Chapter Text
Epilogue (7 ABY)
I won’t have peace. I’ll just worry about you all the time.
That’s just love. Nothing you can do about it.
Cassian Andor and Maarva Andor (Andor, Season 1, Episode 7 - Announcement)
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They part ways after the war. For only the fire of Rebellion unites them.
He takes a position at the University of Coruscant. An extension of the work he has done at Shimmer Base. If the people and their homes have not survived the culling of Empire, some academics reason, then perhaps their culture and their histories have. So he, alongside some others, decide to put them back together in a memorial.
And when the time comes, he will gain access to the New Republic’s main archives, and he will erase the both of them from the history books, one by one.
From now on, they will live unremarkable lives and die unremarkable deaths, unmarked and forgotten. There is no greater gift.
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She returns to the Galactic Antiquities and Objects of Interest in Coruscant because it is still the only place she knows. She even recovers the Fondor from a salvage yard. The ship is missing half a wing and the lasers are non-functional. But that is no matter. She still has his set of schematics and she knows a few mechanics from Shimmer Base who have settled in Coruscant. They can fix this for her.
The only change she makes is the potted plants she hangs where the false wall and the fitting room used to be.
She takes a lover and backs away almost at once. Too soon. Much too soon. Instead, she adopts a loth-cat. It prowls the gallery and sleeps under the sun rays and requires no companionship at all.
Better.
The weeks begin to pass. The universe had promised her peace. But unthinkably, she begins to worry. And there was nothing she could do about it.
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Her dreams will follow her for life. But she cannot continue to hide in them. For she will not find an answer there. She has known that for some time now.
There will be no grand moment of redemption or clarity for them, no instance which will tilt the balance towards good or evil, blood or grace. Sometimes, it just is.
These were now her words.
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"Professor Lear?"
They stand before each other at the university quadrangle, inscrutable as always. They are with the world now, and old habits die very hard.
She holds out a stone tablet.
"I've come across a piece of questionable provenance."
He smiles.
"Let me see."