Chapter Text
Cassian’s path out of the manufacturing center shouldn’t have taken him anywhere near the shipping bay.
He’d been undercover as an Imperial facilities inspector for two days, gathering intel about the sudden demand for quadanium in the Tapani sector and waiting for the Pathfinder team that would be sent to cover his extraction. He hadn’t particularly liked the second part of the plan: he preferred to manage his own exfils - no moving pieces to consider beyond his own tolerance for risk and, more recently, Kay’s calculations coming through over his comms. But the manufacturing plants on Calipsa had been cracking down on security, and Draven didn’t want to take any chances with Cassian’s cover being blown by a detected data breach. They would need some way to track down any leads he uncovered, and the right combination of code cylinders for the role hadn’t come cheap.
So a team effort it was. Cassian would secure the data, and the Pathfinders would be there to draw fire while Cassian slipped out.
According to the mission timeline, the team should have arrived on planet at 0800 Imperial standard time. When the signal fire from the east wing of the building started, he was supposed to head directly to the extraction point, five klicks away on the other side of a sparsely forested ridge.
But when the chrono on his wrist hit 0930, Cassian didn’t hear signal fire from the east wing. Instead he heard the concussive boom of an explosion, the floor under his feet shuddering as the impact rocked through the rest of the facility.
Cassian paused - putting his hands over his ears so it would look to any observers like he was bracing from the noise - and switched on his discrete comm, straining to pick up any chatter from the team on the ground.
He could hear nothing: no voices, no clicks of someone tapping out the all-clear. Silence, then the vicious swear he let out under his breath, then the first shouts of confusion coming from the corridors around him.
Cassian flexed his fingers against his temples to ground his focus. He shouldn’t be lingering. He should be halfway to the speeder bay by now. The Pathfinders were there to create a diversion, and for all he knew that was exactly what they were doing. Everything might still be going according to plan, plus or minus a few improvisations.
And in any case, there would most likely be nothing he could do for the team even if it weren’t.
“Fuck,” he said again, louder this time, and then he hung a left down the next hallway, heading toward the east wing at a brisk walk.
Three meters down the corridor an alarm blared over the P.A. system, a modulated voice ordering all non-security personnel to evacuate the building. Moments later the hallway around Cassian flooded, a stream of bodies and whirring droids rushing past him, and Cassian put his hand up to his ear again, pretending to listen for orders that would explain why he was moving directly against the current.
Ten meters further he picked up the first smells of the explosion: acrid and coppery, turning the air into a bitter film against his tongue. The corridors were growing clearer of traffic as they grew thicker with smoke, and Cassian risked a pause to reach down into his boot and extract his vibroblade from its sheath.
Intelligence had planned the extraction to coincide with the morning hours, when half the security staff got diverted to escort the chief operating officer from his private residence to his office on site, but there would still be five guards on duty, and Cassian would bet good credits he wasn’t lucky enough for them all to have gotten caught in the blast.
Sure enough, he heard a yell of alarm a moment later, followed by the sound of blaster fire and three quick pulses of plasma lighting up the haze of smoke ahead.
He paused at the edge of the doorway to the shipping bay, ducking his head around the corner before returning to cover and reviewing what he’d seen: one Rebel still on their feet, crouched behind a low stack of crates five meters to Cassian’s right; two security guards on the upper levels moving around to flank; one guard on the ground, left-handed, rifle barrel pitched too far forward on the forearm, peripheral head sweeps shallow at 150 degrees.
Cassian adjusted his grip, counted a beat, and then sprinted into the bay, dropping his shoulders so he came up under the approaching guard’s right side.
He drove his blade between the ribs as he twisted around, hauling the guard’s arm over his shoulder so he could use the man’s back as a shield against the blaster fire from above. The guard jolted with the impact of a bolt, and Cassian took the opportunity to wrench the rifle free from his other hand. He tucked the barrel against his own chest as he dropped to his knees, letting the guard’s body slump over him for one last bit of cover until he could roll sideways, landing on his back beneath the durasteel platform of a loading dock.
Cassian’s interference had given his fellow Rebel an opportunity to jump out from behind the crates and exchange fire with the guard who’d shot at Cassian from above, so Cassian leapt back to his feet and ran along the side of the dock at a low crouch, visualizing the angle of approach and calculating the distance the other guard must have reached before he ducked out and fired two shots up at the second floor - heard the loud thud of a body hitting metal girders, hard.
A second later, another thud - from the ground floor this time - and Cassian cursed as he spun around to catch the final guard with a shot to the chest, not bothering to wait for confirmation of the kill before he sprinted toward the shipping crates where the Rebel had gotten hit.
He knew before he got there that he was too late. The body was still, thrown over a fallen crate at a jarring angle with a blaster hole visible in the upper torso. Cassian stopped to close the man’s eyes before scanning the rest of the shipping bay for any other signs of life.
None greeted him. The bay was silent now, and though he could discern the make-shift uniforms of a small Pathfinder team littered around the floor, no limbs stirred. Many of them appeared to have been caught in the initial explosion, and even if there’d been time to call in a medical team - even if Cassian hadn’t been under twenty minutes from missing the extraction window - he wouldn’t have needed Kay on the line to know how low the odds were that he could save anyone but himself.
Cassian let out a slow breath through his nose, setting a mental clock for three minutes, and then he made his way among the fallen figures, stooping to press his fingers against wrists or necks, finding everywhere the same emptiness he’d expected: no pulse, no pulse, nowhere to even look for a pulse, and then -
He paused, a meter away from the next slumped form, something in his stomach lurching sideways like a ship losing an engine.
He couldn’t move. He wasn’t sure he could breathe. Because there was something about the crooked angle of the fallen body’s hand, the wiry slope of the shoulders, the way the shadows pooled to make a pocket of darkness underneath what was visible of the eyes, the lines of a face Cassian hadn’t seen in years.
“No,” he said aloud, less like a protest than an involuntary exhale: the wind that got knocked out of the lungs when there was no time to prepare for the blow.
It wasn’t possible. It shouldn’t have been possible, and for one wild moment Cassian thought he might bolt for the door. Because if he never turned the body over, he would never have to know it was true. If he didn’t try to shake life back into them and fail, then he could go on imagining the eyes under those lids still filled with restless, watchful sadness - go on picturing them as he’d seen them last: sweeping over a stretch of open water before they turned back toward him, a question forming in the crow’s feet crinkled at their sides.
He could walk away now and keep pretending he would still meet that gaze somewhere else someday. On some world where Cassian had never been before - a place where no trouble had ever followed him.
But Cassian didn’t walk away. He lurched forward: three quick strides, a fall to his knees, and then he was curling a hand to support the back of the man’s neck, rolling the figure toward him as his heart jabbed a series of sharp, relentless upper-cuts against his throat.
“Melshi,” he said, because it was Melshi - he’d known it was Melshi - and the second syllable cracked as he pressed his fingers to the place where a pulse should have been. “Come on, Melshi. Not like this. Come on.”
Please, he didn’t dare say out loud. But he thought it anyway, squeezing his eyes shut as if he could will more sensation under his hands by blocking out his sight. Come on, Melshi. Don’t do this to me. Come on. Come on.
A moment later he felt a flutter, a jump of life against his skin.
“Melshi,” he said again, moving his hand up to cup Melshi’s cheek, stroking a thumb across his jaw. “Melshi. Wake up.”
Melshi’s chest rose, a huff of air brushing over Cassian’s hand, and Cassian felt his own lungs empty in a rush - the relief so sudden he almost had to brace himself against the ground.
“That’s it. That’s better. Come on. Come back to me. Just breathe for me, okay?”
Melshi let out a low, reedy sound, his brows furrowing for a moment before his eyes blinked open. He searched the space in front of him, his gaze unfocused.
“That’s it,” Cassian repeated. “That’s good, Melshi. I’m here. I’ve got you now.”
Melshi’s lips twisted into a grimace of pain, and Cassian frowned, trying to decide which hand to move so he could search for its source, but then Melshi identified it for him:
“Keef,” he said, his voice so taut with hurt that Cassian froze in place, aching as if he’d been kicked in the gut.
“It’s me,” he replied when he could speak. “It’s me, Melshi. I’m here.”
Melshi blinked again, his eyes finding Cassian’s at last and holding them as a deep, wet breath heaved through his lungs.
“Oh,” he said thickly, and then, a moment later: “Am I dead, then?”
“No.” It came out sharper than Cassian had meant it, so he tried to soften the edges by brushing his fingers across Melshi’s cheekbone, sweeping away a smudge of char. “You got caught in a blast - knocked out, but you’re okay. You’re going to be okay now.”
“Mmm,” Melshi hummed, and Cassian wasn’t sure if he’d heard Cassian’s words or not: his eyes were losing focus again, his breathing shallowing out. “Wondered if I’d see you. Before I went. Thought if I saw anything - anything nice, you know - it’d probably have to be you.”
“Melshi,” Cassian said firmly. “You’re not dying. I’m going to get you to medical. You hear me? You’re going to make it. You’re going to be fine. Just stay with me.”
“Glad you came, anyway,” Melshi continued. “Hope it’s a long time before you join me.”
His eyes made one more effort to focus on Cassian’s before they were rolling back in his head, his eyelids fluttering shut.
“Fuck,” Cassian swore, and then he drew in a slow breath and set his shoulders.
Because Melshi was alive. Melshi was alive, and he was here, his skin still warm under Cassian’s fingers, and Cassian was going to keep it that way.
He made himself release his grip on Melshi’s face and neck - lowering Melshi’s head carefully to the ground so he could scan his body for injuries.
There was an angry red line across Melshi’s left temple, just underneath his cap: a blow to the head, maybe from catching debris, since there were lacerations across his left shoulder as well. Moving lower, Cassian found another gash - deeper and more worrying - stretching from his left hip back toward his spine, a sliver of metal visible through the gouge that seemed safer to leave in place.
“You’re going to be okay,” he said out loud, wrapping his hand around one of Melshi’s wrists and allowing himself to wait long enough to feel the tremble of a pulse. “Try to stay passed out for this part.”
And then he hauled Melshi over his shoulder, getting a solid grip around one of his thighs and settling his own weight under the load before he made his way to a nearby haul ship, his steps as quick and gentle as he could manage.
**
It wasn’t until Cassian got back to base that he was able to piece together what had happened. It wasn’t until Melshi was stable - until Cassian had seen him lowered into the bacta tank with his own eyes - that he could muster enough focus to try.
The exfiltration team had gotten an emergency comm just moments before the explosion, Draven explained. The Pathfinders had infiltrated the facility as planned, and the ground unit - to which Melshi had been assigned three days earlier, for his first deployment since being transferred to Yavin IV from a smaller cell - had been setting charges to leave behind in hopes of sabotaging shipping after they’d pulled off planet.
That’s when one of the security guards had walked in for what could only have been an unscheduled break. The last, panicked recording from the comm had caught fragments of what happened next: shots fired, someone yelling to take cover, the sound of a grenade hitting the ground, an explosion of duracrete and metal.
Nine of their own were dead on site. Melshi would be in recovery protocol for at least two weeks for a severe concussion, internal bleeding, a perforated bowel, and a kidney that had needed to be partially regrown. And Cassian couldn’t stop himself from poring over the contents of the slim data stick he’d snuck out, looking for any emerging narrative or tactical hunch that would be worth the high costs they’d paid to obtain it.
“You’re fixating,” Kay had told him, the fourth time Cassian had asked him to project the number of additional starfighters that could be built with a given marginal increase in quadanium production. “The implication that my estimates will have changed over the last four hours is both illogical and insulting.”
And Kay was right. Cassian knew he was right. But still, there had to be something they were missing. So he shut down the screen and paced out of the room, telling himself he’d just stick his head in the med bay on his way to the mess.
Cassian had tried not to spend too much time looking in on Melshi while he was under sedation. Melshi had been delirious during their reunion - for the few moments when he’d been conscious at all - and it felt strange to take too much time learning the new lines and scars and flecks of gray Melshi had gathered during their years apart when Melshi had no opportunity to turn away from the scrutiny or to return it with a gaze of his own.
But he’d been by often enough, apparently, that the medic on duty - a young Twi’lek called Nenobe - looked unsurprised to see him now.
“Captain Andor,” they said, gesturing him forward, “I’m glad you’re here. I was just getting ready to take Private Melshi off sedation. He’ll likely be disoriented at first, and it might help to see a familiar face.”
Cassian made a vague sound of acknowledgement, though he wasn’t sure the familiarity of his face would be likely to clear up Melshi’s confusion about where he was or how they’d both gotten there.
Then again, if Melshi did remember any details about what had happened in the shipping bay, it might help him absorb the shock Cassian had already had time to process if he could see the proof of their paths crossing for himself.
Nenobe moved around the side of Melshi’s bed to adjust the levels of propofol in his IV drip, and Cassian walked forward to perch on the edge of the thin mattress where Melshi lay, letting his eyes rest for a moment on Melshi’s face before he focused on Nenobe’s movements again, watching the display for Melshi’s heart monitor to see the valleys between beats shorten.
“It may take a few minutes for him to wake up,” Nenobe said. “I’ll be nearby, if he needs anything. You know the concussion protocol?”
Cassian nodded, and Nenobe inclined their head.
“I’ll be nearby,” they repeated, and then Cassian was alone with Melshi for the first time since he’d found him bleeding onto the floor of an Imperial manufacturing facility.
He’d thought he might feel uneasy about the close proximity after so long apart, and it was indeed a surprise - not entirely soothing - to realize he could recognize the sound of Melshi’s breathing without reflection.
The first night they’d ever spent in each other’s company, Cassian had listened to that sound: mixed in with the sighs and snores and scuffles of the longer floor, but already particular, somehow, because Cassian could match its cadence to a voice that had called him by name - to a face that had stepped out of the regulated arrangement of the prison to look Cassian straight in the eyes.
It hadn’t lost its distinctness, he found. It still sounded like a signal beacon, transmitting its quiet code: I’m here - I’m ready. I’m here.
Melshi made a soft noise now, and then a louder groan. His eyes pinched shut, shot open, searched frantically around him, skipping over the forms of the room without seeming to take anything in.
“Hey,” Cassian said, scooting closer on the bed so he could grip Melshi’s hand. “It’s okay, Melshi. You’re okay. I’m here.”
Melshi’s hand spasmed in his, his breathing speeding up before he made a visible effort to calm it. His gaze roved over Cassian’s face for a long moment and then trailed down to focus on the Alliance stripes across his vest.
“It’s me,” Cassian told him, hesitating before adding: “It’s Cassian. My name is Cassian.”
Melshi squeezed his hand, shutting his eyes and opening them again, as if to check his vision.
“I know,” he replied after a moment, his voice croaking with disuse, and Cassian frowned.
“You called me Keef,” he pointed out, “when I found you. You sounded -”
He broke off - the note he’d heard in Melshi’s voice feeling unbearably private all of the sudden - and Melshi winced, rubbing the first three fingers of his free hand over the furrow between his brows.
“Must’ve been a wee bit disoriented,” he said. “Might have asked you if I was dead?”
He looked at Cassian for confirmation, and then his lips tugged up at one side: a wry twist that seemed more like an internal memo than an attempt at outward expression.
“I found out about Cassian Andor just after we left Niamos,” he explained. “Saw the bulletins from the ISB hanging up the first place I landed, and when they stayed up at the next place and the next, I hoped that was good news. That you were still free somewhere. But when I heard your voice again, it had been so long… I must have gotten confused.”
He was holding himself very carefully, and Cassian couldn’t tell whether it was the pain coming through the sedation or the topic of conversation, so he resisted the urge to press.
“How the fuck did you find me, anyway?” Melshi continued. “Can’t remember much of anything before you were there.”
Cassian took a breath, looking down at the hand he still had wrapped around Melshi’s - deciding, after a moment, to leave it in place.
“You were on a mission,” he said. “Diversion and sabotage support for an Intelligence agent: that was me. There was an explosion after your team entered the shipping bay. You caught a large piece of shrapnel in your back and took a blow to the head. I found you, and I got you to the extraction point.”
Melshi watched him as he spoke, his eyes searching.
“Just me,” he said finally, not quite a question, and Cassian pressed his jaw shut, biting down on the memory of a salt breeze on his face and the weight of Imperial credits in his bag.
Not enough, he’d said then.
He managed a nod now, and then he looked away - fixing his gaze on the floor and watching the shifting, aqueous pools of light filter through the bacta tanks as he gave Melshi time to count his losses.
“Thank you,” Melshi said finally, and Cassian huffed a laugh, sharp and derisive.
“For what?” he asked. “For helping plan the mission that almost got you killed?”
“For saving my life?” Melshi suggested, his eyebrows rising. “I’m no Intelligence officer, but it seems you had a bigger hand in pulling me out of that mess than you had in putting me in it.”
Cassian shook his head.
“I wasn’t supposed to be in the shipping bay at all.”
Melshi hummed, a small smile forming on his lips.
“I figured,” he replied, and suddenly Cassian could feel every warm bend and point of pressure in the knuckles of Melshi’s hand - the way his own thumb had settled into the crease of Melshi’s palm.
“So,” Melshi continued, “you think you can bust me out of here?” His eyes crinkled around the sides, and then he added, “Cassian,” his voice tracing the contours of the name like a current rolling over stone.
Cassian suppressed a shiver, releasing Melshi’s hand to smooth his own along the surface of his thigh.
“I have a plan,” he confirmed.