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Kanan is rested but he’s restless.
The nights have been bad but they’ve also been worse. There was also a time where the nights were better. There were some nights where the past didn’t haunt him because the brightest light he’s known in his life was right there in his arms to keep the darkness away. Now she just sits on the floor, pouring over her life’s work in silence on the worst of nights – somehow it’s just enough.
It should speak volumes that her presences alone is enough to drag him from the darkness; she doesn’t have to touch him, doesn’t need to kiss him awake, or hold him in her arms. Just knowing that she’s there settles the tension racking his body, quiets the dreams that consume him almost nightly.
It should speak volumes that he needs her so much. She is all that is good in his life, the direction he needs, the hope he can’t have.
Still she says nearly nothing to him.
Mostly, she’s resorted to leaving him on the Ghost to keep up the routine maintenance after their first – and subsequently last – disastrous mission back together. The intel was recovered but it was sloppy nonetheless; he never lost track of Hera, not truly – but the silent understanding that had once come so naturally to them was nowhere to be found.
Kanan doubts it can be found again.
Hera couldn’t look at him then. Even weeks later, she still can’t. He doesn’t blame her; not then and not now. He can barely stand to see himself in a mirror, it stirs the darkness and self-loathing inside him – he can only imagine what she feels when she forces herself to look at him.
There’s no way to apologize for what he did to her, no way to take it back. Explaining that what he did was meaningless when what Hera means everything will only make it worse; it will only cheapen her perception of what Kanan thinks everything means. Too many times a day, he asks himself why he can’t run, why he can’t take the clothes on his back and move on like he used to – but the answer is always the same.
Kanan loves Hera. He wants to protect her. He needs to keep her safe.
Hera can have her Rebellion, put herself in the line of fire if that’s what she thinks she needs to do, but he’s not going to leave her to it alone. He’ll never leave her to it alone, so long as she tells him to stay on the ship.
Even then, he vows to himself, he won’t run again.
Not even if she tells him to.
-
Hera sighs as she looks at the stack of credits they have and considers the amount they need to survive.
The Empire is driving up the price of fuel, food is more expensive, port fees are getting higher by the day and caf is becoming a luxury spend that really shouldn’t be included in the budget – intel missions aren’t going to cut it for much longer. The answer is obvious as she grinds the numbers and then grinds them again; a few credits seem to come out of nowhere on occasion – Hera knows that nowhere is the drawer that Kanan keeps everything that she’s ever paid him that he refuses to accept.
Be that as it may, it’s still not going to be enough to keep the Ghost fueled at the rate that they’re going.
Fulcrum has offered several missions; complex infiltrations, releasing political prisoners, pick-up and delivery of stolen weapons. Missions that take finesse, that take being able to look at him without that churning feeling in her stomach. They are missions that take more than just a tactical plan – they’re missions that take trust and she just doesn’t have it. Not for him. Not after what he did to her.
You told him to run, says her heart.
Shut the fuck up, says her brain.
There’s running off to get drunk and then there’s running off to fuck an Imperial. The former she can get over, the latter she never will. Hera gave herself to him; she gave herself to him. There were months of telling him that she had goals and a mission and that she didn’t have time for any of that and he made her fall in love with him anyway, made her take him into her bed by being Kanan, left her craving his arms and his lips and the deep timbre of his voice that reverberated into her very being – and then he fucked an Imperial like Hera was never more than an object of convenience.
Hera is pragmatic; she knows that these missions are bound to fail because she’s as angry at him as she’s ever been at anybody in her life. If she were given the choice of leveling her blaster on an Imperial or on Kanan, her answer would depend on the day and how focused she was on the original mission at the time. It’s why she has to keep him at arm’s length.
Easing him through the bad nights while she works is one thing; she needs him clear and focused to help keep up the ship – at least that’s what she’s telling herself. It’s another thing to actually try to open up, to let go, to ask him what the fuck he was thinking. Hera knows she doesn’t want the answer because she either wouldn’t understand it or she’d understand it and want to forgive him and then it would happen all over again.
Kanan isn’t the guy who commits to things, least of all a Rebellion. He’s the guy who follows his dick where it leads him and clearly it’s still attached to her because he’s managed to hang around even though it’s not getting any attention.
Another message from Fulcrum comes across her encrypted channel and it’s a mission on Kaller that’s going to take muscle and manipulation. Immediate refusal makes her look unreliable. Immediate acceptance guarantees complete and utter failure.
And they’re running out of credits.
-
Kanan knows it’s a bad idea from the beginning but he doesn’t say a thing.
Hera has the ideas and Hera makes the plans.
He just goes where she tells him to.
They’re tight on credits, low on fuel, and they’ve lost each other completely. The latter doesn’t change the former and the former is what is most important. Hera can’t run her rebellion if the ship doesn’t have fuel. It’s a mission that would have scaled mild on the level of complexity when they operated on the same wavelength. Coordinated attacks, retrieval of cargo from inattentive Imps, and run like hell. The plans were always his but she carried them out with expert precision.
“You’ll get their attention, I’ll get the crates,” is all the instruction she gives him. He doesn’t ask for how much attention she needs him to grab and how long to keep it up. She won’t watch for him so he’ll watch for her instead.
Honestly, he’s craving the idea of a fight, a way to blow off some steam. Keeping an eye on Hera won’t be the problem, stopping once he gets started is going to be the problem. He’s got a lot of steam to blow off. His fists are starting to ache with need when he registers his name from her lips; she must have said it a couple of times because now she doesn’t sound flat, she sounds irritated.
“Kanan.”
“I heard you,” he answers, a blatant lie. “You’ll get the crates, I’ll cause the distraction.”
Hera waits expectantly, waiting for the rest of her plan that she just spouted off at him. He doesn’t have anything else to say. He’s too focused at the idea of cracking a helmet or twenty.
Kanan looks at her, even if she won’t look at him. Just fucking yell at me, he thinks. Hit me, kick me, scream at me. Give me something besides this.
Finally she forces herself to look at him, he notices. Her eyes aren’t as empty as her words – she’s always spoke volumes to him with her eyes without ever speaking a word at all, “Ten minutes after I get the crates, you meet me back at the rendezvous and we get the hell off this planet.”
I’d really prefer twenty minutes, he thinks to himself. He’s itching for the fight.
“I’ll meet you at the rendezvous ten minutes after you get the crates,” he repeats in that empty and even voice, the one she uses with him. His eyes bore into hers and he pleads silently for mercy. There’s a pang of something else that grips his heart ever so briefly, an acute awareness of the lack of space between them, that gaze that draws him in, the way her lips have formed into that displeased pout, just the slightest part of her lips – lips that used to be his to kiss.
There’s a flash of anger in her eyes then. “Don’t fuck this up,” she mutters and starts to walk toward the galley. She spins on her heel just as abruptly and walks toward the cockpit instead.
Kanan won’t allow himself the hope that she felt what he felt, too. He will, however, allow himself the slightest bit of amusement at the fact that whatever she did feel got under her skin enough that she forgot what she was doing.
He closes his hand over one fist and compresses his knuckles, releasing the tension with a series of loud cracks and repeats it with the opposite hand.
This is a mission he’s actually looking forward to.
-
This is the language that Kanan Jarrus speaks. White helmets splattered with blood from his busted knuckles; random civvies that got in the way and deserved what they had coming for doing so. His right fist is searing with pain and he loves it as he drives another shot into the stormtrooper gripped by the neck in his left hand. The trooper goes limp and he goes looking for another but there’s nobody left looking for a dance.
He glances at the chronometer.
“Fuck,” he mutters. He should have been gone fifteen minutes ago. Kanan kicks one of the limp troopers out of his way before he stumbles down the street and feels a sharp pain drive up his hip. Huh. At some point somebody must have hit him with a blaster because that’s definitely a blaster shot.
Too bad it didn’t take him out because he thinks that would have been easier than having to face Hera after fucking up her plan.
It was a stupid plan anyway, it’s why he makes the plans. She’s smart as fuck but she doesn’t always have the tactics. That’s why she kept him around.
Now she does it to torture him, remind him that he’s a fuck-up, remind him that he’s not a good person – he hasn’t quite figured out that part yet.
The planet is light on Imperial presence anyway. He gets back to the Ghost and it’s not like the spare fifteen minutes did anything except give her extra time to take stock of the crates on board.
It doesn’t change the fact that she is pissed when he gets back. There’s those lekku that she’s got turned into her back. Her jade knuckles blanched to the same color as the markings along her lek, and maybe now she’ll yell at him.
If he knew that all it would have taken was him roughing up a bunch of Imperials to get the job done, he would have done it weeks ago.
The yelling never comes.
Her eyes level on his and he sees the twitching of her muscles; the muscles that would normally surge her into his space and begin a physical surveillance of all the injuries and bandage what she could. Those twitches lose to her emotions and keep a solid three meters between them.
“You look like shit,” she finally spits out.
Kanan flashes a sheepish grin and gives the slightest of shrugs. Everything hurts and he hasn’t felt this good for weeks. He ventures to push a little more, “Mission accomplished?”
Silence lingers for a moment and he sees Hera doing the best visual assessment of his injuries that she can without actually having to touch him or ask him if he’s fine. Her gaze turns back to the cargo; the cargo that will keep the Ghost on its course, food in their bellies, and caf in the machine.
“Halfway there,” she finally acknowledges weakly, “we just need to deliver them to Kaller and we get paid.”
The delightful pain that racked his bones only moments ago is replaced with a searing emotional pain instead. He doesn’t repeat the words, doesn’t ask why Kaller because she doesn’t know what Kaller means to him – he’s never bothered to tell her. No matter how much of her pain she’s shared with him, his pain has always been his own.
Never more so than now.
“Then let’s get them delivered,” he finally musters and climbs the ladder to leave her in the hold alone.
-
Hera is surprised when the sounds of his nightmares pull her from sleep. Kanan got to do what Kanan did for far too long today – longer than she’d told him to. His knuckles are busted and she’s pretty sure he’s hiding a blaster bolt along his hip if the sear of his tunic is any indication but he seemed lighter, at least for a minute, when he came back to the Ghost.
Throwing a few punches and being an oaf was easily his strong suit.
Kaller will be more complicated and she can’t let his dreams carry him too far tonight. If they lose these weapons, not only do they lose their payday, they fall into the wrong hands. Hera creeps from her room and into his, those four meters more easily traveled that the first time she did it. She tells herself it’s because this mission must go off without a hitch, even if they haven’t even started to master basic communication again.
If they ever will.
Hera settles at the head of his bed, leans her head back against the bulkhead and says his name gently. Selfishly, she hopes that he snaps out of it sooner rather than later because she needs sleep too. They can’t fuck up another mission.
“I’m awake,” his voice is deep but not sleepy; it sounds more pained.
She makes no effort to move, “I thought you were having a nightmare.”
The quiet lingers too long and she thinks for a moment that maybe he fell back asleep but the staggered pattern of his breathing, the way his limbs wrestle in the sheets tell her otherwise. When Kanan sleeps, he sleeps like a rock; still and sturdy. He claims sleeping with her is like a fight for his life, limbs and lekku that flail every which way, leaving him to pretend that he was covered in bruises the next morning.
That was when they slept together.
Now she barely sleeps at all, sitting sentry at the head of his bed, reviewing her intel and creating reports all while keeping his demons at bay.
Hera waits a few more heartbeats, listening to the rustle of his sheets and the way he seems to be holding his breath, racked with indecision of if she should stay or go. If he’s not sleeping, she needs to. When she starts to shift to her feet, the smallest of voices halts her escape.
“Please stay.”
The words aren’t suggestive or lonely, they’re not sleep thickened; they’re desperate.
She settles back against the bulkhead and closes her eyes. She’s so tired – tired of all of it. The anger and the loathing and the silence and the questions. She’s tired of the things that she’s letting eat her up from the insides because she doesn’t want to talk about any of it – she just wants it to go away.
It would go away if she made him go away – she thinks and then knows she’s wrong – his absence would just make it worse.
His voice draws her from her thoughts and the question draws her up short, “Is this us now?”
Hera doesn’t know what they are, what they could ever possibly be again. She hurts and she doesn’t know how to make the hurt go away – it isn’t like a blaster bolt or a busted knuckle. It’s not a laceration to be repaired. The pain is still fresh and the damage is permanent. There’s no way to repair the wounds he inflicted.
There isn’t a good answer to his question, so Hera just remains silent.
Kanan continues for her, “I know I can’t make it better. I can’t take back the things I did. But this – what we do – we used to be good at it. I’m not asking you to forgive me for what I did but we have to find a way back to before. You have a mission and I don’t want to be the reason you fail.”
The words tug at her heart and tears sting at her eyes.
Fuck him, she thinks.
Talk to him, her heart says.
Drawing her knees closer to her chest, Hera lays her head against them as she turns the words over in her head. There’s so many things to be said but only one question that makes itself clear, “Why are you here, Kanan?”
“You told me to stay.”
“And before that – why were you here?” She presses.
“I told you that I’d follow you anywhere,” he answers and it’s true – he told her the same years ago and he’s done exactly that. He’s fought her fights however reluctantly, he draws his breaths to keep her safe, and he lives to see her smile.
Hera turns her gaze to him through the darkness and through the dim light, it’s a sad smile she smiles – a gaze of disappointment rather than a glare of contempt, “Then you’re here for the wrong reason.”
Kanan bristles at the words, “But I’m here.”
“And when I’m gone?” Hera asks the heaviest question she can. She isn’t stupid – what she’s doing is a death wish. It’s not a sacrifice she wants to make but it’s one that she’s willing to make good on if it means that the Empire goes down. “If the only reason you’re doing this is me, what do you do when you don’t have me anymore?”
Does he have her now?
The silence returns between them but it isn’t heavy and angry; it’s contemplative. It’s inundated with all of the implorations that she’s been trying to get Kanan to understand for years. Her fight is bigger than her, bigger than them – and what he is capable of is so much greater than what she could ever hope for.
“I don’t need you to fight my battles, Kanan,” she finally says and it’s a softer voice than she expected. “I want you to fight the battle with me.”
The word want is the word that catches his attention. Hera wants him for something, for anything – and he’ll do it for her if that’s what she wants because it’s the first time she’s wanted anything from him for too long. His thoughts and reasoning are the exact opposite of what she’s telling him.
“You’re stronger than me,” he admits.
“Kanan,” his name is a sigh and it’s sad but it doesn’t hurt to speak it – not like it has, “you’re stronger than all of us. You just don’t want to be.”
The words turn over in his mind, again and again, and Kanan knows what she’s challenging him to. He can clearly see the direction that she’s trying to nudge him toward.
He can’t make that step. He won’t make that step.
Hera doesn’t understand the cost.
How could she?
He’s never told her.
Kanan isn’t going to tell her now, either. “I can’t be what you’re asking me to be. Not anymore,” his voice is sad and soft, “but I can fight the battle with you. If you’ll let me.”
Hera settles her head back against the bulkhead and closes her eyes. The angriness that still grips her tells her not to hold her breath, he’ll only fuck it up again. The perseverance and drive that has placed Kanan Jarrus in her path, no matter how much he’s hurt her, tells her it’s okay to hope – it’s okay to hope that he’ll come around and maybe one day, that he’ll find hope of his own.
She accepts that calling for the night; they’re both exhausted and it is easier to hope for him to find his way than it is for her to hate him for the way he went.
“Get some sleep, Kanan,” she says softly. “I’m not going anywhere.”
For another night, she’ll keep the darkness away.