[ it becomes quickly apparent to cassian that this is not his dream, and he spares a moment to hope they don't all wake up on a train to another snow buried city. he doesn't recognize the place, the people, the setting, but the atmosphere already has him on edge. ]
[ he feels like he should know, as he watches it unfold, and the longer the scene carries on the more he suspects. it's the way the man speaks and talks under a guise of teaching, it's a tiny little girl being trained to kill, and how similar 'yala' sounds to 'yalena.' ]
[ it's dutch, he realizes, only moments before the little girl dislocates her shoulders, and cassian frowns. he's too desensitized to violence to cringe, but it doesn't mean he can't be upset or sympathetic to what he's witnessing, for what she was turned into against her will. ]
[ it's the real dutch he finds standing near him seconds after the murder, but he's still gathering up his thoughts. she was so young, just like she told him. but then again, so was he. ]
[ sometimes, dutch dreams about this — about all the things khlyen did to her, about all his lessons. sometimes, she dreams about the stories he'd tell her, too, when the nights were long and the days were deep, there lived a little girl.
she doesn't expect to see anyone else in the dream, but cassian is there and it doesn't feel like a surprise, the way nothing in dreams ever really seems. ]
Khlyen Kin Rit. It's respectable.
[ the name, that is. the man — that's another question, isn't it? but he's her father in all the ways that matter. she's only just accepted that. he's her father and she's her daughter and aneela is her sister (mother, if you squint) and he did what he did to protect her.
it was terrible, but she gets it. he turned her into a weapon to give her a chance to survive and now that's what she is. a weapon and broken, damaged — but alive.
[ he would leave if he could, because he knows if someone intruded on a dream like this of his he might be annoyed. an invasion of privacy. but dutch doesn't seem angry with him. small mercies, he supposes. ]
[ he huffs. ] That makes it even less fitting.
[ as far as cassian is concerned, nothing about this situation is respectable. cassian was taught how to hold and shoot a gun as a child, but no one forced him to break his own bones to kill a man. but he is coming at it from his own perspective, and even though dutch has told him bits and pieces about how she came to be who she is now, he doesn't want to flat out attack her childhood. he would hate it in reverse. ]
[ she'll be angry later, once she wakes up, once she realises. right now, it feels normal for him to be here. (that's probably telling in and of itself.) ]
Yeah.
[ a beat. then: ]
My father.
[ it's an admission of sorts. he'd always been a father figure. he's 50% of her genetic code. dutch was't born the usual way, but he's the father of the woman whose mirror image dutch is. he raised her.
[ that's a new fact, one that makes him a little madder about everything he's already been told, even if none of that shows on his face. he's been long without his parents, but at least they hadn't ever made him into a murderer. they fueled his motivations, they never held the trigger. ]
[ but he is still trying not to get (outwardly) judgmental about any of this, even if the grim line of his jaw suggests a level of anger. ]
[ but the truth is more complicated than that. the truth is that she'd been weeks old, or maybe months, no older than that. the truth is that she hadn't been born but instead made, that aneela dragged her from the green, a perfect mirror image of herself, a child taken from a memory of herself. ]
[ even if he has no idea to the truth about the mystery over her birth, he has known many, many children who didn't know when their birthdays were. told him they were six, maybe seven. at least that was something he never forgot over the years. he doesn't think anything of the phrasing. ]
[ but five. five is so small, and his heart is heavier for it. ]
No, there isn't. Children get pulled into all kinds of terrible situations regardless of age. [ how many people fighting with the rebellion now were child soldiers like him once upon a time? how many kids get recruited into spy rings without even knowing? ]
[ cassian himself understands the value of an innocuous child walking through the streets, carrying a token or a message in ignorance. he killed his first stormtrooper as a preteen, but he'd certainly shot at them for years before that. he wanted to stop them, hurt them, fight them. ]
Is that the third member of your team? [ she mentioned johnny being one third of it once, and with the Backstory Level here, he just assumes this d'avin might fit there too. ]
Two people who have never met, saying something very similar, I think it means we might be on to something.
[ terrible. he harbors no illusions that his childhood was not awful and over far too soon. the only thing he would defend about it is the cause itself, because it was necessary. ]
[ he does not miss her ignoring the second half of what he's said, but it's very easy to recognize evasion when it's basically his middle name. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
it's a dream now
[ he feels like he should know, as he watches it unfold, and the longer the scene carries on the more he suspects. it's the way the man speaks and talks under a guise of teaching, it's a tiny little girl being trained to kill, and how similar 'yala' sounds to 'yalena.' ]
[ it's dutch, he realizes, only moments before the little girl dislocates her shoulders, and cassian frowns. he's too desensitized to violence to cringe, but it doesn't mean he can't be upset or sympathetic to what he's witnessing, for what she was turned into against her will. ]
[ it's the real dutch he finds standing near him seconds after the murder, but he's still gathering up his thoughts. she was so young, just like she told him. but then again, so was he. ]
Khlyen is a terrible name.
no subject
she doesn't expect to see anyone else in the dream, but cassian is there and it doesn't feel like a surprise, the way nothing in dreams ever really seems. ]
Khlyen Kin Rit. It's respectable.
[ the name, that is. the man — that's another question, isn't it? but he's her father in all the ways that matter. she's only just accepted that. he's her father and she's her daughter and aneela is her sister (mother, if you squint) and he did what he did to protect her.
it was terrible, but she gets it. he turned her into a weapon to give her a chance to survive and now that's what she is. a weapon and broken, damaged — but alive.
does that make it better? ]
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[ he huffs. ] That makes it even less fitting.
[ as far as cassian is concerned, nothing about this situation is respectable. cassian was taught how to hold and shoot a gun as a child, but no one forced him to break his own bones to kill a man. but he is coming at it from his own perspective, and even though dutch has told him bits and pieces about how she came to be who she is now, he doesn't want to flat out attack her childhood. he would hate it in reverse. ]
That is him, right? The man you told me about?
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Yeah.
[ a beat. then: ]
My father.
[ it's an admission of sorts. he'd always been a father figure. he's 50% of her genetic code. dutch was't born the usual way, but he's the father of the woman whose mirror image dutch is. he raised her.
he's her father. ]
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[ but he is still trying not to get (outwardly) judgmental about any of this, even if the grim line of his jaw suggests a level of anger. ]
How old were you?
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[ but the truth is more complicated than that. the truth is that she'd been weeks old, or maybe months, no older than that. the truth is that she hadn't been born but instead made, that aneela dragged her from the green, a perfect mirror image of herself, a child taken from a memory of herself. ]
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[ but five. five is so small, and his heart is heavier for it. ]
Too young, for something like that.
[ not that there's a good age for it either. ]
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[ she thinks about jaq, briefly. about how close she'd come to doing to him what khlyen did to her. how convinced she'd been that it was necessary.
how d'avin had left because he thought her too damaged, too dangerous. broken goods. ]
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[ cassian himself understands the value of an innocuous child walking through the streets, carrying a token or a message in ignorance. he killed his first stormtrooper as a preteen, but he'd certainly shot at them for years before that. he wanted to stop them, hurt them, fight them. ]
It does not mean it's okay either.
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[ d'avin, who'd called what khlyen had done to her abuse. ]
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Is that the third member of your team? [ she mentioned johnny being one third of it once, and with the Backstory Level here, he just assumes this d'avin might fit there too. ]
Two people who have never met, saying something very similar, I think it means we might be on to something.
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Yeah, he is. Johnny's big brother.
[ easier to mention who d'avin is, even if it's giving away an unnecessary detail, than to react to the last part cassian's said. ]
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[ he does not miss her ignoring the second half of what he's said, but it's very easy to recognize evasion when it's basically his middle name. ]
Even more reason for me to agree with him.