The soft yellow light in the canon cockpit came from one small lamp in the ceiling above the seat. It wasn’t nearly as bright as the ship’s main luminescent lamps, it just gave enough light to distinguish your surroundings. It reflected with a small warm spot in the glass, making it seem as if there was a comet flying towards Ghost, or as if Ghost itself was flying towards a star. Ezra loved sitting in the chair, staring at the endless black-and-white cosmos, at the yellow reflection, at his own nearly invisible one, wondering, whether or not he could see home from this far away.
Probably not. He was home.
The cockpit was a special place on the Ghost. It sort of showed, who lived in it and who piloted it, sometimes even better than the crew’s cabins. Sabine’s seat was easily spotted — colourful, bright even in complete darkness. Hera’s was always by the controls, neat and clean and empty, except for one tiny thing she showed nobody. When she and Kanan had just begun flying together, both still scared teenagers, he carved four letters on the side of the backrest with a piece of shrapnel. They spelled “Hera”. Hera was a bit angry at him at first for ruining the leather, but he knew that she wasn’t. She loved touching it mindlessly, reading her own name with her fingers, touching Kanan’s through space and time.
His cabin used to be his personal space for a long time before the boy came. He liked its silence, its gloominess, even. It had nothing in it but a bed and a table, though Zeb had never thought of it as of a prison cell or anything. It felt too welcoming to seem like one. The light wasn’t red or blindingly white, it was dim. The air smelled nicer than in prison and had none of its usual dryness that hurt the lungs. It was a warm, soft, safe place, where Zeb could sleep or just lie with his eyes closed, resting and remembering. Then Ezra appeared, and the room lost its charming minimalism. The boy had almost no clothes, but for some reason there was just too much of everything everywhere now. Ezra was all over the place: in instruments on the table, in paper sheets he used for scribbling something, even in the painting on the wall that Sabine made. It annoyed Zeb for a long time until he realised that without all of it his cabin would have been too…empty? Too lonely.
Ezra’s presence was what made it a home.
For a long time he had searched for those special oils that the Jedi used to burn at the Temple. Or at least for the special scented candles that all padawans had in their rooms. They smelled of hot sand and magnolia petals, of silky warmth and of soothing silence. They could be different, of course. Some smelled of roses and softness. Some — of rainwater and lilies and freshness. Some reminded him of thunderstorm air that’s full of electricity and of dry earth. He looked for them for a long time, but never found them again. It was quite probable that the Emperor had proscribed their selling after the purge, and it made Kanan sad. But one day Hera gave him a little box and told him that it was a present for his birthday, though she never knew his real birthday, and it wasn’t in nine standard months. Kanan opened it gently, finding a set of scented candles under the lid. He knew that they weren’t the Jedi Temple ones, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that Hera cared enough to give him a present in the midst of fighting the Empire. She found a place for love while surrounded by death, fear and danger. Later that day Kanan lit one of the candles and breathed in the scent. It was an oily one, it smelled of sweet flowers and light cotton and animal fur and it also smelled of Hera. He knew that had he needed to chose now, he’d take the ones she gave him over the Temple ones every time.
They made him feel as home as he’d ever felt since being a padawan.
The cabin she occupied, like everything she’d ever done, carried a thousand of her marks. She liked thinking of them as of her own special kind of fingertips that you just can’t not leave. It made the thing truly hers. Like the armour that she cherished more than most things she’d ever owned. After painting the grey beskar she looked at it, and goosebumps ran down her spine, for now the armour was actually her property. Her legacy. Her right. The same thing happened to her cabin. Sabine painted the first small graffiti on the second day of her life with the crew. It was the letter “P” written in a gradient of fiery orange and poisonous pink. She didn’t have any explanation for the choice, only a feeling that it was right. Many years later she added the rest, proudly and a bit shocked. “Phoenix”. The paintings were her stories, her divination, her relaxation, her pains and sorrows, her passions and victories. It was all here: on the walls of a ship cabin. She knew that it could be torn to shreds easily, that it could all just be blown into oblivion someday, that it could be stolen or sold or painted over with some boring shade…but it would not disappear. She would not disappear. She didn’t perish with her achievements anymore.
And right now, while she was safe and sound, the cabin felt more like a home than anything else in the galaxy.
