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The dark sat in front of him glaring and angry. There was a buzz in his ears. Melshi had not had a moment of silence in months. Wedged in between the constant adrenaline of missions, briefs, debriefs and reports was a dragging and everlasting exhaustion. The spiralling of his mind at rest forced his feet and hands to move and move and move so that the sharpness of grief could not catch him.
The wood he sat on was waterlogged and sagged at his touch. An amber light from inside the cabin behind him illuminated thin flying rain. The impenetrable darkness ahead spoke to Melshi of a quiet that he did not know of.
Movement from inside the cabin raised him from his thoughts. A moment later Cassian’s head popped round the door frame, “Caf, Melshi?”
Melshi raised up a thumb, “Aye, come join me?”
Cass tucked himself back through the door and there was a roar from the hob as it clicked to life inside. Minutes later steaming hot mugs made their way out and into Melshi’s minutely jittering hands. Cassian sat himself down heavily beside him.
“It’s cold out here,” Cassian spoke.
Melshi pulled off his coat to share it with Cassian before passing him a mug. A cold hand passed itself into Melshi’s pocket. A smile briefed his face. Cassian took a mellow sip from his caf.
“I’m chilled to the bone,” Melshi mumbled, coyly.
Cassian let himself be drawn into Melshi. The stubble on his chin grazed his neck. Despite how they unwound at each others touch they found that the heaviness in their hearts did not budge.
Melshi placed a kiss to Cassian’s shoulder.
Cassian’s eyes lingered on the foliage in front of them, “Do you ever want to run away into it?”
“And do what?”
“Have a quiet life?”
Melshi looked down at longing eyes. Bags grew heavy under them and he noticed the way the shadows hollowed out Cassian’s cheeks.
Cassian’s voice was quiet as he thumbed Melshi’s hand, “We could live off world. Together,” he sighed, “Just you and me.”
A coldness began to encroach Melshi. His fingers ached as they passed slowly through Cassian’s hair, his past labour on slick white prison floors ever present.
Cass rested his head in Melshi’s lap and turned to him. He took his hand knowingly into his own. “We could be farmers, I like seeing you with your hands dirty.”
Melshi squeezed his hand back, “I’ll be getting transferred to the produce collective, then.”
Cass smiled but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. He looked distant, caged; hardened, fallible.
Melshi felt like he was holding someone who had turned into stone. Despite the horror he had experienced this week in particular, Cassian’s inability to smile was the worst of all of it. Melshi felt truly spent. Tears pricked at his eyes which then began to fall down, spilling over the fingers with which he pinched his brow.
“Melshi,” Cassian whispered, sitting up.
Melshi cried into his hand. His mind and body dictated by a raw and scraping grief.
Arms gently circled around him and held him.
The coolness of the jungle in front of them promised respite but it was lying. Shrill beeps of the explosive devices that tore limbs from the bodies of their friends and enemies spoke to them softly in moments of quiet of the danger, the hope, the hopelessness and unwilling, forced sacrifice that had led them here to Yavin. Melshi wished that he believed in something greater so that it was not just he and his dead and alive friends fighting against a rearing swirling mass of death.
“I’m sorry, Melshi. I shouldn’t joke.”
It was a while before Melshi raised his head. He raised a hand to brush at Cassian’s cheek and looked searchingly in Cass’ eyes, “You are so tired, Cass. You don’t know how to rest and neither do I.”
“I’m here to do my job, people die if it doesn't get done.”
“Something has to give, I can’t continue to see you like this,” Melshi said with muted desperation, “we can’t be the ones who give out, Cass – people do depend on us and that’s the point.”
“And what can I do about that?” Cassian spoke abruptly and earnestly, “What can we do? This is what we do, must do, have to do, unless we wake up one day and decide that we do not give a shit, and we are not there for people when they need us most.”
“It might not be a fucking choice, Cass, you understand?”
Cassian was quiet.
“You joke to me about wanting to leave, and then you tell me that you can't try the one thing that will help you stay.”
“And what about yourself? Is it just me who is the problem?” Cassian snapped, as he slowly began to untangle himself. His eyes watched the floor and the jungle instead of Melshi. He sniffed in the cold air. “Look, I’m going to go -”
“Cass -”
Cassian pushed himself off the decking and jumped down into the leaves below, determinedly walking as far away as he could before anyone could notice him and how his hands were shaking and how his face was stricken by grief.
Melshi meanwhile sat as if he had been struck, the warmth from Cassian’s body whipped away from him and into the wind. The world around him suddenly roared back into focus. The rumble of the ground that came from ships taking off ran up through his body. He noticed that he was shivering; head damp from the dripping sky above.
“I’m a fucking idiot. Just so fucking stupid. Just so stupid…”
He felt otherworldly as he stood up and stumbled back into the kitchen. He planted two hands firmly on the table to hold himself up, staring at the dozens of unread datapads that Cassian had left on the table.
He did not hear Cassian come back in that night and awoke to an empty bed. With Cassian dead asleep in the hammock in their main living space, wet clothes chucked over a chair, Melshi brought a blanket over for him and softly covered him without waking him.
He fumbled with the datapad he had taken with him to bed to read that night and changed into a new set of clothes and gathered his gear before taking off to see Draven to volunteer for the next mission in Cassian’s place, knowing how fucked it was that he was going but going anyway.
As Melshi adjusted his gloves, waiting for the hangar door to finish closing, he heard shouting through the gap, “Ruescott Melshi! You don’t get to make decisions for me! Fuck you!”
Melshi breathed out heavily as the door shut with a hiss. K-2 whirred as he turned to give Melshi a look.
“Ah piss off, let’s just get on with it, alright?”
“Both you and I know that I cannot piss even if I wanted to,” K-2 announced to him from the pilot seat, “Cassian does not look very happy with you.”
Melshi looked past K-2 to where Cassian was on the tarmac, shouting with one hand on his heart and the other cupped around his mouth in an attempt to make himself louder as they lifted off.
When Melshi returned, K-2 in tow and a concussion on its way, Cassian was not around. Melshi set his jaw and bowed his head and walked as straight as he could towards the intelligence room to make his debrief before heading to medical, which felt easier to approach than their home.
As he was being seen to by a nurse droid, sat in the corner and biding his time, Melshi looked up to see Cassian with his arms folded and fingers tapping standing just outside the door.
“It wasn’t what you think.”
“I don’t care, please.” Cassian shook his head and came in towards him. “I just don’t care. Is he okay to be left alone?” he said, addressing the droid who beeped affirmingly before whirring away.
Melshi touched his forehead tenderly, not without noticing how Cassian’s eyes followed his movement.
“I love you.” Cassian said, nonchalantly.
“I love you, too,” replied Melshi.
Cassian paused for a moment to reach a hand out to him as his eyes flickered between Melshi’s newly healed forehead and his eyes. “Come with me? Please?”
They left medical to take a walk outwards and into the jungle, they did not say anything for a long while but their hands found each other and their fingers intertwined.
“I’m worried, Melshi. All the time. Of what happens when I stop and let the quiet in.”
Melshi was silent and listened as they walked together.
“I don’t even know what rest would look like. What happens when we need to be there but we are not. I help people, Melshi. I helped you.”
“Maybe…” Melshi started, quietly, “Draven needs to start training up others. I don’t think rest means we will not be there in an emergency, that we abandon people.”
The jungle, humid and damp, in spite of it’s noises felt like it was holding them, quietly, as they slowed to a stop.
“We’ve all got to work together. I just,” Melshi’s voice felt caught, “You mean a lot to me, Cassian. Knowing that you, we all, deserve a life without horror, without cages, and that we don’t fucking get to have that just. I’d do anything to let you have that.”
Cassian took more than a second to reply.
“Yeah.”
Melshi nodded and looked up at the branches above him, letting gravity withhold his tears.
“Melshi.”
He cleared his throat, “Yeah.”
“Let me hold you.”
Melshi let his gaze fall as he realised that Cassian was watching him. He brought Cassian’s fingers to his lips and kissed them softly. Cassian wrapped his other hand round Melshi’s waist and drew him in close, resting his head on his shoulder.
Melshi lay his head on Cassian’s shoulder and uttered to him, “Let me hold you.”