Work Text:
Hera takes a deep breath and lifts the crate with her knees, cursing the lack of equipment that has kept it off a hovercart. Up the ramp and onto the Ghost the old-fashioned way, then.
“Hey.” Kanan, walking up behind her with that near-silent tread. Well, today is about to get a little easier. “You want a hand?”
She drops the crate. “Yeah. That would be nice.”
So Kanan picks up the box she'd been carrying, and she goes back for the next largest one. They work in a silence that’s almost companionable—except for the heavy feeling of Kanan next to her, thinking about something. He finds the stack of crates in the corner with difficulty, setting each one down with a thud rather than using his Force abilities to move them gracefully into place. Brooding, then.
“Are you going out?” he asks at last.
“For a few hours. Just a supply drop, not… to the complex.”
He nods.
“Not until tomorrow.”
Another curt nod, his head tucked down.
All right, that’s enough dancing around the subject. “Kanan.” She puts her hands on his shoulders and keeps her voice gentle. “What do you want?”
He shrugs. He’s come here for something, and now he won’t tell her.
“Kanan?”
A deep sigh. Then he takes off the mask over his eyes, rubs the bridge of his nose, and looks at her. Except that he isn’t really looking at her. He’s letting her see his face.
“I want you to stay here,” he says, leaving the please unspoken. “Don’t go.”
Don’t go ? Hera actually starts back in surprise. Of course he doesn’t want her to go, but that he would actually ask this of her…
Kanan’s face goes from frightened to guarded again, and she thinks of her own entreaty: Please—can you take the mask off? Around me? I want to see your eyes. And he’s done that without argument or hesitation, opened himself up to her every time.
But that was a simple request. This is not.
Finally, she manages a baffled, “Why?”
He doesn’t say anything.
“Kanan, you’re going to have to give me more than ‘because I say so.’ Do you have a feeling about this one?”
His voice comes out with that barely-held-back fear that always makes him sound demanding. “Yeah.”
Oh.
“Hera, don’t do this. Something’s going to happen, this one’s a bad bet.”
She considers. He’s usually right about this sort of thing. And then they take extra precautions, or change the plan and find a back way in. They’ve turned down a few jobs. But those hadn’t mattered, and he hasn’t asked her to pull out of a real mission in years. So she takes him seriously, even though the Rebellion can’t afford to lose this opportunity. “Do you know for sure that the operation is going to fail?”
“No,” he admits reluctantly. “No, I never know any of these things for sure.”
“Then we’ve got a chance. It’s not a bad bet.” And they’ll fail for certain if nobody tries.
“Hera—” He grabs her hand, insistent, and she pushes down a thread of anger. That’s taking it too far.
“Kanan, I have a mission.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that story before. When are you going to feel you’ve done enough for this Rebellion?”
She gives him the easy, the automatic answer. “When the Empire is overthrown, and people are free to live their lives the way they want again.”
“And when that time comes—how do you want to live your life?” He’s waiting. And it’s too big a question to throw at her over a simple mission.
But he’s also on edge, so Hera keeps it neutral and honest. “I don’t know. I guess I never really thought about that.”
“So I guess you never really thought about us.”
Kanan’s words hang heavy with recrimination, and she feels the guilt all the way down in that place that never could please anyone, no matter how good, no matter how proactive she tries to be. And there is guilt’s companion—resentment, because this isn’t her fault, and she’s being forced to shoulder the blame yet again.
He’s just scared, she tells herself. He’s afraid again, and pushing this issue back at him won’t do any good.
But she’s scared too, and it isn’t fair of him to make her a target. So when she answers, she knows he can hear the exasperation.
“Kanan, we’ve been through this before. It’s not over , and it probably won’t be during our lifetimes. I’m not going to abandon these people to take all the risks on their own. Nobody earns that kind of laziness.”
“There’s your father talking.”
“Don’t you dare bring my father into this.” That’s what he wants. He wants her angry enough that she can’t stay rational, because what he’s asking isn’t rational. So she takes a deep breath and calms herself. A little. “That was never the deal, Kanan. You don’t get to ask me to run away with you.”
“You want to talk about the deal? Fine. Then you have to let me come with you.” He crosses his arms over his chest and stands up straight. Facing off. Against her.
“No. Not this time. The x-wing seats one, and we can’t slip anything bigger through the blockade right now.”
“Hera, this is a trap. For you.”
“It might not be.”
“This is a TRAP, and you’re the only one who can’t see it. We all get that you’re brave, but this is just stupid!”
“That is Not. Fair.” Of course she knows it’s a trap. And she’s afraid—she doesn’t want to end this alone, and mostly she doesn’t like the idea of flying off and leaving them all here. She’s lonely for them, and she’s lonely for herself, and now she’s extra lonely because she can’t even tell Kanan all of this. He’ll use it to guilt her into staying.
“What am I supposed to do then, Hera? Let you go off and get killed for no reason, because you’re being an idiot?”
“Yes! Let me go! Grow up and see that there are bigger things at stake than you!”
They stand, breathing hard, blows exchanged, wary for what comes next.
Kanan’s clinging hard, which means he’s terrified. They have this argument every few years. She thinks back to the time right after Sabine came on board—oh, that one was bad. She doesn’t remember what he’d accused her of, but they'd gone round and round until she’d finally lost her temper and shouted at him.
“This doesn’t have a happy ending!” she remembers yelling. “I am going to die in the cockpit. That’s how it happens. If you want to be with me, you are going to have to figure out a way to accept that!” It had been ugly. And he had sat down, so wounded, and somehow that injury switched off his pushiness.
“You do this thing,” he’d said quietly, thoughtfully. “Where you retreat into duty when you feel threatened. You turn into Hera Syndulla, Freedom Fighter, and then you don’t have to worry about anything. Because a person can get hurt or feel afraid. But a cause? What can the Empire do to hurt a cause?”
She’d swallowed against a painful lump in her throat, just as she was doing now.
“But I miss my Hera,” he’d said. “And I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.”
Then she’d broken into tears, and that fight was over.
But now they’re older and both seasoned veterans, and when things get ugly they usually don’t cry.
Of course, they have better tactics, too.
“Come back in ten minutes?” Hera asks, a truce.
“Yeah, let’s try talking in ten minutes.”
She nods and brushes past him.
“Hey—” Kanan catches her by the hand again, and she tenses, ready for round two.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and lets her go.
“I’m sorry, too.”
They’ll talk down their own fears and then come back and talk it through together, without fighting a war against each other. Not everything has to be a battle to the death. Hera wraps her arms around herself and plans it out as she walks.
“What’s the worst thing that happens if I go?”
“You could be—” He’ll stop—no need to voice all the options.
“Maybe,” she’ll agree. “And what happens if I stay?”
“Well….nothing.”
“Right,” she’ll say, standing on the landing field in front of the Massassi temple, amid the dregs of their fleet, the Empire closing in. “We stay like this. Nothing happens.”
Then he’ll let her go and discipline himself to wait here with Ezra, training his charge calmly, walking through the minefield of his own terror without ever missing a step. Just like he always does.