…and so, to everyone who graciously asked for a sequel, we're off. Sorry about the long delay; I meant to start posting this one earlier this week, but going back to work after an extended break is never fun; and the extra time helped in ironing out the plot. I have to say though, when these characters decide to hijack a poor fangirl's brain they do not mess around: they have been talking and pulling tricks [and screwing like minks] inside my head all this time ;)
I am well aware of having just dumped 5000 words of undiluted exposition onto unsuspecting readers. What I can promise is that there will be nothing of this kind going forward – they will talk, travel, pull off risky jobs and get into trouble, and all that with additional exposition kept to a bare minimum. In drafting this I switched back and forth between splitting up the stuff in this chapter into subsequent ones, leaving only a bare-bones "intro crawl", and grouping it all here into a more or less chronologically cohesive narrative, and after trying both I figured that it flowed better this way; but you be the ultimate judges of that.
By way of fair warning, most Alliance people I put in the tags will only stick around for a couple of chapters (or rather, Jyn and Cassian will leave them after that point). And there will be a small but determined bunch of OCs taking their place after that.
Last but not least, I will answer the lovely readers who left comments for Against the Odds over the past few days as soon as I wake up. I'd love to do it now but It is 6 am here, and I am too brain dead even to proofread.
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Prologue
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Three and a half years after the battle of Scarif
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The name of Rogue One has become legend, with the Alliance's most famous and almost-invariably victorious elite starfighter unit named in its memory.
The name of Jyn Erso, by contrast, is completely unknown.
x x x
They themselves categorically insisted that their role in the destruction of the Death Star remain a closely guarded secret, adamant that the credit for stealing the plans should go to all who died, not just the two of them who happened to survive. In the case of the heroic pilots who blew up the Death Star, their celebrity status, they figured, was justified by their personal accomplishment in firing the all-important shots – flying prowess, a good eye and a steady hand on the firing controls – that allowed them to accomplish the nearly-impossible. They, by contrast, were simply the ones left alive; or so they chose to see it. A handful of Alliance leaders and officers knew – Mon Mothma and Davits Dravis and Jan Dodonna, and Mon Mothma had to tell Leia Organa who had received the plans and insisted on knowing who had sent them, and on meeting them when it turned out they had lived; and Leia then confided it in her aide-de-camp and also told those three heroic flyboys to take them out for celebratory drinks as the least she could do to make up for their absence at the awards ceremony; and Luke ended up blabbing to his new buddy Wedge; but beyond this bunch, all that got around was rumours and conjecture.
One particular reason Jyn's name was not known is that it no longer applied, as it were. They got married almost immediately upon arrival on Yavin IV, and she took his last name; Erso was still the first of her last names on the official record, but to everyone concerned she was henceforth known as Jyn Andor. Cassian had proposed to her on board the shuttle, notionally in order for them to have a better shot at getting private quarters, since as a Captain he had had to shack up with a roommate… though seeing how nervous he was when asking her, it might be that his motives went beyond pure practicality. It was a very simple ceremony as weddings go; all they did was get their eye scans and her new name entered in a registry, and their only concessions to ceremony were the white dress shirts they wore – she had to borrow one of his – for wedding attire. Rather than elaborate dress or fanciful vows, its real highlights consisted of Mon Mothma officiating, and Leia and K in his spanking new body as witnesses, and the drinks they had with the three pilots afterwards. It was enough.
Come to think of it, Captain Andor was no longer known as such, either. Cassian did not get a medal for the Scarif adventure; instead he got a severe dressing-down from Draven for insubordination and an instant promotion to Major, which, in turn, gave him the coveted right to private quarters. It might be said that his promotion superseded the need for the wedding, if its original raison d'être were to be taken at face value; but they got married anyway, neither of them remotely inclined to question their earlier resolution.
Jyn had held no rank at the start of the mission, so she just got a job.
Technically she was made sergeant, but it was simply the entry-level rank within the communications and coding unit she had chosen to be assigned to. Despite not having a particularly outgoing personality, she fit in quickly and relatively easily with the fellow Rebels by virtue of being no-nonsense, lightning-fast with her data analysis and conclusions, and creative with her code slicing suggestions; and was ultimately regarded as trustworthy. Her relations some of the other girls were, admittedly, initially cooler which probably had something to do with her having taken away a very desirable, if rather unapproachable potential boyfriend; but then even they had to admit how much his manner and outlook had improved with her arrival, what with the sparkle in his eyes and radiant smiles all around and a heretofore-undiscovered capacity for laughter; in the end, in the face of such overwhelming evidence of her good influence, she was forgiven. So now she had a job… and a chance to work and fight for what she believed in, for the good of the galaxy, side by side with the man she loved.
It was enough.
x x x
Now, more than three years onwards, the two of them very often find themselves taking part in the same briefings and working on the same operations, both their roles bridging the murky-but-crucial spaces between Intelligence and military strategy and government; although strictly speaking, they have never been in the same service branch at the same time. The changes in their respective assignments were the result of their choices, but those same options came about as a consequence of intervening events on the military and political arena.
Specifically, it came down to Airen Cracken and Crix Madine.
The two had both held high rank in the Imperial navy before joining Alliance command and assuming their respective General insignia soon after the battle of Yavin; but the outward similarities belied the events that had brought them to this juncture. Madine, a top-notch commander in the Imperial Army, was driven by his conscience to defected to the Alliance when faced with orders too vile to fathom; he was apprehended by the Empire and then rescued from prison by Rebel agent Kyle Katarn, and brought to Alliance HQ by the newly-minted Rogue Squadron from the rendezvous point on his native Corellia. He had plenty of brains and backbone that quickly led to him becoming a General and chief military advisor to Mon Mothma, an appointment whose urgency and value were both greatly increased when General Jan Dodonna went missing following the evacuation off Yavin IV.
The other consequence of Madine's exhaustive inside knowledge of Imperial operations was that he combined these duties with running a sort of crack commando unit to handle the more sensitive and timing-critical undercover assignments. In fact, when General Draven was killed soon after the departure from the Yavin base, it was suggested that Madine take his place in charge of Alliance Intelligence; but he declined, ultimately seeing himself as more of a strategist, or at least a tactician, than a spymaster; so that the Alliance was pressed to recall its unrivalled top operative, Colonel Airen Cracken, from deep within Imperial cover to take his place at the helm of Intelligence as a fellow new General.
Had Cassian known about this plan from the outset, he might have ended up working under Cracken's command; there was certainly plenty to recommend Cracken as an excellent leader, but the top-secret nature of his mission, spanning nearly ten years spent undercover in the Empire and known to no more than three people at any one time, meant that not even Cassian had been privy to his upcoming appointment. When the truth surfaced he was admittedly impressed by Cracken's success; his own two-year stint at Carida was nothing to scoff at, but it paled in comparison with what the other man had pulled off. Not that Cassian had reasons to be bothered by a lack of respect for his own ability; quite the opposite, in fact, as his rumoured role in the Scarif mission had made him into a sort of good luck charm for Alliance Intel. He was not a poster boy on par with the three pilots who had decided the outcome of the Battle of Yavin, and his tasks were not of a flashy kind, but the special status he had suddenly come to enjoy made him rather self-conscious, not to mention putting a cramp into his mission roster, seeing how he was no longer seen as entirely dispensable.
Jyn had no reason to complain about his lighter travel schedule, what with worrying despite herself and missing him every time he went away, and going through acute agony on at least two occasions, watching over him in the med bay and waiting for his life to be pronounced out of immediate danger when he came back really beat up, once with a collapsed lung – K had had to carry him off the shuttle and he looked so ashen that he seemed dead – and once with half a dozen blaster shot burns, in a coma from pain. At least the other few times when he got injured on mission, he had the courtesy to come back conscious. But she knew it would be of little use trying to lecture him on being cautious.
It did not take long for wily Madine to notice the smart Intel officer who seemed ill at ease with the constraints of his role, and he did not waste time in poaching Cassian into his unit, using the lure of letting him run the commando operations side under his own guidance. This meant that Cassian still had missions to run, but the ones he went on now were fewer and of a higher-profile nature. Rather than finding and cultivating assets on the ground or gathering intelligence firsthand, his role was to lead the crack team now placed under his direct command, with the data gathering left to Intel; thus more often than not he would find himself working with Admiral Ackbar's people, especially with Rogue Leader Luke Skywalker and his successor Wedge Antilles, on planning priority raids. Any attempts he may have made to disassociate himself from being entitled to the tribute implied in their squadron's name were mooted by the flyboys repeatedly referring to him as the squadron's godfather; he sighed and scoffed at first but had to live with it.
Cassian's new appointment was enthusiastically supported by Mon Mothma; her interest might have been surprising, but he saw it for what it was, a way of ensuring that she had a trusted source who could discreetly keep tabs on Madine, a new Imperial defector, should his conduct give any reasons to doubt his integrity. Luckily for all involved, the need never arose, but once again, Cassian had to contend with more of a high-profile role alongside both Madine and Mon Mothma than he had originally bargained for.
All this came about right before Airen Cracken stepped in as head of Alliance Intel; and on learning about the scandalous theft of a valued operative, Cracken tried to lure Cassian back, even going as far as tempting him with an immediate promotion to Colonel, to no avail. This did not exactly contribute to a particularly cordial relationship between Cracken and Madine, at least initially; and Madine was quick to ensure that Cassian stayed in his unit by getting him increasingly involved in the strategy side of his brief.
As it happened, it soon earned him the rank Cracken had promised him thanks to his role in orchestrating a high-precision, virtually bloodless planetary coup against the Imperial rule on Sullust a standard year and a half after they left Yavin. Not only did this give the Alliance a much-needed morale boost at a time when the Rebel fleet was jumping around the galaxy looking for a good new base; it gave them as good a provisional base as they could get and a contingent of Sullustan pilots known for their unparalleled tactical maneuvering skills, and most importantly, it gained the Alliance the full services and the diverse but uniformly indispensable output of SoroSuub Corporation, the entity that for all practical purposes constituted Sullustan industry, its starcraft and weapons among the best, and best-known, in the galaxy.
Cassian's role in planning and pulling off the coup made it plain to Madine that his time could be better spent on high-level strategy and tactics rather than skulking in alleyways, even at the helm of a commando unit; and so, to his initial chagrin, by-then-Colonel Andor saw himself taken away from his commando team and brought fully onto the strategy advisory side, and seeing his usual briefing counterparts change from the alternating Rogue Leaders and other military top brass to Alliance command officials – more specifically, the provisional Diplomatic Corps.
More specifically, Leia.
Despite her unconditional trust in Cassian, Jyn might have balked at letting another woman, let alone a young, spirited and very attractive princess, spend protracted time in her husband's company – if anything, more on the account of her resenting them both in case of failed attempts at seduction then on the account of him giving in to said attempts, seeing how he looked to have lost interest in other women after they met. Fortunately for all concerned, it did not take Jun long to see, in the slightly claustrophobic confines of Echo Base that by then had moved to Hoth, that Her Highness only had eyes for a certain roguish smuggler. In a more amusing twist, she soon figured out that Captain Solo had seen Cassian as a similar threat until it soon became unmissably clear that Cassian only had eyes for his wife; or else there would be no telling what these two, with their shared Corellian heritage despite the fact that Cassian grew up on laid-back M'haeli, would have got up to.
As it was, their paths crossed relatively infrequently: after Han, Luke and Chewie had treated them to the celebratory drinks at the Yavin base, they each had missions to go on, and in Han's case also greedy bounty hunters to outrun, that kept them from spending much time in each other's society. Maybe it was a good thing, seeing how Han would bristle at Cassian's blow-by-blow logical approach to military missions and how Cassian would scoff at what he saw as Solo's excessive posturing. But even if they were not firm friends, they had a great deal of respect for each other; and when Leia came back to the fleet obviously heartbroken over Han's carbonite ordeal, Cassian was among the first to offer his services in helping her find and rescue him; and it was only her willpower and sense of duty that made her decline the offer, seeing how the search for Han was more of a personal quest, no matter how desperately important to her, than an Alliance tactical priority.
The tide of galaxy-wide sympathy had started slowly turning in favour for the Alliance at around the time they were established on Hoth; by then news of both the Imperial atrocities and the Alliance's brave depredations had reached even the more remote corners of space, and despite the painful defeat on Hoth, they were determined to push forward to build up the momentum. It was not so much about the large-scale battles, really; most of the struggle against the Empire did not play out on such a grand scale, especially seeing how the Imperial military numbered billions and Alliance forces ran perhaps into hundreds of thousands; though effective ambushes and small victories with a big impact on morale were another matter. But arguably the most important advances were made at negotiating tables instead of battlefields.
And so Colonel Andor's latest job saw him working with Leia, and her aide-de-camp and unofficial spymaster Winter, and occasionally Wedge where Rogue Squadron came into the picture, to crisscross the galaxy meeting with the heads of major industrial conglomerates, sounding out their sympathies and seeking to sway the ones increasingly doubting the Empire's infallibility, whose numbers were by then on the rise, toward co-operating with the Alliance, either directly through supply agreements, or indirectly through delaying or outright sabotaging Imperial orders. Cassian usually took a role that was nominally low-profile, such as a technical advisor or, on a couple of occasions, even a bodyguard; but he would get more involved as the negotiations progressed, and those who may have known him before Scarif would have been amazed at seeing this formerly brusque and brooding character work effortlessly as a consummate charmer.
Their efforts have paid off, landing them several key allies among space transport and fighter ship builders and their respective parts supplies: apart from SoroSuub, by now the list numbers the all-important Corellian Engineering Corporation, starfighter manufacturing giant Incom, its offshoot FreiTek and their suppliers Novadex, Torplex and Fabritech; important shipboard weaponry manufacturers Borstel, Dymek, Arakyd and Taim & Bak; and standalone ranged weapons manufacturers BlasTech, who guaranteed important supply contracts despite the Imperial pressure that came from suspicions regarding their changing allegiance. Rendili StarDrive, major shipbuilders who were still cautious about openly siding with the Alliance, nonetheless committed themselves to lend their support by discreetly sabotaging Imperial orders. The list is not limited to ships and weapons, either; by now they boast the support of both of the galaxy-wide duopoly droid manufacturers, Industrial Automaton and Cybot Galactica; and of Athakam, supplier of vital medical equipment and pharmaceuticals.
But the fight is far from over.
x x x
Jyn's career with the Alliance may not have risen to the exalted heights that Cassian was now inhabiting, but in her defence, he had had something of a head start; so she had no compunctions about taking nearly a year to get to the same point where he was when they met. In fact, it was something of a thrill to have herself referred to as Captain Andor.
She started out as a sergeant in Alliance communications, splitting her duties between code slicing as and when required and data monitoring and analysis the rest of the time; but she did not stay either a sergeant or a comm specialist for long. Her data analysis that helped the orderly evacuation off Yavin earned her a promotion to lieutenant, and soon thereafter she was recruited into Alliance Intel by its new chief Airen Cracken; he found out who she was, or rather whose daughter she was, which alone made him curious, and hearing her in a couple of briefings prompted him to make the offer, complete with a captain's rank.
She was under no delusions about her getting this position largely due to Cracken's failure to get Cassian back into Intel; Cracken could not have them both working in his unit since they were married and Cassian would have won out if Cracken had equal picking rights, but once it was clear that Cassian was sticking with Madine, he was quick to poach her as a valuable asset in her own right. Thus, at the same time when Cassian started his transition from spying to strategy, Jyn went from communications to spying and intel data analysis, albeit largely of the datapad rather than mission variety.
Having been caught by Imperials and spent time in prison on Wobani, and being something of a potential high-value political asset to the Empire, apparently disqualified her from most active mission assignments despite the fact that Jyn herself and fellow Alliance code slicers had done a good job erasing her Imperial records wherever they could find any; and so her early endeavours to get even with Cassian for repeatedly putting her through the ordeal of waiting for him to come back alive were not particularly successful.
After the initial blissful time on Yavin IV, things between them took a turn for the worse soon after the Rebels had had to leave the base, when she discovered that Cassian had somehow got Cracken's ear in giving himself a say in Intel's decisions to send her on missions… or rather, getting himself a veto right. The first she knew of this was when Cracken referred to it as she was forced to confront him when, after nearly two weeks of intense and excited planning of a mission to Bilbringi, she was told that a fellow operative would be going in her place. Considering that Cassian had witnessed all her excitement, and had kept his reaction to only occasional skeptical observations about the mission's high-risk nature, his dastardly handling of this deal with Cracken struck her as the height of hypocrisy bordering on betrayal.
For about five minutes, she actually considered leaving him. By the time she stormed in front of his desk in Madine's offices she had changed her mind about that, but it did not stop her from dragging him away to their private quarters to have a shouting match that led to nothing but three days of gloomy trench warfare. He admitted his involvement but adamantly refused to apologise or even not to interfere going forward. And so it went; for the following three days they barely spoke, he would seethe and she would sulk and they would stake out sleeping rights on the sitting-space couch so the losing party, perversely, ended up alone in the double bed.
There would have been no telling as to how long this would go on had it not been for her finding out, thanks to Cracken who sought to make amends correctly seeing himself as something of an accomplice, about Cassian leaving on another mission – but at about ten minutes' notice. Whatever their recent relations had been like, this had her running breathless through the Mon Valle, the Alliance frigate that was their home at the time, to catch him on the flight deck; and whatever he may have thought of her abrupt change of heart – whatever Jyn herself may have thought of her abruptly crumbling resolve – it did not make the reconciliation any less sweet.
He learned his lesson, but only halfway, it seemed: the second time he blocked her as a mission candidate he told her about it himself, but only after he had made certain she was not going. She learned her lesson too, so instead of flagrant warfare they bickered morosely for about a day and a half; with no mission to go on this time, Cassian had to capitulate in the end, promising her with all the enthusiasm of a condemned death row inmate that he would not interfere in subsequent mission plans where she was concerned.
To Jyn's considerable satisfaction, her next two assignments fully vindicated her insistence by virtue of their unqualified success and her coming back without a single scratch to show for it… which could not be said of the third one, the seemingly straightforward task of breaking into and copying an Imperial data archive at the Sluis Van shipyards, where she came to within a hair's breadth of being imprisoned and within an uncomfortably short distance of being shot dead during her escape, and clawed her way back to her ship with a badly dislocated shoulder and a nasty blaster burn on her thigh, to make it back to the Fleet on a noxious cocktail of painkillers and a stim patch overdose.
Cassian was not angry when he came to see her at the med bay, but seeing his suddenly quiet and kind-of-broken manner, she was not sure which was worse.
The absolute worst came in the following four days when he started avoiding her. She was back from med bay in just over a standard day, and came back to their quarters expecting to find him there after the end of his shift, only to be greeted by a dark and empty room. Her momentary panic subsided when a check of her surroundings showed her that he had not packed up and left as she was beginning to fear, but the fact that he did not show up until three more hours later, stone cold sober, unfailingly polite and distant as Kessel, made it amply clear that things were not back to normal. She spent the following day, still on recuperation leave, alone in their quarters; he chose that particular day to be working obscenely late so as to come back when, by a reasonable calculation of her work shifts, she should be asleep.
After two more days of such treatment, unable to face the prospect of going to bed alone, she got dressed and spent upwards of an hour scouring the dim recesses of the Mon Valle, and eventually saw him in a far corner of the reserve hangar bay, sitting alone and quietly miserable, staring into space.
Whatever resolve she may have had left evaporated at the sight of the pain she was so obviously putting him through; no amount of thrill seeking or even mission expediency was worth it. When she tearfully promised to him that she would not volunteer on any more missions unless he himself suggested it, or at least approved it, he answered, to his considerable credit, that he would not have opposed any of her assignments had he only been able to accompany her, as the worst for him was being beyond the range of reaching her quickly enough to get her out of danger – most of the time you're not even in the same star system, as he correctly put it. She ended up thinking that he was not being at all unreasonable about it, after all, though in a more composed state she might have put up a pretty strong objection to the I don't want to live if you die out there part, starting with and what do you think it feels like for me. Then again, no matter how important any residual arguments might have been, they had to wait until after they had celebrated that particular instance of reconciliation; and with the two of them taking a day's leave and surviving on ration bars to save themselves the trouble of leaving their quarters, by the time they had to get out to report to their respective superiors, renewing any kind of argument was about as far from the top of their priorities as it could get.
There was a sort of silver lining to the fact that Jyn now stayed away from most field assignments, in that she found her calling doing in-depth data analysis that would feed into strategic and tactical recommendations for Alliance command, seeing which worlds were swayed by anti-Imperial sentiment, where Imperial forces show themselves vulnerable to attack, and where the industrial players were sufficiently frustrated as to lend a willing ear to Alliance advances – those same strategy recommendations that, more often than not, Cassian was working on. Her new role let her combine the scientific mindset she had inherited from her father and the resourcefulness and gut sense she had developed throughout her peril-filled past to derive pointers that often translated into saved lives.
The immediate benefit was that by virtue of working on different aspects of the same operations, she and Cassian they ended up seeing a good deal more of each other; where in the early months, between his and her respective assignments, they could spend days and even weeks apart, now in addition to the downtime at their quarters, they would meet and talk almost daily for work. They did not stop arguing altogether, but the nature of their arguments changed a great deal. They were a lot more likely to disagree over interpreting the finer points of intel data or the precise tactical implications of a given news item than to tear into each other over concern, no matter how excessive, over the other's well-being.
They found their stride since the early clashes; it may have cost them some time and effort, but in the end they learned to tame their tempers to make the most of the precious time they had together. All they had to do was remind themselves that in a way, every day, every hour, every minute they had since Scarif was a priceless gift they shared.
That they have survived this far is nothing short of a miracle – what with the fraught departure from Yavin, the last-minute evacuation from Hoth where Cassian had to drag her away from her station where she was helping comm officers direct fleeing Rebels away from the attacking Imperial troops; the close calls they both had faced on missions, and the early fiery arguments about going on same missions; the anguish of seeing each other injured, and the grinding routine of living in cramped quarters on board Rebel ships jumping around the galaxy for more than a year post-Yavin, and now for nearly twenty weeks post-Hoth. They have survived all that… no; they have lived through all that, and their lives have been no less fulfilling for these perils and tribulations. There may have been a relative lack of big dramatic gestures and a distinct shortage of much-needed R & R, but it has given them a more acute appreciation of the things they say to each other, the time they have had together, the quiet moments, the light touches, the quick Holonet calls when either of them is away. In a way, they have kept each other alive through all this.
Then again, between all that has happened, no matter how perilous, nothing has come close to their Scarif mission in terms of sheer mortal danger.
Until now, anyway.
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TBC
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You may recall Crix Madine as the young-ish bearded guy who sends Han, and Leia and Luke, as the ground team that goes to Endor in Return of the Jedi; his backstory that I quote here comes from EU canon.
Airen Cracken is a character in X-Wing books (so his first official mention really comes up post-Endor), but his undercover-agent backstory is my invention.
Winter, Leia's aide-de-camp and childhood friend and part-time spymaster, is a recurring EU character.
I double-checked re when exactly Wedge took over as Rogue Leader, and it was indeed some time between Hoth and Endor, though Luke retained an honorary commission.
Sluis Van and Bilbringi both come up in Zahn's Thrawn trilogy, should you end up wondering about the name-checks.
I hit a mini-glitch in the timing of my plot in that I ended up having to indirectly factor in the pesky and very mediocre offering that is Shadows of the Empire. The upside is that it is likely to have conveniently ended a month or so before my plot kicks into gear (which is about three years and ten months post-Yavin and two months pre-Endor, if the official chronology four-year gap is to be followed [somehow I always assumed it was three, but whatev]).
There are apparently two different medical conditions referred to as collapsed lung; the one I reference is the more acute and dangerous one known properly as traumatic pneumothorax.
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Add to the exposition dump my twin transgressions of (1) jumping forward almost four years and (2) sidestepping the plot where they interact with the entire "main trio" plus Lando and Chewie. On the first count, let me say I do admire fellow writers who manage to plot Jyn and Cassian's adventures immediately following the Battle of Yavin, but I lack the imagination to measure up, so much so that this past chapter represents my best shot at imagining their life within the Alliance. As you've seen now, I see it as more of a routine than a series of spectacular capers, with the missions they go on carrying their share of risk but ultimately successful and not rising to the excitement level that would justify a fic, or even a full-blown separate chapter. And since they do not show up in the original films, the only plausible reason I could retrofit while keeping them alive is that most of their work is top-secret in commando-type / strategy advisory / intel roles that do not, however, let them travel together with very rare exceptions. In short, I thought I needed something worthy of sending them on a joint mission that could then be described in considerable detail; you will see what it is in the next chapter, and I hope the order of magnitude will be up to scratch.
As for their casual relationship with the "main trio", I guess my reasons are obvious from this chapter: the way I see it, Luke is too much of a kid flyboy (at first, and then too much of a brooding superhero philosopher) to mesh well with these two cynical romantics, and Han is too different from Cassian for the two of them to become fast friends – unlike the "elder brother" Han-Luke dynamic, or the "fellow scoundrels" Han-Lando dynamic, Cassian is too serious and low-key and Han is too prone to bits of bragging and posturing for them to really hit it off IMO. I see them too much at odds, with Cassian likely to take Han's arguments and destroy them with steely logic, and Han would bristle but have to grudgingly agree in the end, while Cassian would be very impressed by Han's reckless exploits but do his best not to show it openly – all this seems to me to be a great foundation for mutual respect, but not quite for friendship. The people I do see them being both good friends and easy colleagues with are Leia and Wedge (and in principle, Winter and the other Rogue and Wraith Squadron books characters like Corran and Tycho and "the other" Nawara (Ven, that is) and Iella Wessiri), but I cannot promise either of them putting in more than a fleeting cameo appearance.
And finally… I claim research privileges for having spent part of my time away from this plot getting my hands and eyes onto whatever I could see of Diego Luna's films… and the more I saw the more I was blown away by his acting range and by how insanely sexy he is. You may have seen him in Y Tu Mama Tambien and in Dirty Dancing/Havana Nights (and if not, I highly recommend both, and this latter rec is coming from someone who abhors both dancing-centric movies and excessive fluff), but the ones that call to mind Cassian, and Jyn and Cassian together, are the impossibly romantic Solo Dios Sabe from 2006 and the sublime caper gem Criminal from 2004. If you are thinking of watching either one, I am positive they will not disappoint. (if you are also curious to see him in an MA-rated film, check out The Night Buffalo; but its plot is a bit too heavy for my liking).
See you next chapter! – I'll do my best to put it up by Sunday.