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[Damn. It wasn't that he was reluctant to give the information - well, in a way, he was - so much as that he knew that giving it would only increase Hux's power over the others from his galaxy rather than lessen it. Confirm the worst. Great. So it was a while (and a drink later) before he replied, doing it over video rather than text, because he tried to write it down succinctly and it felt too morbid.]

Yeah. I'll answer what I can. [He is looking grimmer than Cassian has likely ever seen him.]

Short story is that 34 ABY, the First Order opened hostilities against the New Republic by firing its super weapon Starkiller upon the seat of the New Republic government in the Hosnian system. One shot, five planets destroyed instantly. The Republic fleet was also destroyed. The Resistance struck a counter blow and destroyed the Starkiller, but not until after billions of people died, all because the Republic wouldn't believe us that the First Order was an actual threat.

[It was a while (and destroying some things, then binding his injured hands) later before he replied back.

He sticks to text because he can't speak and doesn't want anyone to look at his face.]

he exaggerated less than id hoped
he also left things out
the resistance
the counter blow

[not just entire planets
can destroy entire systems

we got them
but not until after
death star still got alderaan
starkiller got

it was for nothing

…

Decades—a lifetime for some—of 'New Republic' is not nothing
nor is the ideal of it confined to any planet—even any group of planets:
it's about sentience, beings choosing, their wants their needs
if it was really the better way
it was
then it would keep coming back too

but the escalation

should we just have let them

is this the result of challenging

would they have done it anyway

how
why

Cassian doesn't want to go kill Hux now.
He's not thinking about Hux much. Not as an individual, anyway. Only as that type. Who just kept coming back, and coming back, and coming back… era after era, war after war…

They were the minority of beings—

destruction is so much faster and easier than creation or preservation
simple math decreed that in order for everything not to be already gone, there must be more creators/preservers than destroyers
considerably more

—but how did they get such disproportionate power

because it's easier and they don't care

it's easier and that's why there must be more of us

even if they keep coming back

even if

…Cassian struggles a moment to switch to audio or video. Feels like Poe deserves mutuality, a voice at least to answer his voice—he did as Cassian asked though it was obviously excruciating…

…he can't. I'm sorry. He can't.

More text:]

hux took credit
does that mean

[…but the next is not 'should we fear him', 'should we take vengeance' or 'punish' or… anything to do with Hux, ultimately.

Except that this time, yes, he wants Hux not to be lying. Wants him to be responsible. Because that would mean—]

it was original design
not galens legacy

?

does jyn know

Edited 2017-09-17 09:31 (UTC)

[He regrets giving details as the moments stretch. He pours himself another drink. His hands are still steady, somehow, but he's going to have nightmares tonight. (As if he doesn't have them every night.) He knows he should be trying to keep up his usual demeanour, but he can't. Not about this.]

It was nothing like the Death Star. Starkiller was a modified planet that drained stars in order to fuel its weapon. The Death Star was meant to be a threat as much as a weapon. Starkiller was nothing but destruction.

I didn't tell her.

[For all the massively outnumbering beings whom that doesn't help a bit—versus the how many of them who will still know (four) or care (three)—Cassian won't even think in terms of gratitude. It's such a small mercy. If he believed in anything like afterlives or karma… if the Force worked in such ways… then at least the burden of that would be on a soul other than Galen's. For Galen's and Jyn's sakes. Not for the sake of punishing the one who actually… when a soul like Hux's that took pride and pleasure… (untranscribable thoughts)

He appreciates the specificity of answer: Poe didn't tell Jyn, which is not to say she may not know from elsewhere. Though Cassian suspects she would have told him, in turn. …He's going to have to tell her after all. Will not keep secrets from her even if he could. (Should?)

…A curse of mindsharing, this. He'd tracked this down, insisted on knowing. She hadn't asked for it. But he won't be able to keep it from her. She wouldn't want him to.

Perhaps someone will come from as far in their future to them as they had been to Revan. Where none of this would be half remembered. Cycles would have repeated so many times and hopefully progressive overall evolution would not be outstripped by such acts of cataclysmic ego, by individuals who wanted to be more important than that whole, somehow. Perhaps everything would be dust by then. Or something entirely separate would have taken their place. At least, for their own time, the lives around them…

…No, there was no rationalizing this.

Right now, there was only one another.

Should…? no. Because Jyn would probably feel the same way Cassian does, in what he's about to say to Poe… and finally gets himself to switch to video doing it.

Looking even older, still, than he had ten minutes ago. Premature canyons carved onto his face.

(In purely physical age, how long their atoms have been assembled into these forms, rates of cell decay… Cassian is six years younger than Poe. No one would guess.)

He keeps his freshly battered and bandaged hands out of frame.]

Thank you. I needed to know. When the confirmation exists, one can only wish to get it from a friend.

[Small mercies.

He feels belatedly guilty for thinking only of Jyn when—]

And Bodhi?

[Poe shook his head slowly.]

He knows the gist, I think, but I didn't give him the details. Not sure they would do any good.

They aren't really important. Not for you guys. I would say buying thirty years of piece is good enough. Our war is my burden, not yours.

[a moment of… strickenness, maybe

Then… Cassian actually smiles.

Quietly,]

If we were capable of thinking that—not feeling everything in the universe as our own burden—would we have lived these lives at all?

[…Jyn hadn't thought that way. Kay hadn't thought that way. Other things had driven them. It makes Cassian love them all the more fiercely. Again: programming versus choice. He would never have been able to walk away because he'd been incapable, pathologically—molecularly, of doing anything else. They could have and didn't.

Bodhi did also seem to think that way. Not as abstractly as Cassian, but as intensely. Cassian loved him fiercely for that too.

And Poe, now. It's in Cassian's smile. As if you hadn't been before: welcome to the family.]

[It pulls a rueful smile out of him, too, despite himself.]

... No. Probably not. [He lets out a sigh and wets his lips.]

I just - didn't want to cause grief where there was no point. Whatever this place is, for whatever reason we ended up here, it's not that War anymore. Even if I really wish I could just deal with Hux here and end it.

Relaying it is not causing it. Right?

[Because he knows Poe already knows that. He doesn't need to know Poe better to already know: this man would never shoot the messenger. We can know for everyone except ourselves.

Cassian's mouth tightened: what on someone else might be a rueful smile.]

I know. The Timeline Project… my idea was to make that point. Leave the war where it applied.

But he… people like him…

[Ugh. Start from opposite:]

…For us… [Presumptuous as hell but, again, doesn't think it's a leap and doesn't think Poe would mind even if it were] …it's about trying to fix something that's actually happening.

For them…

[tries to remember that Varadan saying. Translates to Basic:]

"A fire-eater must eat fire, even if he must light it himself."^[*]

[^[*]OOC: Isaac Asimov = ancient space wisdom, yeah?]

No. But it doesn't feel that great, either. [He gives a mirroring rueful smile in return.]

[The smile grows a little more fond at the saying. He recognises it - his grandfather used to say it.]

Little more literally then I think Grandpa ever meant it, but yeah.

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