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Nemik slams the navigation unit down on the table. His breath is sharp and cutting, wire-thin but aggravated and fast. He swears, and the noise is weak. The wet, nose-stuffed sound after is louder, but the rest of the tears are quiet.
Cassian never pegged him as a quiet crier. Then again, he's never thought much about tears. With time, he's learned what Nemik's look like. His hands will have gone over his face, heels of his palms pressed against his eyes. Tears will be slipping out down his nose.
It’s the fourth time he’s slammed the unit to the table, the fourth time he's lost himself to frustration today. It’s not a good day. Cassian woke up with Nemik sat up beside him, propped up against the head of the bed and staring listlessly off in some far distance. He knew it would be a hard one from that alone.
“Are you alright?” he had asked, knowing the answer was no but not knowing how much.
“The nerves that could be saved are screaming at me,” Nemik replied plainly, almost curiously. Then, “Do you suppose I screamed like that?”
He hadn’t.
It had been quiet. More than anything, Cassian remembered the silence. At the time, he had been relieved. Less distractions meant better odds, and their odds had been slim.
And then—
Well, and then. It happened. His chest feels weighed down by it now. The memory of relief is crushed under the weight of the truth. That rush of adrenaline died next to the slam he didn’t hear, against the choked-out gasp Nemik made against the floor during the takeoff.
“Maybe,” Cassian had said, because he’d learned it wasn’t really about the screaming. Nemik sits with it the way he knows best, with wonder and growing understanding. Cassian sits with it too, in the quiet, but there is not much he wonders besides if Nemik will call for him. He will come if he does, turning into the other room to meet him at the table, but going if he doesn’t ask never works.
There are some struggles Nemik tackles alone. Cassian won’t take that from him. He’s earned the right to it.
The navigation unit will be fine. “Old and true, and sturdy. One of the best navigational tools ever built. Can’t be jammed or intercepted. Something breaks, you can fix it yourself.” It was built to last, and it’s lasted. The few pieces that break are replaceable. Fixable, with time.
That is the issue. Neither of them can fix this.
It isn’t always this hard. There’s a quiet wrenching in his stomach while he waits. Anticipation doesn’t do it. Cassian doesn’t mind the waiting much, but he isn’t fond of the suffering. Pain, on days like this, doesn’t serve to grow. It crushes, and both Nemik and him are caught underneath its bootheel.
He waits it out. Nemik fights his own battle and Cassian waits to cover him.
In the beginning, he jumped the gun early. Nemik would struggle, with buttons and brushes and pens, and Cassian was quick to rush over to help. Some of it was guilt. Most of it was guilt, probably. Things only became what they are now in the aftermath. Love took time to grow.
Guilt made him desperate. Desperate to fix it, first, and then desperate to help once they both learned there was no coming back from the injury. Nemik had—he'd tried to reason his feelings into compliance, like he does, convinced he thought his way out of suffering and grief and then choking when it hit him anyway. For a bit, he’d floundered like a fish out of water. He couldn’t fiddle with comms or write down new theories or be on the ground like he’d been ready to—like he wanted to. It looked like he wanted to watch the galaxy change more than he wanted to breathe, sometimes.
And then he couldn’t.
So Cassian had hurried to help.
It worked, at first, when everything and everyone was moving and rushing and turning and Cassian and Nemik barely made it out above the metaphorical water, but Nemik grew weary once things settled.
“I’m still a person,” he had said once, after throwing his hairbrush from eternal frustration, tears stuck on his lashes and hands trembling as always, “I’m autonomous and self-identifiabl—well, actually, I’ve been thinking about a theory on that, but—right, Cassian, stop.” Cassian had stopped. Nemik had grabbed the brush back and pushed him back, slowly, pressing with all his effort and barely any weight, “I can do things on my own.”
Cassian stepped back with the push. Little things, these little fights Nemik took against the galaxy were needed for him to accept the losses he took in other areas.
“Well, how much of a loss can it really be if I get to have someone like you helping me?” Nemik had asked with a small but persistent smile. It had been a good day, then.
“Someone like me?” Cassian had asked, plugging the drain in the tub and turning back around, “What does that mean?”
“Kind,” Nemik had said, as Cassian helped him into the bath. Cassian had choked on his own breath before he swallowed it down.
Kind.
It does not feel kind to hear Nemik lose the battle, over and over again. It feels like a death, like the awful, gut-wrenching moment where Nemik went silent all over again. This feels like cruelty. But what would Cassian know of kindness? It is kind to Nemik. That’s what matters here. Nemik says it is kind, and Cassian trusts him to know himself.
So he waits. The waiting doesn’t bother him. The silence grates, but he’s known grating. He lives it, under and in and through. Things never stop hurting, and they never stop being hard. It's—easier, maybe, when they struggle in tandem. They can't hold each other up, not always, but they can be there for each other. They can fight their battles knowing they aren’t alone, knowing they aren't the only ones fighting.
“Cass,” comes Nemik’s voice eventually, slowly drifting down the hall. Then, a little louder, “Cassian.”
Relief is the hitch in Nemik’s voice when Cassian goes over. Relief for Cassian, mostly. It’s not a victory for Nemik today. There is no quiet celebration.
For many things, there may never be.
But Nemik tries, and he lives. They both live.
“That matters,” Nemik had said quietly, over a cup of milk on Aldhani, “Trying means something. Learning moves the benchmark where we start. Success is not the only metric we should live by.”
“And for living?” Cassian had asked, and it was mostly bewilderment that made him ask. People die achieving their goals just as much as those that don’t. Breathing was no great act. But then again, that was before Nemik lived. That was before he made it, barely scraping through.
Nemik had looked up at him, eyes brighter than Aldhani's own Eye, “When the odds are stacked against you, when the wills of oppression are leaving you for dead, survival is the greatest act of defiance. That’s what I think, anyway.”
“And if we win?” Cassian will ask, far later, because he likes hearing the sound of Nemik’s voice, and even if he can’t believe it all, he wants to. Someday, he will.
Nemik will smile. His hands will shake when he grabs Cassian's, but they will hold on even through the trembling. And he will say, “In all ways that matter, I truly believe we already have.”
But that isn’t now.
Now, Cassian makes dinner. Nemik’s hands shake too hard to hold a fork and he falls apart at the dinner table before he picks himself up. Cassian helps him.
And slowly, both of them move towards the future.
Someday, and probably someday soon, Nemik is going to tell Cassian that it’s time. They’ll go back into the larger fight together. Cassian is nearly sure that it is not a winnable fight. Nearly. He grows more willing to try anyway with each passing day, no matter how improbable it is.
But today, and for now, Cassian waits. And for now, they live.
For now.
"There is a torch. It isn’t bright when compared to the moon or the stars or the Eye, and more often than not it’s heavier than it’s worth. There’s hard work involved in lugging it around and keeping it from splintering, and if it does we must repair it with painstaking care. Sometimes, the wax and tallow drips down and burns our shoes.
Do we stop lighting the torch when it singes our hands? When burns blister our toes and crack our feet? Do we let it hang low when we walk past wild grasses, turning from a light to a searing, all-consuming flame? Do we let it die? Do we let it kill with reckless abandon?
First we pass through the farmer’s field, the cook’s, the servant’s, the beggar’s, and the orphan’s. Kicking down is so easy. When you’re holding something, you can’t punch up in the same way. But it burns, always, and it will take everything if we let it.
We walk to the Empire’s after we make it through the rest. If we make it this far, we will see a beautiful garden. There are fountains with ornate carvings bubbling water, and beautiful animals rested in the trees. Flower fields are colorful and shapely cut. The bushes wrap politely around stone statues. The water runs rich here.
Of course it does. They took the water from the farmer. Fountains were made by carvers from distant lands, equally as stolen. The animals are not at home here—their home is gone. They live here instead, at the behest of the amusement of the Empire’s whims. The flowers grow small here. They are pruned of their vines and kept desperate for water, even with the dammed river so close.
In every other field it would only take an errant spark to build a wildfire. Here, with water set to drown, it takes dozens of torches. Hundreds, thousands, millions. People trickle through slowly, solely or together, sharing weight or bearing the burden alone. When we arrive, we are surprised at how many others are with us. We only knew our own torch in the dark. All we could recognize was the weight of the damn things, the aching of our feet and the sting of smoke in our eyes.
Still we come.
Still we make it.
It’s time to burn the fields. Did you remember to bring your torch?"
—Dictated by K. Nemik (deceased XXX BBY), transcribed and co-authored by C. Andor (deceased 1 BBY), "The Trail of Political Consciousness" extracted pg 334