Running down the Academy steps to the motionless body, shrunken in collapse, the swirling starscape of its face gone flat; trying to take shelter behind it as explosions went off; standing over it and trying to defend it with a toy blaster, while bigger bodies ran past and knocked him over without noticing he was there
Squeezing into a Republic war machine, nearly losing his arm in the gears, managing to deposit a handful of pebbles and grit, the nightmare of claustrophobia and crushing machinery; only just getting himself back out in time, before it stuck and exploded; then realizing that he'd just killed the operators
Xilo looking at him from the wrong side of the lines, motionless but for her hair in the breeze; then her hand, so subtly, moving to the hidden detonator on her thigh; and her mouth shaped the syllable: Run
One grabbed the back of his head and slammed his face into the console; two others grabbed and pinned his wrists; another kicked his feet apart from behind, as they ripped down his fatigues; and it took all he had not to scream into his hidden comm for Kay to save him from what was about to happen
The parade of faces: with a smoking blaster burn where an eyeball should be, a caved-in skull, skin discolored from drowning or strangling, knife wounds, bruises, garrote, electrocution; Some clearly done in unavoidable defense. Some in mortal combat. Some with coldblooded surgical precision; or simply abandoned, not saved
From the couch, outside the bedroom, the sounds Cassian was making were loud enough to be heard inside; groans and cries and jumbled words in several languages, some that might be names—Khryw, Lyyxo, Surat, Draven, Xilo, Narede, Dorosz, Farir, d'Djiera, Kay—and thuds from his feet or his fists.
(And the conclusion that 'Talk in my sleep' had been a hell of an understatement.)
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timeasmymeasure
cw: past violence & noncon -- LMK if this is okay?
Date: 2019-06-15 12:18 am (UTC)Sometime between midnight and dawn, it started.
Running down the Academy steps to the motionless body, shrunken in collapse, the swirling starscape of its face gone flat; trying to take shelter behind it as explosions went off; standing over it and trying to defend it with a toy blaster, while bigger bodies ran past and knocked him over without noticing he was there
Squeezing into a Republic war machine, nearly losing his arm in the gears, managing to deposit a handful of pebbles and grit, the nightmare of claustrophobia and crushing machinery; only just getting himself back out in time, before it stuck and exploded; then realizing that he'd just killed the operators
Xilo looking at him from the wrong side of the lines, motionless but for her hair in the breeze; then her hand, so subtly, moving to the hidden detonator on her thigh; and her mouth shaped the syllable: Run
One grabbed the back of his head and slammed his face into the console; two others grabbed and pinned his wrists; another kicked his feet apart from behind, as they ripped down his fatigues; and it took all he had not to scream into his hidden comm for Kay to save him from what was about to happen
The parade of faces: with a smoking blaster burn where an eyeball should be, a caved-in skull, skin discolored from drowning or strangling, knife wounds, bruises, garrote, electrocution; Some clearly done in unavoidable defense.
Some in mortal combat.
Some with coldblooded surgical precision;
or simply abandoned, not saved
From the couch, outside the bedroom, the sounds Cassian was making were loud enough to be heard inside; groans and cries and jumbled words in several languages, some that might be names—Khryw, Lyyxo, Surat, Draven, Xilo, Narede, Dorosz, Farir, d'Djiera, Kay—and thuds from his feet or his fists.
(And the conclusion that 'Talk in my sleep' had been a hell of an understatement.)