A/N: I do not own Star Wars or Rogue One.
His father witnessed Order 66 firsthand, and when his mother had her back turned, he would describe it. Death had disturbed Cassian, then.
Cassian was young, his skin soft and void of any future scarring, his eyes bright as the heart of stars. He had listened to his father's stories with wide eyes, clutching his stuffed x-wing pilot.
"You must always be ready, my son," his father had told him, his voice smooth with just a hint of his mother's accent. "People are not always what they seem." His father clasped his son's shoulders. "But know you must always trust the case. They're our only hope."
Only hope. There had been a lot of those "only hopes" back in those days. The universe was purer. So was Cassian Andor.
Cassian was five when his mother fell ill, and an orphan by the time he was six. By the age of seven, the Rebellion had forced a blaster into his hand. He was a good shot. A very good shot. Too good of a shot.
And thusly, at just seven years old, Cassian knew he would become a killer. An assassin, they told him, to make him feel better. Cassian did not particularly care what they called him. He would be ending lives either way.
It was around this time Cassian received his first scar- one right above his eyebrow where a blaster had grazed him. He had refused the bacta offered to him. The wound made him more like the assassins he saw wandering rebel halls.
The first time Cassian killed, it was an accident. There was a raid on rebel supplies- pirates from the Dagoba system. One tried to pull a blaster on his then-best friend, Dariu.
Cassian hadn't thought has he ripped his own blaster from its holster. The pirate fell with wide eyes- eyes that seemed to curse him as he tumbled off the railing and to his death.
While Cassian was in shock, apparently a pirate had attempted to kill him (Cassian didn't blame them). Dariu had knocked him out of the way, and the enemy's knife just barely cut into his cheek.
But it went straight into Dariu's chest. Cassian hadn't let his wounds from that day- both physical and mental- heal, either.
Kaytoo was insufferable. The droid had a tendency to say whatever came into his circuits (apparently a side-effect of the re-programming), which Cassian assured him on many different occasions would be his doom.
(The droid simply told him he could survive most attacks, and that Cassian was much more susceptible to death between the two of them).
Kaytoo gave him his third scar on his face. The droid, on attempting good natured actions, had slapped Cassian "playfully" across the forehead. While holding a shard of glass.
Cassian tried to get that one to heal. It never did.
He obtained many more scars as he got older, all seeming to accumulate on his face rather than a body part less visible to the human eye. Many were from the enemy, some were from his ship, but most were from his own dumb luck. A scrape here and there from raising his blaster too fast. A gash from scratching at an apparently poison-filled bite. His most recent one, Kaytoo would tell anyone who listened, was from a bantha. Cassian chose not to remember that story.
"What are the chances my entire face is covered in scars by the time I die?" Cassian asked the droid one day as they awaited to kill an ambassador.
Kaytoo turned- metal and wires rubbing together. "It's high," he assured him, nodding. "It's very high.
Jyn was a terror: reckless, unpredictable, disrespectful….
And beautiful. Yes, Cassian Andor told himself yet again, Jyn was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
"Trust goes both ways," she tried him. He caught the line- bait, hook, and sinker. Part of him wandered if it would be too bad a way to go- shot by a woman as bold as her.
Bold. Yes, that was how to describe her. It was not her outward beauty that enthralled him, but her bravery that seeped from her every pore. They were going to have fun together.
Later, as he threw himself into the Jedhan dirt, he did not notice the metal that dug into the soft flesh of his chin. Just another scar- he was covered already.
Rogue One would have gone to the ends of the universe for those plans, and in their own ways, they did. Cassian just assumed, at the end, that he'd just followed Jyn to the end of existence.
He'd known her barely forty-eight hours, yet he was in love. So in love, and yet he would not act on it as he stared into her eyes in the elevator, as he balanced his full weight on her shoulders. There was something to beautiful about the moment to ruin with a kiss.
So instead he pulled her into his arms, and they held each other as light engulfed him. At the last moment, before the world disappeared, Jyn laid a hand on his cheek. He looked at her, at the woman in his arms, and covered her hand with his own.
Monday's child was fair of face.