#velcinta

The celebration on Endor spills through the trees like firelight. Everywhere Vel looks, people are laughing too loudly, crying too openly, and clinging to one another with the frantic disbelief of survivors who haven’t yet learned what victory feels like.

Vel leaves before anyone can ask her to stay. She doesn’t go far, just moves beyond the brightest ring of firelight, where the music softens, and the forest takes over. Endor is impossibly alive around her—moss underfoot, insects singing, and branches shifting in the night wind. After years of bases carved into stone and ice and fear, the softness of the place unsettles her.

The Empire is gone—the thought should be simple; should be clean. However, it moves through Vel like a wound being prodded.

She stops beside a fallen tree and sits, hands clasped loosely between her knees, listening to the celebration continue without her. For so long, the future has been a thing she refused to picture. It had felt arrogant to do so, dangerous to want, cruel to hope. Every plan ended at the next mission, the next extraction, the next name added to the dead.

Now there’s no next mission waiting for her in the dark.

Footsteps approach through the leaves, quiet but familiar, but Vel doesn’t turn. ‘You found me.’

Cinta lowers herself beside her on the log, close enough that their shoulders brush. ‘You always go quiet when you’re overwhelmed.’

Vel huffs a faint laugh. ‘I wasn’t aware I was being obvious.’

‘You aren’t,’ Cinta says. ‘Not to most people.’

That softens something in Vel immediately, and she looks down at their hands, where they rest near each other but aren’t quite touching yet. Even now, after everything, there’s a part of her that waits, that remembers stolen seconds and careful distances.

Cinta reaches first. Her fingers slide between Vel’s with the ease of long practice, and Vel closes her hand around hers as her heart flips in happiness. For a while, they simply sit there together as the celebration glows behind them. Ahead, the forest stretches dark and breathing, full of small living sounds. Somewhere above the canopy, Vel knows the wreckage of the war is still cooling in orbit, but down here, against all sense, the galaxy feels peaceful.

‘We won,’ she murmurs eventually, almost in disbelief and awe.

Cinta’s thumb moves once across her knuckles. ‘We did.’

Vel lets out a breath she hadn’t realised she was holding. ‘I keep waiting for someone to tell me where to go next.’

‘I know.’

‘Or what to blow up.’

‘Preferably nothing tonight.’

That draws a real laugh from Vel, quiet but unguarded, and she leans sideways until her shoulder settles more fully against Cinta’s. ‘I don’t know what to do with this.’

‘Victory?’

Vel nods. ‘Tomorrow.’

Cinta turns her head to look at her then, and in the low firelight that reaches them through the trees, her face is warm and steady and achingly real. ‘We’ll learn.’

The simplicity of it almost undoes Vel.

She thinks of Ghorman. Of blood on Cinta’s clothes. Of the impossible terror of almost losing her before either of them knew how to say the things that mattered aloud. She thinks of Aldhani, of the names they carried, of everyone who didn’t make it to this forest or this night.

Victory doesn’t erase any of it. But Cinta’s hand is in hers, the war hasn’t managed to take that, even though it’s tried time and time again.

‘What do you want?’ Cinta asks quietly.

Vel looks at her and for once, the answer doesn’t feel like a strategic weakness, or feel selfish or naive or childish. It just feels terrifyingly plain. ‘You,’ she says. ‘A life with you. If we’re allowed one.’

Cinta’s expression shifts—not dramatically but open in a way Vel still treasures every time she sees it. She lifts their joined hands and presses a kiss to Vel’s knuckles.

‘We’re allowed,’ she replies with a soft smile, and Vel closes her eyes against the sudden sting there.

Behind them, someone cheers loud enough to send birds scattering from the trees. Cinta’s mouth curves brighter, and Vel smiles helplessly back, caught between laughter and tears.

‘You’re very sure,’ Vel murmurs.

‘I survived Ghorman,’ Cinta replies, dry and gentle. ‘I intend to be sure about everything now.’

Vel leans in and kisses her, slow and warm, and when Cinta kisses her back just as ardently, Vel feels the future open—not as a battlefield or an obligation, but as a path they might actually get to walk together.

When they part, Cinta rests her forehead against Vel’s.

‘Tomorrow,’ Vel whispers.

Cinta’s hand tightens around hers. ‘Tomorrow.’