Chapter Text
Scarif was over.
The Death Star was destroyed.
They’d survived.
(Hadn’t they?)
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( NOW )
Cassian Andor had been the best spy in the Rebellion since he was fifteen years old. He knew death far too well -- he had caused it, had escaped it, far too many times to count. That was nothing new.
This was new, this… thing, that existed whenever he stood in the same room as her. It was strange and unnatural and made him reckless; and then annoyed again because recklessness had no place in the life of a spy.
She caused it. Jyn Erso had come barging into his life and now nothing made sense the way it should have.
But somehow, he couldn’t find it in himself to regret any of it.
Even if it had led to this, there had to be something -- some kind of atonement, or justification -- that everything that had happened had happened to bring them to this point.
He had not followed Jyn Erso in going rogue for absolution (he was beyond that already); he had followed her because he chose to do so.
Maybe Scarif was a suicide mission from the start, maybe it wasn’t. He didn’t know.
(He would’ve followed her regardless).
He pulled Jyn closer as the wrath of her father’s creation came roaring closer--
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( THEN: Yavin IV )
She’s tiny.
That was Cassian’s immediate thought when he first laid eyes on Jyn Erso.
Word was she’d left her mark on the extraction team -- even hit Melshi over the head with a shovel, if the rumors were true. People talked about her time with the Partisans -- she’d been the best of the best then, apparently, held in reverence second only to that of Gerrera himself.
Cassian stayed in the shadows while she talked with Mothma, watching, assessing.
She was quick, defensive, her eyes darting around the room, making note of the positions of doors and determining which people posed threats and which did not. She did not look for a weapon.
He should know. He had done the same thing.
(Neither one of them needed a weapon to be dangerous).
(The mirror hurts, Cassian, Draven said in his head. There are people out there that will remind you of yourself -- because of loss, or circumstance, or pity. You need to be able to do what has to be done regardless, but there is no escaping the hurt that comes from seeing your own self reflected in the eyes of another.)
He stepped out of the shadows deliberately, watching to see her reaction. No one else saw it, hidden in her micro-expressions, but he did.
A slight tightening of the corners of her mouth. Her eyes narrowed just a fraction. Her head cocked just a single degree to the left.
He’d just become her greatest threat in the room.
“When was the last time you were in contact with your father?”
“Fifteen years ago,” her voice was clear and sharp, chilled like the icy frost that used to cover the ground on Fest even during the summer months.
She glared defiantly at him, like a child being difficult just for the hell of it.
(Cassian absolutely did not notice her eyes, the way they reflected back at him.)
“Any idea where he’s been all the time?” he asked again, and it can out far too even and reasonable, but it was taking all his years of spying to keep the snarl out of his voice.
(They were green, her eyes -- at least, he thought so. They… shifted. Changed. Green and brown and the faintest gray-blue, all swirled around the golden flecks that looked like pieces of the sun.)
(They burned with need).
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( THEN: Eadu )
The scope cast Galen Erso in an unnatural green light. It warped the colors of things, but allowed him to see shapes clearly through all the unceasing rain this planet had to offer.
There were other people -- witnesses -- out there on the platform with Erso. Scientists, maybe, but soldiers too. And the deathtroopers that flanked the man in the white cape.
If -- when -- he killed Galen Erso, those troopers would hunt him. He and Kay would need a new ship; there was no way they could hide from Imperial deathtroopers for more than a handful of days, not in this weather.
Not if he was also being hunted by Jyn, for killing her father.
He pushed that thought away, just as he had pushed thoughts of her away in the Partisan prison cell. They were distracting, these thoughts of her, and he had been fighting long enough to know how it ended when operatives were distracted.
He’d had to clean up those situations, sometimes.
But Jyn Erso was not there to stop him or distract him, and the crowd on the platform had shifted to the point where he had a clear shot--
(Galen Erso had Jyn’s eyes. Dark, sorrowful, staring, except that his were surrounded by a weather-beaten, drawn face, the face of a man weary of war, of the part he had to play to defeat his enemies--)
(It was the face of a man who had lost his family and devoted himself to the war instead)
The mirror hurts, indeed.
Cassian saw Jyn’s eyes in his head and Galen’s eyes in his scope.
He swept the rifle aside and felt the rain beat down on him as he bowed his head.
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( THEN: Yavin IV )
Cassian couldn’t find it in himself to regret his decision.
On Eadu, when he’d made the decision not to kill Galen Erso, he had realized something.
Jyn Erso was powerful -- he’d always known that. That’s why he’d known better than to judge her by her size in the war room on Yavin.
She was powerful because she fought. Always.
But she was also powerful because, despite herself and her past, she cared.
He’d seen it when she was gentle with Bodhi after their escape from Jedha, when she pulled herself up that unending ladder to reach her father before Krennic could have killed him.
(When she’d taken out that squad of troopers on Jedha, before they could shoot him).
Jyn Erso was powered by need and hope. Those two things tangled inside her, urging her to fight, to act impulsively, and to build herself a family of misfits event though she’d lost hers twice before.
Need and hope burned like a fire inside her, hotter than rage and brighter than bitterness.
On Eadu, when he’d made the decision not to kill Galen Erso, Cassian Andor had realized that he cared for Jyn Erso.
(Some spy he was).
That realization came too late.
Galen Erso died in a hailstorm of Alliance bombers.
For one, heart-stopping moment, Cassian had thought she was dead.
( not her ).
It wasn’t like when he’d found her on Jedha -- she wasn’t catatonic. She fought him, when he first tried to drag her away, but he persisted. She remained numb after that, simply following him, as they raced ahead of the troopers.
When she screamed at him, onboard the stolen shuttle, he understood. He’d known, as soon as he looked into her (deep green, gold-flecked) eyes that she hated him. He was the man who killed her father.
(Why did that thought make him feel so empty and cold, as if something in his chest had broken into pieces, leaving a great black hole where it had once been?)
But then he got angry. He’d spent more than half of his life fighting this fight, committing atrocity after atrocity so that others wouldn’t have to. He’d tortured and killed and maimed for the sake of a world that he would not live to see -- one without the rule of the Empire bearing down on it.
So he shouted back. She’d abandoned the fight years ago, chosen to run away from her problems, to ignore the fighting and the suffering she saw around her every day.
At least he’d done something . At least if he was going to hell, he knew he was doing it so that others wouldn’t have to -- and so that one day the Empire would burn there too.
So when he returned from Eadu and saw Draven standing in the war room, red-faced, with his disappointed-in-failure glare setting his features in stone, Cassian did nothing.
And when he saw that the Council would not listen to Jyn, and he turned to leave, Draven caught his arm.
“Was it worth it?” the General asked, surveying the room full of senators that was soon going to explode in debate.
Cassian’s eyes swept the room, his gaze stopping on the figure of Jyn Erso -- the woman who frustrates him, makes him reckless. The woman he cares about.
“Yes.”
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( NOW )
I’m dead.
This is his first thought, upon waking in the darkness.
His second thought is a mental scream, from the fiery pain that raced up and down his spine.
Death is only rest for those who live good lives. The evil, the killers, beware -- Death, when it comes for you, will not be peaceful.
He couldn’t remember where he’d heard that before. He would've laughed in grim humor if his entire spine were not being ripped apart and forged back together in the same instant.
His arms twitched, shifted -- but all he felt was cold. The last time he’d felt anything, Jyn had been in his arms, warm and alive and breathing--
Of course Jyn isn’t going to be here. She doesn’t deserve to be damned in hell with you.
White, piercing light stabbed through his eyelids. Voices, yelling, a strange, erratic beeping -- the noises cut through his brain, digging deep into his skull.
“Cassian?”
He knew that voice. Knew it, cherished it -- never, ever wanted to lose it.
Jyn.
She shouldn't be in hell with him. She deserved whatever kind of peace she could gain in death.
She deserved better than him.
She always had.
He might’ve tried to tell her that, before he fell under again.
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( THEN: Scarif )
The elevator was dark, calm, peaceful. Jyn stood near to him, not speaking, just being there. Being with him.
He wanted to kiss her.
It seized him with a fiery demand, a need, that would not be ignored. He shifted towards her, and she looked up at him, her eyes wide--
But he pushed it aside, again. Jyn deserved better than that.
She deserved to be able to die -- because that’s what was waiting for them at the foot of the tower, death -- without having his feelings forced upon her. She deserved to die alongside someone she might even consider a friend, without having to doubt him, doubt her trust in him.
(Maybe it was good that they die now, each in their own little delusions; Cassian that Jyn might care for him, Jyn that Cassian was a good man. Maybe it was better this way, that they never learned the answers to their questions; maybe it was better that this ended before they had a chance to start.)
(If they survived, she would leave. She thought he was a good man, an honorable soldier of the Rebellion, but he wasn’t. She would learn that, if they survived, and she would leave him behind. She would take everything with her.)
(And he wouldn’t even try to stop her, because she deserved better than anything he could’ve given her. How was he supposed to ask her to love the man who killed her father?)
The elevator stopped. They stepped out, Cassian still leaning his weight on Jyn.
They struggled towards the beach together.
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( NOW )
They’d survived.
The Death Star had been destroyed.
They were adrift, with the rest of the Rebellion, trying to outrun the Empire’s forces. Cassian was still bedridden, unable to move much for fear of prolonging his healing process.
Jyn came into his room every day. She sat and held his hand -- sometimes she told him things, about herself or the Rebellion or what obscure piece of wisdom Chirrut had shared at breakfast that morning.
He always pretended to be asleep, when she was there. It was quieter; easier, when he was not expected to reply. He had never been a talkative person, but she made him want to tell her everything, just by being there. She made him want to be the man she thought he was.
And that was a dangerous thing.
Sometimes, he was truly asleep when she came in, and that saddened him the most; because even if he never responded, just knowing she was there and hearing her voice made him happier than he had any right to be.
There were times when he wanted to wake up. To reach out and touch her hand, to speak to her--
But then he remembered himself. Someday, he was going to have to own up and tell her of every horrible deed he’d ever done for the Rebellion. That was the day he was going to lose her.
He just wasn’t ready to lose her quite yet.