Chapter Text
Hera sat in the dorsal turret of the Ghost, watching the sun set over the treetops of the Endor forest through the bubble-shaped viewport. The cloudless sky was a blaze of colour above her, vivid swipes of orange and pink and gold like a painter had taken a brush to a canvas. It reminded her of another sky, on another planet. That was why she was up here by herself and not out there with the rest of the fleet’s pilots, celebrating their biggest victory.
The Emperor was dead. The second Death Star had been destroyed. Darth Vader had burned on his pyre. The galaxy was finally free from tyranny and all it needed was a new government to form and lead them forward. This was a huge moment – so why did she feel empty?
She knew why. She’d spent years fighting to get to this point, but the one person she’d most wanted to share it with wasn’t here. She may have been free, but he would never be.
She may have tried to deny herself any dreams of a life after the rebellion, of what she and Kanan could have become, but somehow her subconscious had done that for her. Yes, she had Jacen, Sabine, Zeb, Rex and the rest of her family, but there was no-one she could truly call her partner like she had called Kanan.
That was why she was up here, in his turret. It had always been his turret, ever since he’d joined her after Gorse and taken on the role of her handyman, her co-pilot, her gunner; her crew. Even when Zeb had joined and took the position just as often, she still thought of it as Kanan’s station. Just like she would always think of the co-pilot’s seat as his chair, and the second cabin as his room, and the side of her bed nearest the door as his side.
His loss wrapped around her heart and gripped like a vice. Even after four years the pain was still there, an open, gaping wound that refused to heal. Raising Jacen had been hard, possibly the hardest thing she’d ever done, and not just because she'd had to do it as a single parent. Every time she looked into her son's eyes, she saw Kanan. Much as she would always love Jacen, it was a constant reminder that Kanan was gone, that he was never coming back, that he would never know his son and their son would never know his father.
Even the sunset reminded Hera of Kanan. Atollon’s were more spectacular than this, the dust in the planet’s atmosphere creating an even wider range of colours that blended into the striated rock of the canyons. Endor’s sky was more muted, but a beautiful contrast to the verdant forest below.
I’ll see you again. I promise.
His words to her under that sunset echoed back in her mind now. He'd kept to the spirit of that promise; he'd come back from Malachor. They’d then had two more years together, two years of him seeing her but not seeing her. Not until maybe a glimpse at the end – one that she would never be able to ask him about.
They'd had eleven years in total. Eleven years of working and fighting and living together, and though he'd known how much he meant to her, Hera couldn't help but feel that she had squandered her time somehow. If only she'd known–
No. Neither of them would have done anything differently.
A sad smile crept onto her face as she remembered the first time she saw Kanan. He'd stepped in to protect an old man – Okadiah, his friend – from the ruthless Count Vidian. People with the will to stand up to the Empire had always caught her attention as someone with potential, but she'd had a different objective to recruiting that day.
Maybe next lifetime, pal.
She'd been prepared to let him slide. She hadn't known of the galaxy's intention to draw them together, like a binary star system in orbital decay, destined to collide in the most spectacular fashion. Spectacular they had indeed been, right until the fiery end. Would they get another lifetime, another chance to do it all over again?
There were people out there who believed in that kind of thing – in the eternal soul. Maybe they were right, and maybe they would get another chance, in another life. Or maybe this was it, and they’d had their chance, and those eleven years were all she’d get.
Either way, Hera knew one thing for sure. She watched the sun sink below the far horizon, and the soft glow of campfires beneath the treetops beckoned.
She wouldn’t trade those years for anything.