#like when it comes to cass and maarva he's not becoming what she was he's breaking the familial cycle to not live his life as she was

[rotzaprachim]

so just... chewing on maarva and cassian’s relationship (like many people i think this is where most of my biggest discordant notes of season 1 struck) and how i don’t think the way it’s... handled is even particularly internally consistent within the season. much about the circumstances of it - i.e. her straight up kidnapping of him - are kind of left on the table without much unpacking, although i think with some individual nuances. one thing that strikes me is the scene at the end of episode three, which almost made me cry both times i watched it, as the sun goes down on ferrix and paints cassian’s face, and young kassa’s face, in gold. it’s beautifully shot but also explicitly contrasts kassa and cassian’s repeated forst exile, how cassian is having to flee and being again taken from his homeland by circumstances beyond his control. and that sunrise looks an awful lot like his face being lit on that beach in scarif. it’s not a happy motif, to me, too see his waking up on the spaceship painted in this light. even if maarva is outlined in gold, she’s taking him into something that is being visually compared to death. 

and there’s another thing that really struck me with the long episode 7 sequence between cassian and maarva that the AMCA guys were later talking about that i WISH the finale had dug more into, which is this: cassian has become, for whatever intents and purposes, maarva’s son. he’s living to be what she raised him to be, in a life very similar for the most part to her own. Maarva for the most part isn’t a rebel. She probably isn’t aquiescent, fully, but she and klem were drifters living off taking bits off other people’s spaceships, or downed craft, and bouncing around and living on it. When we see Cassian hustling around for the starpath unit, he’s basically just continuing in the family business, something further confirmed by his memories of Klem in the season finale teaching him to clean rust from scrap. And this adds all these complex, fucked layers to that episode seven exchange. Because maarva wants to rebel, now. she wants to join the rebellion. but she’s older. she probably has a lot of ideas about the end of her life. And she has this absolute condescencion and frustation about what Cassian is and what he’s doing. How he’s off with His Women, how he’s Gadding About or Doing Things she doesn’t like him doing. and it IS complex, on screen, beyond what the show later treats their relationship as. 

but i really, really think there was more room here to represent the more complex dynamics of a working-class parent whose been struggling their whole lives essentially taking their frustration at their own life and how it was lived out on their son for doing the same thing, rather than the kind of Saintly Mam Figure In a Chair and her Lowlife Washup Useless Son Who’se Failed Her. cassian being the younger mirror to maarva that she doesn’t want to see is a much more interesting dynamic. she’s angry with him for not being the rebel she never was. considering uh actual stuff fiona shaw has said... i really wish there’d been more space to unfurl maarva’s frustration with him in a more complex way. i wish cassian had more love and rage and frustration with her all mixed together. one part that struch a wierd note with me in the finale is “i love him more than he could ever do wrong” because it’s like... even after death, maarva’s love is still swirled in with her judgement of him. it’s that i love you unconditionally EVEN if you’re bad logic a lot of parents have and it’s fucked. 

 i wish she’d been cassian’s messy older mirror rather than ultimate paragon. he doesn’t live up to her image, he does the work she never did. 

[okdeedee]

to know him is to love him

cassian andor x gn! reader - part of latch (takes place after as i was saying)

masterlist an: ok i will not lie i wrote this in 3 hours getting progressively wine drunker but honestly im rlly happy with it so. letting her fly out into the world.

warnings: i don't really use pronouns at all, it just doesn't come up in my writing style atm, so this is gender neutral. andor spoilers, obviously. some mention of death. some deep yearning. and even deeper trust. fluff. lots of fluffy physical contact.

wc: 2.4k

For only the second time in his entire career as a commissioned officer of the Rebellion, Cassian has a paid day off. He’s not quite sure what to do with himself.

The only idea he had was turning off his alarm last night, which he did, but his strict body-clock refused to let him sleep in. 

So he got up at 0800 and tried to relish the relaxed pace at which he walked to get to the mess hall. It’s coming out of the rainy season on Yavin 4, so Cassian stood in the clearing just outside of the temple that serves as headquarters and tilted his face up for a couple seconds to feel the sun. 

He actually sat down for breakfast and ate the hot food option instead of his usual ration bar. 

Then he checked his datapad, on which there was nothing new or interesting. 

Which brings him to now, at around 1100.

Cassian has become a task-based creature, so a day off is not really what he needs; especially when he has nowhere else he really wants or needs to be other than here. 

He thinks he might go back to sleep, or try, at least. So, he makes a purposeful turn halfway through his aimless walk down a random corridor and starts to make his way back to his room.

But then when he looks down to check the time for the first time this morning, he sees the date on his chrono, and everything comes to halt. 

Suddenly, he’s back standing on a beach in Niamos, watching the horizon as the sun sets. He remembers even the minute details from that moment. The flapping of his pants against his legs in the wind. The near silence of the waves that came in to shore. Xanwan’s modulated voice coming through the public phone.

Cass, I’m sorry. Your mother’s dead.

He remembers Melshi asking if he got through, and saying very calmly, although he was falling to pieces, “Everything okay.”

Cassian has known loss since he was a child. He knows how it clings, how it hits like a punch to the gut at the strangest of times.

He naively thought that it would get easier, a year, two years after Maarva’s death. He doesn’t quite know why. His natural parents’ death never got easier. Neither did Clem’s. Neither has the loss of Kerri, wherever she is now.

But he had hoped, against everything, that it might be different with Maarva.

That’s just love. Nothing you can do about that.

Cassian feels a little like his chest is about to explode with pressure of everything in it. He wants to stop one of the many people walking past him in this corridor. Someone shouts near his ear at someone running past, and he wants to shake them, tell them, explain it. Everything he wishes he could have done.

My mother died two years and a few days ago, and I found out two years ago today. I didn’t find out till a couple days after she died because I was in prison for something I didn’t do. I argued with her the last time I saw her, and she said it was alright, but it’s not. It’s not.

Melshi is on a mission today. Anyone else here that he’s known for that long, he doesn’t want to tell.

He takes one step, and then another. His mind feels vacant like he’s underwater, or like a vacuum has taken all the air, and therefore the sound, out of the galaxy.

So he walks and doesn’t think for a couple minutes, and when he comes back to himself, he’s standing in the upper hangar.

He presses his hands over his face, scrubs his forehead with his hands. He squeezes his eyes shut and only just suppresses the urge to slap his own cheek a couple times.

He opens his eyes and the first thing that he sees is you.

You’re doing some tune-ups on the T-65B’s. There’s an astromech he hasn’t seen before milling around the same X-wing you’re working on, and it chirps at you as you both work.

He can hear faint music coming from the little radio at your feet.

He watches with rapt attention as you make funny movements with your shoulders in time with the music. He feels his face go warm when you start to move your hips in time. You chuckle at something the astromech says, and he finds himself walking over to you.

As a rule, Cassian doesn’t seek out other people for help. It’s just not in his nature to have that kind of vulnerability.

But he trusts you, now. He’s pretty sure it’s been a little over a year since you got here. You’ve only ever been kind and warm and bright to him.

“Hey,” he says as he nears you before he can talk himself out of it.

You turn and see him, and your familiar glowing smile takes over your face. “Cassian!”

You hurriedly dump several tools in the toolbox at your feet and reach out your hand, which lands on his upper arm. You give it a gentle squeeze as you respond, “Hi! What’s up?”

Cassian is so fragile right now that he almost melts at the feeling. He lets out the deepest sigh of his life, and your eyebrows furrow.

Suddenly, he doesn’t want to tell you, and this all feels stupid, and he should have gone back to sleep or opened his stash of spotchka or really anything but this.

You scan his face worriedly. “Cass?”

His throat has closed up and he is at a complete loss for what to say. He sort of wants to turn and run.

You, warm and attentive as always, know intuitively how to help. You take his arm and sling your other one around his shoulders and walk to the corner of the hangar. You sit him down so he's leaning against the wall, and then you sit down next to him.

You smooth his hair that is sitting haphazardly across his forehead. You take his hand and stroke it with your thumb very softly and slowly.

Stars, how he wants you.

Not sexually; not in the state he’s in.

But he wants your touch every day. All day. He wants to hold your hand for hours. He wants the warmth of your smile the second he wakes up and he wants to bask in it until he falls asleep. He wants your laugh to echo in every space he occupies, not because it’s haunting him, but because you’re always walking in tandem. He wants it to be his responsibility to take care of you. He wants you to take care of him, too, which is very new for him.

He looks at your joined hands, and then at your dear, concerned face.

“You don’t have to tell me. We can just sit here.”

Cassian feels a rush of affection for you so deep that he almost forgets why he came here in the first place. 

But then a minute or two passes in silence, and the hollowness in his chest comes back, so he takes a breath and opens his mouth to speak. 

“My mother died a couple years ago.”

You breathe in a little sharply, and he can hear the sorrow in it.

“I- hm. I found out she died two years ago today. She’d already been dead for a few days. They couldn’t reach me to tell me.”

“Oh, Cassian.”

He can’t look at you, doesn’t want to see whatever heart-shattering, empathetic expression is on your open face, so he stares at the ground. In truth, he doesn’t know where to start. He could stay here for three hours and talk about Maarva and only get through the first couple years of their life together.  

He doesn’t know, but you’re waiting, and he trusts you enough to listen to whatever he ends up saying. 

“Her name was Maarva. Maarva Carassi Andor. She… I- She saved my life.” 

He stops. You squeeze his hand in support. 

“I was born on Kenari. It’s a Mid Rim planet that the Empire took over for mining projects. It’s toxic, now. Too many accidents. My sister and I… Our parents were killed early on.”

He tells you the story of the ship that crashed. He tells you about the leader of his little orphan community being killed. He tells you about creeping into the ship, about destroying the control panels in childish rage.

“How old were you?” You ask, when he pauses. 

“Maybe ten?” 

You gasp softly, and he looks at you. Your eyes are shining with what look like unshed tears. He clears his throat. “And your sister?” 

“Around five.” 

You put your other hand around the one of his you’re already holding. “Stars, Cassian.”

He remembers not hearing the sound of anyone in the ship until he saw a movement in the reflective panels in front of him. He tells you as much. He tells you about turning around and seeing Maarva and Clem, being terrified. The struggle and being tranquilised. Waking up on their ship without his sister, the sun in his eyes. 

“They raised me on Ferrix. I didn’t speak the language, so I lashed out. I learnt Basic, but got into fights at school, I didn’t have friends at first. I made their lives so difficult. But they loved me.” 

.

You stare at this man you’ve known for a year now. You’ve seen him tired, or high off adrenaline at the end of a mission, you’ve seen him care for his squadron and stay by their sides in the medcenter. You’ve seen him smile, wide and carefree, maybe three times. You’ve seen him barely containing his rage. 

You’ve seen him in a hundred different states, but not this one.

The thought that this almost unfailingly stern man contains this much love and pain is half unimaginable and half the only answer to the questions you’ve always had about his nature. 

He tells you about this amazing woman, his mother. Her wit, her generosity and care, her faith. Her patience in teaching him to use a comm, a datapad. The way she’d fume and fuss after a tedious meeting with the Daughters of Ferrix when she was president. 

How, when she got older, she wouldn’t turn the heater on. How cold she was when he’d come home after days away. Despite her frailty, the way she always had a fierce love and protection of this son of hers. 

He mentions the money they stole, his plan to go somewhere warmer with her, his leaving without her after their argument. He stops for a little, then starts again. 

“I got told over the phone that she’d died. I was … I couldn’t get back to Ferrix fast enough to see her. They’d put her ashes in brick by the time I got back. And then I missed her funeral because the Empire was torturing my friend and I had to get her out, and-” 

.

His throat is burning from holding back tears. “Another friend repeated what she said to tell me before she died.”

He tells you what she said. He doesn’t know why. He didn’t plan any of this. 

Tell him he knows everything he needs to know, and feels everything he needs to feel. And when the day comes and those two pull together, he will be an unstoppable force for good.

Tell him I love him more than anything he could ever do wrong. 

He trails off. He feels less like something is trying to pry its way out of his chest, and more like he might be able to breathe again. 

There is a minute or so of silence. You’re still stroking his hand. 

“She’d be so proud of you.” 

Cassian huffs, a bitter smile on his face. 

You remove one of your hands from his and place it on his cheek, turning his face toward you. 

“Cassian Andor, listen to me.” 

His mouth falls open a little in awe of your fervent expression. 

“Your mother would be incredibly proud to see you where you are now. You experienced incredible pain and loss, and you didn’t let it consume you. You risk your life every day to fight against a ridiculously powerful and remorseless system. You care so deeply for everyone - your squad, complete strangers, K-2, even me.” 

“Of course I care about you.” 

You stroke his cheek with your thumb once, as you chuckle. “Nice try. This isn’t about me.” 

Your hand drops from his face, and he resists the urge to pick it up and place it back. 

“You are an unstoppable force for good. You…I…You are the most incredible person I know,” You say almost painfully earnestly.

Painful only because Cassian wants to lean in and kiss you breathless, but doesn’t think it’s the time. 

Cassian closes his eyes to imprint that moment in his memory for the rest of his life. He hears a ship take off outside, hears the faint buzz of your music that’s still playing nearby. 

“Cassian?”

“Yeah?” 

“Thank you for sharing that with me. Your childhood, her memory.” 

Your faces are quite close, now. Cassian can’t avoid looking down at your lips for a second. It feels like his skin is about to jump off him, or like he’s been electrocuted. You bite your bottom lip contemplatively for a second, and he’s about to lean in, but there is an announcement over the speaker in the hanger, and it makes you both jump. 

.

You both laugh a little at the change in the energy of the moment. Then there is a lull, in which you look like you’re preparing for something. You let go of his hand, take both of yours and cup his face. Then you move his head down just a little, and gently touch your foreheads together. 

“It’s an honour to know you, Cassian.” 

“Kassa.” 

“Hm?” 

“My name.”

You draw back and look at him questioningly. “Kassa?” 

“That’s my birth name.”

Force, you love this man. 

The thought hits you like a blaster bolt and paralyses you for a second, but you recover soon enough to not raise suspicion. You hope. 

You open your arms wide and pull him toward you. Like liquid, like choreography, his arms wrap around you, and you sit there on the floor like children, holding each other tightly. 

“Kassa?”

“Yeah?” 

“It's one of my life's greatest joys to exist at the same time as you.” 

.

.