Chapter Text
and the rest is rust and stardust.
------------------------------
( NOW )
The last time he had thought he was dead, he had been in surgery after Scarif; had awakened later to find Jyn Erso sitting next to him, her scarred, calloused hands pressed over his.
That was not going to happen this time.
Cassian was not dead yet, but he was dying. Even now, his brain was growing numb, as each lobe was shut down by the spread of the toxins.
Flaming, fiery needles pierced his veins, scalding as if his blood was boiling.
(Cassian)
(Cassian can you hear me)
------------------------------
( THEN:Yavin IV )
“This is an unwise course of action.
“Shut up, Kay,” Cassian growled, moving past him.
“You are displaying erratic and illogical behavior. I was not aware that there was a variable in this environment that was sufficiently powerful to cause you such a loss of faculties,” the mechanical components inside the droid audibly whirred to life as it revisited its calculations.
Cassian stopped in his tracks, turning to glance over his shoulder at the droid. “You really underestimated her, didn't you?”
“Are you referring to the small, annoying human who calls herself Jyn Erso? Is Jyn Erso the reason you have developed these strange behavioral patterns?”
You have no idea.
“So you did underestimate her,” Cassian replied, smirking. “You, the strategic analysis specialist, failed to anticipate the statistical impact of Jyn Erso.”
“You underestimated her, as well,” Kay huffed in return, clearly offended at Cassian's disparagement of his statistics.
Cassian shook his head. “No. I didn't.”
(The mirror hurts, Cassian.)
“Here,” Kaytu muttered, pulling the datastick from where it plugged into his metal chassis and shoving it at Cassian. “I have updated my backup. Are you now sufficiently convinced that this mission poses no threat to my operational security?”
“Not really,” Cassian replied honestly, as the two of them left the droid bay and ascended to the ground floor of the ziggurat.
If everyone he'd talked to had done what they were supposed to, he'd have just under twenty operatives to offer Jyn.
(It wasn't nearly enough, for what she had to do. He didn't even know if she'd accept it, his gift -- or if she'd turn it away, because he killed her father.)
“There is no reason for you to be concerned; as a droid, I have one of the highest chances of survival, after yourself, because I have prioritized your survival over mine” Kay continued, unaware of how truly unwelcome such information was.
(Cassian didn't want to know the chances that he was leading almost two dozen rebel soldiers into certain death.)
“And Jyn?” he asked, pausing in his stride. “What chance does Jyn have of making it out alive?”
“I… was not aware that you were so vested in her… odds,” Kay spoke slowly, haltingly, the way he did when he knew what he was about to say would not be well received.
“Jyn Erso's odds of surviving the Scarif operation are less than four percent.”
(Jyn. Jyn, with her fire-soul and her flaming eyes and her fierce words. Jyn was going to die, and he, Cassian Andor, was going to live.)
(Was going to have to live without her.)
“Change the odds, Kay,” he snarled. “Change your priorities. Jyn needs to survive. You have to be there to make sure she does.”
“Are you intending to die on this mission, Cassian?”
“I don’t know,” he replied, slowing to a halt as he saw the crowd of rebels -- pathfinders and ground forces, mostly -- that had gathered in the central hangar of Base One.
Jyn walked out of the war room, her eyes blazing, frustration evident in her tense shoulders and fisted hands.
I believe her.
------------------------------
( NOW )
Cassian’s eyes flew open and he shot upright.
His heart was racing. His breathing was hard, fast, labored. His hand, when he held it upright, shook uncontrollably.
His vision was hazy, unfocused. Lights flared up, and grew dimmer; colors shifted, mixed, separated again. His fingertips buzzed.
(What had they done to him?)
“Shh, Cass,” a voice murmured, soothingly. Warm, calloused hands grabbed his shoulders, pushed him back down onto the (solid, rock-hard, military-issue) cot. “It’s okay.”
Jyn?
“J’n,” he tried to say, but his tongue was thick and numb and his voice slurred. His head lolled backwards, the shapes of the pipes on the ceiling of the hold spinning in front of his eyes.
“I’m here, Cassi,” she whispered as the buzzing in his fingertips abated.
“N’ r’ly you,” he rasped, his head still swimming. Jyn had not come back for him. It just was another cruel trick the toxin was playing.“Faek J’n.”
“I’m not a hallucination, Cassian,” she replied, moving one of her hands to run through his hair just like she had when he woke up from Scarif. “The toxins are almost out of your system. I’m here for real, I promise.”
(Her fingers were warm, soothing, where they moved against his scalp. He turned his face into his arm, his nose pressed up against the inside of her wrist.)
She felt like Jyn .
He grabbed her free hand, from where it rested against his shoulder, ran his fingers over her palm.
Felt the familiar raised lines of a knife wound, slicing across her hand.
“It’s me, Cassi,” she murmured again. “I found Kaytu. I’m here.”
“Jyn,” he whispered, his lips still pressed against the skin of her arm. He felt his head start to clear, the shifting colors and shapes resolve themselves into the familiar features of a stolen cargo ship.
He saw Jyn -- real Jyn, living, breathing Jyn -- leaning over him. With her flyaway hair and her shifting, gold-flecked eyes.
She was here. She was real.
(she had come back for him?)
Exhaustion crashed over him in a wave, as whatever stim shot they had injected him with finally wore off. He felt tired, down into his bones.
The last thing he did before his eyelids drifted shut was pull Jyn just the slightest bit closer.
Her warmth melted into him, chased away the cold memory of his cell.
(she came back for him.)
------------------------------
( THEN: Home One )
Jyn Erso was stubborn and brash and willful. She was fierce and protective and far more inclined towards fight than flight.
(She was also, now, apparently, a moony-eyed teenager with a crush. It annoyed her to no end, what he could do to her with just a look -- but then he would look up at her, through those few pieces of hair that kept falling onto his forehead, and she would remember why. She got lost in his (deep, chocolate-colored, impossibly expressive) eyes far too often for it to go unnoticed.)
(He would leave her, if he did notice. If he knew how he made her feel -- how every time he brushed her skin she felt a bolt of electricity, how being around him made her intoxicated and happy , how she wanted to pull his stupidly attractive face down to hers and smash their mouths together -- he wouldn’t want her as his partner anymore.)
(He would leave her behind, just like everyone else, because he didn’t love her back.)
(Every woman and half of the men in the Rebellion would jump at the chance to be with him in that way. Jyn Erso was nothing special in all that.)
Cassian had missed breakfast that morning. He didn’t always make it, but… he was usually there the morning after they spent the night at the cantina.
(He teased her sometimes, about the way she acted when she was drunk. She leaned heavily on him, with her inhibitions lowered, laughed hysterically.)
(His eyes lit up, when he told stories like that, all golden-brown and warm.)
(Drunk Jyn was brave enough to lean into him, to be closer, to try for what she wanted . Sober Jyn was decidedly not that brave.)
So she’d hacked into the Intelligence database --
(“So… we have a mission, tomorrow? Corulag, is it?”
“That’s only on the classified database, Jyn,” He’d replied, while stuffing an extra blaster into his pack. (she still hadn’t returned the one she’d stolen.)
“That’s where I’m looking.”
He glanced up at her, and she let a smug smirk stretch across her face. “And what do you think of Intel’s cybersecurity?”
“I think it would be a good idea,” she replied.
She’d gotten a genuine, warm-eyed smile for that one.)
--and found his mission files.
(She’d seen them before, of course, but she… she hadn’t opened them. It seemed wrong, like an invasion of privacy. She knew he hated the things he’d had to do, and she… she didn’t want to force him to share that burden with her.)
Alliance Intelligence Operation 384712083 -- FILE UPDATED [0.6.13.0930 ABY]
Mission Objective: [requires auth code 07728-delta]
Requested Operative(s): Ser. Jyn Erso -- NOT APPROVED
Commanding Officer: Capt. Cassian Andor
Fallback Operatives: Capt. Cassian Andor -- (vol.) APPROVED
Objective status: complete
Operative status: KIA
Mission Report:
Mission Termination: APPROVED
Extraction: N/A
“You bastard,” she whispered. He’d never even told her that she’d been selected for this mission.
He’d just taken the burden on himself, without telling her.
(Why didn’t you tell me?)
(Why didn’t you trust me?)
------------------------------
( THEN: Home One )
“What the hell is this?” Cassian snarled.
“I put in a requisition order for a third grade operative under your command to complete a third grade mission on Sevarcos II,” Draven replied smoothly, opening the file and skimming over it before replacing it on his desk.
“I fail to see your complaint.”
“Jyn Erso is not a third grade operative,” he growled, knowing that he was revealing far too much to Draven, too furious to care. “She’s not expendable.”
( Never, ever expendable.)
“She is the most expendable,” Draven replied. “She’s a hero to the entire Rebellion. ‘The woman who went rogue’, or whatever slogan they thought up for her down in Prop.”
“You kill her and you’ll have a riot on your hands--”
“By the fucking Force, Cassian, use your head! I taught you this!” Draven shot back. “I taught you how to manipulate people -- to pull the possible reactions and determine the best course with which to proceed. Why is Jyn Erso expendable?”
She isn’t, his thoughts screamed, and she never will be. And she will never do the things you’ve made me do for you.
(She’s a hero, the darker part of his mind hissed, the part that was an assassin and a soldier and a spy. Everyone knows her. Everyone cares about her.)
(Heroes make great stories, but martyrs are the ones people die to avenge.)
“You’re going to use her death to motivate the Rebellion.”
“You see, Cassian?” Draven asked, handing the file back to him. “I didn’t even need to tell you that. You knew that that was Jyn Erso’s best use to the Alliance. You might pretend to belong with these rogues -- but you’re still the spy I trained you to be. You will be, for as long as the war goes on.”
Cassian had turned and walked away from Draven -- but he could not walk away from the ghosts that lived inside his own head.
(You’re still the spy I trained you to be.)
Cassian had always known that the scars he earned, the changes he underwent in Intelligence would never go away. He knew that he was never truly going to be anything more than Captain Cassian Andor, spy and murderer.
He’d thought… he’d thought that Jyn had changed him. He’d thought that maybe, one day, her hope might show him how to be a good man.
( Jyn’s hope is for herself, and her friends, and the end of the war. Jyn does not hope for you.)
(But I hope for her.)
He’d considered Jyn’s death. In his own head, his own rational thoughts, her death had made sense .
(I would never hurt her.)
(Monster. Betrayer. Murderer. This is why she does not love you.)
There were no fallback operatives, no one to go to the spice lords instead of Jyn.
Cassian turned his stride towards the shuttle bay, ignoring everyone he passed in the hallways.
It is suicide, to go to Sevarcos II without an extraction plan, without a backup team -- without any equipment save for his comm and the vibroblade strapped to his boot.
(You’re still the spy I trained you to be.)
I will never hurt Jyn.
(You will be, for as long as the war goes on.)
------------------------------
( NOW )
The first thing Cassian was aware of was the warm, heavy mass of another body lying on top of his own.
The second thing he realized was the pounding of head in the aftermath of whatever antidote and stim shot Jyn had forced him to take.
His eyes blinked open, and the world took shape around him.
(Jyn lay curled in his arms, her cheek pressed to his collarbone, one hand curled over his heart. Her breathing was deep and even as she slept, her sleep peaceful as was so very rare for soldiers like them.)
A KX-series Imperial Security droid stood in the hold, its eyes glowing white in the dim light.
Cassian didn’t dare to hope, but-- “Kay?”
“You didn’t activate my backup,” the droid stated, its vocoder lowered to avoid waking the sleeping Jyn. “ And it’s been five months since the destruction of my previous iteration. Did you not want me back?”
“No, Kay, no. Never,” Cassian whispered. His hesitation had nothing to do with the droid and everything -- everything -- to do with his failure to protect his friend in the data vault. “I just… I couldn’t.”
Kaytoo’s servomotors whirled for a moment before he responded. “Elaborate.”
“I…” Cassian swallowed, began again. “On Scarif, when you… died, Kay, it was because I left you behind. Jyn and I went into the data vault and we left you at the command console.”
“That was the correct choice, Cassian.”
“How?” Cassian laughed without humor. “It failed. You died because we left you strategically vulnerable. You died because I failed to look out for you.”
“That is not true, Cassian. I am not dead,” Kay responded matter-of-factly.
“You aren’t disposable, either!”
“I… do not really know how to stay this,” Kaytoo stated, unsure, “but… you say that your actions that led to my demise were… completely wrong, and that… is not true.
“You made the decision to leave me because you knew -- and my past iteration would have known -- that that gave you and Jyn and myself the greatest chances of survival. It did not work out for me as well as it did for you and Jyn, but… just because the actions you take have negative consequences does not necessarily make you at fault for making those choices.
“I do not blame you for my demise, Cassian. I am not dead, and you are not a bad person.”
(You are not a bad person.)
He didn’t know how he felt about that, about what Kay thought, but he rapped his free hand against the cool metal of the droid’s chassis and let it walk back to the cockpit.
“He’s right, you know,” Jyn murmured, awakened by Kaytoo’s heavy tread as he clomped away. Her green-gray eyes blinked up at him, still hazy from sleep.
(there was nothing in the galaxy that compared to this woman.)
“Hmmm?”
“You’re not a bad person, Cass,” she said, nuzzling into his chest. “You’re a good person who had to do bad things.”
“You shouldn't have come for me, Jyn,” he whispered. “I took the mission, I knew the risks--”
“I love you, Cassi,” she interrupted, not looking at him, avoiding eye contact. His heart seized at her words--
(I love you, Cassi.)
(You are not a bad person..)
(I love you)
“--I wasn’t going to let you die when it should have been me, instead."
“I’m never going to let you do the things I’ve done,” he declared, trying to avoid getting distracted as her fingers started running circles over his heart. “And you’re never going to be expendable.”
“But you have to let me do my missions, too,” she replied, finally looking up at him. “You need to trust me.”
“I’ve always trusted you,” he replied simply. (He was a liar. He was a spy and a liar, but this woman pulled the truth from his veins and made his heart relearn what it meant to hope.) “I love you.”
“I know,” she whispered, picking her head up to look at him, their faces only inches apart. He pressed his forehead against hers, in silence, waiting.
They lay together, and breathed.
And they were home.
------------------------------
( THEN: Yavin IV )
He couldn’t tell Jyn everything he needed to tell her. He couldn’t tell her about his mission on Jenoport, or his stints undercover on Coruscant, or the Carida military academy where he’d watched his father die, or Admiral Grendreef--
There wasn’t the time. If they were going to steal the plans, they had to leave now .
He’d tried to tell her the things he’d done, tried to make her understand what kind of man she was placing her trust in.
Spies, Saboteurs, assassins. Everything we did, we did for the Rebellion.
Everything I did, I did for the Rebellion.
And every time I walked away from something I wanted to forget…
But he had failed, clearly, in making her understand who and what he was.
He walked closer, just barely able to keep a smile off of his face as he drew nearer to her, like a moon caught forever in the gravity of the sun, never to escape its orbit.
(She wouldn’t be looking at him like that if she knew the things he’d done.)
I told myself it was for a cause I believed in.
“I’m not used to people sticking around when things go bad,” she said, and the way her eyes glimmered made his heart clench.
“Welcome home,” he whispered, leaning in close enough to see the individual flecks, like constellations in her eyes.
She smiled back up at him, and he knew he could never regret the decisions that had led him there, or the ones that would follow after.
A cause that was worth it.