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Boots on the ground.
Chill in the air.
Blaster fire.
Screams.
The wind is bitter and it’s cold and yet there’s sweat along his brow. There are troopers everywhere – hunting them, hunting him – and he can’t move. Kanan’s chest tightens and his breaths come shorter, sharper, and then he can’t breathe. Their mechanically filtered voices rattle through his mind and he can’t make out the words – everything feels so far away – but he knows they’ve found their mark.
Run or fight. Do not just stand there.
The words echo in his mind, over and over again. Run or fight, run or fight, run or fi-
“Kanan!” Hera’s voice slices through it all and her hand on his pulls him from under. Her hand on his brings him back to reality. Her hand on his reminds him that he’s not there but he is here.
His breath is shuddering at best as he tries find purchase on reality, tries to find his grip on his present and let go of the past.
Kanan’s grip is Hera’s hand, soft and sure and warm and gone because Hera pulls away.
“These need to be delivered now or we miss our window,” the frustration is obvious in her voice and there’s too much at stake. She pulls his crate away from him, situating it on the hoverlift with hers, determined to see her mission through to the end.
“Stay here,” Hera says.
You must run. Master Billaba said.
The last time he listened, he lost his master. If he listens now, will he lose Hera?
Hasn’t he already?
Kanan makes a decision.
Do not just stand there.
The Force is barely with him because he keeps pushing it away – but if there’s ever been a time that he wished that he had the discipline to summon its calm, it’s now. Kanan closes his grip around the hovercart, replacing Hera’s hand with the cool durasteel – his new anchor to reality. He ran before, it made things worse.
The only option is fight.
Fight with her, not for her.
Hera leads and he doesn’t follow, he stays beside her. The boots on the ground are still too loud, the chill in the air is still too bitter, the darkness pulling at him still too strong. His grip tightens on the cart and he forces himself to breathe.
The words barely make through his tightly clenched jaw, “Talk to me, Hera.”
The sidelong glance cast in his direction feels like a dagger in his chest but it’s accompanied by silence.
“Please,” Kanan lets the desperation hang heavy in his tone because he needs to get a grip and she’s the only thing he has. He’s forsaken the Force, he’s lost his way, and he can’t keep it together not here, not without her.
And she won’t know why he needs her right now unless he tells her.
“The last time I was here, I lost everything,” he adds quietly and his voice doesn’t sound as strained as it feels. The silence between them lingers for a few moments longer, the echoes of the past grow louder in his head, and then –
And then her hand sits aside his on the cart, her pinky barely brushing his.
The echoes start to quiet. The pain starts to fade.
The emotions start to surge.
“Talk to me, Kanan.” Hera’s voice hasn’t sound like that since before he ran, before he did the unspeakable and unforgiveable. It’s soft and soothing, comforting and calm. It sounds like the voice of a woman who still cares for him, even when he doesn’t deserve it.
Kanan’s initial impulse is to tell her meaningless things, the things he sees, the things he hears, a verbal reconnaissance of their surroundings. Running, but in words, running from the things that haunt him and will never let him go. What he needs to say is lumped in his throat and it won’t go down and it will never go away if he doesn’t let it go – so he says what he needs to, even if she won’t understand it.
“This is where she died,” his voice is shaky at best, “where I died or that part of me died. We were sleeping around the fire one minute and then we were fighting for our lives the next. The clones that fought beside us were the clones that were trying to kill us and – “
“Your master told you to run,” Hera finishes the statement gently because it’s the only thing that he’s ever told her, the ending of a story that he never intended to tell. There’s no hesitation when she puts her hand over his as they keep astride, “and you lived.”
The way she says those words deepens the crease between his brows, “But she died. They all died.”
“And you lived, Kanan,” she sighs softly and settles her hand back aside his, just their pinkies barely brushing. “You survived something that nobody else did. That was her ending but it wasn’t yours.”
His hand is aching for her grasp again but not because he needs the anchor this time; it’s because he loves her so incredibly much and the distance between them is unbearably great. “I shouldn’t have run,” he finally says and this time he isn’t talking about Kaller and he isn’t talking about Master Billaba. He wants to tell her that he’s sorry, promise he’ll find a way to make it right because what’s the point of having a beginning if has no reason to live?
Kanan wants her to understand what he’s saying because he’s afraid to say anything else.
“Then stop running,” she says it like it’s a simple solution – the way to fix everything. Then she speaks again and he knows that she doesn’t understand that he was talking about them, “She had hope for you. I know you lost a lot that day but you’re still here. You can still fight and do good in this galaxy, Kanan. There are people that you can bring hope to and hope is stronger than fear.”
Though he sees it, he doesn’t want to. Kanan is vaguely aware of all the Imperials around them, the meaningless conversations and the directionless movement. They wouldn’t be that way if they knew what he was, what he used to be. The target on his back would be as plain as day and he’d drag Hera into danger right along with him.
But aren’t they in danger anyway?
They move together toward their mark, side by side with purpose, for the first time in too damn long. His finger brushes hers when tendrils of the past tease at the corner of his mind but he doesn’t say anything further. Was that really what his Master Billaba had wanted? For him to run so he could fight another day?
Either way, he’d be doomed to die and it doesn’t make sense that she’d want him to live to only die another day.
Hope is stronger than fear.
The thoughts of fourteen year old Caleb Dume finds Hera’s words and latches onto them with ease, stirring an entirely new conversation in his head. She died for me. I should do something.
They make their rendezvous without confronting anything but the demons of his past. The hard part should have been the delivery but it turns out to be the easiest part of the job. Imperials are surrounding the Ghost – or maybe they’re just swarming the port and it feels like they’ve isolated themselves to their escape route. Kanan’s instinct is to start fighting but Hera’s plan is to try to sweet talk her way through them instead.
Kanan produces a counterplan, the first he’s proffered in weeks. She shoots it down with expert precision and an icy tone, accompanied by no explanation why.
“Will you just trust me?” He hisses as they duck into an alley.
Thirty meters from home and away from Kaller is when Hera finally gets mad at him like he’s been silently willing her to for so long. “Yeah, that ship has sailed,” she mutters as she surveils the situation. Her face is expressionless and Kanan can’t tell if she meant to say it out loud but he’ll take what he can get where he can get it.
Even thirty meters away from leaving this fucking place.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” He prods, splitting his brain cells between the mental mathematics of how long it would take him to knock out eight – no, nine – troopers or keep them otherwise occupied while she fires up the Ghost and keeping up this fight
Hera turns her eyes on him and she’s glaring at him and it is so much better than the emptiness and the hurt and the silent signs of all the other things he did to her, “Are you really going to make me spell that out for you?” She doesn’t wait for him to answer because obviously she’s been holding it back and there’s no holding it back anymore, “You fucked an Imperial and you want me to trust you?”
Kanan recoils because he doesn’t need the reminder. But he’s not going to run – he’s going to fight, “Yeah, I remember. You don’t need to remind me.”
There’s an ungraceful snort, “I’ll remind you every fucking five minutes if I want to.”
“Fine. You sit here and start the timer,” he spouts back and he doesn’t know if he’s relieved that she’s ready to have this fight or irritated that she couldn’t have picked a better time to do it because thirty meters from a bunch of Imps doesn’t give him ample opportunity for intelligent argument – or even a proper place to raise his voice, “I’m going to get us a path to get out of here.”
Hera doesn’t have time to respond before he leaves her alone in the alley and darts out toward the ship. There’s four troopers down and one in his grasp when she has to fire on the one that’s about to take him out from behind a stack of crates. “Do you have any idea how fucking impossible you are?” She snaps at him, and then sends another trooper to the ground with her blaster before she punches in the controls to open the ramp.
“We’re getting out of here aren’t we?” He snaps back, cracks his fist against another helmet when the blaster in his hand would have gotten the job done more easily.
“And announcing our presence to the entire planet in the process,” she’s seething now, “get your ass on my ship before I change my mind.” Hera probably doesn’t mean it when she says that but Kanan decides she probably deserves the option of sending him out of the airlock at any time she chooses.
Kanan springs off the ground and onto the ship as she’s lifting off; working muscles that are enhanced by the Force but sorely neglected. He flips off an Imperial who can’t shoot the broadside of a bantha before the ramp closes. When he makes his way to the cockpit to do his part to get them into hyperspace, the door is locked from the inside.
“Oh, come on!” He groans in frustration against the door but the only answer he gets is an angle of ascent that is entirely unnecessary, sending him flat on his ass.
Somewhere beyond the doors, he hears the tell-tale whumping of Chopper that are a blatant indication that Hera knew exactly what she was doing. Fucking droid, he thinks to himself and scrambles to his feet. He scampers up the ladder to the dorsal gun instead and takes aim on two TIEs coming off the portside; no sooner than he’s got a shot lined up – and he tells her – she slams them into hyperspace before he can even get a shot in.
Dammit.
The stars streak by but he doesn’t move. He watches and he waits and he listens for the slightest indication that maybe there will be more – more arguing, more fighting, more chances for him to tell her that he shouldn’t have run.
More never comes.
-
Hera is confused.
She’s angry and she’s hurt and she’s confused. How the fuck does he take her from wanting to save him from himself to wanting to end him with her own damn blaster in a matter of minutes? More importantly, why the fuck does she still care?
She doesn’t want to care.
She doesn’t want to hear him or look at him or see him and yet she wants to hold him because he’s on the edge of something and it could be something so good if he just lets it happen. If she’s not lying to herself, she also just wants him to hold her; she wants to feel his warmth and his hands and his mouth and – she misses him, misses her Kanan.
Why the hell does she miss him so much?
He fucked an Imperial, Hera. She’s slowly turning it into a mantra, she’ll get there if she tries hard enough. Fuck him being scared, fuck his past because she’s got one, too. Her past doesn’t send her into the arms of someone else, doesn’t send her scurrying into the cantinas and to the bottoms of a bottle. Her past gives her drive and hope and –
He’s not the same as you.
That damn voice of reason.
Hera heaves a great sigh and buries her face in her hands. He’s trying to do something – what he gave her today was more than he’s ever given her before. The thought brings perspective but then she’s angry again because she would have never taken this mission if she knew what Kaller was to him. She audibly groans because now she’s in a full blown argument between logic and love – if they hadn’t come here, she wouldn’t know what it means to him and she wouldn’t understand his loss.
Kanan let her in today and that’s something that she should acknowledge.
He also told her to trust him and like that’s going to fucking happen.
The constant battle between her heart and her mind is exhausting and there’s part of her that wants to let it all go. Just start over again and let him find himself and see what happens eventually – a very long eventually. Simmering underneath the surface of the anger that Kanan barely scratched, she still hurts so damn much and he’s too self-absorbed to see it.
How do you grieve for something you’ve lost when they’re not truly gone?
Hera wonders if this is how Kanan must feel – a constant push and pull between darkness and light – when the right thing to do hurts too much and it’s frightening but the sadness will swallow you up whole if you don’t just hold onto something. Is that why he held onto her? Is that why he’s still holding onto her? Is it running but in a different direction?
This is the first time in Hera’s life that she’s ever felt so conflicted. She was never so unsure when she left Ryloth, when she walked away from her father and her history. She wasn’t exactly unsure when she allowed Kanan on her ship as crew; he was a set of hands she desperately needed and he was still a mystery but a man that had proven himself.
She’s never told Kanan but she did it for Okadiah, too.
She was sure the first time he kissed her – a moment of exhilaration turned soft and sweet and so absurdly amazing. She was sure when she wanted more, every time she wanted more.
What would she give to go back to that instead of sitting in the place they’re in now? This place where she wants to kiss him and kill him all at the same time, the place where she wants him to get lost and be found. She’s angry at herself because she told him today that hope is stronger than fear but she’s afraid to hope that he’ll find his way back because she’s afraid that when he does, she’ll find her way back to him.
Quit beating the dead fucking bantha, she thinks to herself and just for once, tries to surrender to the darkness. He fucked an Imperial and no matter what he changes, he can’t change that.
But what can he change? Says her heart.
And her heart wins out.
-
Kanan isn’t even asleep when Hera slips into his room and settles on the floor at the head of his bed. “You don’t have to stay,” he murmurs into the dark, “I’m not going to sleep tonight and one of us should.”
He wants her to stay more than anything else in the galaxy. Especially tonight.
Hera shifts slightly on the floor, draws her knees up like she always does, presses her back against the bulkhead in silent insistence that she’s not going anywhere.
Shifting his eyes to the back of her head, to the curve of her lek, Kanan longs to touch her but keeps his fingers woven together against his abdomen. She’s here and that’s enough. Words and stories that have played in his mind and tugged at his heart since that deadly day on Kaller start to nudge their way up to his lips.
“I was 13 when Master Billaba chose me as her Padawan,” he tells her quietly, “some of the other younglings thought I was crazy for wanting her. She had some issues.” He huffs a slight laugh, remembering how some of friends thought he was crazy, “Maybe she did but she understood me. She understood me more than any of the other masters or any of the other younglings. I asked questions and she answered them, in her own way.”
No words come from Hera but she’s tilted her head to the side ever so slightly and her profile has come into view; she isn’t quite looking at him but she’s not looking away from him either.
“Kaller wasn’t even the first place I fought,” he continues, “there were other battles before that. I was fourteen years old when – “ he pauses for a moment to find his strength, “when everything happened and I had already fought on more than one planet. How fucked up is this galaxy? The weird thing was I felt at peace when I was fighting when I should have been scared. I knew my place in the galaxy then, at my Master’s side. She told me that it was okay to feel that way but to never become to attached to them because the galaxy was always changing – “
Kanan falls silent then.
Did she know?
How could any of them have known though? How could the Jedi ever possibly begin to suspect that they’d fall in such a surgical precision to the very soldiers they had forged bonds and fought battles with? That they’d have to kill men that they’d come to know as friends or be killed.
Did she know?
The question lingers anyway, a question that his Master can’t answer for him now.
Hera’s hand lifts and rests along his side. His hand moves to hers with immediacy, just the bared skin of their pinkies brushing and it’s all the strength he needs.
Kanan keeps talking. He doesn’t expect her to respond, it’s not really why he’s saying these things – at least not totally. These are things he should have told Hera years ago, things she deserves to know.
They’re also things he needs to get out, poison that he should have let go of years ago.
“You have no idea how scared I am of going back to that, Hera – “ it’s a shuddering breath mixed with a statement that becomes nearly incomprehensible, “what if they found out what I was? If there’s still somebody that can sense any of us who might be left, who can hunt us down?”
He doesn’t expect Hera to respond but she does.
“We’ve got the better pilot.”
Kanan allows the slightest of laughs, her light piercing a moment of his darkness. He resists the urge to cover her hand with his, refuses to take more than what she allows. He’s burned that bridge, burned a lot of bridges – but maybe there’s a different way back.
He hopes there’s a way back.
What was it that his Master Billaba had always said to him? Perhaps the answer will come to you in another form. If the form was accepting the influence of the Force, of embracing his Jedi past, could he really do that? Could he even do that for Hera?
“What happens if the pilot only has a Rebel and not what she’s looking for?” He asks, fear already conquering indecision of accepting the guidance of the Force.
Hera shifts slightly and this time she’s definitely looking at him but her hand hasn’t moved, “I’m not the one looking for anything, Kanan. That’s not a decision that I can ask you to make.”
It doesn’t mean that she can’t hope he’ll make that decision on his own, he thinks. Why wouldn’t she? The Jedi were a source of hope for the galaxy and she certainly wasn’t the first person to openly hope for the Jedi to somehow return.
Hera’s words hit him harder than they should, though. Wasn’t that why he was scared in the first place? The Empire got too close and he felt that nagging tug of the Force, assumed that Hera was pushing him toward that and so he issued an ultimatum – asked for a reason, no he asked for permission, to run. When Hera gave him that permission, he used it to hurt her as his thanks.
Now she’s sitting next to him, a million kilometers away, and it’s his fault because he assumed she wanted what he wasn’t willing to give.
Now he’s sitting next to her, a million kilometers away, and he’s wondering if he can give her what she isn’t willing to ask for.
Would it even make a difference if he did?
No.
That isn’t what she wants and it’s not something he can give. Being on Kaller was enough to reinforce that he’s not in a place to consider taking up Caleb’s old Jedi ways as a way to heal the wounds that he inflicted – and Hera would only get angry if he chose that path because of her.
Kanan can do good without the Force.
He can fight the battle with her.
Hope is something he can try.
It’s something he can do; he’s already hoping that he could find a way back to her.