Watching Thane ship out was a horrible experience. Ciena thought she'd be able to handle it. She thought she'd be able to accompany him to the hangar without crying. She failed.
"No, hey. You don't need to cry." Thane took her into his arms for the thousandth time in three weeks. If he was tired of needing to comfort her all the time, he didn't show it. "I'm not gonna be reckless anymore. I have someone to come back to now. I have someone to call every chance I get. I'll try to call you at least once before you start work. Just to let you know I'm safe."
Ciena nodded, trying everything she could to stop sobbing. "You need to live, okay? I need you. I can't… I can't lose anyone else."
By now, the other New Republic soldiers were staring at them. There weren't that many returning to duty the same day Thane was, nor was Ciena the only one shedding tears at their departure. No, they were staring because they had figured out who the pair of them were. No one was happy to see an ex-Imperial in a New Republic hangar.
Ciena withdrew from the embrace. She needed to pull herself together. "You're not fighting warlords in the Outer Rim anymore. You transferred."
Thane nodded. "To the Circarpous sector, yes. It's in the Expansion Region."
"You said it's not as dangerous there?"
"It's not, I swear. The Empire abandoned the sector eight months ago. My job is to keep crime syndicates and other nasties from taking over in their absence. Mimban still has a heavy mining industry that the black market would be thrilled to claim as their own."
Ciena hummed. Crime syndicates could be every bit as dangerous as Imperial fighters. She'd skirmished with more than a few in her day. "The New Republic wants those mines as well, I take it."
"They want the Mimbanese to decide for themselves what government they desire and what direction to steer their economy in for the coming years. I wouldn't be surprised if the Mimbanese continue to export their natural resources, but the final decision is theirs to make," Thane explained to her in a lecture reminiscent of several previous discussions. For someone who believed all governments were the same and that corruption existed everywhere, he sure spent a lot of time reminding her of all the ways the New Republic wasn't the Empire.
She assumed he did it for her. Thane knew how Ciena recoiled at the mention of her Imperial service, and he wanted to show her that he wasn't walking down the same path she had. His service was something he could take pride in.
"Listen to her question him. He broke that Imp out of prison to be his wife. The least she could do is act grateful," Ciena overheard an older woman say to her departing soldier. Based on their ages and similar appearances, Ciena guessed the pair were siblings.
Thane nudged her until she faced him again. "Don't listen to them. This moment is about us." He kissed her on the forehead. "I leave in a few minutes, but I will come back. This deployment is temporary. Our marriage is forever."
Ciena leaned into his warmth, her body pressing against his as much as possible given the bulk of his pilot suit. She tilted her head up so their lips could touch. "I love you."
Thane leaned in for the kiss, and the two spent his last few minutes on Chandrila locking lips. Given the way they kissed, a passerby would think they hadn't utilized their honeymoon at all.
Ciena gasped, swept away in the twin tides of emotion and sensation. She didn't hear the whistling at first. It wasn't until a different soldier approached them that she noticed.
"Dang, Kyrell. Now I get why you went fishing through war prisons for a wife. If the Imps I knew put out like that, I wouldn't be here."
Thane broke away from Ciena, scowling. "Kriff off, Jaxon."
Right as he said that, the last call for departing soldiers to the Circarpous sector went out. Both Thane and Jaxon the wolf-whistler had to load up their X-wings.
Ciena forced herself to pull away first. She needed Thane to know she would survive Chandrila without him. He was the one flying off into potential warzones. Not her. "Goodbye, Thane. I love you."
Thane gave her one last peck on the lips before running off. "I love you too. I promise to stay safe. Take care of yourself."
"I will," Ciena called out as Thane rushed over to his ship. He got a stern glare from the traffic controllers for delaying, but nothing too harsh. They were used to seeing people struggle with departure. Soldiers were allowed to have their loved ones see them off for a reason.
Ciena stayed and watched as Thane performed his preflight checks. When those were over, he boarded his X-wing and waited for the signal to roll out of the hangar. She lingered until his ship had taken to the air and was too far away for her to make out its entry into the atmosphere. Once Thane broke away from Chandrila's orbit and was in position to jump, he would be careening towards Mimban faster than the speed of light.
She waited in the hangar for a moment. It was only the suspicious glares of Republic servicemen that motivated her to leave the spot. Ciena wagered they'd had at least one pair of eyes on her for the entire exchange just in case she tried to sabotage the hangar.
Despite the heavy traffic outside, Ciena's ride home was desolate and silent. Even with no roof on the speeder, she remained closed off from everyone else. The whole way back to the apartment, Ciena felt like the space beside her was missing a person.
She didn't think she'd ever had a feeling exactly like this. The closest thing she could compare it to was when she and Thane had received assignments on different ships after graduation. At least then she'd been excited about her new job. Now she just felt… it was irrational to say abandoned, but that was precisely the emotion churning inside her.
That sense of abandonment persisted throughout the rest of Ciena's day. Despite the growing mess in her now single apartment, Ciena made no effort to clean up the mess. She ate little and went to bed with an extra blanket to combat her newfound sense of cold. The apartment became her new prison cell for the next three days. Reason told Ciena that she could leave at any time, but emotion kept her from crossing the threshold. It wasn't until she ran out of food that Ciena dared brave Hanna City on her own.
Shopping alone was awful. When Ciena was with Thane, she was able to focus her attention away from the attention of strangers and onto him. Nowadays, her attention had nowhere to go. Everywhere she went, Ciena was convinced people knew who she was. They'd read that horrid article and recognized her from her mugshot. Everyone in the New Republic hated her for daring to live among them. She kept her hair down and wore bright, civilian colors to confuse them, but it was obvious no one was fooled. Republic men in and out of uniform stared Ciena down as she went about her business.
What if some extremist attacked her? Ciena had been a reasonable fighter at one time, but she'd lost her step since Jakku. For her month in prison, Ciena had used the exercise yard more as an excuse to leave her cell than to stay in shape. She hadn't worked out at all since coming to Chandrila.
That was something she could do before her job started. The first days were bound to be the worst, but Ciena refused to be defenseless. She'd been ridiculous to rely on Thane for protection. If she couldn't fly anymore, her physical abilities were the next best thing she had left from her time as a soldier.
Ciena's prediction came true. Her first day back at the gym was pitiful. She'd come in convinced she could use her old routine only to cut it down to half. She returned to her apartment an exhausted wreck. Showering helped... minimally.
When Ciena left the shower, she noticed a light flashing on her comm. A message.
She pounced on the device, ignoring her body's protests. Ciena's eyes barely registered who had left the message before pressing play.
"Hi, Ciena. I just want to let you know that I'm settled on base. I patrol the sector in my X-wing with a partner for the foreseeable future. I'm sorry I missed you this time. I don't expect you to wait all day by the comm, but I was really hoping to catch you the first time I had a chance. If you could call me back on holo in three days from now the hour before holocomm access in our complex ends, I would love to talk with you. I miss you already.
"Good luck at your job tomorrow! I love you."
Ciena set the comm back on her nightstand, hands shaking. Seven minutes. She'd missed her chance to talk to Thane by seven minutes. Of course the one time she tried to do something else with her time was his one opportunity to speak with her.
She stumbled back into the bathroom, picking her towel up off the floor. Ciena shouldn't be so hard on herself. It was one time. She would have other chances to call Thane while he was deployed. If they could go years without contact during a more dangerous war, Ciena could go three more days without hearing from him now.
In the interim, she was grateful for Thane's reminder about her job. Ciena had an idea of where she needed to go to meet Dr. Cricklin, but she ought to review the map she'd received to be sure. Now that she had a definite task set out for her, Ciena partially regained her ability to motivate herself. She set out her identification, her clothes, her keys... everything she would need tomorrow.
A job would be good for her. Ciena needed something to come into her life after everything that had left.
"Mrs. Ree! So glad you could make it." Dr. Cricklin met her at the speeder lot to her university's administration building. Ciena had left an hour early, but traffic and navigation of a large city proved challenging, meaning Ciena pulled up at exactly the time Dr. Cricklin had specified for her.
Ciena smiled at the elderly professor as she pulled the necessary items out of her speeder. "Dr. Cricklin. Thank you for meeting me outside. I wondered how I was going to find you on this campus."
"It's a big school, definitely. The office we're headed to isn't the easiest to find either. This building has been renovated so many times over the years that the numbering system changes mid hallway more than once. Walk with me, dear." Dr. Cricklin gestured for Ciena to follow her inside. She chatted about the building's history all throughout their walk. Ciena's part in the conversation was to verify she was still listening. Dr. Cricklin was a typical boss in that regard.
The pair stopped in front of a door/window hybrid at the end of the third floor hall. There Ciena met the administrator Dr. Cricklin had spoken with about hiring her. Ms. Dunning missed no opportunity to emphasize how happy Dr. Cricklin was to bring Ciena onboard. "Sara here is thrilled to have you, Mrs. Ree. Being the project director comes with so many important hiring choices. I do my best to help Sara here, but all I set are the numbers. Who Sara chooses to fill those slots is ultimately her choice. She can hire from her own students, the best and brightest historians our partnering universities have to offer, or… other sources." She handed her a datapad. "Top three forms are for you. Scan your ID to begin."
Ciena leaned down to fill out the datawork, not responding directly. The conversation continued as she worked.
"Oh Lina, history doesn't belong to the ivory tower. It lives inside every person who's ever sat in front of their grandparents by the fire to hear stories, who has visited structures from a bygone era and marveled at their design, who has lived through the worst things war has to offer and still makes the choice to live a normal life." She turned to Ciena. "Let Lina know when you're finished, dear. Then she can upload you into the system. We'll walk over to the campus library while she does that."
Ciena nodded in acknowledgement, trying not to mull over the compensation section. Her first post in the Empire had paid better than that. Her monthly paycheck would be just under a third of Thane's. She had to remind herself once again that money wasn't the main reason she was taking this job.
Money wasn't all that mattered, after all. More important was the work Ciena did. Since when had she become so materialistic?
After scanning the digital pages once last time, Ciena affixed her signature to the bottom of the forms. She handed the datapad back to Ms. Dunning. "Thank you for your help, ma'am. I look forward to helping the New Republic tell the truth about this war."
Ms. Dunning took her device back from Ciena, careful to ensure their hands didn't touch. "I will get this in our system right away. She's all yours, Sara."
Dr. Cricklin applauded. "Wonderful! I'm sure Mrs. Ree will call you if there are any problems."
The pair left without another word. Dr. Cricklin continued to babble on their walk to the library, which rested a half kilometer away in a different section of campus. Ciena wished she could say the university reminded her of Royal Imperial, but the relaxed nature of the students she observed would never have fit in there.
Once they reached the computer lab within the library, Ciena learned that her job would be extremely similar to the reporting she'd done for the Empire. Her duty was to go through battle footage taken mostly from Imperial buildings and ships (no one else filmed regularly) and compare it to existing records. The main difference was that instead of focusing only on Imperial presence, casualties, kills, and desertions, Ciena was now expected to collect that information on rebels, rebel allies, and civilians as well. Instead of each side of the war getting its own database, reports were to be sorted by battle/skirmish.
"Once you have those uploaded into the database, our friends in the data analytics department will sort the files and apply their search engine. When our project goes public, people will be able to search their friends and relatives by name and track their role in the war. They can also search by ship, squadron, legion, or unit."
Ciena nodded. "I can think of a lot of people who will appreciate this. This project sounds very… transparent."
"It is, dear. The New Republic Senate may have ordered this project, but it's not only for them. They want civilians and planetary governments to make use of it as well. Governments everywhere can use the information we provide to award reparations, death certificates, pensions… all the things that are difficult to keep up with for a state in transition. Sometimes datawork gets damaged or destroyed or lost in fighting, and it's such a pain to put everything together again."
"That's true." Ciena remembered something that had come up in her interview. "What do you want me to do with unclear footage? If someone only might have died, what should I say about them?"
"This time, be as optimistic as possible about people's survival. We never want to tell a family their beloved relative is dead unless we are absolutely certain. You will be able to label people 'suspected casualties' instead of 'confirmed casualties', but try to use 'survivor' whenever possible. One of your coworkers is in charge of tracking down survivors to request their testimony." Dr. Cricklin smiled. "I know most people will refuse, but any documented experience of the war is valuable. Selection comes after compilation in an undertaking as massive as this."
Ciena blinked, orienting her mind to the true size of what this project was seeking to accomplish. "How much did the Senate set aside for this project?"
"A million and a half credits."
"That's nowhere near enough."
"It never is, dear. Most of my interviewers are students traveling abroad for class credit. I have other assistants writing grant applications to private foundations. We make do with what we have." Dr. Cricklin sighed. "I hope you understand now why hiring you took a bit of shoving. I hope you find this work to be rewarding, Mrs. Ree."
Ciena offered a smile. "I think I will. I admire what you've set out to do, Dr. Cricklin."
"What we've set out to do." Dr. Cricklin returned her smile, twirling Ciena's ringlets with her free hand. "Welcome aboard, dear."
So began Ciena's first nonmilitary job. For five days a week, she spent close to all her daylight hours inside the library of a university she didn't attend, talked to almost no one, and crouched over a computer trying to make out ranks, insignia, ship identifications… anything that might offer her the name of the people she watched kill each other.
The Empire was the easiest. Many of the soldiers she was meant to identify had already been mentioned in other sources (read: service records), and their uniforms were what Ciena was most accustomed to picking out. The Empire had believed in consistency and always wanted their men to be identified with ease, from hardened general to new recruit. Picking Imperials out reminded Ciena of her recovery days though, which is why she always did them first and moved on to the others as quickly as possible
Ease of identification was not a trait Ciena could attribute to rebel soldiers, whose uniforms and markings were far less consistent. When Ciena herself had fought in the war, she'd identified the relative rank of enemy fighters by their behavior and flight pattern more than their appearance. That strategy may still tell her who commanded who, but it rarely offered her any names. The earlier in the rebellion Ciena examined, the harder it was to find records on official squadrons or who may have been a part of them. Some of the rebels weren't even part of the main alliance. They operated in our own domestic cell that may or may have not have joined Chancellor Mothma's forces at a later time. Ciena understood that was the nature of the rebellion, but it made her job far more difficult.
And don't even get her started on the civilians. It was depressing how few of those Ciena could identify. She had the (again: mostly Imperial) citizen records of who lived in the areas where fighting occurred, but they gave her little insight into who may have been caught in the crossfire. Was that Ugnaught who died from a stray blaster shot the store's owner or someone running errands? When that thermal detonator demolished part of an assembly line and killed five, which workers had been on shift? Some of these reports had been drawn up during the war, but not all of them had survived. Even fewer were exhaustive.
Ciena felt her frustration grow with each passing day. These were sentient beings whose lives had been extinguished, and she couldn't do something as simple as name them. Names were the first step to preserving a person's memory, and she lacked even that much. She'd described her dilemma to Thane, who helped her acknowledge that perfection may not be possible in a job like this. It was a hard pill to swallow, but one he'd fed her as gently as he could. Talking to him on holo was the highlight of her week.
Faces blended together in the holograms as hours drew long. Ciena would think she'd identified a rebel only to realize she'd labelled three people with the same name. At least she caught her mistake before pressing upload.
Despite every frustration she encountered, there was one thing Ciena knew she was grateful for: she never worked on a battle of which she'd been a participant. Ciena walked by a coworker tasked with the Battle of Hoth once. She knew Dr. Cricklin had those records. Most likely, Dr. Cricklin had looked up Ciena's history and purposely avoided overlaps. It was a small gesture, but one Ciena instantly appreciated. She didn't know how she would feel if she had to jot down her own name into this database. Just the sight of that much familiarity would probably send her reeling.
Ciena's thoughts on familiarity stayed idle for the first few weeks of her job. The war was big enough that she didn't expect to encounter many people she knew. That is, until she saw him. The second invasion of Naboo. Her first sighting of him in almost a decade.
Thane's brother.
A/N's: I hate to admit it, but this chapter is a lot of transitional material. I knew what I needed to accomplish here, but I don't know if I was able to make it interesting to anyone other than me. Conceiving of how Ciena navigates the world alone without prison or Thane, plus how the New Republic might go about forming their records of the war, was an engaging mental exercise on my end that leads into where I want this story to go. This story that gets longer and longer every time I sit down to write it.
Anyway, I hope this was worth the wait. Please enjoy, and let me know what you thought below!
