Chapter Text
Cassian tells the Alderaanian princess, “The Empire's pace of oppression outstrips our ability to understand it.”
“Excuse me?” The tone is almost as cold as outside their current base. She's clearly indicating he should shut up and move along.
But she upset Bodhi, and Chirrut, and Baze. And Cassian doesn't have many people, but they're his, now.
And she upset them.
They'd offered to light a candle for her - for Alderaan. (He's lit one himself, for-, late at night, when no one's around.) And she turned them down, harshly. (She'd said that she had to watch her home be destroyed, had to feel all those lives be snuffed out-. Well. Baze saw his home be destroyed, and Chirrut felt it. Jedha was destroyed by the Death Star too.) He understands why she said what she did, but she still upset them.
And while Cassian doesn't like talking to people, Captain Andor does. He's personable, and charming. He knows how to talk to people, how to make them happy- and how to make them unhappy too.
“That's the trick with the Empire, it's easier to hide behind forty atrocities than a single incident.”
“How dare you-.”
Yes, the implication that Alderaan is not in a separate class of loss could be considered insulting. Just because it's a core world, not mid-rim or outer-rim like the rest of them.
It isn't an insult, though.
And-. Chirrut had told him that he carried his cage within himself. He's trying not to let that be true.
So he says nearly the only words he remembers in Kenar. He remembers so few, now.
“Mar’kum el’ma ha’shey. …Ye mar’vy el’nere. Mar’vy ya el’nere.”
She frowns. She doesn't understand him. Of course she doesn't.
(At the same time, though, she does. Of course she does.)
But she's letting him talk, now. She's listening.
He tells her, “You think you're the only one to lose your home to the Death Star. -To the Empire.”
She's not. And she has no right to sit here and pretend like she is. Not in front of everyone else here.
“You haven't lost everything. You have people who know what you've lost. Don't you look away from them.
"And even if you had-. You're not the only one here who's lost everything. Don't you look away from us.”
(Cassian lost everything, when Maarva and Clem took him. He no longer does anything that Kassa would have done. Even when he's fighting for the rebellion, he's always pretending to be someone else, someone who can't paint their face in readiness for a hunt. He can smudge dark grease on his wrists, sometimes, when they're hidden under shirt cuffs. But even the small things, he can't do anymore, because he doesn't remember what they are.)
She looks him in the eye, and she flinches. He doesn't know what his face looks like. Slowly, slowly, he gets it back under control. (He's not Kassa. He's Cassian. He's Captain Cassian Andor. He is Captain Cassian Andor.)
Quietly, she asks, “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because for everyone here, we've lost our homes to the Empire. Either they're gone, or we can't return. Or both. Don't assume you're the only person who's ever gone through this.”
She doesn't hold eye contact.
He can't go home to Ferrix anymore either - to where Clem and Maarva are. He's given up even the hope of returning to Kenari, where his parents and family are. The only home he has now is the Rebellion.
She at least has people who know the things she does, and the things she doesn't.
Cassian has nothing. A name he doesn't use, a language he can't remember, a planet he can no longer call his home.
(He couldn't even grieve, in case someone found out, and told the Empire. No one is from Kenari- no one is supposed to be. And if the Empire knew, they'd come after him. They did, the first time someone told them. He can't let anyone know. That was the first thing that Maarva and Clem taught him: let no one know.)
But still. He remembers when the grief had been raw. Nothing will soothe that pain until she lets it.
And one of the hardest things to learn had been this: to try.
He doesn't want to use his own words for this.
He says quietly, because Nemik’s words haven't left him since he first heard them, “There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy. …Remember this: Try.”
Her forehead pinches in a frown. She recognises it, he can tell.
Then she looks startled, “That's- that's from The Trails of Political Consciousness, isn't it?”
Cassian wouldn't necessarily expect himself to have read it either. But Nemik's last wish had been for him to have it, and he couldn't have done anything else.
He'd made copies too, and left them at every Rebellion base he could. It seems that this princess picked one up.
He nods, “Yes. By Karis Nemik.”
And then she asks, “What language was that- what did you say?”
He shakes his head. He won't-.
The only person who will ever know of that language is him. He's never found anyone else. Not in more than half a lifetime of searching. Nothing but rumours. She doesn't get to take that from him, not even the knowledge of it.
He tells her, “You aren't alone in your grief. You have that much.”
The last sentence comes out bitter, and her gaze snaps to his.
She says, “You're from Fest, aren't you? There are other people here from Fest.”
He just looks at her.
Very very quietly, she realises, “You aren't from Fest.”
He doesn't answer.
There's no forest on Fest. He will not claim it. (There's no forest on Ferrix either.)
He doesn't answer out loud, anyway. But in his own mind, he says to himself ‘Mar'de Kassa, jeh Kenari’. He's not from Fest. He's from Kenari. Except he's not.
But he's already said too much to her - he's never said this much.
He says nothing more, just turns and leaves.
When Maarva died-. He hadn't been there. He'd been so close. Just a day or two. And then he couldn't go to the funeral. He couldn't hold her brick, and place it into a wall. He doesn't regret getting Bix out, or letting Brasso walk Maarva’s brick down Rix Road. But he didn't get to say goodbye to her. He's never been able to say goodbye to anyone he cares for. They've always died before he can, before he could make it back. He's always had to grieve alone.
When he left- when he was taken from Kenari. Maarva and Clem couldn't grieve with him. They didn't know how. And it wasn't theirs to grieve. And by then, he'd been Cassian, not Kassa; and Cassian had no reason to grieve. Cassian could not grieve. And he's been Cassian for a long time now.
He has no one who knows what the sunrise looks like coming through the trees. No one who knows the way home. -No one to sing the grieving song with him.
There's just him.