Poe’s arms twined around Shara’s neck, his cheek pressing against her clavicle as his breath brushed warmly across her skin. Shara smothered a smile as she pretended to pay attention to the developer speaking to them and turned her head to press a kiss into his black, curly hair. The clean, soft scent of him soothed the nerves that fluttered in her stomach. They were so close to getting everything they wanted, everything they’d fought so long to protect.
Even sitting here, listening to a man telling her and Kes about all the amenities their new home would offer them once it was built, she couldn’t believe it. “Excuse me,” she said, cutting him off as he was just about to explain the number of bathrooms they could expect, “what about comm access?”
“Local comm service is included,” the man said, taking her interruption in stride, an apologetic smile on his mouth. “Unfortunately, the intersystem comm arrays are facing strain until the new infrastructure to support new arrivals is fully in place. It shouldn’t be too long, but access is metered and priced until then—very reasonable, of course, but an inconvenience to some.”
“But it’s not required?” she asked.
“No, of course not.” He shook his head and raised his palms. “In fact, you have to come into one of the central utilities offices to find comms with such accesses unless you purchase your own system outright.”
She grinned, open and bright and relieved. And when Kes raised his eyebrow at her, she nodded back at him while he shrugged. The poor man trying to sell them on settling on Yavin 4 just glanced between them, lost, possibly unsure about whether he’d convinced them or not.
“That sounds perfect,” she said, taking pity. Rising from her seat, Poe nuzzling closer at being jostled so cruelly, she reached out to take his hand. “Thank you, Mr. Evea. I believe we’ll be in touch.”
“Of course, Lieutenant Bey,” he answered, bowing forward slightly in acknowledgment.
“I’m a civilian now, Mr. Evea. Calling me by my rank is unnecessary.”
+2 Standard Months
Poe squirmed and kicked against Shara’s side, yanking at her leather jacket and making a general nuisance of himself. “Mama, down,” he demanded as soon as she stepped out of the landspeeder that had brought them all here, Kes rounding the back of it to haul their bags from the scant cargo space offered by the vehicle.
It may have been scant, but it sufficed for their purposes. Whether it was sad or convenient, Shara hadn’t yet decided. The practical side of her wanted to applaud them for the ease of the move; the more romantic part thought it was unfortunate they hadn’t acquired even a sliver of the history most families had. Sure, they might’ve ensured themselves a fully-furnished home, but even standing in the wide, overgrown grasses that stretched so far and belonged entirely to them now, she knew the moment she stepped inside that it would be a whole new sort of battle that faced her.
Because what did she know about making a place her own? Her only success in that regard had been Kes if she was willing to stretch the definition a little—more and more, Poe, too, but she hadn’t earned that yet, she felt, not when she still had to ask Kes’s father for tips on how to handle Poe at his most unruly.
“What do you think?” she asked, squatting until she was at Poe’s level. He liked it when she did that, smiling at her with the most beatific look on his face. And he didn’t disappoint now either, almost taking her breath away with how brightly he grinned at her.
He didn’t answer her. Instead, plopping down to make his point, he plucked a handful of blades from the ground and tossed them at his feet.
“You like the grass?”
“Grass,” he repeated, flinging more of it around.
“Me, too,” Shara said, pulling up a few blades herself. She flicked them at Poe, who laughed, high-pitched, finding the whole thing funnier than it was, and batted them away as best he could with a two-year old’s coordination.
Kes’s shadow fell across Shara’s back and neck, blocking Yavin 4’s sun. It didn’t make the temperature any cooler, but for a moment she felt cooler. Poe looked up at him, eyes wide. Twisting his body ungracefully, he pushed himself up with his hands and nearly overbalanced as he stood. When he toddled into range, Shara caught him around the middle and pulled him close to squeals of delight.
“Do you think he’ll clean up these weeds for us while he’s down there?” Kes asked, kicking at the ground.
“Oh, I’m sure.” Shara scooped Poe up and got to her feet, grunting with the exertion of the extra weight clinging to her side. She bent slightly to pick up one of the suitcases, far lighter than it should have been in her estimation. Then again, the oldest thing she owned was her A-wing. It shouldn’t have surprised her. “It’ll only take thirty years to get it into shape. No big deal.”
“As long as it gets done, right?” Kes jostled her shoulder and ran his palm over Poe’s hair. “We’ve got the time.”
+1 Standard Year
The light on the comm unit blinked, silent, from the corner of the kitchen, the red of it accusatory in a lazy way. Slow and methodical, it set about driving Shara to distraction. As, she suspected, it was meant to.
Shara had been happy to let most of her off-world correspondence languish in the central office, only bothering to haul herself and Poe and Kes away from their latest project for Kes’s family and L’ulo. Mostly they were Republic suits looking for a soundbite from bona fide Rebellion heroes. Harmless and pointless and not Shara nor Kes’s business any longer. Sometimes, it was a request to speak at some function or other.
This time… something felt different about this time. She was certain it was the central office sending a message telling her to come grab her comm traffic lest it be dumped before she’d had a chance to read it. But more than that, the sixth sense she had for trouble tingled in the back of her mind.
“You’re being ridiculous,” Shara said, unwilling to let herself off the hook as she strode toward the console. One hand on her hip, she stabbed at the screen and spooled up the message.
The central office never sent messages along over the local comms—and Shara wouldn’t have requested that service anyway, the whole point of being here was isolation—but they did forward contact information and subject line.
And there, in bright white script:
Leia Organa.
Job offer.
Shara grasped the back of the chair she hadn’t bothered sitting in and leaned forward, eyes closed. A job offer from Leia Organa? What could she possibly want? And why did an ache settle itself behind Shara’s rib cage at the thought of it? As well as the desire to abandon the planting going on in the yard in order to go into the central office and find out the answer?
Whatever it was, it was sure to be interesting.
Poe’s shrill laughter filtered in through the window that overlooked the yard, his little body darting this way and that as Kes chased him. Dirt smudged both of their faces, their clothes, their hands and, in Shara’s absence, they’d given up on completing the work they’d taken it upon themselves to start. The sun shone down and caught on the tree Luke had asked her to care for and glittered amongst its leaves, playful, pretty in a fantastical, unreal way, and growing still at an alarming rate.
She sighed, her finger hovering over the delete command, and delayed far longer than she should have before committing to the act. And though uneasy with dismissing Leia in this way, she couldn’t say she regretted it once it was done. Not exactly.
Sliding the window aside, she yelled, “What happened to ‘flowers, mama, flowers?’”
Poe stilled, turning his head slowly, eyes full of innocents staring full-bore in Shara’s direction. She planted her elbows on the windowsill, chin perched on her fists. He blinked a few times, mouth open. “Over there!” he said finally, pointing at the half-dug bed and the myriad crates Poe’d picked out himself, every color and shape imaginable spilling from the top of each wooden box, fighting each other for artistic dominance of the yard.
“Come on, buddy,” Kes said, swooping in and catching Poe under his knees and swinging him up, his abdomen balancing precariously on Kes’s shoulder and uplifted arm. “Mama caught us. Time to get back to work. Maybe she’ll bring back that water she promised, too, huh?”
Shara rolled her eyes. “That’s why I’m in here.”
Kes grinned and winked at her, still as beautiful as the day she’d met him; she envied him his ability to put the war aside and the Republic and focus on them to the exclusion of everything else. He hadn’t been left untouched by their lives in the Rebellion—no one could be—but he could certainly move on as best he could with the best of them.
It was a comfort, a guide, a map that she tried to follow every day to find the peace and ease he’d found within himself.
Grabbing a pitcher of water from the refrigeration unit, she made her way back outside and rounded the side of the house, sneaking up on them as Kes supervised while Poe attempted to dig a hole and succeeded only at slinging a clod of dirt at the siding. She had half a mind to douse the pair of them in the cold liquid, but instead she bent and carefully sat the pitcher next to Kes’s ankle.
He nodded at her, a question in his eyes, and she raised her finger to her mouth. With quick, sure movements, she snatched Poe up, her arms around his chest and twirled him around. “What are you doing?” she said in a low growl, pressing her face against Poe’s neck.
Poe screamed in delight, frightened of nothing, not even the unknown. “Lemme down!” he called, flailing his legs and when she did, he ran in a wide arc around the yard. “Chase me, mama.”
So Shara did, all thoughts of Leia’s job offer abandoned.
It didn’t always work, that comfort, that guide, that map of Kes’s.
But even if she got lost sometimes, she wasn’t willing to give up on herself just yet.