Tag: trauma

skitzofreak:

dasakuryo:

I sometimes wonder how the aftermath of Scarif would have affected Cassian, had he lived, in the sense of how the events that transpire and his own emotional turmoil may affect his decision on which terms he will remain on Alliance Intelligence.

It is clear, of course, that all he has done and some of the lives he has been forced to take weigh heavy on him, the guilt, pain and regret tear him apart. One could argue that, given the choice, he would settle for not taking those kinds of missions anymore.

However, I believe that it is worth considering he may have thought upon whom that responsibility would fall. Because even if he doesn’t do it, someone would invariably have to be in charge of that. Who? Another fellow rebel? One of the new recruits?

Imo, I think Cassian would have to end up choosing between two options that, still, tear him apart.

On the one hand, he refuses, the job falls upon another Intelligence member. Best case scenario, someone that has been with the Alliance for quite some time takes up the responsibility. They have gone through similar hardships, they likely feel the same mixture of emotions he does, they likely are as damaged as he is. Worst case scenario, it goes to a new recruit, who hasn’t gone through everything he has yet, suffered what he has, broken like he has. The guilt is knowing he burdened someone else.

On the other hand, he keeps on taking those missions. And the burden keeps piling up guilt on him, tearing him apart. But is the alternative truly better? Considering Cassian’s selfless and self-sacrificing personality, he might even end up considering it is his duty. He has already been scarred and damaged, he can spare someone else such a burden (especially the young).

Personally, I think he would have ended up choosing the latter.

All of this! 

I would like to point out one thing that maybe helps mitigate the pain: the nature of the war changes after Scarif, after Alderaan and the Death Star burn and the very economic and political landscape of the galaxy shifts radically to account for those huge losses of influence, resources, and lives. The Galactic Civil War officially begins, brought from stealing secrets and sabotaging political movements to front line battles between cruisers and destroyers and actual ground troops with defensive lines. What has been a shadow war fought in back alleys, or via propaganda and stolen data, or “police actions” on backwater planets where hardly any media coverage happens has now become the forefront of every planet’s news cycle, is now full of explosions and missiles and AT-ATs stomping across the surfaces of hundreds of worlds. That does not, of course, mean that spies are no longer necessary (on the contrary, I bet Rebel Intel is now busier than ever), but the types of missions change. We need this person to die? Well, when before they would have been hanging out at fancy balls and hi-tech office buildings, now they are probably in a fortress or on a Star Destroyer somewhere that it would be advantageous for us to occupy instead, and so we can just flat out attack instead of infiltrate. (Yes, yes, the Allliance Fleet is still a vastly inferior force, but plenty of sources discuss rebel bases full of fighters, and there are open aerial/space engagements happening on multiple planets during the OT timeline). I’m no expert, but I do know that spy work shifts when the war is in the physical battle space and not primarily in the cyber/information battle space. 

All this to say that while Cassian would absolutely chose to keep the burden of those uglier missions on himself rather than refuse them and let the pain fall elsewhere…the necessity of those missions might be somewhat more rare. Now they need to cut supply lines. Now we need to persuade not just agents but whole planets to the rebel side (actually, recruiting probably takes one a whole new level of necessity and urgency in the Alliance after the loss of Alderaan). Now we need to know troop movements, which are much easier to discover than movies like to make you think, and we need resources, which involves less murder and more theft. So yes, Cassian Andor would probably still struggle with the darker aspects of his work…but there would, perhaps, not be nearly as many moments where he has to stare into the distance and try not to smell the cooling corpse at his feet. Not nearly as many times where he must befriend and then betray someone to get what his side needs. And certainly not as many times where he would find himself the sole linchpin on which the operation hangs because he’s alone with the knowledge of what the Empire is trying to do, and therefore he must temporarily prioritize his own survival above anything else (a choice which probably chafed him worst of all).

So hey! There’s that, at least.