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Cassian wasn’t there when they placed it, but he came here often enough later. It was tucked up high, but he had never been afraid to climb. The rough stone hardly registered under his calloused fingers. There was still dried blood pooled around his nails, his gloves covered hands still raw from clinging to a different rock less than four days ago. Time felt nonlinear. A hundred years had passed since he was a prisoner, but the scratches on his arms were still too new to scab over. Two days ago he still had a mother. He lost an entire family in another life, on another world. He only knew Nemik for three days. How long ago was that? He heard Clem’s voice in his ear like he was still right there, but he had been gone for years.
The man who sees everything is more blessed than cursed. Eyes open, possibilities everywhere.
When Clem was killed, it was so abrupt. It felt like being knocked to the ground and losing all the air in your lungs. Only it wouldn’t pass. There was no way to get the air back. Maarva had pressed him to her side, trying to make him look away, but he watched Clem’s legs kick desperately, briefly, until they went still. He saw the moment he stopped being Clem. In an instant, whatever lived behind his eyes and made him the calm, steady man Kassa would cautiously and, eventually, completely trust as a father, disappeared.
Who walked them home after that? Jezzi? Bix’s father? He couldn’t remember. Clem’s things were everywhere. Why wouldn’t they be? It was his home. Parts on the table waiting to be cleaned, spare boots next to the door. His pillow still had the indentation from the night before. His dirty clothes were in a pile next to his side of the bed. His blaster was still tucked into the drawer of his nightstand. So many things he planned to fix or pick up, but he wasn’t coming home. He was gone, all of a sudden. Everywhere Cassian looked he saw a place Clem should have been but wasn’t.
Maarva’s grief was silent and still. She sat and stared, took deep, shaky breaths. Cassian’s grief was silent, but not still. Loss was nothing new for him and he did what he had always done.
He exploded with rage that was violent and futile.
He was overpowered and taken away.
After that, he stayed away. He hadn’t chosen Sipo or Mimban. But then, he hadn’t chosen Ferrix, either. He came back, but it didn’t feel like coming home. Maarva looked older. Clem’s things were all gone, except for the blaster. His room was a child’s room. An altar to a boy who didn’t exist anymore. Maybe never existed- Clem and Maarva’s son. But Cassian wasn’t anybody’s.
Tools and scraps he’d collected sat where he’d left them at thirteen. Even his blowgun still leaned against the wall where he always kept it. He didn’t know how Maarva got it back. He assumed it had been destroyed when he was arrested. It was the only thing he had from his old life, the only proof he had that Kenari existed and his family had been real. He had been so proud when he learned how to use it, but what good had it done? It hadn’t saved a single person he loved.
He never touched it again and he tried not to look at it. He carried Clem’s old blaster now. That hadn’t saved anyone he loved, either- not since he took it for his own- but it saved his own skin plenty of times. Saving himself was all he knew how to do.
When he was on Ferrix, he either slept at the yard in what was left of the old hauler or shared someone else’s bed as often as possible. Sometimes he stumbled back to Maarva’s house and passed out in his old room because he couldn’t make it any farther. She’d always wake him in the morning with hot caf. She never asked where he’d been or what he’d done. She would look at him, and for all he had learned to read people, he couldn’t describe what he saw in her expression. Something like sadness. Something like regret. Something like hope and resignation all at once.
Cassian, what have you done?
I messed up.
The house was being watched now, of course. He wondered if anything was still inside. Was Jezzi taking care of the plants? Was his blowgun still leaning against the wall?
He hadn’t been there and his mind still couldn’t make sense of it. He still felt her. There was no such thing as Ferrix without Maarva. His life had been loss and chaos and fear for as long as he could remember, but there had been one fixed point. He could come back to Ferrix and Maarva would be there. One truth to ground him and keep him from spinning out into the galaxy, untethered and alone. While there was no one who really knew him- every version of him- there was one person who almost did. And now she was gone.
Tell him he knows everything he needs to know and feels everything he needs to feel. And when that day comes and those two pull together, he will be an unstoppable force for good.
Tell him I love him more than anything he could ever do wrong.
Her last message to Ferrix crashed over Rix Road, but her last message to Cassian sat heavy in his gut. He loved her as well as he knew how, but he had always been so angry, too. For taking him away from Kenari. For living when Clem had died. For staying behind when he needed to her to come with him. For loving him when he was unlovable. For letting him come back after every beating and screw up and selfish disaster he wrought upon himself. He resented her for the unforgivable sin of loving him, because he couldn’t begin to accept it. Now, just when he thought he might, it was too late.
Cassian’s grief was silent, but not still. And loss was nothing new for him. So, he did what he had always done.
Almost.
He did not explode. The rage was there, still violent, but no longer futile. This time, he armed himself with it. He nurtured it. He let it flood his veins and clear his vision. Honed and sharpened it with perfect control.
And he could be taken away, but he would not be overpowered.
No game. Kill me. Or take me in.