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First button, second button and then the last. All dressed in black and after hours of trying to get up to get ready, you were officially ready to go. Mon Mothma had requested that everyone present in the base would meet at the great hall to address and honour our fallen heroes and their mission. This wouldn’t be your first gathering to attend after a group of rebels have had their mission go awry, but this would certainly have to be the most painful one yet.
With slightly trembling hands, you tried to gather your hair in a bun. Anything to cover up the state you had been in for the last couple of days. As you practically dragged yourself out of bed that morning, you had contemplated whether you should even bother to go or not, but you decided that if you had been going to all the past memorials of random rebels you’ve never interacted with, you might as well force yourself to go the one memorial that honoured him.
After you’re truly done and you look in the mirror, the look of your puffy eyes bring back why you’d been crying for the past four days all over again. The realisation hits you again, and by now you’d think it would hurt less every time, but it’s actually worse. You feel like a nail being hammered down non-stop and every time you’d think you were correctly in place, you get hammered down all over again. You hold your sobs in and try to sit down on the edge of your bed, you try to relax before walking out of your room, but it hurts so fucking bad. Every time you experience the pain of remembering the reality of the situation, your brain looks for comfort and reassurance. He had always been the one to provide you with that, and now, he’s no longer around. Every time you realise this all over again you sob out loud, you feel like you’re dying and your chest is collapsing. This is real. With one last exhale, you let out one last sob and force yourself to get up and get this over with. You wash your face in hopes of salvaging your miserable state, not that you’d think anyone will be expecting otherwise. Your relationship with Cassian had never been official in front of everyone, but you never really needed to say it out loud.
A million tissues later, you’re out of your room with an extremely red nose and in such a disheveled state that you don’t care. You’re grieving, it’s not professional but it is what it is. You walk down the corridors, looking at the ground, trying to avoid all types of eye contact, sparing yourself the pity stares or the actual possibility of someone being stupid enough to approach you in hopes of making you feel better. What do they know? Nothing anyone could ever say could make this any better. The fact that he had died heroically did not hurt as much as the fact that he never told you he was going. He gave you no chances to say good bye, to feel his warmth, to kiss him, to stare into his eyes just one last time and you weren’t able to forgive him for that. He was dead gone and you were never gonna see him again and you were blaming yourself for not appreciating every piece of him at every chance you got. You beat yourself up for all those times when he’d try to catch a kiss or grab you to the side of the hallway for a quick hungry make out session and you’d said no in fear of being caught in the act. God, how you wish you had been caught. That would be less painful that regretting never having it at all. It is so unfair.
You walked into the grand hall to see a couple of hundred almost full seats. That soothed your aching heart just one bit. It wasn’t for nothing, they weren’t forgotten. However, these people were smiling. They were happy that the Alliance now had the Death Star plans in their hold, but right now, you could really care less. You took a seat at the far back, not caring if you couldn’t hear Mon Mothma speak. You weren’t here to listen to her, you were here for him and you had hoped that somehow somewhere, he sensed that. You tried so hard to focus on that. You shut your eyes and tried to focus on thinking of him. You didn’t expect anything to happen, but in the heart of this gathering and the spirit of the Alliance, sacrifice and unity in the air, you were trying to share one last moment with him.