hoofgirl:

Affirmation – Chapter 12 – FreakCityPrincess – Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) [Archive of Our Own]

Cassian returns from a long-term undercover mission to find that some things have changed, and that some things haven’t. 

The Rebellion was scattered, stationed on various different moons across the Outer Rim and hidden in the shadows of ally worlds after the victory on Endor. 

Pursued by a crumbling Empire desperate to regain control, even while the wider galaxy celebrated its downfall. 

The world around him is alight with colour, bright and vivid and blinding. It’s almost dreamlike, except he’s never seen such colour in his dreams, haunted as they were by featureless black and white and the colour of dirty snow on Fest. 

And there’s every other sense that’s being fired up on top of that. The festival is loud, full of screaming children and chattering sentients of various breeds, humanoids and others that he hasn’t seen for years. Firecrackers go off on the road, and if they were isolated sounds he’d flinch at them, but everything else is louder and unfamiliar and dizzying. 

The smell of stirred dust and fried foodstuffs, sweat and floral aromas sting in his nose, makes his brain hurt. He sees stars behind his eyes when he closes them. He sweats through his civilian clothing, which clings in an unfamiliar way to his body. 

It’s overwhelming. The natives of Edero are celebrating the harvest festival in a grand scale this year, but they’re also celebrating the first one in decades, because the thus-far Imperial occupied world now has its first taste of freedom. 

Cassian pushes his way through the crowds on the pavement and past the vendors selling mouthwatering treats. He searches for any empty routes he can take, his eyes darting on and off to the brick-red building the next road over, close by illusion but far away given all he’d have to get through first. 

His heart spins too fast in his chest. He wants to sit down, he wants to drown all the sensations out. It’s too much at once, a sensory assault when his every sense has been dead for too long. 

Read the rest on Ao3!