I woke up this morning.

I walked out of my house and stared over the farm and realized for the first real moment in my entire life that I had a future.

Khomo played in the yard outside, Seku was up early with the nerfs, and my other boys were picking some of the late summer crops out in the fields.

Concordia was home again.

I looked to Khomo and felt something inside of me still a little bit. He was the same age as Talen was when I first met him, the same age as Shiny when he walked in wide-eyed to the academy. My kid wasn't being forced to grow up early. He wasn't fighting in wars, wasn't having to kill people, see death everywhere he went.

Sure, there was still a war raging out there, one I knew my boys would one day have to face, and one I knew my other kids were still fighting in, but it wasn't here. At least not now. Khomo was getting the chance to grow up on his own terms. The war wasn't going to jade him like it had so many other kids.

I saw Shiny once. On Lothal.

I had been passing through and saw him with his helmet off at an Imperial station. He had grown up. He was taller now, almost two full meters. His face was full of sharp lines, his head full of auburn hair, but those eyes of his... I barely recognized him at first. I thought it was a bad dream. They were so old. They looked more like Red or Grek by the end of the Clone Wars than anything else. Despite that, someone, another trooper, had come up and slapped his shoulder, and said some joke, and for a brief moment, I saw him smile. It was one of Shiny's half-smiles, one that tugs at the left corner of his mouth and draws it up just enough to know he's smiling, and I knew he was in good hands.

I don't expect to see Talen again anytime soon. When he had pulled me out of the Mimban wreckage and I woke up... My jeti'ika had grown up. I don't know what had happened between the time we saw each other in that spaceport and when he finally found me, but it had changed him. His eyes were older, too.

That was the part that broke my heart.

Their eyes.

They should still look like Khomo, still alive and full of life in their prime, but instead, they had the eyes of twenty-year war veterans. They were children when the war started fighting a fight that should have died with their parents, and I don't think I can ever forgive either the Republic or the Empire for what they did to those boys.

To my boys.

It was in the past. Wherever they were, I hope against hope that the galaxy hasn't forced them to become bad men. I was given a second chance.

I didn't deserve it.

They do.

There is still a war raging out there as I write this, and if either of you read this account of my life, I hope it lets you know how proud I am of both of you.

My jeti'ika and my cadet...

I know we'll all meet again someday. The Force has a funny has of doing that sort of thing.

For now, I think my little farmstead on my father's estate, my three wonderful boys, and my magnificent wife will suit me just fine.

In the end, it's everything I ever wanted, and it feels right.