“Kes, it’s been an honor,” Cassian said, clasping him tight by the arm and squeezing. He pulled the man into a hug, brief, and clapped him on the back before letting him go. “If you see General Solo, tell him to find me at some point. I’d like to thank him for letting me in on his ground mission.”
Laughing, Kes scraped his hand across the back of his neck. “I don’t think there was any ‘letting’ involved,” he answered, a sly smile curving his mouth. No hard feelings, it said. We both know you’d have muscled your way in regardless, it also said. “But we were sure glad to have you and Sergeant Erso at our backs all the same.”
Cassian’s hair fell into his eyes as he bowed his head in acknowledgment. A stick cracked beneath his feet as he took a step back. “Give Lieutenant Bey my regards as well.”
Kes grinned at hearing his wife’s name spoken aloud. He never failed to smile, thinking of her—Cassian tried not to be jealous—and nodded. “Will do, Captain.” Saluting, he turned and headed back toward the tight fray of people at the very center of the Ewok settlement. From over Kes’s shoulder drifted a last minute yell.
“May the Force of others be with you!” Kes called, a habit he’d picked up from Chirrut—and Baze. Many people had, adopting it in addition to the more familiar refrain, entrenched from the days before even Cassian’s recruitment into the Rebellion if such a thing could be imagined. He liked this version better; the Force had never been with him, but he might have borrowed it from someone else a time or two in his life.
Putting that thought aside, Cassian went in the other direction, jamming his hands into his pockets as he picked his way across the hastily cleaned paths that still harbored all sorts of nasty little surprises for the uninitiated and unpracticed. Exposed roots, more than a few creatures that would happily take a bite out of an ankle, fallen vines. If not for the shimmering, utilitarian safety lights someone had strung up, there might have been a few more bruises in store for Cassian. As it was, he still almost tripped over a shadow that turned out to be a rock and only at the last moment realized it, stepping deftly to avoid it—and almost tipped forward as he over-corrected anyway.
Endor. Who’d have thought it would all end here?
And who’d have thought he’d make it? Because he certainly hadn’t, no. He’d considered himself a dead man a million different times over on a million different planets, each occasion thinking, this is it and no, this is it and really, there’s no getting out of this one, I might as well make peace with that now. And eventually, he had. Just… he’d taken it for granted that he wouldn’t live to see this moment.
But no. The second Death Star rained down fire in the atmosphere, the most moving celebratory display Cassian had ever seen. X-wings and their pilots corkscrewed and screamed low across the forest’s canopy to shrieks of delight that he could hear even this far out, even over the relentless drumming music, even over the laughter and singing and shouting.
And yet Cassian was here. He was here. The mighty Empire crumbled above his head like so much space dust, a hundred-thousand meteors upon which to make a wish. He was here and it—it was not.
And for the first time that he could remember, the future stretched before him, not a tantalizing dream just out of reach—a goal for other people to pursue while Cassian forced himself to live only in the moment—but a tangible, true thing that could belong to him.
Right now.
Right down this path even.
His stride stretched, gait speeding up as he sought his quarry. Though it had cooled considerably as night set in, he didn’t feel it, heartbeat speeding up and blood pumping compensating for the chill. He didn’t let himself run, but he wanted to, though it was as likely as not that Jyn would laugh at him for doing so.
He would like to hear her laugh.
Kes had been the one to tell him where he might find Jyn, having seen her wander off a little while ago and thinking correctly Cassian would like to know. She wouldn’t have gone far. And yet it seemed like ages until he saw her silhouette, just a bit darker than the tree line around her and yet not mysterious to him in the slightest. He would know her anywhere. Her shadow moved, the smooth arch of her hunched spine straightening, and though it could have been anything, he knew it was her.
Closer now, he made out her steepled fingers pressed against her lips as she looked up. “Cassian,” she said, turning toward him. Her hands fell to her sides, pressed against the fallen log beneath her.
“Don’t get up.” He came to a stop at her side and looked up, the muscles of his throat tightening. The view wasn’t very good here, too obscured by the thick overgrowth of leaves hanging overhead. But even so, the warm, red light of heated, molten metal reflected off the trees, pulsing as the remaining pieces of the Empire’s great hope continued to burn. But even such a beautiful sight as that was no match for Jyn. He twisted to look at her instead. “May I sit?”
She shifted over, though not as far as she might have if she wanted to keep a fair share of the log for herself. No, she showed the bare minimum that courtesy demanded of the question, and said, “Of course.”
This had become their way, this polite fiction, this self-preserving courtesy. Decorum had kept them together and seen them through this war with hearts and minds unscathed and unburdened by wanted complications.
But perhaps decorum had no place in this new galaxy they’d helped create. Perhaps, they could put decorum aside now.
His arm, thigh, and knee all brushed against hers as he settled next to her. And though she wore a jacket, she shook minutely, tremors running occasionally through her body. If he thought she’d take his jacket, he would have offered it to her; the best he could do was gesture for her to give him her hands so that he might rub warmth into them, this compromise that was no compromise, but a plausible excuse for touch. Just as he expected, she didn’t question this request. Another part of the unspoken bargain they’d struck on that beach.
“It’s lovely, isn’t it?” Jyn asked, head turned up. The light flickered on her face, coruscating in warm-toned ripples. So much more soothing than looking at it directly. “In its own way.”
“I’m just glad it’s over.” His fingers, calloused, dragged over Jyn’s knuckles. His words felt inadequate, but no less true for that. He was glad.
A wistful smile formed and faded from her mouth. “You think it’s over?”
“Perhaps not for some.” He thought of Commander Organa and General Calrissian and Mon Mothma. There was yet work for them to do and they were so very clearly chomping at the bit to do it. But for others—for Cassian… “The Alliance will restructure. And along with it, the army and navy.” He sighed and released Jyn’s hands with a brief, tight squeeze. “They need soldiers, peacekeepers. They may even need spies, but they don’t need me.”
“Cassian.”
“This—” He pointed up at the sky, that unbelievable, impossible sky. “—this was always the goal.”
“What will you do?”
That was the question, wasn’t it? The honest answer was he didn’t know. He had no idea what he wanted to do, what he was good at, what he could be. The only thing he knew for sure was that he wished he hadn’t let go of Jyn’s hands already. “What I always do, I suppose.” Leaning into her, just a little, he smiled. “Muddle through until I figure it out.”
Jyn leaned back, rocking toward him so that their shoulders brushed. It was such a meaningless gesture in the grand scheme of things, but for Cassian it might as well have been the only thing in the whole damned scheme that mattered. “You’ve never muddled through a day in your life,” Jyn said. “You always know exactly what you’re doing.”
“That hasn’t been true in years,” he insisted. Not since you. It probably wasn’t true before that, but for a time it had felt that way and some days he missed that certainty. But most days he was merely grateful to her—and to his own heart for still being capable of questioning itself at all. Doubt was good; it kept a person honest.
And oh, how he doubted now.
“What is it?” Her hand settled on his knee and there was nothing he wanted more in this moment than to cover it with his own.
So he did. And when he spoke, he hoped he didn’t sound too earnest, too breathless. He didn’t want to influence her or make her feel awkward if… but he wasn’t a wordsmith; he wasn’t a poet. He couldn’t massage words into the shapes he wanted them to take. Only rarely could it be said his words have moved someone to more than action. “What are you going to do now?”
She drew in a deep breath and held it for a moment. “I don’t know. I never thought I’d make it this far.” Her eyes narrowed, but even though it was dark, he saw the interest there. “Do you really think—?” She glanced down at their entwined hands and turned hers, palm up, to better grip his, too. “It can’t be that easy, can it?”
Cassian almost laughed. “I don’t know, but I’d like to find out.”
“You’re really done?”
Cassian nodded and pursed his lips together. I’ve served my purpose. He closed his eyes, counted to three, and opened them again. He might not have been a wordsmith, but that had never mattered to Jyn before. “We could figure it out together if you want to know the answer, too.”
“Oh,” she said. “You mean…”
Never one to risk bad luck or giving away anything to the enemy, he didn’t carry any tokens that might mean anything to either of them or mark the occasion. He could give her nothing but a promise and the parts of himself that the war hadn’t taken from him and broken irretrievably. But this was Jyn. There was nothing in him that she hadn’t accepted and embraced already by her actions if not with words a hundred times over since they met. She didn’t need a token.
Whatever decision she made, she was here and she’d survived. And so had he. They’d outlived the Empire.
That was enough.
“Cassian?”
His heart in his throat, he looked at her, the wash of color across her face changing from red to joyous blue and green and white, the sky alight now with real fireworks. A sheen glittered in her eyes, matched, he was sure, by the sheen in his own.
He moved slow as though through bacta and brushed his fingers across her face, his thumb over her bottom lip. Her eyelids fluttered shut and she drew in a shuddering breath and the only thing that stopped him from pressing his mouth against hers was the need to see her like this, just like this, for as long as she would let him.
“Let’s find out, shall we?” she said in a whisper.