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1. Cassian’s earliest memory is of hunger gnawing at his belly and rocks biting at his fingers. He’s perched on top of a wall in the slums, watching the Republic troopers march into Fest’s capitol city and screaming at them to just go away already, no one wants you here.
His mother’s been dead for three weeks, her Haavi vanished in a whisp of wind, and he hasn’t seen his father in even longer. Can barely remember their faces, the sound of their voices intertwined as they sang an old lullaby for him. Sometimes—most of the time—Cassian can hardly breathe with how badly he misses them, how much he hates the Republic troopers for taking his family away from him.
But he’s not alone; there’s a long line of kids to either side of him. Mostly war orphans, or the children of families too poor to keep them out of the fighting. Their dæmons are all small, cautious things—dull-scaled lizards quivering in their humans’ pockets, tiny flickering birds perched in hollows of bone and muscle, or long-limbed clumsy puppies huddled behind too-skinny legs—but not his Roshell.
Even in Cassian’s memories, Roshell is brave, and bright, and boundless.
One minute she is a half-grown hyenax kit, lending her voice to his as they hurl abuse down at the troopers below. Then Cassian blinks and she’s a tiny bird soaring in circles around his head, wings a vibrant green just like their father’s Astaria, screaming defiantly back at the world. Another moment later, and Roshell has flickered and forced her way into a shape that looks alarmingly like a krayt dragon, only smaller, opening her gleaming maw like she intends to swallow a trooper whole.
Cassian throws a rock at the passing squadron with as much force as he can muster. He knows nothing about the war, only that the King has called on every last person to defend their home from these white-suited monsters.
He and Roshell are in agreement on that, at least—Fest is their home, and they’re willing to fight, so the Republic will have to pry the rocks from Cassian’s bleeding fingers.
In the end, it isn’t enough.
2. “Let them pass in peace,” a voice declares.
Cassian, face still stinging from Kaytoo’s improvised slap, turns in the direction of the voice while keeping a protective eye on Jyn and Kaytoo flanking him to either side. Roshell brushes against the backs of his ankles reassuringly, and for just a moment Cassian imagines he can feel the warmth of her fur. It’s impossible to get a read on any of the Stormtroopers, identical to the last in their gleaming white shells, not without dæmons trailing behind them.
That had been the first clue that these Stormtroopers were different from the clone troopers of the Republic, Cassian thinks. He had hated the clones, hated what they did to Fest and other Separatist planets, but he had never looked at them and felt an indescribable sense of wrong, like he does now.
“Halt!” the Stormtrooper captain commands, leveling his blaster at the Jedha native who had spoken.
“I fear nothing, for all is as the Force wills it,” the man says serenely, hands clasped at the top of his elegant staff. He’s wearing black and red robes—Temple Guardian robes—and his eyes stare sightlessly forward. It’s the Guardian he caught Jyn talking to earlier, he realizes. The dæmon prowling at his side is enormous—her shoulders come up to the man’s rib cage, a four-legged feline with thick black stripes in her russet fur—and she makes a quiet noise of agreement as she settles on her haunches behind him.
Cassian has met people with tiger dæmons before. They are ferocious, fearless, formidable. None of them know how to back down from a fight, not even a fight they have no hope of winning. Cassian has seen Imperial dæmons, snarling blackstalkers and slobbering hyenaxes, cowering with terror at the feet of a tiger with something to protect.
Every instinct Cassian has tells him that this man, with his pale sightless eyes and his patient dæmon, is dangerous.
He is proven right when the man knocks out an entire squad of Stormtroopers by himself.
The Guardian takes out a couple troopers from the ensuing squad of reinforcements, too. But most of them get gunned down by a hailstorm of heavy blaster fire, spouting out of the alley behind them. Cassian ducks on instinct, scooping his Roshell up with one hand and glancing over to check on Kaytoo. There’s a shout of dismay from Jyn next to them, nearly inaudible over the scream of the blasters, and when Cassian looks she’s diving after her little dragon dæmon.
The last Stormtrooper hits the ground, and the air grows still.
“You almost shot me!” the blind man says petulantly, tapping his staff forcefully into the ground. His dæmon butts the side of her head against his stomach, making a noise somewhere between a growl and a purr.
“You’re welcome,” their mysterious rescuer grumbles back. He moves into view, a mountain of a man whose face is creased with dignity and loss. He’s wearing thick red armor—assassin’s armor, Cassian’s run into a similar style before—and has a heavy repeater cannon strapped to his back. The dæmon that slinks irritably along at his side has white fur, with faint gray stripes that are barely visible in the Jedha midday sun.
Cassian’s jaw drops. Another one? He thinks, and Roshell sinks her sharp little teeth into his ankle.
Don’t be rude, she hisses at him.
“I didn’t know there were Jedi here,” Jyn says. Her winged lizard dæmon is huddled in her arms—Cassian still doesn’t know his name, and if Roshell knows what it is she refuses to tell him—but the look on her face is alight with hope.
The mercenary—assassin—whatever he is, he snorts and checks the barrel of his cannon, unloads a final shot into a still-twitching Stormtrooper’s helmeted head. “There are no Jedi anymore. Only dreamers like this fool,” he grumbles, waving a hand at the Guardian.
The gravel in his voice, paired with his irritable scowl, tells Cassian that he is annoyed with the Guardian. But Cassian is the Alliance’s best spy for a reason; he watches their dæmons trot to meet each other in the middle, watches the white tiger obviously check the other over for harm before biting her gently on the ear in rebuke. The russet tiger swishes her tail impatiently, but she doesn’t move until the white one is satisfied.
“The Force protected me,” the Guardian says.
The assassin glares at him. “I protected you.”
They have to be partners, Cassian decides. Only time and trust build that sort of rapport. But what kind of partners, he can’t decide. Is it just business? Or are they lovers too?
Roshell bites him again, and this time Cassian can’t hold back the hiss of pain. What? he snaps.
She refuses to answer him, instead gives an annoyed little bark and stalks to the end of their range, unafraid of standing in the open in the middle of what was, just a few minutes ago, a battle zone.
3. The last time Cassian sees his home planet, Fest is burning.
He presses his nose to the rear viewport of a tiny Corellian shuttle, Roshell cradled in his arms so she can peer out with him, and watches the crumbling skyline of the capitol. Large swathes of the surrounding fields and forests are crackling with flames, pockmarked and bleeding from the concentrated Imperial laser blasts.
Apparently it hadn’t been enough to crush Fest in the Clone Wars, Cassian thinks bitterly, because the Imperial fleet has returned when they’ve only just started to recover. There had been no warning, no negotiation that he knows of—just green fire thundering down from the sky, carving swathes of destruction across the entire planet.
Footsteps clank loudly on the floor planks behind him.
Roshell leaps out of his arms as Cassian topples against the wall, startled. He’d like to keep watching Fest get smaller and smaller in the viewport, swallowed up by the endless black, but a lifetime on the streets has taught him to keep unknown variables in his line of sight if at all possible.
And there aren’t many more unknown variables than the Togruta that’d rescued him in the first place.
“Torvo says five minutes until hyperspace,” Fulcrum says. “But we gotta get past all those Star Destroyers. You ever worked an artillery gun?”
Cassian hasn’t even been on a ship before. But either you make yourself useful or you die, and Cassian’s fought too hard for this to be his end.
He nods.
Fulcrum raises her brow ridges in surprise—but then she glances down at Roshell, pacing in circles at Cassian’s feet with all her fur standing on end, and a smirk curls across her face. “A word of advice?” she says offhandedly. It isn’t a question. “Teach your dæmon how to lie. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got the best sabacc face in the Outer Rim—your dæmon’ll give you away every single time.”
Cassian can feel the heat gathering across both his cheeks as he scoops Roshell back into his arms. His eyes fall on Fulcrum’s dæmon, a gold brown feline big enough to ride, who blinks back at Cassian balefully. There’s no aggression in his stance, no hint of the adrenaline that must be coursing through both of them at the narrow escape, nothing to indicate that the striped cat isn’t about to go lie down for a nap.
Roshell licks at his chin. Don’t be rude.
What?
Stop staring, she says, squirming in Cassian’s arms now that she’s got his attention, itching to have her paws back on the grating. It’s impolite, and you know better. These people saved us.
Yeah, but why? What are they going to demand from us as payment? Cassian asks suspiciously.
“Kid,” Fulcrum says. She’s bouncing lightly on the balls of her feet, her lekku swaying with the motion, but there’s no snap of impatience in her voice. “Star Destroyers, remember?”
”Mierda,” Cassian spits. He follows Fulcrum down to the gunmounts, lets her get him settled in one of the artillery chairs and pays attention as she points out all the buttons and levers he needs to use.
Right before she steps away to get into her own chair, Fulcrum laughs gently and ruffles his hair. Her tiger dæmon gives a great rumbling laugh at the look of disgust on Cassian’s face.
“Help us get through this, kid, and Syrras and I will teach you how to lie properly on the flight to Dantooine. After that, you can do whatever you want. Smart kid like you, I’m sure you’ve got something lined up—but there’s always a place for you with the rebels.”
Roshell hisses and plants herself firmly in Cassian’s lap, nudging him until he focuses on the toggles in his hands and the Star Destroyer looming in the viewport window. He shoots frantically—it takes him a couple tries to figure out the toggles, but desperation is a great motivator—and all the while, Fulcrum’s words are turning over and over in his mind.
A place for us? he thinks incredulously. There hasn’t been a place for them since the Republic came to Fest and Cassian’s parents died. He doesn’t know what a place that he hasn’t had to carve out with bleeding hands would look like, but it sounds nice. It sounds like something he wants.
4. When they are nine, short and skinny and starving, Roshell decides to try out as many forms as she can think of. They steal a couple holodisks from the public library on Fest, because she’s already tested all the animals native to their planet and none of them had felt quite right.
It nearly costs them everything, those holodisks, and in the end Roshell doesn’t like any of the animals contained within them.
I won’t steal more of them for you, Cassian says one night, huddled in the scant shelter provided by a doorframe. Roshell is tucked inside his fraying coat, curled up close against his belly where she’ll keep them both the warmest.
She nips at his fingers, but doesn’t argue.
Roshell knows as well as Cassian does that it’s hard enough stealing what they need to survive.
The Republic—Empire, now, he guesses, but what difference does a name make when it treats his people the same—had pulled their soldiers out of Fest a year ago. That seems like enough time for a planet to recover, but somehow Fest is struggling even more. Their fields are barren, the cities crumbling and pockmarked from blaster fire, and everywhere Cassian looks is overrun with starving orphans.
When Fest’s armies had been depleted, when all their young men and women were dead, the government was desperate enough to make use of the hundreds of orphans swarming around. The King had offered rations to anyone who wanted to fight, double for the kids who undertook secret raids and spying missions on the Imperial troopers.
To Cassian, who was starving and desperate and angry down to his bones, that sounded like a fair trade.
Now, though, a year out from the fighting, the King has no more use for child soldiers and war orphans. He would rather pretend that his cities aren’t overrun with starving children, pretend that all of them died during the occupation, and that the thieves plaguing Fest’s markets aren’t a problem of his own making.
Competition on the streets is fierce. Survival is a struggle every minute of every single day, and the only one Cassian trusts to watch his back is Roshell. He had trusted a couple other children, once, a year younger than him and two inches smaller, and woken up the next day robbed of everything except the threadbare clothes he was wearing.
He swore he wouldn’t make the same mistake again.
They take to lurking around the meager spaceport, watching the ships come in and debating where they would go, if they were brave enough to stow away on one. Roshell makes up stories, fantastic and lurid and more ridiculous by the day, about the crews that pilot each shuttle.
One of the freighter pilots has a fox dæmon, compact and sleek and elegant trotting along at his heels. Cassian doesn’t take any notice at first, but Roshell falls abruptly silent in the middle of a sentence and watches the other dæmon with painful intensity. She quivers, tiny ears perked forward, and whines quietly.
They’ve read about foxes before, but the holodisks they stole didn’t have any pictures for Roshell to practice with. This is better than a picture, though—Roshell focuses intently for a minute, and then there’s a half-grown black fox standing next to him.
She hardly ever shifts out of fox form, after that. And six months later, Cassian wakes up feeling more grounded than ever before. Roshell licks his chin and murmurs, I don’t think I’m going to change again.
5. “I’m sorry, what?” Cassian says. To his own ears, his voice is dangerously frigid. His injured shoulder throbs sharply, but he’d been ordered to debrief the second his ship touched down on the landing pad and kriff everything if he’ll show a hint of weakness to his commanding officers.
Maybe those bounty hunters got in another lucky shot, though, because Cassian can’t believe what he’s hearing.
Roshell, perched primly on top of the briefing table, flicks her ears in Cassian’s direction. She never looks away from Mon Mothma’s Jahi, but Cassian can feel the focus of her attention like the warmth of his own personal sun. They can’t be serious, she says in the lowest of whispers. The Senator wouldn’t ask that of us. You’re jumping to conclusions.
How am I jumping to conclusions? Cassian snaps back, but the Senator leans forward before he can say anything else.
“Lieutenant Andor,” she says. Her voice rolls around the room, dignified restraint thrumming in every word. “This is the fifth mission where you’ve nearly gotten captured or died in a year. I was willing to explain it away as a bad coincidence, but this last incident proves that you need someone to watch your back.”
“We’re saying you need a partner, Andor. Not that we’re taking you out of the field,” Commander Draven says. He stands at Mothma’s shoulder, his musk hound dæmon curled up neatly at his feet. Draven has been Cassian’s handler since he joined the main Intelligence cell on Dantooine, has guided him through countless missions and often acted as the voice of reason in Cassian’s ear when he wanted to pursue a lead further.
Of course, Draven’s also the reason Cassian knows what it feels like to slide a knife between a man’s ribs, but Cassian doesn’t like to think about that.
The Senator smiles at him. “You’re one of the best intelligence officers we have, Cassian, and our survival depends on the information you bring in. We can’t risk losing you. Choose whoever you want, but from now on no more solo missions.”
Anger thrums up and down his spine. Cassian clenches his fists at his sides, hoping the table is high enough to hide them from Mothma’s view. “Do I have to make a decision right now?”
Force, I hope not, Roshell growls. Her tail flicks irritably from side to side, but other than that she is like stone. Everyone else here just slows us down. Who would you even pick?
“We don’t have another assignment lined up for you yet, so take as much time as you need,” Mothma says, waving a magnanimous hand.
Unwilling to wait for a proper dismissal, Cassian turns on his heel and strides out of the briefing room as quickly as he can without breaking into an outright run. Roshell hisses at him when he moves faster than she can keep up with; the bond between them stretches until it borders on painful and Cassian has to stop in the middle of a hallway, chest heaving.
She swipes at his leg with needle-sharp claws, expertly aimed to avoid catching the top of Cassian’s boot. Nerf, she says, fondness coating her voice even though her spine is tense and bristling with agitation.
“This isn’t what we meant, Lieutenant,” Commander Draven growls two weeks later.
Cassian crosses his arms. “It’s perfectly safe—I did the reprogramming personally. And what else were we going to do with a decommissioned Imperial security droid?”
“There was an entire team of slicers assigned to accessing that droid’s datafiles without turning it back on again,” Draven snaps. “We’ve been waiting for that intel for months. And now you want me to let you take it into the field?”
Behind Cassian, K2-SO shifts its weight with a quiet whirr. It has been docile, if not quite polite, ever since Cassian completed the reprogramming two days ago, reinforcing all of Cassian’s hopes for taking it into the field with him.
There isn’t another agent he trusts enough to go on missions with, but a droid? A droid that’s been specifically programmed to watch Cassian’s back? He’ll bring the droid along if it gets Draven off his back, and he can think of any number of missions where an undercover Imperial droid could come in handy.
“Statistics indicate that there is an 83% chance of my being useful to Cassian on a mission,” K2-SO says.
Draven raises an incredulous eyebrow at Cassian, who can only shrug.
“The KX-series droids are multi-functional. This one, it seems, was designed for data analysis and extrapolation.”
“Even more reason I shouldn’t let it anywhere near an active mission,” Draven says.
Cassian crosses his arms over his chest. Roshell’s warm weight presses against his ankles, reassuring him without words. “Sir, you said I could have any mission partner I wanted. I’ve made my choice.” He waves a hand behind him at K2-SO.
Draven glares at him for a breathless moment. But he’s clearly turning the idea over in his head, weighing the advantages and the risks, and eventually he gives a reluctant nod. “Fine,” he says, biting the word off angrily. “Fine. But you’ll turn it over to Intelligence before you go anywhere, let them extract all the intel they need. And I want one of the slicers to go over the reprogramming job you did, make sure you didn’t miss anything.”
It’s more reasonable an order than anything Cassian expected to get, so he salutes sharply and turns on his heel. K2-SO follows Cassian without a word, and once they’re in the hallway outside the briefing room Roshell yips excitedly.
I can’t believe that worked!
Cassian favors her with an indulgent smile, leans down and scoops her into his arms. “It was a good idea you had,” he murmurs to her, and Roshell licks his nose.
“Yes, yes, hurrah,” K2-SO says dryly from behind them. “Does this mean I get a hug next?”
6. Kaytoo treads out of the cockpit after they get safely into hyperspace, unwilling to deal with Cassian’s bad mood any longer. Roshell slithered into the crawlspace under their stolen ship’s console half an hour ago, and now all that’s visible of her are her amber eyes, balefully staring at him.
Cassian ignores her. He doesn’t have to explain himself to anyone, least of all Jyn Erso, and orders are orders. He hasn’t climbed the ranks of Rebel Intelligence by disobeying them, no matter how much he might’ve disagreed in the past.
After a while, the cockpit door whooshes open again. Cassian turns, a belligerent shout for Kaytoo to just go away already on his tongue, when he realizes that it’s not his partner standing there.
It’s Bodhi.
The pilot still looks as fragile as he had back on Jedha, the first time Cassian’d seen him with his head in trembling hands, but there’s also anger in his face. Steel in his spine, maybe, though Cassian has no idea what would’ve put it there. Bodhi’s raven dæmon is perched on his shoulder, her wings dark as ink stains and an intelligent gleam in her eyes.
“Are you here to yell at me too?” Cassian asks. He can feel his shoulders drooping, all the fight draining out of him as quickly as it’d come. He’s tired of fighting for the day. He just wants to be left alone with his guilt.
“Oh—uh, no,” Bodhi says, stuttering. “We thought. That is, Saani thought you might be hungry. And, well. Here.” He shoves a medical kit at Cassian. The food he’d brought isn’t much, just a couple standard ration packs, but Cassian is absurdly touched by the thought all the same.
He accepts both offerings with suddenly nerveless fingers. “Thank you,” Cassian says quietly.
Saani rasps something to Bodhi, too quiet for Cassian to hear, and alights from Bodhi’s shoulder with a gentle rustle of her wings. The cockpit is cramped, barely enough room for two pilots, but Saani makes a quick loop around their heads and then perches on the unoccupied pilot’s chair.
“Jyn was wrong, to say that to you,” Bodhi says. “You’re not a Stormtrooper.”
Cassian takes a deep breath. And another, biting down on the vicious words that swell up inside of him. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he says curtly. He’s not angry at Bodhi, and he doesn’t want to say anything he’ll regret later.
Bodhi nods, like he understands. “I just wanted to apologize. You were trying to do the right thing, for the galaxy.”
“Wrong thing, just for the right reasons,” Cassian says. “It was still the wrong thing.”
“I know a little something about that,” Bodhi says, humming a little like he’s considering the facts again, and slips into the seat next to Cassian.
The presumption irritates him, grates along his still-raw nerves and sets them alight. “You don’t know anything about me,” he snaps, biting off each word so the sharp edges catch in his mouth and bleed.
Bodhi blinks at him. Shocked, Cassian thinks, and then the pilot’s shoulders curl forward and his hands meet in his lap.
Silence falls between them, stilted and uncomfortable.
Cassian stares out the windshield, watches the streaks of hyperspace until the colors blur onto the inside of his eyelids. Until the ropes strangling his heart and lungs ease, just enough for Cassian to take a deep breath and step away from his anger.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbles. “You’re not the one I’m angry at.”
Bodhi nods. There’s a distant look in his eye when he finally swings back around to meet Cassian’s gaze. “I’m not mad at you either. That’s why I came up here in the first place.”
“Wrong thing for the right reasons, huh?”
“You could say that I have some experience with the matter, yes,” Bodhi jokes.
When Cassian looks over at him, he sees that Roshell has slithered out of her cubbyhole and is perched on the flight console in front of Bodhi’s chair. Saani is next to her, talons wrapped around one of the least critical flight levers, feathers rustling quietly as she folds her wings in. Roshell mutters something to the raven dæmon, ears pitched forward with curiosity, and rubs her nose against Saani’s breast.
Looking at them both framed together by the glow of hyperspace, Cassian’s startled to realize that the color of Saani’s feathers matches the ink dark of Roshell’s fur perfectly.