[ he says sternly, reaching out in turn to smear some of his blood-sap onto vash's shard. and then,
vash surely learns that what happens next is important: because the empathetic bond opens between the two of them, crumbles every single one of cassian's — and his, surely — defenses, leaving the answer to vash's earlier question, his why, crystal clear.
cassian had said to him once, we aren't all so lucky as to be born in peaceful times. the truth of that burns clear now: vash sees armies in white armor marching into towns, crushing resistance, hanging so-called instigators in the square; he sees this expanded across cities, across planets, across an entire galaxy. history rewritten: anyone who ever opposed the empire, criminals and discontents and monsters; anyone who supported it, heroes bringing about peace, making the galaxy better for everyone.
a frightened voice: they're making a weapon, a planet-killer.
an ancient city crowded with people, falling to pieces under an unfathomably huge shockwave, too powerful to leave survivors. a young man's voice: tyranny requires constant effort. it breaks, it leaks. authority is brittle. cassian, fleeing a battlefield as a teenager; cassian, a child, looking out upon an ugly scar of an enormous mine, on what should be (once was) an arboreal planet; cassian, an adult, committing wholeheartedly to the cause of resistance, to fighting the empire, until he has nothing left. because he has nothing left, no home or family or scruples or identity left to him but the cause.
because zenith promises change. because he cannot restore his galaxy as he left it, and live with himself. because he already cannot live with himself, the lives he's ended and atrocities he's wrought, but at least they were for something. because there should be people out there who are meant for peaceful times, who will be able to speak of the empire, of terror and oppression and darkness, in the past tense, taste freedom, know what he never has —
and so, it's easy. it's easy to let go of the bright meridian energies bottled in his blood and let them pour into vash; it's easy to take, in turn, the cool zenith energies that whisper to him of a better galaxy. ]
no subject
[ he says sternly, reaching out in turn to smear some of his blood-sap onto vash's shard. and then,
vash surely learns that what happens next is important: because the empathetic bond opens between the two of them, crumbles every single one of cassian's — and his, surely — defenses, leaving the answer to vash's earlier question, his why, crystal clear.
cassian had said to him once, we aren't all so lucky as to be born in peaceful times. the truth of that burns clear now: vash sees armies in white armor marching into towns, crushing resistance, hanging so-called instigators in the square; he sees this expanded across cities, across planets, across an entire galaxy. history rewritten: anyone who ever opposed the empire, criminals and discontents and monsters; anyone who supported it, heroes bringing about peace, making the galaxy better for everyone.
a frightened voice: they're making a weapon, a planet-killer.
an ancient city crowded with people, falling to pieces under an unfathomably huge shockwave, too powerful to leave survivors. a young man's voice: tyranny requires constant effort. it breaks, it leaks. authority is brittle. cassian, fleeing a battlefield as a teenager; cassian, a child, looking out upon an ugly scar of an enormous mine, on what should be (once was) an arboreal planet; cassian, an adult, committing wholeheartedly to the cause of resistance, to fighting the empire, until he has nothing left. because he has nothing left, no home or family or scruples or identity left to him but the cause.
because zenith promises change. because he cannot restore his galaxy as he left it, and live with himself. because he already cannot live with himself, the lives he's ended and atrocities he's wrought, but at least they were for something. because there should be people out there who are meant for peaceful times, who will be able to speak of the empire, of terror and oppression and darkness, in the past tense, taste freedom, know what he never has —
and so, it's easy. it's easy to let go of the bright meridian energies bottled in his blood and let them pour into vash; it's easy to take, in turn, the cool zenith energies that whisper to him of a better galaxy. ]