Chapter Text
0 ABY
Kassa was dreaming. He knew he was dreaming, because Kerri was here, and he was home.
"Can I come?" Kerri asks in a language he thought he'd forgotten.
"Yes," Kassa says, because this is a dream. Maybe she'll be able to leave with him. He helps her don her face paint, and ignores the protests of the others. They run through the forest, Kassa pulling Kerri by the hand, their shoes pounding against the dirt. The part of him that knows this is a dream wants to stop, to linger with the trees and ferns and birds, but he cannot. They follow the group, tracing the trajectory of the downed Republic ship.
When they reach the mine, Kassa stops. Looks at it, understands it, the way he wasn't able to in life.
This is a dream, after all.
"Kassa?" Kerri says, tugging at his hand. He's still looking at the pit, looking for signs, clues, something to tell him what actually happened to his home. "Kassa, the sky." He looks up, and the sky is metal. Not all of it—but it's almost worse—he can see the edge of the Death Star, curving away from the planet.
It starts to glow green.
"We're ok," Kassa says, kneeling down to pull Kerri into a hug. He doesn't know which one of them is crying. "It's going to be ok." There's a tearing, roaring noise—
Cassian wakes up. He tries to jerk upright, gasping for breath, but is stopped by blankets and tubes. He stops, remembers. Scarif, transmitting the plans, the Death Star. Escaping in a ship, the quiet hours in hyperspace. He's in the medbay on Yavin, the only light the faint glowing of the machines he's hooked up to and—
"You're awake." Kleya sits in the chair next to his bed, looking up from her datapad.
"Melshi and Jyn?" Cassian asks.
"Alive. They were discharged a few hours ago." Kleya puts down the pad, but doesn't turn it off. The shadows form harsh lines on her face. "I'm glad you made it back," she says, so softly that Cassian barely hears it.
"You would've had Wil," he says. "And Vel." It's the closest thing to an apology either of them are willing to give.
"You should go back to sleep," Kleya says, and Cassian does what he always does when Kleya or Luthen gives an order. He follows it.
When he wakes up, Wil's in the chair by his bed. He's fiddling with some piece of machinery, his crutch leaning on the wall between them. He doesn't look at Cassian as he shifts his IV enough to slowly sit up, wincing.
"You would've died, Wil," Cassian starts. They've had this argument before—after Mina-Rau, when Luthen was looking the three of them over like they were a particularly interesting artifact. He doesn't particularly want to have it again, but the look on Wil's face makes it seem inevitable.
"You still should've told me."
"Would you have stayed behind? If you knew?"
"Yes." Wil looks at him, then, eyes like steel. He looks away nearly immediately. "Maybe."
"That's why I didn't tell you."
"I'm not some kid to be protected, Cassian."
"I know that," Cassian says, but it even sounds like a lie to his ears. He knows that given half a chance, he would hide them all away, safe from this fight. He also knows that they would never let him. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry." Wil puts away whatever he was tinkering with, slips his hand through the cuff of his crutch, and stands up. "Just keep coming back."
"Wil—" Cassian starts.
"I'm going to tell the doctors you're awake."
Cassian gets discharged from the medbay around midday with a bottle of pain meds and strict instructions to rest for four weeks at a minimum. He can manage with two, at the worst, and given what just happened, he might not even get that.
He knows that General Draven probably wants to see him, but right now, he doesn't really care. He veers away from the main part of base, ignoring the stares and whispers, and heads straight back home. The last time he did this walk, only a couple days before, he was coming back from checking on Kleya. The last time he did this walk, the Death Star was just a few rumors that command wouldn't listen to, not a terrible reality.
The last time he did this walk, K2 was alive.
"Cassian!" Jyn calls out as he approaches, running down the steps to meet him. "Are you—"
"I'm okay," Cassian says, redirecting her back into the yurt. "Are you alright? Is Melshi—?"
"We're fine, Cass." Melshi's sitting at the table, one leg covered in bandages and stretched out in front of him. There's a medbay-issued crutch against the wall, Chirrut's staff on the table. "Confined to quarters for the second time this week, but fine."
"You saw Draven, then," Cassian says, joining Melshi.
"Briefly." Jyn pulls the tarp down in front of the door, then sits down in the third chair. K2's chair, Cassian realizes absently. Originally Wil's. He shakes off the thoughts, tunes back in to Jyn's words. "The entire base is apparently on lockdown," she's saying. "But no one is telling us anything."
"Do you know if they got the plans?" If it didn't work, if Scarif was for nothing, then—
"They were transmitted successfully," Melshi says, cutting off Cassian's spiral. "And I'm pretty sure Draven's going to want to yell at you, too."
"Of course." He hated the idea of leaving Melshi and Jyn again, but if something went wrong with the plans, Draven was his best bet at figuring out what he needed to do next. "Did he say if I was supposed to go find him, or…"
"No need." There's a knocking on the frame of the yurt, and Draven pulls aside the tarp. "Captain Andor, a word."
They end up pulled off to the side of the path back to the rest of base. Cassian doesn't know if it's a good or bad sign that they didn't go all the way back to the temple.
"What are we doing with the plans?" Cassian asks before Draven has the chance to start.
"You are not doing anything," Draven sighs. "You just took fourteen men on a reckless, unsanctioned mission and got thirteen of them killed."
"It was a necessary mission. And we have the intel, do we not?" Cassian watches Draven scan the surrounding area, then take a step towards him, lowering his voice. "What happened?"
"What I'm about to tell you is classified. Understand?" He says. Cassian nods. "The plans were successfully transmitted to Admiral Raddus. His ship was destroyed, but the plans were saved by Leia Organa on the Tantive IV. However," Draven's voice drops to a whisper. "The Tantive IV and its crew have been intercepted and presumably captured by the Devastator."
"What?" Cassian can keep his voice to a whisper, but he can't keep the disbelief out of his tone.
"It's being handled." Draven stares at Cassian, daring him to argue.
"By who?" Cassian doesn't know everyone in the Alliance, but he knows enough. There are a limited number of people who they would be able to send into a Star Destroyer to extract someone, and thirteen of them just died.
"Just—go back to your quarters, Captain," Draven says, ending Cassian's attempts to pry. "Rest. You've done enough these past few days."
"Fine." Cassian pushes past Draven, heading towards home. He doesn't look back.
"How was Draven?" Melshi asks when he enters.
"They've lost the plans," Cassian says instead, going to grab the back up supplies under the bed. Checks the bag on rote—credits, an identity that hasn't been burned yet, spare blaster, a few ration bars, a medkit.
"They've what?" Jyn stands up, following Cassian with her gaze as he prepares. "How?"
"The ship they were on got intercepted." They could ask Kleya about the Devastator's location, use the ship from Scarif. It would be tough with just the three of them, but—
"Wait, hold on." Melshi grabs Cassian by the arm as he passes. Pain bursts in his ribs and back as he twists towards him, jerking his thoughts from the inside of a Star Destroyer back down to Yavin. "I assume Draven didn't tell you to do any of this."
"That hasn't mattered before," Cassian snaps, pulling out of his grasp. "And the Council is being indecisive, as always."
"And you know that from one thirty second conversation."
"I know that because I know when someone's lying to me when they say something's being handled."
"Cass." Melshi pins Cassian in place with his stare. "You're injured. I'm injured. We have one stolen imperial ship and no clearance. If we tried to leave right now, we'd be running on fumes."
"We have to do something." Jyn's come to stand next to Cassian, taking the bag of supplies. "We saw what it did on Scarif. If we don't have the plans, the rebellion doesn't have a chance."
"If we don't do it—"
"If we do it, we will die, just like we would've on Scarif."
"Melshi—" Cassian takes a step towards him.
"We got lucky yesterday. I don't think we'll get that lucky again."
Cassian stops. Looks at Melshi, leg bandaged and Chirrut's staff by his side. Feels his ribs, burning with every breath. Catalogs supplies, support, and the lack of both. He's Kassa again, standing in front of a pit in a planet that he can hardly comprehend. He's one man, staring up at a superweapon he unwillingly helped create.
"Fine." The fight leaves Cassian in a breath, and he sits down heavily next to Melshi.
"What?" Jyn asks. "That's it?"
"Melshi's right." Bix had told him, in this home a year ago, that he was supposed to be a messenger. He knows now that she was right. The message was sent, his apparent purpose fulfilled. He's acting on borrowed time, and he doesn't want to use it chasing the thing that would've killed him. "If we go now, we'll fail, and the Alliance will be even more lost on what to do next."
"I—" Jyn looks around, incredulous. "What happened to I couldn't face myself if I gave up now? You were all for running off on half a chance a day ago."
"We made it back," Melshi says, and Cassian fills in the fact that so many didn't.
"I can't—I need to take a walk." Jyn turns on one heel and throws the tarp out of the way, disappearing into the bustle of Yavin IV. She seems to take the air out of the room when she leaves, Cassian sagging against the table. He reaches one hand out towards Melshi.
"They're all—." Melshi cuts himself off, grab's Cassian's hand. He squeezes it enough to hurt. "If they were here—"
"We would've gone."
"Wouldn't have needed to."
Jyn comes back while Cassian is making dinner. Her hair's messier, and Cassian spots bruises forming on her knuckles, but she doesn't say anything, just takes the plate she's handed. It's a quiet night, but Cassian doesn't think he could stand anything else.
Cassian wakes up to a pounding on the wall of the yurt, in a four-knock rhythm that has him shaking Melshi on his way out of bed—ignoring any and all pain in his ribs and back—and grabbing a blaster before he gets to the door. He pulls aside the tarp, and is greeted by Vel and Kleya, faces grim.
"We have news," Vel says, and Cassian steps aside to let them in. Jyn stirs in the hammock, and Melshi's already out of bed. "It's bad."
"Are we evacuating?" Cassian asks. Do they have the time to evacuate, is the real question. Or is the Death Star already in orbit, already getting ready to fire.
"No." Kleya's voice is firm.
"Then what happened?" Jyn asks.
"Alderaan has been destroyed by the Death Star," Vel says, and Cassian staggers back, halfway in relief that it isn't anything worse, and halfway in guilt and grief.
"You mean Aldera?" Melshi joins the rest of them in the main room, leaning on Chirrut's staff. "The city?"
"The entire planet," Vel says, and she isn't lying. "And that's not all. Mon got a call this morning, while she was telling us, and—" Vel cuts herself off, looks at Kleya.
"Leia Organa and the Death Star plans have been retrieved," Kleya says, voice perfectly even. "They're coming back to Yavin."
"Thank Force."
"How?" Cassian asks. He knows Kleya's tone, and it's not a good one.
"With help from a Jedi, apparently," Kleya answers. "They managed to escape, but they are almost certainly being tracked. There is a high likelihood that Yavin will become compromised in the next few hours."
"So then why aren't we evacuating?" Melshi asks before Cassian has the chance to. "We have the time."
"And go where?" Kleya asks. "If the Alliance has another base capable of supporting this many people, we didn't know about it."
"Yavin doesn't have the ships for a full-scale evacuation," Vel adds. "Especially not after Scarif. Some people would have to stay."
"So we fight." Jyn straightens, pride evident in her voice. The mission isn't over yet.
Despite Jyn's proclamation, there's not much a handful of spies and smugglers can do in ship-on-ship combat. And that's what it's going to come down to, Cassian realizes, listening in as General Dodonna briefs the pilots. One battle in the stars, where either the Death Star dies or the Alliance does.
He sneaks Jyn and Kleya into the command room while all the X-wings are taking off. Melshi and Vel are in the mess hall with the rest of the non-pilots, listening in on a pirated signal courtesy of Dreena and her friends. Cassian hasn't seen Wil since yesterday.
The room slowly fills up, Draven glancing at where they hover in the corner but not saying anything. Dreena takes her place at a comm station nearby, and soon the room echoes with pilots sounding off as they launch.
The main screen is filled with a countdown to their destruction.
They stand there and listen, doing nothing, as pilots try to save them, and die in the process. Three members of Gold Squadron, gone. Three more from Red. All the while, the Death Star grows ever closer, rounding the edge of Yavin like a twisted sunrise. The number of flashing signals on Dreena's station grows, more pilots burning and dead.
He wonders how many of them flew at Scarif. How many survived that impossible battle just to be killed in this one.
The Death Star moves into firing range over Yavin, and the room goes silent.
"I need to see it," Jyn says, and disappears outside, Kleya hot on her heals. Cassian looks at Dreena.
"You should come. Find Wil," he says. If they're dying here, he wants them to die together.
"I have to keep the lines clear," she says, not looking away from her station. "Tell him…" She looks at him then, eyes clear and focused. "He knows what I'd say."
"Ok," Cassian says, because what else is there to say. He follows Jyn and Kleya out to the landing pad, joining the crowd of people staring up at the metal sphere nearly blocking out the sun. Wil's on the far side of the pad, the sun glinting off the shine of his crutch. Cassian starts to move towards him, but then Melshi appears by his side. Vel's right behind him, running past Cassian towards Kleya. Cassian grabs Melshi's shoulder, steadying both of them. Jyn's on his other side, staring up into the sky. Watching as it starts to glow green.
He is so, so glad Bix left.
The sky explodes.
Kassa's ears stop ringing, and he is alive. People are cheering all around him, streaming out of the mess hall, and all Cassian can do is watch as the pieces of the Death Star burn up in the atmosphere.
"We did it." Jyn turns to him, smile wide. "It's gone, we won!"
"I—" Cassian's thoughts are going a mile a minute. The Death Star was gone. The weapon Luthen and countless others had died for, Cassian had gone rogue for, gone in a second. It didn't seem real. Out of all the things Cassian had seen, of all the missions he'd gone on, they'd never had a victory like this.
The crowd surges around them, towards the three ships flying into the hanger, and Cassian slips into it on instinct. He pulls away from Jyn and Melshi, ignoring their calls as he makes his way home. The path is deserted, the trees closing in around him. The flowers are still blooming, the birds still singing in the canopy, the jungle remaining indifferent to the chaos above.
Cassian wonders what it would be like to be able to know birds by their song again.
"Cassian!" Wil yells out behind him, ripping him from his thoughts. "Where are you going?"
"Home," Cassian says, turning around to face him. He doesn't mean the yurt, he realizes. The message has been sent. He could go home, wherever that was.
"Why? Everyone's back at base," Wil says, stepping up to meet him on the path. "I think they're starting a party."
"They don't need us there," Cassian says, only halfway talking about whatever celebration they're throwing.
"What?" Wil's grip shifts on the handle of his crutch, the foot digging into the dirt of the path.
"Don't you understand? We're done. The Alliance, the rebellion, they don't need us anymore. They need people like those pilots, not people who go rogue on half a radio call."
"So that's it?" His expression goes from confusion to disgust in an instant. "Another close call, one victory, and you're calling it in?"
"Haven't we done enough?" Cassian counters. "It's been years, Wil. Years of running, of fighting, of lying and stealing and killing. Years of watching friends die. I can't do it anymore. We have a chance, now. A chance to actually live."
"A chance to go back to sleep, you mean." Wil takes a step forward, nearly running into Cassian as he speaks. "A chance to start pretending everything is fine, that destroying one weapon won the war we've been fighting for years."
"I know the war isn't won," Cassian says.
"Do you? Because this time last week you were in the fight, and with the Death Star gone, that's right where we are again. The Empire is still out there, Cassian. It's not going to stop."
"And the Alliance won't. I'm—"
"You know what? Fine." Wil steps back, starts to turn towards base. "If you want to go fly off somewhere, find Bix, go back to sleep, fine. But I'm going to stay awake."
Cassian watches him walk away, and thinks about leaving. Thinks about finding someplace where he could know the birds, the trees, the path of a river. Thinks about finding Bix, creating that life that he wanted so badly a year ago, wants again now.
Thinks about doing that while the birds are drowned out by TIE fighters overhead. While the shadow of the Empire hovers over every interaction, every planet that they run to.
Would they even be able to live under their own names?
He makes it to the yurt, grabs Bix's old datapad from the box under the bed, pulls up her last video. Her voice fills the room, and Cassian's thoughts stop in their tracks. He had nearly forgotten what she sounded like.
"And when it's done," she says, staring at him from the screen. "When it's over, and we've won, we can do all the things we ever wanted." He stops it. Rewinds.
"When it's over, and we've won—"
Rewinds.
"And we've won—"
Rewinds.
"And we've won—"
Rewinds.
"And we've won—"
Rewinds.
"Cass?"
Cassian startles, stops the recording, turns. Melshi is standing in the doorway.
"Cass?" He asks again. "You good? Wil said—"
"I'm staying," Cassian decides as he says it. "I know what Wil said, but I'm staying."
"I wouldn't blame you, if you weren't," Melshi says, stepping forward. "We've done a lot for the rebellion."
"I don't think I could just," Cassian sits down heavily. "Walk away, look away, after all this. I thought I could, for a moment, but—"
"We need to see this through." Melshi sits down, holds a hand out to Cassian.
"Yeah." Cassian grabs his hand, rests it on the table. "The war isn't won yet."
"But it is taking a break, I hear," Melshi says. "Do you have uniforms anywhere?"
"Imperial ones?" Cassian has a few stashed in the box under the loose floorboard by the bed, but he doesn't know why they would—
"No, Alliance ones. They want us to wear them for the ceremony tomorrow."
"The what?"
They end up skipping the ceremony. Jyn and Vel drag chairs from the various yurts to the clearing nearby, refusing any of Cassian or Melshi's offers for help. Wil and Dreena bring bottles of revnog that they've smuggled in, and Kleya has gotten a box full of cups from…somewhere. On second glance, a few of them look familiar. He suspects that if he checks his cabinets, they would be emptier than usual.
"I see you've decided to stay," Wil says to him as everyone else is setting up.
"You were right," Cassian replies. "I couldn't go back to sleep again."
"I knew you couldn't." Wil uses his free hand to pull him into a half-hug.
"Hey!" Dreena appears at Wil's side. "Stop whispering, we're set up."
They pass around the bottles, cups, and stories. Melshi tells of a few ill-advised run ins with journalists, right after they got off Niamos. Vel talks about one night on Aldhani, before Cassian had arrived, when they thought they heard an Imperial alarm that turned out to be a flock of migrating birds.
Jyn and Wil swap tales of Saw and the partisans, and Dreena talks of Ghorman, before the front and the massacre.
"You know, Luthen and I had a plant in the ISB," Kleya says as night draws nearer and the conversation goes quiet. She's leaning on Vel, staring out into the trees.
"You did?" Dreena asks.
"Lonni Jung," Kleya confirms. "He worked with us for years."
"And he didn't get caught?" Jyn leans forward. "Or rat you out?"
"No," Kleya laughs. "He was good at his job. He told Luthen about the Death Star, about Galen and Jedha." She turns away from everyone, and Cassian suddenly has a bad feeling about where this story is going. "Luthen killed him."
"Well, shit," Melshi says. Cassian can't bring himself to feel surprised. The revelation echoes through the clearing, surrounding them and all their ghosts.
"To Lonni, then," Jyn says, raising her cup. "To everyone who died so that we could be here today."
"To Lonni," they all echo, and drink. The revnog burns more than usual going down.