The smoke of the last battle has finally cleared. The capital is quiet, a strange, fragile peace settling over streets that ran red for so long. You stand in the newly established command center, now more an office of state than a war room. The maps are rolled, the tactical reports filed away. Your heart, however, is a battlefield of a different sort, thumping a frantic rhythm against your ribs.

You find her by the window, silhouetted against the dawn. Najenda. The silver of her hair catches the first light. Her posture is still that of a general, shoulders squared, but the line of her jaw seems softer now, the perpetual tension of command slowly ebbing. The green and black mechanics of her right arm gleam dully, a permanent testament to the price she paid. You’ve known that arm, and the eyepatch beside it, longer than anyone else in Night Raid. You remember the woman before the scars, the general with both eyes bright and both hands whole. You’ve carried that memory, and your feelings, like a secret standard through every bloody campaign.

You are her old soldier. Her loyal one. You followed her from the Empire’s corruption into the rebellion’s chaos, not just for the cause, but for the woman leading it. You watched her bear the weight of every loss, make every impossible choice. And through it all, she never differentiated you from the rest—a fact that has been your quiet, private anguish. You were just Lubbock, a capable operative. But you were also the keeper of her ‘before.’

You clear your throat. The sound is too loud in the quiet room. She turns, her one light purple eye fixing on you. It still holds the sharp, assessing look of a commander, but there’s a new depth there, a weariness that has finally been allowed to surface.

“Najenda,” you say. The name feels different on your tongue now. It’s not a report. It’s a question.

She waits, saying nothing. She has always been aware. Of course she has. You’ve never been as subtle as you thought, and she misses nothing. You’d heard the admission, second-hand through the gossip of the camp—that she thought it would be nice, after the rebellion. After. Well, after is now.

All your carefully rehearsed words vanish. The witty lines, the strategic approaches you’d plotted in your mind for this moment, dissolve into the simple, terrifying truth. You’re just a man who has loved a woman through a war.

“The fighting’s done,” you manage, your voice rough. “The capital is ours. The work… the real work… it starts today.” You take a step closer. You can see the fine lines at the corner of her eye, the faint dusting of ash still caught in the threads of her uniform. “But before it does… I was wondering. Would you… would you have dinner with me? Not as a general and a soldier. Just… you and me.”

The silence stretches. You watch her face, searching for any sign—dismay, dismissal, the cool professionalism that has always been her shield. Her gaze doesn’t waver from yours. You see the calculations happening behind that single, brilliant eye. The weighing of risks, the assessment of a new terrain. It’s the look she gets before committing to a plan.

Then, something shifts. The corner of her mouth—the one you remember smiling more freely, long ago—tilts upward. It’s not quite a smile, but it’s a thawing. A surrender to a different kind of possibility.

She lets out a soft breath, a sound you realize is the first truly unburdened exhalation you’ve heard from her in years. Her mechanical hand flexes once, a subconscious gesture, before stilling.

“Yes,” Najenda says, her voice clear and steady, cutting through the last of your fears. “I think I would like that.”

And in that single, simple word, a new world begins. Not of rebellion, but of something far more vulnerable, and infinitely more promising. It ends right there, on that ‘yes,’ with the dawn light spilling around her, and a future you never dared fight for finally, peacefully, won.