#unlockyourmind-wp

A few from the crowd, friends and neighbors and the otherwise bold, joined the families at the front. They laid hands on them, gently helped them stand. Sara Yarem stayed put, and Mirian with her. 

Cassian stood alone. 

"My apologies, Mr. Skova." The Commandant descended down stairs roughly cut into the rock. He sidestepped Mirian and Sara, approaching Cassian with his usual languidness. His eyes shone ghostly in the last, unfading glow from Kepnos's noxious city lights. The execution squad stood silently behind him. Cassian fixed his eyes on their helmets.

"It's a nasty business, certainly." Riceter looked at the ridge with a shade of fake regret. "Particularly unpleasant for your first day. But I hear Eleos suffers similarly."

Cassian said nothing.

"We are lucky, then," he said pointedly, "that this isn't frequent, or else that might be too much for us all to bear. Especially for our young Point over here. Competent and loyal to a fault—" Cassian's stomach turned. "—but still new to it all."

"How new?"

"Well, older, actually, than almost anyone. She's lived here ten years or more. But she is new to the work." Riceter shook his head. "I myself only arrived three years ago, right before Mirian the Mother died—after a decade in Huvo, that is. Have you heard of it?"

"Vaguely."

"Well," Riceter replied, "if you ever have the chance, I'd certainly recommend a look around. The Empire has done a particularly magnificent job of setting its barbarism into order. We've set up factories and industrial centers to put its citizens to good work; we've set up schools to educate their children, and to discipline them: Huvo is well on its way to maturing into a most industrious Imperial state, one of our finest successes. Have you ever heard of the Huvon black hawk, Mr. Skova?"

"No."

"Half bird, half amphibian: they can soar over a hundred and fifty thousand feet in the air, yet can dive and swim among the creatures of the Huvan reefs. Nearly extinct now," he added sadly. "They lived primarily in Huvo's great seaside forests, which have been mostly cut down out of necessity. However, I did manage to snag one for my private aviary. A beautiful creature it is, the poor thing. Mirian, my dear!"

Mirian stood, straight and still and ready as a droid. Her clothes were dirty. 

"Yes, Commandant."

"I've determined that you and your Second will visit in two weeks' time. He should be well-established in the position by then, and just in time before the freeze. You'll take care of him well, I trust? Keep him out of trouble?"

"Yes, Commandant."

"Splendid!" He clapped his hands with that mildly saccharine restraint. "I will remind you the day before. Have a good night, my dear Mirian. A brief one too, let us hope. And you, Mr. Skova..."

Riceter lowered his voice and leaned closer, close enough to make Cassian's stomach crawl. "... Your position has been empty for far too long. I hope that, with your support, mishaps like these may be better avoided. And a good night to you, my friend."

He left for his transport. His hands were clasped firmly behind his back; his back was firmly turned. Oh, how Cassian would have loved to use him for target practice. His shoes looked too clean for this muddy earth. 

Mirian knelt again, muttering into Sara's ear. They both forced themselves to their feet on shaky knees, in ash-caked clothes. 

"Skova!" She was already walking past him. "Take care of Sedra, please."

Take care? Care of what? Sedra was fine. Sedra didn't like him, or wouldn't like him later. Why should she? Happy just as she was at her mother's skirts.

"Skova!"  

Cassian grit his teeth— just a kid— grit his teeth and closed the gap in one long stride. He laid a hand on the girl's shoulder.

"Walk with me, Sedra."

The girl stopped, wrapped her arms around herself, and looked him up and down. "Who are you?"

"Skova. Well—" Cassian choked on his words. "I'm Amrodoro. Skova."

Her eyes narrowed; she leaned away. Cassian started to panic. Why the panic? This was a kid. A fucking kid. 

"You can—call me Amrod if that's easier."

"My name is Sedra."

"Yes." He glanced ahead; Mirian and Sara were yards ahead now. He held out his hand. "Let's walk, Sedra."

She paused—would she? what then?—but put her small, slight hand in his. Her fingers were cold; Cassian gripped them tighter. He walked slower for her short legs. Not that the others set a rough pace. He was glad—it meant he slipped less often. Especially now. It was getting dark. 

"Who are you?"

"Amrod."

"What do you do here?"

"I help Mirian."

"You and Miri?"

"... Yes." Cassian's face twitched. "Me and Miri."

Sedra's fingers relaxed a little in his. They were getting warmer. 

Several minutes passed in silence. The four of them kept Kepnos at their backs; far ahead something dully reflected its ugly blue light. The bogs. North and maybe a little East. Far, far from the house. The Mirian House, they'd called it this morning. Midmorning. It was evening now, close to night. Miri of the Mirian House. Cassian tested the name once more on his tongue. He hated the taste.

"Uncle Sergo was there," the girl said suddenly.

Cassian bit his tongue and looked to Mirian. Her back was turned. She was no help. 

"He was."

"He plays Catchem with me. You play Catchem?"

"I don't know what it is."

"Huh." Another pause. "Uncle Sergo got me swords."

"Swords?" Panic welled again. Cassian felt silly. "Where'd he find swords around here?"

"Under the black houses. He takes me there sometimes. Mama doesn't like it unless she comes. Then she tells me to sit by the tree. But sometimes Bobbidy comes."

Cassian had no idea what she was talking about but let her go on; short, matter-of-fact sentences. He was unreasonably tense. Why panic? Fucking kids. He'd been a kid too, once. A long time ago. Like everyone. He couldn't remember it, couldn't remember what to say. Should he say anything at all? He'd been a kid who'd lost family once. All of them, actually. What did people tell him? He couldn't remember. 

Didn't help that she'd apparently adopted Mirian's delivery. Miri. Downright unsettling. 

"How old are you, Sedra?"

"Six. I turned six two weeks ago. Actually... three weeks ago."

"Well. A happy birthday to you."

Cassian asked nothing else. 

It was pitch black by the time they stopped. C-Series still whirred here and there in the streets like artificial torches, belts pulsing white and orange and gold. With Kepnos they cast a warm, muddy light over the glinting muddy streets, and the people who walked them—fewer now; still very much alive. Cassian's eyes stuck on their hardened faces. They knew. They'd seen. No one spoke. 

Mirian and Sara disappeared into a little door. Seconds later soft, yellow light streamed through the opening. Sedra pulled her hand from his. His fingers felt cold.

"Come on, Amrod."

Cassian followed her through to the little house. 

Very little. A single, rectangular room with a low roof; three dingy white walls and one on the right of poorly paneled wooden slats. Bits of light shone through from the other side along with unfamiliar voices. A two-family house. In the far right corner beside a single yellow lamp hung a set of bunk beds—slabs of metal protruding from the plaster wall, covered with sleep mats and sparse bedding and draped with torn clothes. Sara Yarem sat on the lower bed, resting her head in her hand, staring at the sandy, unswept ground. Across the room Mirian had straightened her scarf again and worked at the makeshift stove, a thin metal tile balanced on half of an old heat generator. 

Sedra laid her head on Sara's knee. "Mama?"

"Yes, baby."

"Can I show him my swords?"

"Yes, baby."

The girl scrambled up some sacks from the end of the bed and emptied them into her hand. 

"Here." She showed Cassian. Two spiral screws lay in her palm. 

"What are they?"

"They're our swords. Here."

She jabbed one towards his chest. Cassian flinched; his heart pounded.

No panic. Fucking kids. 

He glanced at Mirian. She'd put a pot on the stove and was measuring out a helping of rice. She watched him from the side. Cassian waited for her to tell him what to do. A Skova!; a jerk of the head. Mirian looked away. Nothing. 

Cassian accepted the screw. 

The girl smiled and held up her sacks—not sacks but dolls, two of them, oval heads the length of their flattened bodies, hairless, mouthless, charcoal streaks for eyes, made from what looked like faded rice bags; loose threads tied off their grotesquely oblong limbs. 

She shook the doll in her right hand. "This is Bobbidy—" then her left; "—and this is Graida."

They were identical. Cassian pretended to tell the difference.

"These are their swords?"

She nodded. "Do you wanna play Catchem?"

Back to Mirian. No sign from her yet. The frothing pot reminded Cassian of his hunger, and his thirst, and his exhausted eyes, and his cold fingers, and his overheated head. But no, no. This wasn't the time, this wasn't right. 

"I'll play."

"Sit down. No, here."

Sedra dragged him from the door to the center of the room; he had to bite back a laugh. It felt so wrong here, small and chairless with a silent, grieving stranger on one side and a silent Imp on the other, but he hadn't had a kid boss him around since he was a kid in the Pecquenta Corps. He looked up. Mirian was smiling. 

"Catchem," as it turned out, was Sedra's tag— armed tag. Cassian didn't remember his tag involving swords. Sticks, stones, hand grenades, maybe, running after and running from real armed men. They'd had that. But that wasn't for fun. Maybe he shouldn't try to relate. Maybe just sit, and humor the girl as long as possible, and try not to kick up too much dust. He let her doll catch up with his; she drove her screw through its limp abdomen. Cassian flinched. 

"Bobbidy wins!" she yelled. "And Graida falls with a great scream. A scream, Amrod."

"Ah!"

"A great scream."

"Aaahhh!"

"She falls to the ground—" Cassian dropped his doll. "—and breathes... her... last..."

Sedra threw her hand over her forehead and collapsed. "Dead!"  

"Are you Graida now?" Cassian asked. She scowled and sat up again.

"No. I won."

"Yes," he laughed, "I think you did. Just about skewered it—"

She seized his doll, screw hanging out, and lifted it victoriously. "And Graida lives!"

"She—" Cassian blinked. "She what?"

Just then, Mirian tapped Sedra's shoulder. Dinner was ready. She set a small helping of rice and a cup of water next to the other doll, and stooped down by Cassian's shoulder. 

"Weren't you listening, Skova?" Her voice trembled with excitement. "Graida lives."

Cassian rubbed his ear where she'd whispered. Goosebumps. By the time Mirian had given Sara her share, he couldn't help but notice there was none left for them. His stomach ached with hunger; he could feel it in his chest. And Sara only picked at her food.

"Baby, don't eat on the floor."

"Yes, Mama." Sedra picked up her food and joined her on the bed.

"And don't leave your—"

"I have it." Cassian swooped up the dolls and screws like a hawk its prey. He set them gently at the foot of the bed, forcing himself not to look at their food, not even to smell it. He felt guilty. Why the guilt?

"What do you say, Sedra?"

"Thank you."

Cassian only nodded. He leaned against the door while Mirian drew a rickety stool to the bunkset. She sat with her elbows on her knees, pulling a datapad from an inner coat pocket, tapping here and there in silence. They'd have to talk soon, one way or another. Sara didn't seem ready yet, and Mirian didn't push her. Decent of her. Cassian couldn't stand to watch. 

There was a window a foot and a half from the door, a little below his eye level and boarded up with rocks and mud. The insulation looked several years old, if not more. Too old to hold up another winter. Cassian examined the doorframe. Little cracks spread from the seams. Here, the light within and the dark without, there was no telling if the cracks were wide and deep enough to let cold air right through. The plaster itself was cold to the touch. Would Mirian mind if he stepped outside? Just for a minute, just to look at the door. She probably would. Did Cassian care? It was chilly out. And there were people out, too; what if he recognized one from the crowd? So what if he did! He'd meet them eventually. Possibly. Probably. 

"Household. . . Livelihood. . . Unit compensation. . ."

Compensation... Awfully Imperial to Cassian's ears. Awfully pragmatic. Was Sara in any shape to talk, to understand? Of course. She worked here. Volunteered here, actually. There was a difference. Was Mirian her employer? Or her coworker? Would Mirian demand her back to work the next day? Awfully Imperial... But that happened in the Rebellion sometimes, too. Back-to-back missions, frequent loss. But that was different. 

Would he be shipped right out again, once he got back? If he got back. The whole thing was already fucked. Hopefully they'd send him off right away; he didn't like to sit still. If he got back.

Cassian scuffed his boots over the sandy floor. Little pills of rolled up mud peeled off his soles, sticking against the ground. He tried to stomp them up again. 

"You alright, Skova?"

Mirian had put her datapad away and stared at him. In other light, in other eyes, Cassian might have called it genuine worry. He flushed.

"Fine. All fine." 

She nodded, unconvinced, but turned back to Sara. She squeezed her hand. 

"We'll have it in first thing tomorrow. Things will be okay. You and Sedra both. I promise. And I'll take these—" She bundled up the clothes hanging from the top bunk. "—and I'll be back soon. And you're welcome any time of day and any time of night, for anything. I promise."

"Thank you."

"No need." Mirian kissed Sedra's head and tugged on her braid. "You stay out of trouble. Promise me?"

"I promise." The girl nodded bashfully. Mirian kissed her again and tightened her hood scarf. 

"Skova."

Cassian opened the door and held it for her. Her scarf brushed against his hand; the fabric was warm. He shuddered. 

"Bye, Amrod!"

Cassian froze in the doorway. 

No panicking.

"Goodbye," he said with another forced smile. He shut the door tightly behind him; hopefully Sara remembered to lock it. Hopefully she didn't notice the rolled up mud on her floor. 

Here in the darkness, Cassian could see light leaking through the cracks in the window and door frame, dull, golden filaments that led to nowhere. Someone had better fix them before winter came. 

He caught Mirian staring. 

"What?" he snapped.

She raised an eyebrow. "All fine?"

Cassian took one last look at the door before pulling himself away. "All fine."

They took a soft pace back; Mirian walked more beside him than ahead of him. She murmured directions now and then, "left" and "straight" and "cross." Otherwise they walked in silence. Snippets of somber conversations drifted through thin, plaster walls; tookas snarled lowly from dark, adjoining alleys; the vibrowire fence droned on to the melody of a lone, late-evening mourning dove. And then there was his own shaky breath and its pale steam. He had nothing to cover his face. 

It was almost nice to walk beside another human being. Almost, for the time being. 

Back at the squat, square house, Mirian input the key code. Outside, nearby droids shone on the scratches in the door like ghosts. Inside, Mirian's own droid was working. Cassian could see the fragile, telltale filaments around the door frame. These would need fixing, too. 

The door slid open. Mirian wiped her boots on the mat and Cassian followed suit. She set the Yarems' clothes at the foot of her bed. 

"Sit where you want."

Cassian took the chair on the far side of the desk-chest, the one he'd taken this morning. Mirian stood again at the stove. Should he offer to cook this time? His head was so heavy, heavy as an ion cannon; he propped it up against his palm. The sedated droid was warm against his other hand. If Cassian wasn't sure she'd see, he'd press his whole face against it. Fall asleep. He was so tired. Where would he sleep? Too tired to even ask. But too hungry to be too tired. His ears pricked up at the sound of rice poured into water. Cassian looked over, expecting to see Mirian as she was at the Yarems'. No. Here she was hunched over the narrow countertop, head against the cabinet, fingers digging into an empty plaster bowl. Cassian thought she might be sick. What then? Go on cooking, probably. She seemed like the type. 

"He'd brought the bread home," Mirian said suddenly. Cassian raised his head. 

"She had enough time to get it out of the house, sink it in the marsh. She could have been killed if they'd found it first. Certainly arrested."

Cassian waited for her to continue. She didn't. Eventually she straightened up again, stirred the rice pot, strained the water out through old mesh. Cassian only fought his way through muddled thoughts and foggy memories of the day. Yes, they'd seen Sara before. He'd seen the brother, too, what felt like days ago. It had to be less than twelve hours. He didn't know the time. And Cassian realized he'd never known which of those gaunt, scared faces belonged to Sergo Yarem. Not that it mattered anymore. His body was gone and over the ridge. The blackbirds here, the shriekers—were they scavengers? They'd make unrecognizable messes of those faces, anyway. His stomach flipped, now with hunger, now with nausea.

"You told her to, didn't you?" he finally asked. 

Mirian walked to the desk with two bowls of sticky rice; she returned with two cups of something steamy. Her eyes were glued to the ground. She took care to pull her chair out quietly.

"I can't help them when they get caught," Mirian repeated to her own food. "But sometimes... sometimes we can get away with a little more. With much discretion."

She began to eat. Cassian eyed his food suspiciously. Poison wasn't completely out of the question but the odds were low enough. He took a bite, two, three, four, shoveling rice into his mouth like he'd never eat again. It was wet and unseasoned; the sogginess soon dried out on his tongue into a plastery paste. A whole minute passed before he remembered his thirst and he looked to the mug. Tea, probably. Lifeless gray leaves floated on the water. 

He took a sip. It burned his lips and tasted like licking a power generator. He tried to control his puckering face. Mirian put her spoon down. 

"I'm sorry that this happened today, Skova."

Cassian froze with his mouth still full of battery acid. He'd have to get used to this stare of hers: wide, gaunt eyes with dark circles swallowing up his, rarely blinking. Eyes it might prove difficult to pull the wool over and a mouth sharp enough to slice through it, anyway. Cassian tried to match her stare, but—oop! He didn't care to. He went back to his sticky rice and tried to forget about the tea. 

"I'm not the one who needs an apology."

"Let me amend it, then." Mirian folded her hands on the desk. They rested dangerously close to his; he pulled his rice bowl closer. 

"I dislike," she said after a deep breath, "the circumstances surrounding your arrival and subsequent assignment, for reasons we've already discussed. I say 'dislike' for two reasons. Firstly, because their peculiarity sets me on edge. I find it hard to believe that a single day has brought not one but two misfortunes. Secondly, because they've made your life here—for the immediate present, at least—much harder. No one's supposed to jump into this with no training whatsoever. Especially since, I admit, I'm not in the best position to train you. You need to learn quickly and you need to be ready, in an emergency, to take the lead. I'm afraid the manner of your own arrival has sabotaged you—to what extent, I don't know.

"Nonetheless: whatever's at the root of the peculiarity—" her eyes flashed. "—you've been dealt a cruel hand. Personally so. It's cruel that you should witness the worst of the job in your first twelve hours. Perhaps you're right," Mirian sighed. "I shouldn't apologize to you. But I think it's beneficial, for honesty's sake, to acknowledge the unique ways in which today has been cruel to you. And it would be cruel of me, too, to pretend all is well when I'm sitting right across from you. That's why I'm sorry."

Cassian swallowed another mouthful of slimy rice and tried another swig of tea. He very nearly coughed it up. 

"If it's cruel, it's common. Commonplace. It's the same everywhere." Cassian shrugged. His voice was hoarse.

"Maybe—" Mirian stared at him with knit brows. "You mean to say that none of today's events have bothered you?"

"I mean it doesn't matter who's bothered. What happens, happens."

She looked down into her untouched tea. Something deflated in Cassian's chest, like the string pulled taut between them had snapped. 

"I think..." Her fingers twitched. "I think you're lying, in some way or another. I hope you're lying."

"Life has enough worries already," Cassian echoed from the transport. Bitterly. 

"That's right."

But something about that wasn't as genuine. Cassian thought she was lying, too. 

Without warning, Mirian scooped up the last of her rice and downed her whole cup of tea, leaves and all. She took both their bowls to the sink. 

"We'll stop by Sara's tomorrow, and all the other families. Make sure they've gotten through the night. Distribution begins at noon. We'll submit the R&R the day after tomorrow or tomorrow evening, if there's time."

"R&R?"

"Recompense Requests." She scrubbed their spoons with a hard block of soap. "Imperial-related deaths, when they impact a family's livelihood, are sometimes eligible for some compensation. Never enough, but it's something more than nothing. Executions are harder." 

She sighed. She spent several more seconds bent over the sink. "Sara's a registered volunteer. We might be able to push something through for her."

Wasn't Sergo a volunteer too? Cassian didn't care enough to ask. His tea still sat before him mockingly. It wasn't steaming anymore. Cassian decided to chug it. Fuck. He should have chugged it when he had the chance; the heat at least distracted from the rancid perfumy taste. The hair at the nape of his neck stood up on end. Cassian threw it back like Mirian did, forcing himself to keep it down. Every muscle in his face contracted. He felt thirstier than ever as he smoothed over the cup with his thumb.

"Where am I staying?"

Mirian glanced at him from over her shoulder. "You stay here. You can bring me that mug to wash."

"Here?" 

"That mug, please."

Cassian pursed his lips as he handed her the still-warm cup. He was getting impatient. 

"Points and Seconds house together," Mirian explained, satisfied. "In some of the newer Sectors they live in adjoining units. Our house is too old to add another wing. So, yes, here."

He forced a laugh. "Where would I sleep? There's only one bed."

Mirian hesitated. "The last Second and I shared," she said slowly, "and my mother and I before that. I have a sleeping mat and bedding to spare if you'd rather take the floor, and we can keep the droid beside you if you don't mind the noise. But winter is coming on quickly. Past winterfall the droid won't be of much help. But it'll be enough for now." 

Cassian looked around. Professionally, a nightmare. If he could reconnect with Kaaza, they'd need a way to communicate regularly—far from Mirian's gaunt eyes. Not just Mirian, or Miri . An Imp. If she wouldn't try to save a friend from a public execution, she'd do nothing to cover his ass. Hell, she might report him for getting mud on her bedsheets. Just for fun. 

But where else was he supposed to go? Sector One housing seemed thin as it was. Was he planning to curl up next to a feral tooka for warmth? They had a personal C-Series here; if he had to stay through the winter, he'd want somewhere clean, warm, and dry. And staying through the winter was rapidly becoming less possible than probable. 

Not if they moved fast. Maybe this was incentive. Fuck. 

"... I'll take the floor."

When he looked back, Mirian's eyes had lost their razor focus. She nodded absentmindedly, almost in relief. "Yes, the floor... And the mat."

She slid a sleeping mat from under the bed, spread it alongside in front of his duffle bag, and handed Cassian one of the pillows and the top blanket.

"It'll drop to freezing tonight, though not below yet. The fresher's in the back corner. We have enough water if you need a shower but not much of a water heater. There's an extra towel in the cabinet. You have something to sleep in?"

"Yes."

Mirian spared him a tight smile before heading to the fresher. He soon heard running water. 

In the meantime Cassian spread the blanket neatly over his mat and straightened the flat pillow. The mat was stiff but not damaged, and barely dented. Barely used. The old Second had shared her bed, after all. Wonder who they were, wonder what happened to them. Long gone by now, probably. Wonder why they left. 

Rummaging through his duffle bag, Cassian found the tattered old day clothes he kept for pajamas—but good enough that he could move and run and work at a moment's notice. Next to them were his toothbrush (no toothpaste) and a handheld scope the length of his index finger. Cheaper than he liked, but cheap got you through the detectors at customs. 

Cassian listened for the running water before changing into his pajamas. They felt like his day clothes when he put his parka back on. He stood, dirty clothes in hand—how did they do laundry here? How often? Sometimes Cassian hadn't changed for weeks, sometimes he'd lost count. Mirian seemed like she'd care, though. Would she kick him out if he didn't keep clean? Cassian chuckled at the thought. 

He heard a bout of coughing from the fresher, deep from the lungs. He stopped laughing. 

She wouldn't cough all night, would she? Cassian refused to sleep with ear plugs on principle. Maybe he'd just have to deal with it. The water shut off. Not wanting to be caught standing, he draped his muddy pants over his bag, pushing them back from his pillow.

The fresher door slid open with a shuddering scrape. It should be re-oiled. Mirian reappeared with her outer clothes in hand, including her hood; long, dark hair hung down her back in a loose braid. She opened her desk-chest, folded and replaced some of her clothes, and draped her ashy trousers over the wooden chair. 

"You can put your dirty clothes here," she said with her back turned. "I'll wash it all tomorrow if I have time. Not all days are this messy."

Cassian's face burned as Mirian checked the locks on the door and then the window: thick, grimy glass instead of mud and pebbles. She pulled the ratty curtain tightly shut and tucked it into a crack in the plaster.

"Things are quiet here," she murmured, "but we all keep cautious. You remember what I told you today?"

"If I'm not cautious I might be turned into peat."

"I told you to keep your mouth shut." Her fingers dug into the fabric of the curtain. "Among other things. This house is probably the safest place in the whole Sector. Bear in mind that that could change in an instant. You understand."

Cassian nodded, and waited: she looked like she wanted to say more. Nothing came. She only dimmed the lamp that sat near the stove—soft, deliberate steps near silent without her boots—and sat on the bed with her legs dangling off.

"You'll move the droid where you will?"

"Yes."

She paused, eyes darting. "... Is there anything else I can do for you today?"

"No."

Cassian met her bloodshot gaze. 

"Goodnight, then. Skova."

"Goodnight."

Mirian curled up into the single pillow under the single coverlet, curled tightly next to the wall. Cassian frowned. She'd be colder there. 

He draped his muddy trousers over the opposite chair and set his boots by the front door. Mirian's sat on the other side. They'd run into each other if they both had to get up in the night. He pulled the C-Series closer to his mat, running his hands lightly over its buttons and lights. Medium heat setting. Fine enough. He wrapped the blanket around his coat and lay down. 

Even with the mat, the ground was harder than he'd braced himself for. COlder, too—though nicer, somehow, than the cramped stuffy quarters in the belly of the ship. At least he could stretch out his back. But whenever he tried the backs of his legs froze. So he curled up again, quite as cramped as he'd been most of the past week. 

This morning. The ship was this morning. It had been a forever. Not a forever. Just a time. 

Kaaza was in Sector Two. Their intel was in Sector Two. Their maps, their comms. Everything. 

Cassian was in Sector One. 

That was okay. Okay. All that separated them was a ridge, after all. And Mirian said it could be crossed. Further North, probably—unforgivable idiocy, Cassian thought, to try to climb in secret over Golgaelar Hill. But would secrecy matter more than speed? And Cassian was Second now. Would he even find the time?

Golgaelar Hill. Strange name. He shuddered with cold. Who named it? Doesn't matter. It sounded hateful coming from Riceter's mouth. These men we call our friends. Brothers. Sons. They had crumpled like puppets without their strings. Sergo Yarem was one of them. Which one was he? Where had he stood? In the middle for all to see? Or shafted to the side, watching his sister scream from a distance? Did he see Cassian standing there behind the front row? Standing alone—behind the front row with the other families mourning. 

Strange that no one else had tried to fight. Maybe they had. Cassian hadn't been paying attention. Maybe they had. Maybe Mirian just played favorites. 

Not that it mattered. Even if the crowd overwhelmed the execution squad, backup would be close behind. They'd all have been killed anyway. They were as good as prisoners here. They had no power. 

Mirian did. Mirian who was called but not named; Mirian who wept and cooked for the woman she'd rushed to restrain. Our young Point, competent and loyal. Karlon Riceter knew her well. Karlon Riceter esteemed her highly. She had no right to be here. No right to cook for Sara and no right to tug the girl's braid. No right to whine. I can't help them when they're caught. Had she even tried? 

No, of course she wouldn't. She'd lose the esteem; she'd lose the house with the personal C-Series she hated. That droid was a privilege. She had no right to complain. How many others froze through the night? How many others slept on the ground, and what would their Point do for them once winter fell? No telling—might even be his job by then. Get fucked. 

Don't get ahead of yourself. Don't get too worked up over a handful of people you don't know. You're here to get your intel and get out. You're here on a mission. Maybe it'd help to kill her in her sleep. For the mission, of course. Nothing personal. Just like the men they'd shot up on the ridge. The men awaiting justice. The men we call our friends. They'd crumpled like puppets. Crumpled down the opposite cliff. He saw them like shadows. Fuzzy, burgundy shadows backlit in red, shadows through leafless brambles, crumpling, and crumpling again—

Cassian sat up. He was covered in sweat. He threw off his blanket, threw off his parka, stumbled to the fresher. He hadn't taken that shower. He hadn't brushed his teeth. He'd have to wait until morning. Shaky hands forced on a faucet ringed with white crystals. He splashed water against his face. It was ice cold. Fuck, he was so thirsty. He drank out of cupped hands, drank until the water ran down his forearms and the dryness of his mouth relented. He turned off the water and stared in the mirror. Gaunt eyes with dark circles. His whole body sagged with exhaustion. 

Without the running water, he heard breath from the other room. Uneven breath, again and again. Cassian wiped his face with his shirt and leaned against the fresher doorway. 

Mirian hadn't moved from her spot by the wall. Another breath. Shuddering, shaking the mattress below. A sniffle so faint he could only just hear it. Muffled in fabric. Cassian felt sick to his stomach. 

He had to cross the room; he had to put his coat back on. He heard her crying clearer here. He tried to be quiet. He wanted to scream. 

Cassian turned the droid's setting to High; it hummed a little louder. When he wrapped his pillow around his head he heard its whirring only faintly. Resting on his arm—he knew it'd prick and ache tomorrow. At least the sound was drowned.  

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Before him stood a man more bent, more pale, more haggard and disheveled than he'd ever seen, not in all his time as a bounty hunter. And—dank farrik—that was him. He grit his teeth and took a chunk of his hair between his fingers, and raised the scissors.

Snip. A good two inches of dark brown fell to the dingy and age-streaked polycarbonate sink. Din looked back up. He'd cut too high. The half of his hair not laced with his lashes stuck out choppy and slanted against his sweat-beaded temples. He flexed his fingers, trying to swallow down the panic bubbling in his chest, and cut the other side.

Snip. His face felt cooler now, but without the overgrown bangs his skin looked paler and his eyes darker than ever. Rings of gray and purple hung beneath his sockets with nothing to distract from them but the uneven rectangle that reluctantly lay on his high forehead.

Dimly—very, very far off, a neighboring galaxy away and its silvery slivers of stars—he remembered his mother, the one he'd been born with. She'd been tall, dark-eyed and dark-haired and pretty to his childish eyes. Such a handsome face, she whispered to him with his cheeks in her hands. She said it like it was a secret, something fun and exciting for his ears only, and the promise of more. Strong forehead, like your father. And she'd press kiss after kiss between his brows, holding him firmly in place as he squirmed.

He'd always wondered if she had survived, somehow. His father, too. Long after he'd forgotten his love for them, he still pondered their fate. It had probably been bleak; the Mandalorians who found him found few other survivors. They'd have to have been very, very fast runners.

Snip. His hair had grown bushy around the ears; Din hated having these things so close. The helmet muffled most sounds for him and made them tolerable, if a bit monotonous. He hated how each swipe of the blades echoed through his ear drum and reverberated in his skull. It was enough to drive a man insane. His hands were shaking.

"Damn it!" The scissors hit the sink with a clatter. He'd nicked himself. The wetness in his ear felt foreign and made him shiver; his blood looked almost indigo in the cold, blue-ish light. He found a wad of cotton in the cabinet and pressed it against his head. He should have left his hair alone when he had the chance.

But he couldn't stop now. Even he had that much self-respect.

Snip. Snip. Snip. He took deep breaths, regular breaths. His hands steadied. He didn't nick himself again, not even when he had to reach around to the nape of his neck where the metal felt coldest. Locks of hair landed in his undershirt and cloak; he'd have trouble cleaning that out later. It'd be a very scratchy next few days but at least he'd be cooler. He set the scissors down on the sink—more gently this time—and brushed what he could from the fabric. And a little less dimly—a candle in the next room—he saw a little green fist clutching a clump of dark brown hair, waving it like a flag.

Where'd you find that, kid? Din scooped him up in one arm. I think you've been climbing where you shouldn't. Hm?

He only cooed and stared up at him with those enormous, dark eyes. He was smiling, Din thought; he could see his tiny teeth peeking out. Hell, the kid knew he shouldn't be crawling onto the fresher sink. Did he care? Apparently not.

Give it to me. Grogu only clenched his fist tighter. Open, Din said louder, holding out his other hand. Grogu's fingers relaxed, leaving the fine strands to fall between Din's cloak and his cuirass. He sighed. Thank you.

Din lurched to turn on the water and leaned over the sink, gripping the sides with both hands. A cold flash washed over him even as he sweat through his clothes. He was not gonna be sick. He was not gonna be sick. The dark strands floated down the drain. Dimly, far off, he remembered that hair belonged in the waste basket. Not the plumbing. But by the time he remembered it was almost all gone, along with his cold sweats.

He went to clean the scissors on his cloak of any remnants and noted a rusty smear at the tip of each blade. It was his blood, now dried. Some of it had gotten into the rest of his hair, no doubt. He'd have to shower it out later. For now he only ran them underneath the cold water, dried them with his cloak, and put them back in the cabinet. Bottom shelf, though he couldn't remember if they went in front of or behind the package of bacta patches. Not that it mattered.

Satisfied that he'd more or less cleaned up his mess, Din looked back in the mirror. A crack job. Clumps of hair still stuck out at odd angles—not to mention the too-short, too-crooked bangs in the middle of his forehead. But when he put on his helmet, all of it disappeared: the haircut, the dark circles, the flushed and pale patches. The cut on his ear. Only the cool blue light on polished beskar, impenetrable by blasters and sabers and scissors alike. He slipped on his gloves, opened the door, and turned off the light.

"Find what you need?" Boba asked him back in the cockpit, helmet still fixed ahead.

"Yes," Din answered. He sat in the passenger's seat and gripped the armrests with a silent, shuddering sigh. "Yes. Thank you."

Ageless, timeless voice from the unwrinkled face. He blinks. He doesn't understand. 

"Cassian. Well—" he chokes. "I'm Cassian. Andor."

He frowns at the sounds falling out of his mouth. That's not right. 

"What are you doing?" he asks again. He's so, so tired.

The child points to the sky. "It's Winterfall."

He raises his eyes to the red evening, to the indigo sphere belted with manmade orange. Gold filaments race along like lightning. 

As his eyes lift, the sky falls over the ocean like bedsheets settling. 

"Come on!"

He grabs the child, he tugs on the wrist, tugs too hard, he runs to the mountains. His knees bend again. His weight shifts. They run to the mountains. The child runs one step behind. 

The ridge is sloping upwards; the ridge stands vertically. Stairs hewn into rock. Who'd hewn them? he wondered. What were their names?—Who worked on the stairs that lead to nowhere. 

He's standing still, he realizes. His face burns. He climbs with the certainty of the dreamer who knows they can't fall. Five steps, fifty.

the kid! he realizes. His face burns. He climbs back down with the shame of the deserter. Five steps, fifty. The sky falls and the sea swells. A wave rolls on. 

"Hurry up!" He pushes the child up before him. He'll climb up after. He won't look back; if he looks away he'll look back and see the child disappear. Almost to the top. He looks down. They've climbed a whole mile. His fingers are numb. He's going to fall but a hand reaches over the top of the cliff; the hand tugs on his wrist, tugs him over the edge to a narrow, flat peak with room just to stand. Three sheer sides drop down around them. The sky still falls.

"Thank you." He sits next to the child, legs kicking and dangling off the edge. "What's your name?"

"Will. What's your name?"

"Amrod." His face burns.

The sky falls closer. They watch it in silence. 

"Jump, Amrod."

"What do you mean, jump?"

"Jump," Will says again in that ageless, timeless voice. "Before Winterfall can catch you. I can't help you if you get caught."

He looks over the edge over the toes of his boots. But Will wouldn't lie to him, not with that voice. He stands and lets his knees crumple, limp down the sheer ridge. Will's face disappears. He's falling. He can feel the ground rising close beneath his back. He could always feel the eyes on him. He was falling. He was falling. 

He was on the ground. 

He lay there, one heartbeat, five, racing. He waited for the pain to follow the darkness in his eyes. But all he felt was stiff. 

So Cassian opened his eyes. The sky was reddish and low to the ground—plaster ceiling above a sleeping droid. His limbs were lead; he bent his elbows and knees like he'd twist durasteel into a curved panel for the hull of a ship. He sat up. Numbers flashed duly on the droid’s belt. Three-thirty in the morning. Were these Standard Hours? Cassian didn't know. He got up—the blanket had gotten tangled around his waist—and put his boots back on. It was dark outside the window. 

To his right Mirian slept fast, close to the wall and with an arm stretched behind her in the empty space. Must be nice to have so much room. 

Cassian opened the door and set one of Mirian's shoes in the doorway. He stood just outside the house. The cold hit him like a shock wave, blurring his vision and freezing his eyelashes. Cassian took a deep lungful of fresh, frigid air. His lungs contracted, forcing it out and desperate for more. So he breathed again, and again, deeply, slowly. Slowly his eyes adjusted, though hazy with cold, through the blue light of the South to the speckles of gold light dotting the hills of the West, filaments at insulated doors and window frames, through to another moon hanging over the marshes. Small or far away, full and reflecting the light of their distant sun and Topron's vivid, violet gasses. Stars twinkled far behind. He'd see them better further North, far from these cracked plaster lights and the Empire city behind. He'd make it someday. He'd see them in fuller darkness with his back to the light. Around him the marsh would glisten with moonshine on the stagnant water.

Moonshine on the Great Serpent's scales... Cassian couldn't remember. Was she asleep with the rest of us? Or swimming through her marsh, unbothered and glistening?—

Cassian should be asleep; he should be inside. The threshold was too cold for him to stay. 

He pushed the door open again, one hand on the inner edge and the other on the formless scratches, faintly gold and silver like opal ore. They sent a shiver down his spine. The door needed repainting. 

Cassian paused on the doormat: Mirian was still asleep and breathing quiet, even breaths. He let the door close and locked it again, and loosened his boots. It was too early to feel rested but too late to go back to sleep and too cold to do either. He lay back down on his mat with his boots still on and nestled deeper into his parka. The blanket had grown cool in his absence. 

The droid whirred soullessly at his back. Cassian could lie here another hour until he was warm enough to work. What time did Mirian get up? Should he get up the same time? Or earlier? He should have asked. And he should have showered; his scalp felt grimy. He could shower in the morning. He could shower now. It was too cold. And then he'd have to ask about that moon, ask for its name with its silver lilac behind his closed eyes. 

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Cassian shook his head in disgust. "I've slept five days. That's enough."

"You should pretend, then." Kaaza's eyes were still closed but his voice suggested he'd been awake a long time. "Too many terns around."

"Shrieker, too."

"Shrieker?"

"Think so," Cassian nodded. "I'll—"

"He might end up on the other side of the planet." Kaaza rolled his shoulders once, twice. "But terns'll be everywhere. Focus on them for now. Go to sleep. If you can."

He said no more. Cassian's fingers flexed at his side. He pulled his duffle bag closer to his chest. "Yes, sir."

This wasn't a mission for two. He could have done it alone. He'd been alone on Ord Mantell and on Darkknell, too—each mission successful; each mission swarming with Imps. General Draven trusted him that far. You're a capable officer, Andor, he'd said before the pick-up. One of the most capable we have. But this isn't about capability; it's about resources.

The Rebellion couldn't afford another drop into this place, and Cassian agreed. His opinion, they'd already wasted too much time and effort, too many good agents' lives. But no one had asked for his opinion. All they'd asked was that their Plan B be stuck with Plan A all along. 

But as for "Plan B," they hadn't assigned another lieutenant. They'd assigned a captain: Captain Andrew Kaaza, local legend after that business on Ilddam that cost him a chunk out of his leg. This wasn't lost on him. 

He folded himself over his bag like the twi'leks nearby, his face resting against the dirty, discolored canvas. It stank with sweat and age but at least it was darker here, and cooler, and it muffled the droning of the hull. Snoring, sniffling, rushed whispers, and always that soul-crushing hum. He'd be working with all this soon; all of them. Hopefully not too long but it was impossible to tell with these things. But—they'd planned. They had their codes; they had their targets; they had their names... 

Far off and dulled like velvet a child was crying. Its caretakers shushed, then cooed, then made nameless, placeless noises. The child laughed. 

Cassian wondered if it was the same child he'd seen before. The black-haired boy from the corner. Probably not. There were plenty of children here. Too many. And that little boy was too old to be laughing like this: broken, hearty, hiccupy laughter that Cassian thought belonged to babies. Not that he had much experience.

but still, he thought. it'd be nice. for it to be the same. just so he could picture. it wasn't that big and they weren't that far. in the belly of the ship.

His eyes moved behind his lids; his fingers twitched as he slept. But any dreams he had were muted and strange and felt like he was swimming, slowly, in the ocean's deepest recesses. The hold's soft cacophony rolled like waves, like wind on the surface—water pressure, maybe. Wakefulness afterwards was never much different. Always the same.

Always, except for now. Now he was spiralling down, down, pulled down, pulled by—something, maybe up instead. A fisherman reeling him in, a hook embedded in his guts, heaving up, jerking right, jerking left, against the ground, against the wall and Cassian opened his eyes to the darkness of his duffle bag. Sweating, but not sure what he'd dreamt of. He never remembered, not this week, not on this journey to Veneskar. Draven called it the galaxy's custodial closet. And maybe it was—none of the agents they'd sent in had ever come back to deny it. For now all Cassian could do was believe as he hunkered down in this in-between place with these in-between people, emerging from the in-between of asleep and awake. 

But the pulling didn't fade. They'd hit gravity, Cassian realized with a shock of heat and then a swiftly spreading chill. They were descending. He raised his head—pounding, aching—and saw Kaaza—wide-awake, wide-eyed—watching him.

"Sleep okay?"

"Fine." His neck ached, too. He shouldn't have slept bent over like that; he shouldn't have fled that protruding bolt. "We landing?"

"In a few minutes." 

Cassian rolled his neck and flexed his fingers. How was Kaaza keeping so still? His legs were just as crumpled-up as before. Cassian checked his watch. That was almost four hours ago.

And it was more, much more than a few minutes before they touched the ground. All the while, Kaaza stayed still—even when another bout of turbulence sent the whole hold shouting and Cassian's head rocketing into the wall. Right against the bolt. There was a sickening lurch. Then it was still.

Everything was still, everything for a long time, and silent. The soul-crushing hum was silent; the passengers silent; the passengers petrified. The hold held its breath, ready to vomit them all out but not sure when. There were voices—officers, mostly. They all sounded the same in their stiff, Imperial poshness. You didn't distinguish them by tone nor volume nor cadence but by rank, by the haughtiness in their voice. Occasionally, the familiar staccato of a stormtrooper taking orders and then the rumbling, the hissing, the groaning of moving metal; more Imperial voices beyond. 

And suddenly, light flooded in. No sight of the outside yet but soon the whiff of new air. Not fresh; new. The wave of warmth returned and with it the chill in his blood. Cassian shuddered. 

They hadn't come for fresh air, he reminded himself sternly. The sooner they were back in a cavernous, foul-smelling ship, off-world-bound, the better. 

Stormtroopers motioned people up. Single-file. Hurry up. More lines. . . You! Wait. . . But their impatience proved pointless against the passengers' stiff legs, scattered, threadbare bags, and unruly children. Everything was still, and then everything was slow. The veiled woman and her little boy were among the first to leave. The man with the gaunt eyes followed. He looked even thinner standing up, not much taller than Cassian was, and he gave one last sweep of his eyes around the ship. They all disappeared into the vague, gray light. Maybe Kaaza was right. Worry about the terns for now.

Now and again people stumbled on still-dormant feet: they paused for balance, raised a hand; a trooper jabbed them with his blaster. Now and again Cassian heard their shins hit the metal below. But he dared not watch too closely. For every trooper forcing passengers out there was another who surveyed the emptying hold with empty, impenetrable, helmeted eyes, blasters raised. And they got closer. 

They ushered up the twi'leks, then the two half-ration men: each was wrapped in what had once been rich blue robes before whatever tragedy had dirtied and tattered them. Cassian didn't waste time wondering what it was. A trooper stalked towards them with heavy footfalls.

"Get up." He kicked Kaaza in the left shin; he clenched his fists but otherwise didn't wince. He only struggled to his feet, slung his duffle bag over his shoulder, and extended Cassian a hand with a smile that betrayed neither fear nor pain.

"Up you come, Skova," he said leisurely.

Cassian's head grazed the roof; Kaaza was bent over in front of him. The stormtrooper stooped, too—clunky and comical in all that armor. No one in their right mind would have laughed. 

The light was growing bolder. It reflected brighter off the dull, smudged metal until the trooper stepped aside, Kaaza stepped onto the boarding ramp, and Cassian followed close behind—kriff, it was fucking bright. He hadn't realized just how dark it was, there in the belly of the ship. Now, with just a foot on the ramp, he flinched, blinked, squinted. Everyone and everything became formless reams of darkness.

A blaster barrel poked his chest.

"Stop! Open your hands."

Cassian complied with a pounding heart. He couldn't even fucking see.

"Move along."

He continued down the boarding ramp, still a little blind and heart still pumping double-time. Kaaza was waiting for him at the bottom.

"Keep your head on straight, Skova."

Damn him. Cassian kept quiet and observed the place like he'd come alone.

He noticed, firstly, that the light was dimming: back from the initial shock of white to a cool, ashy gray. Not just the light. Everything. Clouds that blanketed the whole sky with neither wrinkle nor blemish, long lines of refugees in worn-out clothes, stiffly uniformed officers, and finally a high wire fence and a charcoalish ridge in the distance. The weight of sameness weighed heavy on his chest, heavy on his lungs. His eyes strained for color; his ribs ached.

Secondly, he and Kaaza wouldn't be settling in any time soon.

Three tables on Cassian's right headed three lines at least twenty meters long, winding to and fro like sluggish serpents. More people than had been in the ship. Had other transports landed at the same time? Perhaps a little before. This was a mass arrival, then. Maybe that would be better for the mission. Already the officers' postures were slackening—by fractions of degrees, but slackening nonetheless. Yes, this would be better. They were directed into the right line. 

Far, far ahead was the little family and the man still watching with the distrustful eyes. They were dismissed and stood off by the fence amidst the growing crowd of the approved. On the right, a gaggle of the rejected. Some paced back and forth; others sat on the ground, knees to their chests or heads resting on their arms, their bags, each other. What would he and Kaaza do, then, if they ended up with these?

They shouldn't, he told himself. They had their intel. They had their names. Why, then, was he already planning an escape with three back-ups? And why did he have to keep reminding himself he was beholden to the Captain's orders and not the other way around?

No, all they could do now was wait—and wait they did. Cassian's feet ached and then throbbed, sharp pains like spikes shooting through his boots but he didn't complain. He didn't shift his weight; he didn't shuffle his feet. This custodial closet of an Imp hideout and Senate scam wasn't getting anything from him. They throbbed for minutes and then tens of minutes, and then almost two hours before they were next in line. Not at the table yet but facing a metal plate in the ground flanked by two stormtroopers. Directly ahead was a droid scanner. 

"Move alone. Stop there."

Kaaza was up first to stand on the metal plate. The droid faced him squarely. 

"No weapons?" asked the trooper on their right. "No comms, transceivers, explosive material. . . ?"

He continued with his list of illicit items; Kaaza continued, "No, no, no. . ." The droid scanned him head to toe with a frail blue light. It sank, and sank, and sank—

—And the sensors went off.

"What's that?"

"Identified: unidentified metalloid."

The trooper shook his head with a sigh and nodded to his comrade. "Roll his pants up."

It turned out to be less of a roll and more of a yank. Kaaza stood still as ever.

"What is it?"

"Cybernetic implant." The second trooper pulled Kaaza's pant leg back down. "He's clear. Move along."

And Cassian took his place on the metal plate, will steeled for an uneventful crossing. He lingered a few feet behind; Kaaza waved him over without so much as a glance.

There, the officer—customs officer, then—scrolled up and down through his translucent holopad. Kaaza watched him with an amiable smile, sparing Cassian the burden of being pleasant, as the officer was transformed before their very eyes: from a tired young man with grayish skin and slightly slouching posture to an Imperial Lieutenant, a military man and the fingertip of the most powerful army in the galaxy. His back straightened. His eyes hardened. His slack lips drew tightly shut and taut over his thin mouth. 

"Vaslin Kiyo?"

"Yes, sir."

"Assigned Sector Two?"

"Yes, sir."

The thin line drew tighter. "You've been scheduled for arrival with the Volunteer Shuttle, that is, Shuttle B-18, which is scheduled for arrival three days from now."

If Kaaza frowned, it was vague and brief; the smile won out in the end. "I understand, but my friend and I needed transport as soon as—"

"The instructions were quite clear," said the officer firmly. "Trooper! Escort them to the holding area. And don't worry." He smiled at them, a thin smile that meant no goodwill. "We'll get you both sorted."

And so there they were, in the "holding area" with the restless rejected—but not among them. Cassian and Kaaza both faced away from them and away from each other. Instead Cassian occupied himself with the prison block of a building ahead into which the customs officer had disappeared. Dark gray, plainly edifaced, and imposing. Behind it, maybe a mile, stood a cluster of tall, spindly spires. They glowed blue and white like living needles and almost pierced the force field overhead; he thought he saw faint shimmers at their highest points. 

This was Kepnos, the capital, Veneskar's Imperial city and one of the Empire's Wilderned Wonders. That's how they advertised it, anyway. Now that Cassian was here, however, it didn't seem like that much of a wonder—at least, not so far as Imperial grandeur was concerned—and the landscape didn't seem like that much of a wilderness. It was just empty. A wasteland, an ashtray. And the shade of Kepnos did nothing to soften that prison-block building of harsh duracrete, nor the apparent hole in their intel. His intel, actually.

How could he have missed this?

No, he hadn't missed it. He'd gathered what he could; he'd gathered what they asked. He'd followed their orders and given his. Everything was ready. He'd done it right. And he was angry to have to amend his escape plans. Not that he had many options at the moment. 

"Cheer up, Skova," Kaaza said out of the corner of his mouth. "I'm sure this is all some misunderstanding. Misunderstandings happen. But I will be sure to check with whoever mishandled it."

"Or," Cassian said heatedly, "there was no mishandling. There's too much for them to keep track of; they did the best with what they've been handed. It's never enough."

"Maybe not." He shrugged. "But since it's their job I'd like to—"

At that moment the duracrete opened its mouth, just enough to spit out their customs officer. His tightly drawn lips had curled down unpleasantly, sourly, like they'd been poisoned with a perpetual distaste for life. He approached them without a glance and stood at attention. No more slouching for him. Cassian himself corrected his posture, squaring his shoulders, raising his chin. Waiting. Silent. 

Finally, more movement from his periphery.

The duracrete opened once more, not to spit but to reveal: a man taller than the officer, taller than Cassian, not gangly but graceful. Subtle grace, a freedom, an exclusive, elite leisure to his limbs. His dark hair was fashionably slicked down and his face was dreadfully pale. He wore no hat. 

He ambled over to them with no particular speed and stopped with no particular suddenness, looking them over with mild, gray eyes. No creases in their corners. Cassian knew him before he even opened his mouth.

"Karlon Riceter, Imperial Commandant." He shook their hands. "You seem to have upset Lieutenant Ikov's delicate constitution. To what end, gentlemen?"

Kaaza volunteered. "I apologize, sir. My friend and I boarded the wrong transport."

"Is that so?" Riceter shot the lieutenant a look. Languid but withering.

"The next work shuttle doesn't arrive for three days," Ikov supplied.

"So, so..." Riceter looked back to Cassian and Kaaza in turn. "Well, Mr. ...?"

"Kiyo, sir."

"Well, Mr. Kiyo, I'm sure there's a perfectly logical explanation. Did you not receive your boarding numbers?"

"We did, and our IDs. But we had to leave as quickly as we could and that meant the refuge shuttle. Circumstances, you know. I thought for sure we'd contacted someone properly."

Cassian stared at the ground, blood boiling. Kaaza knew damn well Cassian's Sector Two contact had been MIA for months now. Damn well.

Riceter smiled. "Circumstances?"

"Flooding, sir. It was too dangerous to stay."

"But surely," his smile widened, "if you're willing enough to volunteer here, in this pit, you'd have no qualms staying to help your own people."

"You know Eleos, sir." Kaaza's face screwed up in disgust. "Empire hasn't stabilized it yet. No law and order. Skova and I are happy to help as long as we have clear direction. And a civilized environment."

There was a moment of silence just a little too long.

"You see, Lieutenant?" Riceter had a handsome face, Cassian supposed, but somehow smiling didn't become him. "Nothing to worry about."

"Yes, Commandant."

"And, Lieutenant?"

"Commandant."

"Alert Ordo and guide Mr. Kiyo to his station. Immediately."

"Yes, Commandant."

Kaaza slung his bag over his shoulder again; Ikov moved to lead him away. Immediately. Cassian began to follow.

But there was a hand digging into his shoulder—long fingers, biting pressure. 

"And where are you going, little friend?"

Cassian bit back the blood threatening to boil over. 

"Kiyo and I were assigned together. Sector Two, supply distribution."

"And your identification?"

Cassian handed him the disk from his breast pocket. Riceter unlocked it, held it in the palm of his hand, expanded the faint blue image—leaving Cassian face to face with his own alias.

Amrodoro Skova, the real one, or what was real before Rebel technicians had gotten their hands on this disk. They'd darkened the eyes, narrowed the jaw, even added a shadow of facial hair, but there was only so much they could do without compromising its authenticity. For five whole heartbeats they stood there, silent, gazing at the effigy. 

Might Riceter have seen Skova already? The dreadful thought crossed his mind like a shock of ice water. Maybe he had. Maybe he knew what Skova looked like. Or maybe the real Skova was injured or dead in the floods. Perhaps it'd been reported. Perhaps—

"I'm afraid there's been a mistake."

The air was sucked from Cassian's lungs.

"You've been reassigned, Mr. Skova." Riceter locked the disk again; the image disappeared. 

"Reassigned?"

"Hm, yes..." he said leisurely. "Sector One. You've been approved and appointed Second."

"This is the first I'm hearing about it," Cassian challenged, trying his best to keep polite. Riceter seemed unfazed. 

"Well, of course, but if you and Mr. Kiyo had just waited on Eleos two days more you would have been properly updated."

"Well," he nodded. He had no idea what the hell he was talking about. "Well, that... is a great honor."

"Indeed," Riceter smiled. "We believe you'll be very useful. Sector One has lacked a Second for far too long; I can think of no one better to fill its shoes."

Cassian nodded a little too awkwardly. If Riceter noticed, he didn't comment on it—but his eyes flickered to Cassian's right hand and his fingers twitching against his thigh. Cassian stopped. Immediately.

"You know where Sector One is?"

"Uh—no—"

"Sector One," Riceter turned him by the shoulder with that same biting force, "is all of what you see here and up to that ridge. The closest and oldest part of the Center. I hope you appreciate its history. Troopers!"

The two wandering nearby stood at attention. They were both, incidentally, much bigger and much taller than Cassian. And much better armed.

"Lead Mr. Skova to the Mirian house."

"Yes, sir."

"And I recommend, Skova," Riceter continued, "that you befriend your Point. I believe you'll find much to learn."

Cassian didn't know what to make of that, much less how to respond. But he was spared the difficulty—just enough time for a vague nod before a blaster jabbed him right between his shoulder blades. 

He forced his knees to move and his feet to march. The gates slid open with a mighty creak. Flanked by stormtroopers, Cassian stumbled forward into the sprawling, ashy, bone-chilling Refuge Center. Alone. 

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But he looked back anyway. Kaaza was on the other side, doing who knows what. Doing, actually, what the job entailed in the first place. He started walking again. So did she.

"Much travel between them?"

"Not much."

"Because of the ridge?"

"Sure."

"So there's no way through?"

"Go try it yourself if you're so curious," she snapped. 

Was that permission? "I think my Point doesn't want me running off."

Mirian shook her head. He couldn't see her face. "You're right, Skova. Maybe you are a fast learner. Or a flatterer, at least."

They reentered the main road just feet from the gate. Cassian recalled their meeting. Dawdler. Liar. This made three titles she'd gifted him today. How generous. 

"To my knowledge," she continued, "there's no pass through for almost a mile North. But you can climb over—if you're daring, and if you have a good pair of boots, and if your hands don't shake. There are plenty of places to slip and fall, and fewer to recover yourself."

Cassian paused. "Have you done it?"

Mirian held up some token Cassian couldn't see; the gate was opened with an ear-crushing screech. He caught up with her on the other side. 

"High-clearance volunteers don't need to climb the ridge," she said finally. "There are military transports that wrap around the Southernmost end, and travelling is rare enough as it is."

Something about that answer didn't seem right. Something about her voice set Cassian on edge. But the conversation ended. Troopers ambled on all sides. Dawdlers.

They passed by the ship that had brought him here alongside half a dozen identical transports. Beyond another vibroware fence was another, larger landing pad: a gray sea of cargo ships or a graveyard teeming with tepid life; low-ranking officers stacked newly-arrived supply crates, all painted black and embossed with the white Imperial Crest. Hundreds, maybe thousands if Cassian had the time to count. A third of them or so had some abbreviated Aurebesh stamped across the Crest; these were stacked separately and too far away for Cassian to read them. 

Mirian stopped in front of this second fence. Her posture, stiff yet swaying slightly, reminded Cassian of those short, leafeless trees where sparrows watched with liquid eyes. 

"We'll need to do it quickly, if we can. Morya Dweri will be waiting for us. She's—"

"Mirian! My dear, my dear..."

Mirian grabbed Cassian's coat and yanked him back. Ice spread in his stomach. Approaching them, graceful and awfully translucent in the waning afternoon light, was the Commandant. He wore a handsome, kindly smile that didn't suit him. Mirian didn't return it. Her jaw was clenched and her lips drawn tight as she saluted him. 

Cassian saluted, too. Calmly, mechanically, feeling—just for a second—like he was back on Ord Mantell, lightyears away. He'd been a government agent there; he'd been Willix then. No, named. No, pretending—but this wasn't the time. And it didn't matter.

"Commandant."

"Now, now, Mirian, no saluting between friends." He clasped her hand. Riceter pronounced her name with more precision and Imperial poshness than Cassian had. It sounded uglier, somehow. "And Mr. Skova... Fortune smiles indeed, that we meet again so soon. I take it you were delivered safely?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good, good." Commandant Riceter held out a gloved hand, the same he'd dug into Cassian's shoulder an hour and a half ago. Cassian shook it, firmly aware of the burning velvet of Mirian's eyes. 

"Were I not so... tied up, as it were," Riceter continued, "I would have escorted you myself. I always cherish a visit to the Mirian house." He turned to her. "And I congratulate you on your new partner; you must be very proud. And less lonely, perhaps."

Riceter's upper lip curled; Mirian's eyes narrowed for no more than a microsecond. Something was happening; somehting had happened. Cassian felt excruciatingly out of place. He folded his arms and shuffled his feet, determined to put some distance between them. 

"Thank you, Commandant. He shows much potential."

"I daresay he does," Riceter agreed. His colorless eyes examined Cassian like a museum exhibition. "Your record is marvelous; I find your work on Drangna particularly admirable. I knew as soon as I saw your file that you were destined for far greater than supply distribution. Not, of course, that the Empire misappreciates her distributers." He looked back to the first gate where a cluster of non-Imperials—other volunteers, Cassian assumed—had congregated around a stack of crates. "But there's something terribly lowly about such work. Don't you agree, Mr. Skova?"

Cassian carefully froze his face. "I don't call much labor lowly, sir."

"Spoken like a true Second," Riceter replied with another unattractive, ironic smile. "Yes, you will do well."

A subordinate officer with his cap pulled low over his eyes approached. He gave the Commandant a stiff bow before handing Mirian a datapad.

"Shipment, ma'am."

Cassian couldn't read it; the text was too small. But Mirian frowned and pursed her lips. She stopped reading and stared at the ground, as if she were trying to see through to the moon's churning core. 

"Commandant."

"Yes, Mirian?"

"This is fifteen hundred kilograms fewer than the last shipment," she said quietly.

"Is it? Oh dear, I've forgotten—" Cassian knew he hadn't forgotten at all. "Some of our transports are still... missing, shall we say. There was some hold-up along the way, can't imagine what. You'll receive the deficit within the week."

"I understand." And Cassian suspected she didn't understand at all. She signed the datapad with an uncommonly thin, black stylus and handed it back to the officer. She nodded to Cassian; they both turned to leave.

"Thank you, Commandant."

They waited for Riceter to dismiss them. He didn't.

"Speaking of supplies, my dear Mirian, the strangest thing happened this morning."

He liked to lengthen his s's, ugly and out of place with his crisp Coruscanti accent.

Mirian hesitated. "What's that, Commandant?"

"You know, my dear Mirian, that from this yard we deliver shipments to Kepnos as well as to the eight Sectors." He waited for her to nod.

"Yes, Commandant."

"And these shipments are distinguished from the rest by an embossed krill and peth, marked for Kepnos in particular."

Another pause. "Yes, Commandant."

"Well," he sighed, "this morning we received a shipment destined for Kepnos, along with the rest. Two workmen at about half-past ten discovered a crate with a severed lock, into which someone—or something—had broken while the workmen were distracted. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"

"No, Commandant."

"Alas, I thought not," he said with a faux-dejection. "In that case, you wouldn't mind that I've sent some troopers into your Sector? Along with five more security droids. We'll be searching the whole Center by the by, of course, but Sector One is closest to the looted shipment. Shipments, actually; this is the third incident within the last year alone. This could very quickly become a Center-wide epidemic. Nay, Empire-wide."

"Yes, Commandant."

"We are lucky, therefore," the Commandant continued, "that it is food alone the thieves are after. Eight loaves of bread and two air-dried fish, to be precise. We see all manner of blasters and blaster gas and power cells here, as well—better a starving thief than a violent and rebellious one, don't you agree?"

"Yes, Commandant." Cassian clenched his teeth. "But if I may request—I don't like shooting in my Sector. Especially from droids."

"Then let us hope the thieves come quietly. For thieves they are, I am sure. It would take three or four minds at least, not to mention hands, to navigate as successfully as these have. But, provided they cooperate, I can assure you: the Empire and her Emperor abhor senseless violence. As do I."

"Thank you, Commandant."

Riceter smiled. It was a vaguely fatherly smile despite the startling youth of his face; he didn't look a day older than thirty. There was nothing behind the eyes. Windows to the soul, Cassian thought distantly. These are mirrors, and the gray of the ashy landscape shines dull inside them. 

The slow whizzing of a speeder broke the tension, followed by the velvety hum of its engine idling. Cassian looked over his shoulder. It had come from the Southern side, in a narrow but worn tract of land between Kepnos and the Center. Several people were crushed into the back—including a tall, broad back with a long, black braid. Kaaza.

Cassian's insides lept, even as he kept his outsides very still. He knew with some certainty that he couldn't make contact on this outing—especially not with the mountain of a man loitering along the passenger's side. Taller than Kaaza with none of Riceter's leisurely grace, dressed in a clean gray suit that imitated the Imperial uniform. His eyes were fixed on Riceter, maybe Mirian and Cassian, too, and Cassian hated them. He hated the way he didn't seem to blink, the way he ignored the driver, the passengers, the workers. Not that any of them spoke to him. 

Riceter noticed him at the same time Cassian did. "You know how I love chatting with you, my dear Mirian, and Mr. Skova too, no doubt, but I'm afraid I must excuse myself. And Mirian," he added with a nod, "I'll be inviting you and your Second soon. I'd like him to see the aviary."

He waited. 

"It is well, Commandant."

"Splendid." He smiled with all the pleasure of a man who is regularly obeyed. "Until then, Mr. Skova."

"Until then."

The Commandant's eyes lingered on him before he turned to meet the man with the loathsome gaze. "Gallio! . . ."

Kaaza turned. He and Cassian locked eyes. A heartbeat.

"Don't dawdle, Skova." Mirian tugged on his sleeve. He would have slapped her hand away by pure instinct were she not already five feet ahead of him. He clenched his fists as he followed her to the cluster of volunteers. Sector One people, he assumed. Mirian gave instructions as if by rote; she never tripped over a word and the volunteers began to move before she really finished. Cassian looked back at Kaaza, back at Riceter and the mountain man. Their conversation was going well. 

"Are you listening, Skova?"

Cassian jerked his arm away before she could pull on his sleeve. "Yes."

"What did I just say?"

"We'll be manning the transport," Cassian said tiredly. 

Mirian narrowed her eyes. "Yes. Yes, we will. In the future, keep your eyes and ears on the task at hand, thank you."

"I heard you just fine—"

"Mirian?" Another voice, a new voice. Cassian looked back to the cluster: a woman with a kerchief framing her round face and a tired smile stood idle. She was young, not yet thirty, Cassian thought, and kept a bird-framed little girl with the same round face close at her side. 

Mirian shot him a look that meant no good will but ignored him for the moment. "Yes, Sara."

"Sergo and I usually man the transport—" Cassian raised an eyebrow. "—but if you say you are... he's not here yet but Sedra and I can still—"

Mirian walked to the woman's side until their shoulders were touching. "You'll have different work to do, Sara, and speed is of the essence."

"Do you want me to wait for Sergo—?"

"Sara." Mirian whispered in her ear so low Cassian couldn't put two words together. He could only watch as Sara's limbs froze, one by one, and then her face, and then her chest, until she didn't even breathe. 

"Go now," Mirian finished, resting a hand on the girl's head. Sara's limbs came to life again, janky and disjointed as an old droid, scooping the girl up in her arms and slipping back through the gate. Mirian watched them until her eyes glazed over.

Cassian was reluctant to speak; worse was standing in a daze. Dawdling. "What's that about?"

Mirian forced her head to move and her eyes to blink. Cassian thought again of that long-dormant droid.

"Get moving, Skova." Her voice was brittle. "We have work to do."

Tagged:

She feels it too and drops her gaze, tightening her grip on the cups of caf, pushing one of them into his hands. Her fingertips are warm to the touch. He shivers.

“Drink up; it’s cold out there.” She laughs again—with a nervous note Poe hadn’t heard before. “Black. Three sugars. Or whatever passes for sugar these days... You’re lucky I like you, Dameron.”

And she passes away into the stilted light of the narrow tunnel, out to the hangar where she spends her every waking hour, where the darkness is only just beginning to fade.

And Poe looks after her and sips his drink. Scalding still, and stomach-churning just like all Resistance caf. He has to admit, though: he’s fond of it. Not least because of her. Because she takes the time to fix it for him. Because of her warm fingers against his calloused skin, searing lightning, healing, burning—

He sighs and slams the steel door shut. He’s lucky she likes him. Lucky as hell.

*     *     *

By dinner time, the sky darkens. And after dinner it pours. Maker, it’s loud. So loud Poe almost can’t hear the rickety old caf machine starting up behind him. But he does hear it. He freezes, looks around, and there she is. Soaking wet from head to toe, leaving a puddle on the floor... That’ll be a slipping hazard, to be sure. Poe should let someone know. But for the time being, he... doesn’t really care. 

“For me?” He joins her at the machine, nudging her arm as she pours another two cups of caf. “You shouldn’t have.”

“Unfortunately not. It’ll be a late night and I need all the caffeine I can get.”

She pours a packet of “sugar” in each and a healthy dose of powdered cream. Poe’s close to her—their shoulders touch—but she insistently avoids his eyes. He pauses at that, distant, faint alarm bells ringing, but she’s a morning person, after all. Maybe she’s just tired. Maybe Indigo Squadron’s a bit more banged up than usual.

“You keep drinking caf this late, I’ll be waking you up in the mornings,” he jokes. She doesn’t answer. “Or I could... I could stay up with you, if you want. Help you finish your work.”

Another pause. “Thanks,” she says quietly. “But you’re a pilot, not a mechanic. This is a shift I’ll just have to work—”

“Or I could just hang out, keep you company—”

“Poe!” She slams her hand down on the counter hard enough to shake the cups of caf. “Just—please, Poe—go to bed and leave me alone.”

“Oh. I understand—”

But she doesn’t stay to let him finish; she presses down the lids, shoots him one last look, and leaves him at the caf machine. Out of the mess hall, out to the hangar and the darkness and the pouring rain. Poe raps his knuckles against the metal, licking his lips. 

Fuck. 

That did not go well. 

What the hell’s the matter with her? He’s her... her friend; he wasn’t... unfriendly, was he? No, he’s done her worse before. Hell, he cussed her out this morning—and she just laughed while her eyes glittered. But she’d never snapped at him before. No, maybe she’s just—

Really not a night owl. 

“Hey, Dameron! Dameron! Earth to Poe?”

He blinks and stares at the corner of the mess hall, his eyes for some reason struggling to focus. About six other pilots are crowded around their favorite table—the one he’d been sitting at before his—uh—lapse in judgment. Lastik’s waving him over with exaggerated landing signals and a tone you’d only take with children. 

“Fucked it up with another one, huh?”

“No, no, I—” Poe shakes his head. Another one? The hell’s he talking about? No, fuck— 

“It’s... not like that.”

“Can’t charm ’em all, hotshot. You in for a round of jet juice?”

“Not tonight.”

“Aw, come on, Dameron. Pure Jelucan!”

Poe glowers at him. Isn’t it obvious he doesn’t want to talk? He’s done. Fucking. Done— 

“Jelucan or not, I’m gonna hit the rack.”

“Hit the rack? Fuckin’ eight-thirty—”

“I’ve got an early morning tomorrow,” Poe interrupts with a curt pat on his shoulder. He doesn’t wait for him to respond before heading back to the barracks. 

What an ass.

He shakes his head. It doesn’t matter. But even when he’s stripped down to his underwear and splashed his face with cold water, he can’t shake that feeling, that somehow all of this has gone terribly wrong. And even when he’s lying in bed at fucking nine at night, he can’t shake the image of her storming away. Her eyes had been red and watery and he’d chalked it up to fatigue. He wasn’t so sure anymore. 

If he were a better man, maybe, he’d get dressed again, head down to the hangar. Hold up his hands and apologize. Cut the jokes, commit, listen better. He almost does, too. Alternatively, though, it’s impossible. Disastrous, absurd. There’s no fixing this. Not right now. Not at nine at night. 

So he pulls his pillow over his head and screws his eyes shut. 

*     *     *

There’s no knock on the door come five a.m, but Poe’s up anyway. His neck is stiff and his feet are cold but his body’s wide awake. Maybe he doesn’t need a wake-up call anymore; maybe she’s fucked up his circadian rhythm for good. He can squeeze his eyes shut as much as he wants, but there’s no forcing himself back to sleep. 

So he sits up, gets dressed. Washes his face, makes his bed. The light is still cold in the hallway and barely there in the East. He can see the hangar from here, and the Indigo Squadron where she works. There’s movement and the briefest glimpse of the top of her head. Everything in him clenches. 

Does she remember? Can she feel it? Feel it in her gut as she worked through the night, as it haunted his sleep and settled in his joints? He should ask her, just to be sure, but he’s not sure where to begin. 

So he doesn’t, not when he returns to the hangar with two cups of caf—black, three sugars in one hand; one sugar and cream in the other. Poe clears his throat but she doesn’t hear him, her whole upper body beneath the X-Wing. He sighs.

“Morning, sunshine.”

“Damn it,” he hears, slightly muffled, as she pulls herself out. There are grease marks across her face—probably from where she’s wiped the sweat from her forehead—and circles under her red-rimmed eyes; she looks at him evenly, neutrally. Is this how Poe usually looks in the mornings?

“I, uh, thought you could use a pick-me-up.” Fuck, why does he feel so awkward? “I can just... set this here if you want. Wanna keep working.” 

He can’t for the life of him read her eyes—not until she sighs, and her whole frame collapses. Just a little. 

“I don’t know if I can,” she says finally. “Probably could use a break, huh?”

Poe blinks as what feels like every muscle in his body relaxes at once. He hands her her cup; her fingers are cold. She leans up against the hull of the X-Wing and pats the ground beside her. The concrete is freezing—still damp with last night’s rain—but her body next to his is warm. He shivers.

They drink their caf in silence. The East slowly pales and the stars fade away, and in the growing light he can see for the first time the Indigo Squadron in its entirety. 

Yesterday, a group of nine. Today, three. 

Poe sighs. 

“Listen, I’m—I’m sorry. About last night. It was... shitty of me.”

“It was shitty of me, too.”

“No, no—” he clenches and unclenches his fist. “You did what you had to do. I was being an ass. I’m sorry.”

She’s silent for a long time. Poe drums his fingers on his knee.

“No,” she says quietly. “I didn’t... have to. I just... couldn’t leave—”

“I know.”

“I’m so tired.”

“I know.”

Poe feels her cold fingers wrap around his hand. His breath catches. And when he feels her head on his shoulder, his heart just about stops. 

Her breaths are so even, so steady; Poe’s sure that if she sits here long enough, she’ll fall asleep. Sure enough when he looks down, her eyes are closed. The sun is rising, shining gold upon her face, a day beginning, healing, cleansing—

He can feel it in his bones, in his tendons and metacarpals as he squeezes her hand in return. 

“Don’t sleep now,” he whispers.

“Mm. Fuck off.”

Poe laughs clear as daylight, and she laughs along with him—muffled though she is in his jacket. He holds her hand more tightly; her fingers respond immediately. He could sit here forever, he thinks. Cold and warm, morning and night. Silver and gold as the sun breaks through the last few clouds and shines the stars away—

Cassian looked up to where Topron should be, proving what he already knew. Nothing. Nothing except a faint purplish hue he might be imagining. And none of it was worth it, anyway, when he started tripping over jutting stones, over loose, slimy gravel, over the unstretched legs of people resting against the walls of their homes and smoking who knows what. That was to his left; the street lay right. Kids were playing, running up and down with expert footwork, tossing balls made of woven, wiry branches.

Until they noticed the stranger with the bare head, flanked with stormtroopers: sinking into shadows, slinking behind their mothers as they washed clothes in outside tubs; soundlessly, like tadpoles and minnows when the shadow of a heron ripples over the surface of still water. 

Cassian didn't hold it against them. He'd had to slink around, too. Some were more adept than others; they'd have done well in his Corps. Not that he wished that on them.

Even with the children melted away, he could feel stares at his back. Frequent, subtle glances out of the corners of their eyes, shapes and faces in narrow windows that disappeared when he turned his head. He stuck out like a sore thumb: dark clothes so far untouched by Veneskar's grimy ash; neither headscarf nor hooded cloak nor hooded parka. The damn stormtroopers blended in better than he did—even when they seized him by the neck whenever he slipped and set him upright with enough force to buckle his knees. Even when they jabbed him in the head with their blasters hard enough to bruise. Oh, he'd be covered in them tonight. And as the troopers pushed him up the slowly steepening incline it happened again and again and again.

Whenever it did, the stares stopped. Everyone turned their heads. Everyone pretended not to see. 

Finally—head aching, legs burning, stomach rumbling and his mouth dry—Cassian was stopped in front of a house, a real house. Not a slanted or stacked apartment, but just as small and discolored. Squarish, low roof, grime dried and caked on the door. A figure of—something had been etched into the metal; the flecks of white told him it had been painted once, long, long ago. A gnarled hand, maybe a claw, maybe a bird. A bird with broken wings?—something looked like a tail. Stripped of its paint; stripped of its feathers. 

The blasters dropped from his shoulder blades. One of the troopers circled ahead and banged on the door. Five times, three heartbeats.

"VT for assignment." There was no answer. He knocked again. "VT! VT for assignment, from the Imperial Commandant."

Silence.

"Point's not here."

"You sure?"

"What?" He shrugged, blaster waving beside him. "You wanna try?"

Cassian's chaperone circled to the door and banged so hard the plaster frame shook. He paused.

"Point's gone."

"Fucking told you that. Didn't have to break the damn door in."

His comrade bristled. "Well, what do we do with him?"

They stared at him and Cassian stared back; they stared back at each other; they stared back at him."

"Guess we go back."

"What, with him?"

"No. He stays with the Point."

"Well, we can't just leave him."

"Sure we can."

"What would the Commandant say if we lost him?"

"We're not losing him, we're dropping him off. And you think the Commandant wants to see us bringing him back?"

More silence.

"Wanna leave him here?"

"We'll leave him here." They nodded to each other. "Hey! Tenny!"

Cassian raised his eyebrows.

"Stay here and wait for the Point. Understand?"

"Yes, sir."

This was a rule Rebellion-wide: whenever a trooper followed an order with Understand?, there'd be no accountability and few consequences if any. The troopers themselves hadn't caught on yet, and neither did these. They trudged on past him with heavy footfalls. Each took the time to shove past his shoulder and force him into the wall. His arm ached. Cassian watched them disappear. Once again the children melted away and tookas scampered into the shadows. It wasn't him, then. Or maybe it was.

In front of the apartments directly across the street, a twi'lek with deep blue skin hung up her laundry. She avidly avoided Cassian's gaze. How long would clothes take to dry in such cold, moist air? And it was autumn now. Autumn-ish. It would only get damper. It would only get colder. Cassian was already chilled to the bone.

And, come to think of it, Cassian was very, very thirsty. He crossed the street like a loth cat and approached the twi'lek's laundry line.

"Excuse me—" She backed away immediately without even glancing at him. "Excuse me, do you know where the Point is?"

She muttered something under her breath.

"Where?"

"Out."

"Out? Where out?"

"How do I know?" She shooed him away with a flick of a damp sheet. He stumbled backwards."I work all day. I don't watch."

Cassian wiped freezing water droplets off his forehead as a man with a coat and hat of matted fur passed through the center of the street. He glanced their way; he had a leathery face. 

"Excuse me—" The man looked away and walked faster. "Excuse—do you know—"

But he was already out of earshot down the slick, muddy hill, down with a speed Cassian could barely believe and into a sparse crowd of the same dullish color. 

Cassian drew back to the little house—the Mirian house, Riceter had called it—and leaned against it, hand on the door, right on the mangled bird. Fuck. Now that he was still, now that no blasters propped him up, the last hour and a half threatened to wash over him. A tsunami welling and building up, building and building and not ready to crash. He had no idea where Kaaza was, where Sector Two was, how to get there. He had no idea where the Point was, what they looked like, when they'd come back. 

He did know about Sector Two. At least, as of a few months ago. His contact had been able to tell him something or other before the line went dead. But this morning had thrown that plan right out the window. He had no idea what he was doing.

What bullshit. 

Yes, bullshit! cried a voice in his head. He'd been alone before; he'd be alone again. He could be alone now.  

He ran his hand down his face; it was covered in dust and that strangely textured, ashy grime. He wiped both hands on his trousers, leaving long, pale streaks, and examined the house, memorized it: seven feet tall, haunting figure etched in metal, directly facing the ominous, indigo ridge far ahead. The twi'lek woman just across. And Cassian set off, back down the gentle slope. He slipped as he walked. 

His fingers dug into the unforgiving wall for balance as mice and tookas skittered past his legs. He'd never seen tookas like these before: gray fur and black speckles, hauntingly pale eyes like green candles. He wouldn't much like to see those eyes after dark. Blackbirds rested on low rooftops; one opened its beak. Neither song nor caw but a shriek escaped it, unsettlingly human-like. These birds didn't give a shit for the apparent custom and watched him unceasingly with unblinking black eyes. He could feel those eyes, too.

On two adjoining rooftops at what looked like an intersection of poorly paved roads, three had alighted. Then four, then six, then eight—looking down, cocking their heads, shifting forwards and backwards and forwards again. Cassian stopped short.

Right below the birds at the far corner of the intersection, behind four or five dark, stacked crates, was a circle of young men. Humans, that is. Cassian counted five. They were huddled close together, rather suspicious and rather public, but people passed them with the kind of deliberate ignorance Cassian was learning to expect. 

Though he didn't forget his search for the Point, this was worth watching. Maybe if he could lean up against the wall like he had nothing to do and nowhere to go, maybe if they thought he was just resting here aimlessly—maybe they wouldn't notice. Cassian nestled himself in the little hollow between the threshold and door frame of the slanted building and tried to cover his head with his sleeves.

A blackbird hopped down to the far man's shoulder. He threw his arms back; the bird let out a scream; Cassian saw something in his hands and elbows. Little brick-sized bundles, wrapped in something too processed-looking to be fabric. As the man moved, Cassian saw the rest of them. All with the same bundles. 

"Hey!" Someone kicked him in the ribs. "Hey, off you go—!"

They kept kicking and Cassian was forced onto his hands and knees, gasping for air. Finally he made it to his feet, covered in that whitish paste and holding his side. A young woman about his age with a kerchief tied around her ears scowled at him and then slammed her door shut. Cassian pulled his wits together. That's right. He was leaning against her house, right against her doorway. This was her right.

He looked back to the intersection. Her voice had been loud.

All five men were staring at him now. Under their hoods he saw their faces: thin faces, drawn faces—young faces, by fuck, some younger than his own. Their bundles were immediately tucked under their coat sleeves. 

Cassian stepped towards them; they didn't move. He decided to take this as a good sign. 

"Hello." His voice cracked. His mouth was too dry to speak, fuck's sake. He swallowed. "My name is Skova. Amrodoro. I was wondering..."

Another step; more stillness. They each examined his uncovered head. 

"I'm looking for this Sector's Point. Do you..." Scratch that. "... Can you tell me where they are?"

Five heartbeats. Six. Seven. They were coming faster. The men looked at each other out of the corner of their eyes. And Cassian knew it was lost.

They bolted, scampering over the toppling crates like tookas. The blackbirds flew away in a panic and a flurry of high-pitched screaming.

Cassian drew a hand down his face. He could feel the grime wiping off. He didn't care. Ought to just go back to the Mirian house and die of thirst there. Don't be so dramatic, he told himself firmly. you don't have that luxury. and even if you did, you shouldn't. doesn't become you. Besides, if you get too thirsty, you might sneak some water from that woman's laundry tub. disgusting. But you wouldn't die. 

It was five seconds from the moment the men ran away to Cassian's decision—during which a figure ran out of the maze of walls and rubble and into the intersection. Skidding to a halt in grime-caked, laced boots; losing balance, swaying back and forth; staring blankly right at the toppled crates, at the empty corner, at the empty roofs where no birds rested. 

She—for a she the figure seemed to be beneath the scarf and layered robes—collapsed onto a low, broken chunk of wall, hands on her knees, chest heaving. 

She shouldn't be running like that, Cassian thought. She'll just draw attention to herself, and there are stormtroopers out. Shriekers, too. He wondered where that man was now, the man with the hollow eyes. Didn't matter. Cassian turned around. Back up the hill, back to the Mirian House. Hands clutching the wall. 

"Hey!"

Cassian looked away and walked faster. 

"Stop!" 

The voice wasn't loud. It wasn't powerful. But Cassian knew, by some confirming dread, that she was talking to him. 

So—he stopped; he turned around.

The woman had stood up silently, shoulders back, feet squarely planted. Her breathing was coming back under control.

"Yes. You. What are you doing?"

"I'm not doing anything," Cassian said bitterly. He was learning, slowly but surely: to be ignored was a blessing of its own.

"Dawdling," she concluded. Her voice had an edge as hard and sharp as flint. "As you dawdled, then, what did you see?"

"Didn't see anything." He began to turn and back away. 

She stepped towards him. "A dawdler and a liar. So I'll ask again. What have you been doing?"

Cassian glared at her. "Asking for directions." 

"You talked to them?" She put her hands on her hips. "What did they say?"

"Nothing! Don't know anything. Just trying to find your damned, fucking Point."

He turned his back on her. But he only made it two or three paces before a raw, ungloved hand dug into his shoulder, pulling him back to look her in the eye. They were wild eyes, Cassian thought. Raven-black, velvet-black, charcoal-black, burning like embers with feverish light.

"I am the Point."

Each syllable, spoken slowly and clearly, was another rock in the pit of his stomach. He couldn't take a breath.

"And I don't tolerate liars in my Sector. If you're newly arrived, as you seem, you should have been shown to your housing already."

"I don't... Not yet..." Cassian struggled for the words. "I'm a volunteer." 

"What's your assignment, then?"

Cassian ground his teeth. He already suspected: she would not congratulate him. but—she could not be angrier than he was. 

"Just assigned Second." 

The Point was silent, sizing him up from head to toe, shoulder to shoulder, narrowed eyes burning holes into his skull.

"Identification, then."

She held out her hand; Cassian again pulled out that metallic black, hexagonal disk. Again the holo expanded. Again the face and chain code revolved like a planet on its axis, casting an eerie blue-green light on their clothes and skin. And the Point scrutinized every letter, every number, every strand of hair and line in that ghostly skin.  

And she was silent, still. For too long. 

"Amrodoro Skova."

She knows, Cassian thought. She sees. Her voice was soft—too soft. A long pause.

"You're aware, I hope, that this code places your arrival for at least three days?"

"Yes."

"You're aware too, then, that this center isn't yet fit to receive your?"

"We worked it out with customs."

"Who is we?" she demanded, eyes flashing.

"My friend and me."

"Just the two of you?"

"Yes."

"And where is your friend?"

Cassian hesitated. "Sent to his station. And they took me here."

Her eyes darkened and shifted between his like roving spotlights in a prison yard. Seconds passed. Finally—the Point locked the disk and held it out to him. He pocketed it again, not taking his eyes off her. She looked at the sky. Vaguely purple splotches in the South. And she looked towards the East, towards the crooked streets where the five young men had disappeared. Her shoulders heaved with a deep breath; no sigh followed.

"You'd better follow me," said the Point quietly. Not just quiet—low and reticent. She looped around him nimbly, back up the hill, with short, silent strides. 

"Quickly!"

Cassian made a point to pause, just a little, just to look back to the empty corner. She was angry. No, stressed. Both? Both—and so was he. Everyone here—from terns to shriekers to his own damn partner—had done nothing but boss him around from the day of the pick-up and he'd be damned if he'd yield now to such an empty, obsolete command. In fact, standing alone in the crossroads was almost peaceful, if lonely: the kind of peaceful loneliness you felt when you turned away from your own haggard, bruised reflection in a broken mirror.

The Point's footsteps, silent to begin with, fully faded away. Cassian turned. She was far ahead now; she made her way with speed. maybe the soles of her shoes? their tread? He could only see them turn up at the heel. Whatever tread they had was caked in dirt.

"Oof!"

Cassian was suddenly back in the mud, back on all-fours; a burst of burning pain throbbed in his right knee and shin. He dug his fingernails into the plaster wall to the tune of angry binary. He blinked the sudden wetness away and saw, hovering in front of his face and whistling shrilly, a kind of droid he'd never seen before. Black beneath the dust, a little less than half his height, and shaped like a jellyfish. Its top hemisphere whirred frantically above a thick belt of what looked like white-hot metal; indeed, he could feel the heat radiating in his face and stinging in the new bruise forming on his leg. It raised up a thin, dangling arm, one of many: its conical end crackled like a vibroblade, jabbing towards his face.

"The hell—"

It whirred faster, beeped louder; Cassian ducked to escape its many and agitated limbs. 

"Yes, I'm sorry—"

"What are you doing?"

His head snapped up; he hadn't heard the Point approach. At the sound of her voice and a pat on its head it retreated, floating away down the street. Cassian scowled.

"Ask whatever the hell that is."

She studied him. Eyes dark. "Don't talk to it," she said at last. But she offered him a hand up—warm where she'd touched the droid—and walked alongside him. Slower, nearer. 

"I've been here a long time," she offered quietly. "I forget about the learning curve. That's my mistake. But," her eyes darted all around, "you'd best get used to it. The top layer is thin, but it never goes away. You'll need to learn to walk quickly here—and learn quickly."

Cassian hardly listened, trying to ignore the throbbing in his leg that worsened with every step of the slippery incline. "What was that thing?"

"That's a generator droid, Class 2 C-Series. We're far from the sun here and there's little wood; the supply we still have is strictly moderated. We need the extra heat. Especially once winter comes."

They walked on in silence. Cassian slipped again; the Point propped him up by the elbow. "Don't talk to them," she repeated in a murmur. "Or any other droid you find here."

"Why not?"

"Because I've asked you to."

A bullshit answer, and she knew it, too—she suddenly retracted her hand from his arm. Cassian looked around. Now that he was looking for them, he saw glimpses of their whirring, whistling domes dotting the whole stretch of land before him. Hovering in alleys, avenues, crates, narrow doorways. 

"Hurry up."

Cassian glared at her, again a few feet ahead of him, bookmarked the droids in his brain, and kept on. 

They were back at the front door of the Mirian house. The Point unlocked it—Cassian counted eight numbers in the key code—all the while tapping her fingers against her thigh. And Cassian again felt like he was looking into a broken mirror. 

The door slid aside and she ushered him in; they were plunged into pale darkness that wasn't just the same hue but the same substance, somehow, as the cloudy darkness outside. The Point locked the door again and peered out the single, tiny window overlooking the street. A ratty sack-cloth curtain had been hung with nails driven into the upper wall. Cassian simply stood at the threshold, watching her awkwardly, observing the room. 

It was a low ceiling, only a little higher than the one in the dark belly of the ship; Kaaza would certainly bump his head on the doorframe. The room was small and square-ish. In the left corner beside the window was a bed with coarse-looking, taupe-colored sheets and two pillows, so flat they looked more like the floor mat Cassian was standing on. Covering it all was a coarse blanket of the same color. Thin, and threadbare at the ends.

Along the back wall was a very old stove—probably original to the house, before whatever devastation the planet had been through. Old enough that it almost certainly violated at least three health and safety codes you'd find in Coruscant. It was joined to a small sink and water dispenser; two cupboards above. To the right, a narrow door which Cassian assumed led to the fresher, or something like it, and a desk that doubled as a clothing chest (or the other way around; he couldn't tell). Behind it were two dark chairs and a C-Series droid, whirring slowly.

But the dirt-stone floor looked freshly swept, the bed clothes freshly tucked and made up in a way Cassian had never seen before, even by military standards. Neither wrinkle nor rumpled corner was to be seen. All surfaces were clear of dust and clutter.

"Wipe your boots on the mat, if you would."

Cassian was willing to bet the mat had been cleaned recently, too. The Point nodded to the desk. "Sit."

He paused, dawdling a little in the center of the room, before picking the chair closest to the door. His muscles were tense; was she sure it would support his weight? It had thin legs. Stick legs. And he didn't like being so close to the droid. Now that he was, though, he noticed that its top hemisphere lights were out; it made no sound; its limbs dangled limply. It seemed sedated, somehow. Drugged. Cassian forced his fingers to be still.

The Point had opened the right cupboard and pulled out a cloth-covered half of a loaf of bread. She cut a slice onto a plastery plate no bigger than some high-society saucer. She filled a cup of water.

"Who were those men?" Cassian asked. He didn't expect a response. Indeed, the Point hesitated.

"They steal food, sometimes," she said slowly, back still to him.

"They're thieves?"

"They're hungry."

"You chase them because they're hungry?"

"No." There was a subtle vehemence there, like the hottest water boiling up from the bottom of the pot. "I chase them because I can't help them if they get caught. And they know that."

She set the bread and water in front of him with a force that felt like restraint and returned to the wall by the window. Cassian took a bite. Chewing it felt like chewing on a handful of wet sand. He washed it down with a long draught of lukewarm water: it felt like a salve down his throat and distracted him from a new spark of anger. if she wouldn't help them, who would?

"But you'd best worry about yourself, Skova. I'm afraid there's been a mistake of some magnificent proportion."

"I know," Cassian said, mouth still full. He swallowed. "I'm supposed to be in Sector Two."

The Point narrowed her eyes. "No, that's not it. I approved your file for transfer myself. I have been expecting you."

Cassian ground his teeth. focus on the sandpaper bread for now.

"I'm referring, rather, to the fact that you and your friend should have been detained upon arrival."

"I told you," he gritted out, "we worked it out at customs."

"I'm not deaf," she replied sharply, "and I say still: you ought to be detained. Not imprisoned," she added when he raised a brow. "Shown to a holding room until the volunteer transport arrives. That should be three days. Then you'd all be taken to the military base, yonder East, for a two-day training course."

"Two days?" 

"I don't say it's enough." Her eyes darted to the door. The pale light that made it through the hole-riddled curtain cast her whole face in shadow. "But then they would not be dumping a new arrival on my hands to train myself, from scratch." 

The Point paused, scrutinizing his face. "I don't mean to offend you," she said finally. "I only mean: why competent Imperial officers were met with new arrivals aboard the wrong transport, on the wrong day, and instead of detaining them as is the regular practice—there is a set precedent—escorted them straight into the Scrawl Center is a question worth asking." She waited for him to swallow. 

"Do you know the answer to that, Skova?"

Cassian took another bite and looked no more concerned than if she'd asked about the weather. "No idea."

She watched him for a long time. His fingers bounced on his thigh. 

"Until, then, you or I can answer that, do us all a favor and keep your mouth shut."

She'd do well identifying shriekers, Cassian thought suddenly. He pushed the thought away. "Yes, ma'am." A tinge of sarcasm polluted his voice. She didn't comment on it.

"'Ma'am' was for my mother. You can call me Mirian."

He frowned. "Like the house?"

"If that's how you've learned it," she chuckled, not entirely good-naturedly. "The house is named after my mother and me, not the other way around."

"You were named after your mother?"

She paused. "Called, I suppose."

"What's the difference?"

The Point—Mirian, then—looked at him hard. "You ask too many questions, Skova."

"Rather train a rock, then?"

Her lips quirked in an almost-smile. "I'd rather you ask more pertinent questions."

"Pertinent how?"

"... Pertinent-practical."

"They are practical," Cassian said just as scathingly. "If I have to work with you."

"I could send you back to customs any minute."

"I've already eaten a quarter of your bread. You might as well keep me."

Mirian gave him a wry smile. "We'll see. People in your position don't tend to last very long. Nor mine."

Cassian opened his mouth to ask what she meant, but at that moment her comm link lit up. His eyes lingered on the flashing red a moment longer than they should. Comm links were allowed for Points, then. Or maybe Seconds, too, if he'd come with the right transport. 

Mirian murmured her name and held the comm closer to her ear. Strange. Mirian sounded like a first name—it'd have to be, if she was named for her mother. People usually responded with surnames. Professional people did, anyway. The voice on the other end was muffled. Mirian's fingers twitched against her side and she couldn't stand still on her feet. The voice cut off.

"You'll need to finish that soon." Cassian almost couldn't hear her. She faced the windows. "We're needed at the shipyard."

He shoved the last of the bread into his mouth, followed by the last of the water. He could have done with five cups more; his throat seemed to crackle like a dry bone and his mouth was hot. Mirian whisked the cup and saucer away. She rinsed them, dried them, stacked them neatly in the left cupboard. The sparse kitchenware was stacked and aligned uniformly and to perfection. She straightened the thick scarf around her head.

"I'll get you a hood when we get back."

And then she waved him out of the house and locked the door behind him, and Cassian was met with a sickeningly familiar path down a sickeningly familiar street.

Tagged: 

"That was Sara Yarem; her daughter is Sedra. Sergo Yarem is her brother. You met him this morning."

"I don't know anyone here," said Cassian. "Unless he works in customs."

Another minute passed in silence.

"The droids and troopers that search our Sector: they search for him."

A damp chill spread down Cassian's back. He blamed it on sweat. "The men in the street."

"Men in the streat..." Her voice was soft and her eyes absent. She blinked hard, like she was waking up from a dream. "Sara is looking for him now. Hopefully she'll find him before they do."

All Cassian's muscles tensed, from his tongue to his toes in his mud-caked boots. Mirian might have caught the men hours ago if Cassian hadn't been there. And what would she have done with them? Who's to say she wouldn't have turned them in herself? Better Sara find them than Riceter's "friend." Better, yes. Even if the thought left a bitter burn in his throat that refused to wash away with his spit. 

"Well," he said spitefully, "better a thief than a rebel, right?"

They'd arrived at the gate. Much louder; Cassian almost covered his ears and even Mirian swivelled her head like there was a crick in her neck. Heavier, too. The metal moved, his bones rattled, his teeth chattered, until it was still and the transport slid through. Slowly, slowly. Mirian shot him a look from the corner of her eye.

"Yes. I noticed."

Cassian's fingers twitched against his thigh. "It's a very... Imperial sentiment."

"I'm not talking about the sentiment. I'm talking about you. You didn't like that."

Cassian shut up, clenched his teeth behind his lips, forced his fingers flat. Bad sign that she'd read him like that. Chink in the armor. No—just the newest hole in this fishnet of a mission. Better to catch it early.

"You don't like it now, either."

Cassian forced a wry smile. She wouldn't let him play dumb today. "Again. Very Imperial."

"This is the Empire, Skova. You'll have to forgive the Imperial Commandant his Imperial turns of phrase. Especially since, apparently, he considers you a friend."

She lingered on that last thought; Cassian ignored it. "Like you forgive him?" 

"Sure."

"You don't pretend to like droids and troopers in your Sector."

"The Commandant knows my preferences, and where I stand before Imperial authority."

"And where is that?"

A long pause. He thought he saw her bite her tongue behind her lips. "I stand for peace. For peace I will sacrifice preferences."

An apologist, then. Figures. Riceter probably bought her years ago. How much? A house with four walls? A nicer generator droid? Real baked bread she didn't have to steal? All to keep the peace—and what peace was that? Armed security droids stalking the whole Sector? They'd shoot anything that looked at them funny. They didn't care. It's how they were programmed. To keep the peace. 

"The men are starving, you say. You can't like it any more than I do."

"What I like and don't like is none of your concern," Mirian snapped. She kept her eyes on the road—hairpin turn, slowly sloping upwards—and her face hard as bedrock. "I think you'll find there are plenty of things I dislike."

Cassian settled back in his seat, seething. Shanties and thinner, taller plaster buildings reeled by. The bile in his throat began to dissipate.

"You don't like droids."

Mirian looked at him again, more curious than anything else. "That's right."

"Of any kind?"

"The kinds that I have seen."

"Even the one in your house?"

"Especially that one."

"What's wrong with it?"

"Obsolete."

Cassian rolled his eyes. The droid hadn't been in the bargain, then. "Disorder. Dirtiness." Another look. "Your bed. And your floor is the cleanest patch of ground in the Sector."

"Hm." Mirian drummed her fingers on the wheel. Her eyes were empty again. "There's a layer of granite right beneath the ground. Our climate is cold and damp; the soil can't absorb all its moisture. Especially in the streets, which used to be paved throughout. Now they've been broken for years and the mud has nowhere to go. So, sempiternal slime. Dead skin of the very earth."

Cassian had been content with "mud."

"What broke them?"

"The streets?" She cocked her head. "Some earthquake, I assume. Or the Great Serpent, as the stories say. Perhaps she arose from the earth and broke the pavement against her back. They say she has a taste for the birds of the air."

Cassian stared at her, waiting for the punchline. None came. "Earthquake, then."

A strange smile haunted the corners of her mouth. "They say that on the clearest nights, if you venture to the Northern marshes, you'll see the moonlight reflected on her scales. If you're not swallowed up by the bog and turned into peat."

"Peat people," Cassian huffed. Snake underground. Fucking hell. Hundreds of snakes underground, probably thousands of them tunnelling with the worms and the maggots. None of them big enough to break much less than a chalkboard. He glanced again at Mirian, at the ghostly light and crinkles at the corners of her eyes. Yes, she enjoyed making him question. He wasn't going to humor her any longer. 

Bodies in the bog, though... That intrigued him. Not that he'd ask for more. 

The bumpy, broken road straightened and the slope levelled until you almost couldn't feel it. Directly ahead loomed Kepnos, the Capital, the Drumlin. Its crags fell less than a mile from Sector One's Southernmost edge and its city rose above: a high wall of durasteel, a hundred skyscrapers with clean, white walls, too sharp to be beautiful. People lived there; people worked there. People had died there. People Cassian knew. His stomach turned. 

Mirian tapped the breaks. Steam and smoke curled into the air and mingled until they blended with their background. Mirian began to cough. Cassian could hear her gasping for breath through the fabric of her scarf. He looked away. 

They'd stopped in the closest thing to an open space Cassian could find. Vaguely circular and flanked, left and right, by storehouses with low, flat roofs and black panels. Further down, a whitewashed, two-storied building stood alone: belted by a good ten feet of empty space and clean, the exception in a world where no space went unused. Except for a single Twi'lek woman leaning against it, arms and legs crossed, no one walked in front of it; no one walked behind. Cassian didn't like that. Mirian was still coughing. 

The Twi'lek nodded at their transport. "Kuarn up your throat again?"

Mirian powered down the transport, composing herself, and flashed the kind of smile you reserve for friends. Beads of sweat dotted her forehead. "It's not Kuarn season yet."

"Every season's Kuarn season."

The woman, who spoke with a soft Ryl accent, ambled over to lay a hand on Mirian's shoulder. She wore a soft cloth cap and long sleeves rolled up to the elbow; violet markings spiralled down her turquoise lekku. 

"You keep up like that, you'll be hacking blood before long."

"Long enough, let's hope."

"Hm." She folded her muscular arms and watched the smoke rise. "Thought Kimber told you you shouldn't drive."

"And I told Kimber to mind his own business."

"No, you didn't."

"No." Mirian smiled and wiped her brow with the end of her scarf. Cassian caught a flash of dark hair. "But plans change. Kimber will have to forgive me."

"Who's that?" The Twi'lek jerked her head at him. 

"Skova. He's just been assigned Second."

She raised an eyebrow. "You have a new Second?"

"Plans change." Mirian gave her a sideways look and a small shake of her head. 

"Skova, this is Morya, head of supply distribution. You'll be working with her often."

Cassian's fists were still clenched in his coat pockets. "Pleasure."

The transport shook as the others hopped off. Morya greeted each with a hand on the shoulder and a firm handshake, firm enough that a dark blush crept along Venka's cheeks, and a kiss on the top of Tohlsi's head. She turned back to Mirian, arms folded. 

"What do you have for me today?"

"Full shipment of medical supplies. Half shipment of food."

Her smile dropped. "Why half?"

"We don't know yet."

"Empire just lost it, huh? Good look for them."

"Feel free to take it up with the Commandant."

Morya tsked and shook her head. "Better for unloading, I guess. Faster. You gotta get out soon."

They exchanged another look, eyes burning beneath their lids. Without their voices, without the gates, without the transport's wheezing engine, Cassian thought he heard a droid's distant footfalls. 

But work resumed. Morya spoke often and laughed easily, a hearty laugh from deep within her chest, even when lifting cargo left her out of breath. Naj had himself a willing listener, Venka the bold but gentle energy to put her at ease, Cassian and Mirian a few minutes of blessed silence. He caught snippets of conversation: questions of clothes and blankets and the coming winter; "Kimber" popped up again. Venka joined in. When he could, Cassian stole glances at the ridge. Mirian was right. No obvious pass through. Not nearby, anyway. 

"Damn." 

Cassian looked up. Mirian kept her voice to a whisper but yanked, harder and harder, on the last cable knot. It had been stuck at the bottom of the stacks. 

"Need some help?"

She looked up with wild eyes, like she'd forgotten where she was and forgotten that Cassian was there. "No. Thank you."

"Pulling won't help."

"I'm aware," she said, still pulling. Her fingers looked raw. 

"Well, if—"

"Got yourself a dud, huh?" Morya laid her hand on Mirian's shoulder again. Cassian looked back down and pretended not to listen. "Get those all the time. You gotta slice 'em."

She pulled out a pocket knife no bigger than her thumb and cut the cord right above the knot. Mirian's hands curled around the rail.

"That's Imperial property, Morya," she said quietly.

"Tell you what." Morya thumped her hand against Mirian's back. "Empire finds all our missing food, I will personally stitch all their shit cable back together." She peeled Mirian's hands from the rail. "Tohlsi's stuck working alone. You go help him finish. Second and I will move these last ones."

Mirian didn't argue, to Cassian's surprise. Tohlsi had finished his work ten minutes ago. She knew that. Not his problem, Cassian decided.

"Four more, Skova. You ready?"

Morya watched him curiously; her dark eyes and unwavering stare suddenly reminded him of their Point. This did not help.

"Ready." He grit his teeth and took the metal crate in both hands. Morya said nothing else to him.

"Listen up—" She announced to the rest. "—Anything marked mern, to the right storehouse. Cresh goes left."

"Morya—" Mirian stood close to her side. "Morya, I have to leave."

"Go," said Morya firmly. "I've got it under control. You and Skova get out of here."

Again, not a word. Mirian sat behind the wheel; Cassian had to jog to catch up. They were in a hurry. 

"Want me to drive?"

"No."

She nodded one last time to Morya before putting the transport in reverse, lurching without all the weight.

"I can drive if it makes you cough."

"It makes everyone cough but I don't trust everyone to drive."

"You trust Sara Yarem—"

"Yes, I do," she said heatedly, "and I've known her and her whole family for years. Forgive me if I decline to bestow you driving permissions four hours after you dropped on me out of thin air."

Cassian shook his head and leaned back. Didn't matter if she trusted him or not. Might as well relax while he could. They inched down the serpentine road, inched through the gates. There was a blackbird's nest in one of the joints in the metal. It was abandoned. 

The more he looked the more he saw the smoke in the air. Not just from their transport but the landing pad, the shipyard, and what he assumed was the military base further beyond. Veneskar's machinery must be old or crude or both. The smoke hung in the air, not smoke but transparent smog that you couldn't see so much as feel in your lungs, your pores, the grooves in your scalp. Cassian had no choice but to breathe it all in.

It wasn't too much of a nuisance. Not yet, anyway. But he glanced back at Mirian and again saw sweat glistening on her forehead. She didn't wipe it away. That concrete, prisonlike building stood tall and broad on the horizon.

"What is that?"

"What?"

"That white one ahead. Is that where Riceter works?"

"Communications Center, yes." She bit her lip. "I wish you had told me you'd met the Commandant already."

Cassian flushed. "And when should I have done that?"

"The twenty-minute walk to meet him might have sufficed."

"You said we were going to the shipyard. I don't read minds, you should have—"

"Regardless," Mirian interrupted, "you need to control yourself better. If I can tell when you're agitated, the Commandant won't be far behind."

"And we wouldn't want that." True enough; Cassian couldn't keep the mocking tone from his voice. Mirian gripped the steering wheel harder.

"No, we don't. Until these people can go back to their homes, I'd like everything to run as smoothly as possible. With or without you."

"When will that be?" Cassian laughed. 

"When what?"

"Your homes, safe. At peace in the Empire."

"Who's to say?" Her voice went quiet. "What news do you bring from Eleos, Skova?"

Cassian clenched his jaw. "Eleos is still unstable."

"Interesting."

"Interesting, yes," said Cassian, louder. "And unstable because of Empire interference."

"A story with its own side, I imagine."

"It's not a story." His fists shook; the force had nowhere to go except his nails into his skin. "It's not your snake underground, it's life. Life for the whole galaxy—"

"And we have our life here," she snapped. "It has enough worries as it is. Leave while you can, then, and join a Rebel cell for all I care. Or take my advice and keep your mouth shut. Either way, don't trouble me with things I can't fix."

All conversation ended. They didn't even look at each other. The sky grew darker, going on five pm; less than a hundred stormtroopers lingered while the last civilians left through the gate. Mirian navigated the shipyard and parked the transport with the rest; she left for the gate on foot with neither word nor look nor nod to Cassian. The message was clear: follow or don't.

Right now, Cassian had no choice but to follow.

They took the main streets this time—the droids must be gone by now, and the going easier on Cassian's achy, exhausted feet. Why hadn't they just taken this way before? Mirian was an honorary Imperial. She should be used to droids and troopers and shooting alike, should be ready to watch them rain blaster bolts over the whole Center. Whatever the Empire needed. Anything to keep the peace. Their side of the story, after all. 

Shooting in her Sector—hers, as if that was anything to brag about, as if she was anything but the Empire's puppet and the pinky finger of the hand that had taken everything from him. From Kaaza. From everyone who found their way to the Rebellion and everyone who found their way here. To her Sector.

Cassian slipped in the mud again. A nearby tooka scampered off into the dark. More of them milled through the streets unconcerned. And he noticed as he lay on the ground how empty the streets were. All doors and windows shut. Some stragglers remained; they wandered into the reddening West. None of them spared him a glance. 

He grit his teeth and forced himself to his feet. Less than a day here; his pants were already caked with mud. He felt thirty pounds heavier. How did Mirian keep her clothes so clean?

The bile rose again in his throat. He pressed on. To hell with Mirian and her clean clothes. 

Where were they even going? Back to the house? For what? Is this what Mirian's "training" looked like? Waste of time. Cassian was starving; that sandpaper bread had run its course hours ago. Pull it together. Weak will, weak mind, to think so much on his hunger. But, fuck—his head felt like it was splitting open. Dehydration, probably. He needed water. He needed—fuck—he wanted clean trousers. 

And where the hell was Kaaza? Kaaza was over the ridge. Cassian would have to climb. Or find one of those speeders. Mirian probably wouldn't let him. 

To hell what Mirian thought. 

The clouds thinned and the shape of Topron grew larger and darker, from lilac to indigo to stormy, purple-gray. Watching its shadow creep over the earth sent goosebumps down Cassian's sweating arms. No washed, watercolor sunset; just a shutting door. Slowly, slowly: there's a light at the end of the hallway, far enough that you can't tell if it's a candle or a lamp or a full fireplace, close enough that you can imagine its warmth, far, too far to ever feel it. And then the door closes, slowly, slowy, and the light eclipses to a sliver, and you're left alone in the dark of the narrow hallway. But Kepnos still shone in the south, ugly beacon of artificial light. 

The smooth, wiry trees blended well with the rushing shadow except in the West, and those that clung for dear life at the top of the ridge. Backlit and spectral, strange and swaying beneath the blackbirds and sparrows perched by their nests in the joints between branches. They spread their wings and puffed their chests, hopping left and right, pacing. Cassian had never seen birds so agitated. 

But now that he was looking—really looking, not just pretending to keep his balance—something was wrong. Something more than birds. 

Few remained in the streets. Too few. An old woman sat on an empty crate, smoking an antique pipe. She ignored Cassian and Mirian when they walked in front of her; her eyes were fixed ahead, on the slimming band of light. The stragglers walked West. Cassian knew they weren't walking home. A dark mass rumbled and shifted at the bottom of the ridge. More shadows at the top.

"Mirian!" he shouted. She'd been walking with her head down. She joined him directly across from an open avenue, the same place he'd seen the men with the bread. Hours, days, weeks ago... He met them on Ord Mantell—Willix pretended not to see. He met them on Fest, before the Rebellion. They knew his name and he knew theirs. Neither said it aloud. And Cassian waited for her to speak. She didn't.

One heartbeat, two. Four, and then five. And then Mirian wasn't there.

Cassian looked down. She'd sunken into a crouch, elbows on her knees and back against the wall, staring ahead. He knelt next to her. His knees felt cool in the mud. Nice when he wasn't falling. 

"What is it?"

She covered her face with her hands. Not to cry, Cassian thought; she wasn't shaking. But he felt like he was seeing something he shouldn't. He shifted on the balls of his feet. 

"Mirian?"

Her hands dropped. No scowling, no fear, no tension in her eyes and mouth that preceded tears. Just heavy. Physically heavy, like the metallic smog settling in Cassian's lungs. Cassian waited.

"The Empire has found them." Mechanical monotone. "They'll be executed now."

Cassian braced himself against the wall. The men in the street.

Mirian staggered to her feet, like her lithe, strong limbs were failing her. But if it was any trouble or pain, you couldn't tell it from her face. "We need to be there."

She began to walk, and then to jog, then to run. Cassian followed. an execution. the men—killed. all these people—. here to watch. 

Mirian skidded to a halt at the edge of the crowd; Cassian stumbled. A thousand people, give or take a hundred, stood in clumps in front of the ridge in the near twi-lit dark. The clouds had broken. The distant sun sank into the rocks in a flood of diluted red. Topron loomed starker: an enormous hemisphere with a violet edge; higher up, indigo; higher, wholly, inky black. 

Top to bottom: sinking Topron, setting sun, the candle—the lamp—in the strip of murky, blood-orange sky, the black ridge topped with six silhouettes. Two on one side, three on the other, hands in glowing cuffs above their heads. In the middle, on the highest, jutting crag, stood Karlon Riceter. Striking and beautiful and terrible. 

A line of stormtroopers at the bottom. A line of people crying further back. Between them, a woman who seemed to be fighting; a woman with a round face and a bird-framed little girl.

Mirian spotted them the same time he did.

"Move, move!"

They gave their Point no trouble. It occured to Cassian, dodging and ducking through the maze of limbs, that they'd been here before, seen it before. But Cassian was new. Cassian got to watch for the first time. 

They broke into the front. Mirian pulled the woman from the troopers. 

"Sara—"

"They have no proof!"

"Sara, control yourself."

"I told them to show me! Show me what he stole! He's registered, he's paid, he's not a thief—"

"Sara!—"

Her voice was drowned out.

"Dear friends..."

Riceter's voice rang out over the valley, unnaturally loud.

"Today, you witness the administration of justice, the victory of law and order, and the benevolent discipline that is the lifeblood of our good Empire."

"Lifeblood! Blood that—"

Mirian put a hand over her mouth.

"To serve our Empire," Riceter continued, "is a privilege—yes, a privilege—and one none take lightly. These men who await justice on this, our Golgaelar Hill, these men, criminals though they are, we call our friends. Our brothers. Our sons, our housemates, our fellow citizens. Our fellow sentient beings. And for that reason—" He acknowledged Mirian and Sara in her arms for the first time. Colorless eyes. "—I share in your grief."

Sara sank to her knees and Mirian with her. Mirian turned around. Cassian could barely see her wide, frantic eyes. Her mouth moved. She was trying to tell him something. He couldn't understand.

"In light of that grief—" The consonants grated against his ears. "—although we punish them and punish justly, we honor them..."

Cassian squinted to make out the shape of her lips. Sedra.

"... Weep, but do not despair..."

Don't let her watch.

"... Mourn, but do not despise, for in their transgressions their lives are forfeit—"

Cassian laid a hand on her shoulder. "Sedra—"

"—their lives, sacrifices to our Empire, to her virtues..."

She jumped. He didn't let go. "It's okay. Sedra, look at me—"

By some miracle, she did.

"... of justice, discipline, moderation..."

He pulled her into his arms. 

"... and order." Riceter smiled. "May they prevail."

He raised his gloved hand. The troopers raised their blasters. Mirian covered Sara's face. Cassian pressed Sedra into his chest. The hand dropped and the troopers fired.

One heartbeat. Everything still, everything silent. Cassian could hear his pulse in his ears. The men fell limp and backwards off the crags.

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