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“Keep going, keep going!” Cassian shouts, even as blaster bolts skim past his face, sizzling the air.
He’s exposed, hanging from the archives, a stationary target for the Imperial officer on the deck above them. Cassian has some cover—not enough—but it’s enough to keep firing at that white uniform and twisted face without being immediately killed.
He already took down the two Death Troopers flanking the Imperial officer—Director Orson Krennic, if his intel is good—but the Director is proving far more difficult to pin down.
Cassian could climb to the left and allow the data files to take the hits for him, but then the Imp would start looking for a different angle and he can’t allow that. Not with Jyn getting closer to the top of the tower with every passing second of borrowed time.
Someone has to make it, and Cassian made his peace a long time ago with the fact that one day, that would not be him.
So he shouts, and he holds his position, and he keeps Krennic’s eyes and blaster focused on him. He exchanges a flurry of fire until a shot catches him in the shoulder and wrenches the archive wall from his grip.
“Cassian!”
Cassian hardly hears Jyn’s cry over the clanging pain of his back colliding with a metal beam. The next beam down slams into his chest, stealing his breath, and then he’s crashing onto a metal grating on his bad arm and everything goes black.
It’s the pain that pulls him back into consciousness.
The burn and ache of his shoulder, the way he can’t quite seem to pull in a proper breath. Metal and blinking lights swim in front of him, a hazy blur. A klaxon is going off in the distance somewhere, and the smell of smoke mingles with the taste of metal at the back of his throat.
He shifts his weight to get his injured arm out from under him, and grunts when it sends shooting pains down every limb. He collapses back to the floor, arm on fire, but at least not trapped beneath him anymore.
Tears sting his eyes and he chokes on a laugh, pressing forehead to cool metal with a lopsided smile.
Not dead yet.
His ribs are bruised at best and fractured at worst. His arm is definitely broken, and he can still smell his own burnt flesh from the blaster bolt. But he’s been shot before, and he’s been broken before, so the only new thing about this is the exact combination of injuries. And that the future of the rebellion and billions around the galaxy depend on him getting up and moving.
Better get to work then, Kassa.
Sometimes he likes to imagine what his sister’s voice would sound like if he ever found her. If she was still alive.
“I’m coming,” he rasps, and gathers himself for the pain he is about to be in. Teeth gritting almost to cracking and breath puffing too sharp and too short, he drags his body to standing, inch by inch. Then he blinks.
By some complete and utter miracle, his blaster has fallen with him onto the platform instead of plummeting to the depths of the archive room.
Chirrut would probably have something to say about the will of the Force and knowing he would need it. But right now, Cassian is too tired and too concussed to care. If it was a mere chance occurrence, he would take all the chances he could get. If it was an ill-defined cosmic entity lending him a hand, who was he to refuse?
Retrieving his blaster from its precarious position near the edge of the platform, Cassian returns it to his hip holster. Then he shuffles over to the smoking wall of data files, arm cradled against his side, and looks up.
The way up through the ceiling of the archive room consists of a circular metal aperture slicing closed every five seconds like a particularly hungry rathtar. Cassian gnaws on his lip, considering. If that was the only obstacle, he could probably do it. It would be messy, but he could make himself do it. However, climbing past this room is not their final objective, and to be of any use to Jyn and the completion of their mission, he is going to need all of his limbs.
Maybe if he can climb his way to the level above, he can find a turbolift or staircase to make it the rest of the way to the satellite dish. To Jyn, if she made it that far. To her body and the file, if not, to finish the mission.
“I’m sure she made it,” he mumbles to himself. His coming is just a backup, an extra precaution.
Except nothing is sure in a fight, let alone a war. He shakes his head, and ignores the spots that dance across his vision. No matter how Jyn might be faring, what he needs to do right now is…
Climb, K-2SO’s voice scratches in his memory, uncommon desperation coloring the synthetic tone. Climb! You can still send the plans to the fleet… you can broadcast from the tower…Goodbye.
Cassian’s chest clenches painfully. There is never time enough to mourn the dead. One would think Cassian would be used to it by now, but…
He steps up to the wall, inhales, and tries to find a position he can use to climb mainly with his right arm.
It’s slow going, and painful. But even broken arms can carry him where he needs to go, if he wants it badly enough.
He climbs.
And as his arm shakes and his fingers grow stiff and sore and his foot slips and sparks shower across his back and burn holes in his shirt, he is reminded of another time and another place.
He is reminded of the most beautiful celestial event he ever witnessed, backdropped by explosions and guttural screams.
Climb! Karis Nemik had cried with a voice not his own. Strangled and frenzied with urgency and whatever drug Vel had pumped the kid full of to keep him conscious. Their navigator out through the Eye of Aldhani.
Like K-2SO, living just long enough to tell them where they needed to go, for the sake of the Rebellion.
Living just long enough to make a difference.
Living just long enough to get them one step further.
For that is all they have ever done: tackling the Empire one step, one mission, one sacrifice at a time. But enough steps, enough sacrifices, and it will bring them to the end of it all.
One single thing will break the siege. Remember this.
Try.
“I’m trying, kid,” Cassian grits out, limbs trembling and sweat rolling down an aching, bruised back. He pants, and claws, and levers himself up, finally approaching the next level. The ledge digs a crushing pain into his chest as he hauls himself over the side of it, and there is a stabbing pressure shooting through an already broken forearm, but if he can just get his knee up over the side—
“Over there!”
“Oh, you have got to be karking kidding me—”
Blaster fire scorches the ground around him and he loses his hold, slipping back, down, and please, no, no, no, don’t fall back down—
Fingernails scrape and scrabble uselessly against metal until he grasps a file jutting out from the wall with his left hand. The sharp arrest of momentum almost tears his arm out of its socket, and Cassian can’t help the scream that rips from his throat. It is all he can do not to let go and plummet back down the forty feet he painstakingly climbed.
Boots thunk closer to the edge. Two stormtroopers is all he saw, and he hopes no more come looking from the sound. He jams his feet into the space between the data files and leans against the wall as much as he can to better unholster the blaster at his side.
When the first white bucket of a head shows itself over the ledge, he plants a blaster bolt straight through the center of the eyepiece. The body tumbles past him, arcing over and just barely missing Cassian from dragging him down with it.
The other stormtrooper hangs back, and only his blaster appears over the side, spewing red blaster fire that pings around, throwing up smoke and electrical sparks until Cassian shoots the gun itself out of the trooper’s hands.
Climb, K-2SO and Nemik say, the word resounding in the core of his being, and he does. Blood pounding in his head and rushing through adrenaline spiked limbs, he reholsters his blaster and lunges upward, scrambling past the screaming in his arm. Can’t let him regroup, need to take advantage of the—Cassian grabs the ankle at his eyeline and yanks it out from under the trooper, pulling him over the side. The trooper falls past his partner, farther than Cassian fell, far enough Cassian can’t hear him hitting the bottom. Cassian grimaces and hangs still for several breathless moments.
There are more boots coming down the hallway. A group of four—no, six—running in formation. He knows the sound. Practiced it, once upon a time. There is no way he will fight them all off, so he hides out of sight, clutching to the wall of the archive room. He can’t feel his hands for how tightly they are gripping the wall, and he is once again reminded of another time, another place.
Tell me they’re leaving.
Melshi. Rocks speared under nail beds and into bare feet too accustomed to smooth metal. White and orange jumpsuits against a dusty escarpment, hundreds of feet in the air. The scream of swooping TIE fighters too close for comfort.
They’re leaving, they’re leaving.
Imperial ships curving around the cliff-side, except Cassian knew they would be back for a second pass. But that wasn’t what Melshi wanted to hear. He needed a lie to hold on for. He needed hope. So Cassian gave it to him.
“They’re leaving,” Cassian whispers to the metal wall as he comes back to himself in the echo of retreating footsteps.
He wonders if he and Melshi will make it out of this one alive like they did Narkina Five. Overwhelming odds were not new to them, but Cassian is not so arrogant as to believe that their luck won’t run out.
Is Melshi still out there fighting on the beach, or is he already lying dead, riddled with blaster bolts or blown to smithereens? Cassian lost his comm at some point, and a part of him is grateful that the ability to find out is out of his hands. He does not want to know how many friends he will lose today. How many he has already lost.
They all knew the risks. They knew the likelihood that this would be a mission none would return from. Cassian has killed for the Rebellion, and he is prepared to die for the Rebellion. They all are.
But even on a suicide mission, he cannot help his desire to live. He burns to make it out, for his team to make it out. There is always a chance, after all—they have been living off of chances, one after another, and Cassian will use them for all they are worth, taking every single one until they run dry and he is left with nothing more than what he started with, his own small life to give.
Only after he is certain there are no more stormtroopers in the vicinity does he heave himself the rest of the way up onto the level. If it was hard before, this time it’s like crawling over shattered shards of transparisteel. His breaths run ragged, spearing through his chest and trembling lungs, and there is a slight whistle to its quality that worries him.
Sweat drips down into his eyes, stinging. He shakes his head, trying to jostle soaked bangs out of the way. Just have to make it… a little farther…
Failing to have Jyn’s back is out of the question. Failing to transmit the plans to the Rebellion is out of the question.
Now all that is left is to do the impossible.
Cassian continues pulling himself up and onto the floor until he won’t fall back down the archive room wall. With a groan, he rolls over onto his back. Thank the stars. The hallway is empty, at least for now.
As quickly as he can manage, he climbs to his feet, using the wall for support. Sliding against it as he struggles forward, he peeks around corners, his blaster at the ready.
He only runs into one other pair of stormtroopers. They go down, but the firefight destroys the turbolift controls next to them and Cassian does not have the luxury of time to stumble around until he finds the next turbolift.
Cassian looks at the staircase beside the lift and sighs.
One way out.
He must have hit his head hard, because there are many things Cassian tries very hard not to think about, and Kino Loy is one of them. Not because of anything he did—if anything, the man deserves to be remembered—but because of what Cassian could not do for him.
I can’t swim.
Helpless eyes in a hard-set face. Resigned and yet still aching with want for a freedom he could never fully enjoy. And Keef—Cassian—could only stare, useless and shocked, as the tide of escaping prisoners swept him over the edge. No chance to go back, no chance to help Kino find another way, even though Cassian knew there was no other way.
One way out.
Kino was never going to make it off Narkina Five. But he poured everything he had into making sure others would.
Honoring that legacy is the least Cassian can do.
I’m going to assume I’m already dead, Kino had said. And taking that, making peace with that, he had worked backwards from the inevitable, asking: what is the most good I can do before that happens?
For Cassian, it’s fairly straightforward. Don’t stop till you’re dead.
Pushing open the stairwell door, Cassian clings to the rail and climbs. Determination powering his legs and pushing him onwards. Past weariness, past ache, past pain and a growing fear that he is too late, that the satellite dish was destroyed while he was facedown on a metal grate.
You need to run, climb, kill!
Kino’s voice impels him. It fills the stairwell, fills the ringing in Cassian’s head like the Ferrix tower anvil. He looks up at the spiraling staircase and it seems to him the same as the one he took to the command center on Narkina Five.
Cassian has ascended three of eight more flights when the door a level down crashes open. Four troopers storm through, armor clanking.
He picks off the first two before they even know what’s happening, and then it’s chaos. Red flashes up and down the stairwell, pinging off the walls and railing and stairs. A stray bolt ricochets off the wall behind him and burns through his calf.
He drops to a knee with a grunt, and two more shots sear the space his head was a second ago. A third shot causes him to dive sideways into the stairs. With a growl, Cassian shoots one of the remaining troopers’ chest, knocking him back into the other. In the moment of distraction, he puts them both down.
Smoke curls from the stairwell. Cassian’s breath comes harsh through clenched teeth. He adjusts the grip on his blaster, the weapon warm in his hand.
We will never have a better chance than this, Kino’s rough voice reminds him, and there is an inexplicable burn at the back of Cassian’s eyes.
I know. I know.
This is their only shot. The Rebellion needs that file, those plans.
Cassian curses his slowness, and the eternity it is taking to reach the satellite dish. This whole mission and the Rebellion Cassian has given his life to could all come crashing down if he doesn’t hurry the kriff up.
With burning resolve, Cassian takes the stairs three at a time, and then is forcibly reminded that he just took a blaster shot to the leg when it collapses underneath him.
Doesn’t matter. Keep going. No stopping till you’re dead.
Cassian dreads to think of what will happen if the galaxy is left to face this monstrous super weapon without the knowledge of how to destroy it.
And "I would rather die trying to take them down than giving them what they want."
“That one was mine, you know.” Cassian puffs. And maybe he is delirious for talking to ghosts, but he couldn’t care less. It makes the burn and ache and stab and pain a little less focused, a little less real.
“It’s alright,” he continues, reassuring a man long dead. “Made me feel like I had said something worth saying. Something worth remembering.”
He thinks of Jyn.
Rebellions are built on hope.
A smile curls his lips. Yeah, he doesn’t mind it so much when people quote him. The sentiment is shared, and if Nemik taught him anything, it is that words have power. The more people they reach, the more power they have.
The more who speak against the Empire, the more the Rebellion presses forward, the more this might all one day end.
Cassian limps up the last five flights of stairs. He goes as fast as he can, rising when he falls and carried by the calls to climb. Bolstered by the bodies that came before him, that he might give his own for those that will come after him.
Rebellion has always been an impossible climb.
And Cassian knows he only ever made it this far by standing on others’ shoulders, on others’ sacrifices. He will do right by their memory to the end.
Cassian reaches the top, emerging into blinding daylight and smoking ruins. Part of the walkway has been bombed, the metal sheared and torn and twisted. He moves forward carefully, trying not to attract attention. The Imperial officer that shot him stands with his back to Cassian and a blaster aimed straight at Jyn. Jyn faces it, unarmed but defiant.
“He built a flaw in the Death Star,” she declares. The wind blows back grimy hair from Jyn’s lifted chin and clear green eyes, and it is beautiful in the way that only defiance in the face of the Empire can be. “He put a fuse in the middle of your machine… and I’ve just told the entire galaxy how to light it.”
Cassian resists the temptation to hope, no matter what he may have told Jyn. It is just as likely a bluff as it is the truth, and Cassian cannot afford to let his guard down by assuming they have already won.
“The shield is up,” Krennic spits back at Jyn. “Your signal will never reach the rebel base.”
Cassian braces himself on a pillar. It’s as much for cover as it is to stabilize his aim as it is to stay standing up.
“All your ships in the air will be destroyed,” Krennic continues, seething with such vitriol that Cassian almost expects him to foam at the mouth. “I lose nothing but time. You, on the other hand…”
Cassian gets a two-handed grip on his blaster, raises it.
“…die with the Rebellion.”
Shoots.
Krennic crumples to the ground, a smoking hole in the right side of his chest.
Jyn startles at the sound, ducking and eyes frantic and searching for the shooter before landing on Cassian. The tension in her frame eases and she gives a small smile of thanks. Cassian nods back.
Then he knows Jyn was bluffing because she runs to the controls at the base of the satellite dish. Cassian covers her as she does, closing the distance while keeping his blaster trained on the downed Imperial Director. It is smooth and unspoken, like they coordinated this, like he was always meant to watch her six while she finishes what her father started.
Jyn pulls down a switch, and an automated voice fills the air.
“Transmitting…”
Black progress bars inch across a red screen, filling white boxes. Jyn’s grin is wide and triumphant as she looks at Cassian, and he can’t help the smile that tugs at the corners of his expression, past the pain and disbelief that he is actually seeing what he is seeing.
Did they, are they… this is actually happening?
Jyn limps over to him and hangs onto his arm for support, still grinning and searching for eye contact. Even panting and barely holding one another up, though, Cassian refuses to take any chances with Krennic.
Jyn follows his gaze to the Imp. Shoulders tensing, she lunges towards the man with a snarl. It's all Cassian can do to hold her back. He keeps his blaster trained on the man with his right hand even as he pulls Jyn back by the hand with his left. Fire shoots down the abused limb, and she almost pulls him off balance, but he doesn’t let go.
“Hey, leave it, leave it!” He pulls her further back to his side, leaning against the pillar behind him to stay upright.
He’s not worth it.
Cassian might be a killer, but Jyn does not have to be. And he would deepen the blood on his hands up to his elbows to keep it that way.
She tugs once more half-heartedly, but does not make another break for the downed man.
“That’s it,” Cassian breathes. “Let’s go.”
Jyn pulls his arm over her shoulder to support him. They stagger haltingly towards the turbolift. An explosion booms overhead and a TIE spirals from the sky.
“Do you think,” he pants, “anybody’s listening?”
There’s another voice screaming from his past. This time it's his own.
You think they care what we say? Nobody’s listening. Nobody.
Except, when he looks at Jyn, that memory dissolves like it never was and he can’t help the smile that spreads across his face even before Jyn gives voice to what her eyes already proclaim.
“I do.”
The certainty in her voice is enrapturing. Hope has been a desperate thing for Cassian for so long, he forgot what pure belief looked like.
“Someone’s out there.”
Cassian looks to the sky, to the Rebel fleet thousands of feet in the air, and believes.
By the time they make it down to the beach, their death shines on the horizon like a second sun.
It burns over the ocean waves, blooming golden-white. Coming for them, as inescapable as the dawn.
This time, there is no ship for a last-minute escape. Even if there was, they would never make it in time.
There has only ever been one way out, after all.
Cassian knew that the moment he gave everything to the Rebellion, the moment he truly surrendered every scrap of his soul. The moment he laid his life down in front of Luthen, to do with as he wished.
Everything he needed to know and everything he needed to feel finally coming into alignment.
“Your father would have been proud of you, Jyn,” Cassian tells her, because he knows how important it is to hear those words. How important it is to give the dead a voice, to say the words they never got to speak.
Tell him I love him more than anything he could ever do wrong.
Maarva would have been proud of him, too. He knows that like a bone-deep ache, a truth in the very core of his being. She would be proud of what they accomplished here today. Proud that her son helped make it possible.
Jyn reaches out for his hand and he takes it. Small waves lap at the shore, and a cloud of fire rushes towards them from the horizon.
They embrace, gripping one another's battle-worn clothing and breathing in the salty air, and Cassian knows there are far worse ways to go than this.
The explosion reaches them with a sound of a thousand rushing winds and a brightness to eclipse the sun. Knees pressed into sand and arms holding close a rebel with a fire to rival it.
Cassian dies with his eyes open, looking towards a future he will never see but that he knows exists. A future made possible only through countless sacrifices.
This future, this fight, this climb.
This one way out.