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The breeze coming from the ocean is cool and crisp. Thrawn wraps his sweater more tightly around him and lets his eyes flutter shut. After all the fighting, he never thought he would find himself here, at the beach of the only planet that has ever felt like home to him.
Warm arms wrap around him, but he doesn’t panic or react violently. Instead, he overlaps his hands over Eli’s—blue fingers intertwining with brown. “You’re up,” he says.
“Would I let you watch the sunrise all alone?”
Thrawn huffs and turns to face him. “Your journey has been long, I planned to let you sleep.”
Eli’s dark eyes are cloudy with sleep, but his smile is bright like the first rays of sun cresting over the horizon. “I guess I’m just too excited to start my life as a civilian.”
“Is that so?”
“Mhm,” Eli tugs on Thrawn’s sweater, bringing him down closer. “Been waiting a long time to do this.”
Thrawn meets him in a tender kiss just as the sun illuminates the ocean and sand in vibrant orange. He runs his hands through Eli’s soft hair and welcomes Eli pulling their bodies closer.
A particularly sneaky wave washes up over their feet and they both yelp as the icy water drenches their shoes and socks. Eli dissolves into a fit of laughter, and Thrawn can feel himself smile at the sight. It is the most beautiful thing he has seen in ages.
“Watch out!” Eli chirps and dances further upshore.
Thrawn tries to move, but his foot is stuck in the sinking sand, and Eli chooses to stay with him and get wet once more rather than flee to higher ground. They pull his foot loose, only for him to lose his shoe and they race up the shore, purposefully tugging off their shoes and socks.
The sand is chilly under his bare feet, but it feels liberating in the same breath. They run along the shore line, dancing away from the waves, just because they can and fall into the sand dune together, sharing breath and kisses and knowing that this is their forever.
~
“Irizi’vah’nya.”
“Just Zivahn is fine.”
Zivahn, now much older than she cares to admit, sits across from a historian who has found interest in her work after her novel superseded expectations on the bestseller list.
“Zivahn, I’m interested to know why you chose the ending you did for the novel.”
“Why?”
“It is rather presumptuous to assume that Thrawn and Eli were in any sort of romantic affair. They were wildly successful EDF officers, insinuating such tarnished their reputations.”
“That is only because you do not know them. I did.”
“Yes, well besides that, both Commodore Eli and Commodore Thrawn died in battle. Eli, in the siege of Csilla and Thrawn six months later. Your book is entirely historically accurate, yet your epilogue is fiction.”
“Is it?”
“Well, yes. They’re dead.”
“Perhaps. Are you familiar with the Living Force?”
“No, ma’am.”
“The Force is all around us. It moves through us, binds us. Some believe that after your life here ends, you enter into a peaceful state. After all Thrawn and Eli did for the Ascendancy, I could hardly deprive them of an eternity of peace.”
The historian takes notes and looks up at her. “You truly believe this as fact.”
“There are two things I know as fact, that Thrawn and Eli loved each other and if there is an afterlife, they are together. In this novel, I choose to honor that. To honor them and their sacrifice for the Ascendancy. We would be lost without them.”
The historian nods. “Indeed. Zivahn…”
“Yes?”
“Will you tell me about them? Were they truly in love?”
“They were. Pick up your pen, I don’t intend on repeating myself.”