flightforfreedom | MoM IC Inbox

[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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