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Hera kept her touch as light as she could as she separated the section of Kanan’s hair into three smaller pieces. Her hands went still for a moment as she hesitated. Something about this felt so intimate. Most humans seemed so attached to their hair, and Kanan was trusting her with his.
“You need help?” Kanan asked. He remained still, seated in front of her on the bunk. Hera didn’t sense even a hint of worry from her friend. He had complete confidence in her despite the fact that she had no experience whatsoever with handling people’s hair. That confidence just made Hera more nervous.
In response, Hera took the strand on the right and carefully crossed it over the one in the middle. Next came the one on the left. Hera let out a soft sigh of relief. Maybe this wouldn’t be so hard after all.
“I’ve got it,” she said. “I need to practice this on my own, anyway.”
That was the whole point of this little exercise. Giving a Padawan their braid was a sacred rite. When she gave Ezra his, she wanted to be sure she knew what she was doing. Kanan had volunteered both to teach her how to braid hair and to let her practice on him.
It wasn’t long before Hera found the rhythm of what she was doing. She was surprised to find that the feeling of Kanan’s hair sliding across the pads of her fingers was oddly soothing. With each layering of one section of hair over the other, Hera’s nervousness faded away. Now that she was actually doing it, this wasn’t as hard as she’d imagined. Still, she kept her touch gentle, not knowing how much pressure it would take to hurt her friend.
“Can I ask you something?” Kanan asked.
“Sure.”
“How did you have a Padawan braid if you don’t have hair?”
“I didn’t.” Hera swallowed as if that would get rid of the painful twinge in her chest. “If you didn’t have hair, you got beads. But I never made it that far.”
Hera’s hands stilled, her eyes going unfocused as she stared at the half-finished braid. Every kid in the creche couldn’t wait to become a Padawan, and she’d been no different. For her, it wasn’t even about the idea of grand adventures and heroics. There were plenty of Jedi who were scholars and healers rather than fighters, and she would have been proud to learn from any of them. Proud to carry the knowledge and traditions of her people to the next generation of Jedi. But all of that had been taken away in the blink of an eye. Now she was just a half-trained Initiate trying to teach a kid everything she’d been able to learn before it was too late.
“What am I doing?” The words slipped out of her mouth almost involuntarily. “They killed us. Letting Ezra walk around with a braid…” She traced the ends of Kanan’s hair with one finger as something squeezed tight in her chest. “I might as well paint a target on his back.”
“Sounds a lot like what you said when we first took him in,” Kanan said, glancing back at her.
Hera winced. It was almost word for word what she’d said. From the second she explained the Force to Ezra, he wanted to learn. She was the one who’d been afraid. But in the end, she knew the Empire wouldn’t care whether Ezra was trained or not. If he was ever discovered, he would be killed. At least teaching him gave him a fighting chance.
“They already know he’s a Jedi,” Kanan pointed out. “Whether he wears a braid or not. If this is what you both want, don’t let them take it from you.”
“We both know it isn’t that simple,” Hera said. They’d both had to give up so much to survive, carving off pieces of themselves and desperately holding onto the scraps that remained. Even if they were already wanted by the Empire, a more brazen act of defiance could just make things worse.
“Have you talked to him about this?” Kanan shifted to face her, his hand sliding around hers.
Hera nodded. “He wants to do it,” she said. “And he deserves it. It’s his heritage. They took so much from us and I just want him to have this one simple thing.”
She sighed, her shoulders tensing as she tried to decide whether she wanted to pull her hand away from Kanan’s or not. A comfortable, familiar silence fell between them. It almost reminded her of the silence in a room full of younglings trying to meditate; nobody speaking, but everyone keenly aware of each other’s presence.
The ache that surrounded Hera’s heart grew more pronounced. She would give anything not to have to be in this position, wondering if it was safe to let her Padawan embrace his own culture. But there was no sense in dwelling on what could have been when this was what they were stuck with.
In many ways, Kanan was right. A target had been painted on Ezra’s back the moment he was born. And the more the Empire tightened its control over the galaxy, the bigger that target became. Now that Ezra was a known rebel and a Jedi with a bounty on his head, something as small as a braid wouldn’t make a difference. But the thought of adding even a little more risk to the life of the kid she’d chosen to protect turned Hera’s stomach.
At long last, she spoke, giving voice to a question she’d asked dozens of times in her head, but never out loud.
“Do you ever regret giving up your name?”
“Every day,” Kanan said. His eyes held that haunted look that always appeared when he spoke about his past. It was more than just his name. He’d cut himself off from anything to do with Lothal. “But my mother gave me a chance to survive. If I wanted to take it, I couldn’t be Caleb anymore.”
In the seven years they’d known each other, it was only the second time she’d heard Kanan speak that name. No one else on the ship knew who he’d been before he left his home planet.
“Why did you keep yours?”
Kanan’s question struck Hera like the sharp bite of static electricity. She’d only been ten years old when she fled Coruscant. In the haze of panic and confusion that had been her first few months on her own, it hadn’t occurred to her that she should be using any other name. And Hera was a somewhat common name among Twi’leks. If she avoided giving her last name, she was relatively safe.
But it was more than just that. The Empire had taken everything from her. From all the Jedi. Her name was hers. After being forced to watch her friends die, being driven from her home, she wasn’t going to give up her name without a fight.
“I couldn’t let them take it,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper as her gaze slipped out of focus again. The words felt distant, like someone else was saying them, and a pressure crushed down on her chest, just as it had that final night at the Temple.
“Well,” Kanan said, his hand tightening around hers for a moment. “There you go.”
Hera couldn’t help but smile at the playful hint of smugness in his voice. He knew her well enough to get her to make his own point for him.
With his free hand, Kanan reached up and tugged lightly at the end of the loose, unfinished braid.
“I think you need some more practice, though,” he said.
Hera carefully carded her fingers through Kanan’s hair, undoing the work she’d already done. This time, she didn’t hesitate before starting again. It didn’t take her long to get the rhythm back, and with each cross of one section over the other, her confidence grew.
She could do this. She could give her Padawan this one scrap of everything that would have been his. Ezra had lost just as much to the Empire as anyone else on this ship. But his pride in who he was could never be taken away.