Chapter Text
There were two primary methods of coping with reality, among the regulars at the Yavin base. Traitors, spies and criminals, crack-shots and ace pilots, each and every one of them alike bound and bonded by the common understanding of the words that had been ringing in Cassian’s ears for the better part of three years now – You’ll ultimately die fighting these bastards.
Some of them took any precious moment of relaxation to escape their reality, drowned in a shared bottle of nog, twisted in each other’s bedsheets. The pilots fell into this category with higher frequency and greater determination than most, and however bemused Cassian found himself at the way they seemed to come and go from one another’s bunks with little apparent concern for consistency or commitment, he could hardly begrudge or condemn it.
The odds of surviving any given TIE dogfight were daunting enough to make even the best of them keenly aware of borrowed time, each and every time they touched down afterward.
For Cassian’s part, he spent enough of his life drinking and fighting and fucking his way through uncomfortable and inconvenient thoughts and feelings, and so he came to find himself in the second camp, had taken Luthen’s taunt to give it all at once and turned into something closer approaching give it all, always, the lot of them who never saw a concept of downtime, only what next?, their days a constant cycle of intel and planning, missions and reports, and the grudging acquiescence to the occasional need to eat and sleep so they might maintain optimal functionality.
Some might have called it dedication, diligence, devotion.
Cassian put it closer to the simple divide between those of them determined to seize any last taste of life to suppress the lurking cognizance that they were all of them one shot, one slip away from death, versus those of them who accepted that they were all of them dead already.
He’d put the last pieces of his crumbling heart on Pegla’s battered ship three years ago, sent them off with one last easy lie to reassure Bix and Bee, and reassured himself in turn that Brasso was the only one of them who could always reliably see through his bullshit.
There was a Keef in Massassi Group, under another wing of Draven’s command.
“Is that your real name?” Cassian had asked upon their first meeting.
A confused, nervous look greeted him in turn, twitchy eyes darting between him and where Draven was halfway across the room listening in on incoming encryptions. “Is this a test?”
Because it was a joke, but only to himself. Which perhaps meant it wasn’t a joke at all; certainly made for a bad one, at any rate.
It took him a half-dozen or so occurrences of someone calling for Keef for Cassian to purge the automatic pause it gave him, after which Keef simply meant Keef, the nervous young defector, and the name Keef Girgo returned to the pyre of Cassian’s prior life. More disorienting piece of trivia than fact of any actual interest or vulnerability.
Plenty of them had done their time in Imperial confinement.
The old mossy stone of the ancient Massassi temples was cold, but it was rough, cracked, worn… beautiful in its imperfections.
x---x
One day, Luthen woke up and apparently decided Cassian had outlived his immediate usefulness; recalled him from a surveillance assignment in a mid-level bureaucrat’s office halfway across Coruscant, loaded him up in the Fondor, and didn’t speak a word as to why until they pulled out of hyperspace in the middle of nowhere, nothing but empty space and distant stars – and a single, nondescript civilian shuttle a hundred klicks out.
An intentional rendezvous, by Luthen’s lack of alarm. “Who is it?” Cassian asked, leaning over Luthen’s shoulder to see the scanner readout.
Luthen tilted his head sideways, considering; twisted around just enough to shoot a wry glance at Cassian, nodded out the viewport and said, “You’ll be working for him.”
x---x
In the chaos of an after-action disembarkation and debrief, a battered and exhausted Pathfinder team rerouted from the Dantooine operating base after an extended recon mission, the sound of a voice rising above the din with a sharp call of, “Keef!” wasn’t anything especially noteworthy or worth pausing over.
The way Cassian’s feet twitched reflexively in his boots and icy dread flooded his veins was, and he faltered mid-sentence to Draven, just a moment, perplexed at the resurgence of that particular tic, and then carried on.
And then paused again, just as quick, with the sudden rustle of bodies around them as somebody shoved through. Draven pivoted, ever-present scowl deepening, and Cassian followed his gaze as he tracked the disruption and barked a reproving, “Sergeant, you will conduct yourself wi - ” before Cassian cut him off with faint disbelief in his voice –
“Melshi.”
Draven glanced between them, the mildest interest in the quirk of one brow, at this newcomer’s ability to stop the forever professionally-focused and determinedly personally-detached Cassian in his tracks, and then took a half-step aside where he was blocking the path. “We’ll pick this up later, Captain Andor.”
Cassian barely had time to get the muttered, “Yes sir,” out before he found himself crushed into a stifling embrace, Melshi still laden down with layers of gear and tac-wear.
“All this time,” Melshi muttered gruffly near his ear. “I never imagined…”
That you were still alive, Cassian finished for him, reciprocated. That we’d see each other again. That the cosmic twists of the universe could be so kind. “Never,” he echoed, voice faint, standing stock-still in Melshi’s grasp, practically limp in his shock. And then he realized – “Cassian. My name. It’s Cassian.”
The grip around him only strengthened. “Always thought Keef Girgo sounded like a con job.”
A rough, reluctant laugh tore from his throat. “It was.”
Melshi pulled back, took him by the shoulders and looked him over. “Was this you, even then?” Cassian blinked. “Cassian the rebel? Captain Andor,” he echoed Draven with a teasing glint in his eye.
His mouth ran dry as he choked on an answer. “No,” he eventually managed, and finally forced his arms to work and wrap around the specter in front of him in, drew him back in close, and tried to decide if it was more lie or half-truth. He split the difference with a lie of omission. “No… not then. Not there.”
He clasped his own fingers together where they met behind Melshi’s back, holding him fast trapped in the ring of his arms, and felt the careful lines he’d drawn and defenses he’d shorn up these past three years begin to crumple into dust.
That the cosmic twists of the universe could be so cruel, he amended bitterly.
“Do we have a problem, Captain?”
He straightened and glanced sharply at Draven. “Sir?”
“You look like you’re planning to spend your night searching for the bottom of the biggest bottle of rotgut you can lay your hands on.”
Cassian’s lip curled up on a laugh that wasn’t quite amused. He narrowed his eyes slightly and pointed out, “Hardly an unusual pastime, around here.”
“It is for you.”
Draven wasn’t the head of Intelligence operations for nothing, anyway. “No rotgut,” he promised, and considered meaning it. “No problem.”
“That Pathfinder sergeant out of Kinrath Group?” Cassian felt a muscle in his jaw twitch, once. “I need your head in the game, Andor; if personnel adjustments are necessary...”
“No,” Cassian countered quickly, and then wondered at the ready refusal; adjustments could help fortify some very tenuous ramparts in his psyche. “A good friend made in trying times.” He swallowed hard and dug the hole a little deeper. “No adjustments; no rotgut; no problem.”
“Hm.” Draven gave him a long, assessing look, more than a little warning in his eyes, and relented. “Dismissed.”
x---x
“You’ll want to give Agent Andor a good deal of discretion in the requisition of resources,” Luthen told Draven, matter-of-fact and all business, while Cassian just stood there awkwardly against the bulkhead in the cramped space, arms crossed over his chest and staring down at his own feet. “And a high latitude when it comes to decision-making and judgement calls in the field.”
The weight of Draven’s stare drew Cassian’s gaze up, shifting slowly between the two men. “I appreciate your faith in Agent Andor,” Draven returned after a moment’s heavy pause. “But I have a number of men and women I’ve commanded a long time, in whom I have a great deal of trust, who are not afforded such autonomy.” He turned his attention back to Luthen, practically dismissive in the pivot. “You have your methods, Luthen, as suit your circumstances, but back at base, we run a more regular outfit.”
“And without Andor,” Luthen countered, “you wouldn’t have a base at all, Davi.”
Cassian’s brow furrowed, but the claim clearly piqued Draven’s interest. “Is that so?” His expression turned more assessing, sizing Cassian up.
x---x
Melshi was waiting for him when he finally made it back to his bunkroom that evening. Leaning against the wall, watching the coming and going of the duty shift swap-over, looking cleaned up and relaxed in a downtime jumpsuit but tired. “That didn’t take long,” Cassian waved the door open. “Who gave me up?”
Melshi shrugged. “Some kid who looked way too amused that I was asking and way too young to be here.”
Cassian smiled faintly to himself as he slowly shucked his uniform jacket, trying to get his head on straight. “He’s a special case.” He threw the jacket over the top of his trunk and gestured around the cramped space. Workstation and bench cobbled together out of old crates and scrap; trunk with the handful of personal effects he’d accumulated these past few years at the foot of a utilitarian army cot. “It’s not much, but…”
“But we’ve survived worse,” Melshi finished for him. Cassian blew out a harsh breath and sank down on the edge of the cot; soon felt the dip and shifting weight as Melshi lowered himself by his side. “Because of you, Cassian, we survi-”
“I don’t want to talk about Narkina Five,” Cassian cut him off; his name sounded wrong from Melshi’s mouth. Collision of universes; melding of nightmares. The futility of survival, of escape, when they were all of them dead anyway.
This Melshi, he suspected, separated by the years since they parted ways on Niamos, on whatever disparate paths that had somehow, against all probability, reconverged here, was among the escapists. The ones desperate to cling to any last gasp of life they could grasp between bloody, scrabbling fingers.
Clinging to a cliff-face while the enemy circled overhead.
Except he was starting to realize that he left all of his contrary determination there, arms shaking and lending any spare scraps of optimism to shore up against Melshi’s rising despair, and soon thereafter on Ferrix he sealed the last bruised and abused pieces of his broken heart on a ship and sent it into the unknown, where their fates could at least be their own and no longer the collateral damage of his recklessness.
No guilt; no vulnerability. Only the mission, and the assets or obstacles in achieving it. Luthen Rael’s perfect soldier, willing to do what it took, whatever it took, every time and time again.
And now there was Melshi. And feelings, itching just out of reach under his skin, both guilt and vulnerability alike in abundance, regret and protectiveness, because what had been the point then, in dragging Melshi up that jagged rock only to see him fling himself aboard the burning ship that was the rebellion, careening ever faster towards inevitability?
Draven’s offered adjustments flashed again through Cassian’s mind, but it was useless, now, he knew too much and had somehow learned nothing at all, would worry about him, constantly.
Nothing you can do about that.
He shoved down the impotent rage and took the coward’s way out. “Should we go find some nog?”
But Melshi surprised him with a ready refusal. “Not tonight. Been a long few months sleeping in the dirt.” He went silent until Cassian dragged his gaze up from his own lap, cast a furtive sidelong glance and found a painfully compassionate stare meeting him in turn. “I think I’ve given you quite a shock.” He stood up, waited for Cassian to mirror him after a few seconds processing lag, and then clasped his hand and pulled him in for a gentler half-embrace, chin resting on Cassian’s shoulder. “We don’t have to talk about it.”
And he left, off to one of the big open bay barracks cobbled together to accommodate the influx of evacuees from the Dantooine base, and left Cassian standing there caught off his guard and wrong-footed and unsettled.
Draven was still in his office when Cassian tapped on the door frame later that night, half-full bottle he’d pilfered from one of the groundside flight wings caught between his fingers. He took ten seconds to absorb the picture before him before beckoning Cassian in, accepting the proffered bottle, and rummaging around under his desk for a couple of battered metal cups.
He poured a moderate splash into each as Cassian slumped into a seat, looked up and studied him through narrowed eyes for a moment, and then added a little more to Cassian’s cup before sliding it across the desk. “Come to change your answer?”
“I want a mission.”
Draven snorted and took a sip of his own drink. “How desperate do you imagine me to be, Andor?”
Cassian threw back half of his cup, grimaced, and asked, “Do you really want me to answer that?”
Draven scowled. “Fine. I need a survey of the upgraded planetary defense measures in the Wecacoe system. It’s far below your paygrade.”
“Guess it’s good you’re not paying me, then.”
“And take someone from Sefla’s team.”
“I’ll see who he can spare in the morning.”
x---x
As Draven’s ship circled in low over the treetops, Cassian found himself staring out the viewport in slack-jawed awe as they approached the towering Massassi ruins. Draven talked him through the pre-set approach routes to the base – the one they were on, all clear, the one that meant it’s a trap, and the tried and true straight-for-the-hangar-emergency-landing but, “Your ship better be visibly in flames or otherwise compromised,” Draven warned. And then when Cassian didn’t respond, he chuckled softly under his breath and conceded, “Luthen does rather like to keep his pieces on their respective game boards.”
Cassian couldn’t quite tell if Draven was counting himself amongst those pieces.
“Speaking of.” Draven signaled the next relay point and swung them in an arcing loop to angle in towards what seemed to be the temple commandeered as a main operations center. “I trust I needn’t spell out that there’s a reason he didn’t bring you all the way in personally.”
Vel’s forced overnight hike through the hills to rendezvous and collect him flashed through Cassian’s memory, but he just nodded. “No, sir.”
“As for Aldhani…” Cassian’s head whipped sideways to meet Draven’s eyes. “It’s an open secret that the money from the Aldhani raid built the Yavin base, and there isn’t a soul here who doesn’t acknowledge its importance as such, but…personal feelings are more complicated, and mixed. A lot of lives were impacted in the fallout. Your involvement would be best kept on a need-to-know basis.”
That was one assurance Cassian had no problem giving. “Of course, sir.”
A few minutes later, they touched down in the main hangar and Draven started the power down sequence. “Welcome, Cassian Andor, to Massassi Group.”
x---x