. Discarded wires, pieces of the hull, and a lone hydrospanner litter the ground beneath him.
"Is it salvageable?" Cassian asks.
"Anything's salvageable," Wil says, not even looking at him. "Weren't you supposed to be gone already?"
"Decided to miss the shuttle."
"Of course you did. Does the admiral know?"
"I haven't told him." Cassian pulls over a ladder and steps up next to him, scanning the mess of wiring and bent metal.
"Here, take these." Wil hands him a bundle of wires. "If you're going to be here, the least you can do is help."
"I was just up with Dreena," Cassian says as he starts to replace the wires. "We got a comm from the ground."
"Isn't it supposed to be radio silence?"
"Apparently, the command crew ran off." Cassian looks sideways at Wil. "All Melshi would say is that they're gone."
"Fucking Solo," Wil mutters. "But otherwise everything's going alright?"
"Seems so."
"Good. Hand me that hydrospanner." Cassian grabs it off the floor, and they fall into silence, concentrating on the broken X-wing. The hanger echos with the sounds of Wil's team of mechanics and engineers at work, metal scraping against metal and everyone calling to one another. It almost sounds like the scrapyard at Ferrix.
Cassian's hands stutter at his work. He hasn't thought about Ferrix, really thought about it, in years. He hasn't been back there in nine, since Maarva's funeral and the riot. Was it still going, throughout all of this? Did the scrapyard still run, the Grappler still mark the hour? Do the people there remember the call to fight, or did they roll over and survive, like so many other planets?
Cassian doesn't know. But if rebellions are built on hope, he'll hope that Ferrix isn't another on the list of planets he'd loved and lost.
Eighteen hours later, he's back in the comms office. All the squadrons sound off as they jump into hyperspace, Home One following a minute later. The comms office has no exterior windows, but Cassian can imagine the scene well enough. Endor looms in the background, silhouetted by the darkness of space, surrounded by Star Destroyers and the unfinished Death Star.
It's not a pretty picture. The fleet, while it's more than the thirty starfighters they had at Yavin, still seems insignificant against the Empire. But they won at Yavin, so maybe this would be enough.
Calrissian orders the first attack run.
Cassian's heart drops into his stomach as they all realize that the deflector shield is still up. Melshi and Jyn and the rest of the ground crew should've disabled it by now. Something in his information must've been wrong, he realizes. Either the location, or the layout, or—
"They knew we were coming," Calrissian says.
The comms devolve into changing positions, covering each other, and pilots going down. Cassian can't process any of it. His mind is down on Endor, running through the rooms of the shield generator, imagining the ways that the ground crew could've been captured or killed. Did they even make it to the building? Even if they did, the Empire knew they were coming. They could've had a squadron waiting for them at the door.
He's ripped from his catastrophizing by the Death Star firing on the Liberty.
Silence reigns over the comms. Cassian can hear one of the comms techs muttering under her breath, maybe a chant or a prayer. Then, Ackbar gives the order to retreat. Calrissian immediately disagrees, and Cassian is surprised to find that he agrees with him. The longer they fight up here, the more chances Jyn and Melshi have to disable the shield.
That is, if Melshi and Jyn were still alive.
The Death Star fires on the Nautilian. Cassian flinches. They keep fighting, the starfighters moving close to the Imperial ships, trying to keep them in range of the Death Star. If the Empire was going to take the fighters down, it'll go down with them.
Despite everything, despite losing too many fighters to count and the Death Star being operational, the tide starts to turn. They take down the Devastator, the Vehement, the Harbinger. Four years ago, taking down three Star Destroyers would've been impossible. But now there's just rubble where they used to be.
"The shield is down!" Ackbar says over the comms, and Cassian's heart soars. They weren't all dead, down on Endor. "Commence attack on the Death Star's main reactor!"
The fighters assemble around the Millennium Falcon. The comms office goes quiet, everyone listening for either success or failure. Everyone not in the ventilation shafts of the Death Star distract the Imperials as long as they can, buying Calrissian enough time to—
"It's hit!" Calrissian yells.
"All pilots, move away from the Death Star," Ackbar orders. Cassian waits, listening—they're too far away for a shockwave, he won't be able to tell if or when—
The comms erupt in cheers. The technicians are celebrating, hugging, and Cassian just pulls back in his borrowed chair, observing a joy that he never expected to feel. He hears the clack of Wil's crutch in the hall, and then Wil bursts through the door, rushing to Dreena with a smile on his face.
"They did it," he says, just loud enough that Cassian can hear. "We won."
Cassian's on the first shuttle down to Endor. The first thing he notices when he steps out of the ship is the smell of soil, of life, and the ferns. His steps catch as he looks up at a canopy that's much farther overhead than he remembers.
It's not Kenari. It's not his home. But it's closer than Yavin's jungle was, and that's enough for Cassian to nearly forget what he's doing until he hears Melshi calling. And then he's running, crashing into Melshi as Jyn rushes to join them.
"Organa met the Ewoks," Jyn explains as the Pathfinders start to herd everyone off the shuttle and to a village. "That's why everyone went missing for a day."
"That and Solo had a rough run-in with a patrol," Melshi adds under his breath. "He must've alerted the whole forest."
By the time the last shuttle arrives on Endor, darkness has fallen on Bright Tree Village. They're all crowded around one of the many fires, Wil and Dreena listening with rapt attention as Jyn and Melshi talk.
"It was an ambush," Melshi says. "We nearly got to the command room only to be met with more Stormtroopers than we could fight."
"Do we know how they knew we were coming?" Dreena asks.
"We've been moving quickly since Hoth." Cassian leans on Melshi as he speaks. "They could've picked up our intentions from the places we've been targeting, the intel we've taken."
"Or a patrol could've spotted us and warned them," Jyn says. "It doesn't matter how they knew. We made it out anyway."
"It matters if we're trying to not get ambushed again," Cassian counters, but it's half-hearted. There's music playing and fireworks going off overhead, and the fire casts a warmth and light across them all.
"Would they even be able to ambush us again? They're saying Palpatine is dead." Melshi puts an arm around Cassian's shoulders, pulling him closer.
"Just because the Emperor is dead doesn't mean the Empire is gone," Wil says.
"But they can't come back from this." The confidence in Jyn's voice is as bright as the fire. "We can just finish them off while they're scrambling to consolidate again."
"And then what?" Dreena asks, quiet.
"We do all the things we've ever wanted." Cassian looks up, into the trees far above him and the stars past that.
He thinks of home.