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After years in the Rebellion, Hera was a light sleeper. The ability to become fully alert in seconds could make the difference between life and death, but it was less convenient now that she tired so easily.
Though no one could have slept through how loudly someone was pounding at the door. She and Kanan were both out of bed quickly, ready for whatever the Empire was about to throw at them. She threw her cap on, but didn't bother with anything else. It wouldn't be the first time she'd flown the Ghost in her pyjamas, and it probably won't be the last.
Kanan had the door open before she even managed to tap on the lights. "Ezra? What is it?
"Not the Empire," he said as he stepped into the room. He looked flustered enough that he could have told them Vader had personally appeared in his cabin and they would have believed him. "I couldn't sleep, so I started meditating and then I sensed something."
Hera couldn't help smiling at how much he'd grown. When they first brought him on board he could barely sit still and now he meditated when left to his own devices.
She could do without it leading to him pounding on her door in the middle of the night cycle though.
"You had a vision?" Things that happened while mediating were definitely Kanan's area. Though any vision that warranted waking them up must involve a fairly large threat.
"Not a vision, something that's happening right now. Something's wrong with Hera!"
Hera sat back down on the bunk. Not Imperials, then. She knew they were going to have to talk about this eventually. She had intended to have the conversation at a more civilized hour.
Kanan waved Ezra to a stool before joining her. Their room wasn't really designed for these sorts of conversations, but it was happening here. "Why do you say that?" Kanan's voice was calm even as panic continued to flash in Ezra's eyes.
"I sensed... I'm not sure, exactly. I've never sensed anything like it, that's why I'm worried! It was… alive, but not like a person or an animal or anything. Maybe a parasite or something! We should find a medic."
Kanan made an admirable effort at keeping a straight face as he wrapped an arm around her waist. "It's not a parasite."
She leaned into his chest. "Technically it's kinda a parasite." The fact that they wanted this didn't change any of the biological bizarreness of the situation.
"We're not saying parasite."
He might not be able to see her smirk, but she was sure he could hear it. "And when it's growing in your body, you can make that decision, love."
Kanan turned his attention back to Ezra. The terminology wasn't the important point right now. "Focus on what you're feeling. Remember what you've felt before to identify it."
Ezra closed his eyes and did something that she couldn't see. And continued to do the unseeable Force thing. She'd thought the reference to it growing in her body would have been enough of a hint.
Normally she wanted to support Ezra's training, but there were limits. "Kanan, I'm sure this is a very useful teaching moment, but it's 0300 and we all need sleep."
Kanan didn't think she got enough sleep before all this. He might even have been right. But he'd been fussing even more over the past few weeks.
"Right. Sleep."
She rested her hands on top of his. On top of her belly. "Ezra, I already saw a medic about what you're sensing. There's nothing wrong, I'm pregnant."
Ezra opened and closed his mouth several times in succession, not at all prepared for that revelation. It wasn't all that long ago that he would have knocked on the wrong door when looking for Kanan. "What? How?"
"There's going to be a Spectre Seven," Kanan confirmed. How was presumably rhetorical. Ezra had enough education to understand that one on his own.
"We wanted to know a bit more about whether everything was okay before we said anything." Hybrid pregnancies were rare for a reason. They were risky under ideal circumstances with advanced planning. Doubly so when they resulted from her missing a routine medical appointment because Hobbie crashed his fighter. And with Imperial torture in the equation there were still plenty of things that could go wrong even if every test so far had looked normal.
"We'll tell the others in the morning."
Now that Ezra knew, that was only fair. It was good news, they didn't need to ask him to keep it a secret from the rest of the family. "For now, we should all get some sleep. The next interruption might actually be the Empire."
Hera had forgotten just how many people they were expecting for breakfast when she decided to tell the rest of the family. Even Ezra knew that Kallus had spent the night, if only because he had to sleep in what was technically still Kanan's room. And Rex was joining them because it was Garan gritmeal day in the mess hall. She couldn't blame him for wanting to avoid it, she hadn't been a fan even before it turned out to be particularly good at making her feel nauseous. Kanan's flatcakes were always better.
She was still going to stick to the original plan. Eventually this was going to impact their work, so Rex and Kallus would have to know sooner rather than later. And once she told the rest of the crew, the odds of someone forgetting they didn't know were higher.
Kallus and Rex might not have been family as long as Zeb or Sabine, but they were rapidly earning that status. This just cemented their status.
Kanan set a platter in the middle of the table for the crew to share and slipped into a seat next to her. Ezra shifted awkwardly and tried very hard to keep his attention on food like the teenager he was. They should really share the news before the poor boy exploded from trying to hold the information back.
She nodded at Kanan as she added a sausage to her plate.
"There's something we need to tell you all." Kanan could barely restrain the glee in his voice. If he had his way, he'd be shouting it in the corridors. It was adorable, even if she wasn't ready to entertain questions from her subordinates.
Sabine exchanged glances with Zeb. They were up to something, but the news was sure to distract them from it. Rex shifted in his seat while Kallus looked down at something on his datapad.
Hera reached over and took Kanan's hand. "We're going to have a baby."
Sabine grinned. "Congratulations! I was wondering when you were going to tell us."
"Had to happen eventually," Zeb added.
Ezra's fork clattered to his plate. "You guys knew? I only found out last night..."
Kanan shot them both a puzzled look. "This is news to me. Seeing as neither of us told you."
They were family, of course, but everyone was already carrying so many of their own burdens in the war.
Sabine shrugged. "Hera asked me to fix the hyperdrive."
The only way to be sure if the core was actually leaking was to crawl in there and attempt the repair. The radiation. Harmless to an adult. Much more dangerous to an embryo that was already contending with the fact that things didn't necessarily line up on a genetic level.
That was three weeks ago. "I guess I did."
"You never let anyone else work on the hyperdrive."
It was… hard to argue with that. She expected her crew to play an active role in maintenance, but she felt more comfortable if she was the one making sure the part of the ship that kept them all alive was in working order. "You didn't say anything."
"If you were trusting me with something like that, there had to be a good reason."
She glanced over to Zeb. "Did I ask you to do something unusual too?" Pregnancy was going to impact some of what she could do eventually, but she didn't think it was that dramatic yet.
He stabbed at his flatcakes. "Nah, there's just no good way to start a conversation about 'You smell different, are you pregnant?'"
"There really isn't." Kanan shot Ezra a pointed look. Hera was still pretty sure he'd known longer than anyone. At least he'd had the decency to wait for her to tell him.
More or less, anyway.
Kanan wanted to wait until she was ready to tell him. At the very least, he wanted to wait until he was sure she actually knew. He wasn't sure when exactly a med droid would be able to confirm what he was sensing, and until then, there was no point in him saying anything.
So he took his quiet comfort from sensing the tiny spark of light holding on through everything that happened. He trusted Hera, and she must have her reasons for waiting to tell him on her own terms.
His resolve lasted right up until the battle to liberate Lothal. It was just like old times when the Force warned him that he needed to get Hera clear of falling debris. Other than that one detail that changed everything.
Just a few scrapes and bruises thanks to Jedi reflexes, but they hit the ground together hard. He could sense Hera's anxiety as her hand dropped automatically to her stomach. There was no hope of seeing a med droid until this was over, one way or another.
He kept his arms around her even after the actual danger had passed. They had a moment, right now. "Hey, it's okay."
Hera nodded and steeled her expression. She was trying to focus, but he didn't need the Force to realize there was turmoil under General Syndulla's exterior. And her hand still hadn't moved. He was sure she'd collect herself and realize what she was doing in a moment more, but why leave any unnecessary stress?
He placed his hand over hers and whispered, "The baby's fine."
"You're sure?" Which really meant "You know?"
He nodded. "Bright and strong as ever. Tough as their mom."
Hera nodded and squeezed his hand. "We have a lot to talk about later."
They had to get through the fighting to have their long conversation.
"It's been pretty obvious that something was up." Rex casually took a bite of his flatcake.
"There's a war on," Kanan pointed out. "Plenty of things are up."
And down. That was mostly their resources though. "Is it... that obvious?" Hera wasn't ready for the entire base to know. It would be unavoidable eventually, but by then the worst of the internal dangers would have passed. If only the external threats could be eliminated that easily.
"Usually when there's trouble, Kanan checks on one of the kids first. Ever since Lothal it's been you."
"I do that?"
Of course he checked on the kids. They might be very competent, but they were still their kids. It was only right to make sure they're okay.
The new kid was notably less competent than the older ones.
"And that was enough to jump right to me being pregnant?" It was a subtle signal that involved knowing Kanan well, but it still implied a certain amount of experience with pregnant women that she wouldn't expect from a clone who spent most of his life at war.
"With how long you've been together, there weren't a lot of other options. I've seen people with pregnant wives now and then."
Mostly, he made a point of not seeing.
Being on a mission with General Skywalker always meant a few things. Everyone knew that you had to be prepared for the plan to get exciting. Less well advertised was how much time you were going to spend not noticing him and Senator Amidala.
And then not noticing she was pregnant no matter how far along she was.
Lately they were rarely in the same place at the same time, so Rex didn't have to spend as much time looking any other direction. But when they actually were on the same planet, the excuses were getting worse all the time.
"I'm going to bring the Senator some tea," Skywalker announced. The Senate had a support staff whose entire job was to fetch tea and donuts; they certainly didn't need Jedi Knights doing that. He was really reaching after four weeks in the field and another wardrobe change for the senator.
"Remember we have the briefing about new security measures for the senate building in thirty minutes," Rex said even though there was no reason Anakin's supposed errand would take that long.
"Right. Need to keep all the senators out of danger. I'll ask Pa... Senator Amidala what she's most worried about." Skywalker did actually seem interested in what promised to be a fairly dull meeting. Nothing about that was suspicious.
"Of course you will, sir."
It was too bad things turned out the way they did. That kid would have been a force of nature.
"Kal, you haven't known Kanan as long, had you noticed that?" He'd been suspiciously quiet through the whole discussion so far.
"Not that but..." Kallus's eyes darted around the room. "There were a few other signs."
"A few?" Ezra squeaked. Hera couldn't help sharing that assessment, given that they thought they were being discreet.
Kallus gestured across the table at Hera's mug. "First of all, Hera's not drinking caf."
Kriff, did she miss caf. She needed it to keep going as much as ever and she wouldn't have given it up for anything short of her child's health.
"Hera stands differently. Kanan's been running a lot of extra errands on base. Hera keeps touching her stomach when she thinks no one is looking. Kanan puts his arms around her waist whether people are looking or not. Hera's been wearing clothes that don't have as many fasteners."
Her face heated at that comment. "That's..." Absolutely true. The complicated clothing had gotten really inconvenient for reasons she didn't need to discuss at the breakfast table. Or anywhere.
At least Kallus didn't linger on the point and kept listing his evidence. "Kanan keeps making a stupid face."
"Hey!" The offended face was usually reserved for comments on his plans.
"Now that he mentions it, it does look pretty goofy." Zeb barely stopped eating to provide his assessment.
Hera leaned against Kanan. "I'm not going to give you a hard time for being happy about this." It helped distract her from all the ways things could still go wrong and actually consider the possibility of everything going right. It reminded her they were having a baby.
"Never mind Kanan's dopey face. Can we talk about the fact that the guy who can literally sense life was the last one to figure this out?" Leave it to Sabine and sibling rivalry to win out in the end.
"Can we not?"
"You're not the last to know," Kanan offered. "There's still Chopper."
The droid warbled a protest and waved his manipulator arms.
"Chopper, don't tease him." Of course he was going to claim he already knew if it was a chance to give Ezra a hard time. "We didn't tell you either."
Chopper continued to protest.
Hera pinched the bridge of her nose. "The inventory?"
It was a bit of an exaggeration. Chopper didn't spend time cross-referencing the entire inventory to find strange patterns to what the organics might be up to.
But someone had to make sure everything was properly stowed on board. Despite his threats, none of the containers ever put themselves away, so he was stuck doing a lot of the work.
AP-5 took care of some of it, but he didn't know the Ghost the way Chopper did. "The general requested several human nutritional supplements, but she didn't specify a location."
Chopper inquired about the quantity. Probably another medical delivery that could go with the rest of the cargo.
"One bottle of each." AP-5 transmitted the exact names and dosages directly.
Ordinarily, any medical supplies ordered in that quantity were meant for the crew's personal use, but Chopper had no idea what Hera would need those for. The last time she started keeping a stock of anything new was after Kanan's sensor damage. There hadn't been any new crew members, so there was no need for new supplements.
He'd research what these were for later. For now, he advised AP-5 to give them to Hera directly so she could figure it out.
"And you didn't have any follow-up questions?" Kanan asked.
Chopper trilled his opinions about organic reproduction and his desire to contemplate it in any detail. Maybe him keeping his findings to himself was the good outcome after all.
Ezra looked around the table. "None of you said anything!"
Sabine rolled her eyes. "We don't gossip about Hera."
That was just a straight up lie.
Once she'd finished patching the leak in the hyperdrive reactor core, the whole thing nagged at Sabine. She already knew what Kanan would have to say: Hera would share information when she decided it was necessary. It wasn't even about the Rebellion, there was no breaking down the parental united front on something like this. He'd been protective of her ever since Lothal, which she'd been chalking up to a pretty normal reaction to the whole captured and tortured by the Empire situation. If she was right about there being more to it than that, there was no way he was going to crack. She might get some suspicious non-answers out of him, but he would keep deflecting over to Hera.
Asking Ezra would just be an exercise in frustration.
That left one option. "Hey, Zeb, something's up with Hera, right?"
Zeb set down the bo-rifle he was calibrating. "You mean besides the fact that she's pregnant?"
Well, at least she wasn't jumping to ridiculous conclusions.
"Did she ask you something weird too?" She couldn't imagine Hera having a reason to tell Zeb but not her. He must have worked it out on his own too.
"It's that or she started wearing a weird perfume." Any perfume on Hera would count as weird if they weren't going undercover somewhere that required it.
"How long do you think it's been?"
"A few weeks, at least."
"Guess I'd better look up the specifications for every system that can emit radiation..." Hera had done so much for all of them. If she needed help right now, Sabine was going to provide it every way that she could. The last thing Hera needed was to be stressing out trying to explain delicate repairs from a safe distance.
Rex shot Zeb and Sabine a look that suggested he agreed with Hera's assessment of their gossip habits. "Well clones don't snitch."
"There were plenty of chances for Ezra to figure it out," Kallus insisted. "Last week Hera was measuring the doors on the Ghost for baby gates."
Hera leaned back in her chair. "You couldn't possibly have known that was what I was doing." It was, but she could have been considering any number of after-market modifications. The war was getting more intense by the week.
"Kanan was making the face."
"That's my face again," Kanan argued.
Hera nodded. They could fight that one, at least. "It doesn't count as a separate item on your little list."
Kallus shrugged. "I've still got seven more. I don't expect Ezra to realize how long Imperial interrogation drugs take to wear off, but he should have at least noticed that you're taking naps."
Hera sighed. She really didn't have time for those, but they were hard to avoid. Growing an entire person was exhausting even when they were still the size of an orsiberry. She'd hoped everyone was just assuming that she was at a meeting or working on something elsewhere when Kanan finally talked her into taking one and she ran out of ways to convince him she was fine.
Kanan smirked. "All these years I've been trying to convince you to get more sleep. Never occurred to me that getting you pregnant was the trick."
Hera raised an eyebrow at him. Ridiculous man. "You realize that a baby will mean we get even less sleep, right?"
Kallus moved on before Kanan had a chance to reconsider his life choices. "You wouldn't let me and Zeb come back without a meiloorun yesterday."
Finally, something that had nothing to do with her condition whatsoever. "That was an excuse for you two to spend time together."
"She's been craving jappa berries and she's been sending me to get them because that's my job."
She didn't exactly have to twist Kanan's arm to get him to do it. Sometimes he even got to eat some if the baby was happy before she finished the package.
"Yeah, that had nothing to do with this." Ezra sounded a bit proud of himself for finally having the upper hand. "She uses produce to make people get along. Or to get us out from underfoot."
Sabine squinted from her to Kanan. "Wait. How far along are you?"
"Ten standard weeks." Which did not in fact align with any long errands she'd assigned the kids. They weren't the biggest barrier to actually getting a moment alone with Kanan in recent days.
"The baby has elbows," Kanan cheerfully announced in an attempt to get them off that particular line of inquiry. "Probably. It's hard to be sure about the timeline this early with a hybrid."
"That's why we hadn't said anything. We wanted to see how things were going to go." Everyone had so many of their own worries. Foolish, it seemed, since everyone had figured it out anyway. "It seems the Force really wants this child to exist though."
"Can you tell if they're Force sensitive?" Ezra asked.
"What, are you already in the market for a padawan? Better work on actually identifying what you're sensing and whether it really needs to be dealt with when some of us are trying to sleep."
"Just curious."
They really did need to get used to questions if they were going to introduce a tiny new person into the galaxy. Especially with the sort of stories Kanan told about his time at the Jedi Temple.
Kanan brushed the tips of his fingers over her belly. She didn't think that was actually necessary for checking on the answer to Ezra's question, but as Kallus had already pointed out, she had developed a habit of doing the exact same thing. "It's way too early to be sure."
"The Empire is going to assume that they are." She could install all the baby gates she wanted; it wasn't going to protect their child from that. Their inquisitor problem was only going to get worse when word got out that they had a youngling who couldn't hold a lightsaber.
Chopper warbled dire threats toward anyone that tried to harm Spectre Seven.
"Droid's right," Zeb said. "They'll have to go through all of us."
"Are you going to turn Kanan's room into a nursery?" Sabine was doing a very poor job of hiding what she was really asking.
"Yes, you can decorate it." It was one less thing for her to worry about. She wanted to see to the safety gates and installing an infant restraint system in the cockpit herself, just like she wanted to look after the hyperdrive to the point of it being a blatant giveaway. Sabine could definitely handle painting the bulkheads to a more baby-friendly design. Kanan hadn't exactly worried about making any major changes to the room before it got relegated to holocron storage.
"What I don't understand," Kallus said. "Is that the two of you have done plenty of infiltration missions. How is the only person you managed to fool the one you banned from recon missions?"
Kanan sighed. "If we promise we'll never go undercover as people who aren't expecting a baby, will you spare us the rest of the list?"
Kanan brought her jappa berries in the cockpit. At least now he could stock the refrigeration unit without anyone asking awkward questions about why there were so many. The real question was whether the baby's good manners in wanting something that grew locally would last through missions that took them offworld.
Hera popped one of the berries into her mouth and held the container out to Kanan. She'd expected some chaos in response to the news, but nothing quite like that. "Remind me again why we were worried about having to raise a child?"
He laughed. "We have a Jedi and a Mandalorian and they only give each other as much grief as any other siblings."
Which was, it turned out, a lot of grief this morning, but they were fine most days. "And we've managed to raise them to not make any fifteen point lists."
"Hear that kid? You're not allowed to do anything like that."
"You know they can't hear you yet." She tried not to worry too much about how different ears could be between humans and Twi'leks. She didn't care which kind the baby wound up with as long as it was something that worked. But they didn't have any yet.
"Still never too early to lay down some ground rules."
Kanan wrapped his arms around her. Kallus wasn't wrong, he'd been holding her like this a lot since they'd actually had a chance to talk on Lothal. "It's a chaotic family, but our baby's always going to have it."
"I'm glad everyone knows now." Or, it seemed, was admitting they knew. "We should tell Senator Organa next time he's on base."
"Why him?"
Mon Mothma was the obvious choice as they grew closer to needing to inform someone from High Command. And she would inform her as well, but there was one problem to address. "Because he hasn't seen either of us since I got pregnant. Which means I might actually get to be the one to tell him."