people should ship cassian/din solely because being around someone as distrusting and trigger-happy as cassian would give din a migraine
idk the sw timeline so ignore the inconsistencies but assume din is at least 5-7 years younger than he is in the mandalorian.
as indicated in the episode the prisoner, din was even more terrifying when he was younger. he was quick to kill, referred to enemy combatants and marks alike as “target practice,” hung around with the likes of xi’an enough to start a flirtationship and some degree of rapport with a crude and cruel crew, and also happily left a member of said crew for dead in imperial territory for reasons unknown. this din is colder even than the one we meet at the beginning of the Mandalorian: this din is willing to turn a baby over to the imperials for the right price.
this is the man luthen (or his assistant, or maybe even syril/a third party) hires to hunt down recent fugitive, possible political agitator, and definite loose-end cassian andor shortly after the prison break on narkina-5.
either it’s din who breaks into the prison and busts him out (which i don’t like because that moment is so powerful, and cassian deserves to keep that w), or after the narkinians give cassian and melshi a ride off-world, din shows up, having tracked cassian this far. in another moment of selflessness (which is happening to him more and more often; cassian will deny this if questioned however) cassian leads the Mandalorian away from melshi after making melshi promise to go back to ferrix for the funeral. cassian makes a good effort and almost escapes on din’s ship (breaking the carbonite machine in the process), but din snags him at the last second and takes off with him.
din and cassian begin their road trip to the drop off point, and through bullshit and shenanigans wind up bonding along the way. cassian, who is slowly becoming the budding revolutionary he is at the end of season 1, finds himself trying to bullshit and sway din to the revolutionary cause the way vel and luthen once tried to sway him, only now, he is starting to believe what he’s saying. he’s finally getting what everyone has been trying to teach him — and it’s happening because he’s faced with din, another survivor of a cultural and ethnic genocide, another person who has watched the empire destroy their entire world for profit, another man who has lived in hiding for most of his life, another man desperately clinging to the remnants of who he was and doggedly ignoring the state of the Galaxy around him so long as it doesn’t directly effect him out in the Outer Rim.
(din doesn’t believe a word of what cassian says about the rebellion. marks always lie to save their own skins. cassian is a liar by trade.)
plus, despite the similarities of their backgrounds, din and cassian couldn’t be more different. din believes in honor and has a code and a creed that he lives for, though his morals are gray as hell; cassian has lived for himself and maarva for most of his life and is just now learning that he has a responsibility to others to make the world a better place. they are two dangerous men in a fragile place between realizations, actualization, floating in that uncomfortable plane between fear and growth and change. that they both exist in this place is the only reason their interaction doesn’t immediately end in bloodshed (though they both make more than one attempt).
the drop off goes wrong; it’s a trap, maybe din’s covert is targeted by the people who hired him/the empire because tyranny is brittle and paranoid, and a breach in contract means they’re in limbo together. not quite on the same side, but more than they were before.
don’t know where the story quite goes from there, but i see cassian/din being two ships in the night. there is an opportunity, at one point, for them to sort-of-kind-of be something together, for din to join the rebellion, but it’s impossible. din is more like cinta at this point of time: the covert comes first in all things, and no amount of alleged attachment to cassian will sway him; especially not if it makes the empire eye the coverts. din either lets cassian go, or cassian bribes him with the credits he got from the heist, or cassian abuses the small ounce of trust din gives him after traveling together for so long to sabotage his ship and escape, and even though din is furious and maybe unreasonably stung by this, their last fleeting look at one another is one of understanding. cassian has his own war to fight and people worth fighting for, and no matter the bittersweet tension building between them, the rebellion is more important. din has a chance to shoot cassian and go back to get his reward money, but din doesn’t take it. instead he is silent as cassian steals some of din’s gear and uses it to escape. to return to his precious, doomed rebellion.
“don’t look so sad,” cassian smirks. “i’ll bring it back.”
din says nothing. just watches cassian escape, committing that face to memory, certain it is the last time he will ever see it, because cassian is, first and foremost, a liar.
and din is right.
until five years later, when luke skywalker shows him images of the rebellion crew who died to destroy the Death Star, and the blue glow of the holofeed lights up that sharp jaw, pinched smirk, and dangerous dark eyes that din would know anywhere. even over years of absence he can hear the man’s barbed, sharp laugh, the haughty toss of his head as he flouted death again and again, like his luck would never run out.
