A.N. I'm probably being overly cautious, but I just wanted to issue a little warning that there is some violence in this chapter. Not really anything worse than cannon violence, but it's there. If you want to avoid it, then skip from the point where Cassian hisses "GO!" at someone, to the point where it says "the entire fight took less than..."
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Silence permeates the hallway outside of their rooms in the hours just past midnight, broken only by Cassian's soft footsteps as he paces back and forth. A nightmare had awakened him and he'd been unable to fall back asleep because of his sore ribs and active mind.
Nothing good ever comes of nightmares. He's been plagued by them for long enough that they no longer cause him to spiral into dark places, but it always takes him a little while to shake off their lingering shadows. Ideally, it's best to be awakened from them before their completion—before the body jolts awake in a panic—but only by someone you trust, because when waking from a nightmare one is always incredibly vulnerable in the first few moments. For Cassian, the person who always woke him was Kay. The droid was not the soft and cuddly type capable of comforting him, but Kay's sarcastic and blunt approach always worked for Cassian.
This time, though, Kay hadn't been there to wake him before the nightmare finished. The pain of his friend's loss still cuts deeply into his heart and he wonders if it will ever lessen—given his past experience with loss, he knows it never will. Sighing, he loses himself in the memory of the first time Kay had saved him from a nightmare, on one of their first missions together, over seven years ago.
xxXxx xxXxx xxXxx xxXxx
He hasn't slept in over thirty-three hours, not since before they'd landed on this moon and things had immediately gone to hell. The intel he'd had was bad—which happens more often than he likes, which is why he always tries to go on the missions himself instead of sending someone else—and instead of the moon being a mostly deserted city with an abandoned Imperial base, it was a highly active city with a heavy Imperial presence. Which is good to know now, but would have been nice to know before they'd landed and were immediately boarded by Imperial officers. He thanks the Force that he always makes sure to have documents and a cover story, because even on low level missions of minimal danger—which is what this was supposed to be—he might need it. Turns out this time, his thoroughness had absolutely saved their lives. It had given them enough time to get out of the ship and disappear into the city with only a blaster burn on Cassian's back. And it would have gotten them completely safely into the city if Kay hadn't let slip his disdainful opinion of the Empire and how easily they were fooled, within hearing of an Imperial soldier.
Of course, once they'd disappeared into the crowd and found a relatively safe place to hunker down, the question had immediately arisen: how to get off the moon? Their mission was shot, there was no way they'd be able to accomplish it, as they had come to pick up a supply of bacta left behind in a deserted imperial base. As the base was most certainly not deserted and Cassian had not come prepared to infiltrate, there was no way it would work. After their initial escape, it had frustrated him to no end that they had already failed, because in a Rebellion against the Empire, bacta was a crucial resource. The irony of which was not lost on him, given that his shoulder could have used some. It had still been bleeding sluggishly on and off, and not for the first time a small part of him wished that blaster shots were hot enough to cauterize... but only a small part.
After they'd hunkered down in the second story of an abandoned house and Kay had put a makeshift bandage on Cassian's shoulder, there had been nothing to do but sit and wait for things to cool off. Which is what they are doing now, eight hours later. Finally determining that the Empire had given up looking for them, Cassian tells the droid to stay put while he finds a way off this rock. For once, the droid doesn't protest… maybe it's because Kay feels guilty for getting Cassian shot… it's food for thought that he tucks away for later.
Cassian dons a cloak and one of his least favorite, more sordid identities and goes searching for the underground market he knows has to be present given the Empire's presence. It doesn't take him long to find—he's in Intelligence after all, it's his specialty. Once he does, he brings out his oozing, sleazy charm and total immorality and talks his way into captaining and delivering a ship of smuggled cargo. It sometimes surprises him how easily he's able to make people disregard his youth—he's just nineteen—but he's thankful of his ability to pull on a mask so ruthless that no one thinks twice. He finds out the cargo is a shipment of unwilling slaves and skillfully conceals his surprise with a sneer. Well, it will kill two birds with one stone, he thinks. We'll get a way off this moon and we'll get to save some innocent lives in the process. It makes sinking into the skin of a crooked scumbag worth it. He's glad the whole mission isn't a complete loss.
On his way back to Kay in the middle of the night, he picks up a tail, though fortunately it's not Imperial. He immediately attempts to lose it and after an hour of twisting his way through the city all the while ensuring he never loses his way, he finally succeeds. He's only a mile from Kay when a disturbance catches his attention: five men surround a boy in an alleyway to his right, their dishonorable, disgusting intentions clear; he no longer has to wonder how the slaves he's supposed to ship were acquired, there's a kidnapping taking place right in front of his eyes. Cassian stops. Every self-preservation instinct in him screams "KEEP WALKING! That's not your problem!" While every protective, moral instinct in him snarls. He knows he should keep going, because if he stops now the odds are high that 1) he'll get beat up, 2) it will draw the attention of the Imperial patrols and 3) it will mean he and Kay never make it out of here. He's sure Kay could tell him the precise odds of each scenario, but he doesn't really want to know. Steeling himself, he turns and strides down the alley, keeping to the shadows and giving into his protective instincts; he's never been terribly good at self-preservation. And he needs to shake off the feeling of corruption and immorality that came from the identity he'd assumed. Needs to remind himself that's not who he is.
The boy's the only one who sees him coming and even the child doesn't notice him until he steps from the shadows and swings a metal pipe at one of the men's heads. He sees the boy's eyes flare with fear at first, thinking he's joining the men, then shine with the smallest glimmer of hope when the kid realizes he's not. It's enough to make whatever happens worth it. The man he strikes with the pipe crumples to the ground—dead or unconscious, Cassian's not really sure and he doesn't really care. The noise and sudden loss of their companion causes the other four to wheel around. He takes a second man out the same way he did the first before they realize what's happening. With two men down, that clears the way for the boy to escape.
"Go!" he hisses at the kid, who needs no second urging. He's gone.
The remaining three men leap back out of his range, and Cassian prays to the Force that they don't have blasters. So of course, they have blasters. Though he also has a blaster with him—because he never doesn't—he very much wants to avoid them using one and also to avoid using one himself. Not because he has any qualms about killing them—given what they were about to do—but because blasters are loud, louder than a pipe hitting flesh, and he really doesn't want to bring Imperial patrols this way. Facing long range weapons with his own short range one, he pursues the only course of action that has any change of succeeding: he charges, before they have a chance to fully draw their weapons.
He strikes one in the knee then the hand, sending him to the ground and disarming him, his blaster skittering into the shadows of the alley. The man starts to cry out in pain, but Cassian finishes him with a blow across the jaw that snaps his head back and crumples him.
That just leaves two, which are better odds than what Cassian started with, so he'll take them. Plus, only one of the men has drawn a weapon—the other doesn't appear to have one. The first raises his arm to aim, but he's too slow and Cassian's only two feet away. He closes the remaining distance, grabbing the gun and jamming his finger behind the trigger mechanism. The man squeezes and the trigger clamps down on Cassian's finger, causing him to hiss with pain, but the gun doesn't fire. Cassian drops the pipe—they're too close quarters for it to be useful now—and grabs the man's whole arm instead, pulling him closer as he brings his knee up to strike the man in the stomach. The man doubles over as Cassian twists the gun around the man's finger, causing an audible snap as the bones in his hand break. If he'd had breath to yell, the man would have screamed.
His confrontation with this man, however, has given the last man time to advance. Cassian feels someone approach behind him and dodges just enough that the blade the man had tried to jab him with only deals a slicing blow, not a deadly stab.
Cassian lashes out with his leg, giving him a moment's breathing room as the last man leaps back to avoid being permanently crippled by a blow to his knee. The man Cassian's holding punches him feebly in the ribs, but he responds by slamming the man's head against the wall and finally directing his full attention to the last man, who flings himself at Cassian, blade glinting. Cassian's able to dodge fully this time, avoiding the knife and grabbing the man's arm, using his momentum to spin him around and onto the ground, all the while maintaining his grip on the knife hand and twisting until the man drops it. Cassian kicks the blade away, but he's not fast enough to avoid the man's sideways sweeping legs that knock Cassian off his feet, his head smacking painfully against the ground. He lies dazed for a moment, gathering his bearings but then the man is suddenly on top of him, punching him repeatedly in the face.
One of Cassian's arms is pinned, but his other is not. He sacrifices guarding his face for a moment in order to reach into his boot and withdraw the dagger he keeps there beside his lock picks. The knife slips silently between his assailant's ribs and the blows stop. The man stares stupidly down at the blade protruding from his body, before looking back at Cassian.
Cassian shoves the man off of him and onto his back, reversing their positions, then withdraws the knife, causing the man to gasp, blood already seeping from his mouth.
"Who are you?" he gurgles in a lost voice, as if confused how anyone would risk their lives to help an innocent on this hell hole of a moon.
"A better man than you," Cassian replies simply, before closing his eyes and slitting the man's throat in a mercy kill. He takes no pleasure in it. None whatsoever.
The entire fight took less than three minutes, but by the end, Cassian's exhausted, both physically and mentally. He heaves himself to his feet and stumbles the rest of the way to Kay.
Slamming the door to their hideout open, he drags himself wearily up the stairs and through the entrance.
"Cassian! You're back!" the droid greets him, with something that almost sounds like enthusiasm in his mechanical voice—but Cassian's head is spinning so maybe he imagined it. "The odds of your return were quite low, I'll have you know, so I've been devising alternate ways in which I could escape and have thus far come up empty. What took you so long? And were you successful in—" Cassian flicks on the light in order to make his way into the dark room "—obtaining transportation for us and why are you bleeding?!" the droid demands upon seeing Cassian's face.
"I ran into some of the less honorable inhabitants of this moon," he explains, easing himself down onto the floor, his feet no longer able to support him.
"Cassian, the entirety of this moon's population are of the 'less honorable' sort and you were specifically trying to seek them out," the droid points out. "Did you think they would give you a hug and a pat on the head?"
Cassian snorts. "No, I didn't. It was an unplanned encounter after I obtained transportation. We've been hired to smuggle slaves out late tomorrow—or, I guess, late tonight," he amends, as it's past three in the morning.
He slumps against a wall and leans his head against it. Closing his eyes as he tries to relax, he's surprised by the amount of wetness he feels on his back. Huh, that blade must have gotten me more than I thought, he muses, listening to Kay drone on about all of the dishonest and illegal activities that likely occur on this moon daily. A little while later, it takes him a moment to realize Kay has suddenly fallen silent. He doesn't bother opening his eyes, though, just figuring the droid has finally run out of things to rant about, until Kay calls uncertainly, "Cassian?"
"Hmm?" he hums.
"Are you bleeding from somewhere other than your face? Has the blaster wound opened up again? Your vital signs have decreased dramatically."
"Mmm, the blaster wound is fine," he reassures.
"That's strange. I'll have to get my diagnostic capabilities checked when we return to the Alliance because I could swear—"
"I think it's the cut from the knife that's the problem," he mutters, before falling into the embrace of unconsciousness.
xxXxx
He watches the life bleed from her eyes as she stares at him with indescribable love, clutching his small hand in her cooling one.
"I love you my Cassie. I love you," she whispers.
And she's gone. Hands lift him, pulling his screaming form away and thrusting him into the cold reality of a world without her. Flames erupt around him, roaring as they close to engulf his grief stricken form. He can feel their heat as they approach, almost upon him, and—
xxXxx
Something sharp pokes him in the side, jolting him from his nightmare. He groans, swiping it away, but it's persistent. It pokes him again. And again. Then it pokes his face and he can no longer ignore it. His eyes fly open, greeted by two incandescent blue orbs hovering over him.
"Cassian," Kay greets, "it is time for a check-up. I'm not sure if you have a concussion but there's a sixty-six percent probability given your head trauma and my medical files inform me a concussed person should be awakened every few hours."
He sighs.
There's a pause before the droid adds, "Additionally, I was detecting elevated stress levels consistent with unpleasant dreams and thought it might be good to awaken you."
And that's how Cassian knows Kay cares. A smile slips onto the man's face. "Thanks, Kay."
"And, since you seem to be feeling rather charitable and probably won't remember this the next time you wake up, I want to say that I'm sorry I got you shot."
Much to Kay's dismay, Cassian does remember the following morning. And he never lets the droid live it down.
xxXxx xxXxx xxXxx xxXxx
Cassian's heart aches as he paces the halls of the Hoth base, the memory of the turning point in his and Kay's partnership fresh in his mind. That mission had catapulted their partnership onto a course for friendship, and their friendship had grown quickly after that—though Kay was always quick to deny it, saying droids are incapable of forming friendships… the big liar. Cassian misses the droid more than he can express. Misses his unfailing pessimism, his quick wit and his way of always speaking whatever comes into his circuits.
When Cassian had reprogrammed the Imperial droid, he'd never in his wildest imaginations thought that the droid would become an irreplaceable part of his life. At the time, his motivations had been purely selfish and non-emotional: he'd needed backup and none was coming from the Alliance. It had been a desperate gamble. An "if this doesn't work I'm going to die anyway" sort of situation. When it had worked, no one had been more surprised than Cassian himself. He'd made it back to the Alliance thanks to Kay and then he'd handed the droid off to the engineering department, thinking that would be the last he'd see of Kay. He'd assumed they'd assign the droid to someone else; Cassian always worked alone.
But it turned out that no one was comfortable working with a former Imperial droid. Who would have guessed? So the only one willing to go on missions with Kay was Cassian himself. And thus their partnership had begun. Cassian admits in the early days that there were moments where he thought maybe Kay's reprogramming wouldn't stick and the droid would turn on him, but after a while, those fears turned into distant memories.
Kay had been loyal to a fault. There were some that would say that was just how he'd been reprogrammed, but Cassian knew better: Kay's loyalty had been incredibly selective. In the early days, there were several times where Kay deliberately left him hanging one way or another, until Cassian outright saved the droid's life on a mission. Things had changed after that. So no, Cassian did not believe it was just how Kay had been programmed.
He stops pacing for a few moments, paused outside of Jyn's door. He misses Kay. He honestly and truly misses him. Due to Kay's insistence, Cassian had had a backup and had clung to that hope when he heard his friend die, but that had been crushed when he arrived here at Echo Base and all of his other things had made the transit and that had not. With its disappearance, his hopes of reviving his friend had died.
He takes a step forward to resume his pacing, needing to build his stamina back up after so many days of stillness, when a noise catches his ear from behind Jyn's door: it's a sob. He hesitates a moment, not sure if she would want him to intrude on her grief, until he hears more sounds of distress and understands she's having a nightmare. When her sob gets louder, he makes his decision. He opens her door and slips quietly inside, seeing her tossing and turning on the bed.
"No, no, no, no," she cries, "please no!"
He rushes to her side and sits on the edge of the bed. "Jyn!" he hisses, gently shaking her shoulder. "Jyn! Wake up!"
She comes awake in a mass of flailing limbs and—while he should have expected her defensiveness—it surprises him. Sensing a foreign presence above her, she strikes out with the heel of her palm, whacking him in his sternum before he can block it. The breath leaves his lungs forcefully from the hit, healing ribs screaming in protest, but he doesn't back away. Instead, he moves inside her flailing arms, gasping for breath as her fists pound against his side, until he's able to grasp her face in both of his hands. "Jyn!" he says softly. "It's me, Jyn. It's Cassian. You're all right, you're safe."
The pounding slowly stops as her eyes focus on him, her breathing heavy. "Cassian," she sobs, "Cassian you're dead. They're all dead and we failed."
"No, Jyn," he counters, pulling her against him and tucking her head beneath his chin, "no it was just a nightmare. I'm here, I'm alive and we did not fail."
She cries into his chest, clutching the back of his shirt in her hands. "It was so real," she whispers brokenly. "They're always so real… Have they found you, yet?"
"What, the nightmares?" he asks, feeling her nod against his shoulder. "Yes, they've found me, but more accurately, they've never left me alone."
She pulls back at that and he lets her, not wanting to make her feel trapped. "How do you stand them? How do you keep them from driving you insane?" she demands shakily.
He draws in a breath, thinking about his answer before replying, "Well, when I wake up, I start reminding myself of everything good in my life, which for a long time was a very short list. But," he continues gently, "since I met you, the list has gotten longer," he confesses, hand reaching out to wipe the tears from her face. "And then I hold onto all of the good as the nightmares fade."
"And that works?" she asks in disbelief.
"Sometimes yes, sometimes no," he admits, dropping his hand from her face to clutch one of hers. "But it never hurts to try."
"Thank you," she breathes, tears still slipping down her face, "for waking me. Would you, would you…" she can't finish.
"Would you like me to stay?" he finishes for her, sparing her the pride of asking.
She nods slowly.
"Then of course." He starts to move from the bed to the floor, but she reaches out to stop him.
"You don't have to stay on the floor. It can't be comfortable and I know it can't be good for you." She scoots sideways, turning to face the wall and lying on her side, leaving a narrow part of the bed empty. "There's not much room, but it will be better than the floor."
He waits for several moments, giving her plenty of time to retract her offer, before slowly stretching out on the narrow bed beside her. "Are you sure?"
"Yes," she says with conviction. "I know I'll be safe if I have you at my back."
Her words touch him in their honesty.
"Okay, but if you push me off of the bed, I promise you retribution," he teases, trying to chase away the last dregs of her nightmare.
Her quiet chuckle and "give it your best shot, Rebel scum," lets him know he's succeeded. He doubts he'll get much sleep, but that's not the point. He'll be her guardian for tonight. Even though he can't fight the specters that haunt her, he won't leave her now.
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A.N.2. I really really love Kay and Cassian's friendship (droids totally have feelings!) and I needed to write about it because it's taking too long to bring Kay back (which is my own fault... but shhhh).