Chapter Text
The first thing Zeb noticed as he woke up was how badly his head was pounding. Not too surprising, considering how many stun shots those stormtroopers had landed before he went down. Memories of the fight were still pretty hazy, but he remembered taking quite a few of them down with him. Good. Normally he would have given a satisfied chuckle, but right now his head hurt too much. Still, it was a nice thought.
There was cold metal underneath him. He could smell another being in the room with him, hear the shuffling as they shifted from one foot to the other. Sounded a lot like stormtrooper boots. There was a guard right here watching him, then. No need to draw attention right now. Zeb kept his eyes closed and kept listening, and tried to piece together what had happened.
He remembered the disastrous supply run to Balmorra. He'd been separated from the rest of the crew, chased down an alley by two squads of stormtroopers. Well, alright, maybe he'd shot at the troopers, shouted and cursed and done everything he could to make sure the second squad followed him instead of the kids. The point was, he'd been outgunned.
Agent Kallus had been there too. Zeb hadn't known what he expected to come out of their little team-up on the ice moon, but the answer turned out to be a big old nothing. It was probably stupid of him to feel let down, but he had all the same. He'd really thought, just for a while, there might be more to Kallus than being a willing Imperial pawn. Apparently not. He'd pelted down the alley after Zeb right along with his minions, shouting commands. He hadn't even done it well. Hellbent on catching every imaginary Rebel on the planet, he'd kept directing troopers off onto routes they weren't even using.
Funny, that. He’d seemed smarter on the moon. Maybe Zeb had hit his head in the escape pod crash, started imagining things. Maybe Kallus being half-decent had been a fever dream too.
Even with Kallus’s sudden bout of bad strategy, there had been enough troops left when he finally caught up (after a merry chase, Zeb thought with satisfaction) that the fight hadn't lasted long. Pinned down as he was at the end of an alley, no cover and stormtroopers swarming in the other end… At least, Zeb had thought as he lay on his side after two stun shots had already found their mark, at least his family had gotten away. He could see the Phantom rising out over the city. It had circled, searching for him, but then a squad of TIEs closed and it had to bolt.
Zeb had smiled, looking up at it. The stormtroopers had kept firing for a bit even after he went down, though they were such lousy shots that only one more actually hit him. Or was it two? Hard to tell. One of them might not have been a stunner. His head swam, thick and fuzzy, and Balmorra started to fade.
"That's enough!" he’d heard Kallus shouting, in that high voice which he'd learned meant Kallus's stress levels were climbing to critical. Zeb supposed he had a lot to be stressed out about. Another failed attempt to capture the Rebels his superiors wouldn’t be too happy about. All he'd gotten was Zeb. Zeb would've been disappointed too.
He heard a door hissing open, and sank deeper into his pretend unconscious state. Boots clanked on the flooring.
"Leave us," came a sharp, familiar voice. Agent Kallus again. Coming to gloat? Or maybe to give him another sad story that made it seem like there was more to him than there was.
More boots as somebody left the room – a door sliding shut – a clicking mechanical noise, and something being powered down. Zeb's ears twitched, trying to figure out what Kallus was doing.
Kallus came closer. "Zeb?" His voice wasn't sharp anymore. "Zeb? I know you're conscious. Are you all right?"
Zeb cracked an eye open reluctantly. "Yeah, doing just peachy after your men stunned me about a hundred times. How'd you know I was awake? You know, after I got stunned about a hundred times?" It was an awfully familiar – and abrasive – tone to take with a high-level Imperial agent, but despite Zeb’s disappointment, it was impossible to fear Kallus or detest him in quite the same way he had before. They had saved each other's lives multiple times on that moon, and even if Kallus had forgotten he hadn’t.
"I saw your ears moving," Kallus explained. He was kneeling next to Zeb, on the floor in a standard Imperial holding cell with red lights flickering up from beneath the deck. They hadn't even bothered tossing him on the bench. "I'm sorry about the stunning."
Zeb snorted. "You're sorry?"
"Whatever you may think of me, however well-deserved it may be," Kallus said, "I am not a complete monster. Hold still, I need to look at you. Tell me, what day is it?"
"I dunno, how long was I unconscious after your men stunned me a hundred times?" Zeb fired back as Kallus peered into his eyes.
Kallus smiled faintly. "That will do just as well. Do you feel lightheaded? Nauseous?" He was giving Zeb a keen once-over.
"What are you, a med droid?"
Kallus just raised an eyebrow.
"Nah," Zeb admitted finally, then reconsidered after sitting up. “Well, a little queasy I guess. Head hurts like blazes."
“That’s to be expected.” Kallus started probing around the blaster burn on his arm. One of the stormtroopers had “forgotten” to take his weapon off stun after all. Zeb winced. It was stinging and overheated, but it didn’t hurt too much. Must have just grazed him.
He kept expecting Kallus poking around to set it off, but he had a light touch even with gloves on. A field medic’s touch, Zeb thought, maybe – no, Kallus had the opposite of a bedside manner. A slicer, a mechanic or an engineer, something like that. The delicate detailed work without the necessity of any warmth or reassurance. His fingers were nimble. Zeb swallowed, and tried not to feel disappointed when Kallus let go.
“I'm afraid medical supplies are out of the question, but here." Kallus reached into his uniform and pulled out a ration bar and a small water pack like trench soldiers carried with them. "It isn't much, but…"
Zeb eyed them suspiciously. "They filled with truth serum or something?"
"If I were going to drug and interrogate you, why did I turn the cameras off?"
Zeb glanced up and discovered that the blinking "active" lights on the cameras were in fact off. "You could've rigged 'em," he muttered.
"I could have. I didn't. Besides, you're trained to resist truth serum. It isn't as if I would get anything out of you either way, so you may as well take this and keep yourself nourished. This may be the last chance you get for a while."
Reluctantly, Zeb took the water and the ration bar and took a tiny, tiny sip of water. It was lukewarm but sweet and he was parched, but he'd wait a little first to see if it had any unexpected effects before drinking the rest.
"Why?" he demanded. "What's going on? Shouldn't somebody be torturing me for information right about now? Is that what you're here for? Or if you're not, what are you here for?” He looked Kallus up and down. There was what appeared to be genuine concern on his face, and he didn’t think Kallus was good enough of a liar to fake that – or practiced enough at friendly feelings to know how – but how much did he really know about him? “They send you in to soften me up?”
"If you'll stop asking questions for a few seconds, I can start answering them,” Kallus said with only slightly sarcastic patience. “Nobody sent me. I came to check on you, under the pretext of softening you up. Please do try and act like I've worked you over when I leave. I have a reputation to maintain. As for what's going on, I'm nearly as lost as you. Thrawn wants you for something, which is why you haven't gone to interrogation yet. He’s taking us to the planet Moraband. Do you have any connection to it?"
Zeb shook his head, surprised he'd gotten so much information. Of course, Kallus could be lying about all of it, but Zeb didn't get the impression he was. "Never even heard of it."
Kallus sighed. "Very well. I'll see if I can find out more. In the meantime, rest as much as you can. Whatever Thrawn wants from you, it must be important, or he wouldn't pass up an opportunity to extract the location of the Rebel base from you.”
Zeb drank a little more water. "Why're you doing this? If you really are on my side, you could get killed for it. I thought you said we were even after you helped Sabine out." Briefly, he considered thanking Kallus for that, then dismissed it. No need to give him credit for doing the bare minimum. Even if, in the Empire, the bare minimum could get him shot.
Kallus smiled at him again, but this time it had a sad tinge. Zeb wished those big brown eyes of his weren't so… big and brown. Already he was thinking silly things like we worked together once, why not do it again? and maybe he really isn't so bad. Firmly, he ordered himself not to get distracted by a pair of pretty eyes, and form conclusions about Kallus’s trustworthiness independent of the fact that he sometimes gave off the exact energy of a kicked, starving loth-cat.
"The kind of debt I'm in," Kallus said quietly, "is not to you exclusively, nor can it be repaid by one good deed – or a thousand good deeds, for that matter. I'll get you out of here, but in order for that to happen, when the moment comes you need to trust me. That's why I'm here: to tell you to be ready. There won't be time for doubt later."
Zeb was munching on the ration bar now, so he supposed Kallus had succeeded at the trust thing, even if it was probably a terrible idea.
"...You need me to scream or something to make it look good, or is this place soundproof?"
"Soundproof," said Kallus with another lip twitch. He held his hand out for the empty water pack and ration bar wrapper, and tucked them back into his uniform. "But thank you for the offer. I'll turn the cameras back on now." He hesitated. "I know you don't trust me yet, and I won’t argue the validity of your reasons, but… you aren’t alone here. I – I wanted you to know that."
He turned and was reaching for the wall terminal when Zeb interrupted him.
"Wait. If you really wanna help, tell me, did they make it out ok?"
"Yes," Kallus said without turning back. "The shuttlecraft jumped, and we lost track of them."
Zeb nodded. There was no reason for him to lie about that. Actually there were a lot of reasons – leverage, mostly – for him to tell Zeb someone else had been captured, which made him more inclined to believe everything else Kallus had said so far.
"Thanks," he said roughly.
Kallus glanced back at him. "Of course." Then he twisted his code cylinder and the cameras turned back on.
"If I were you," he said coldly, "I would spend some time considering my options. Things will go easier if you cooperate." With that, he swept out with a hiss of the door.
Zeb remembered to clutch his ribs when the guard came back in so it would look like Kallus had beaten him up. Why hadn't he? And if he was so desperate to redeem himself, why was he still with the Empire? He could have left. Zeb had offered him a chance already, and he must know the Rebellion wouldn’t be too fussy about his Imperial past; they needed all the help they could get. Zeb couldn't begin to figure him out.
Still, there was nowhere he could go with a door he didn’t have the skills or equipment to open and a guard’s eyes on him at all times. He had to stay put for now, and hope that Kallus really was on his side.
His whole body ached. Following Kallus’s suggestion and resting up so he would be ready for an escape probably wasn’t a bad idea.
Reluctantly, Zeb closed his eyes and with an effort relaxed his muscles. He tried to come up with a plan of his own, but his pounding head dragged his thoughts down into a murky swamp, until everything was dark.