Then, finally, some good news. Organa's daughter returns with the schematics. With the guidance Jyn Erso had given them about the reactor module, they quickly find an exterior weakness and launch a successful assault against the battle station. Draven didn't expect to be celebrating anything so soon – let alone the destruction of the planet killer. There's carousing in the Great Temple – singing and dancing, a fair amount of weeping too. There has never been a party like it on Massassi Base but Draven can't forget, even for a single night, that the Empire is still out there. It wasn't so very long ago that they didn't even know about the Death Star, and they were no less at war.
He finds Mothma in her office yet again, staring pensively out her window. He didn't leave to find her, but found her all the same. A ferocious peal of thunder shakes the earth beneath them and then the skies open up. They haven't seen hard rain like this in over a month. It's cacophonous.
A wonderfully cool breeze draws him over to the window and to her. "You should be down there with them," he says.
The revelers have run outside and they're dancing madly in the shower. An ecstatic holler, hardly human, pierces the night and the pounding of the rain. Its originator spins in three drunken circles and then falls into the mud. Five other young men run over and dog pile on top of him.
Draven and Mothma glance at each other and laugh.
"Maybe not," he corrects, and they laugh again.
"I am with them in spirit."
"I hope so. We should celebrate when we can. What happened to Alderaan will never happen again. That's worth celebrating."
Mothma turns a wry look upon him. "You don't look as if you're celebrating."
"You know me by now." It's the only explanation he gives.
He expects her to smile at that – at her gruff, no-nonsense general - but she doesn't. "If you're the man I think you are," she says finally, after a long silence, "then you're dwelling on what you've done wrong. On the mistakes you've made. You're probably blaming yourself, and wondering if you're fit for your position."
He's hit with a terrible panic until she adds: "I am wondering those things about myself."
He's not sure what to say. She's right, of course. He was wrong about Galen Erso, about Jyn Erso and the Scarif mission. And he had been more than a step behind on all of it. He has been wrong, perhaps, about a great many things. It didn't used to haunt him but it does now, because…
"You know how close we came to not having this victory," she continues, finishing his thought exactly.
She offers him no absolution; she has none to spare, not enough even for herself.
Unexpectedly, she elbows him. "What are you doing engaging in such a futile exercise? You are Davits Draven: enemy of futility. Mercilessly forward thinking."
He thinks to himself that he should smile for her, but he already is. "Even old dogs can learn new tricks."
She smiles. "Not so old."
"Perhaps not."
The recruits down in the mud make him feel old. Maybe Mothma doesn't.
Even as they stand inside the rain is misting them, from splash and from wind. She reaches up to pull down her tarp – a poor excuse for a window covering - and for the first time he truly feels sorry for her that she must forego the elegant senate offices on Coruscant, with their plush carpets, chandeliers, and floor-to-ceiling glass. She deserves to be in a place like that. He has always served near the field, on ships or in makeshift headquarters. The humidity is starting to drive him a little mad but he's not hurting for lack of luxury.
With the window tented and the vast openness of the jungle canopy closed off to them, it suddenly seems that they are standing very close to each other.
He's wearing the wrong jacket for this weather – it's absorbing all the moisture. He pats it lightly. "A bit like standing by a waterfall." He almost cringes at his awkward attempt at idle conversation, and he sounds too much like he's debriefing one of his agents after a mission gone wrong.
"I've never been to a waterfall," she says, wistful, after a grin that tells him she knows he's distressed. He's not sure if she's honoring his effort or torturing him. "I've seen many quite lovely ones, on Chandrila, on Naboo – but only from afar."
Perhaps it's only that he's eager to speak of his home world but the chatting becomes easier: "I grew up in the mountains and there were many. Some of the largest ones on the planet were in my region, but nothing impressive on a galactic scale."
"Pendarr III, is that right?" It is right, and he's impressed she knows. "Do you miss home?" she asks.
"Yes." He hadn't planned on saying anything more, but her eyes urge him to continue: "I miss it sometimes. I left to defend it from the Separatists, but my path hasn't taken me back there yet."
"Do you have any family?"
"My mother and sister, and her children whom I've never met. I tell myself I'll see them when this is all over. But the end has never been in sight."
"You should go back to Pendarr, the next chance you get. If I could go to Chandrila, I would go this very minute." He accepts her advice – her command – with a sympathetic nod. "And you never married?" she then asks, and there's a slight change in the air. The conversation doesn't seem quite so idle anymore and his instinct is to flee.
"Too busy," he answers.
She replies, with a hint of regret: "I know something about that."
"You married the rebellion."
"We both did."
Music and laughter keep him up that night. Or something else. He turns from one side to the other and back again, his eyelids popping open as if out of his control to stare at the mossy stone ceiling as he kicks the sheet off in frustrated swelter. He has the nagging feeling he left something undone or unsaid in his conversation with Mothma.
He's growing introspective in his old age.
Draven attends the medal ceremony commending the heroes who helped bring down the Death Star, but his mind is on the next step. His scouts have brought back a list of uninhabited planets and moons where the Alliance might station its next headquarters, but the most recent battle's proximity to Yavin has accelerated their timetable. He and Dodonna turn their focus away from choosing a new base and towards a carefully choreographed migration from Yavin, implementing all the lessons they learned when they left Dantooine. The planning required to find a home on board the fleet for the entire population of Massassi Base is extensive. No one knows how long it will be before they can settle on the ground again.
The entire rebel navy comes to assist with the evacuation of Yavin, and not a moment too soon. Draven oversees Mothma's departure personally. He sends her in the middle of the exodus, cushioning her between the vanguard and the dangers of the rear. He would have liked to have been on her ship but he's taking responsibility for the tail.
The evacuation is clean. He finds her first thing once his shuttle lands on her flag ship and gives her a firm nod across the milling crowd. She sighs with relief, and a faint smile crosses her face. She nods back.
Operating from the fleet isn't ideal, but they manage. Weeks go by. Despite their escape, reprisals for the Death Star are on everyone's mind, especially Draven's, but the intel is scarce. He sends a team deeper into Imperial space and none of them return. Mothma is furious, at least as furious as her cool exterior allows her to be. "It wasn't your initiative to take," she says. "You didn't run it by me, because you knew I would say no." And then: "When we disagree, you don't get to do as you please." And finally: "It isn't just insubordination, it's disrespect." She reminds him, hurtfully, that General Cracken is the Alliance's intelligence chief, not him. And then she dismisses him coldly.
He thinks she is inordinately upset with him, but he is efficiently chastised. However, he can't help but think that it was his team's failure – and not their deaths – that was unacceptable. If they had sent back actionable intelligence, even at the cost of their lives, she would have had to have acknowledged the legitimacy and value of the mission.
He acknowledges to himself that it was a mistake. And if he could, he would trade 20 pilots and tens of thousands of stormtroopers to get his agents back.
She won't let him protect her by keeping her out of the loop. He doesn't want these things on her conscience. He can carry them. She shouldn't have to.
They're at odds. Permanently. A former senator from the Hosnian system wants to be on the council. He has 30 ships and over 200 men. Draven doesn't trust him. Mothma ate tea cakes with him once at a senate luncheon and thinks he's dependable. There's mass slaughter of the native species on the planet Ilben by the Empire. She wants to intervene but he knows they can't. For just a moment she looks as if she thinks he enjoys mass slaughter. A brilliant Imperial general on Desra is single-handedly responsible for keeping the entire planet under the Empire's rule. The only one who can get close enough to assassinate him is his interpreter, still an adolescent, who offered to do it if the Alliance could arm him. He'll surely be killed or taken into Imperial custody. Mothma won't say yes but Draven does.
He is unapologetic. He was placed in this position for his strategic mind. Every uncomfortable decision, every unfortunate reality, every regrettable sacrifice, is pushed on him. It's who they need him to be. If they can't do it, then he will.
"We have to be better than them," she says. Her new mantra, her new song.
"You want to win, don't you?"
General Cracken returns from his work in the field and resumes his duties as head of intelligence. He meets with Mothma when meetings are required. The command table is smaller aboard her ship; Cracken is the one with a seat. Draven is busy scouting – new planets for the fleet to orbit when discovery forces them to migrate, and when he can, candidates for their new Base One – and he rarely sees her.
"The chancellor speaks highly of the work you did while I was gone," Cracken tells him.
"Does she?" He's not skeptical she said it, but a little skeptical that she meant it.
Sometimes she sits in on his consultations with Dodonna about the new base. Slowly, they're narrowing down their list.
He loses count of the months, and he can feel the rebels aching to put their feet on the ground. He can handle space, but they're crippled functionally. The sooner they find a permanent base, the better.
"You've overcorrected," she says dryly, when he shows her a dossier on Hoth. "Instead of sweating we will be losing fingers and toes to the cold." They're in orbit around Avla Laturne, and he hasn't seen her in seven weeks.
"There's very little Imperial activity in that quadrant, and the snow is excellent camouflage. There's substantial cave work already that we can take advantage of."
"Please tell me this is just a lesson in appreciating Yavin," she begs. "I can feel my appreciation growing by the minute." He's getting a little nostalgic himself, for the red gas giant hung in the sky that turned purple as the sun went down, and for those ancient, enigmatic edifices that had given them shelter. And she is right: it won't take long on Hoth before he misses the heat and the heady smell of jungle trees even more than he already does.
Only a few weeks away from the fleet and he missed her too. He feels an unmistakable sensation of relief when he lays eyes upon her at her desk. He hadn't realized it until that moment but he is developing a protective instinct for her, more akin to what one might feel for a queen than a chancellor. Perhaps he is coming around to seeing her as the indispensable and irreplaceable asset to the Alliance that Bail Organa and others had always believed her to be.
They begin preliminary construction on the new base on Hoth.
Hoth could not be less like Yavin IV. Draven's lips are chapped by the second day. His knuckles peel. His nose bleeds. The days are cold and the nights are colder. The rebels sleep on simple cots with a sort of solidarity and pride – "Anything for the Alliance!" – bundled up in all the clothes they might have worn out into the ice and snow. They're enjoying fresh air, even the frigid kind. He's in the barracks with everyone else, at least for now. Friends and couples squeeze into the same bunks, spooning each other for warmth. Hoth makes you long for company in a way that Yavin never did. On Yavin, you would rather go and sleep out in the dirt than share a bed.
The tunnel system is tight and confusing to navigate. Draven isn't sure how much of that is the architect's fault but he would like to leave the man outside the gate for the night. They call it Echo Base, and he hears her voice before he rounds the corner and sees her. They've been on Hoth for two weeks when they run into each other for the first time in those damned halls. An astromech droid rolls indecorously past, driving them even closer together than the confines already had. Endemically disrespectful, those droids. Draven catches himself against the wall, sparing a glare at the oblivious machine.
"Ma'am," he greets formally, righting himself.
She bites her lip at his formality. "General."
He begins moving past her towards his destination, until he hears her ask unsurely from behind him, "How are you settling in?"
He swivels around. "No worse than anyone else."
"Good. I'm glad to hear that."
"And you, Ma'am?"
"The same, I suppose. It's not a very comfortable place, is it?" She grips the edges of her white fur coat and pulls it tightly around her. Her face becomes narrow between the folds of the hood, lovely against it with the hint of her auburn hair.
"No."
They are both thinking that they miss the days on Yavin, but they don't say it. He nods to her and leaves.
And then it comes. A blitz. Bombs over Hoth without warning. It has been no longer than a month and the Empire has already found them. It's pandemonium as they flee. The fighters are on their own as the larger ships help with the evacuation, and Echo Base shakes with explosions and the footfalls of AT-ATs. He finds Mothma is the hangar. General Rieekan, the base commander, is pushing her into a long-range shuttle.
"Go with her," Rieekan tells him, spotting Draven as he runs over.
"I can't go yet!" he protests, shouting over the roar of dozens of engines. "I'll go last, like I did on Yavin."
The pilot pokes his head out of the cockpit: "We're ready for takeoff."
"Cracken is overseeing the removal of all sensitive and necessary information from your office and the Princess and I will make sure everyone makes it out. Just go. Go now!"
Draven is staring at the door back in to the tunnels, but she steps down the ramp and takes his hand. "Draven, let's go," she says. He knows it's hard for her to leave behind Leia Organa, her friend and mentee. He must do as she is doing, and trust their people. "Davits," she repeats, firm but not impatient. She has never addressed him by his first name before.
They break free of Hoth's atmosphere with a stronger thrust than he has ever felt, the pilot scrambling to get them out of the system. TIE fighters loop around to watch them, but only a Star Destroyer gets off a shot. It misses by a wide margin and their ship makes the jump to hyperspace and to safety.
The protocol is radio silence. There's no way to know who is dead, and who made it out. It's a sort of limbo. They'll hop around the galaxy a few times before heading to the rendezvous point, just in case.
Draven and Mothma aren't alone. In the cabin with them are two other escapees – a young female technician and a comm operative of a species Draven couldn't name. The ship is at capacity with the four of them, the pilot, and his co-pilot. Arguably, it can't even hold six comfortably for a trip of what might be several days. Mothma offers them a few words of comfort and then turns introspective. Draven expects their chancellor to be stunned. But she's not in shock - she's wired, jittery. She paces.
There's very little to say. While they might not know exactly what they did wrong, what was clear was that they had not been careful enough. And while they didn't yet know who they had lost on Hoth, this had been the worst blow struck against the Alliance to date. There was no point – no benefit - to voicing those ideas. There was nothing to discuss, nothing to figure out.
He admires the way she handles the shock. She's stressed, overwhelmed even, but she doesn't wallow in disbelief. She's already strategizing.
"Sometimes I think I'm not strong enough," she whispers, after the others have fallen asleep out of boredom and exhausting uncertainty. She's sitting now, holding her head in her hands.
"You are," he assures her, with so much confidence that he doesn't even emphasize it.
"When you say it, I believe you."
"Because you know I wouldn't say it merely for the sake of your feelings."
She gives him the trace of a smile: "I'm not so sure."
"You wouldn't want me getting soft. What use would I be to you then?" She picks up on the bitter note and begins to speak, but then thinks better of it. "I'm sorry. I'm on edge," he apologizes, rubbing his forehead.
"You have a very steadying presence. Has anyone ever told you that?"
It's not what he expects her to say. "No, I don't think anyone ever has," he replies dryly. 'Steadying'?He doesn't imagine that's how he is perceived.
"I'm glad you're here with me. I feel better, just having you here." He stirs, uncomfortable at the compliment. "I'm not really thinking about what happened today. I'm thinking about tomorrow. About what comes next. And it's…it's too much," she continues. "But you're here. And you'll face tomorrow with me. And you'll make sure the Alliance lives on. I am…reassured."
"Are you sure you still want me? I'm in intelligence. Look at what just happened." He hears his own voice, thick with grief and regret.
"This was not your fault. I'm not certain a mistake was even made. There will always be things about the Empire's power that we will not know and cannot understand. Clearly they see us as a threat now in a way they never did before. We cannot continue as we have in the past. I can only hope that there are enough of us left that we may continue."