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imsfire2 · 7 years ago

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Director's Commentary- chapter 2 of Keeping Faith: "'Captain, a word.'" through "'Thank you for your honesty, Captain Andor.'" -- Basically the whole conversation w/ Draven. This fic made me cry and I still tear up when I read it sometimes :)

Thank you for the ask, and for the feedback! I remain very fond of “Keeping Faith” months after finishing it.

(This whole scene was written to have two people who are not very good at talking about emotional matters trying to address some extremely important emotions. They are both of them very tense and uptight, and neither of them really has much experience of doing this, and least of all of sharing this kind of stuff with each other. But they do care; and it’s through their conversation, as they fight for each word of it, that I wanted to explore Cassian’s state of mind and the agonising decisions and choices he’s trying to make).

“Captain, a word.” Davits Draven touches his sleeve in passing and he stops dead in the gangway. He hasn’t seen Draven since the evacuation. Since – since -

Get a grip on yourself. “Yes sir.”

(So Cassian is really struggling at this point in the story: Jyn is listed as missing following the Hoth evacuation and he’s just about holding it together a couple of weeks later with the help of meds and through having been assigned to desk duties. The smallest thing can set him off to thinking about Jyn & whenever that happens he wants to scream. He fears he will never, ever, ever be whole again.)

“At ease, Captain.”

“Yes sir.”

There’s a long cold pause while Draven stares at him and then at the wall of the corridor, as if looking for words printed there. Finally he says “I saw your request to take part in the recovery operation. Your choice of wording was – unusual.”

(authorial confession: I have no real idea what Cassian actually said in his memo)

“Sir?”

(and already, only days after he sent it, nor has he. That’s the kind of state of mind he’s in).

“Oh for the love of life, Andor, at ease! Why do you want to go back to Hoth? I don’t understand why you could possibly want to return to – well, to return there.”

(I have such a lot of feels for Draven, the bitter, cold man who does what has to be done and gives the orders no-one wants to have to utter, and shoulders it all on his conscience; and a lot of feels too for the Cassian/Draven pseudo-father-son relationship. Ever since reading that Cassian was recruited by the young Draven I’ve never seen any of their interactions in quite the same light. If you want a really heartbreaking one-shot on this relationship, btw, read the brilliant “Biography of a son” by rapidashpatronus).

Cassian stands numbly waiting for the General to carry on speaking. He does want to get a grip, he truly does, but he really can’t find the words to answer; not like this, just standing in a passageway, impromptu. He worked for hours on that posting request, trying to sound professional and make a logical case. He has no idea what this reference to “unusual wording” is about.

His mind is grey, like the ice of his long-ago home. Gripping on to ice is a doomed task.

He’s beginning to wonder how much longer he can go on like this.

(I used words like numbly, doomed, and the images of ice, & Cassian’s feeling that he cannot express himself without having time to work out carefully what to say, etc, are all based on my own and friends’ experience of depression).

Draven does not continue speaking. He meets Cassian’s eyes and his lips tighten to a thin line, thinner even than usual, and he waits.

Cassian says at last “I made a mistake.”

“Does that mean you’ve changed your mind about wanting to go?”

“No, sir. Not that. A – a mistake…” He can’t go on. He can see it all, the enormity of it, but explaining it would be like trying to bring a thundercloud inside the ship just by the power of words, and he can’t find words, he just can’t…

(We know that Cassian in canon is a man of few words. I have a headcanon that he can be perfectly fluent and glib on an undercover mission but when it comes to talking about himself, over time this laconic tendency has become so normalised that he really struggles. Add in the emotional pain he’s in now, and the effects of the sedatives he’s taking, and although he knows what he’s trying to express it does literally seem beyond words to him).

(Also I do like that metaphor about trying to bring a thundercloud inside a space craft; it sounds so unpleasant, and would of course be terribly dangerous, were it not also completely impossible).

Draven sighs. “Well. Who gets to go back to Hoth isn’t my decision. Perhaps that’s just as well. In the meantime I’m extending your temporary re-assignment to the Signals and Comms team, as per your second request. But I wanted to tell you in person that there will still be a place for you in Intelligence, whenever you do decide you are ready to return. You were one of our best. When you’re fit for field work again, I want you to know you can come back. It doesn’t matter if it’s months. A year, even.”

(Draven has a lot of faith in Cassian; after all, he wasn’t just “one of our best” but hands down the best operative in Intelligence).

“Thank you, sir,” would seem to be the appropriate thing to say. But it doesn’t feel right. “May I be frank, sir?”

“Yes.” Draven looks ill-at-ease with the clipped assent he’s just given. But he has given it. (Read: It’s very unusual for General Draven to accept frankness because it usually means the kind of trouble best kept under hatches).

Cassian grabs at the one thing he feels able to say.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to return to Intelligence, sir. Least of all to working in the field.”

“You were one of our best,” the General says again. “I can wait. Take as long as you need to get back to par.”

(The General really, really wants Cassian to reach out and grasp this offer; I guess that to his way of thinking, it would be the beginning of the way back for him, from the disaster at Hoth and from his emotional collapse at losing Jyn).

“Thank you, sir. Nonetheless.”

There’s a long silence; Cassian stands rigid with his hands clasped behind his back, waiting to be dismissed.

(& now Draven, who is also a man of few words - and my guess is that Cassian gets it from him - tries to express his own understandng of the situation and his feelings. Not terribly well, poor chap).

“I realise,” Draven says slowly “That it would be pointless for me to push you for reasons and explanations you are clearly unable to give. I am aware that you’ve been under medical supervision since Hoth. Losing someone you care about in circumstances like these is – traumatic. I do have some idea what you’re going through.”

Out of nothing, out of nowhere, for a fraction of a second Cassian feels sheer rage heat him. He breathes fast, his nostrils flare on a single inhalation and exhalation before he controls himself and commands his face to impassivity again. Tells himself it doesn’t matter; and he looks through the wall, at the base of the vertical hull plating behind Draven and fifty metres back. Goes numb, empty, grey.

(For just a moment Cassian is in touch with all the emotions he can’t face or handle at the moment; it’s triggered by a sudden reaction of thinking Drave is trying to minimise what he’s going through and talk about some minor personnel losses from a few years back or something, and make this about himself. He isn’t; but the rage that thought inspires wallops Cassian like a brick. And then he disasocciates and goes blank, his fall-back method for dealing with something he just can’t handle. Just like in the fight after Eadu, when his emotions break through his usual control, the top layer comes out as anger).

“Cassian.”

Reluctantly he hears the sound. Not Captain or Andor but his given name. He’s not sure how many seconds have passed. He comes back into himself. “Sir?”

“We have to work alone, in this field. We tell ourselves that, we build our armour and carry it with us. But doing the kind of work we do, it kills, it starves something in you. So you decide to take the risk; have a friendship or two, maybe risk a relationship; stop being so isolated. Tell yourself it can be done, you can do it. We’ve all done it. I did it. I did it twice.”

The repeated iterations of do, done, did, did make a pattern, are almost a kind of poetry; but he blinks and realises what’s just been said. It’s an unbending beyond anything he’s known from Davits Draven in more than fifteen years.

(I wanted even that moment of open self-expression from Draven not to be completely successful. Because Cassian is so traumatised right now and only just crawling out of the rabbit hole, he doesn’t register immediately how honest and open this is; which is tragic because this is Draven about to bare his unhappy soul, and an enormous display of trust from him, which he probably couldn’t make to anyone else. But for a moment all Cassian hears is words making noises…).

“Sir?”

A faint mirthless breath escapes (as near as poor Draven can get to a chuckle) and the General says shortly “The first one left me and the second one died. I learned my lesson.” (I wanted his summing-up of his emotional past to be as succinct, and as loaded, as possible). He looks at the deck for a moment, his mouth tightening over swallowed memories. “But I don’t blame you for trying. Your relationship with Sergeant Erso seemed to be strong. It gave you a foundation you hadn’t had before. Had me thinking, if anyone on my team could manage to make something like this work it would be you.”

“But I couldn’t. Sir. It was –“ He’d like to break down and curl up and clutch his head again, right here in this public place, sooner than have to say this; but such melodramatics are unacceptable. He takes a deep breath, holds it for the count of four, looks for each word. “I told myself the same thing. That I could do both. Make it work. I could keep both commitments going. I told myself I wouldn’t let either one slip, I cared too much about them both. The rebellion, and – Jyn. But then I didn’t follow through. When the attack happened, I focussed on just one of my commitments and didn’t even think to look at the other; and I failed her. I didn’t look. I didn’t keep faith with her. I wasn’t there. Now she’s gone and I can never bring her back.”

(Cassian had just assumed Jyn would know what to do and would do it, because he has total faith in her - but this time his devout certainty that she is infinitely competent has backfired and because he has grown used over years to holding himself responsible for every death & mission error, he blames himself, almost out of habit).

“Officially she’s missing in action.”

“But she’s gone. It was – it was an error of judgement. Sir. I should have quit after Scarif. I should never have let myself believe I could handle both. If I go back into the field, now, having to make decisions, having to trust my own judgement, I – it won’t work. I can’t do it, sir. I know now that my judgement is fallible. It’s fallible at the most serious level. If I can fail something so profoundly important to me, then I can fail anyone. Anything. I can fail the cause. I can no longer trust myself in the field.”

(And he manages to express something of the agony that is destroying him. It isn’t just that he’s failed Jyn but that he now knows he can fail the most important thing in his world. This degree of failure cuts apart everything he has known/thought about himself and leaves it bleeding; and Cassian feels himself profoundly broken by that. He has a lot of self-loathing, which has been overlayed with happiness and commitment for the last few years; but failing like this, failing the most crucial person in the most crucial way, has brought it all right back).

Silence. His shift is due to start in twenty minutes and he knows he needs to get something to eat in the mess first. But all he wants is to go back to the dorm and take his pills, and sleep. Turn off life for ten hours and not have to think about any of this.

Draven waits for Cassian to go on. Says quietly, when he does not “I hope in time you will come to feel differently.” His face is set, and sad. “You will remain on secondment to Comms until you request a reassignment. Thank you for your honesty, Captain Andor. Dismissed.”

(& I wanted to end the conversation with Draven trying, in his stilted and shut-off way, to show that he still trusts Cassian’s judgement, even now when he’s this fucked up, and he’s prepared to let him make his own decisions about this).

Thank you very much for the ask!

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