Cassian Andor (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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sixthiterationlogs2017-03-09 12:43 pm
candor1) wrote in sixthiterationlogs2017-03-09 12:43 pm
jannat al-ma'wa • sub rosa
WHO: the Starhungry Wargames soap opera troupe
WHAT: Ongoing follow-up to this. More correspondence possibly as top comments; other scenarios as top comments encouraged!
WHERE: their respective cabins, wherever else they wanna write or read
WHEN: -ever slips in comfortably with everything else (I defy continuity)
OPEN TO: Jyn, Finnick, Annie, Cassian. If Annie or Finnick actually want to involve anyone else they absolutely can.
WARNINGS: None planned; any comments can have own warning tags
STATUS: open
CREDIT NOTE: don't remember the origin of the story, but I learned it from a retelling by Jane Yolen.
~~~~~~~~~begin~~~~~~~~~
Cassian finished writing before turning to Jyn. He pulled her into his lap, leaned them both into the light, and held up the finished paper for her to read it.
Finnick or Annie would later find it folded and slipped under their door.
The sentence structure and formatting were hardly up to communique/report standard; but it was considered impiety to write it down at all, so he did so minimalistically. It seemed… that construct again… a worthy infraction.
The text:
WHAT: Ongoing follow-up to this. More correspondence possibly as top comments; other scenarios as top comments encouraged!
WHERE: their respective cabins, wherever else they wanna write or read
WHEN: -ever slips in comfortably with everything else (I defy continuity)
OPEN TO: Jyn, Finnick, Annie, Cassian. If Annie or Finnick actually want to involve anyone else they absolutely can.
WARNINGS: None planned; any comments can have own warning tags
STATUS: open
CREDIT NOTE: don't remember the origin of the story, but I learned it from a retelling by Jane Yolen.
Cassian finished writing before turning to Jyn. He pulled her into his lap, leaned them both into the light, and held up the finished paper for her to read it.
Finnick or Annie would later find it folded and slipped under their door.
The sentence structure and formatting were hardly up to communique/report standard; but it was considered impiety to write it down at all, so he did so minimalistically. It seemed… that construct again… a worthy infraction.
The text:
parable of Naqshban passed by chain of transmission from the elders of Varadan through many generations to d'Djiera al-Terasu to Cassian Andor (tariq muttasila – unbroken) to Jyn Erso + Finnick Odair + Annie Cresta (tariq munqati‘a – approximation)
I was told this on a lifeless planetoid, by a woman with no memory, who somehow knew it anyway.
Azraa'vel shepherd of the angelic tribe went to a great mortal leader who was about to die
Azra. said: "you have served and protected many people with all of your life, you have earned your choice in death: eternal reward or eternal punishment" • Leader said: "can I see both before I choose?" • Azra. took her in his wings and they flew
Azra. landed them and said: "behold punishment"
it was a fertile land with many beautiful plants • hills and streams all the way to the horizon • beside their landing was a long table that stretched as far as they could see • piled with wonderful delicious food and pleasurable nourishing drink • to sit at that table should be to want for nothing but taste enjoyment forever
• all the people at that table were wailing with torment
Leader demanded "Why do they suffer?" • Azra. pointed to their hands • every person was shackled in their place • a person could reach food and drink but could not bring any of it to their own mouth • Leader covered her face in grief • Azra. took her in his wings and they flew
Azra. landed them and said: "behold reward" • it was a fertile land with many beautiful plants • hills and streams all the way to the horizon • beside their landing was a long table that stretched as far as they could see • piled with wonderful delicious food and pleasurable nourishing drink
Leader said "this is the same – we've gone nowhere" • Azra. pointed to the people at the table • they were still shackled down • but these people were talking and laughing in love and joy
Leader said "I don't understand they're still chained" • Azra. pointed to their mouths • these people could also reach the food and drink • they could also not bring it to their own mouths to feed themselves • these people did not try
• they raised their food and drink to either side and gave it to each other
Azra. to Leader: "it's for you to choose"
c.
Pre-Letter
At the first click of the doorknob being turned, her eyes dart over - always still half-expecting to see someone other than Cassian, always vaguely anticipating an enemy of some kind. By the time he's walked in the door, she's picked up on the familiar cadence of his steps and has relaxed, expression and gaze soft. She stands, brushes the tree-lint from her army-green cargo pants (a gift from the mysterious boxes), and folds up her multi-tool to replace into one of the pockets.
"Hey," she says, once he's in the door - padding her way, barefoot as she normally is inside of the cabin, over to greet him.
/disappointed in self to go so full on headcanon but suspect you'll forgive me/
The victor of the game is the last one left alive
"That how you feel, Coal?" Blue said. "You a 'victor'?"
You gave up what they would have taken without making them fire a shot.
"You gave up your chance to speak to me," muttered Cassian. "You could have told me everything. You could have told me anything."
I'll take my chance until the chances are spent.
"I made my choice for as long as I could," she said.
"It wasn't only your choice!" he screamed.
"Dorosz and Foa? or the baby?"
I've done terrible things. Everything I've done, I did for a cause I believed in.
"If you wanted to die," he said, "why did you take them with you"
"If you wanted to live," she said, "why did you ever take up with me"
The only promise to myself I never broke, never betrayed
She pinned him to a tree and enveloped him whole.
He didn't want to go with her but was instantly lost. Her hollow eyes—he'd thought them a mystery to understand, hadn't seen they were already dead… Her long black hair… The curves of her body like he'd never seen or touched or been taken by before… Her face… her… …oh god…
…The look on Jyn's face when he'd told her they'd played Sabacc for him. Like they'd done something terrible. What if he was the one who'd done the worst thing. So quickly and easily to agree.
Blue hadn't wanted it. Hadn't wanted him. Probably the only one of the three who didn't. But she's played her cards and had nothing (nothing) better to do. The neophyte needed initiation. She wouldn't be bested by Red or Green. Couldn't let them be so distracted. So she took his hand and led him past the curtain (nothing else between them and Narede and Dorosz's inevitably listening ears), and sat down on the bed, and fixed him with her eyes, and he could only look back, not knowing what he was supposed to feel or do. And she told him to undress and at first he refused. But all she had to do was remove her own jacket and let down her hair and he proceeded to do everything she told him. As it turned out: badly. "Well," she'd said, "we'll work on that"
was that I would only give all my actions and life to a cause that was worth it.
and however it had started they kept working at it over and over for the months they had left
Her arm encircled his waist, hand grabbed him from behind and pushed him into her. He strained, trying so hard not to feel… how it felt… good
"There are two ways to cope—push away everyone or desperately approximate connection"
Right now… the cause that seems worth it…
"You've been dead seven years," he groans as she drew him on. "You were gone. I let you go. Why are you back. Why now."
is to try at life.
A touch on his face pulled him out.
d'Djiera's moongreen eyes in her sandbrown face sparkled back. She laughed at him, yanked him by the collar away from the tree, but dropped him like a (…coal.) as soon as his feet hit her footprints.
Draven sat somberly beside him. Exactly as Cassian would later sit beside his own recruits. "There's only so much you can work through," they both said. "Unless and until the conditions repeat."
With Jyn.
Cassian dug his fingers into the bark of the tree. Pressed his forehead to it too. Branding himself with the imprint. Safely away from everyone else, he made himself scream. get out get away from me not with her
"But you are everyone in your own dreams," Not-d'Djiera just the wish (the dream) of her—the idea that she could have been some sage for his benefit, that her existence was an answer and that it could apply to transfer to anyone else—pointed out.
"And you dream of a traitor."
It felt like much longer since he'd left, when he walked through their door. Saw Jyn, now, here, relax when she sees him
is he not an enemy
and come to meet him.
He wants his eyes to show how grateful he is to see her. How glad she's here. How glad it's now. How much he wants to follow d'Djiera's example and let nothing else but now be real.
…But if he were really like d'Djiera, he wouldn't be able to love Jyn either. If he had no past, to that degree… neither could they have a future…
There must be somewhere in between both bad extremes… d'Djiera or Blue… however they'd actually been or the monstrous dimensions they'd taken on in his mind… no go away there must be someone real
There is and she's here and she wants you but for the dozenth time you may have ruined it.
with them.with him.Cassian slowly wraps her in his arms. Then lets the circle of his arms slide down her body, the rest of him following. Until he's brought them both to the floor, Jyn seated, Cassian doubled over to lay his head in her lap.
Maybe this is really why you wouldn't be alone with anyone but me, Kay cheerfully pointed out. You realized keeping it all held in forever was unsustainable. You needed now and then to collapse. But you knew if you did, I couldn't be hurt.
YOU KNOW I LOVE YOUR HEADCANON *grabby hands*
If he looked harder, he would see the glisten of her eyes - the muting of the jade held within. He'd see the tension travel up her jaw as she forced tooth upon tooth. He'd hear the rapidity and shallowness of breath as the vice in her chest grew tighter. But she knows he won't; his mind isn't with them in the cabin.
She allows herself to follow him, down to the floor, one palm pressed against his chest, the other gently raking the hair from his forehead. She lifts her head, glances back towards the scarred piece of wood she'd been working on. Something to keep her grounded, something to keep her here while Darkness tugs at her hand for her to follow it.
no subject
The floor was cold. She was warm. He abandoned the rest of his body to the floor to press his face into her stomach and thigh, smoothed his hand along her back to hang on to her as the world spun, and so his own arm covered his face.
It isn't fair to her. It's too much to expect. You'll drain the well.
Not your job to decide for her
Just ask
"Tell me something," he managed.
The ritual. The rule. Take him out of his story into one of hers. When one couldn't articulate bring me back or help me.
no subject
If she could only reach down into the depths of him - take hold of what it is that hurts him so, exorcise it from his body -
Leave him clean, and whole, and complete.
She tries with her stories. The little bits she's able to recall and reveal to him. But what happens when there are no more tales to tell? What happens when she's unable to distract and divert the ghosts long enough for him to remember she's there (turn back around, coming running back into her arms)?
What happens when she fails?
Focus, Jyn.
"My favorite holodrama was called The Octave Stairway. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but it's about this man, Brin, who's trying to get back home by climbing this fabled staircase, the Octave Stairway. I had a nightmare about it, once. Well - more than once, really, but there was one in particular that used to show up over and over again. I'd be trying to climb one of the stairs, but it'd be too large. Too high. I'd be so small in comparison. I'd try, and I'd try, and I'd try - but I never got any higher. I'd turn around to see Brin there, only - he looked like my father. He'd tell me to keep moving, to keep trying. When I turned back around, the staircase would be normal again - regular sized (or maybe I'd gotten bigger) - but then when I tried to run up it, I'd fall. I'd stumble backwards and fall for what felt like ages." She inhales suddenly, like she'd forgotten to breathe. "I always woke up before I hit the bottom."
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Your end, now. Trade.
"My father was an Imperial cadet," said Cassian. His voice in his own ears as if from very far away. This was the first story, half before his own memory of it. It was odd it hadn't come out before now. "At the Carida Academy. He was training for Imperial Military Intelligence. I know I was born on Fest but mainly because he told me. He'd took me to Carida when I was two. By the time I learned to ask, he wouldn't tell me who or where my mother was. It was the Clone Wars still. There was a protest against imperial expansion by activists and some of their Caridan sympathizers. It turned into a riot. My father was killed. I don't know which side he was fighting on. I don't remember what happened but I was told later that I was trying to defend my father's body with a toy blaster. By the activist who grabbed me and saved me from being trampled or shot. She took me with her to the Fringe. That's how I joined my first insurrectionist cell. Became a soldier at the age of six. …Her name was Xol Khriou and she looked after me when she wasn't doing her own work. I think she was mainly a saboteur. She'd told me a story about moonlight making pathways, stairs and bridges when it reflects on water or clouds. There wasn't much water or clouds on the worlds we were mostly on. But whenever I see them now I think about her on the other end."
His body has gone slack under her hands and in her lap. His breathing slowed, eyes closed. The two stories mingle hazily in his mind. Brin and Khriou, Galen and Jeron, Jyn and Cassian. Moonlight, octaves, staircases.
He's almost ready to be in the present again.
But no… brow crease, one more problem left unresolved.
"What happens to Brin?" he asked. "At the end of the holo?"
no subject
She's surprised he'd been an Imperial officer. Another similarity between the two of them, she realizes. Fathers bearing the flags and costumes of the Empire. Devoured in their work. Too preoccupied for children.
She can see him - or what she imagines to be him - pulling the trigger of his blaster, trying his hardest to defend - even then, even when he'd been that small. Trying to save, trying to protect. She can almost picture the walls beginning to be built, the fortress he'd tucked himself away inside of - trading in a toy blaster for a real one.
"It's incredible you remember so many names," Jyn murmurs. Out of those she'd been raised alongside under Saw, she could only remember a handful of them. Some died within her first week there, and she'd realized it was probably better to purposefully avoid learning their names; it made it easier to ignore their empty bunk, their absent laugh. She couldn't mourn what she didn't know.
Something in her eyes goes dark, fades to sobriety and grief.
"We'd left Coruscant to escape to Lah'mu when I was four. I never got to see the end of it."
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"But if I hadn't remembered anything else, I think I'd have remembered her name. …And I only know that much about my father and my life because she made me tell her on our first flight from Carida to the Fringe. When I was still… speaking." Child Cassian would soon stop speaking. For almost a year. (And arguably not quite pick it back up again afterward. —Maybe not until being here.) "When I would have forgotten, on my own, being so hurt and so small, she reminded me."
Slowly, Cassian pushed himself up. Sat back to avoid hitting Jyn's face with his head. Took a moment with face bowed to breathe. Then looked up into her eyes. The stars and galaxies were back in his. They told her how sorry he was, before he touched her face and leaned in again to rest his forehead to hers.
Speaking of memory enhancement techniques. He tucked a file marked Octave Staircase: fate of Brin into the category return to later. Perhaps they could make up an ending. Maybe Khriou and Galen would feature. (…And Jeron. Perhaps. Though as characters went, in Cassian's mind, he wasn't as fully formed.)
But that would be later. Because more urgent, the operating function come back online: now explain.
"Thank you." Between their faces, his thumb traced a line down her cheek, coming to rest with the rest of his fingers in her hair. "Lo siento. I… just had a long conversation with Finnick."
no subject
Her fingers gently brush the hair at his temples, tucking the longer strands behind his ear, gaze angled back down - soft. She wonders if she'd stopped speaking, when he mentions it; wonders if the weight of it all took her away from herself back when she was a child. She can't remember. The brain nestled in her skull apparently tucked those memories away, sealed them up so deep in the vault that she's unable to find them. Perhaps it's better that way, she thinks. Don't linger on the ghosts of the past more than you already do.
She adjusts as needed as he moves, the color of her own eyes returning at the sight of his - now vibrant, alive, with her. Reaches her fingers up to trail the back of the hand on her cheek, exhales relief. For a woman who's spent her life alone, the thought of it now terrifies her into silence. It feels like weakness, but it's one she's willing to have.
"Finnick?" Her tone is surprised. It's a foolish question to ask, given the state Cassian had been in when he'd arrived - but she isn't sure how else to ask, "How is he?"
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"I understand him better," he said. "I wish I didn't.
"I want to help him. But I'm afraid…
"Jyn… I did something that may have…"
Betrayed you?
"…I wish I'd talked to you before I knew…
"I don't know if I crossed a line. I…"
He lets out a ferocious exhalation of frustration and closes his eyes against her breastbone.
"I apparently can't speak."
(Again.)
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Something in her stiffens, hardens at the words hiding behind his teeth.
Preparation.
Self-preservation.
Protection.
"What happened?"
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One more bracing breath. Then he reports as succinct, fast, and crisply as possible. When there's no time to lose. Lives hang in the balance. You make your report and receive your orders. Nothing else. You barely take time to breathe.
"When I came through the fountain, Finnick found me. …Just as he did you. I was screaming your name. He explained that I was alive but there was no going back, and that you hadn't come here with me. He offered to take me somewhere warm. The way he said it and the way he touched me, his body language, it seemed like he was offering… seemed like he was propisitioning me. I didn't want to think or feel anything. I was cold and wanted to get warm. I thought I was dead but was apparently alive. I still felt you in my skin and couldn't bear that you were lost. I wanted to drown it out. I wanted to lose myself the way I had in the middle of a siege with another soldier. So I responded to him. I didn't know what I know now."
What Finnick hadn't actually told him and so wasn't necessarily a violation of Finnick's trust to tell Jyn. Except of course it was… except, actually, no it wasn't. What they'd been playing at was a violation of Jyn's and Annie's trust. They forfeited limited disclosure when they toed the line.
"He hasn't confirmed it. But from what I can tell from what he says and how he behaves, his body language, his reactions: I think he was a sex slave in his old life. He uses seduction as a defensive technique. But he doesn't control it. If someone reacts to it as I did… assuming actual willingness and giving it back… he doesn't know how to refuse. So he kissed me. I realized I was making a poor decision purely out of shock. Realized he didn't really want… realized I didn't really want… any of it. I called it off and apologized. He took me to the inn and showed me to a room and let me be and I didn't see him again until you arrived. But that's why he and Annie have treated me like a threat to them ever since. I didn't know about Annie, nor Finnick's maladaption to trauma. When Annie started following me, I wanted to figure it out. I confronted her and learned a lot from her. I became aware of my mistake—of the harm I'd caused. I don't blame myself—I'd died right in the moment I learned I could want life again but lost the thing that made me want it which was you; so of course I wasn't making the best decisions. But I still wanted to make it up to him. After he brought you here, I wanted to thank him. But additionally thought it might be an opportunity to apologize and try to prove that he had nothing to fear from me.
"I wasn't looking for him today. I was going to the spring to try and help my hand. He was there. He stayed while I washed my hand. I tried to thank him for helping us. He just… looked at me like I was… like what I was. Had been. Even when I was that, few ever looked at me like they could see it."
Except you, Jyn. And then through you, the others… but it meant when you looked at me differently, so did they, too.
"It… didn't bring out the best in me.
"I asked him why. What I could do. I tried to find out about his world. There are some things that are similar. There are more things he wouldn't tell me. What's very clear is that he's convinced this is still his world, somehow, and the threats that plagued him there are just as much here. Including being a gladiator meant to fight everyone else to death. I lost my temper. I told him being here with you without enemies stalking us or shooting at us was a gift I wasn't going to waste. I didn't want any new ones. I wasn't going to leave him at my back if he intended to be mine. I had no need to be his. If he felt that under attack, we should be allies to each other against the common danger, instead of potential threats to each other perpetuating it.
"Oh, Yava." He does not talk this much. But it's a report and must be thorough and every detail may count… but it's harder because there's more in there, for which he isn't just the conduit but the source, and he doesn't know if he'll having anything left if it keeps pouring out of him. His pulse was choking him and breath ran too shallow and he had to bend over to pause.
no subject
She stays silent, stays quiet -
Attempts to regulate her breathing,
slow down her heart to stop the vibration of it from blocking out his voice,
controls the tremor in her fingers that begins as his story unfolds.
Steels herself;
replaces bone and muscle and soft flesh with stone, durasteel.
Flexes and sets her jaw.
Corrals the flurry of her mind to stay attentive and focused.
Listen to him, for kriff's sake.
When he pauses, she can hear the percussion of his heartbeat, echoing her own. She can feel the strangulation in his throat, the furious tempest of his lungs. She knows he's trying to reveal this all to her as a status report - sterile, unfeeling, detached. She knows that he's failing to do so. In their collective time together, it's the most she's ever heard him say - one thing after the other, barely time to breathe or think or feel. Unlike him in every way possible.
But she understands why he had to let it fall out of him like an unstoppable current, unable to force his lips and teeth and tongue to be the dam and the mortar to keep it together.
A breath in, a breath out.
"You'd thought I was dead," she says softly, voice calm but calculated, purposeful. "For all reason and logic, Cassian, I was dead. You showed up here, without me; I don't know where I was for that month you were here alone. I don't know why it took me so long to show up, but -" She reaches, fingers trailing the back of his hand. "You can't condemn yourself over a crime when it wasn't one."
no subject
Again, eyes close, quick breath, and his fingers reaching for her hand, but stopping shy of taking it, fingertips only grazing. Alright, so finish.
"I couldn't convince him to join me in this world. So," switch tactics, "I tried joining him in his. I learned a lot that... isn't for me to tell yet. If he decides to stop carrying his world here with him, it will be fine. For now... the detail that made me understand was: his whole life experience gives him good reason to fear that, even here, he's being watched. Nonstop omniscient surveillance."
His pause this time isn't to avert his eyes. It's to (pleadingly, blazingly) meet hers.
"How can I leave him alone in that hell?" he asked. "My whole life was to make a better world and bring as many as I could along with me. His rebellion needs to be fought in his own mind. But it still needs fighting."
...He doesn't tell her (not yet his place) the element of, even if misplaced, responsibility. That Finnick was the casualty of a Rebellion like theirs.
"So... I played along with his delusion in order to reach him. Decided to play spy again so he'd know I was serious about helping him. And the strategy we both know... is seduction. I didn't kiss him. But I gave him a message disguised as... nearly doing so."
His eyes had fallen from hers again. "I'm going to write to him. I don't know what. That accomplishes circumventing his fears and not having to repeat physical contact. I just... know I was walking a line. Saying it aloud it doesn't seem as extreme. But I still wanted to tell you... And not do anything else on this front without your thoughts."
no subject
How, despite all of that - despite everything he'd ever suffered, everything he'd ever endured, he still helped her.
It takes all of her strength and concentration to focus back in on Cassian's voice as it fills the space between them, swirling around them like smoke and fog.
"You can't fight a rebellion on behalf of someone who'd rather not fight."
"You can stand to see the Imperial flag reign across the galaxy?"
"It's not a problem if you don't look up."
"You can't force them to fight." Of course, hadn't she been forced? Thrust into the mess between Alliance and Saw and Empire? Hadn't she been forced to pick up the mantle of a cause in which she'd never believed, never once conceived as her own? "You can give them the option, show them they have a choice. Present them with all of the information in the hopes they make what is most likely the best and correct choice. Fight with them, once they choose." She turns her palm over, allows it to meet his. Gently wraps her fingers around the width of his hand.
She realizes this isn't the crux of Cassian's story - that comes next.
She inhales a sharp breath, but not with anger, or disgust, or disappointment. Rather, with pain - for him. With him.
Her other hand brushes the strands of hair from his forehead, beckoning him to meet her eyes. Her gaze is a soft glow, the flame of a candle against the darkness of his. Swipes her thumb over his cheek.
"I'm not cross with you," she coos, voice intentionally soft. "I'm not angry. I understand, why you did what you did. A way to get your message across in a way that'd feel safe to him, if he's still under the impression that we're being watched. Which .. I'm not entirely convinced we aren't."
A slight shake of the head.
"Not the point, though. You were a spy long before I met you; I don't expect you to suddenly stop being who you are, being who you've been for so long, just because we're here.
But - thank you, for telling me. For coming back to me." She lifts their entwined hands, presses her lips to the back of his. "Writing seems like a safe path to take, for everyone involved."
no subject
"Thank you," he murmured. Resting his forehead against hers once more; the relief, at last. How did I get to be with you. How did you come through everything you have and still be this. How can you walk through the dust of these worlds and still shine.
"I think," he said after a moment, now spent, un-urgent, more pensive, "I wasn't really worried about hurting you with the romance act. I think I was worried…" The catch in his breath confirms for himself that he's right. "…about willingly resorting to… being a spy."
But once again, she not only forgave him, but helped him understand better what he'd needed forgiving.
He cupped her face and kissed her. His other hand still clasped in hers.
As to whether or not they were being watched… he sensed that they were in agreement. They very well could be. But by creatures on such a different level, possibly different perceptions, from themselves, there was no point worrying about it. They'd touched on the conversation several times… it was good to share thoughts, but as usual, there was only so high they could build without data. For now, he agreed. He just couldn't be bothered. He was grateful she felt and thought the same.
A moment later, foreheads still touching, lips barely parted, he breathed a laugh. "Honey, I'm home. How was your day."
I WANT TO MARRY YOUR ICON
"I think you'd be hard-pressed to unravel yourself from being a spy, unable to know where one ended and the other began. It's been a part of you for so long. You'd been trained, conditioned to be it in every corner of yourself." A breath, some self-reflection. "Just as I'd been raised to be a fighter." Of course, that part of her identity had begun to fade, little by little, with each setting of the sun in this new, strange place. The tiny fragment of the girl back on Coruscant, the one who'd create lavish dances and dramatic intrigue only a child could imagine with her dolls - the one who'd ruin the crops with her (premonitory) far-off battles - had begun to flourish again. A seedling, peeking its head through the dirt of her life. Dormant, waiting for the moment to grow.
She traces her fingertips along the cliff of his jaw, murmuring a contented sound at their mingling lips. Echoes his laugh with one of her own.
"Not nearly as exciting, I'm sad to say. Spent most of the day fiddling with the multi-tool. It's got .. a lot of things. Some of which I'm not quite sure what they are."
^_^ From "Solo Quiero Caminar"! Just pretend the lovely Ariadna Gil is our lovely Felicity.
…She's not asking, he noticed, about the fact that he even has 'seduction training'. That's more than all right. He's talked out about the past and possible ripples into their present right now. He also finds that he's subconsciously tagged that detail with the determination not to bring it up again unless she does first. Some things need not be imposed. And that one was not utterly without application to/involvement with her. Techniques once learned had not been withheld. If, for the first time since learning them, full willingly, without agenda, and enjoyably.
GLADLY *swoon*
She shifts herself so her back's now pressed to the blanket, head still resting on his bicep underneath. Gently slips the black multi-tool from his hands to begin fiddling with the thing - prying the two main halves apart, revealing the pliers in between. She goes through each of the 21 (she counted) separate items, including: scissors, two blades, a saw, a ruler, two files, a bottle opener, a can opener, and four screwdrivers.
"These are the ones I'm not sure about," she says, showing him what are (unbeknownst to her) three wire cutters, a crimper, a wire stripper, and an awl. The awl looks a bit like a blade, but seeing its size difference with the others, she thinks it must be something else. "How does it compare with yours?"
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"Those are for manipulating wire," he murmured, lips against her cheek beside her ear, showing her the same functions on his own. "There's no wiring here to worry about—" Neither live nor apparently at all (which was why he'd abandoned his brief thought at trying to build electricity-generating wind turbines: they had no appliances to power even had it succeeded) "—but they can be used for other things too. Like getting through a mesh fence."
His also had pliers, wire cutters, electrical crimper, knife, saw, and rather ingeniously designed bottle opener cum carabiner. (Some of those could pretty much double for scissors and can openers.) Where his differed from hers: a cutting hook and hammer; a bolt override, carbon scraper, cleaning rod, and dissassembly punch.
Which… though he'd never used a ballistic gun, and there weren't analogous tools for blasters… he somehow sensed had to do with weaponry.
He decided not to think too much about it. The bottom line seemed to be: it was slightly more geared toward construction.
"I've been thinking about helping fix up some of the buildings around here," he said. "I suppose this might be meant as encouragement."
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She folds her tool back up into its slender profile and shifts, turning back towards him again. The tool is sheathed back into her pocket and her hand retreats to re-find the gentle vibration of his heart. There's something brewing beneath the calm surface of his words and his face - she can see the twitches at the corners of his mouth, the space between his brow. Studies them for a moment before turning her head enough to kiss his shoulder.
"Suppose you can't do much fixing if you don't have the tools to do so," she replies softly, shifting to look at her fingers on his chest - gently tapping each finger in succession to the drum of his heart. "I think you're right, about this being an encouragement - and not a warning."
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Perhaps he should care in order to try to ensure he could stay safe with Jyn. But that was back to the Finnick debate: the only upshot might be ruining the opportunity they did have.
Tired, now, done with thinking. He too slipped his tool back into his pocket so he could rest both hands on Jyn, folding his arms around her, and closing his eyes into the top of her head. Feeling her fingers transmit their wordless message on his chest. He ran one hand up her arm to shoulder to face to rest and curve on the side of her head. Keeping you. Precious. Protected. Mine.
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Again.
"So what sort of things are you going to fix?" she asks, the words sliding out of her mouth lazily - secured and warmed by his arms, the comfort. Home.
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He'd meant: as opposed to being a small gear in an intergalactic causality machine where the outcomes of his actions would hopefully be felt many people and systems and possibly years away and he could only vaguely see the big picture if at all. But the way it came out sounded like…
the light on Scarif
and momentarily silenced him.
But after a moment, he spoke again. In a more… distant but not from negative emotion… perhaps pensive voice.
"I was making a hand-off in the Kanchen Sector, on Pakrik Minor," he said. "It's an agriworld. All farms and wilderness. We were doing the exchange there because it was where my source felt safe. But coming in, I blew my power cells, and since it was the middle of nowhere, had to wait several days for replacements. I never got to see countryside like that. So I decided to do a walkabout and camp. On my second day, a few hours out from the spaceport, I was watching some tallgrain farmers. One came over to offer me a drink. He obviously wanted to know who I was. But he was very friendly. We spoke for a while. It wasn't until a few of his comrades came over that I noticed anything strange. …And I wouldn't have if I weren't trained to see through disguises and physical alterations. Look for prostheses or through injuries, past changed hairstyles or clothes, get right to things like bone structure… I saw that all of the men, all seven, were exactly identical.
"I figured if they killed me, it was a nice enough place, and I wanted to know. And they could tell I'd noticed anyway. I guess they figured I was more likely to keep their secret if I didn't go away and try to look into them on my own.
"They were clones, of course. An experimental batch. From a particular original and designed not to be suggestible and submissive but to retain his skillset. Not drones or foot soldiers—officers. But in leaving them insight and the ability to interpret and analyze, they also had a level of free will, noncomfority, dreams and desires, that the Empire had no use for. So they were to have been 'retired' at the end of the Clone Wars. Instead, somebody had had the idea to make them a sleeper cell. Out of the way in case another use for them did arise.
"What they hadn't counted on was that these Clones ended up loving Pakrik Minor. They lived together as brothers, had found partners, had started families, and lived for planting the land. They had no desire to be called up again. Genuinely weren't sure what they would do if it ever happened. I revealed myself as a representative of the Alliance and brokered a deal that if they were called to move against us, if they could avoid it without themselves being killed. In return, in good faith unless/until that time arose, I would never tell anyone about them. …As deals go, it really wasn't worth anything. But they believed me enough to let me go. …Really, they didn't want to hurt me anyway—they were very moral—and I wouldn't have told anyway. I never did, until now."
He rested his head back on the floor, looking up at the ceiling. "I think about them a lot. I thought about them when I got those seeds. Getting the chance to do something straightforward… where you see the results in front of you… where the results are to create, rather than… I could see why they loved it. I left as soon as I could and spent the rest of my time in the spaceport. I couldn't let myself want something similar. At least, not as long as I knew I could never really enjoy it, never be at peace knowing I'd turned my back on so many who had no such option. …Probably never at peace anyway because then I'd have to come to terms with myself. I found myself wishing I had the justification they did. The choice to stay in hiding or be a detriment to my people. Choose a new life or be killed. Where retiring would miraculously not be a betrayal or surrender, but itself the best way to serve."
He hadn't really had a thesis statement in mind when he'd started telling her that. There wasn't necessarily a conclusion to be drawn now. But he turned his face to look down at hers, rubbing his fingers across her hand where they held them.
"One life is no recompense for many," he said. "Not even for being mine. But… I'm glad I… died. Whether we really did or not. We were taken out of that world. We were 'retired'. …So I think about them and feel like… that's a good example to follow."
[ooc: Pakrik Minor and the clone sleeper cell turned farmers stolen wholesale from Timothy Zahn's Hand of Thrawn duology, which takes place in a totally different point in SW history, but since that's no longer considered canon, it doesn't muck up continuity. ;-) ]
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Her eyes flutter at the beginning of his story, more alert and attentive to his words. She tries to imagine their faces - all identical, all exactly the same, yet poorly disguised with prosthesis or clothing. Imagines them talking with Cassian, one stranger in a sea of clones. Thinks of Lah'mu.
Once he's finished, she shifts herself so that she's half-propped up on her side, elbow pressed to the ground with her head resting on its corresponding hand. Entwines their fingers until there are no spaces in between them.
"I know that you've done many things you aren't proud of, and that you've taken a many lives. You were good at your job. But you deserve to know the other half of that equation. There's no death without life, and there's no life without death. You've spent too long on one side. I want to help you find the other."
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…her body, that he could never…
It'll only be an issue if we want a child…
…but they didn't, it was just… what she'd just said… sometimes the very possibility (—or lack of it) of something was enough to make itself felt.
But… it's all right… because this is enough. She is enough. She's more than he could have asked.
He brought their interlaced fingers up to his face. Kissed her fingertips, the back of her hand; slipped his fingers from between hers, his hand flowing around hers to cup it behind, so he could kiss her palm—his abrasive cheek and gentle mouth.
"I don't know if I agree," he said, "that I 'deserve' it. But… maybe what's 'deserved' or not doesn't matter. The opposite of death isn't more death. …I don't know if I 'deserve' the other side, but I want to serve it. …And in the end I don't care because I'm just so grateful to do so with you."
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The press of lips against skin.
The care he uses to shower her with affection is enough to make everything in her soften, so much so that her head comes back down to rest on by his shoulder - arm no longer able to support it under the melting heat of his love. And she knows that's what it is, even if Darkness so often likes to try to snatch her hand away from him, lead her unwilling body from his arms.
"I think everyone deserves it, in one way or another. Not everyone will take the opportunity, but I think everyone deserves the chance to." She flips her hand over and presses her palm to his breast bone, feels the reminder of his life behind it. "Including you."
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He wouldn't say it aloud. He knew it made her feel… (undeserving?) …the opposite of what was intended.
But he could think it. And that's why you shine. And why we rallied to you.
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She reads.
She frowns.
She takes a deep breath, rereads. She cocks her head, and then turns to stare at Cassian's house. "Now what are you playin' at, huh," Annie murmurs as her mind whirs and clicks over in thought.
Her first reaction is, honestly, to march over there in person, bang on the door, yell. She doesn't it. It'd cause noise, draw attention, and she'd go and stumble over her words, probably. But written words? Two can play at this, and she's tired of Cassian with his haunted help-me eyes and soft mouth masking someone she increasingly can't predict.
Later, there will be another piece of paper placed under a door. It's a waste, but Annie is angry and protective and jealous. The words are simple, written in a chicken-scratch hand that's trying to be precise and legible.
A) I'm not sharing Finnick. Fuck off if that's your intention.
B) What IS your intention with this?
C) If you're going to waste paper with messages make sure they make sense.
D) Allies don't play games.
- AC
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Not to "waste paper", her note is returned with his responses written in under her own.
A) I'm not sharing me. Intentions reserved for Jyn.
B) Hypothesis: been forced to habituate to highly specialized circumstances, survival methods can become maladaptive if those circumstances spontaneously change. Less literally: If one adapts too well to Hell, one may not realize they've gotten out; Hell then becomes self-made.
C) You and Finnick both maintain we're under surveillance. I'm not convinced we are but understand you have good reasons and will respect that fear. This was the suggested method to continue a conversation not subject to hidden cameras.
D) I asked him and confronted you to not include me and/or stop playing. Clearly not working. If you won't join me outside the game, I'll join you in it. Not leaving someone who treats me as an enemy at my back. Welcome your advisement how to proceed.
~ CA
A couple days later
B) Alternate hypothesis: A lifetime of one environment is not easily shaken when a number of successful traits in one setting transfer to another. In addition pressure to conform to expectations frequently has the opposite effect when the subject is free to rebel.
C) I wasn't asking about the act of note writing just about the CONTENT and the INTENT.
D) Find some patience and perspective. We have not attacked you in action or word we have not gossiped about you or otherwise sabotaged you. The people I trust completely in my own country I can count on one hand with fingers to spare. Asking us to trust you completely because you think it'd be a good idea is a bit rich.
Also your first letter looked like an opening play in a game not the work of an ally. You offered loyalty then prod us. Why?
- AC
An hour later, written under her words on the same page.
I suggested alliance to correct for distrust and hostility. Simple equation. There appears to be disconnect in definitions. If we are to proceed we should synchronize. For instance: complete trust was never on the table. Not expected nor offered. I ask to not be treated as an enemy. Give me reason to trust you're done following and surveilling me. Ideally: stop recoiling from me, treating me with open horror when we happen to occupy the same space. If you don't find that sabotage… I understand my impressions or emotions in reaction to you are not your responsibility. However, I am taking your and Finnick's reactions to me as exactly my responsibility if there's anything I can do about it. Because that's my definition of alliance. Not to leave someone to bleed out when they've been wounded.
If attempting to communicate is compounding rather than offsetting the issue, I am corrected. This will be my last attempt. Unfortunately, in a place this small, meeting again is inevitable. Deal with it in the moment however you wish. I will react however seems appropriate. Within the limits of my willingness—patience (granted, not very much) and perspective (I would posit larger than you credit)—to have my new life and freedom so delineated without necessity.
Intent: It seemed like I managed to harm both of you before I'd even met one of you, and thought I'd try to mend it. I apologize for my selfishness for trying to join in someone else's fight uninvited. I can only promise the attempt was to be on your side against what I consider common adversaries. But it obviously backfired so I withdraw.
I hope my returning your documents is taken as intended: I am not collecting "evidence" against either of you. If leverage on me will make either of you feel better, ask and I shall give. The ones who would have used it against me successfully killed me. I am out of that fight. If it could have followed me here… the fight would not have existed in the first place. If my enemies had the power to pull me off an exploding planet as the shockwave consumed me; transport me without vessel, sensation, or time lapse into a fountain; and instantaneously healed my fatal injuries, there would have been no fight in the first place. They would have simply shaped the rest of reality.
Alternately, this is an afterlife. In which case I refer back to the fable. Intent? Take it as an explanation of my own. I will make this a heaven, if not for myself, then for Jyn.
The offer of written correspondence is still open to Finnick if he wishes it. But you, Annie, I don't think require such buffer. I won't send further letters and suggest you not either. If you wish to converse in person, you know where to find me. This was not intended as a game. Let's not let it become one.
Excuse the images the font that emulates Finnick's handwriting is obscure ...
There is one way to give him the barest of facts, though. So a few days after Cassian's first letter arrives, Finnick takes some paper from Annie's notebook and sits down at the table to write.
It's a long letter that Cassian receives, and it's written in an uneven hand that might make the writer seem unaccustomed to writing. That's far from the truth: Finnick writes often, but he'd left school young, and the fine details of handwriting had never featured highly on the curriculum in Panem. Writing and reading in the Districts were utilitarian skills, not refined ones.
The letter slipped under the door has only a brief introduction.
It takes a long time for Finnick to write it all out, as he's working entirely from memory. There may be passages where words aren't quite correct, or occasional clauses or paragraphs that are skipped. But he's heard these words over and over again, every Reaping every year of his life, and again, at every replay of every Reaping he's watched in his studies.
He knows this treaty, so the text is largely correct. It details the wrongs the Capitol felt had been committed against it, and the laws that had been put in place to suppress the Districts. The acts of rebellion that were forbidden. The punishments that were to be meted out for them by the Peacekeepers. The powers they would have. The restrictions on travel and communication between the Districts, and between them and the Capitol.
The only emphasis comes in the section establishing the Hunger Games, and it's merely the underlining of two sections:
The treaty goes for pages and pages, and at the end of it, Finnick adds no comment. It's a gamble, assuming that Cassian will read what Finnick is feeling but not expressing: the anger and hatred at the Capitol that fills every word he quotes. But leaving these things unspoken is all he can do, turning the Capitol's games to his own purposes, which he's been doing for so very many years.
The signature is simple.
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Tries to gauge subtext.
Then tries looking for codes within it to decipher.
But in the end, it really does seem to be a recollection of an official document. Underlines for emphasis not code.
Cassian sat back, now having to gauge and analyze his own mixed reactions.
It's interesting… but ultimately there's little there that Finnick hadn't already told him at the spring.
If you thought I didn't understand…? …Though of course now I don't…
But Finnick had replied. That was a risk and a choice and a step that Cassian respected and was a bit surprised by. Especially for someone who seemed to fear Cassian was collecting evidence against him. …Granted, the content of the letter was hardly risky, if it was something regularly and officially declared.
So what… how next…
Body sometimes cues mind. Cassian's eyes flicked over to the wall before his brain caught onto why.
He caught himself looking at the list tacked to the wall. A different kind of declaration. His and Jyn's mutually created regulations.
He glanced at item two and exhaled at himself. All right, then.
Slipped back under Finnick's door that night… was his own letter back. The recreation of the Treaty of Treason. Every page of it.
There was one new page at the end. The front side read:
And on the flip side of the page—first, a symbol, hand-drawn but precise:
Then the words, with such deliberate spacing as to likewise be recreated from an image (and it was if only in his memory):