Chapter 28 · The Letter

Leia had not called Hera to the office. That was the first decision. Not the Chancellor’s office, where every wall seemed to listen even when it did not record. Not a Ministry briefing room, not a legal chamber, not one of the secure conference spaces where sorrow entered already half-converted into evidence. Not anywhere with a seal on the door, a protocol officer outside it, or a table designed to make all human beings seated around it pretend they were less breakable than they were.

She called Hera to her apartment. That was the second decision.

Han was not home. Deliberately, though Leia had not explained it that way when he left. He had looked at her once, looked at the sealed packet lying inside the small locked case on the table, and then, with rare and blessed restraint, said only that Chewie needed him for something down at the Falcon and that he would be back later unless she told him not to be.

Leia had kissed him. He had not asked whether she was all right. He was getting better at knowing when the answer did not help.

Now the apartment was quiet except for the distant city beyond the windows and the soft hum of the environmental system adjusting against Coruscant’s evening chill. Leia had not made tea. She had considered it, then rejected the ritual as too obvious, too close to comfort performed because comfort itself could not be offered. There were two cups on the counter anyway, untouched. Habit had betrayed her.

The envelope sat inside its evidence sleeve on the table. Not evidence, Leia corrected herself. Correspondence. Safety-screened personal correspondence returned to the intended recipient. A beautiful sentence. A fragile lie. A mercy with teeth.

When the door chimed, Leia stood too quickly and had to place one hand on the back of the chair until the brief dizziness passed. Pregnancy, although not yet visible, had become very good at reminding her, at the least convenient moments, that her body had entered negotiations of its own and was not always interested in government crisis.

She opened the door.

Hera Syndulla stood outside in civilian clothes beneath a flight jacket, which somehow made her look more guarded than uniform would have. Her lekku were wrapped close, her posture straight, her eyes already narrowed with the defensive exhaustion of someone who had decided, on the way over, which arguments she would not tolerate and in what order.

“Leia,” she said.

“Hera.”

Hera looked past her into the apartment, taking in the absence of aides, guards, legal pads, recording fixtures visible enough to be polite, and Han.

“Is this personal,” Hera asked, “or personal in the way politicians say before asking you to be reasonable?”

Leia stepped aside. “Personal.”

Hera did not move immediately. “That’s not an answer I trust anymore.”

“No,” Leia said. “I know.”

Something flickered across Hera’s face then—not softness, not yet, but the recognition that Leia had not defended herself.

She entered. Leia closed the door behind her.

For a moment, they stood in the small entry space like two women pretending not to know how many dead had followed them inside. Outside, traffic moved between towers in layered streams of light. The apartment smelled faintly of ginger, metal, and Han’s jacket thrown over the back of a chair as if domestic disorder could keep the galaxy from becoming entirely official.

Hera’s gaze went to the table. To the sleeve. She went very still. Leia saw the moment she understood that this was not about her petition. “What is that?”

Leia did not answer from the doorway. She walked to the table, slowly enough that Hera could follow or not follow as she chose. Hera followed. Of course she did. “It was recovered today,” Leia said. “By Kallus’s team.”

Hera’s face closed. “From Thrawn?”

“No.”

The word was too quick, and Hera heard it.

Leia corrected herself before the suspicion could fully sharpen. “From a courier who delivered something Thrawn’s related.” she decided to deliberately omit the details. ”We believe the same person placed this separately, after the delivery.”

Hera’s eyes moved from Leia to the envelope. “Separately.”

“Yes.”

“For whom?”

Leia turned the sleeve so the name faced her. Hera saw her name on it. All the color seemed to leave the air. She did not touch the sleeve.

Leia wished, suddenly and uselessly, that Han was there after all. Not in the room. Not even close enough to hear. Just somewhere solid in the same apartment, making noise in the kitchen, being irreverent and alive and proof that some people could remain present while terrible things were opened.

“Hera,” Leia said quietly, “we have not read it.”

Hera looked at her. The look was so sharp Leia felt it like accusation before the words came. “We?”

“Kallus had it safety-screened. Exterior scans only. Explosives, toxins, active transmitter, slicing component, structural tampering. Nothing that revealed the content.”

“You scanned it.”

“Yes. But they didn’t access to its contents”

Hera’s jaw tightened. “You want credit for that?”

“No.”

“Good.”

Leia accepted the strike because Hera needed something to hit and because, in truth, part of her deserved it.

“Kallus wanted to bring it himself,” Leia said.

Hera’s expression changed by a fraction. “Why didn’t he?”

“Because I told him I would.”

“That doesn’t sound like Kallus.”

“No,” Leia said. “It sounded like someone who would do it even if it hurt him. I decided that was not the same as it being right.”

Hera looked back at the envelope. For a long moment, she said nothing. Then, in a voice too controlled to be calm, “Is this why you asked me here?”

“Yes.”

Hera gave a small, bitter breath. “I had a whole speech ready. I thought you were trying to convince me to trust Thrawn’s information, ot tell me I’m making the trial harder…”

“I assumed.”

“It was good.”

“I’m sorry to deprive you of its audience.”

That almost reached her. Almost.

Hera’s eyes did not leave the name on the envelope.

“It came through evidence recovery,” Leia said, keeping her voice low. “I can’t give you the operational details. The less you know about how it reached us, the better—for you, for the chain of custody, and for whatever happens when someone asks questions later.”

Hera stared at the sealed packet on the table between them. “And you think this is from Ezra.”

Leia nodded softly and Hera’s eyes flashed. “There is something else you should know.” Hera looked at her sharply. Leia forced herself to continue. “This is not in the main case file.. The recovery footage has been restricted inside the investigation. The section showing placement of the envelope is not in the working file.”

Hera stared at her. For a moment, Leia thought the anger would come back full force.

It did not.

Something more complicated moved through Hera’s face. “You edited evidence.”

Leia did not look away. “Yes.”

“Leia.”

“I know.”

“No, I don’t think you do.”

“I do,” Leia said, and this time there was enough Alderaan in her voice that Hera stopped. “I know exactly what that sounds like. I know what governments call necessity when they want to keep their hands clean. I know what files become when people decide they are allowed to protect the truth by hiding part of it.”

“Then why?”

“Because if we made this official before you saw it, it would stop being yours. That’s what Alexsandr said. And he is right.”

Hera’s expression cracked. Only a little, but enough.

Leia picked up the sleeve at last. “Someone may have done this to move you. Whoever sent it may have done this to move all of us. It may be a trap. It may be manipulation. It may be the cruelest forgery anyone could have chosen.” Her voice lowered. “But it is addressed to you. Not to Intelligence. Not to the prosecution. Not to me.”

She held it out.

Hera did not take it. Her eyes were fixed on the handwriting.

Leia’s arm remained steady. Barely.

Finally, Hera reached out.

Her fingers touched the sleeve first, not the envelope, as if the transparent barrier could make the moment less real. Then she took it. The evidence sleeve crackled softly between them.

“I’m leaving you alone,” Leia said “No one is recording. No one is listening. There is no official observer. If you choose to show it to us afterward, you choose. If you choose not to, then for now, it remains yours.”

“For now,” Hera repeated.

Leia did not pretend otherwise. “For now.”

Hera looked toward the windows. The city beyond them moved on, indifferent and infinite. Then she looked back at the envelope. “Leave me alone, please.”

Leia nodded.

She walked toward the bedroom, then stopped at the threshold. “Hera.” The Twi’lek did not look up. “I am sorry.”

For a moment, Leia thought Hera would ask for what.

For Kanan. For Ezra. For the letter. For Thrawn. For the edited record. For every impossible decision arriving dressed as mercy.

Hera did not. She said, very quietly, “Me too.”

Leia left her in the living room.

She closed the bedroom door behind her, not fully, not enough to make Hera feel locked into anything, only enough to give the illusion of privacy in an apartment that had suddenly become too small for grief and too large for comfort.

In the living room, Hera stood alone with the sealed envelope in her hands.

For a long time, she did not open it.

Then, with fingers that had flown combat missions, repaired damaged systems, held Kanan’s hand, held Jacen as an infant, signed casualty notices, and gripped controls through fire no machine should have survived, she broke the seal.

The letter inside was one folded sheet.

No code cylinder. No hidden device. No long explanation.

The handwriting was hurried, uneven in places, written against a surface that had probably not been flat and with a stylus that had dragged once near the bottom edge. It looked, devastatingly, like something written in the time between one risk and another.

Hera read.

Hera,

I’m all right.

I know that is not enough, and I know you will be angry that it is all I can say. Be angry. I would be.

Don’t worry about me more than you have to. I know that is a stupid thing to ask, but I am asking anyway.

I heard you won.

I wish I could have seen it. I wish Kanan could have seen it. I wish a lot of things, and none of that changes anything, so I am trying to stay with the part that does: you did it. You all did it. Everything we fought for, everything we lost, it was not for nothing.

Tell Zeb I am sorry about the thing with the helmet. He’ll know which one. Or he will pretend he does not, which means he knows exactly.

Tell Sabine I hope she forgives me.

I hope you forgive me too.

I love you.

Ezra

Hera read it once.

Then again.

The second time, the words moved. Not on the page. In her.

I’m all right.

Not safe. Not free. Not coming home.

All right.

Ezra had always been terrible at lying when he cared too much about being believed. The letter sounded like that. Like him trying to stand in front of a hole in the wall and insist it was only a draft. Like a boy who had become a man somewhere beyond her reach and still thought apology could be smuggled through humor if he placed it carefully enough between grief and love.

She sat before her knees decided for her. The sofa caught her badly. She did not care.

The letter shook once in her hands. Not much. Enough.

She pressed the heel of one hand against her mouth and made no sound at all.

That was worse than crying.

In the bedroom, Leia stood on the other side of the half-closed door, one hand resting against her abdomen, and listened to the silence of a woman reading a message from the dead, or from the missing, or from whatever cruel country existed between the two.

She waited.

Because for once, the Republic could do nothing useful with the truth until the person it had wounded most decided whether she could bear to speak it aloud.