Rebellions are built on hope

incognitajones:

A ficlet for @siachti and @englishable, who probably weren’t expecting something quite this grim. I’d apologize, but well… this is where the prompts for Day Three (Alliance Intelligence/Fulcrum, “collateral damage”) and Four (“silence”) of Cassian Appreciation Week led me.

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Your mistakes aren’t the worst of it, other Fulcrum agents had warned him. You might expect that, but no.

They sting, they wound—how could it not, knowing that your error, your wrong choice, led to people dying?—but they also reflect imperfect knowledge. Time pressure. Not seeing the terrain clearly through the fog of war. Things that, as clichéd as it is to say, could happen to anyone.

Other times, it’s been the harsh demands of self-preservation. Tivik was bad, but at least he’d done his own killing that time. Looked the man in the eye. Had a reason more pressing, less abstract than the calculus of what was to be gained in future.

No, the deaths you let happen with clean hands and clear sight are the worst.

Every time he leaves a city knowing exactly when it will be bombed. Every time ships jump straight into an ambush because warning them would be too obvious. Every time he and Draven agree they can’t act on intercepted intelligence yet, because it could give away their source and choke off the flow of valuable information. Standing aside, watching the numbers on a screen tick up and up.

Cassian’s silence has killed more than his hands ever will.