melanoradrood:

Celebrate Rogue One ♡ Cassian Andor ♡ Day 3:

Past and/or Future 

     It was more than Cassian had hoped to bring back from this mission; a treasure hoard of facts and speculation and possible connections, enough to keep the analysts busy for weeks or months or years.
     If he was lucky, it would even be enough to keep him from replaying—over and over in his head, on the long shuttle ride to safety—the last dying groan of the man he’d murdered.

     Galen stepped forward. Cassian had the shot.
     But he was breathing too hard now. The rifle rose and fell. He clamped a hand on the barrel, lodged it firmly against the rocks.
     He was tired of crimes he never answered for.
     The Death Star is your answer. Finish this mission, and all is forgiven.
     He looked at Galen Erso through his scope and saw his daughter’s eyes.
     With a hoarse and ragged cry, he swept the rifle away from the rocks and set it in the mud at his side.

     He’d told Jyn: We’ve done terrible things on behalf of the Rebellion. Some he remembered now—Tivik, who’d made all this possible and been rewarded with death—but most, to Cassian’s shame, he couldn’t bring to mind. He’d bartered his ideals and the lives of others away, one by one, to find a victory that would make it all worthwhile. Yet as he watched the pulsing lights of the turbolift he felt keenly that neither victory nor defeat would change the terrible things in his past. Jyn couldn’t give him what he’d come for.
     That was the crux of it, really.
     Because he’d given her what she needed, and he’d done the mission right, and he found that was enough.
     She believed someone was out there. Maybe it was even true.
     He did want it to be true. With all his heart, he did.