Cassian and I always used to share everything with one another. He keeps much of himself hidden from the rest of the world, but when two people are as close as we are, it becomes a necessity. A survival tactic. Ever since we were little, we learned to lean on one another. Because burdens are easier to bear if you let someone carry them with you. How else could we have made it this far? Cassian and I always used to share everything with one another.
But these days, we don't.
Because the older we got, the heavier and more gruesome the burdens became, and the more Cassian began to keep from me.
There are two things that I know of:
Firstly, he will not open up about the lives he has taken. Few people would believe me, but Cassian is no lion-heart. At his very core, he is a gentle soul. I can see it sometimes in those dark eyes, but that too he often hides from the world. His calloused nature is a learned thing, beaten into existence by years of fighting and bloodshed. He refuses to admit the suffering it has always caused him.
And secondly, as much as I pester him about it, he never talks about Krennic. It happened years ago when he was captured on a mission. Somehow, the man broke him. When Cassian returned, he was changed, nearly beyond recognition.
These two things remain. Always. He guards them with his life, even today. He shuts the pain away from the world, deep within himself where even I cannot reach. I used to think he was just trying to keep me safe, but now I find it downright irritating. When two people are as close as we are, there shouldn't be any burden too heavy or gruesome for one to share with the other. But evidently, he lives by a different code. We are as close as two people can be, and yet some things are just not meant to be shared.
0 BBY
YAVIN 4
Life had not been kind to Benduday Andor. The scars on her face didn't just tell a story, they screamed it. She had learned long ago to ignore the stares, but they bothered her more than she let on. In public, she wore her mask. In solitude, late at night, that's where the danger was. She would face it sitting in front of the mirror. What did they all see when they looked at her, anyway? Wasted youth? Beauty marred? A victim of cruel fate? Sometimes she wished she knew, but mostly she was just annoyed.
Her consolation was and always had been in Cassian. He saw right past the scars, or rather, he knew them well already. He had watched her collect most of them along the way, wiping the blood and patching them up when they were fresh. The ones on her face were a different matter entirely. He had never forgiven himself for not being there to make them better too, and she cherished him for that. She cherished him for a lot of reasons.
But Cassian hadn't been around for days, and Ben was beginning to get fed up with everyone else at headquarters, Mon Mothma especially. She hated the way pity crept into those grey eyes every time they settled on her. Pity was the last thing Ben needed from anyone. Life had not been kind to her, but so what? She told herself there were many worse things than to have one's story branded across one's face. If only these people would learn not to stare so much. Stalking through the hangar, she fixed her gaze straight ahead as the eyes bored into her from all directions. Thinking sensibly, she had started avoiding all life forms in general, but the one Ben was going to see today was not living, per se.
With a sigh of relief, she stepped into the hull of the UT-60D Alliance starfighter where it rested outside the hangar. The very same droid she had salvaged from Geonosis was seated in the pilot's chair. He turned as she entered.
"Benduday Andor," he said, his two round light receptors flashing towards her. "You're a sight for malfunctioning optics." Even in the dimness of the U-wing's hull, the scars on her face caught every bit of light in their craggy terrain. But K-2 never seemed to notice. He spoke his mind about many things, but this he had simply accepted.
"Ben," she pronounced carefully, rolling her eyes as she closed the hatch behind her. "Everyone calls me Ben, Kay. I've told you far too many times."
"And I have told you, the diagnostic capabilities necessary to retain 'nicknames,' as you call them, are not included in my programming." At the word 'nicknames' he succeeded in pouring a great deal of cynicism into the quotation marks he traced in the air with his long, mechanical digits.
Her eyebrows shot up. "Well, I don't know what you did with them, but I definitely put them in there." She jabbed a finger at his smooth, grey head. "Perhaps it got lost somewhere in all the sass you've downloaded."
"I only learned from the best."
"Well you can stuff it when the professor's around." She plunked herself down onto the floor.
A pause, and the droid turned back to the console and continued his systems check. "Someone has short circuits today."
"Yes I do. Because someone is leaving without me. Again."
"Well, if you will miss me that much, I—"
"I wasn't talking about you, Kay." It came out more tersely than she wanted, but she was in no current mood to be compassionate.
Another pause. She could almost hear the sparks flying inside that metal brain. "Fine. Then if I was capable of emotion, I expect I would now be feeling joy at the prospect of leaving you here."
"Fine." She folded her arms and stared at her knees, looking up again when K-2 didn't turn away. "Cassian comes back today," she admitted, sensing the question buzzing through his wires, "but Draven is sending him right out again on this wild Bantha chase to Jedha." He had been away for days, rooting around the darkest, rankest places the Galaxy had to offer for information. After the Ring of Kafrene, they had immediately sent a team with K-2 out to Wobani, following the trail of connections to this planet killer. Cassian had travelled far and long after that, hopping from transport to transport to avoid being followed.
"And you think he will not have adequate time to recover from his previous mission."
"Well, yes." And no, not at all, she thought, but kept it to herself.
"Let me put your worries to rest. Taking into account the lack of time Cassian Andor has to recuperate, I estimate his ability to function will only be diminished 8.67 per cent."
In fact, the droid was accurate to the hundredth, but she wasn't listening. "It will throw him off, I know it will."
"I have never known Cassian to ever be 'thrown off'… unless we are including the time he tried to take that wild nexu for a ride. In all my years, he has always been a constant, whatever state he was in."
She looked at him then as she would a child. "You're only twelve years old, Kay. Three if you're only counting the years after we reprogrammed you—"
"I am not."
"—and you didn't see him the day we first found you. What a mess. Whichever way you look at it, I've known him longer, so I must know what is best."
"I find that assertion vague and unconvincing." Her smile was immediate. She had taught him that one. She watched the droid as he returned his attention to the dash. Only K-2SO could break her composure with such ease. Somewhere outside, she could hear a shuttle touching down on the landing platform.
"I love you, Kay."
That caught him off guard. The droid turned again in his seat.
"In a purely creator-created sort of way, of course," she clarified.
He regarded her for a moment, his light receptors twitching from side to side. Processing.
"I cannot reciprocate," he said finally. She grinned. "As an automated being, I am not capable—"
"I know, Kay." She scratched at the back of her neck.
"But…if I could..."
"Understood."
"You know that I…"
"Got it," she said, holding up a hand. He paused, receptors twitching again, nodded satisfactorily, then turned back to his duties.
"Ben?" Someone pounded on the outside of the U-Wing. "Are you in there?"
"Yeah, I'll be out in a second." She got to her feet, crossing the width of the hold in a stride or two and pausing at the hatch. "Kay?"
"Yes?"
"When you get to Jedha, don't just wait on this ship for Cassian to get back. I don't care what he says, you do whatever is necessary to keep him alive."
A third pause as the information was filed away. "Thank you, Benduday. I will take your proposal into consideration."
"It wasn't a propos—." She stopped and pressed her lips together. "Look, let me put it this way. I reprogrammed you once and I can do it again. If you let anything happen to Cassian, I'll have your skinny metal ass for it."
Unperturbed, the droid turned and continued flipping switches. A steam vent somewhere underneath them opened with a spiteful hiss.
"Define 'anything'," he said after a moment.
"Define it yourself."
Another bang on the hull. "Ben!"
She didn't move. "Kay."
"What now?" He refused to look at her this time.
"Do I have your word?"
"Yes."
"Even if you have to fly the ship to him to get him out?"
"It shall be done"—if he could have sighed, he would have—"with no small amount of huff."
She decided to let him have it. She punched the hatch-lift and glanced at K-2 a final time.
"I do love you, you know."
The droid turned once again as she stepped out of the cockpit, tawny hair catching fire in the late morning light.
"I…love you, too," the droid murmured to the empty ship.
Outside, Ben didn't need to look to see that Cassian was there, leaning against the weather-beaten side of the U-wing. He fell immediately in step with her.
"You don't have much time," she said, hardly glancing at him. "You are required in the war room to meet the contact." This was their way. They almost never bothered with traditional signs of affection, often reverting to name-calling instead. Neither one was very good at 'hello's, and especially not at 'good-bye's.
"Right," he said, squinting against the sun. "Who is he, then?"
"She," Ben corrected. "Jyn Erso."
Cassian scowled. "Don't like the sound of her."
"Hey, you're lecturing to the Council, here," Ben muttered. "I'm already starting to think this is a bad idea."
The captain didn't give an answer, just lowered his head and slowed his pace until he came to a stop. He placed his hands on his hips as she stopped beside him, her hazel eyes never leaving his face.
When he met her gaze, he inclined his head but a little, looking at her from beneath a heavy brow. The look would have been stern, but his eyes were tired. His face was drawn, his stubble longer than she remembered.
"How are you doing?" He beat her to the question. She knew exactly what he meant. The mood turned so suddenly, she could taste it in the muggy air.
She dropped her gaze to the space between them, shook her head slowly. "I hate that you had to kill that man." She spoke of Tivik. She was back on the Ring of Kafrene. "I hate that I was the one who told you to do it."
He let the truth hang there for a while.
"He knew too much." His tone was shallow. They both knew it wasn't anything close to good enough. "Ben." When she didn't respond he moved closer and placed a hand on her shoulder. "He was only a worker in the mines. He did his job—"
"No." She finally raised her eyes to his. "No, Cassian. Every life counts. Taking one is never to be justified."
She did this often, laid his acts bare for what they were, bad or good, forgivable or not. He shoved such things down. She dug them up. They continued in an endless cycle of burying and exhuming, of hiding and seeking that often left both exhausted. But it was their way. It was necessary. The lives he refused to talk to her about she would always pursue, sometimes to the brink of reason. Every single one mattered to her, because it was he who bore them. And I took three this time, he told himself. She seemed to sense his thoughts. Her eyes softened. They were like liquid gold in the morning light.
"I hate what it does to you." It was the same thought she must have whispered to him a thousand times before. "I hate that it ever has to happen in the first place, because I know you won't let me carry that burden with you."
He took a deep breath and squeezed her shoulder once before letting go.
"Some walls must remain standing." Her silence was agreement enough, but her eyes said otherwise.
They continued to walk, entering the dark and bustling hangar.
"I have orders to help you prepare for departure immediately following this meeting," she said, all business again.
"We'll need your best accessories, Lieutenant," he returned, happy to play along.
She nodded distractedly. "Sure."
"And try to save some ration bars for the rest of us, won't you?"
He was rewarded with a prompt smack upside the head. It only made him grin. She was never too distracted to take a swing.
"Piston-head," he heard her grumble as she strode away.
"Mudlicker," he called after her.
Mostly dialogue, but I hope you liked all the same.
Reviews are very welcome!
