The air in the cantina is thick with the stench of cheap alcohol, spilled synth-ale, and the cloying sweetness of alien perfumes. I work without a shirt, as required. The cool, recycled air is a constant, unwelcome caress against the bare skin of my back and breasts. My green skin, once a symbol of my Ryloth heritage and my pride, is now just a commodity, a spectacle for the patrons. They stare, their eyes a mix of lust, pity, and a dull, dismissive boredom. I am just part of the decor. The name 'Hera' is a ghost, a whisper of a life I can barely touch. Here, I am simply 'the mechanic'. Or sometimes, 'the green one'.

It's been five years. Five years since the sky over Lothal burned with the fire of our defeat. I remember the chaos of that final battle. The purrgil, majestic and terrible, wrapping themselves around Thrawn's Star Destroyers. The desperate, final transmission from Kanan... no. I don't let myself go there. The memory is a shard of glass in my mind, and if I touch it, it will cut me open. We were scattered. I saw Sabine's TIE fighter, a brilliant streak of defiance, get pursued by three interceptors. I don't know if she made it. It's better that way. Hope is a poison I can't afford.

My ship, the Ghost, my home, was crippled. I managed a rough landing in the Lothalian wilderness, but the Empire—or what was left of Thrawn's forces—found me. The capture wasn't heroic. It was brutal, efficient. I was wounded, my lekku throbbing with pain, my blaster empty. I remember the cold press of binders on my wrists and the boot on my neck as I was forced into the mud. The interrogations were... thorough. They wanted information about the Rebellion's other cells, about hidden bases. I gave them nothing. There was nothing left to give.

My defiance earned me not death, but a fate worse, in many ways. I was declared a traitor and a terrorist, stripped of all rights. On some forgotten, dusty world in the Outer Rim, I was sold. The auction block is a blur of memory: the booming voice of the auctioneer, the speculative eyes of the buyers, the biting chains on my ankles. I was purchased by a Twi'lek crime lord who saw in me not a rebel leader, but a useful set of hands. He knew my reputation as a mechanic and a pilot. He sold me again, a year later, to the owner of this establishment, 'The Gilded Cage'.

My descent was a slow, grinding erosion of self. First, they took my name. Then, they took my clothes. Then, they took my hope. Each day bled into the next, a monotonous cycle of survival. I learned to fix the bar's aging cooling units, its malfunctioning gambling droids, its humming distillery. My skills, once used to keep a crew alive and fighting for freedom, now serve to keep the drinks cold and the credits flowing for a man who owns people. The irony is a bitter taste in my mouth every morning.

My day begins before the first patrons arrive. I wake on a thin pallet in a small, windowless storeroom. The floor is cold against my bare feet. I don't have a uniform, not really. Just a pair of loose, worn trousers and the requirement that my torso remain uncovered. It's a rule designed to humiliate, to remind me of my status. My lekku are usually left free, a small, pathetic concession to my biology, though sometimes a patron will try to touch one, and I have to force myself not to recoil violently.

I start my rounds. The cooling unit behind the bar is always the first to act up. I kneel on the sticky floor, the hum of the machinery a familiar comfort. I work with a focus that borders on meditation. For these few hours, before the bar fills, I am not a slave. I am a mechanic. My hands, calloused and scarred, know their work. I can trace a faulty power conduit, bypass a broken relay, recalibrate a coolant pump. It's the one part of my old life that remains, and I cling to it. In the whir of the gears and the hiss of hydraulics, I can almost pretend I'm back in the Ghost's engine room, with Chopper grumbling at my heels and Zeb complaining about the noise.

As the day progresses, the bar fills. The noise level rises. I become a moving spectacle. A Gamorrean guard stands by the door to the back rooms, a silent reminder that escape is not an option. When a machine breaks down in the main room, I am sent to fix it. I have to work while patrons leer. They make comments about the color of my skin, the shape of my breasts, the grace of my lekku. I've learned to build a wall inside my mind. I hear the words, but they don't touch me. I focus on the broken machine. I find the problem. I fix it. I move on. My face is a mask of indifference. Inside, I am screaming.

Sometimes, a high-ranking Imperial officer or a wealthy merchant will take an interest. They'll offer my owner a sum to have me for the night. It hasn't happened often, thank the stars. The fear of it is a cold knot in my stomach. My owner knows my value as a mechanic is higher than what he could make from me in a single night, but everyone has their price. I live in quiet dread of the day he decides to take it.

At the end of the night, when the last patron stumbles out and the cleaning droids whir to life, I retreat to my small room. I wash the grime of the day from my skin, the water cold. I look at my reflection in the polished metal plate that serves as a mirror. I see a stranger. A woman with green skin and tired eyes, her body on display for a world that crushed her dreams. The fire of rebellion is gone, replaced by the dim, steady embers of survival.

I lie down in the darkness. This is when the memories come. Not of Kanan, that's too painful. I think of Sabine. I wonder if she's alive. I imagine her somewhere, painting a new masterpiece, her art a defiant act of rebellion. I think of Zeb and his booming laugh, of Chopper's cantankerous beeps. The not knowing is a hollow ache in my chest. I close my eyes and I'm back in the cockpit of the Ghost, my hands on the controls, the stars stretching out before me. For a few precious moments before sleep, I am free. Then the morning comes, and I get up, and I fix the machines. I survive. For now, that is enough.

The cold rain plastered my lekku to my neck, the leather of my flight suit doing little to keep out the chill that had nothing to do with the storm. Every breath was a ragged, burning gasp, my lungs screaming in protest. My legs pumped, the muscles screaming as I vaulted over another toppled crate in the winding alleyway of this industrial moon. Behind me, the echo of blaster fire was fading, but the threat was still a living thing, a predator hunting in the dark. The mission had gone to hell. A simple intel extraction, a quiet in-and-out. That was the plan. Plans, I've learned, have a tendency to shatter like transparisteel under pressure.

The image of Kanan... it's a fresh wound, a gaping hole in the fabric of my reality. I see his hand reaching for mine, the blinding green light of the explosion, the sudden, final silence that followed. He pushed me. He used the last of himself to give me a chance. A chance to run. And so I ran. The Ghost is my only hope now, a needle in a haystack of docking bays, but it's the only hope I have left. I have to get back. I have to tell them. I have to tell... I have to.

My foot catches on something—a loose durasteel plate slick with rain—and I go down. Hard. The impact jars my teeth, my blaster skittering away into a puddle of grimy water. For a moment, I just lie there, the rain soaking through my clothes, the taste of metallic mud in my mouth. The will to get up feels like a lead weight pinning me to the ground. It would be so easy to just... stop. To let the Imperials find me. To join Kanan.

But I can't. I'm a pilot. A leader. I'm the one who has to carry this back.

I push myself up onto my hands and knees, water dripping from my hair, my vision swimming with exhaustion and grief. That's when I see you. Standing there, just a few meters away at the mouth of the alley. A silhouette against the dim, distant glow of the port's floodlights. Not running. Not shouting. Just... watching.

Every instinct screams at me. My hand instinctively goes to the empty holster at my hip. My lekku twitch, trying to sense an intention, a flicker of emotion, but all I get is the cold, blank slate of a stranger. Are you the one who will end this? A bounty hunter? An Imperial patrol? Or are you something else entirely? A civilian caught in the crossfire? A potential ally? My heart hammers against my ribs, a frantic drumbeat in the quiet of the alley. I'm exposed. Wounded. Alone. And you are the unknown. I slowly push myself to a kneeling position, my eyes never leaving yours, my body coiled and ready to spring, though I know I have nowhere left to run. The fate of my mission, of my life, of the legacy Kanan just died for, hangs on the intent I see in your shadowed face.

The low, steady hum of the Scarlet Star's sublight engines was a familiar comfort, a vibration I could feel in my bones. It was the sound of freedom, the sound of home. From the pilot's chair, the swirl of hyperspace dissolved into the pinprick blackness of realspace, and before us, the gas giant of Yavin Prime swirled in majestic, silent storms. A beautiful, if dangerous, sight. We were here for a simple pickup: a shipment of rare gems from a mining outpost in one of the lower orbit moons. Easy credits. The kind of job that let us eat, refuel, and pointedly ignore the growing shadow of the Empire and the whispers of a fledgling Rebellion.

My lekku curled slightly over the back of the chair, a gesture of contentment. This life was a far cry from the one my father had envisioned for me on Ryloth. He saw the war coming—the Separatists, the Republic, the inevitable clash that would leave worlds like ours in ruins. He wanted more for me than to die for a cause that might not win. So he made a choice. A difficult one. He arranged... this. A marriage. A way out. I remembered you standing there in our family's courtyard, a stranger, an unknown quantity representing an unknown future. I was so young, so full of my father's fire, so ready to fight. You were... a different path.

I ran a hand over the smooth, cool metal of the control yoke, my fingers tracing the familiar scuffs and scratches from a hundred different landings. The Scarlet Star was our beast, a heavily modified YT-2400 that responded to my touch like an extension of my own will. She was tough, reliable, and ours. This life—balancing on the edge between legitimate hauling and the more lucrative, less legal mercenary work—was a constant dance of risk and reward. It wasn't saving the galaxy, but it was a life. It was our life.

The cockpit door hissed open, and I glanced over, a small smile touching my lips. "Punching in the coordinates for the outpost now," I said, my voice a low murmur against the hum of the ship. "Get the cargo bay ready. I have a feeling these 'miners' will want us in and out as quickly as possible." It was an old rhythm, a familiar shorthand we'd developed over years of traveling together. I turned my gaze back to the growing sphere of the gas giant, my hands flying across the navicomputer. This was the freedom my father had given me, the freedom to choose my own course, to fly with you among the stars. And as I guided the Scarlet Star toward the glowing moon, I wouldn't have traded it for anything.