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Ezra tried to sleep in his own bed; he really did. At the end of each exhausting day, he dutifully hauled himself up the ladder to the top bunk, slid under the scratchy blanket, and closed his eyes. He lay still, he counted loth-rats, he focused on the simple inhale and exhale of his breath, and still sleep would not come. Neither awake nor asleep, he felt himself oozing through monotonous hours that blurred together into a sticky fog. And so, just as he had done every night since Kanan sacrificed himself at the fuel depot, Ezra descended the ladder—swearing that this was the last time—and silently padded through the dark to his Master’s now-empty bunk, where he curled up on the bedroll that smelled less and less like Kanan with each passing day. Cocooned under the thick, woolen blanket, he drew his knees close to his chest and steadied his breathing. Now he could sleep.
His mind wandered through dreams of an open prairie, dogged by a darkness always lurking just out of sight. As he drifted, he seemed to be going nowhere at all, the tall grass stretching out endlessly across Lothal, the entire universe contained on a single planet. In his sleep, he barely registered the soft footsteps from the hallway pause outside the room or the hiss of the door sliding open.
“Oh, I’m—I’m sorry. I didn’t realize—” Hera stood pajama-clad in the doorway, her eyes puffy.
Ezra opened his eyes groggily and looked towards the door, embarrassed to have been discovered. He had hoped to keep this a secret.
“Hera?” he said, rubbing his eyes and propping himself up on an elbow.
“I can go,” she said quickly, stepping back into the hallway.
“No, s’okay. Not my bed.” He kicked off the blanket and swung his legs over the edge of the bunk, the floor cold underneath his bare feet. Dreading the return to his own bed, he looked up and met Hera’s eyes through the darkness.
“Mind if I join you instead?”
Ezra shook his head and gestured to the bedroll.
“Company sounds nice.”
Hera crossed the room, closing the door behind her, and sat down next to him. Without the illumination of the hallway light, they sat in complete darkness, only their breathing and the background hum of the Ghost sounding in the dark. He and Hera had not been alone together since the crew returned from the fuel depot, and the magnitude of what they lost in that explosion—a partner, a mentor, a crewmate, and more than anything, a friend—left them both in a disoriented haze. These last few days felt like sleepwalking, with grief heavy on their minds.
Through the darkness, Hera reached for Ezra’s hand and squeezed it.
“I miss him so much,” he whispered, leaning against her. Such a simple string of words that took incredible effort to say. But that was one of the first things Kanan had taught him: if he couldn’t be honest with himself, he would never be a Jedi. “I miss him so much it hurts.”
She knew; she felt it, too. Hera didn’t pretend to have any answers. She didn’t know why she waited so long to tell Kanan she loved him, and she knew trying to answer that question was a hopeless trap. All she could do was pull the blanket around them both and trace small circles with her thumb on Ezra’s shoulder, holding him close until she felt his breathing even out; he was asleep again. If she couldn’t tell Kanan how she felt, she vowed to do the next best thing: channel that love outward into everything she did from this moment on, and first, that meant sitting here in the dark while she and Ezra Bridger, at long last, got some rest. They were going to need their strength to face what lay ahead of them.