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Normally, Kallus didn’t hide from his problems. He didn’t always look forward to confronting them, but more often than not, he did. It was frustrating, and Zeb had questioned his poor sense of self-preservation enough to know that Kallus, by his nature, was a fighter. So, finding him lying on the floor under his desk on Yavin 4 was startling to say the least, but the reason for it sent blind hot rage into the furthest corners of his body.
Seething enough he’d have nearly foamed at the mouth if he were capable of such a thing, Zeb confronted the only man he could think of to blame.
“They never should have just given him that report.” Zeb snarled. “Look at him, Draven. Is this what you wanted? Are you happy now?”
“Not by a long shot.” Draven’s fight came right back to snap back at Zeb. “Kallus might be an ex-Imperial, but he’s one of my best officers and I have enough respect for his work to have disallowed something like this if I knew about it,”
Scoffing, Zeb’s ears pulled back and he stepped forwards with his hands clenched into fists. “Oh, yeah? If it wasn’t you, then who did it?”
“Captain Kallus is not exactly well-loved by everyone on base. I have a feeling one of the men in the division with a grudge against him saw an opportunity and acted on it.” Draven said
“So, it wasn’t you, but it still wasn’t an accident.”
“Most definitely not.”
“Great.” Zeb threw up his hands and growled.
Draven scoffed “Not great. Look at him; I can’t use him! He’s barely there. Almost catatonic.”
Zeb sighed, and moved away from where they’d been standing to scoop Kallus up off the floor. “I’ll take care of him.”
“Please do. I’ll inform command that he’s taking some time off.”
“I’ll let you know how things are going?” Zeb offered.
Draven shook his head, skepticism oozing from his expression. “If you can find the time when dealing with that mess? Go ahead.”
Three days of numbness.
Although Kallus was sometimes quiet on odd days here and there, Zeb struggled with his lover’s pain. On those terrible days Zeb and Kallus would often spend them in solitude, just the two of them, locked up on the Ghost or secluded wherever they could manage to find a place.
This silence was different from the agony in his eyes whenever he looked up at Zeb, from the guilt Kallus often shouldered at the expense of his own forgiveness. This time, Kallus went a full day without so much as a single word, and then two. After three days, Zeb felt his patience with himself starting to wear thin.
Despite having dealt with such grief in his own life after Lasan, after Kanan and Ezra, after Sabine had parted ways with the Ghost crew to do what she felt she needed to, he could not help Kallus. It didn’t matter what he tried; he couldn’t reach through that barrier to his love. After an exhausting third day of desperately trying to reach Kallus, Zeb made the trek back to his bunk, trembling hands holding a bowl of soup that sloshed around, threatening to spill on the floor.
Kallus was no longer on duty, Draven had made that clear, and Zeb spent the entire day aboard the Ghost trying to get through to Kallus.
The first time Zeb entered his room on the Ghost and Alex had been missing from where Zeb had left him, his heart plunged itself into ice. No. He’s gone. But he can’t be gone, where’d he go? Zeb dropped the bowl of soup he’d made, not caring that it doused the floor in broth and vegetables, and rushed forwards, as if his eyes were deceiving him, as if he would find Alex in his bunk, tucked away into a corner.
Narrowly avoiding stepping on his love told Zeb otherwise.
“Oh, Alex,” he said, crouching down to take Kallus’s hands in his own. “Alex, what’re you doing down here?” Zeb asked.
Kallus didn’t answer but didn’t fight it when Zeb wrapped those burly arms around him to scoop him up from off the floor.
“Karabast, I’m glad I didn’t put you in the top bunk. You scared me half to death, you hear me?”
If Kallus did hear him, there was no indication of it.
“Well, you’d better not do it again, Alex, I don’t know what I’d do if I came back here and found you were missing, again.” Zeb settled Kallus back onto the lower bunk and on his side, so Kallus faced the doorway. Zeb looked the same direction to ensure it was good enough of a view but frowned. “Aw, karabast, Hera’ll kill me if I don’t get this cleaned up. I’ll be back with something for you to eat in a second, just stay here.”
Kallus, to his relief, didn’t move by the time Zeb had returned with another bowl of the same soup, and although Zeb ended up feeding Kallus himself, it was better than nothing. A small portion of one of the last spoonfuls spilled slightly, and Zeb chuckled. “Come on, now. I know my cooking ain’t the best, but it’s what we got, okay?” Zeb’s finger brushed away a stray stream of broth on Kallus’s face with a hopeful smile.
Kallus did not reply.
“That’s alright, you don’t have to talk to me right now. We’re just going to get you in the fresher, I know you like the warm water.” Zeb set aside the bowl and lifted Kallus into his arms, doing his best to appear upbeat and cheerful. “Come on, now.”
It was discouraging when Kallus didn’t respond again until they fell asleep, curled up in Zeb’s bunk.
That night, Zeb woke with a start. His first instinct was to check the room for anything that might have caused the sudden interruption of his rest, but finding nothing, Zeb looked down into his arms and smiled sadly. Alex, even with whatever was wrong with him, was hard pressed to break his habits. Those warrior’s hands, roughened with the long history of many battles, gripped Zeb’s velvet fine fur as if clinging to life itself.
With enough practice extracting himself from his lover’s grasp, Zeb chuckled, and kissed Alex’s forehead while he snuck out to use the fresher quickly. Maybe it was a sign, he hoped, a sign things would be getting back to normal again, and Alex would talk to him.
Not even a second later, the ear-piercing scream from his bunk sent Zeb barreling back down the hall and through the doors where he rushed to Alex’s side.
He was on the floor, again, but when Zeb was within reaching distance, between sobs and unsteady breaths, Alex managed to clutch fistfuls of the Lasat’s fur.
Alex shook his head furiously every time Zeb tried to reposition him, no matter how much Zeb tried to reassure him that everything would be just fine. Frustratingly, Alex refused to look at him and kept his now silent tears away from the Lasat’s eyes.
“I’m here, Alex, it’s alright.” Zeb said, just holding Alex as best he could. “I’ve got you, I promise,”
It took nearly an hour, but Alex relaxed enough for Zeb to return him back to the bunk, even if he kept his fingers weaved in the Lasat’s fur with a death-grip.
Determined to try and get them both out of the bunk the two of them had been holed up in for some time, Zeb carried Kallus out of their room the very next day. Zeb brought Kallus down the hall and sat him down at the dejarik table while he went to the mess to grab something quick and easy. He wasn’t willing to leave Kallus alone for too long after the incident the night before.
“Kal-” Zeb let out a frustrated cry when he found the human laying on the floor in the middle of the common room. “I just- how did you get there?”
Kallus turned his head to look at Zeb, messy blond hair ruffled all around his eyes. A tear, one of many, Zeb realized, rolled down the side of Kallus’s face and slipped past his hair to splatter on the floor. “Hey, hey, it’s okay. I’m here.”
Zeb was there. Through thick and thin, he had made it his mission to be there, to wait until Kallus reached out again.
Zeb laid on the floor besides Kallus, one hand brushing away the tears from his love’s eyes, but they kept coming. “Zeb?” Kallus croaked, one of his own smaller hands laying overtop of Zeb’s.
“Yeah, Sasha. Yeah, it’s me.”
The tears kept coming. “Zeb, I’m so sorry.”
“No, no.” Zeb shushed him gently, “You don’t ever have to be sorry for something like this. Not with me.”
“I just- I just don’t know how to tell you.” The words fumbled as they came from his mouth. Tears continued falling, and Kallus sighed, head dropping back down the floor. “I want to, but I don’t know how.”
“You don’t have to. Not right now.”
Kallus took in a shaky shallow breath. “I wanted her to meet you. My mother, I meant.”
“Me?” His face contorted in surprise; Zeb hadn’t expected anything resembling Kallus’s declaration. The mother of a once snobby Coruscanti meet the alien boyfriend of her son?
Kallus nodded, and sighed, squeezing his eyes shut. He opened them again, and reached out with one shaking hand to brush the back of his fingers under Zeb’s eye and across his face. “Yes, Zeb, I wanted her to meet you. I wanted her to love you as much as I do.”
“You were going to introduce me to your mom?” Zeb repeated in disbelief.
“My mother would have loved you.”
Zeb’s hope soared. “Really?”
“Yes, really. She hated the Empire. She hated the xenophobia and classism and all the rules. She’s part of the reason why.”
“Why what?”
“Why I left the Empire.”
“Your mother?” Zeb asked, and when Kallus nodded slowly, Zeb’s fingers trailed along the side of his face. “Tell me about her?” He asked gently, praying and hoping he wouldn’t cross a line to get him to open up.
“She was perhaps the complete opposite of me when I was ISB. I tried so hard to hide it, to bury that past, and she knew it. She knew I was ashamed of her, ashamed of who I was and where I came from.” Kallus flinched. “I pushed her away and did my best to forget about her.”
“What changed?” Zeb asked, a large part of him wishing and hoping for the answer his imagination concocted, even if it wasn’t necessarily logical.
“I got to know you on a barren icy wasteland of a moon.” Reaching up to mimic Zeb’s touch, Alex smiled. It was small, and his eyes were still pained, but not empty. The Lasat’s fur bristled under his fingers; not even the pain he felt could mask the fondness alongside it. “But I always thought after the war, after everything was said and done, we’d go to her home on the lower levels of Coruscant, you and I. She would get to meet you, Zeb. She would meet you and she would love you.”
“I- really?”
“Of course.” Alex laughed through his tears and nodded. Pushing himself up off the floor to sit up and gaze lovingly into Zeb’s eyes, he nodded. “My mother would adore you. Even after everything I did to drive a wedge between her and I, she still loved me. Enough to defy the entire Empire and to tell me I was stupid on a regular basis.”
Zeb barked a laugh and continued to caress Alex’s face. “She sounds like someone I know.” Zeb said, and there was no mistaking who he was talking about. “You’re a rebellious bunch, you Kalluses.”
“Me? I’m nothing like her, Zeb. She was kind, compassionate, generous to a fault. I’ve been nothing but selfish my entire life. I hurt her again and again.”
“You’re an imperfect person. That doesn’t mean you’re not a good one. She knew that before I did, and before you even considered it,” Zeb said pointedly. “She knew you have always been a good person, Alex. She knew it, and I know it.”
“Zeb,” Alex’s smile vanished. “Zeb.” He repeated, voice breaking, his lover’s name like a mantra on his lips. “Oh, Zeb.”
His tears hadn’t stopped, but they only grew worse. Brown eyes pleaded, even though he didn’t know what he wanted besides Zeb.
“Karabast, Sasha, c’mere,” Zeb said, pulling Alex forward and pressing his mouth to the side of his tousled blond head. “I love you. I’m here. I love you.”
Alex cried into Zeb’s chest. A silent sob pushed him deeper into Zeb’s warmth and he shook his head. Zeb knew with anyone else in the galaxy, Alex might have felt as if he were a simpering fool, but with Zeb, it didn’t matter. He could be the biggest kriffing fool in the galaxy in front of Zeb and it wouldn’t matter, because kriff it, Zeb would always be there.
Alex cried until he couldn’t cry anymore, and even then, Zeb held him with a tear-soaked jumpsuit and aching big green eyes.