espionage! → cassian andor

ii. the interrogation

⋆☆* ✧✰.✦

CASSIAN DESPISED THE EMPIRE and anything having to do with the Empire, including and especially those who worked for it. The way he saw it, only the worst people in the galaxy would want to help bring about oppression to struggling systems and families. If they weren't bad people, then they should have known better and not gotten themselves involved with the tyrannic government. It was what made sense, and it was the basis on which he lived nearly his entire life.

But something about this ISB agent intrigued him. He and his squad had been watching Orla from the moment she left her house that morning, so when she met up with who they could only assume was an Imperial agent of some sort, they watched closely and prepared to strike. It was something the Imperial agent did during their walk to the enclave that intrigued him greatly—so much, in fact, that it was the first thing he asked her about during her interrogation.

"What kind of Imperial agent gives credits to the homeless?" It sounded a bit strange when he said it out loud, but it didn't fit with everything he knew. He wanted to know why.

They were on Yavin IV in one of the interrogation cells, which were small rooms with no windows and nothing but two chairs. The Imperial sat in one, glaring daggers at him. Her wrists were bound behind her back and her hair was disheveled, her already-unruly curls falling in her face even more. He, meanwhile, stood back next to the door, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest and looking at her with genuine curiosity and more than a little distaste. The question surprised her and for just a moment her lethal glare disappeared, giving way to a natural expression of surprise. Then it was back and she replied bitterly, speaking for the first time since she had been bound in the enclave.

"You think us all to be heartless individuals?"

"Mostly, yeah," Cassian deadpanned. She rolled her eyes.

"It's you lot who are heartless. I understand why you had to shoot this Orla being, whomever she was in this little rebellion of yours, but I'm sure you could have found a way to merely capture her if you tried. You wanted her silenced, plain and simple." He scoffed.

"Oh yeah, as if the Empire never does that," he retorted sarcastically. "We asked her to stand down. She didn't. How were we to know she'd commit suicide by us?" He knew that was a valid point, and even she conceded it by not replying.

He stepped further into the room and sat down in the chair across from her, crossing one leg over the other and recrossing his arms over his chest. He wanted to look comfortable—which he was—seeing as she was incapable of sitting comfortably herself. It was a tactic he used time and time again, and while he didn't think it would break this Imperial agent, it would at least irritate her and he couldn't help himself. He narrowed his own eyes at her.

"You talk of heartless as if the Empire hasn't killed people for merely speaking out against it, as if it hasn't been the cause of that very homelessness that fills the Outer Rim." Her brows arched, a look of amused disbelief gracing her features. She sat up straight, her hair falling back and fully revealing her face. Her skin was a shade darker than his own and it was imperfect, littered with freckles, and she had an inch-long scar that went across her right cheekbone. She was, he couldn't help but note, rather attractive. Shame she was an Imperial.

"Us? We strive to help bring peace to as many systems as possible. The Outer Rim is just too filled with crime—in part due to the Rebellion, I might add—for our rule to get through. Only once the Empire strengthens will we be able to help them, and that will only happen if your cause stops fighting for anarchy." The strange thing was that he actually believed her. Obviously he knew she was full of it, but she spoke with such polished care that he knew she genuinely believed the words coming out of her mouth. What had she seen in her life to make her believe such a thing?