How To Tell If You're Alive
Chapter 2
The second time they meet, Cassian is clad in rebel tans.
He is three years older, his baby face contoured by a mustache and stubble. As he steps into the bleak interrogation room, there's no boyish warmth to his eyes, no relaxation found in his body language, neither carefully faked nor otherwise.
The small room holds a table and two chairs and nothing else. The smuggler's ankles are cuffed to the chair legs, his wrists to the table.
He looks pissed.
"Now look here, you son of a…" Han Solo starts off as soon as the door opens.
Cassian doesn't look at him till the door has sealed shut behind him. "Mynock? Bantha? Tairn? Personally, I prefer Barve. It's two insults for the price of one, and I like efficiency."
"Slorth!" Solo spits.
Cassian acknowledges his choice with a curt nod. He doesn't sit, just places himself behind his chair and rests his hands on the back of the chair. "I'm Fulcrum. Do you understand why you're here, Han Solo?"
"Because you're a bunch of karking-mad fanatics going around willy-nilly kidnapping an honest smuggler?" Solo goads, his voice somewhere between mocking singsong and spitting the words at him.
Cassian does appreciate multitasking. He can respect that.
He makes a point of taking note of the man's bleeding upper lip and cut eyebrow. He had put up a fight every step of the way. Cassian had appreciated that, too, watching the surveillance tapes. "We'll provide you with bacta once you have been returned to your cell."
Solo meets his eyes. "You shouldn't."
Cassian doesn't arch a brow, but he lets curiosity show in his eyes. Curiosity, and a wordless demand for answers. No, not a demand. Demands come from people who expect they need to make demands. He is simply awaiting the answers due to him.
"No point wasting good bacta on a dead man."
He presses his lips together in faint disdain. "How melodramatic."
Solo leans back as far as his chained hands will permit. In Cassian's mind, he lets the movement come to its logical conclusion – Solo lazily leaning back, arms crossed behind his head as if he has no care in the world. In reality, he's still slightly hunched forward, and far removed from a posture of cocky self-assurance.
"What?" he asks, matching Cassian's disdain beat for beat, "Are you going to tell me you won't kill me once you're done, code name Fulcrum with the pretty brown eyes and memorable face?"
"Actually, it's the accent that is most memorable," Cassian points out, "but I'll give you that a photofit sells better to ISB. If you're going for the aesthetics of cheap spy dramas, that is."
Cassian takes the time Solo spends stewing in indignation to sit down.
Solo has aged, too, though not as visibly as Cassian has. There's not so much change between 23 and 26 as between 20 and 23. They have both grown far more jaded than older, anyway.
"No recording? Is this just a cozy reunion between you and me then, Jorik?"
Solo's arrogance is sharper now, acerbic even in the almost-flirty-but-certainly-insulting tilt of his chin. Or maybe he'd always been that way and he had been a far better actor in that cantina than Cassian had given him credit for. Cassian takes note that he dislikes this possibility.
He also takes note he's never denied that Solo will die once Cassian is done with him. He chooses not to rectify that.
"I have been watching you since you were led into this room."
Han's smile is all teeth. "Dragged. The word you're looking for is dragged, sweetheart."
Cassian meets his smile with one of his own, bland and lifeless, and intended exactly as such. "It was your choice to disobey." He lets that hang between them, lets it melt and merge with the implied promise of death.
This would be a good time to leave, and let possibilities fester in the captive's mind.
Cassian doesn't want to leave.
He's never liked unfinished business. If he is going to pick at this scab, he might as well keep going till it bleeds.
"I'm going to ask you a number of questions pertaining your last run now. As you know, it ended with you entering one of our supply stations, and consequently being detained for questioning. In the interest of saving us both some time, I suggest you refrain from answering any question with I don't remember. You have just proven that your memory works fine."
Unprofessional, a little voice that sounds suspiciously like General Draven's hisses at the back of his mind, and he knows it is. But Han Solo had remembered. It had taken barely a minute to recognize a man he'd met in a cantina once, three years ago.
Solo shifts now, as much as the shackles permit. Cassian would say it's in discomfort, but then he rolls his eyes and huffs, and the lines between pretense and reality blur too much for Cassian to trust himself that he could properly pinpoint them.
"Alright. It's the accent. Not often you meet a nice Festan like you in a place as seedy as that one."
He's still smirking in that infuriating way that twists everything into an insult, but Cassian wonders if he'd ever looked for Jorik when he returned. If he had ever returned. Cassian would have, if K-2SO's calculations hadn't resulted in a disheartening 2,3% likelihood of successfully recruiting him for the Rebellion.
Cassian lets some smugness show on his face. "Told you."
Should Draven decide that he must indeed die, Cassian is going to inform him of his fate with finest Coruscant twang to his voice. He would rather think of that than the order itself, anyway.
Silence settles heavy between them.
To an intelligence agent, silence is a familiar old friend. Cassian welcomes it.
He's got all the time in the world. Han Solo's chances of making it out alive decrease with every hour in captivity, statistically speaking.
He wonders if Han has read the statistics, and decides he hasn't. Chances are that he knows anyway, that he feels the truth of it in his bones.
"So? What now?" Solo finally blurt outs.
"Now you're going to tell me how you came to trespass on our base."
Han laughs harshly. "ISB would be proud to have you, sweetheart."
"No. But they would be lucky to have me."
They meet another's eyes, both equally stubborn, neither willing to budge an inch.
Cassian folds his hands on the table, the very picture of placid professionalism. "I assume you feel safe, knowing we reject a number of torture methods employed by the Empire. What you don't seem to understand is that this leaves me with a considerable number of options."
"So? It doesn't matter what I tell you, you won't believe me."
That is true, yet the accusation makes something hurt and bitter well up in him anyway. He presses his lips together, and moves on. An interrogating agent isn't entitled to feelings.
"I'll have your story verified."
"Fine." There's something distinctly mutinous about Han's body language as he leans forward, a challenge in his eyes. "At a cantina on Tatooine, I heard rumors about an abandoned supply depot from the Clone Wars. My partner's been in bacta for weeks, I needed a quick, easy job I could do by myself. Turns out it wasn't abandoned anymore, you'd revived it as one of your secret stashes." He shoots him a quizzical look. "Now look into my eyes and tell me you believe a single word I said."
It sounds like an excuse. He doesn't need K-2SO's processor to tell him the overwhelming likelihood of it being an excuse.
He also doesn't want to prove himself the man Han sees when he looks at him. Even though late at night, when he has nothing but his doubts for company, Cassian judges himself just as harshly as Han does.
For a moment he wonders, if he'd seen Han again three years ago, would he have judged him just as harshly?
"I'll have your story verified," he repeats, his voice just as icy and clipped as before.
He stands up.
"So…" Han's drawl is mocking. "Let's say you get it verified. Are you going to kill me once you have what you need, Fulcrum?"
Cassian turns around again, meets his eyes. His gaze is placid and betrays none of the turmoil raging in him. "In that case, I suggest you sell my face to ISB. You can't give them anything they don't know already, but if they don't kill you they will pay you well."
He turns on his heel and walks out while Han is still bellowing demands at him.
He tells himself he won't look back. He tells himself he won't watch as they drag Han out of the base, already abandoned except for the handful of people who had remained for the interrogation, and leave him to find his own fate. He most certainly doesn't let himself consider what will happen if Han's story is proven a lie. (It isn't.)
He does keep tab on his ISB profile.
To his best knowledge, Han Solo never approaches the Imperial Security Bureau.
Cassian Andor tells himself that is enough for him, and moves on.
