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Hera is tired.
More specifically, Hera has spent far too long in piles of wires and with tools in her hand trying to keep the Ghost in tip-top shape. (Well, get it better than it already is. A pilot’s job is never truly done, and anyone who thinks differently is an arrogant nerfherder just asking to be shot out of the sky because their shields can’t hold longer than five seconds.)
She’s also had Ezra under her care alone for the past two days.
Kanan has been undercover at the planet’s local watering hole for exactly that long, and he still has days yet to go. She doesn’t envy him—he’d been a bartender numerous times before they met, but he was much happier on her crew than he’d been just trying to earn a paycheck to support himself and Ezra. It’s just the only way she—well, they could come up with to get to the information leak Fulcrum had promised to be worthwhile if they could catch him drunk enough. So Kanan is at the bar, staying at a skeezy motel in town to keep his cover, and she’s taking care of Ezra in the meantime.
Not that she finds Ezra to be a particularly difficult charge to care for. For a ten year old, he’s incredibly self-sufficient. Hera supposes that’s a skill he didn’t have an option but to create. Kanan was out working odd jobs across the galaxy throughout his life, and the two of them hadn’t been separated permanently since the Jedi Temple fell.
Still, she expected it to be…harder, maybe. She had cousins back on Ryloth, of course. Children running around, trying not to grow up too fast in the midst of one war and then another. She’d held tiny hands awaiting their mother’s return, babysat little ones who had yet to utter their first word in Ryl, and was left in charge by her father when all of the grown-ups went away. But that had been out of necessity. Another chore just like cleaning out blaster rifles and doing her lessons.
And, yes, technically, this too was a responsibility she took on because Kanan wasn’t able to, but it didn’t really feel like it. It was natural, almost, looking after Ezra.
As she already knew just from watching he and Kanan together, he was a good kid. A little reckless at times, sure, but he genuinely seemed happy to be on her ship, in her presence. Not even a year yet and he’d already become someone she couldn’t imagine her days without. He was clever, funny, adorably mischievous, and again—well behaved when he wanted to be.
In fact, tonight he’d put himself to bed around his usual bedtime instead of wheedling her to stay up another hour or three (likely only because he’d tried it the first night and she’d simply raised an eyebrow, taken his datapad, and dimmed the light in response, but still).
This is why she’s alarmed out of a half-asleep-walking daze on her way to her bunk for the night by the sound of familiar light footsteps darting towards the refresher.
At first she thinks he’s just going to the bathroom—not completely abnormal for him, considering the amount of times she’s greeted him at a late hour to only receive a sleepy grunt in response. She begins to turn to her quarters, prepared to leave him be.
That is, until she hears what sounds like a sharp cry from the ‘fresher, making her pick up the pace in the opposite direction and slam her palm into the door control without bothering to knock.
“Ezra?” comes out of her mouth before she even rounds the door, only a little panicked sounding to her ear cones. What she finds isn’t exactly comforting.
Ezra’s a pitiful looking heap of a human, leaning against the toilet bowl with his hands while his knees dig into the refresher floor. He makes another noise, this time a dry retch that leaves him physically shaking and struggling to stay vertical by the time she runs over to his side on the floor.
He leans into her touch, allows her to take his weight just a little too easily. “Oh, love,” she says, wiping the hair from his forehead and feeling its heat along with the shakes ravaging his muscles.
He looks so much younger—his age, he’s just a child—when he looks up at her, eyes wet. “It won’t—I just want it to sto—“ In a millisecond he’s up again from her arms, his whine no longer muffled when all that drips into the toilet is spit. “There’s no more, but I can’t—“ It’s not a pretty sight, poor little Ezra bent over sobbing, begging to stop being sick, looking at her like she’s Kanan—like she can fix anything. Because he’s only ten years old and he’s depending on her. Because she has to.
There’s a part of her that just wants to curl around him like a blanket. She wants to shield him from this sudden illness and this tremulous galaxy and all of the terrible things that happen within it.
She thinks this might just be how Kanan feels every day: like he’s not enough. She’s not Ezra’s mother, and if her only charge beforehand could be counted as Chopper, well...droids only leak oil and require a quick tune-up to fix the problem. They don’t get sick.
Hera is not Ezra’s mother. However, Kanan is not his father—wasn’t at eighteen and biologically never can be—but damn it to all hells if he doesn’t try his best to make up for that fact by trying to earn that title every day. Hera has seen that. Hera has admired that.
Hera is going to be that for this little boy, because it’s what he needs from her.
With a breath through her mouth, ignoring the smell slowly filling the cramped refresher, Hera braces herself for whatever the next few hours or days bring.
For Ezra.
“Let’s get you back to bed, huh?” she suggests, more moving him up and onto his feet than actually asking.
Ezra takes their closer proximity as an excuse to cling to her, clearly weak, but also seeking her comfort. “I—I can’t I—can’t stop throwing up—gotta stay in case—“
“I know you still feel nauseous, but I think you’re empty and it’d be better if you went to bed, kiddo,” Hera feels Ezra shake his head into her stomach. She sighs, searching for a solution not in the room but from the depths of her brain when she spots one of the buckets they sometimes use for cleaning off in the corner. “What if I got you something, just in case?”
Ezra considers her in silence so long that she worries he’s passed out standing clutched onto her, but he muffles out an affirmative response and allows her to slowly but surely maneuver them out of the refresher and into the hallway, him half walking and clinging to her a little hard whenever he presumably starts to feel like he’s going to throw up again.
“This isn’t my room,“ he starts, but she shushes him, leading them past his own room and into her quarters instead. One of the perks of being captain is a slightly larger bunk. She wants to keep a close eye on him going forward, and she’d rather not try and do so from the empty bottom bunk in his room.
Instead she leads him forward to her mattress, pulling back the blankets and sheets to wrap him under. She feels like her own mother, almost, tucking a little one into bed. She ignores that thought to instead show him the bucket’s location next to the bed with a pointed finger. “Right here if you need it, okay? I’m going to try and find something in the medkit for that nausea before I go clean up in the refresher. I’ll be right back.”
“Hera, it’s my fault, you don’t have to—“
“Hey.” Hera shakes her head. “No. None of this is your fault, Ezra. You’re sick. The most important thing right now is getting you better.”
“…’kay.” Ezra curls into her sheets, seemingly too tired to argue that his illness is somehow a burden to her. She doesn’t know where he would even get such an idea from. She’s never treated him as a burden. A little inconvenient to work around in the middle of fighting the Empire, maybe, but that’s what she signed up for when she encouraged Kanan to bring him along.
(She remembers the look on Kanan’s face so clearly from that day—at first when she’d offered him a position and he’d instead asked for a reroute to a different planet, and then later when he’d revealed he wasn’t alone and she’d offered him to stay anyway—awed, confused, and with a reverence she only learned later was very specific to her.)
She worries about this as she finds the medkit and does a cursory clean up of the bathroom, flushing the toilet and spraying air freshener to mask the smell until she can do a better job or wheedle Chopper into the task.
Maybe Hera isn’t the most expressive of her emotions, sure, but Kanan’s always told her that she has a way with people—that he’d followed her initially for a reason. She can remember many moments of shared physical and emotional affection she’s offered up to Ezra over the last few months alone: a proud squeeze of his shoulder, a warm hug upon their return from a long mission, a good-natured hair ruffle that she learned from watching Kanan. Had that not been enough? Doesn’t Ezra know how much she’s glad that he’s here for she and Kanan at the end of a rough day?
She tries to shake it out of her head. His opinions of her are something of little concern for her when his stomach is convulsing. First, get him the anti-nausea patch. Then maybe a glass of water if she can get it in him before the medicine knocks him out as it’s wont to do.
Ezra’s not much better when she returns with the medkit under her arm. He’s still curled in on himself, but he’s clearly in more pain judging by the fresh tear tracks and quiet sobs. Poor thing. She’d taken far too long worrying about the past instead of getting him what he needed in the here and now.
“It’s alright, Ezra, come here,” she soothes, crawling to the side of her bed that’s closest to the wall and giving him better access to the bucket by his bedside. He eagerly curls into her, using her thigh as a partial pillow while curling the rest of himself against her legs. “It will all pass once this kicks in, just give it a few minutes.”
Hera unwraps the packaging of the anti-nausea patch, thankfully allowing her to bypass any kind of alternative methods to try and make sure a pill would stay down long enough to start working. She takes his bare arm—uncovered by his now throughly sweaty t-shirt—and sticks the patch on. He gives a sharp jerk of movement—an indication the patch has activated, then settles against her again, clearly still uncomfortable.
“Are you gonna tell Kanan?” Ezra asks, tired but still conscious enough to speak instead of slur.
She absentmindedly runs her hand through his hair while she speaks, abandoning the idea of the water since he’s now partially on top of her. She’ll get it first thing when he wakes. “Mmm. If it gets bad enough, maybe. I’d rather not divide his attention if I can help it. Besides, there’s not much he could be doing that I’m not already, right?”
“Good,” Ezra mumbles, pulling her top woolen blanket farther over himself, finally content. “I don’t wanna worry him. He’ll get all…” Ezra takes a beat like he’s going to finish his sentence, but instead seems to drift off within the thought, his head turning heavy as he more truly moves into being asleep, conversation abandoned.
“Yeah,” she says more to herself, thinking of Kanan’s wide protective streak. “I know.” She more comfortably adjusts herself into a lying down position instead of sitting up, allowing Ezra to curl himself closer for more warmth when he sleepily objects to her jostling with a vaguely dissatisfied noise.
Despite still being dressed in her daily wear, cap, and goggles, she falls asleep to the sound of Ezra’s quiet breathing and the feeling of it puffing against her shirt.
The next day shows an improvement in Ezra’s nausea, and for a few blissful hours, Hera believes that the entire affair was a one-night bug that just has to finish passing out of Ezra’s system.
Her neck is slightly sore from how she slept tucked into her bunk beside Ezra, but it was actually comforting to know he didn’t seem to have moved since he fell asleep against her the night before. She gets some water in him and not long after, some rice boiled in a simple soup broth that his appetite eventually warms up to eating. All things considered, she thinks she’ll be back to tinkering on the ship and trying to distract Ezra with chores to keep him out of trouble in no time.
Just as she’s about to tell Chopper to run a diagnostic and give her something to work on, the spoon stirring cup of caf she was fixing almost tumbles from her grasp in surprise at the pained gasp coming from where she left Ezra to continue resting in her room.
“Chop, get the medkit!” she orders, leaving the caf behind.
She finds Ezra in a sweaty tangle of sheets, twitching so wildly that she worries he might be having some kind of seizure.
“Ezra?” Hera gets on her knees next to the bunk. “Ezra, what’s wrong?”
Ezra only whimpers in response, his fist wrapped around the sheet so tight his circulation is probably getting cut off.
Hera grabs his hands, pulling them into her own, but he yanks them away violently, yelling “No! NO!”
“Okay, okay, love, I won’t,” she soothes, reaching this time for his hair, trying to replicate her earlier gesture—what she knows has comforted him in the past. All she notices at first is the sweat-slick texture of human hair, but then underneath…yes, humans tended to run a little warmer than Twi’leks, but still. She’d slept next to Ezra all night without feeling this radiating heat from his skin. “Does something hurt? Are you—“
Tears fall from his eyes, accompanied by the wheezing inhales and exhales of his distressed breathing pattern that quickly become sobs. “I’m scared—I don’t—“
“You’re safe, Ezra, it’s just you and me,” Hera tries to comfort him again, but he curls in tighter on himself, ignoring her platitudes and turning away.
Chopper rolls in with a few indignant warbles about organic frailty that she’s only able to translate in the back of her mind due to years of practice—her heartbeat feels so loud thrumming through her veins, she’s panicking—before she grabs the medkit from Chopper and finds the thermometer.
Trying to force it into Ezra’s open, crying mouth seems pointless, so she instead goes for the armpit, dragging down his sleep shirt sleeve and holding his arm shut so that the tool can get a reading. She’s only slightly regretting not having sprung for one of the in-ear thermometers, but at the time of getting the medkit she’d only had herself and Chopper to think about, and those models were useless for Twi-lek ear cones.
He wriggles a little against her grip, but then goes back to speaking instead of moving as much. “Caleb, I—Caleb—!”
She sighs, running a hand down Ezra’s back. Caleb. Meaning Kanan. Who’s not due back for another day at least. “He’ll be here soon,” she tries.
She checks the temperature reading when it beeps. She was right—the thermometer is indicating a high fever. Meaning this sickness—whatever it is—isn’t over just yet. Vomiting was round one. Fever clearly wasn’t far behind. If she’s lucky, they’ll get out of this without breaking out the tissues.
“Where are we going?” Ezra says, and this time she doesn’t bother to respond. He’s clearly too feverish to even register her presence. “Caleb, we have to go back, the Temple—!” Her heart squeezes a little. It had taken a while for Kanan to tell her the whole story—what happened exactly when the Jedi Temple fell and all he’d done to keep Ezra safe after. Poor thing seems to be stuck in the memory. “Why does it feel so dark?!”
Hera needs to stop this. It’s bad enough he had to live it once, but this is just—pitiful, that’s the only word she has to describe it. She takes the fever reducers from the kit and palms them, following them with something that should be strong enough to help him sleep—hopefully without any nightmares like this one.
“Chopper, give me a hand,” she directs, propping Ezra up with her arms while trying to keep the pills securely in her fist. The droid very clearly avoids his usual complaints, rolling up next to the bed and supporting Ezra’s weight when she props him gently against Chopper’s manacles. She puts the pills in Ezra’s mouth without trouble, then thankfully gets him to drink the water without getting it all over the sheets or choking. He must at least be awake enough for that, then.
As the medication begins to do their work, she re-settles Ezra in her bed. As he quiets and stops his jerky moments, she untwists the damp covers and replaces them with an extra set before giving him the pillow she used instead of the tear-and-sick-stained one he’d clearly used the night before. Once the medicine truly kicked in, he’d hopefully have a few hours of more restful sleep while she got the mess cleaned up.
Now she just had to hope he would have no more fever hallucinations when he woke.
Hera’s dressed for bed by the time Ezra wakes up again. She’d been keeping an eye on Ezra next to her in her quarters, quietly reading about human illnesses and absently wondering if she should shoot Kanan a message about Ezra being so sick he was hallucinating their past.
She watches the typing message icon flash off and on in front of her a few hundred times before going back to postings for possible future jobs on the holonet. He’ll be back within the next day or two, according to his last update. Fulcrum’s information had been solid, then. She’ll stick to what she told Ezra—she’ll only tell Kanan if things get out of her control.
“Mgh,” Ezra grumbles, rolling over to look at her from under his still droopy eyelids. “How long have I been—?”
“It’s been a while. I was getting worried.” Hera places the back of her palm over Ezra’s forehead. “You’ve been feverish, so I gave you something to help you sleep better. Still are a little feverish, by the feel of it.”
Ezra groans a little, burrowing further into the covers. “’s Cold.”
“Fever sweats, probably,” she sighs, putting aside the datapad and crawling across the Ezra-sized lump on her mattress. “I’ll get you another blanket, huh? That one your dad likes.”
Ezra nods up at her, shuffling more towards where her body heat once was.
She does go get the blanket from Kanan’s room—the one he knows everyone else likes to steal and therefore attempts to hide (except that the Ghost is her ship, and she knows every inch of it, even his quarters, thank you very much)—but stops by the galley for water and a ration bar that Ezra can hopefully eat quickly and take with more fever medicine.
Setting him up like so works for a little while—he doesn’t talk much through the chewing of the bar, but he seems present when she asks the general questions about how he’s feeling and makes it to the refresher and back without her help before crawling back into bed again.
He even makes it quite a while contently reading the holonet next to her, mumbling or pointing at the cargo transport listings she’s looking at when he has input. The fever seems to have worn him out despite all the sleeping, however, so he curls up next to her in the bed when she decides his condition is stable enough to get some sleep for herself.
“You all good?” She asks, making sure he doesn’t need anything else before she truly tries to sleep.
Ezra shrugs, almost dejectedly curling into his pile of blankets.
“What’s the matter?” She puts her hand back to his forehead to see if his temperature has risen again, but it feels the same as when he woke earlier, and the next round of fever reducers likely hasn’t kicked in yet since he waited to take them for a little while this time.
“I miss Dad.”
“He’ll be back soon.” Hera moves a little closer, grabbing Ezra’s hand where it lies near hers on the sheets. “He messaged. It’s only a day or so. You know he misses you too.”
“Yeah.” Ezra squeezes Hera’s hand. “I bet he misses you too.”
Hera snorts. “Some days I wonder how he ever got along before he met me.” Hera lowers her voice to a whisper, as if Kanan’s around to hear the next thing she says. “But then I remember that he had you.”
That gets Ezra to smile, and she smiles in return. He’s definitely returning to better health if he’s happy to poke fun at Kanan.
“I don’t wanna be tired anymore,” Ezra groans. “It’s boring.”
“We’ll see how you feel tomorrow. Maybe if you’re up to it you can at least get out of bed for a while, okay?” Hera wrinkles her nose. “And straight into a shower.”
“I can go back to my own room if it’s really bothering you…” Ezra mumbles, shifting under the covers but clearly reluctant to leave the warmth and safety of being with her instead of being alone when he’s still clearly sick.
Hera rolls her eyes, lifting her arm up. “C’mere.”
Ezra’s eyebrows raise at her, but he quickly accepts the gesture by turning to face away from her and curl his torso under her waiting arm. He really is shivering despite the blankets and the heat of his still feverish skin, so she rubs her hand over his arm a few times to create some friction.
Ezra curls into the touch, mumbling out a response that takes her far away from her previous state of half-asleep.
“Night, Mom.”
For a moment, she just freezes her arm where it is, afraid to break the quiet and wake him from what was likely a fever-induced moment of fuzziness or to acknowledge what to do with the statement if it wasn’t.
She is not Ezra’s mother.
And yet.
“Goodnight, Ezra.”
She brings her arm up around Ezra’s body over the covers, allowing him to burrow in closer. She doesn’t know exactly when she finally goes to sleep, but it’s certainly not easy to drift off with that statement echoing around in her head.
“I see Ezra didn’t destroy the ship while I was gone.”
“Was that a legitimate possibility?”
Kanan shrugs. “He’s barely ten.” At the very least, Kanan doesn’t look any worse for wear after his time away from the Ghost. She can tell he’s emotionally exhausted.
He’s giving her that look—she can’t really describe it other than it’s very…moony. Like she’s hung the galaxy simply by existing in her own ship. The look he reserves for her and very well may never turn off when she’s not looking.
Hera rolls her eyes, causing Kanan’s grin to spread even wider. “I’ve missed you.” Kanan looks around, clearly searching for his usual other greeter after a mission away. “Where’s Ezra?”
“Probably still asleep,” she answers without thinking.
She only realizes her mistake when he replies, wary, “You’re not usually one to let him sleep in.”
“About that…” Hera sighs, figuring it’s best to get it all on the table before he goes into a panic spiral like the look on his face at only those two words seems to indicate that he will. “Ezra got sick a few days ago. It’s been manageable, but—“
“He’s been sick, and you didn’t think to tell me?!” Kanan crosses his arms, bristling at her. “Hera, you know how important he is to me, how could you—“
“Woah, Kanan, stop.” Hera puts her hands on his shoulders, breathing in and breathing out in an attempt to get him to do the same. “You know that I know how much you love that kid. I care about him too, remember?”
Kanan takes a beat, then nods, closing his eyes and taking a breath. “What happened?”
Hera shrugs. “I don’t know, to be honest. He just got sick one night. I heard him run into the refresher. The nausea’s stopped since then, but he’s been pretty feverish the past few days.” She sighs. “Getting him into the shower yesterday practically wore him out. Must be some kind of nasty bug.”
“Poor kid.”
“Listen, Kanan, the reason I didn’t tell you about Ezra was because there wasn’t anything you could do.”
“I could have been there for him!”
“No, you could have been distracted and gotten yourself killed trying to find Imperial leaks on a planet that’s crawling with ‘troopers.” Hera crosses her arms, tilting her head to challenge him into arguing that she’s not right. “I took care of him, Kanan. I know that you’re his father and missing something like this is hard, but you were away and you left me in charge of his care. I’ve been slowly getting his fever down between the meds and cold showers, I’ve made sure he rests and eats and drinks enough, and he hasn’t had any nightmares since—“
“Wait, nightmares?”
Hera nods. “About the Temple. He—he called for you. For Caleb. I didn’t say anything about it to him, but…I’ve still had him bunking with me just in case it happened again.”
It all finally seems to register with him. “Really? You have?”
“Gods, yes, Kanan. I may not have raised him before, but he is on my ship now and he’s my responsibility too.” She takes Kanan’s hand, curling their fingers together. “I know that I was unsure about having a child on this ship in the beginning but I—Kanan, I love having him—having both of you around. I don’t want you to think that I can’t—that I don’t want to be there for him too.”
She hadn’t realized how quickly attached she’d grown to both of them. Or, well, maybe she just tried to ignore it before because it was easy to see someone like Kanan going away at the first sign of trouble to protect Ezra. She hadn’t known that part of this not-telling-Kanan was also about proving her dedication to them as much as they seemed to be dedicated to staying with her for the long term. She wants things on the Ghost to be this good—for the fight against the Empire to go well, for them to still be able to protect Ezra as much as they can during it. She wants this place to finally feel like a home for them after all of that displacement in their lives after Empire Day.
There’s a moment of silence. Kanan just nods at her, squeezing her hand tighter, and she thinks that will be the end of the discussion.
Instead, he pulls her closer by their joined hands, and he kisses her.
Maybe, if she’s being honest, she’s thought about kissing Kanan Jarrus before this moment. Mostly in an innocent what-if sort of speculation. Just for the experience. Because he was an undeniably attractive human who was in close proximity to her every day and it had been quite a while. Because of that stars damned look he gives her.
This is not anything heat of the moment, nothing spontaneous or charged by sexual tension, desire, or wanting.
And yet, Hera Syndulla is very unlikely to forget such a first kiss. (And she thinks first, because she leans in a little too much, wants to touch the fine hairs against his neck, wants—)
It’s almost a chaste kiss, but for how he brings up his unjoined hand to cup her face before it ends, bringing her forehead close to lean on when it’s over.
“I’m not—sorry,“ He shakes his head against hers. “I just—I had to—thank you. That’s not the only reason I why I kissed you but—for all of it. For giving us a chance, for being here—thank you.”
Some part of her thinks she should tell him off. Repeat a warning about professional distance. Mention the child not far away. On another day, in another circumstance, she might.
Instead she finds herself smiling. He’s not telling her terrible pick-up lines or flirting with his suave attitude. It’s a genuine reaction, one she actually almost appreciates. She worried he really would be mad, that he’d feel like she was trying to replace him—especially after the “Mom” incident the other night—but instead, he was filled with so much emotion that he just—he kissed her. And he didn’t take it back as a spur of the moment decision.
That’s not the only reason why I kissed you.
“Do you want to, um.” Hera takes a moment, tries to regroup. She’s kissed men before, honestly, Hera, get it together. “You should go check on Ezra. He’s missed you.”
“Yeah,” Kanan says, detaching himself from her, but looking about as dazed as she feels. “See you later for dinner?” He offers.
“Maybe. I haven’t gotten a lot of work done because of—no, yeah. Later.”
Kanan smiles, then, maybe a little proud to have rattled her. He turns away to the ladder in the cargo hold with his hands in his pockets and saunters away with a little swing to his hips. Not that she’s paying attention to his hips, smug little—
He turns around again once he’s up the ladder, the look on his face this time more sincere. “Hera.” She crosses her arms, looking up at him, partially waiting for some kind of flirtatious line that will make her only sort of hate him all over again. “Thanks for taking care of Ezra for me. Seriously. I’m glad that he—that we have someone like you.”
“You’re welcome, Kanan,” she replies, only a little shocked at the earnestness. Even more surprised at what she says next. “I’m…I’m glad to have you both too.”
Yes, Hera had been alone for a while before she met Kanan. She could be alone, if the worst happened and Kanan and Ezra had to leave. But she hoped that they wouldn’t. This endeavor—raising Ezra, fighting the Empire, getting to know Kanan better—felt very much like something only just beginning.