What is this? A character study of sorts?
I cant get poor Captain Andor out of my head.
Also, why does Cassian not have a character tag in this archive? What more does he need to do, I mean honestly? Rude.

This is still new to me, so reviews and feedback are most appreciated.

She doesn't know that he rarely dreams.

He sleeps the sleep of the dead; uninterrupted and silent and long. But to say he rarely dreams doesn't entirely mean he doesn't dream at all. And when he does dream, it is only ever of his parents. And it is only ever the same dream: they are young (he especially, just six) and as he remembers them. They are sitting at home, what used to be home, talking around the table about nothing particularly important, and it is pleasant enough.

Only in the blink of an eye it all changes.

He sees not the bright and youthful faces of his parents, so full of hope and fight and life, but as he last saw them, bloodied and battered. His mother's mouth frozen in a silent gasp of horror; his father's head, half collapsed, slumped at their spots at the table where they had previously been conversing. And he wants to scream, to thrash, to kick himself awake. To will himself to wake, semi-lucid, but he is only ever stuck, floating between unconsciousness and wakefulness, unable to look away or see anything else.

When he does eventually wake, his chest sheened in sweat and hair stuck to his forehead, he doesn't sleep well for the next few days.

It goes without saying, he prefers not to dream.

She doesn't know that his hands shake.

After a mission, sometimes for just a few minutes, sometimes for hours, sometimes for days.

He hides it well, it's barely noticeable. K-2 commented on it once. But that was only once and never again. If it sets in for the long haul, more than a few hours, then the only thing that cures it is getting blind drunk. Liquor is his drink of choice, over ale or wine, but he's not entirely sure the moonshine which is produced on the rebel bases quite passes as liquor. It's closer to jet-fuel.

But it does the job.

These days he has to drink a bottle of it just to take the edge off.

She doesn't know that his back causes him trouble when it's cold.

On Yavin it's never really cold. He's seen cold before, he's seen the base at Hoth, that frozen nightmare of a planet. No, it's not frigid on Yavin, but the chill seeps into the barracks during the cooler months, especially at night, and that's when it pains him. It radiates from above his left hip, up to his shoulder, following the wing of his shoulder blade, constantly pulled tight with tension. If it's particularly bad, and he cant stand under a hot stream of water to work out the ache, it shoots down his leg; bright sparks of pain, reminding him of everything he's done to earn such a punishment. Of just how bloody his hands are, how muddy his nose is.

The scars that mark his chest are faded with age, but they glow, bright and hot when he's overheated. When he stands under the pounding hot water to work out the aches in his body, he stares down at them; pink against the olive of his skin, a relief-work of memories. The bad ones are raised; puckered and thick. There's only a few of those. Knife cuts tend to fade faster, while the shrapnel wounds are splayed across him, like stars scattered across the night sky. He remembers how he got almost every one of them. How many lives he took while gathering them. Sometimes, absent-mindedly, he traces one below his collarbone while he's thinking. It helps to centre him.

His mind, body and soul bear the scars of the war he's been fighting ever since he was old enough to fire a blaster. But everything he has done was done for a purpose, carefully weighed up and measured, and done with the ever present hope of freedom surrounding it like a fine mist.

He doesn't ever tell anyone about any of it.

But he'd tell her.