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They’re huddled together beneath an outcropping of rock, bare and bloody feet tucked close, arms slung around each other. Keef is resting his cheek on Melshi’s head when he says it. He sighs, and Melshi can feel the other man’s ribs expand under his arm. Whatever happens now, we made it! Melshi extricates himself, only a little, only enough to look in the other man’s dark eyes.
“Cassian?”
The man he knew as Keef looked down. The lines around his eyes were deeper in the shadows cast by the rocks, but his eyes were shining through the dark. He repeated himself. “Andor. Cassian Andor.”
The roar of the sea they had dragged themselves out of hours ago suddenly seems quiet compared to the clamor in Melshi’s brain. It’s not as if aliases are uncommon among beings like them, beings dropped in the margins of the Galaxy’s greater stories. How many of the people you heard about these days, people responsible for all the partisan activity the Empire denies is happening while outlandishly punishing civilians for, how many of those people were just one person under ten names. Ten men like that could make one hundred rebel insurgents that could vanish in the flap of a jacket around an alley corner.
Aliases for men like them were not uncommon, but telling someone your name, your real name, that was a rare gift.
Melshi carefully pressed his forehead against… against Cassian’s. Cassian, who had worked beside him on the Floor. Cassian, who had gotten over the shock of the situation and had seen through the panopticon in a day and immediately set about planning their escape. Cassian, who had smiled from his bunk across to him like they were just at some slumber party, not in a room made to murder them. Cassian, who had in a month’s time injected new hope into a hundred beaten down men, who had gotten Kino to lead nearly 5,000 men to freedom. Cassian… Andor…
Melshi said Cassian’s name out loud then whispered his own like a prayer half remembered from childhood. “Ruescott. Ruescott Melshi.” The wind picked up as if to steal it away, cold and salty, stinging his bare ankles.
Cassian shifted to hold Melshi closer. “Now we know.”
Melshi tucked his feet under Cassian’s thigh, willing the wind to die down. “Now we know.”
. . .
A name is a powerful thing. Clem had said as much as he sat beside the boy they had rescued from certain death. He watched the kid put charcoal to flimsy over and over, a tiny frown growing on his face, working on his Aurebesh, and wondered if they had done the right thing. When the boy woke up in the night crying out in a language no one of Ferrix understood or spoke, Clem wondered. He clenched his hand and twisted his wrist to hear his joints grind together. Too late for that now.
“Here now, what’s this one say?” The boy looked up from his letters and glanced at the data pad Clem held out. He didn’t sound it out loud, not louder than a whisper anyway. When he spoke up the word was fully formed and realized, and in that accent Clem thought was adorable coming out of that baby’s mouth.
“Ge-oh-no-sis.”
“Very good, Geonosis. That’s where the war between the Separatists and the Republic began.”
The boy blinked at the datapad, then up at him. “Are we Separatists, Clem?”
Clem tried not to think about hovertanks rolling unopposed down the main boulevard of Iziz, about black outs and rationing and parents starving so their children could eat, about propaganda flimsy falling from the sky like leaves from a tree. He smiled at the boy he fancied was his son. “No, we’re all the Empire now. Here,” he swiped the page on his pad, and a chain code popped up. A code for a child from Fest that didn’t exist. “What’s this one say, now?”
The boy looked at the cascade of Aurebesh solemnly. “Cassian Jeron Andor.”
. . .
Cassian sat in his bunk in the main temple. The briefing had been… well, it had been brief. The message that had been blasted across the galaxy from the Lothal system yesterday, spoken in the voice of a child, younger than he himself had been when he had been thrust into Mimban, had done its work. Melshi had slipped into the briefing room halfway through the meeting. His eyes were tight with that familiar worry but otherwise calm and solid as the stones around them when he interrupted Draven and told the room that there was a report of a pocket of resistance inside a camp for political dissidents, another prison making parts for the Imperial war machine with forced labor. The Lothal broadcast had done it, had somehow been broadcast over the PA system. Melshi requested the two of them infiltrate to help, and Draven predictably said no. No use in wasting them, await further orders, watch and see what happens, the usual line. Dodonna merely knocked his knuckles on the round table, shaking his head, and started young Bridger’s message again. In his memory, Cassian could hear Jem back on the Floor, shaking his head and clicking his tongue, knocking his knuckles in the same manner as Dodonna. “What to do?” The line of Melshi’s jaw had clenched and his eyes had darted over to Cassian, and there was no mistaking it. He was looking past Draven, looking to him. For orders. Cassian, leaning against a tactical screen, had signaled him the way they had on the Floor, a minute tilt of the chin. Not yet.
Cassian sat on his bunk with his footlocker open before him. He had pulled a small leather bundle from it and had been staring at it for several minutes, lost in thought, memories of bad food and worse company and a boy with bright, bright eyes telling him things he already knew but in a way he had never heard anyone say before. Using proprietary hardware as an analogy for Imperial assimilationism. Putting words to the things Cassian had seen and done and felt in the years before and since in a way Cassian himself never thought he could.
Cassian sat on his bunk in the heart of the greatest of the Massassi temples, holding the last remnant of an angry young man who had given his life for a cause that was the only thing that Cassian had left. He opened the case, and the pad came to life. He listened to the last words of Karis Nemik, listened to his manifesto and followed along with the handwritten notes tucked in the case’s leather pocket, graphite stylus in tight and messy handwriting on old, creased flimsy. Had he traded with the Aldhani for it? Had he carried it with him from wherever he had grown up? Brought it across the Galaxy with him on a mission doomed to never be worth the cost? What were those credits compared to the burning fires within the men Cassian had watched die that day? What could Taramyn and Gorn have brought to Massassi? Their knowledge of the workings of the Imperial Navy could have been invaluable, and Cassian hadn’t the foreknowledge to realize that at the time.
Cassian dragged his thumb over the grooves in the leather pad case, thinking. Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. He had been watching Lothal, but only watched. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they've already enlisted in the cause. It was time to stop watching, stop waiting for a moment that may never come unless they made it happen themselves. He thought of that voice from Lothal. Stand up together. Because that's when we're strongest—as one.
Cassian dragged a shaking hand across his beard, too grown out over these past busy weeks, and choked on a breath as Nemik’s voice faded out. The pad showed several bars of space left in its hard drive. Enough room for a foreword, perhaps. What had Luthen seen in Cassian that those men didn’t have? The Role of Mercenaries in The Galactic Struggle for Freedom. Had Luthen seen his own ruthlessness reflected in Cassian, but not in the others? He thought of Skeen, and thought perhaps not. Perhaps that was why it had gone so sideways. Enough of them cared about the cause, but that hadn’t been enough. Cassian would never know why Luthen had sent him to Aldhani, not really. Luthen had been composed of mostly obfuscation and often outright lies. There was no point wondering, anyway.
Cassian sat on his bunk, stared at the pad in his hands, and thought of the day that someone else would be holding it. Would they wonder at all about the man who wrote it, about the men who inspired it? His thumb hovered over the record button, hesitation staying his hand. He could never publish it himself. It would have to somebody else. It would have to be whoever came next.
“My name is Cassian Andor, and this is The Trail of Political Consciousness by the late Karis Nemik.”
. . .
The Ghost touched down on the surface of the second largest moon of the ice giant that Fulcrum had sent as their rendezvous after… that. Fulcrum, the other Fulcrum, had sent them the coordinates, saying they were too hot to come to their base directly, that they would meet and exchange coordinates in person. Kallus had sat in Zeb’s berth for what felt like untold hours, hands clenched together, knee bouncing, trying to think of anything but what came next. Fulcrum had been exposed; he had compromised the entire Lothal operation. Everyone on this blasted ship had been so understanding about it, even with Bridger oh so helpfully pointing out that Thrawn had probably figured out that Kallus was the mole weeks and weeks ago since he was “so galaxy brained, like so smart, weirdly and suspiciously smart”.
Now he stood in Ghost’s cargo bay, staring at the bay door lowering, finally speculating on his future. Even though he knew from first hand experience that the Rebels were incredibly soft about new people joining their ranks, he didn’t know how they punished failure, how they rewarded those who so thoroughly karked up as he had. The ISB would have had him killed for such a blunder as blowing his cover, or rather they would have left him to the tender mercies of the enemy. He was about to see just how tender those mercies were.
Being Fulcrum meant being only one of a network, a voice among a whole cadre of voices. It had been anonymous for the most part, individual contributions buried under layers and layers of code encryption, physical drops in the back alleys of backwaters, but Kallus had still been ISB, and had fairly unrestricted access to Imperial files. He had a pretty good idea of who was at the top of this pyramid of spies he had found himself in.
A man from Fest, a man who was responsible for any number of incidents that the Empire officially denied ever occurred. The robbery on Aldhani, the Ferrix Affair, the Narkina Uprising, any number of prison breaks and assassinations, thefts and illegal salvages. Even all the way in Lothal, Kallus had heard harsh whispers of a man whose mere existence being acknowledged spelled disaster for the Empire. He was an enemy everyone pretended was a myth, merely a boogeyman. A cautionary tale of what happens when sector chiefs let their ambitions run unchecked.
Kallus had dared not to compile his own file about the man, fearing that if he were ever found out it would be used to root out the entire Fulcrum network, but he remembered the holo of an angry young man, barely more than a child, taken on Mimban, that was the only image on file for a being that the Empire was so afraid of that they denied his entire existence.
His knees nearly buckled under the large hand that settled on his shoulder, startling him out of his conspiracy spiral. “Easy, soldier, we’re not gonna maroon you.” He looked over at the Lasat that he had once again found himself indebted to. “Would be a waste of that big brain of yours, filled with all that Imp intell.”
He rolled his eyes. “Very reassuring, Garazeb, I do so appreciate it.” But he felt… warmer. He had felt so cold for so long, but looking into the green eyes of Zeb, someone who had every reason to hate him, and seeing those eyes filled with warmth, it stirred a fire within him.
That fire was nearly doused when young Bridger joined them in the bay and remarked that Kallus looked like someone who was trying to look at their own forehead, but further annoying banter was cut short when the bay door opened and the ramp lowered. Their rendezvous with Fulcrum was a moon with a landscape not unlike Lothal’s, but the grass was the same bright color as young Bridger’s eyes, vivid violet blades blowing in a gentle breeze under a soft pink sky with the gas giant it orbited hovering above it like a looming ghost. As they came down the ramp, Zeb’s clawed hand falling from his shoulder, slightly grazing down his spine as it fell, Kallus mused that at least if he was going to get a blaster bolt between the eyes, it would be in a beautiful place.
A hundred or so yards away was a battered old U-wing, and a man walking towards them from it. There was an Imperial KX droid walking beside him, but the twist in his gut was stayed by that ridiculous Chopper warbling in excitement and using its little thrusters to fly over to the taller droid, blundering into its long legs. Kallus heard the man laugh and saw him shake his head fondly as he kept walking towards them.
He was… so average. He was of average human height, not much taller than Bridger, who he clapped on the back as they met. He had hair the same color and texture as Jarrus’, and his beard was styled similarly. He stood with the same grace that Syndulla did, easy but coiled, ready to strike, the same flash in their eyes. And in spite of what Kallus had learned about this man, in spite of the cold hard facts he had been rotating in his mind about the being at the pinnacle of Fulcrum for weeks now, Kallus recognized the warmth in his eyes as the same warmth in the eyes of Garazeb Orrelios. He was… just a man.
The man held out a hand for Kallus, mouth turning up on one side, and he grasped his arm.
“Alexsandr Kallus. We finally meet. Cassian Andor.”
. . .
The room they had him in was too warm, like there was a furnace overloading somewhere in this building. It was a modular camp building the Imperial troops had set up as their recruitment center on the far side of Ferrix, away from the scrapper city, away from the brick streets he knew by now as well as he had known the jungle he had known before. This room he was in, this building, was made of plastisteel and durachrome, clinical. Unalive. It didn’t retain heat like Ferrix brick did. It didn’t insulate. It couldn’t regulate. It was stuffy.
The black window in the wall suddenly lit up, and she was there. She had a bruise across her cheek and her lip was split, and her hand against the window was shaking. He leapt up and pressed his own hands against the window. “Maarva, Maarva, what did they do to you, what’s happening, what’s going on?”
Her eyes were watering, but they were hard as steel. Her voice came through the speaker above the window, thin and metallic. “Cassian, I’m fine, we’re all fine.” She hesitated. “They’re taking you to a military camp. You’re to serve the Empire for a time.” He felt a wild panic flare in him, an instinct to run, to dash himself against the bars of the cage he was in. He clawed at the window, like he could break through. “Now, Cassian, Cass, Cass.” His heart was pounding.
Maarva was staring so hard at him, almost unblinking. “I need you to listen, Cassian. Just listen,” She spoke a few words he had taught her of his language, the language of the children of his jungle.
A voice came over the speaker, harsh and loud. “BASIC ONLY.” Cassian pressed his sweaty palms against the window.
Maarva squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. When she opened them, they were hard again. Determined. “Cassian, remember what I taught you, to keep yourself safe.” He knew this game. “Remember who you are.” She meant remember your cover story. “Remember where you’re from.” You are from Fest. “Hold everything we’ve done together in your heart, and you’ll make it home.” Don’t forget to lie about who you are or where you’re from or we both will surely die.
This was something they had done since he was a boy. His parents drilling him on his new identity and all the ways his old one could get them all killed. They had practiced the ways they could warn each other, warn Cassian and remind him of the danger. He nodded, pressing his hands as hard as he could against the transparasteel.
He took a shaky breath. “And Clem?”
Maarva kept her eyes locked with his. “He’s with the stone now.”
He pressed his forehead to the glass and said the words he remembered from the jungle, and again the hated voice on the speaker came. “BASIC ONLY, FINAL WARNING.”
Her bloody lip trembled. “Remember who you are. You are Cassian Andor. You are of Fest, and you are of Ferrix. You belong here, no matter what they tell you.”
“I’ll remember, Maarva, I swear.”
She smiled slightly. “I know you will, Cassian.”
. . .
One entire side of his body felt like it was crumbling, his knees were weak and clicked painfully with every step, his heart was pounding a rhythm to match the pounding of his head, but in spite of all that, when he looked into Jyn’s green eyes, Cassian felt at peace, a feeling of serenity like he hadn’t felt since before he was spirited away from his homeworld and into the black reaches of space. She looked… beautiful. Her lips were wind chapped, her face was drawn and pale and bruised, her brow was creased like she was thinking far too hard about this, staring fiercely up at him like she was trying to memorize his face, for all the good it would do her. He stared right back into those bright eyes and saw everyone he had loved and left behind, saw Brasso in the green and Bix in the bruise and Maarva in the concern and B2 in the confusion. Like she was asking herself “why this?” over and over in her mind, childishly saying it wasn’t fair, insisting that he just come home with her, where it was safe.
The light in the lift faded in and out as they descended, casting shadows on her face. But her eyes almost seemed to glow as she gazed up at him. He wondered who she saw in his face, which ghosts were joining her in these last moments.
He stopped. He leaned closer. She ran her small fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck. He wanted to take his fill of her, and he wanted her to know him in turn. It was too late. It was too late. He only had time for one thing, one revelation. Something he hadn’t told anyone since he was very small.
“My name, my real name, it’s Kassa.”
“Kassa.”
“Jyn.”
“Kassa.”
On the beach, he told her what he had wanted to hear years ago, on another beach drenched in the sunset, before he set out on this path. Or perhaps he had always been on his way here. Perhaps there were no other roads. A straight line in paint down from his lower lip to the base of his chin. A long road with no turns, no forks, no branches. Leading to this beach.
Where she holds him.
And whispers his truest name in his ear.
As the horizon rushes towards them, he thinks he can hear the cry of a bird from a jungle he once knew, long ago. It almost sounds like a name.