Hera stared at the colored pencil drawing her son had made her like it was a summons to her own execution. Jacen meant so well; he was so excited to give it to her, so excited to do something nice for his mom, and he'd clearly put a lot of work into it, depicting the two of them as best a five year old could. And he'd done an excellent job conveying his subject matter; there was no mistaking what the drawing was, even without his scribbly aurebesh labels.
His drawing of himself was adorable; he'd taken the time to color his ears green, and drew two lumps on the top of his head, which to an outsider might have looked like hair buns but Hera knew represented the baby lekku bumps on the back of his skull that never quite grew in. He even drew Chopper, orange and yellow and grey, in such an accurate way that she just knew the droid must have posed for him while he drew it.
He'd colored her all in blue. He had "forgot you're actually green", and just drew her as he knew her, the way he saw her most nights. His mother, the hologram. That was how Jacen, her own son, viewed her.
She had been gracious when he'd given it to her, giving him a big hug and thank you, telling him how wonderful it would look in her office (because that's where he wanted her to put it; he said he wanted her to have a drawing of them when she couldn't be home). But standing here in her personal office aboard the Lodestar, trying to find a prominent-yet-unused spot to hang his masterpiece, Hera had to bite her lip to keep from weeping. He was old enough to sign his name on the drawing, and he didn't even know what color his mother was without the blue light filter of a holoprojector.
She placed it in a prominent spot on her desk, somewhere she'd see it every day. A reminder, not that she needed it, of just how badly she needed to come home.











