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BLAKE: If I got a medal, I’d take it back home, why didn’t you just take it home—
SCHOFIELD: Look, it’s just a bit of bloody tin! It doesn’t make you special, it doesn’t make any difference to anyone.
BLAKE: Yes, it does… And it’s not just a bit of tin. It’s got a ribbon on it.
“I’m going to tell you something,” Cassian says.
His hands are scraped raw, clinging to the harsh cliff face that seems almost designed to deter escaped prisoners. His head aches from days without any sleep, and his arms ache from the long swim, and his lungs ache from shouting at people to run—and still, this is the hardest thing he’s done since landing on Narkina Five.
“What?” Melshi shouts back. His voice is breathless, too loud for the short distance between them.
“The PORD,” Cassian says, carefully pronouncing every letter of that godforsaken directive. “When I said I didn’t know anything about it—I lied.”
“What,” Melshi replies, a little softer this time.
“I know exactly why the Empire did it.”
“Elaborate… Please.” Cassian can’t quite see Melshi across the cliff face: just his knuckles going white from the strain, the tip of one sunburned ear. But it’s enough to fill in his expression—the same careful look he wore when Cassian first told him about the exposed water pipe by their station. Like he was trying not to hope too much.
“I know because—I was there,” he says. “On the job. We robbed the garrison at Aldhani, where they keep the payroll for a whole Imperial sector. Took eighty million credits, and got out before they could catch anyone.”
Melshi is quiet, keeping still beneath the wind and the faraway whistle of TIE fighters. Cassian wants—suddenly, irrationally—to see his face.
“That’s why they doubled the sentences,” he goes on, “and—and everything else. They panicked. But I didn’t know it would be so much, I—”
“Hey, Keef.” It takes a second, for the name to register. “Not right now. Tell me later.”
Too many cold, exhausting hours later, Cassian sits with Melshi by the fire.
It’s a small fire, just a few pieces of driftwood lit by a makeshift flint and steel that Cassian threw together from one of the tools they stole back in the ship. But it’s warm enough, purple-orange flames rising almost to chest level as they crouch beside it—sticking sore hands over the hot coals and wincing as the movement pulls at weary muscles. They eat small plants that Melshi has foraged, little brownish scraps of roots and leaves that surely used to grow bigger before the Imperials took this place over.
They sit, eat, and Cassian talks. He tells Melshi about the team, the plan, the months they spent preparing in the valley before anyone approached the Garrison. He tells Melshi about the Imperial commander who’d defected, the rich girl who led the rebels. He tells Melshi about the sluggish way those Aldhani troops responded when the heist started—like they never planned for anything like this.
“Has anyone said ‘thank you?’” Melshi asks, when Cassian is finally finished.
Cassian clears his throat—that was more talking than he’s done in months. “For what?”
“Storming the Garrison,” Melshi says, staring into the fire. “Stealing those credits.”
Cassian shifts, stares at him. “Why would they? It made life harder for everyone in the galaxy.”
And then Melshi turns and stares back. The fire casts bright-orange light on his face, turning his dark eyes almost golden.
“On an individual level, maybe,” he says. “But collectively—knowing that something like that can be done? You should’ve told this to Kino. To the whole shift. Would’ve gotten us fighting even harder.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Cassian says. But he barely sounds convinced, even to himself. His limbs have been frozen since jumping into the ocean, but this—the fire and Melshi watching him across it—is the warmest he’s felt in—weeks. Maybe more.
“It does if you’re a rebel,” Melshi replies. “So many people think resistance is impossible. That the Empire is already too big, too powerful, so you should just lie back and remain loyal even when they take everything from you. But Aldhani—that shows people it isn’t impossible. If someone can steal eighty million credits, what else can be done? And the PORD—that will just make people angrier. Give them more reason to fight back.”
Cassian stares at him—unable to look away even if he wanted to. Melshi’s words echo like the clang of a bell tower on Ferrix, almost too loud to bear. And this reminds him of something else—a manifesto in his bag back on Niamos. He hasn’t really read it yet, just glanced at bits and pieces. Tried not to hear the writing in Nemik’s voice.
“I didn’t do it because I was angry,” he says. “It was a job. I did it because they paid me.”
“Did you?” Melshi tilts his head up, as though to say—are you sure?
That, too, is familiar. For a moment he’s back in Maarva’s kitchen, wishing she weren’t—exactly who she is.
“Melshi, how did you get arrested?” Cassian asks.
And Melshi grins—wide open and impossibly beautiful in a place like this. “How do you think?” he says. “Inciting rebellion. We had a good plan, too. Would’ve taken over the local Imp station if my comrade’s brother hadn’t turned us in.”
“What… what was your sentence?” Cassian says. His voice drops low, nearly to a whisper.
But Melshi stays loud, confident even about this. “Ten years. I had eight left when the PORD hit—and then they turned it into eighty.”
Cassian tries to hide how his stomach drops at that. But he must fail—or maybe Melshi knows him better than he thought—because Melshi reaches down and takes his hand. His palm is warm, from the fire and, maybe, something else.
“It’s alright,” Melshi says. “We got out. Thanks to you. So, y’know—thank you. For that and the raid on the garrison. If nobody’s said it yet.”
Thank you. That’s too loud, too much. Echoing in Cassian’s mind like he’s standing in the bell tower itself, and suddenly he wishes he had a pair of the time grappler’s massive headphones. He hasn’t thought of home—or, has barely thought of home, has successfully suppressed it—the whole time he’s been on this planet. But now it’s coming, all in a rush—and he wants to take Melshi on a walk down Rix Road or through the shipyards, show him the warning chimes, take him to a marching band practice. Everyone back there blames him for the destruction and the Stormtroopers, but maybe Melshi could tell them why he did it. Maybe Melshi could say thank you for something else—
It's a fantasy. But then, so was getting out, before yesterday.
“Keef?” Melshi says. He’s looking at Cassian like—well, like nobody should, really. Intense and soft at the same time.
“My name is Cassian,” Cassian tells him. And he leans forward: crashes their lips together.
It’s uncomfortable at first—a bad angle with Cassian leaning around the fire. And then Melshi moves, shifting on the hard, rocky dirt until he’s closer—putting one hand on Cassian’s shoulder for balance—then keeping his weight there, angling in closer, opening his mouth. Melshi tastes a bit like the prison food, but mostly like seawater, like sand, like making it against impossible odds.
For once, for a few minutes, Cassian stops scanning the skies for planes.
“We should tell someone.”
Melshi’s voice is quiet, barely audible over the crackling of embers, the faraway waves crashing. It would be harder to hear if Cassian weren’t lying right beside him, head pillowed on Melshi’s shoulder. The ground is still hard, weather still rough, but it’s a substantial upgrade like this: sharing body heat.
“Who would we tell? And how?” Cassian asks, more because he wants to keep hearing Melshi’s voice than for any real tactical criticism.
Melshi chuckles—a low noise that Cassian feels vibrate through his chest. “Hadn’t really thought that far ahead. But people need to know, right? Prisoners taking over a whole factory facility. And why we did it, what it was like.”
Cassian stays quiet, looks up at the stars. They’re mostly unfamiliar here, of course, but he can pick out one or two of the constellations Clem taught him. Maybe three.
“Like me telling you about Aldhani,” he says.
“Yeah. Like that.” Melshi tilts his head down, presses his cheek into Cassian’s hair. His skin is still warm even though the fire has died down, like he’s pulled it inside himself.
“It seems incredibly stupid,” Cassian says. “But we can try.”
Melshi chuckles again, lighter this time.
Tomorrow, they will get up, keep searching until they find a way off this planet, and then—what lies beyond that is impossible to plan for, much as Cassian wants to stay up all night trying. But for now, he presses close to the warmest thing he’s had in months, and holds onto that we.