"No, it isn't. People speak often as if the Empire is the only corruption, and as vile as it is, I'm not saying it isn't worse than anything we have seen before, but there was a lot wrong with the state of the galaxy ever before the Empire rose."

He shrugged slightly, trying for a nonchalance that he didn't feel, and failed even to fake, as the tense lines around his mouth betrayed. "The Republic was not what it is made out to be in the melancholic memories of those who profited from it. Maybe conflict is truly the natural state of the galaxy."

It was certainly the natural state of his life, and Cassian Andor couldn't imagine the person he would have grown up to be in peacetimes. Someone altogether different, for sure.