Chapter Text
Ezra smirks at the magazine on their table. "She your type?"
Zeb frowns, trying to figure out what the kid's talking about. The page facing up has a picture of Lo-Fay, the Rodian pop star, in a short, skimpy skirt, her body facing away from the camera but her head cocked over one shoulder, a playful smirk on her face. It's... suggestive, sure, but almost jokingly so, in Zeb's opinion. He can't imagine anyone taking it seriously.
"No," he replies, unwilling to go any further.
Ezra snorts. "Sure, buddy. Your secret's safe with me." He hops onto his bunk. "I won't tell anyone about your celebrity crush."
Zeb jabs a knee into the bunk above him, allowing himself a grin when he hears Ezra yelp. "No secret to keep, kid. I don't have a celebrity crush ," he says, emphasising the words so as to make fun of them, "and if I did, it wouldn't be her ."
"Aww, c'mon." The kid's tone is teasing, prodding for a reaction from Zeb. "You're gonna hurt her feelings." He pokes his head down to look at Zeb, a grin that can only be described as 'shit-eating' on his face. "What's wrong with her, then?"
Oh no, he doesn't. "Nothing."
"So you do like her?" Ezra laughs.
Zeb stares him down before speaking. "...I'm gay , Ezra."
A beat. "Oh." Ezra slinks back into his own bunk. " Oh ."
Zeb huffs. Well, that went well.
Ezra refuses to shut up, however. "So..."
" No , Ezra."
"...who is your type?"
Zeb rolls over to glare at the wall. "I am not talking to you about this."
"Kanan?"
"Ezra ‒"
"That one guy at the bar? I wondered if you were eyeing him up because you wanted to fight him, but ‒"
" Ezra ‒"
"Agent Kallus?"
Zeb resists the urge to puke. "Give me some kriffing credit, Ezra, I've got standards ."
"Really? You don't seem to have any when it comes to beer. Plus," he adds, and Zeb can hear the finger waggle without seeing it, "he's kind of got a beard like you. Could be a Lasat thing."
It is, but he's not giving Ezra the pleasure of even being slightly right. "You know what he's done. What he tried to do."
"Yeah, I know," Ezra replies, oddly casual about the whole thing. "I just mean, y'know, if there was some Kallus walking around who wasn't an asshole. Would he be like, uh..." and he struggles to find the right word "...pretty?"
Zeb snorts bitterly. "No." He stares up at the top of his bunk. "He'll be prettiest when he's dead."
Kallus is, somewhat annoyingly, not dead.
Zeb knows this because he's currently stuck with him in an icy hellhole of a cave with the guy. Zeb knows this because he's fixing Kallus's leg as best he can, hoisting him on his back and out of the cave, and huddling around a meteorite with him. Zeb knows this because he can see Kallus's breath condensing every time he exhales while they wait for someone ‒ anyone, at this point ‒ to pick up their signal.
Waiting's really all he can do. All either of them can do, honestly ‒ just sit and wait and try not to die from the cold, or the local wildlife, or each other.
Though each other doesn't really seem to be an issue, at least not now. Kallus is hunched over, trying to preserve what little body heat he has, and any threatening presence the guy previously had disappears with him looking like that.
Whatever like that means, Zeb doesn't quite know.
So he waits, and he plans, and he fixes, but mostly he listens. Listens as Kallus tells him about his old unit, about the ideals he believes in, about why he does what he does. He listens as Kallus says his name, to the way the syllables sound strange for reasons beyond the tremor in Kallus's voice from the cold.
He hasn't heard his full name in ages. He didn't expect Kallus to know it.
But he watches, too. Watches the distant, glazed look in Kallus's eyes when he recounts his past (and he knows it all too well, has seen it too many times), the way his facial expression suddenly turns into something that's not a scowl, the sleepy look when they first wake up that borders on affectionate.
It's not. Zeb knows it isn't. But whatever it is (vulnerability? unguardedness?) it doesn't look bad on him, necessarily.
In fact, Kallus is looking...
...Well, not unattractive. Maybe.
Just maybe.
He gets the news from Sabine, and then the news from Kanan, and suddenly Kallus is looking decidedly not unattractive.
Sabine's the first to come see him. She wanders into his room the evening after she returns from her mission, the black dye still in her hair.
She hovers in the doorway. "Hey, Zeb, listen..."
Zeb's ears twitch curiously, and he turns towards her.
"So..." She scratches the back of her head. "On my mission, I saw Kallus."
Zeb rolls his eyes. "Don't we always? I swear, it's like that guy just follows us around everywh‒"
"No, but," Sabine cuts in, "he was... different."
Zeb's brow furrows in confusion. He can't have really changed from their conversation, can he? Or...
"He actually helped us," Sabine says. "He... He shut the doors so the troopers couldn't get in and told us the easiest escape route. I didn't," she laughs nervously, "believe him at first, but I told him to give me a reason not to shoot him right there, and..."
"And?" Zeb's voice is quiet, disbelieving.
"And he told me to tell you 'We're even,'" she says, her fingers forming little air quotes. "He used your full name, too. How did he even know that, Zeb?"
"I..." Zeb scrambles to come up with a decent lie. "I let it slip during our fight. Over Geonosis."
"Oh." Sabine frowns.
"I don't know why he helped you," he adds. He can't tell them about what happened on that moon. They wouldn’t understand. He doesn’t even really understand, and he was there .
She shrugs. "Guess we were just lucky, then." She shoots him a weak, confused grin. "Thanks, whatever you did."
Zeb laughs. "No problem."
And then it's Kanan's turn.
It's over the comms, in public, which makes it worse, somehow. Means Zeb's got nowhere to hide.
"I guess we can thank Agent Kallus," he says, far too casually for the weight those words hold. "He knew Fulcrum's secret code phrase."
Hera's stunned speechless, recoiling from the hologram on the table, her mouth open in shock.
Sabine's the first to speak. "Wait, Kallus is Fulcrum ? How does that even make sense?"
Zeb has to speak, has to try and dig himself out of the hole somehow. He couldn't stop himself even if it dug him in deeper, really.
"Karabast," he mutters, scratching the back of his head and staring down at the ground, ashamed. "I must've recruited him. You know," he laughs, unsure, "accidentally."
Ezra's stare is unsettling even through the grainy hologram. "You mean when you were stuck on that ice moon with him?"
Kallus told them what I said? Zeb thinks, in the moment before he thinks Wait, Kallus actually remembered what I said?
"Yeah, well," and he has to speak, has to say something that won't make them all hate him, Kallus included, "we didn't kill each other, so I guess we're friends now?"
It's as truthful as he can be. It's still not enough.
Are they friends? He doesn't think so. Friends talk to each other, and see each other, and tend to have had more than one conversation where they weren't arguing.
But friends do think about each other, and worry about each other, and Zeb'll be damned if he hasn't done his fair share of worrying in the past ten months or so. Friends look out for each other, and Kallus seems to be doing that. If they weren't friends, Kallus would have left him to die.
It's as simple as that. Or rather, it's not, but that's what Zeb's telling himself.
Hera doesn't seem to be sure they're friends either. She gives him a glare. "Still, we'll use caution with our new friend ," she says, dragging the word out so everyone's aware she doesn't mean it, "until we're sure what game he's playing." She looks at Zeb pointedly, and even before she says her goodbyes and turns off the comm, he can tell she's going to have a talk with him.
Sabine leaves, not wanting to stick around, and the droid trundles off somewhere else.
Hera puts her hands on her hips. She closes her eyes and takes a deep, stress-filled sigh.
"I'm not angry, Zeb," she says, in a voice far too controlled to be good news. "I just want to know some things, and this time ‒" she glares at him "‒ I need you to be honest. Completely honest."
Zeb gulps. "What do you want to know?"
"What happened on that moon. Why you didn't tell us before. Why we're supposed to be trusting Kallus now, of all people!" She puts a hand over her face. "If he's a Fulcrum agent now, I'm trusting him with the lives of my crew. And I don't like that, because right now, I haven't seen him do anything except lie and sneer and hunt us down." She waves her hand around as she speaks, agitated, before bringing it back to her hip. "And you seem to know him best, out of everyone here. So convince me."
"He..." Zeb doesn't know how to start, running through every option in his head and just getting annoyed. "Karabast, Hera, I don't know either! All I know is that when we crashed on that moon, I didn't kill him because his leg was broken, and then later, he didn't kill me. I wasn't ‒" he curses "‒ I wasn't there when he decided to become a Fulcrum agent, I didn't tell him to, I just..." He trails off, slowly realising something.
"Just what?" Hera's stare is softer, less threatening.
"I told him to..." Zeb shakes his head. "When we were there, we were talking about Geonosis, and I told him to seek the answers, see if he still believed in the Empire after he found them, but..." He wants to laugh, suddenly filled with pride at the fact that Kallus listened to him, that Kallus did find his answers, that ‒
He forces the laugh down, not wanting to look hysterical. Hera's suspicious enough of him as it is.
"And you think he went looking? Didn't like what he saw?" She cocks an eyebrow.
"It's my best guess." Zeb's talking on autopilot, mind too occupied with the fact that it worked, it worked, I haven't been obsessing over someone evil, thank the Ashla ‒
"Alright, well." Hera grabs her datapad and inputs something into it. "You'll have to file a report, but I do believe you. We'll stay cautious, but we at least have reason to believe this might be genuine."
Zeb nods, turns, and leaves to try and collect his thoughts.
He wonders what it'll be like when he finally sees Kallus again. He allows himself to wonder, in those moments where it's late and the Ghost is quiet and the only thing that could ever hear him is the hum of the engine. His dreams are filled with it, filled with the image of Kallus standing there, illuminated by some strange golden light, looking noble, honourable, good .
And so, when Ezra leaves to get Kallus out, Zeb decides he's going to tell him.
When Kallus gets there, he's going to tell him everything . He's going to say exactly what he thinks, ask why in all the galaxies and stars and planets he would do something as stupid, as reckless, as brilliant, as brave ‒
And, and ‒
He's going to stop talking at some point, and he still doesn't know what Kallus will do, if he'll sit there and look scared, or if he'll break down, or if he'll say something snarky back (Ashla , Zeb hopes he does that), but he knows he just wants to...
He doesn't. He doesn't know what he wants to do, except for some vague idea of feeling Kallus under his fingertips, ears picking up the steady thrum of his pulse, muttering into Kallus's ear about how proud he is, how happy he's alive, how he'll be there, how he's not letting Kallus go back.
He's been thinking about it endlessly, wondering what it means that he's so happy to know someone who did so much, and despite several evenings spent trying to put it into words, he can't quite get there.
So he doesn't. He shows up, waits dutifully for the transport to appear, and tries desperately not to look too excited when it finally lands.
It's not working. Hera's giving him worried glances.
"He didn't..." Ezra trails off, unable to look him in the eye. "He stayed. Said he could do more good there."
Zeb's stomach drops.
He what ?
He gapes at Ezra, frozen still in shock. Ezra slinks off somewhere, looking relatively unharmed, and Zeb's just left standing by the ship, hunched over and disappointed.
No, not disappointed. More than that.
Kanan approaches him first, taking off his helmet and mask and placing a hand on Zeb's shoulder. "You okay?"
"Yeah, I'll..." Zeb draws himself back up deliberately, hoping Kanan won't notice it's forced. "I'll be fine. Just surprised."
Kanan nods knowingly. "Well, you can talk to us anytime." He sighs. "He'd have been useful, I know. I'm sure he'll keep himself busy, but it's a shame he's still stuck there."
Useful. He'd have been useful.
Is that what it is? Zeb wonders.
It could be. Kanan's right. Kallus is highly trained and much better at not-dying than a lot of the rebel forces are right now. He has inside information about the Empire just from having lived in it, not to mention the trove of information he likely has from being an intelligence officer. He'd be a valuable asset to any team.
It's not just that. It can't be. It doesn't feel right on its own. It's... It's something else. Fear. Worry. Disappointment.
Because finally, finally Zeb was going to be able to sort out his emotions. Finally, he was going to be able to sleep knowing Kallus wasn't going to be executed the next day, maybe even hearing him sleep in the bunk below. Finally, he was going to be able to tell Kallus things, to ask him what he found, to spar with a worthy opponent without the added fear of actual death. Finally, he was going to make some kind of progress with... with everything .
And now he’s back to square one.
"Yeah, you're right," he says, instead. "I just hope they don't find him out."
Kanan shrugs. "Well, at least he'll put up a fight. He certainly did today."
And with that, the Jedi walks off, leaving Zeb immersed in his own thoughts.
He's seen Kallus already. Technically. He'd hobbled in after they'd picked him up, and Zeb had spared a glance towards him, just to check he was actually there, actually real, actually not-dead.
He was, luckily. Zeb isn't sure what he'd have done otherwise.
It still hasn't quite sunk in, though, which is why it's still a shock when he sees Kallus the second time.
His wounds hadn't been as clear in the low, odd lighting of the cockpit, but they're a little too clear now. Kallus is bloodied and bruised, looks glum at best and hopeless at worst, and Zeb's not sure if the way he's hunched around himself is from pain or guilt.
He watches him thank Kanan from the other end of the corridor and tries not to think too much about the way his chest feels when he hears Kallus speak.
Karabast.
He's beautiful. He's alive, he's breathing, he's speaking without a garbled filter over the top, he's beautiful .
The moment Kanan leaves, Zeb swoops in. "Kallus."
"Zeb?" He looks up from the floor, his eyes huge and terrified, one of them bloodshot from having been punched earlier. Now Zeb's closer, he can see the bags under his other eye from lack of sleep, the way his skin looks blue, uncared for, the creases on his forehead from panicking, worrying.
Zeb can't help himself. He hugs him.
Kallus makes a tiny, fragile sound, too many emotions squeezed out into one yelp.
Zeb presses his face into Kallus's hair. "You're alive."
"Yes, I..." Kallus's voice cracks, and his whole body shudders. "I am."
Zeb feels rather than hears him start to cry. Kallus shakes when he cries, his arms curled around himself, and soon, there's a damp patch forming on Zeb's collarbone.
He can't bring himself to mind. At least it's Kallus there in his arms, wonderful, honourable, saved-our-lives Kallus who's crying into him. He wouldn't want it to be anyone else.
Kallus pulls away eventually and laughs dryly. "I must look awful." His arms curl a little tighter around himself again.
"No, you look..." Zeb replies, only realising how breathy his voice is after he's spoken. "Fine. But," he adds, tucking a strand of Kallus's hair back into place, "you should probably use the 'fresher anyway."
"Always," and Kallus winces at something hurting him, "room for improvement, I suppose."
He's pretty when he's happy, Zeb decides. Smiles suit him, as does the way his shoulders relax, and the unabashed joy in his voice, and the way his eyes sometimes catch the light, just as the sun’s setting.
It's been a while now since he's allowed himself to think that. He says it out loud too, sometimes, but only when Kallus is asleep, in those rare early mornings where Zeb's awake first.
He has to suppress a laugh just thinking about it. Trust the latest and the earliest risers in the rebellion to end up together.
Still, when he's up before Kallus, it's usually because the nightmares have been kept at bay, so Kallus looks... well, serene, for lack of a better word. It's not usually like that ‒ Kallus is used to sleeping with a frown. Said frown becomes a grimace on bad nights.
It's a scream on the worst ones, the ones where he thrashes and ends up elbowing Zeb in the stomach and won't stop shaking after he wakes up, but Zeb tries not to think about those. They'll go away eventually, they're told, so he sticks them out and tries to push down the fear in his stomach when they happen, along with the desire to hunt down every being who made Kallus like this, the need to fight the demons in someone else's head.
He can't. And this morning, he doesn't need to.
Waking up at 5 standard hours is early for Zeb, but the sun's shining right in his eyes, and it wakes him up. Kallus is lying beside him, a look on his face that's almost a smile, his features relaxed and peaceful.
Zeb resists the urge to kiss him, knowing it'll wake him up. Kallus needs all the sleep he can get, and what he does get seems to be doing him good. He's eating properly, too, and the drop in stress levels means he's not as fragile as he was when he first arrived.
Zeb had worried more about Kallus being fragile when he first arrived on the ship. Deciding to share a room meant that they often had to change together, and Zeb’s concern at seeing Kallus’s shirtless chest had seemingly confused the former agent.
“What’s wrong?” Kallus had asked.
“I can see your ribs.”
Kallus had laughed. “Well, they’re there. You’re kind of meant to see them.”
Zeb shook his head. “Not like that.” He’d run his eyes over Kallus’s torso, suppressing a wince at the way his ribcage jutted out and the fading bruises that lingered over them.
Kallus had just shrugged and slipped on his shirt. "You don't feed prisoners. Not ones like I was, anyway."
The Empire might not have fed their prisoners, but the Rebellion fed its captains. The shape of his ribcage is just visible if Zeb's looking for it, but it doesn't jut out anymore, and the bruises Zeb had winced at have long since faded from Kallus's skin.
It's a good sign, Zeb thinks.
The sun moves, angling its light slightly differently and shining onto Kallus's face instead. He smiles in his sleep, his mouth turning up just a little at the corners. His freckles stand out just a bit more under the sunlight (which Kallus had explained to him, once, before Zeb promptly forgot his explanation) and the sun refracts a little through his hair, turning streaks of it into yellow and white and gold.
He looks like he's glowing.
The light makes it look like his dreams, the ones from before Kallus joined them, with Kallus illuminated by the sun, brave and resilient against the universe. It doesn't quite look real, Zeb thinks, like something out of an old tale, romanticised and changed over so many generations that it's lost any relation to the real event it was rooted in.
He gives in and touches his lips to Kallus's forehead anyway: wary, feather-light.
"Ashla, you're pretty," he whispers, without caring whether the word's accurate or fitting at all, because it feels right. And even if it is wrong, who's going to notice? He might as well just be thinking it.
He rolls over and goes back to sleep, never noticing the knowing smile on Kallus's face, or the way his eyes are open, just a crack.