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Chapter Text

It was a simple supply mission.

That was what she’d promised her mother when she volunteered for the assignment. The mission was basic humanitarian aid, just helping to smuggle some much needed gattis-root onto Ryloth that had only been available in the Imperial medcenters and badly needed by her people that wouldn’t seek treatment for bybbec fever in any of the Imperial run centers. Hera’s people were dying from a fatal outbreak and she could help. She was only providing her skills; she’d learned a long time ago how to scramble a ship’s signature and she could stay off of the Empire’s scanners long enough for them to land and deliver the root at the airbase in Lessu.

It was supposed to be a simple supply mission.

Hera Syndulla had done her job – she’d excelled at her job – even with the Eclipse shot to pieces, she’d managed to land safely in an abandoned commercial zone to make their drop. The problem was that Captain Rheden didn’t do her job in making sure the intel was solid. Awaiting their relief on the ground was the largest group of guttkurs that Hera had ever seen, all of them with blasters trained on her and the rest of the crew the moment they stepped off the ship.

The things that the Empire did with Twi’leks wasn’t a secret; in their custody, Hera knew that she’d be trafficked or sold to the highest bidder to be kept as a personal pet. There were all kinds of horror stories that echoed the streets of the Tann Province. They were the kinds of stories that had given her mother pause when Hera told her that she wanted to fly this so-called simple supply mission.

Her mother had been right.

Looking around as they began to book her crewmates one by one, she wriggled her wrists that had been bound in front of her. That was the stormtrooper’s first mistake. The second was leaving her ample opportunity to get to one of their TIE fighters with the hatch left carelessly open. Hera was fast and nimble; her Uncle Gobi had taught her to fight from a young age. The Imperials couldn’t keep up in their clunky armor if they wanted to.

It didn’t help that they couldn’t shoot the broad side of a Bantha, either.

She leapt onto the wing and then into the hatch of the TIE. Fortunately for her, the startup process of most ships was straight forward and she could read Galactic Aurebesh with ease. Her engines were ignited and throttle opened before the Imperials knew what had hit them. Even with her hands bound, Hera could outfly the guttkurs any day.

Shoving the control yoke forward, she took to the skies. Guilt niggled only slightly at the back of her mind – she was leaving that crew and their objective behind – but she was fourteen. There was no getting out of an Imperial prison and the kind of life she’d be damned to if they took her in. Her father would be better equipped to help the Karthakk Group better than she would, anyway.

The internal comm of the TIE blared to life. This is Moff Delian Mors of the Galactic Empire. You will land and present yourself for detainment immediately or face the consequences.

Hera snorted to herself, “Blow it out your exhaust pipe.”

She accelerated hard, turning to starboard side and away from the ground fire. Thankfully she wouldn’t need to program any navicomputers because that would be challenging with her hands bound together but she’d flown the route from Lessu to Tann Province before. Just as she pushed forward on her yoke to accelerate, her TIE rocked from explosion without warning.

“Karabast!” She snapped and banked hard to portside, activating her rutters to let whatever was firing at her go flying past her and into her line of fire. The Imperial was as predictable as she expected and once it accelerated into her line of fire, she fired off a round to set one hexagonal wing ablaze. the attacking TIE subsequently went sailing toward the ground.

Yanking back on her control yoke, she sent her TIE into a steep and spiraling ascent toward the stars. If they were going to fire on her, they’d have to chase her first.

This is your final warning, Twi’lek. You will land that craft or face the consequences.

Hera rolled her eyes and continued her rapid ascent, her acceleration forcing her weight back into the seat. She couldn’t bite back the grin tugging at her lips from the feeling of gravity trying to tug her back down. This is what she lived for, soaring amongst the clouds, dancing amongst the stars when she was allowed. Force help the Imperials who thought that they had a chance at taking her out; they didn’t know what they were up against.

Another volley flew past her and she laughed to herself. They couldn’t even hit the broad side of a Bantha from their ships. How the Empire got anywhere in the galaxy with their ineptitude was beyond her – they all seemed so incompetent. Her father had said as much on numerous occasions, too. It’s why he wasn’t concerned with their presence on Ryloth outside of their occupation of the medcenters and almost everything else; they weren’t smart enough to counter the presence of Free Ryloth.

Her mother wasn’t so quick to discount the Imperials, though. Where she generally agreed with her mother on most everything, she found herself possibly siding with her father on the Imperial occupation. If they couldn’t take out a fourteen year old girl in a TIE fighter, how much harm could they actually do?

Hera spiraled to portside past the neon green of another volley and fired her own weapons, taking out a second and third TIE fighter in quick succession, sending them spinning back toward the ground. She banked back on her course and found four more being deployed in her direct line of fire. She smiled to herself as she thought, No big deal. I’ve already taken out three of you.

She continued on her rapid ascent, flying just over the oncoming fighters and then looping around until she was giving chase to them instead. She took down two with ease and was in the process of targeting the third when her TIE came to an abrupt halt. The whining of the engines against the strain of an unnatural gravitational pull sent Hera flying forward over the control yoke, slamming her head against the console.

And then everything faded to black.

-

You’re sure there was nobody else aboard that TIE?

No, ma’am. Just the kid.

Very well. Dismissed, trooper.

Hera head was pounding when she came to. She pushed herself up from the slab of durasteel that she’d been carelessly dropped on. She brought her hand to her forehead and winced as her fingertips met a large gash above her eyebrow. Must have hit my head, she thought to herself. She heard footsteps beyond the hatch of her cell and she sprang to her feet with the intention of moving to a corner but her vision started to cloud around the edges and she staggered back, landing on the durasteel slab.

Nausea overtook her and her arm clutched around her stomach, feeling saliva running to her mouth. She took a deep breath and tried to breathe through it. Slowly, the wave of nausea of subsided and she tried to open her eyes again. The mechanical clicking and whirring of the hatch being opened drew her attention up to the door and she tucked her knees against her chest, pressing herself into the corner from whomever was on the other side of that door.

Surely her parents would have figured out what happened. They would be sending someone for her soon, enough.

She just had to hold on.

“Oh, you really are just a child,” a smarmy human woman said, almost slinking into her cell.

Hera felt her face contort in disgust. She’d seen humans like these before when her father had his men dispatch them; they were usually cracked on Ryll. She stared the woman down but made no attempt to move, mostly because her head seemed opposed to letting her do anything.

The woman came uncomfortably close, hovering over her within centimeters of her. The blown out pupils of gray eyes and the way they were hazed over told Hera all that she needed to know, “It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you, young lady.”

“You expect me to believe that?” Hera asked, pressing her back as far as it could go into the wall.

The Imp seemed to regard her for a moment and then gave a lecherous smile, “You’re spirited for such a small girl and quite the pilot, too. You took out five of my TIEs. How old are you?

Keeping her eyes fixed on the woman, she remained silent. The less Hera said, the better. That’s what her dad had told her before; in case she gets caught, say nothing at all or as little as possible.

“Okay, I’ll start with who I am first and then you can answer my questions,” she sat along side Hera, too uncomfortably close, “I’m Moff Delian Mors. And you are?”

Hera leered at her in response.

“Tsk. My dear, you must have hit your head,” the woman said, raising her fingers to the gash on Hera’s brow.

She flinched under the woman’s fingers. If she could have scampered away, she would have.

“Don’t be afraid, my child. I’m just trying to help you,” Moff Delian Mors said, letting her fingertips rest against Hera’s forehead, “you see, normally the Empire doesn’t like to let Twi’leks have important jobs. They usually keep your kind for other purposes. Things that I won’t talk about because you seem like you’re too young to understand – but you, I think you might be a special case.” She paused for a moment seeming to gauge whether or not Hera would answer.

She remained stubbornly silent.

“Anyway,” the woman continued, “I was hoping you might tell me your name. I think I’ve got some grand plans for you and I’m quite curious where you found such spectacular piloting skills for such a young girl. Though, I do have my suspicions.”

Hera could practically hear her dad chide her from wherever he was as she responded, “I taught myself.”

The Moff laughed at her words, a little too hysterically in response to a sarcastic comment. Her fingers fell from Hera’s forehead and she took hold of her face, grasping her cheeks tightly in her hands. The high core accent that the woman had been blithering on in dropped to a low and threatening octave, “You’re going to tell me what your name is and who your parents are or you’re going to face the consequences, young lady.”

Despite the fear coursing through her veins, Hera still said nothing.

The woman let go of her face with a sneer and stood on unsteady legs. “It’s just as well,” she said, resuming her high accented voice, “I’ve got ways of finding out who you are on my own. In the meantime, I’ll see to it that they patch up that nasty little gash on your forehead. You’re much too pretty to be left with a scar so young.”

When the hatch to her cell opened, Moff Mors waved in two storm troopers with their blasters in the ready position. “Take her to the infirmary and get that gash patched up. I’d stun her now if I were you – she’ll get away from you otherwise.”

The troopers didn’t have to be told twice.

-

When Hera came to again, her head still ached but not to the degree that it had been. She pushed herself up from the durasteel slab of her cell slowly. The room started to spin around her. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to steady herself. She opened them again more slowly this time and her equilibrium started to settle. Her stomach was panged with hunger and her mouth felt impossibly dry.

How long had she been in this place?

Gingerly, she reached up to her brow and felt along where the gash had been. It was covered by a bandage now, not as tender under the light brush of her fingertips. She took a steadying breath and tried to sit up straighter but she felt overwhelmingly weak. She tried to think of the things that her Uncle Gobi had taught her about what happened if she got caught outside of her father’s steadfast rule of just don’t say anything.

How long has it been? She thought again to herself. The hunger pangs were obvious; she hadn’t eaten much before the relief mission, so she would have been hungry even if it had been a few hours. Hunger wouldn’t kill her, at least not immediately. Her body was stiff and ached all over; like she’d been stuck in one position for a long period of time. It couldn’t have just been hours that she’d been in their custody. Her mouth was desperately dry and her lips were cracked which meant that she was dehydrated. She’d just woken up and had no need to use the refresher – that meant she was badly dehydrated. She’d die a lot faster from that.

Think, Hera. She told herself. If she’s in a situation where the Imperials have her and its life or death, does she talk just enough to get food and water or does she just wait for her dad to show up and hope she doesn’t die in the meantime?

Her dad hadn’t ever been the most dependable person but it was still her father – surely he wouldn’t leave her to rot in an Imperial holding center. Her mother definitely wouldn’t let that happen. The thoughts were coming too quickly and she felt overwhelmed and while she’d always felt so much older than her actual age, for the first time she truly did feel like just a girl. Her eyes stung like she wanted to cry but no tears came.

Definitely dehydrated, she thought to herself.

The mechanical clicks and whirs of the hatch to her cell began to engage and bright light from the corridors flooded into her dark room. She held her hand up over her eyes to shield them from the offensive light which only spurned her headache. As she adjusted, she watched as Moff Mors entered the room with a tray that contained a glass of water and a bowl of something. Uncle Gobi told her never to trust anything from the Empire.

But her stomach was growling and her mouth was so dry.

“Oh, that nasty cut looks so much better. I was quite concerned we were dealing with much more than external injuries; you’ve been out for at least a day, my dear,” Mors pronounced as she settled the tray along side Hera. “Now, don’t touch that, not yet, Ms. Syndulla.”

Hera felt her blood run cold when the Moff used her family name.

She knelt in front of Hera, placing her hands on either side of her knees as she eyed her closely. Her eyes were hazed over like before but behind it was something more foreboding and it sent a chill down Hera’s spine. “You are, Ms. Syndulla, aren’t you? You look just like your mother.”

Maintaining a perfectly neutral expression, Hera ventured her answer, “You’re delusional if you think I belong to the Syndulla clan and I’m still in your custody.”

Mors smirked, “You’re not a Syndulla?”

“Isn’t that what I just said?” Hera asked crossly.

The Moff raised her fingers to motion a trooper into the cell, one wearing dark clothing and carrying a datapad. The woman took the datapad from the troopers hands and held it so that Hera could see the screen, “So I suppose if you’re not Hera Syndulla that you have no reason to oppose my ordering an immediate bombing run on the Tann Province?” She waited a moment to gauge Hera’s expression and then lifted her finger to the datapad.

Hera pushed the datapad out of her hand and sent it toppling to the floor, “I oppose any bombing on my people.”

Mors picked the datapad back up and winked at her with her glassed over eyes, “I’ll give you one more chance before I turn your home to dust, Ms. Syndulla.”

Eyeing the woman warily, Hera inhaled sharply. Her father could rescue her. Maybe they’d reach out to him and that would even make him come more quickly, “So what if I am? You’re just going to kill me anyway and you don’t have a problem killing my people. Why does it matter who I am?”

“My girl, that’s just not true,” Mors answered and lifted the datapad back to the trooper before waving her away. “You see, you’re a special girl. Those skills of yours could get you quite far in the Empire if you’ve got the right person to vouch for you. A woman of influence, perhaps.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard what the Empire does with my people,” she scoffed, “I’m sure you can find me a real nice owner.”

“Oh, no, I’ve got much bigger plans for you. A pilot of your capabilities? Your knowledge of Ryloth? You’d be so much more valuable to the Empire in a position of glory,” Mors corrected her. She nudged the tray in Hera’s direction, “Go on. You need your strength.”

Hera glanced at the glass of water. She was thirsty.

Mors seemed to study her for a minute and then lifted the glass to press it into her hands, “If your choices are death or death, is there any real reason to be wary of a glass of water?”

The decision may have been stupid but the woman was right at least about that. Hera picked up the glass and took a cautious sip, which gave way to a longer sip and finally to her gulping at the water thirstily until the cup was empty. She sat it aside, her gaze cast downward. She felt shame for being so weak.

Her father would be disappointed in her.

“See? You’re not dead.”

“Not yet,” Hera muttered.

“Not at all,” Mors assured her, “my dear, you’ve got nothing but a bright future ahead of you. I’ve left word with Admiral Tarkin of the Imperial Navy that I’ve got a fine candidate for one of the Imperial Academies. You’re going to become an Imperial Pilot and then you’re going to help me care for Ryloth. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Watching over your homeworld while serving our glorious Empire?”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I’m not human,” Hera said in an annoyed tone, “clearly you don’t understand how the Empire works.”

“Clearly, you don’t understand what it means to have clout with the Emperor, my dear,” Mors corrected her. “I can do something that your father can’t promise Ryloth with his little group of Twi’lek terrorists. You can do something that he can promise. You can keep your family safe.”

Hera’s brow arched in question. She knew she couldn’t trust anybody from the Empire but her curiosity had been piqued, if reluctantly so, “And how is that?”

“It’s really quite easy. You will go to the Imperial Academy as an enforced student of the Empire. You’ll take the assignments given to you and when you’re returned to me, you’ll do as I say.”

“And if I don’t?”

Mors laughed, “I’m not quite certain where you came under the impression that you had a choice in the matter, my child. You’ll do as your told and in exchange, your parents can live. If not – well, you’ll do as I say and your parents can die. Really, the choice is quite clear, I think.”

Hera shifted under the Moff’s gaze, “Then how do I know you won’t kill my parents either way?”

“Because, my dear,” Mors said nudging a bowl of broth in her direction, “you’re going to help me keep your father under control. Rebels are so much easier to control when they’ve got a reason to follow the rules.”

Chapter Text

Eleni Syndulla sat frozen in front of her family’s portrait with her arms crossed over her stomach, sick with worry. It was just a supply run. Hera had told her, had reassured her, had plead with her to let her help, to let her make a difference. Eleni had relented and now she couldn’t help but feel she’d sent her daughter straight into the hands of the enemy.

Her Hera had been no stranger to doing dangerous things. She’d been seven years old the first time she was pretending to be a spy in a very real situation with battle droids at the walls of their homes. She’d been ten the first time she was caught actually spying on an Imperial refinery. Just like her father, she’d was born to be a revolutionary. Eleni had simply thought that flying a relief mission would be the safest way for her to do that if her daughter had insisted on answering to that call.

She’d been wrong.

The conversation carried on behind her back in hushed tones only served to further her anxiety, her husband and her brother Gobi carried on as if she weren’t in the room. The back and forth with no solid plan made her gut churn. While Gobi and Cham hadn’t seen eye to eye in the beginning, her brother had quickly become her husband’s right hand man. While Cham served as a public face to Free Ryloth, as a bright beacon in the dark for the people of Ryloth, Gobi preferred to do things in the background.

Cham led.

Gobi recruited.

Both men had their idea of how to go about things and when it came down to the people of Ryloth, they’d always found a way to see eye to eye, to form a solidified plan of attack or defense when it was necessary. Sometimes the formulation of a plan took longer than others when they were afforded the luxury of things like time. Now, things were different. The stakes were higher than just the suffering citizens of Ryloth, higher than saving part of a province or stopping another aerial bombardment on the cities of their homeworld. Time was not something that was on their side when their daughter’s life was on the line.

Now the stakes were everything and time was dwindling.

“Enough bickering,” she finally spoke, not turning to look at either one of the men. “We need a solid plan if we are to get Hera back.”

She felt two large hands closed over her shoulders and she leaned into her husband’s touch. She’d been fighting back tears for most of the day. All she could think about was the family portrait before her, a family of three where there’d once been four. All that would echo through her mind was the possibility of the Empire taking yet another child away from her. She didn’t get enough time to love her son, never got to see what kind of person that he’d grow into. Hera, on the other hand, had grown into a beautiful young woman that Eleni knew could do good in the galaxy. She knew how big her daughter’s dreams had been and now –

Eleni sighed softly, trying to swallow the lump in her throat, “Cham, what if we can’t – “

“We will,” he promised her. “We just need to find out where they’re keeping her. If they’re on the moon, it will be much easier to infiltrate the compound than if they’ve got her on a Star Destroyer. We will not lose Hera. I swear to you that I will bring her home.”

Eleni tried to forget the fact that they’d already lost Hera. She should have been home, now, and she should have never let her fly that relief mission. If she’d told her daughter no, if she’d ignored her pleas to do something so utterly dangerous, then Hera would be there now. It was with her permission that Hera had flown the mission and now Hera was lost to the Empire and if anything happened to her, when something happened to her, it would be Eleni’s fault.

The thought was unbearable.

“What will they do with her?” She asked softly, though she already knew the answer. The Empire didn’t care how young or innocent her daughter was. Youth merely meant that she’d fetch a higher price. “If they’ve already sent her to the pens we’ll never be able to – “

“That will not happen to our Hera. I will move stars to get her back,” he promised her, giving a gentle squeeze of her shoulders before releasing his grip on her.

The loss of his warm hands against her shoulders made her feel that much more chilled to the bone. It made the room and the hallways of their home that much more deafeningly silent.

Gobi’s voice pierced the silence that lingered heavily, “I have reason to believe that they may not have harmed her yet. My contacts with Karthakk, they said she took out a handful of TIE fighters when she tried to get away from the Eclipse.”

There was poorly timed pride in Cham’s tone when he answered, “Of course, she did. She’s my daughter.”

Eleni cast a gaze over her shoulder toward her brother to silence him before he could argue that he’d been the one to teach Hera to fly. She wasn’t in the mood for another one of their arguments when they needed to be working together to bring Hera home. Her eyes still lingered on the painting, her fiery daughter, so full of spirit. Would the Empire be able to break her?

What wouldn’t they do to break her?

“So they know she can fly,” Gobi said slowly, having received his sister’s message loud and clear. “She took out half of a squadron of TIE fighters. While normally that might not be a what do you think the Empire will do with that? They’ll want to make an example out of her. But with her skill as a pilot, the Imperials may not be so quick to punish her.”

Cham considered it for a moment and then began to realize what Gobi was insinuating, “You’re right. They have to realize that she isn’t one of the common clans by her level of skill alone. They’ll know that she has to belong to one of the clans with access to ships and people who know how to fly them. They may try to use her to hurt us, but that’s going to help us more.”

“Help us how?” Eleni asked quietly. She was less than certain that the Empire knowing that Hera was the daughter of the Syndulla clan would be anything less than harmful to Hera’s well-being.

“If they know who she is, that she’s our daughter, they will try to use it against us. That is how we can draw them out,” Cham answered, “it’s not ideal and I’m not sure if Hera will tell them herself since we’d taught her not to talk to the Imperials. But if we reach out to the Imperials ourselves, offer them terms and conditions – ”

“Cham is right,” Gobi said, as if coming to a realization, “Hera will not tell them who she is. However, if we tell them who she is, we can use Cham as bait to get Hera back. We’ll offer terms of surrender for Cham, get Hera to safety and then my men can be on standby to stop the exchange altogether. We’ll have to lie low for a while, possibly get Hera off world to protect her.”

Eleni turned from the portrait then, daring to hope that they had an idea that might actually work. There would be no reason that they’d want her daughter when they could have Cham instead; the Empire was too brazen to settle for a consolation when they could have the actual prize. “This could work,” she said and allowed for the slightest bit of hope to find its way into her tone, “Gobi, you’re sure that your men can keep them from taking Cham in?”

Gobi nodded, “I’m certain of it. We’ve done it before, this is not any different.”

Cham interrupted, “We’re going to have to reach out to the Imperials soon before they decide to send Hera to the pens, just in case they don’t put two and two together. We all know that Mors is capable of dangerous things but that her proclivity to poor leadership could work against us as well. Time is of the essence.”

Gobi, ever the one to play the devil’s advocate hesitated for a moment, “I will work on a secondary plan if this doesn’t work. Perhaps they decide to use Hera to break you instead?” Gobi asked, sending an apologetic glance in Eleni’s direction, “I don’t want them to hurt her but we’ve seen what the Empire is capable of. Who is to say that they don’t just hurt her as an example to our people?”

“They won’t,” Cham insisted, “not when Moff Mors can use Hera to corner me. Get your men together, Gobi. Think of a contingency if you must, but I trust that this will work. I will turn myself in for Hera and we’ll have her back.”

Eleni’s gaze lingered on her husband’s for a long moment before she turned back to her family portrait, her eyes fixed on her daughter’s image. She had no doubt in her husband’s ability to escape the grip of the Empire yet again – he’d done it before, even in the most dire of circumstances. She only hoped that her daughter had the same fortitude that her father possessed.

-

“Ah, Cham Syndulla, just the man I was hoping to speak to,” the projection of Moff Mors was an unwelcome sight in their home just as her presence had been unwelcome on Ryloth.

Eleni stayed on the opposite side of Cham’s desk, palms pressed firmly atop it. She kept her gaze fixed to the ground in silent prayer that their plan to get Hera back would work. She needed her daughter back home safe.

“I don’t suppose that lovely wife of yours is around?” Mors continued, “I was so hoping to see her.”

“I’m here,” she answered in a firm voice, stepping around the desk and to Cham’s side. Eleni leveled her gaze on the projection of the woman in cold contempt. She tried not to shrink under the lascivious gaze of the Moff. It was a look that Eleni had seen before from the woman; once in person. It made her uncomfortable.

There were many tales of the way that the Moff of Ryloth had lived her life. The women enjoyed enslaving Twi’leks that floated silently about her palatial home. Some of them had been relegated to menial tasks about the home, all scantily clad for the Moff to keep under her perverse gaze at all times. Some of the woman were required to do more. Those women were forbidden to leave that life of service, never given an option to do so, and always subject to the Moff’s inclinations. Despite that the women, all jade skinned and of rare beauty like Eleni herself, were never referred to as slaves. They were simply called her companions.

Eleni felt a wave of anger and nausea crash over her at the lecherous look on Mors’ face. Knowing the woman’s preferences in the Twi’lek slaves she kept meant that Hera’s safety was even more in jeopardy. A woman with that kind of preferences in the possession of her daughter –

Mors grinned, “There you are, my darling. I would be remiss not to tell you that your daughter is quite beautiful. Of course, it’s easy to see where she gets it from.”

“Enough,” Cham cut in, inserting himself in between Eleni and the Moff’s projection. “You know that you’ve got my daughter, then?”

“Of course. The Galactic Empire knows everything about the people of Ryloth. It wasn’t difficult to determine how a girl so young could have such skill in combat.”

Eleni’s hand squeezed her husband’s shoulder. She had faith that her husband would be safe in the exchange; they just needed a second to set Hera free and Gobi’s men would be able to rescue Cham as well.

“Then you know that you’ve got the upper hand. I want to propose a trade. I will surrender myself to the Empire for the return of my daughter, unharmed,” Cham said firmly.

The woman sneered through the other side of the projection, a wicked grin spreading over her face, “You are correct that I know that I’ve got the upper hand, General Syndulla. However, You’re unfortunately mistaken if you believe yourself to be in any position to negotiate terms of release. You see, your daughter has a bright future with the Empire – “

“Please,” Eleni interjected without shame for the desperation of her tone, “she’s just a girl. She’s innocent. You don’t have to do –“

“Oh no, Mrs. Syndulla, please. You insult me. I’m not interested in her like that,” Mors cut her off. “Your daughter is quite the pilot. As I see it, that talent is incredibly wasted on Ryloth. I’ve negotiated for your daughter to be sent to one of the Imperial Academies for formal training. She will learn to serve the Empire under the galaxy’s finest talent and when she graduates, she’ll return home as a servant to the Galactic Empire and Ryloth.”

Cham bristled, “My daughter will never serve the Empire.”

“Oh but she’s already agreed. You see, it turns out that fourteen year old girls are quite malleable when they believe their parents lives to be at stake; and believe me, they are at stake. If you so much as attempt a rescue, I’ll personally execute the girl myself,” she feigned a sad smile in Eleni’s direction, “which would be quite unfortunate, don’t you agree dear?”

“Why would you want her to serve the Empire? She is not human and the Empire does not employee those who they believe to be inferior.” Eleni’s tone was icy.

“I thought that part was clear,” she sighed in mock disappointment, “so long as I’ve got your daughter’s life in my hands, Free Ryloth cannot continue to reign terror under the leadership of the Syndulla clan or any clan. The Empire gains an ace and you can sleep at night knowing that your daughter is safe and unharmed. Your daughter may not be human but she’s got an undeniable gift and the Empire enjoys having the best, no matter what the circumstances. As far as I see it, we all win, even your precious Hera.”

Eleni shook her had fervently, “No. No. Give my daughter back. Take me instead.”

Mors smiled wanly, “While I’d enjoy that, and believe me I would, I just don’t see that as a mutually beneficial situation for the Empire. This guarantees an end to the terrorism on Ryloth and safety for your people through the gracious benefit of the Galactic Empire. Although, I suppose if you disagree with the plans, I can just have your sweet daughter executed instead?”

“No,” Cham said fervently, fist pounding against the desk. Eleni could see him thinking, trying to work through the possibilities and options. “Where is she? I want to see her.”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. Unfortunately, that information is privy to the Empire.”

“And how do we know that our daughter is safe if you do not let us see her?” Eleni asked, forcing the emotion out of her voice. She would not break in front of this woman.

“That is a good point, Mrs. Syndulla. I suppose that I could work out some sort of arrangement, some holos of your daughter so that you can ensure her safety in exchange for information.”

“Information? The holos should be a guarantee that you are not causing her any harm,” Cham argued. “We are supposed to submit to you on blind faith that you aren’t going to mistreat her the way you’ve mistreated the rest of my people?”

Moff Mors raised her brow, “Now you’re catching on, General Syndulla. You see, you don’t know that I won’t mistreat her. However, you’re aware that she’s in my custody and that any disruptions to the Galactic Empire’s presence on Ryloth could result in bringing a great deal of harm to your daughter. Now, as far as those holos go, I would be willing to trade information on your Free Ryloth cells for visual – not verbal – confirmation that your daughter is doing well.”

Eleni watched as Cham’s face fell.

“And what if I want to talk to my daughter?” Eleni asked softly, feeling powerless to the evil woman before her. All she wanted was to see that her daughter was unharmed, and safe. She needed to speak with her and make sure that she was okay – or at least as much as she could be. “What must I give then?”

The projection of the Moff seemed to regard her for a moment and then she smiled sadly, “I’m afraid that’s not a possibility at this time. We wouldn’t want to interfere with her education, now would we?”

“I will give you whatever information you need. At least let us speak to our daughter, say goodbye if we must,” Cham insisted.

“Oh no, General. Please don’t think of this as a goodbye. Your daughter will only be gone for a few years and then I swear she’ll be right back here on Ryloth. She’ll be serving the Empire, serving your people. I’m sure that you’ll see quite a bit of her, especially if your people cannot cooperate with the Empire’s plan for Ryloth,” she paused for a moment and then continued, “Unfortunately though, I do have to prepare your daughter to be shipped out to her new Academy. I’ll look forward to that intelligence for your visual confirmation of her safety though. Please feel free to reach out any time. I’m sure we could work out a regular arrangement.”

Eleni reached out at the projection, “No, wai – “

The transmission ended, leaving them standing alone in the silence of the office.

“Cham,” she spoke and her voice was already breaking, tears flooding the corners of her eyes. “Cham, how do we get her back?”

Though his arms wrapped around her tightly and he promised her that he’d find a way to bring Hera home, Eleni could hear that the words were empty. While she trusted in her husband and she’d seen the many unlikely feats that he’d pulled off in their life together, somehow she knew that this time that there was nothing that he could do. The Empire had found the one weakness in Cham Syndulla’s armor and Moff Mors had determined the worst possible way to use the abduction of their daughter against them.

Eleni knew that her daughter would not face death. Somehow she even knew that her daughter would not see the distinct form of torture that Twi’leks had come to suffer under the rule of the Empire. Hera’s hell would come in a different form; a victim of her family’s political persuasion manipulated in such a manner that she’d never have thought Mors capable of. Hera would live, though, that much Eleni was certain of.

The one that she wasn’t certain of, however, was whether or not she’d ever be able to see her daughter again.

Chapter Text

Let us say goodbye.

Hera leaned her forehead against the transparisteel of the shuttle that had already carried her too far from her family. While the chatter around her ranged from excitement to disgust, the only thing she could focus on was the fact that her parents wanted to say goodbye. They had accepted her fate, had wanted to bid her farewell. 

Perhaps it had been a rouse on her father’s part.

There was no way he’d let her just fall into the hands of the Empire, no way her mother would accept it. There’s wasn’t a scenario where he’d so easily let his daughter go, was there? The holo that Moff Mors showed her father and mother, simply looking resigned and asking to say goodbye. Any emotions that she’d had over the holo, she’d long gotten out in the privacy of her holding cell back on the moon outside of Ryloth. She couldn’t – no, she would not – show weakness.

Not here. 

Not surrounded by a bunch of humans who were either leering at her with lecherous gazes or glaring at her with hatred.

As if it weren’t bad enough that she was the only non-human species on the shuttle, that she would be the only non-human at the academy, they’d shipped her in binders. As if her green flesh wasn’t a big enough draw of attention, wasn’t a blaring sign for the rest of the students aboard that she was inferior, she was being caged like an animal for their pleasure. Her lekku were rigid down her back. Had they not bound them in stiff lacing, she would have turned them inward toward her back to at least curse out her so-called peers in Twi'leki.

Tailhead. Freak. Whore. Abomination.

She’d heard almost all of it before, having been offworld more than once in her life. Those times, though, her mother had been there to protect her. Her father had been there to shield her from it with his large frame and intimidating presence. Here, the only thing she could rely on was herself. Here, the only thing she could do was hope that her parents had a plan for her rescue and try to survive in the meantime.

One of the two troopers assigned to her detail kicked her seat with a loud clang, “Sit up straight, Twi’lek trash. An Imperial cadet does not slouch.”

Hera glared at the trooper but made no effort to move. Every other student on the shuttle was at ease, slouched over a datapad or hunched over the back of a seat dozing if they weren’t engaged in loud speculation of her presence. The other trooper grabbed her lek with a harsh grip and jerked her upright. She involuntarily let out a yelp of pain when they did; her lekku were sensitive, not that she’d expect any human to understand that.

Humans were all the same; self-centered, stupid, and infected with a significantly unwarranted superiority complex.

The only time she’d seen humans that weren’t that way had been during the clone wars when the Jedi fought alongside her father to save her people. Even then, the Jedi weren’t all human. They valued every sentient in the galaxy, were composed of multiple sentient beings.

“Are you going to make me do it again, tailhead?” The modulated voice asked.

Still glaring at the troopers, she straightened her spine only slightly.

“You’d be wise to respect your superiors, trash. Get rid of that look on your face or I’ll erase it for you,” the trooper continued. If Hera were to glance over her shoulder, she’d figured that now the troopers were just putting on a show for the other students aboard. Literally everybody in the galaxy knew that strormtroopers were idiots; they were probably enjoying the positive feedback for a change.

Moff Mors shot through her mind, intermingled with the instantaneous headache from having her lekku so harshly pulled on. If she didn’t cooperate, if she didn’t do what she was told, her parents would die. These troopers could be reporting directly to the woman for all that she knew. Though their request to tell her goodbye still echoed in her ears, she sat up straight and worked to keep her expression neutral.

Hera’s mother had taught her to hope and she had to hope that if she could keep herself alive, if she could follow the rules and act like it was an honor to be a Twi’lek allowed the glory of the Empire, her parents would find a way to save her. Hope was all she could do.

-

The Skystrike Academy on Montross was like anything Hera had ever seen; a levitating mass of durasteel glistening in the brilliant orange and red hues of the sunset. The base of the hulking structure was supported by the only the clouds as if it were weightless. It reminded her of a hive; with TIE fighters and bombers and lambda class shuttles flitting about the structure. In a way, it was almost beautiful.

She’d always felt at home amongst the clouds.

With a blaster pressed to the small of her back, she followed at the rear of the new recruits and watched as each disappeared into their newly assigned quarters. The few glances she allowed herself afforded her the knowledge that each of the shared living spaces had a window that provided an unobstructed view of the evening sky. Anticipation thrummed through her veins, her heart fluttering with hope that she’d be allowed such a view. If she couldn't be free, the least she could do was pretend that she was amongst the stars, that she was soaring through the clouds.

She was not.

Once the rest of her class had been disbursed to their quarters, she was shoved down a narrow corridor to a turbolift. The ride down had felt endless, taking her farther and farther from the stars. Each level descended was another reminder that she was a prisoner of the Empire, not a student of the academy. There was no glory of any Empire awaiting her as Moff Mors had so falsely declared. Hera was a pawn, a piece in the war to be ruthlessly used by the Empire to keep Ryloth in submission.

When the door of the lift opened, the trooper harshly shoved the tip of the blaster into her back lurching her forward off the lift. She stumbled forward but regained her balance quickly only to be shoved in the direction of what she assumed to be the academy’s brig. At the end of the hall, aside an open door were two men in waiting. One stood only slightly taller than her, a heavy mustache hanging over one lip and a heavier brow making his dark gaze more foreboding. The other was thin, a gaunt face and graying hair with steely gray eyes; this face she recognized from holos that her dad had in his office back on Ryloth – Admiral Tarkin of the Imperial Navy.

It was Tarkin who addressed her while the other remained stiff at his side.

“Ah, Cadet Syndulla,” his voice was as cold as he looked.

Hera said nothing but reflexively straightened her spine, mostly to avoid being shoved with the end of a blaster again.

Apparently, some sort of response was required because she ended up being struck anyway.

“That’s quite enough,” Tarkin said coolly to the troopers. “She’s only a Twi’lek. She doesn’t know how to respond to superiors. Release her hands so she can be taught the proper way to respond.”

The binders were removed as the troopers had been instructed and she could hear the low growl of one of the troopers as they did, the uttered derogatory term with it. Hera brought her hands up immediately to massage her sore and bruised wrists but the trooper training his blaster on her made her drop her hands to her side.

Tarkin regarded her for a long moment and then turned to the troopers at her side, “Dismissed.”

They were dismissed without any sort of admonishments, without any sort of warning about harming Moff Mors' precious prize that would help gain better control of Ryloth. A pawn, she was a pawn. She was only a pawn. Just a prisoner, far removed from where her family could find her.

Hera stood stiff before the two men, not shrinking before their critical gazes.

Once the troopers had dispatched, the Admiral paced around her in short and precise steps. “I’m sure you’re aware, Cadet, that this is a first for the prestigious academies. We don’t generally allow your type in.” He paused to gauge her reaction and when she didn’t show an ounce of emotion, he continued, “I’m told that you took down half a fleet of my TIE fighters with your hands bound. I assume that’s correct?”

Her jaw clenched for a moment but her lips remained pressed together.

“Young lady, you will speak when spoken to by your superiors,” the one with the excessive amount of fur on his face finally spoke.

Tarkin held a hand up, “You are permitted to answer my questions. So I will ask you again, were you able to take down five of my fighters as I was told?”

Hera’s gaze remained fixed forward, staring through the furry man, “Yes.”

“You will answer ‘Yes, Sir’ to any questions asked of you,” Tarkin said pointedly, placing himself between his Captain and Hera. “I had my doubts about accepting you into the Academy. The superiority of the human race has been vastly proven to be more effective in combat. However, I’m anxious to see if you truly possess the skills that have been claimed. However, I do have reservations about whether or not your kind can be tamed and civilized to be of any reliable service to the Galactic Empire.”

“I am not an animal,” Hera answered in a low voice, anger flashing through her eyes.

“You will not speak unless questioned,” the man behind her said, stepping forward just behind Tarkin.

“It’s quite alright, Captain Skerris. She will need to be broken before she knows her place,” Tarkin said, unaffected by Hera’s demeanor. “This Academy is meant to be for the best pilots in the galaxy. I doubt that you survive your time here, Cadet Syndulla. However, I curiously find myself in a position that I am willing for you to prove me wrong. If we can find use for inferior species with talents of your nature, it may pave way for the Empire to work so much more efficiently with the lessor planets struggling to accept the leadership and structure provided by our glorious Emperor.”

If they were going to break her, Hera figured that she may as well give up on trying to be civilized while she still had the chance, “And I find myself in a position of doubt that you can teach me something I don’t already know.”

The smile that turned up the corner of Tarkin’s expression sent a chill down Hera’s spine. “I do enjoy a cadet with spirit,” he said in a low tone, his face within mere centimeters of hers. “That being said, you’ll find yourself in a better position if you contain that spirit, Cadet.”

Hera’s brow creased in cold contempt and her chin lifted high as she answered, “Yes, sir.”

Tarkin gave the slightest smirk, straightening his spine to stare down at her over his nose, “This shall be your quarters. Let it serve as a reminder that you are not equal to your peers, no matter what level of your skill that you possess. If the time comes that you are able to demonstrate the traits of a civilized sentient, we’ll reconsider the assignment. In the meantime, Cadet, I suggest that you start by learning how to speak Galactic Basic properly.”

She didn’t keep the sneer from her face and leaned more heavily into her accent as she answered, “Yes, sir.”

Tarkin stepped aside, extending one arm to the cell that was supposed to be her quarters and waited until she stepped inside to slam the door between them. He turned to Skerris after she was secured inside. “She will be fed the same meals as the other cadets, on the same schedule. Outside of scheduled classes, she is to be isolated at all times until I am able to determine if she’s suitable for assimilation. If any our security detail lay a finger on her, they will deal with me personally.”

Skerris gave a curt nod, “And what of the students, Admiral Tarkin?”

Gray eyes leveled on Hera just beyond the durasteel bars for a brief moment before turning back to Captain Skerris, “If the Cadet cannot hold her own against her peers, how can we expect her to be a reliable servant to the Empire?”

A knowing grin painted itself across the Captain’s expression, “Yes, sir.”

-

Each day brought more of the same for Hera.

There were no lights to wake her in the morning as she was never given the courtesy of darkness for sleep. The combination of nothing beyond a durasteel slab for a bed along with the rigid wraps along her lekku left her with a constant and pounding headache. She felt lethargic; sustained on a diet meant for humans and not Twi’leks. The bruises on her wrists, the new shade of emerald against her jade skin, were markings that she’d begun to assume would never fade. Her heart was broken and her spirit was, too.

Each day she watched her human counterparts fly simulations with laughable skill. Had she been given the opportunity to run those simulations, she would have put all of them to shame. She’d volunteered several times for the opportunity, only to be denied.

I only understand Galactic Basic, her instructors told her.

The other students mocked her accent, along with everything else. She was shoved into doorways, or walls, had her feet stepped on or her lekku tugged. Hera maintained a straight back and expressionless face through all of it. Her parents, she was doing it for her parents. That was what she had to remind herself.

Each night, she sat alone in the bowels of the Academy. The troopers no longer sat guard over her once they’d been informed that they couldn’t aggress her without cause. There were no eyes on her, no obvious ears listening. After the first few weeks at the Academy, she’d run out of tears to cry. She was empty, devoid of hope, lacking energy to even grieve the loss of her life on Ryloth. All that was left her choice to keep her parents alive.

The fantasy that her parents would save her had died long ago.

Absently, she rubbed at the bruises of her wrists, trying to massage the ache out of them as she sat on the durasteel slab. There was a voice in her mind, ingrained from the weeks of being locked away to this hell; the voice told her that she was inferior. She wasn’t good enough to be a pilot for the Empire, not good enough to even be taught. The voice told her that she deserved what she endured because she was less than those surrounding her.

A different part of her though, the little spark of Hera Syndulla that was left, whispered to her that she had been brought here for a reason.

She took down five TIE fighters with her hands bound together.

One of these bastard Imperials had seen something in her, had recognized that she was more than just an inferior species, no matter what the motivation behind it. All it would take was one chance, one round in a simulator and she could show them. She’d do it again with her hands bound for all she cared. She’d shut down every one of her smarmy human counterparts, give them a reason to hate her for real other than just their prejudices against her species.

Hera knew what she needed to do to get her chance.

She’d have to forget who she was. She’d have to deny where she came from. She’d have to let go completely. Her father wasn’t coming, her parents said goodbye, and Ryloth wasn’t home – not anymore. Hera may have been a Twi’lek but she was a student of the Skystrike Imperial Academy.

She was an Imperial.

There in the emptiness of her quarters, just a cell in a brig, she began to speak to herself. She recited the pledges of an Imperial Cadet, ironing out her vowels and accentuating her consonants. The manuals reviewed throughout the day, the ones she could only glimpse over the shoulders of other students because they were for students who spoke basic became a nightly repetition. Verbal lectures became spoken mantras and meditations.

Attempting the affections of the Core accent wasn’t possible or her; she began to revert back to her Ryl accent easily. She found though, that she could flatten her words, leave the emotion from her tone just as emotion had left her soul. Hope had been a notion that she’d long forgotten but she willed her efforts to be sufficient.

And they were.

One morning, when the troopers presented to take her to class, she stood at the door of her cells prepared to be bound and guided to class.

“Wrists, Twi’lek trash,” the trooper said, hate laced in his tone.

“Yes, sir.” Her tone was perfectly neutral, no accent, no lilt.

For a moment, the trooper seemed to be taken aback by the tone.

Hera looked at him with an air of superiority, the first she’d allowed herself since coming to the Academy. Anything you can do, I will do better, she thought to herself.

The trooper reacted by placing her binders on extra tight.

Skerris was running the class that day; he’d been the most guilty of refusing her opportunities because she 'didn’t speak basic'. Per the usual routine, the weakest students started the simulations; it was a face off of shitty pilot versus slightly less shitty pilot as they worked their way through the gauntlet. She was certain about half of the class wouldn’t survive to see the end of the term. The results were always the same; Cadet Goran would top the class by the end of the period.

Not today.

“Well, it seems as Cadet Goran has once again shown – “

Hera took a steadying breath, obscured by the larger men in her class and then she shouldered her way through them, taking her opportunity to step on some toes along the way. “Cadet Goran hasn’t flown against me.”

Skerris regarded her for a second, the only traces of surprise in his face a mildly raised bushy brow and curiosity in his eyes. He gave a slight chuckle, “It seems as if somebody has learned how to speak basic.”

The rest of the class laughed with him.

“Unfortunately,” he continued, “your detail isn’t here to remove your binders so it seems as if – “

“I don’t need them removed,” Hera interrupted and then hastily added, “Sir.”

Her students laughed raucously then, one of them shoving her forward with a rough hand. She turned to glare at the offender with a look that sufficiently and silently threatened death if he laid another hand on her. Force help these fuckers the second she had her hands freed, if they ever were.

Goran seemed bemused though, “If the tailhead thinks she can take me on with her hands tied, I’m up for another round, Captain Skerris.”

Skerris glanced at his best pupil and then back to Hera. It was clear by the curiosity lingering in his gaze that he wanted to see what she could do. “Alright then, Cadet. Class should be over but I don’t expect this will take long.”

Despite wanting to grin at her small victory, Hera maintained her neutral expression and walked to the simulation pod opposite Skerris. She glared at her opponent and bit back a comment about paying attention so he could learn a thing or two. The hatch slid open and she slipped inside.

The set up was exactly like the TIE she’d flown back on Ryloth. Rudder pedals on the right, weapons targeting built into the yoke. There was a button to deploy proton torpedoes on the left side of her console that she wouldn’t be able to reach with her hand while she was flying. She toed off her boot and hiked up her knee to rest her heel against the console. If she needed them, she could fire them just as easily using a toe.

When the simulation began, her screen flickered to life, flickered out again and she expected for a moment that she wouldn’t be given a fair chance. Instead, she closed her eyes and listened to the sounds piped into the pod. She could hear the acceleration of the opposing TIE, coming in ahead of her. She guided her yoke hard to portside and was rewarded with the sound of the mechanical hum off to her righthand side. She slammed down onto the yoke, taking her pod into the feeling of a rapid descent, maneuvering just enough that if she could see what she was doing, she’d see that she was spiraling toward the ground.

Just beyond the pod, she heard scuffling outside the door and light poured into her pod bright through her eyelids. She opened her eyes and the screen was there. She banked back to starboard side, listening again for the hum of her opposing fighter. It was just behind her. Hera yanked back into the yoke with all of her weight, sending her TIE into a spiraling ascent, dodging several shots of a laser turret from her opponent. Satisfied with the altitude she’d achieved, she tore out of her spiral and then looped until she was on the heels of Goran’s fighter.

Laser turrets were useless anyway.

Using her toe she stomped on the controls to fire off her torpedoes, Goran locked perfectly in her sights and without a clue that his enemy was behind him.

Before he could respond, it was too late.

Just as Skerris said, the fight wouldn't take long.

The door to the pod opened, her foot still on the console and bound hands gripping the yoke like she was holding on for dear life. Skerris’ mouth was agape. The rest of the students were deadly quiet. She nonchalantly dropped her foot from the console and stuffed it back into her boot before stepping out of the pod. She stood at attention outside of her pod, expression neutral, while the thoughts running though the back of her mind were screaming Fuck you, Goran. Fuck you, Skerris. Fuck you all.

There were no accusations of cheating to be made because they’d cheated her by disconnecting her display when she began.

Finally, Skerris spoke, “How?”

Hera raised her chin to look her Captain straight in the eye, “I was sent to this Academy for a reason, sir.”

“Class dismissed. Cadet Syndulla, you will remain,” Skerris announced, his eyes never leaving hers. The curiosity had left his gaze and was now replaced by suspicion. When the rest of the students had disappeared from the simulation room, Skerris advanced forward and grabbed her face by the cheeks, dragging her within centimeters of his face. “You will tell me how you did that without a screen for the beginning of our simulation or we’ll find other ways of dragging it out of you.”

After weeks of manhandling, Hera had long learned how not to flinch under a harsh grasp, “Flying is more about seeing what is in front of you, sir.”

“Nobody is that good,” Skerris scoffed, shoving her face away, “not naturally.”

Hera remained at attention but spoke before her the weeks of Imperial conditioning stopped her from doing so, “I’m that good, sir.”

For a moment, Skerris looked as if he might backhand her but his fist merely clenched at his side. “Yes,” he answered in a cold voice, “I suppose we’ll see about that.”

Chapter Text

Hera shifted uncomfortably against the table that she’d been strapped down to. It would figure that she had proven herself as an adept pilot so the Empire found a new way to torture her. She’d been a fool to think that ironing her accent into a flat basic and proving her skill at the yoke would do her any good. She would no sooner be an Imperial than she would be rescued by her father. This was hell and it always would be.

She pulled her wrists against the restraints at her sides, tested her feet against the shackles at her ankle. There was droid with an injector arm floating around her head, needle at the ready for she didn’t know what. Apparently having an aptitude for flying was cause for torture in this damn place.

A cold breeze seemed to enter the room before the person that accompanied it. She kept her eyes fixed to the ground, a good little Imperial Twi’lek, silent until she was addressed. The situation was likely to go from bad to worse – she was trying to avoid whatever came after worse.

A large gray hand reached out before her, sliding an eerily long finger beneath her chin. Her eyes trailed upward to find something that looked human but not. Like a walking corpse, the thing had heavy lines etched into its face and red tattoos adorning his forehead and cheeks. Sickly yellow eyes were bathed in the darkness of a heavy brow and seemed to bore into her, straight into her mind.

Reflexively, she shivered.

“I hear you’re quite the pilot,” the thing said to her, his fingertip still lingering beneath her chin. “They say you’re unnaturally good.”

Hera swallowed hard but said nothing.

The thing smiled faintly at her, brow furrowed in confusion as it studied her. “It’s alright child. There’s no need for formality here. I can hear everything you want to say anyway, so there’s no use in keeping it to yourself.”

“Then why would I need to speak if you already know?” She muttered, her voice as icy as the thing’s touch.

“I assure you young lady, talking will be much more comfortable for you than me having to drag the answers out of you.”

She regarded him for a moment and tried to ignore the terror that he sent flooding through her body. Something dark seemed to radiate from him and into her, even into her mind, “You haven’t asked me a question.”

It smiled again, this time as if it were pleased and not quite so dastardly. “I suspect that my time here has been wasted,” he pronounced, dropping his hand to his side. “Your instructors were concerned about your ability to run a simulation so efficiently.”

“It’s not my fault that they think that humans are the superior race,” she muttered, “or that they managed to find the lousiest pilots in the galaxy to recruit.”

The thing chuckled at her words, “Indeed. Though, some may consider your abilities to be influenced by something more unnatural.”

Hera’s brow crinkled in confusion, “Influenced?”

“Influenced,” the thing repeated. “I am the Grand Inquisitor. The Emperor himself has tasked me with finding individuals throughout the galaxy who may be gifted in the ways of the Force and to deal with them. It seems your skills have drawn the attention of many and there are some who believe that you may be one such individual.”

“Oh please,” she snorted, “you think if I had some sort of Force powers that I’d still be at this academy?”

The Inquisitor smiled, “Sometimes the Force can manifest itself in mysterious ways, young lady. Higher levels of physical performance, strong empathetic responses, unusually adept skills at things such as piloting.” His voice trailed off and he studied her.

Something seemed to tug at her mind, like the Inquisitor was pulling at her own memories, indexing them as his own. She flinched and gritted her teeth. It was invasive and she thought to herself that she’d rather have her lekku yanked than be subjected to this Inquisitor’s invasive –

“I do apologize, my child. Part of the job,” he finally said. The grip on her mind released and he stepped back.

“I doubt you are,” she muttered, looking away from the creepy being. Convenient that they use something less than human to do their dirty work.

Not much different than what they were planning for her if she ever did graduate from the academy.

“No,” he said and he tried to evoke something that sounded genuine in his tone, “it’s truly unfortunate when I’m called to such tasks for an individual what’s clearly unaware to the Force. Your gift is real. One day, you may be the best pilot the Empire has ever seen.”

“I could have told you that without you trying to poke around in my head.”

The Inquisitors grin grew. It was hideous and bone chilling. He waved his hands over the contraption she’d been strapped down to and the shackles released, “It’s fortunate. You’ve got quite the spirit. I wouldn’t have enjoyed eliminating such brilliant potential from the galaxy.”

There’s plenty of people that wouldn’t care if you did, Hera thought to herself.

Thinking was her problem.

“A word to the wise, dear child. Remember those that are in your company and what they’re capable of,” he tapped the side of his head. It was his way of reminding her that he could hear her thoughts.

This time she didn’t think what she was saying, “They need to be more worried about what I’m capable of.”

This time the Inquisitor’s smile didn’t scare her; it empowered her, “And so they should.”

-

The next morning that the troopers came for her, Hera presented her arms to be bound but no binders were placed. She dropped her hands back to her sides, spine straight and chin high and followed them down the hallway and to her class. When they deposited her, they said nothing. No derogatory terms, no uttered mentions of her species in her direction.

That would be the last time that she saw them.

The went through the same gauntlet as every other day except she was the first in the simulator. She didn’t leave the pod until the end of the session when she’d bested Goran, and the rest of her class, once again. The once lecherous gazes cast in her direction were now glares laced in contempt. They only fueled her fervor. Skerris said little to her but she could sense the interest that he’d taken in her.

Manuals were given to her during didactic lectures. Though she’d never been given actual copies before, she knew the material from paying attention during classes. When the day drew to a close, rather than being ushered to the turbolifts, she was directed to a bunk of her own. For the first time in a long time, she felt her heart gripped with happiness; she had a window and beyond the transparisteel, a gorgeous galactic night sky.

The bed itself was unnaturally soft after months spent sleeping against a durasteel slab. Instead, she found herself tucked in the sill of her window, eyes fixed on the stars. For a brief moment, she allowed the constellations to guide her eyes in direction of home, of Ryloth. But it wasn’t home anymore.

How many months had she been here?

To her parents, she was nothing more than a memory.

They had wanted to say goodbye.

Nobody was coming to save her, she had to save herself.

It was that moment, finally gifted a real room and a glimpse of the stars that she loved, piled under Imperial manuals and protocols that Hera finally let go of the life that she’d known and decided to fully dedicate herself to the Empire. Perhaps it wasn’t a place where she belonged if any of the humans surrounding her were asked but it was the place that she was destined to be.

-

Hera sat in the lunchroom over a bowl of rycrit broth. Her stipend as an academy student was only half of her so-called peers; still it afforded her the nutrition necessary that the Imperial diet did not provide. She’d grown stronger for it. When she wasn’t spending time in a simulator, she was training her body as her Uncle Gobi had once taught her. Sleep no longer eluded her, the ability to excel was no longer placed out of her reach.

She was the top of her class; her skill was unfathomable, unreachable, unbeatable.

Apparently Moff Mors had received some sort of commendation for her recommendation. Hera owed nothing to the woman and she wished for her death on a daily basis so she wouldn’t have to return to the disgusting woman. The last detail she desired was to be assigned to a woman constantly cracked on Ryll.

The last detail she desired was being assigned to return to Ryloth.

Her family had forgotten her, so she had forgotten them.

Just as she lowered her head to take a bite of her steaming rycrit broth, a hand wrapped around the middle of tchin. She dropped the spoon and spun in her seat, long and elegant fingers grasping the wrist attached to the offender and she twisted their arm tight. There was a gratifying snap under her hand; with any luck, it was a broken wrist and not just a tight tendon giving way.

She twisted harder.

Cadet Benjo. Typical.

“If you want to keep flying, you’re going to need that arm. If you want to keep the arm? Keep your hands off of me,” she said coldly, grip still tight on his arm.

There were little droplets of sweat beading along his forehead.  Hera gave another twist to draw a wince out of the man’s contorted face before she let go and the limb fell limp at his side. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but she thought it looked at least a little deformed.

He limped away, holding the arm against his chest and muttering something about a crazy tailhead to himself.

Hera didn’t even try to hide a grin as she turned back to her broth and her manuals, advanced for the level she was supposed to be studying. She’d long proven that the basics were rote knowledge for her. Her classmates weren’t a match for her on any level. All they had were insults and pettiness.

Let them have their derogatory insults and their attempts at petty bullying; it was all they had left against her. One night after she’d been given an actual room, a group of the peers in her class thought they’d sneak into her bunk, try to use her the way that the Imperials generally used Twi’leks. Unfortunately for them, they learned that she was a fighter rather quickly.  

Three of them ended up in the infirmary. One of them ended up discharged from the Academy because he’d be useless as a pilot when her foot found and subsequently crushed his trachea. There’s no flying a TIE when you have to breathe through a straw.

Surprisingly, there hadn’t been any consequences for Hera. It had been pretty simple; for there to have been consequences for what Hera had done to her peers, they would have had to admit what their intentions were. Not so surprisingly, the cowards weren’t willing to admit what they had been entering her room in the middle of the night.

Now any of their juvenile aggressions were isolated to daylight hours.

Only a few of the idiots still tried to mess with her.

A couple had even tried to befriend her, which she laughed off. Where she’d once had a voice telling her that she was the inferior species in the Academy, that she would never be good enough to be them, Hera was now sure of the opposite. She wasn’t here to make friends or socialize.

She was here to be the best pilot the Empire had ever seen. She was better than them.

Relying on others in the past had done nothing for her in the past and she saw no reason to ever try to again. The only person that Hera had to rely on was herself and it suited her just fine.

-

When the end of Hera’s time at Skystrike had arrived, she had no delusions about her place in the Empire. While she was the best pilot that the Academy had ever produced, she wasn’t foolish enough to apply to any of the Imperial Officer Academies. The most she’d ever do as a pilot for the Empire was fly. Running the bridge of a Star Destroyer, even being a lowly ensign relegated to watching blank scopes for hours on end was a job for humans only.

Hera didn’t care.

In the two years she’d spent at Skystrike, she’d afforded enough respect for a helmet that was customized to fit her head. She’d invoked enough fear that her fellow students left her the fuck alone, and she would graduate with her dignity intact. The years alone had left her bitter, the razor sharp focus that she’d put into becoming a pilot cut away at any sense of duty or morals that she’d had long ago. She bombed helpless planets like the rest of her classmates.

She learned to quit losing sleep over it.

Now she sat in silence, three seats separating her and her next closest classmate. The only thing that differentiated her appearance from the rest of the group was her two lekku, tightly bound in black baffleweave. There was excited chatter surrounding her; they looked out the viewport of Admiral Tarkin’s Star Destroyer – the Executrix – as they dropped from hyperspace and back into realspace. This was their final exam, the last step between their class and graduation.

“What planet is that?” She heard from one of the students, a row of black helmets turned to look at the planet below.

Hera didn’t bristle nor did she show any signs of discomfort when she turned her eyes to look at the world that the other students were gawking at. Her spine straightened and chin lifted high. A sense of bitterness racked her bones. She responded to the people she’d spent two years alongside, one of the rare times that she spoke to them at all, “It’s Ryloth.”

-

While the rest of Hera’s classmates had been permitted to return to the Executrix to prepare for return to Montross after their successful final exam, she’d been specifically requested on the ground by Admiral Tarkin himself. There was a chill in her bones and heaviness in her heart that she fought to ignore. She’d just led a run on Lessu; she’d glassed a city center full of her own people.

Not her people anymore.

After she landed her bomber, she climbed out the hatch and dropped to the ground with ease. Her tread was easy on the ground, eyes focused straight ahead on the man awaiting her. She tried to block out the death that surrounded her; death that she had personally reigned down. Her breathing faltered with unwelcomed emotion and she was thankful for the cover of her helmet to hide any regrets that may have worked its way into her gaze.

“Admiral Tarkin, sir,” she said, giving the obligatory salute.

“At ease, Cadet.” Tarkin said, taking her in.

Hera did as she was told, arms stiff at her side in the at ease position. She felt anything but at ease.

Tarkin took small and precise steps as he paced in front of her, reminiscent of the first time that she’d met the man. “I must admit, Cadet. I hadn’t believed you to be of such superior skill the first time I met you. Even after you had proven yourself, I hadn’t believed you capable of what it took to be a true servant of the Empire.” He fell quiet and turned on one heel to face her, “However, I believe I owe you an apology, Cadet. You’ve exceeded every expectation I’ve had for you and more.”

“Thank you, sir.” Hera said, her voice firm.

That cold and wicked smile that she’d forever associate with the man crossed his lips. “I have high hopes for your service with the Empire, Cadet Syndulla. That being said, I want you to look upon this town. I want you to see the dead and the destruction and remember this. You are a servant of the Empire. This is your life now. Should you ever consider deserting your position,” he paused to motion to the destruction around them, “this is only a portion of the hellfire that will reign down on the Tann Province.”

Something, somewhere inside Hera, mourned for the time that she’d known the Tann Province as home. Her heart ached for her mother and her father, for the droid that she’d pulled from a burning y-wing. Then overwhelming anger took its place. They’d said goodbye. They’d let her go. They’d never even tried to rescue her. This death and destruction was just as much their fault as it was hers.

“I am a servant of the Galactic Empire,” she said in a steady voice, “my place is where my commander says it is.”

The look on Tarkin’s face could only be described as pleased, “Good. Very good. Moff Mors had plans for you to return to Ryloth, however I think that your skills are of better use elsewhere for the time being.”

Hera gave a curt nod but did not voice any agreement or dissent. As far as she was concerned, the further away from Ryloth she could get, the better.

“Very well then, Cadet Syndulla. Congratulations on your graduation from the Skystrike Academy. You’ll receive your assignment once we return to Montross.” Silence lingered for a long moment and a dastardly grin formed on his face before he spoke again, “You’ll understand that we cannot permit you to participate in the ceremonies given the nature of the Imperial Academy. You are an exception to the rule and we wouldn’t want to give anybody the wrong impression.”

No stranger to the specism of the Empire, Hera didn’t shirk, “Yes, Admiral. I will await my orders.”

“Very good, Cadet. Dismissed.”

Hera spun on her heel with military precision and walked back in the direction of her bomber, spine straight and head held high.

A procession or ceremony wasn’t necessary for her. She’d proven her skills as a pilot and put the rest of her class to shame. Despite the fact that she was a Twi’lek, that she was considered the inferior race, she’d proven herself and graduated a system that was erected against her.

When Hera was young, she’d dreamt of being a pilot. She dreamt of living amongst the stars and flying far, far away from Ryloth.

As an Imperial, she’d done just that.

Chapter Text

Hera's decision to be satisfied with being the Empire’s best pilot quickly lost its allure when Hera realized that she’d simply been relished to a different life of Twi’lek servitude; personal chauffer to stuffy Imperial VIPs. She’d run hand full of successful campaigns against unruly worlds before her seemingly permanent assignement, she’d actually taken over the run on one planet that a troop couldn’t handle glassing their homeworld. Not only had she been able to complete that mission without complication, she’d also dragged in the defector who was allegedly trying to align with a rebel cell.

Dumb idea, buddy.

Despite her success and her efficiency, respect would never be made available to her in the Empire. She could secure the galaxy for the Emperor himself and she’d still just be a gifted inferior species. It was living amongst the stars though, when she wasn’t grounded dirtside with people who had purchased their influences with the Emperor, and that kept her going. When she’d first graduated, it was the thought of her parents’ lives, of the Tann Province that had given her drive. It was the reminder that she was keeping her home from being glassed that helped her sleep at night after she’d carried out less than savory things.

Perhaps there’d been a part of her that thought her parents would find a way to reach out to her after she graduated. Perhaps there’d been some sort of longing that she’d felt as a naïve sixteen year old girl; one that had clung to the idea that when she was able to travel the galaxy more widely that her parents would find her. Now eighteen years old, she knew that she truly had been nothing more than a memory to them. Even when she’d seen Twi’leks on other words now, anger simmered just beneath the surface.

There were a prominent species, true, but she’d seen members of her father’s cell. She'd seen plenty of people that should have recognized her. The rare times that those people ever cast glances in her direction, they immediately turned their eyes away in shame. Fear. Embarrassment.

She’d betrayed her people.

Those Twi’leks were lucky they hadn’t crossed her on a bad day or she would have hauled them in simply out of spite; out of the need to send a message to her parents that she was still there and that she was just fine without them.

“Approaching Gorse,” a dark skinned woman announced from the bridge of the Ultimatum, drawing Hera’s attention back to the task at hand. Captain Rae Sloane, or at least temporary Captain Rae Sloane, was preparing their Destroyer to settle into its vector out of orbit.

Sloane was one of the few Imperials that Hera respected even if Captain Sloane didn’t seem to respect anybody except for herself. It was rare that a woman was able to ascend the ranks so quickly without the influence of money or political power. Captain Sloane, just like Hera, was the exception to the rule. Sloane didn’t seem to mind having a Twi’lek amongst her crew, either; not as much as some of her other commanders had.

The woman even looked the other way when Hera had given into her proclivities of dropping a few of her Imperial counterparts with her blaster, on stun of course, when they’d decided they’d mutter obscenities or make unwanted advances at her. Some of her other commanding officers hadn’t been so gracious and Hera had seen enough time inside a brig for her itchy trigger finger and low tolerance for disgusting human behaviors.

Hera stood at the ready now, helmet pressed into her side as the planet flashed into view. It looked like a ball of mud, rolled together by hasty hands with fault lines along the nightside of the planet that were easily viewed even from the outer atmosphere. From what she’d studied in the gazetteer, the day side of Gorse was completely uninhabitable due to the burning hot son and lack of planetary rotation. Hanging just beyond the planet though, was a true sight to behold – and one that nearly took Hera’s breath away.

Cynda, the moon had been called. It shimmered like a jewel in the night, a radiant hue of crystalline blue that glimmered in the starlight. The holos she’d seen demonstrated an even more stunning interior with large crystal pillars that provided illuminated caverns that glittered on the interior of the moon. The planetary body was so large that it had nearly been classified as a double planet in the system. Once a tourist destination in the days of the Galactic Republic, the moon had now been converted into an active mining site for Thorilide; one of the essential components in granular solid state shock absorption for the turbo lasers aboard Star Destroyers.

Hera had made it a point to understand everything that she could about the systems that she traveled to. Not that anybody ever asked her, nor did they expect her to know. Even when she was able to supply the information to clueless captains or commanding officers, she’d rarely earned more than a sneer rather than recognition for being prepared. It didn’t stop her from absorbing every ounce of information that she could, from committing to memory every obscure and random fact about the objective at hand.

Even if she was no more than an overqualified chauffer.

Perhaps she’d gone from a naïve sixteen year old hoping for her parents to save her to a naïve eighteen year old dreaming of the day that somebody would see beyond her race and recognize that she was too good to simply be a competent chauffer. She was more than good enough to earn a spot at an Imperial Officer's Academy. She could be enough to command a Star Destroyer one day.

Looking out at the flow of traffic between the planet and the moon, Hera scowled. Her normal job would not be easy with the number of idiots beyond the viewport that drove their freighters as if they’d never sat behind the yoke of a ship before. There was a constant ebb and flow of the traffic, ships flying over each other, nearly colliding into each other – one had even scraped the Ultimatum, something that Captain Sloane hadn’t taken kindly to.

After Sloane had issued a warning to the unruly and inept freighter, their nearly inhuman guest had boarded their ship a week ago took the opportunity to exert his position over Captain Sloane. His voice sounded like something out of a bad horror holo; booming and tinny, projected from his throat rather than his mouth. Somehow, the creature was considered to be one of the Emperor’s most relied upon men and yet he was barely human.

Sure, the thing had started out human; but after a bought with the fatal Schumer’s syndrome, he’d become more machine than man.

The twinge of jealousy that Hera felt that he was able to command such respect without being a full member of so-called superior race was just as quickly quashed out when she could see the disdain of the bridge staff cast in the cyborg’s direction. For the first time that she could remember in her time with the Empire, she wasn’t getting the nastiest looks from the staff on board.

Captain Sloane turned to Hera, “Ready the shuttle. We’ll depart for the moon on the half hour.”

Hera gave a salute and affixed her helmet, slipping the hinged thing over the top of her head where two exit holes had been created for her lekku. She clasped the helmet into place and affixed her oxygen tubing before departing the deck. Where most troopers complained about their Imperial uniforms, Hera appreciated the anonymity it brought her. With her lekku bound tightly in black baffleweave, most of the Imperials that she encountered didn’t seem to notice that she was different when she was in full gear – mostly because none of them truly paid attention to their surroundings.

It was one of the few times that she actually earned the respect of her rank; Lieutenant wasn’t exactly a rank of honor but it was better than ensign or nothing at all. 

Anonymity suited her just fine.

-

Hera kept the engines warm on the Lambda class shuttle as she’d been instructed. Rather than taking in and marveling at the upper levels of the manmade hangar bay, latticed Thorilide crystals creating a spectacular glitter, Hera watched the comings and goings of the personnel. There were many species that she’d seen; some Devaronians, Rodians, Neimoidians, and even a Besalisk that appeared to be in charge of an operation on the moon. There were a few humans too; most of them looked to have seen better days with yellowed skin or battered bodies that were likely a result of fighting in the Clone Wars or drinking themselves stupid. Few of them looked to be worth any of her attention but at least two had stood out to her as a potential problem.

The first was a short human male who limped along. He had permanent lines of distress etched into his face and a hand that was curled into his side in an unnatural grip. His face was pock marked and he had streaks of pink skin, scars of an indeterminate age, that looked raw against his ruddy flesh and auburn hair. He’d drawn her attention due to his obnoxiously loud voice, the way he waved his good arm around like a madman. He’d been carrying something – a toolbox.

Hera saw no obvious weapons on him.

The other that had drawn her attention was a human male; tall and lean with dark hair, almost black. He looked unusually put together for the characters that she’d seen coming and going from the mines. There was a scowl of disgust that drew his heavy brows together as he unloaded his own freighters – one that she suspected was secondary to the raving lunatic at his side. Her suspicions were confirmed when she saw the taller man grab the crazy one by the collar of his shirt, spit flying from his mouth as he yelled at the stark raving man.

Both of them disappeared into the turbolifts, the toolbox still drawing Hera’s attention. The wretched shorter man didn’t seem capable of fine labor given the curl of his hand. She’d keep an eye out for his return. There had small pockets of resistance slowly surfacing around the galaxy and though she doubted that the man – no doubt suffering from some form of psychosis by his mannerisms – had any potential to do real harm, but he was worth keeping an eye on. The taller man, however, she took minimal interest in behaviorally.

It was something else that caught her eye about him. Something that she couldn’t quite lay her finger on. Her intuition, however vague, had rarely led her wrong when it came to countermeasures against the Empire’s operations and those who thought they had it within them to overcome the might of the Galactic Empire. Her instinct told her to keep an eye on both of the men, no matter how benign the other one seemed, and she would continue to do so.

Hera settled back against her seat, watching through the transparisteel of the viewport at the tall man’s freighter as he reappeared. His eyes seemed to slide back to her shuttle for a moment and he regarded her through the window. For once, Hera wished that her helmet had been off because she would have glared at him to put him in his place for even thinking it was okay to stare at her, at an Imperial.

He disappeared into the freighter for only a moment and then re-emerged, a case of some sort strapped to his thigh.

If anything went south, she officially had her first suspect. Or perhaps second, considering the other less stable man she’d seen moments ago. Hera stared him down while he loaded his hovercart with more explosives. He was the only pilot loading his own cart; another reason for suspicion. The rest of the pilots stood around waiting for the inept loader droids that seemed to be moving at a space slug’s pace.

Before he disappeared toward the turbo lift again, he turned to look in her direction with a smug grin on his face and he gave a two fingered salute.

Humans, she thought with disgust contorting her features beneath her helmet.

Time seemed to drag on slowly and Hera wondered exactly what could possibly take so long to tour the caverns of a mining facility. This man, Count Vidian¸ who had been exulted as an efficiency expert did not seem to move with efficiency at all. Just as she considered utilizing her comm link to call to Captain Sloane to assess for any needs of assistance, a large explosion from below rocked her shuttle. Hera sat up with a start and opened the throttle on her ship. She lowered the ramp and waited expectantly for their envoy to return – hopefully to return. Without knowing the insides of the cavern or where the explosion had occurred, Hera was powerless to do anything but wait. It was expected that she would wait.

Small crystals seemed to fall from the ceilings above, no more than little pebbles that bounced harmlessly off of her shuttle.

Moments later, Vidian and Sloane appeared, their detail of troopers in tow. As they clamored aboard, Sloane was not as cool as Hera had expected that she'd be. She was showing her age; or lack thereof compared to other commanders. Before Hera could pull back on her yoke to bring the shuttle to safety, Hera noticed the man, the shorter one with the stability issues slinking along side the cargo ship she’d been watching. He still had his toolbox in hand but he looked rougher than only a half hour earlier. He glanced around before he slipped into the freighter.

She was easing backward out of the hangar when she saw the taller man, the odd case still strapped to his thigh holster rushing for the safety of his ship, eager to get off the moon moreso than the other workers who seemed to be lingering in confusion.

Gotcha, Hera thought to herself. Ultimatum was only minutes away from the moon. She could land the Lambda, hop into a TIE shuttle and catch up to the battered hauler before they’d even known what hit them.

“Captain Sloane, permission to disembark and take one of the shuttles upon arriving back at Ultimatum. I believe that I can produce the suspects responsible for the incident that just occurred,” Hera said calmly.

Wary eyes lighted on her for a moment and then Sloane gave her a curt nod, “Permission granted.”

“I saw no suspects,” the mechanically modulated voice declared from behind Hera. “I am able to monitor surveillance systems at all times within these facilities.”

Hera’s spine straightened. She was not allowed to directly acknowledge these favored guests of the Empire, only her commanding officer. She felt Sloane’s gaze, still fixed upon her. Sloane may have been young, she may have been more than willing to compromise some of her intelligence for a chance at promotion, but stupid – she was not.

Rather than vouching for the work that she knew Hera to be capable of – not that anybody ever did – Sloane merely responded, “I have multiple apt pilots at my disposal Count Vidian. One can be spared to investigate the cause of that explosion.” She paused for a moment and turned to regard the Count with what Hera knew to be cold contempt but could just as easily be disguised as Imperial Poise, “Of course, unless you have certain preferences in your pilots, my Lord.”

A sickly feeling crept through Hera’s stomach at the insinuation in Sloane’s tone. Perhaps the woman didn’t mean it, wasn’t trying to insinuate it, unless you want the Twi’lek around, but it’s what Hera heard. It’s what Hera was accustomed to. She was an overqualified chauffer and a visual treat.

“Do what you must, Captain. Just don’t waste my time,” the cyborg finally pronounced, threat lacing his heavily modulated voice.

The permission was granted just in time too, for Hera was already landing in the hangar bay of Ultimatum. Only meters away, a TIE shuttle awaited. While she would have preferred the bomber, bringing back a living suspect would be preferential to Captain Sloane and her bomber wouldn’t suit that.

It had been a while since she’d had a chance to work out some of her aggressions on unruly citizens that would oppose the Empire – okay, if she was being honest, she generally cared if they opposed her, but she could blame it on opposition to the Empire.

She was looking forward to it.

-

The ancient freighter hadn’t been difficult for Hera to locate upon departing Ultimatum. There wasn’t a pilot in the galaxy that could outrun her, let alone a mediocre suicide flyer in a freighter well past its expiration date.

“Unidentified Freighter, this is TK54981 of the Imperial Navy. You are hereby instructed to follow vector point four-two for landing and boarding. Repeat, this is TK54981 of the Imperial Navy, requesting heading vector four-two for landing and boarding by order of the Galactic Empire,” Hera broadcasted with an air of authority into her comm, certain that the decrepit freighter was receiving her transmission loud and clear.

The pilot’s erratic flight pattern was evidence enough that the message had been received. The pilot ahead of her seemed to speed up for a moment and then slow down and then continued along the vector with no sign of slowing their assent.

“TKNumbers, huh? Do you have a name?” The voice came back over her comm.

“Excuse me?” Hera asked in an annoyed tone.

The pilot’s voice came back over her comm, smooth as if he were some human piece of waste trying to pick her up in a cantina, “I was just asking you if you have a name. That’s an awful lot of numbers for a guy to remember. Especially after such a long day.”

Hera glared at the comms, “Continue to follow vector four-two, pilot.”

The freighter started to slow and for a moment it looked as if it would veer off course but the pilot maintained. After a few moments of silence, the baritone voice echoed into her cockpit again, “So, TK Numbers. What’s a fine Imperial girl doing out on a night like this? There’s all kinds of dangerous people lurking about.”

This was new for Hera. Generally it took less than a threat of being boarded for pilots to stiffly maneuver to the ground; or erratically try to fly away and then be shot out of the sky. Her fingers were itching at the trigger of her control yoke, already fed up with the pilot on the other side of the comm. “Maintain radio silence and remain aboard your vessel until instructed otherwise,” she finally said coolly. There was no way she was letting this roughneck throw her off.

She had a job to do and she’d return with the people she was certain responsible for the explosion on Cynda. There was definitely some part of her that believed if she worked hard enough, brought in enough agitators, that she'd be seen for what she could be and not what she was.

Hesitation still seemed to halt the bulk freighter until finally, it had landed on the ground just outside of the Imperial Port. Hera leapt from her TIE quickly, half expecting that her obnoxious pilot would make a run for it but there was no movement from the freighter. She drew her combat pistol from the holster at her thigh and lifted it to take aim on the cargo bay door.

There was still no movement from the freighter, not even the sound of movement inside.

“Exit the freighter,” she spoke into the comm link on her wrist, “slowly.”

Still, there was nothing.

Not generally one to give a last warning but also well aware of the strange toolbox that the short and crazy human had along with the peculiar case that the taller man was carrying, Hera decided a final warning was warranted if only to prevent another potential explosion. She pressed the link on her wrists to speak again but the door finally started to groan, the sound of aged durasteel in dire need of lubrication.

The tall man came out first, case still at his thigh and hands in the air. There was a smug grin on his face, “Don’t shoot. I’m harmless.”

Hera kept her blaster leveled on him anyway and responded in an even voice, “Keep your hands up and your mouth shut.”

The grin widened and he made a show out of raising his hands higher.

“Where’s your other passenger?” She asked, watching the smarmy bastard over the top of her blaster.

For a long moment he made a show of keeping his lips pressed together with his hands held high toward the stars. The man was just begging to be shot.

“I asked you a question, pilot.”

“In order to answer a question, I’d have to open my mouth,” he drawled and gave her a wink, “I wasn’t sure what I should do.”

With her blaster still aimed at the mouth, Hera shifted her gaze toward the freighter and she heard the pilot at the end of her blaster shift. She turned her head back to him, “Don’t. Move.”

“Oh, I’m not. I just noticed – you’re not like the other Imperials I’ve encountered before,” He made a motion to his head, referring to her lekku. “Seems like they’re finally stepping up their game. Not that I’m complaining. It’s only too bad that they make you wear those helmets.”

Hera flipped her gun to stun. The pilot was ten seconds away from being dropped, “I’ll ask you again, where is your friend? I saw both of you on the moon. I know he’s aboard the vessel.”

“Oh that guy?” the man smirked, “He’s definitely not my friend. I was actually hoping to turn him into the Imperials. He’s a real pain in the – well, y’know. He’s stuck in the passenger seat if you’d like to retrieve him, take him back to your – “

Before the man could finish his sentence, the psychotic little man that Hera had seen on the moon appeared in the doorway, some sort of device in one hand, large toolbox clutched in his other mangled hand. His mouth had barely opened to speak and Hera pulled the trigger of her blaster, dropping the short man to the ground.

The taller man’s eyes widened and he took one step back toward his freighter, “So you like skipping straight to the point, huh? I like that in a girl.”

“Move again and I drop you too,” she said carefully, reaching with one free hand to loose a pair of binders in a pocket on her thigh.

His eyes slipped to her hand at her side and then back up to her helmeted hand, “Look lady, I brought you the guy who did his thing. Maybe you just take him back to his boss and you and I can go some place fun. My treat.”

“Hands,” Hera pronounced, advancing toward him with slow and intentional steps, “now.”

Before she could take two steps toward him, he bolted toward the aft of the freighter, leaving his friend slumped over at the ramp. He was fast, almost preternaturally so. Unfortunately for him, Hera was used to runners. She fired off two rounds in his direction, just barely nipping at his heel before she ran after him.

It had been just enough to slow him down but not stun him.

Hera sprang from the ground and into the man’s back, slamming him face first into the muddy ground. There was no doubt that he was bigger than her and weighed more than she did; she may have knocked the wind out of him but he wouldn’t be holding still for long. She kept her blaster trained at the back of his head.

“Y’know usually I like them feisty but this time – “ he started to groan and then fell silent before he could finish his statement as she brought the butt of her blaster down on the back of his head.

Humans.

-

The smaller man, while stocky, had been fairly easy to shove into the cockpit of her tie shuttle. She didn’t bother with the toolbox grappled in his mangled hand; the device in his other hand appeared to be a remote control detonation device. She left it aboard the freighter after she'd managed to pry it away from him. She’d let the other troopers deal with it and if they blew themselves up, that wasn't her problem. In his pocket though was a holodisk, though. That, she wasn't going to leave behind. Hera held it between two fingers, eyeing it warily. What was a common agitator that seemed more than a little crazy doing carrying around data on his person? Had it been part of a larger plan or directive?

She’d deliver the information to Captain Sloane personally.

The remaining man, however, left Hera uncomfortably interested. She’d put him in binders attached to her shuttle while she searched the freighter. There wasn’t much of interest there; only a bag of clothing and a couple ration bars. When she came back out, he was still slumped against her shuttle but his head was rolling back and forth as if he were coming to.

Hera knelt before him, pinning his legs into the mud with her knees. She plucked his blaster from the holster and turned on the safety before dropping at her side. Her fingers reached out to the case on his opposite thigh to grasp it and he stiffened beneath her. She looked up at him to see his chin lifting.

“You don’t want to look at that,” his voice was strangely even, a steady and calm tone.

The complete opposite of a man who’d been caught in a terrorism conspiracy should sound.

“Oh, I believe I do,” she answered, reaching down to unclasp it from his thigh.

“You really don’t want to look at that,” he said again and this time the steady and calm tone sounded just a little more desperate. His pheromones gave off fear.

Hera pointedly unzipped the case before him and she peered down into it. Her brow furrowed. It didn’t appear to be a detonation device but she couldn’t quite make out what it was, not under the cover of her helmet. Using one hand she reached up to unclasp the thing, then she unhinged it and dropped it to the side. Her eyes were focused on the large silver contraption; almost some sort of a cell and then a smaller second piece detached from it. They almost looked like they should fit together but she didn't bother. Somebody else could deal with it.

There was another piece in the case, something blue and gold in the shape of a cube.

“Whoa,” her captive said before she even had a chance to ask him what the hell he was carrying.

When her gaze met her captive’s he seemed awestruck. “I suppose if I’m finally going to go, this is definitely the way to do it.” The smug grin on his face had faded into a sad smile.

There was something different about the way that he looked at her compared to the way that she’d seen other humans look at her. It wasn’t lecherous or contemptuous. It was something strangely gentle. She decided she liked it less that the other gazes. She pulled the thing from its case, “What is this?”

“Not a bomb. Which means you can let me go,” he answered, his gaze still leveled on hers.

Hera snorted, “Not going to happen. You’ve got some questions to answer.”

“I can answer all of your questions right here,” he offered and then let a grin pull up one side of his mouth, “or you could let me collect my final pay and then I could take you somewhere nice. Not that there’s much nice on Gorse but I know a few places.”

“The only place you’re going is to the brig,” she said in a firm voice, zipping the case back up but keeping it in her clutches.

The man visually grimaced, his unusually blue-green eyes darkening just a bit, “I’m not really into bondage but – “ he paused and raised his eyebrows. It didn’t change the look of desperation he tried to hide under his miserably failing charm, “I could make an exception for you.”

Rolling her eyes, Hera pulled her blaster from her holster and leveled it on him. She gave no warning before she pulled the trigger.

He slumped again, arms draped over his head where his binders held him to her ship. There was a badge attached to a lanyard around his neck and she reached out to examine it.

Moonglow Refinery it read at the top and just beneath that, a name.

Kanan Jarrus.

Chapter Text

The short and angry loudmouthed human hadn’t lasted long once coming aboard Ultimatum; the peculiar Count Vidian had seen to that. After that, however, Vidian was insistent upon visiting the refineries of the planet in person rather than meeting with them via holo as originally planned. She could see how plainly annoyed Captain Sloane had been at the request but there was something else beyond that – something that Hera couldn’t quite read. She wondered if it had to do with the information that the crazy human had been in possession of.

Hera had immediately turned over the holodisk that she’d found on the now dead man to Sloane upon her return to Ultimatum. A part of her had been curious as to what was on it, if she’d found the key to discovering another set of plan for insurgents or something more significant than just a madman who had explosives. Sloane gave no indication to Hera what the disk contained and she suspected that she would never know.

Even if she had assisted the Empire in uncovering a larger plan of insurgency, Hera would never get the credit. If she’d discovered anything of import at all, Sloane would see the promotion for it. Just like Sloane would get the glory for the other human Hera brought in; the one that, despite the fact that surveillance had determined that he hadn’t been responsible for the attack on Cynda, was still something of high value to the Empire.

There were whispers in the corridors the first few hours that the man had been on the Star Destroyer, speculations and nonsense about him being a Jedi. Hera had thought it ridiculous; the Jedi had been executed years ago. The idea that one could have made it that long under the rule of the Empire was absurd and she considered, for a moment, that it was potentially treasonous to the Emperor.

The weapon he’d carried though, it was a lightsaber, at least once it was assembled into one piece.

Everybody knew that lightsabers could still be found in the galaxy, though, sold to the highest bidders by pirates and smugglers. Most of them ended up in the hands of the Empire anyway, harvested for their crystals and the rest tossed to the compactors. Owning a lightsaber meant nothing, those who sought to purchase them were just too stupid to realize it.

At least, that’s what she’d thought at first.

Then there were the other things that caught Hera’s attention. He’d been placed under the surveillance of the elite troopers, the guys who weren’t generally morons, and he’d simply been able to walk out of holding twice. Surveillance showed the troopers merely opening the door for him and he walked right out of the cell as if he’d been released. One had even given him a blaster once; it ended poorly for a couple of the troopers but he’d been subdued before he got too far.

Hera didn’t know much about the Jedi; only what she remembered of the Jedi from Ryloth. Information about their existence had all but been erased from history. Vaguely though, in some remote corner of her mind that she’d had yet to successfully quiet, she could remember those soldiers that fought alongside her father – the strange calm they possessed and the way that they seemed to come out of insurmountable situations with no more than words.

Could the Jedi use some sort of power of suggestion? She wasn’t sure.

Certainly if they could, the man – Kanan Jarrus – he would have used it on her. He would have gotten away from her. Surely, he would have been more difficult to capture.

Regardless, the Empire had a creature, some thing that looked like he’d once been a man but turned to something darker, and she knew that he possessed the unnatural powers of the Force. That thing could be able to find the truth. That man had invaded Hera’s mind before, had violated her thoughts simply because she was a skilled pilot; that was a time that the Empire was looking for a reason to prove that an inferior species couldn’t possibly be that gifted.

She’d wondered if that thing – the Inquisitor, he’d called himself – would board the Ultimatum to do the same things to the man, to Kanan, like he had done for her. She didn’t have to wonder what would happen to him if the Inquisitor did come; the thing himself had told Hera that he would have hated eliminating such a fiery spirit, alluding to the fact that he would have killed her.

If Kanan Jarrus was really a Jedi, the man was on death row.

Not her problem.

Or at least he hadn’t been.

No longer was Hera assigned to the position of overqualified chauffer for the excessive Count Vidian as he descended upon Gorse to continue his tour of the system; instead she’d been assigned to being an very angry guard. It had been Sloane’s suggestion that she stay upon Ultimatum and stand guard over the man who’d escaped two of the elite troopers. While Hera didn’t particularly care to shuttle around the creepy cyborg, she certainly had no desire to sit and listen to the mouthy human for hours on end.

To make matters worse, she’d been explicitly instructed not to shoot him, not even to stun him.

“I don’t suppose if I ask nicely that you’ll let me out?” His voice wasn’t oozing the charm that it had the night before when she’d sought him. Still, it grated on her nerves.

Hera glanced up over her datapad long enough to silently glare at him and then she returned to what she was reading; information on Gorse and how the dayside of Gorse had once upon a time been considered as a significant source of Thorilide. Only now, it was unable to be mined because of the brutal heat of the sun making the region unlivable for any human miners. Droids could have been a consideration at one time but there weren’t any available at that time that could withstand the heat on the dayside of Gorse. From what she could tell, the droids no longer existed after the Clone Wars.

“I’ll even say please,” his voice had dropped an octave and now it oozed with something more than just asking nicely.

Fed up with his insistence at carrying on with a one sided conversation, Hera slammed her datapad down on the counter at her side. “They told me I couldn’t shoot you but you’re this close to getting shot anyway.”

He laughed, a sardonic edge to the chuckle, “I won’t tell if you don’t. You’d be doing me a favor at this point.”

Hera kept her arms crossed over her chest, staring down the man strapped to an interrogation table as if that had held him before. There was still something in his expression, something that seemed sad or remorseful. It was a near contradiction to almost everything out of his incessant mouth, except for his last words. She couldn’t stop herself from asking, “And exactly why would being shot do you a favor?”

His shoulders shifted minimally, as if he were attempting a shrug, “You and I both know what they’re going to do to me. May as well get it over with.” He paused for a moment and let a grin tug up the corner of his mouths, “I’d rather get killed by a pretty girl like you than whatever they’ve got in store.”

Hera rolled her eyes. There was the guy who was begging to be shot again. “What stops you from just walking out of here like you did with the last two posted?”

“You’re not like them,” he answered, tilting his head to the side as he studied her.

Her eyes narrowed, “Oh look. You’re observant.”

“No,” he said, almost immediately with regret in his tone, “I didn’t mean it like that. I meant that you’re stronger than they are.”

Despite her better judgement, Hera let her curiosity get the better of her, “What do you mean?”

Kanan seemed to consider her for a long moment, those intense eyes of his that were such a striking color laser focused on hers. He looked at her like she was a datapad and he could just read her.

She didn’t like it but strangely, she didn’t dislike it either.

People never looked at her like that.

“That kind of stuff, it only works on weak minds. Your mind is more complex,” he explained and then quickly added, “not that I’m prying.”

Hera knew he was telling the truth when he said that he wasn’t prying; she knew what prying felt like. She shifted in her seat and considered lifting her datapad to continue to read but found herself drawn to his words, even if reluctantly. “So the things they’re saying – it’s true?”

He licked his lip and his eyes seemed to glance around the room as if looking for surveillance but certainly he’d know that it wouldn’t matter if there was. “It’s complicated,” he finally admitted, his voice soft, “I’m not what they say I am but I’m something they don’t want me to be.”

That was a feeling that Hera understood, loathe as she was to admit it. She was an Imperial, a servant to the Galactic Empire with skill beyond of those that surrounded her. But at the end of the cycle, she was also a Twi’lek, something inferior, a reluctant exception to the rule.

She let his eyes linger on his for a moment and she didn’t like the way it made her feel. Hera probably hadn’t exchanged this many words with another sentient since she’d left home. At least not in a civilized manner – no matter how obnoxious he was. “You know,” she finally said, “if you hadn’t have been carrying that thing on you, they wouldn’t have ever kept you aboard.”

Kanan’s mouth twitched in the slightest smile at her words, “I never claimed to be bright. I saw you watching me on Cynda. When you’ve lived your life on the run as long as I have, you do what you have to in order to survive. Plus, most Imperials aren’t generally that perceptive.”

“That’s because humans are idiots,” she muttered, reaching for her datapad again.

“Not all of us,” he countered.

Despite herself, Hera allowed a near imperceptible smile tug at her lips, “You just said you weren’t bright.”

“Touché,” he grinned. There was something in his expression, something that said he wanted to say more but for once, he kept his mouth shut.

Hera turned her attention back to her datapad but she remained keenly aware of his eyes on her. It wasn’t anything invasive, it wasn’t even a leer. It was something softer, more gentle than what she was used to. On occasion, she’d glance up, make a show of looking at the shackles around his wrist or the binders at his waist rather than looking directly at his face.

There had been things that she’d done in her career with the Empire, terrible things. She’d glassed her own people; sitting death watch on a man who was most certainly awaiting the end of his life should have been no different from any of the other transgressions she’d committed. Yet, she was torn. None of the people that she’d harmed before had necessarily deserved it, none of the people who had died at her hand or the cities that had burned at her ground had done anything but oppose the Empire.

But the Jedi – if he really was a Jedi – they had saved her life once upon a time. They’d saved her people.

This man, Kanan Jarrus, maybe there was a chance that he’d done more for her homeworld than she ever had.

Your homeworld forgot you, she reminded herself. She tightened her grip on her datapad, Let go of it, Hera.

Yet again, he’d opened his mouth to speak when Sloane’s voice cut through the silence between them, “Lieutenant Syndulla, you have new orders. Admiral Tarkin has requested for you to transport the prisoner. Coordinates will be went over the secure channel. You are to leave immediately.”

“Syndulla?” Kanan asked, his brows raised high on his forehead, “Like the General Syndulla?”

Hera sneered at him, “Another word and I will shoot you.” She turned back to her comm link. Hera wanted to know what was happening on Gorse that she was no longer required; sure, Ultimatum had been full of mediocre pilots but it was rare that she received a sudden change in assignment – especially from Tarkin himself. “Yes, sir,” she responded in her well ingrained response that said she'd do as she told without the annoyance at the ridiculous assignment. She wasn’t in a position to ask questions; she only carried out orders.

Glancing down at her datapad, she looked at the encrypted message coming across. Some place way too far in the outer rim; painfully close to the unknown regions. No additional crew. He’d be lucky to be alive by the time they got there if he kept running his mouth.

As best as Hera could figure, they’d apparently decided that she was the only one who wasn’t suggestible to the fool. At least they trusted her to transport him; maybe it would mean an eventual commendation or recommendation for promotion when she delivered him in one piece. Or mostly one piece if he didn’t keep his mouth closed.

Withholding a sigh, Hera drew her blaster from her hip and trained it on her captive. “It looks like you and I are going on a trip. Try not to make me shoot you.” She unbound his wrists from the table, leaving his ankles and waist shackled. Surprisingly, he held his hands out willingly for her. Hera placed the binders on extra tight out of spite for him being so fucking compliant.

Her fingers curled around the restraints at his waist and she stopped to look up at him, “You better not make me regret this,” she muttered, “you’re not the only one that’s something they don’t want you to be and it’s a lot more than my life on the line.”

He eyed her for a long moment and then gave the slightest of nods, “Obviously I’ve already been sentenced. No use in two lives going to waste.”

Something about his words seemed sincere and Hera didn’t like it. She stopped working on the restraints to open the locker that contained the case with his lightsaber and the weird cube thing; all of it to go with him. Hera returned to his shackles and loosened the waist restraint, followed by his ankles and waited for him to step down.

The prisoner stumbled forward and his hand braced against her shoulder, causing her to stiffen immediately. She poked the blaster into his side in response.

“Just unsteady,” he said, raising his hands, “sorry.”

Hera scowled, “Just shut up and walk. Emphasis on shutting up.”

He smiled and nodded, walking in the direction that the blaster pressed between his shoulders prodded him toward. At least he wasn’t talking anymore; or at least he wasn’t until they walked through the hangar bay. Angry eyes were trained in her direction and he seemed to grasp that most of them were at her, “You shot a few of these guys too?” He asked her and she could tell by his tone that he was only half joking.

“Only the ones that deserved it,” she muttered, poking him toward the lambda class shuttle that she’d been assigned.

“Says the woman who said humans are idiots,” he answered back under his breath as they ascended the ramp into the shuttle.

“Then I guess you know how many of them I’ve shot,” Hera closed the ramp and shoved him in the direction of an acceleration seat at the back of the shuttle far away from her. She waited expectedly for him to sit down.

“I don’t suppose I get the privilege of knowing our destination?” He asked, still standing before her.

Hera stared at him for a long moment before responding, “Long enough that I can shoot you and they’ll never know that I did by the time we get there.”

He grinned, all stupid and lopsided with some weird glint in his eyes, “Point taken.” Finally, he took his seat as he was told and waited patiently while Hera undid one of his wrists and reattached the free cuff to the acceleration seat instead.

She left him in the empty passenger hold for the cockpit. Hera bypassed the startups, having run a trip recently enough that they weren’t really necessary; the sooner she got this job over with, the better. Just prior to liftoff, Hera programmed the coordinates for Mustafar into the navicomputers and sighed softly. Six and a half days with that man in the back of her shuttle was going to be six and a half days too long.

The trip had better be worth it for her in the end.

Hera knew better to hope than it would be.

-

“Karabast,” Hera muttered to herself when her navicomputers started blaring. The Hydian Way Hyperspace Route had been the most promising for getting her unwanted passenger to his destination sooner rather than later; that was until the route went under Imperial blockade. The code issued to her transport was not military code but special ops. Even with her special assignment, that didn’t qualify her for passage.

Delay meant that whatever good she was possibly doing for the Empire was about to be negated because of a delay she had no control over. She sighed heavily, dropping out of hyperspace just outside of the planet Exodeen. Her attention was solidly fixed on her star charts and hyperspace directories, so much so that she didn’t notice her new guest joining her in the cockpit.

“Problems, Lieutenant Syndulla?”

Kanan had asked the question casually as if he were supposed to be out of his seat.

Hera jumped out of her skin, hand flying to the blaster that was holstered at her thigh; or the one that had been holstered at her thigh. She looked up with her brows raised high on her forehead, “If you think that I can’t fight you without my – “

He held his hands up with a slight smile of bemusement, “I’ve been back there without my binders on for at least six hours. You really think I’m looking for a fight?”

“Then do yourself a favor and go back there and put them back on before I do it for you,” she muttered, looking back to her charts.

“Travel delays?”

“I’m sorry, did I not say that in basic?” She asked, looking back up at him. “You couldn’t possibly begin to understand what I’m dealing with and I guarantee you don’t want to deal with the repercussions of it.”

Ignoring her threats, Kanan sunk into the seat next to her, “Seeing as I’m a dead man walking, I’m pretty sure that I’m going to anyway.”

Hera ignored him, eyeing the Corellian trade spine. That could still get them to Mustafar and it would only be about twelve hours later than her original schedule – at least unless there were more disruptions. She started to enter the coordinates into the navicomputers, ignoring her idiot prisoner. She’d deal with him once they were in hyperspace. He’d better hope she couldn’t figure out where he’d put her blaster as she was positive he’d managed to slip it off of her when she was pouring over her charts.

Another three hours of real space travel before she’d even make it to the Corellian trade spine.

Fucking great.

Hera checked the vectors and pushed forward on the yoke, determined to ignore the unnerving man sitting next to her. After she triple checked the coordinates, she finally shot him an irritated glance, “I don’t know what you did with my blaster but I highly suggest that you give it back to me. Now.”

A faint smile traced his lips, “Does that mean I get my lightsaber back? I promise not to use it.”

She snorted, “Right.”

“Serious. I haven’t even ignited the thing since – “ he started and then his voice trailed off. He glanced out the viewport to the portside.

Hera could see his reflection in the transparisteel. She loathed the look on his face, the contemplative and sad and pathetic and – she couldn’t even put a name to it. They were feelings that she’d eschewed a long time ago and she didn’t care to acknowledge them. Not in herself, not in anybody.

Kanan kept his back turned to her, clearly either unbothered of the consequences or unintimidated by her, “You’ve easily got to be one of the angriest people that I’ve ever met,” his voice was contemplative, his words just a quiet observation.

“I’m not angry,” she muttered.

“You realize that you even sound angry when you’re claiming not to, right?” She could hear the smirk in his voice, though his eyes were still turned to the stars.

“Quit acting like you know me. You don’t know anything about me, I don’t care what Jedi magic tricks you have – this is just who I am, it’s not – “ she started to ramble off but found that she couldn’t come up with a straight forward response to his irritating observations. It was more unnerving that there may have been a partial truth to his words.

He swiveled his seat to look at her, eyes intense, “Let’s get something straight. I’m not a Jedi. I’m a guy who was born infected by the Force and now I get to die for it. Either I give you back your blaster, you shoot me and get it over with or you just let me sit here and shoot off at the mouth so I don’t have to think about it.”

Their gazes stayed fixated on each other’s for a long time, heavy silence hanging between them. Finally he turned away from her and she felt her eyes soften as she looked at the back of his head. She studied the long dark strands of hair – not the craziest she’d ever seen – pulled back into a neat tail. His shoulders were broad but sagged instead of proud. Hera took him in, knew that he could really fight her he if he wanted to. There wasn’t a good reason he couldn’t overpower her and make his escape.

Hera knew why he wasn’t trying, though. It was the same reason that she didn’t dare try, either.

What was the point of trying to escape your reality when there was no possibility of escaping the inevitable?

Chapter Text

Hera slammed the button to close the ramp to her shuttle, pain contorting her face. “Fucking pirate scum,” she muttered to herself, tchin burning at her side. While she’d long gotten accustomed to the ache of having her lekku so tightly bound, it didn’t make them any less sensitive to low-lives who didn’t know how to fight. Just like the moron humans who liked picking fights with her on her many assignments – it didn’t take much for the more reckless gangs to see her as an easy Imperial to pick off.

They’d learned the hard way that she was definitely not easy pickings.

Grumbling to herself, she shuffled through the cargo bay, looking for the medpack. She had no doubt that the baffleweave along tchin was probably fused to her flesh from the bolt that had just grazed her lek. She’d answered the shot with a bolt between the eyes. The shuttle had only been half fueled when she had to make her hasty departure but it would at least get them off the ground and back en route.

Once she located the medkit, she stomped into the cockpit, still muttering to herself. Kanan sat in the copilot’s seat, just as he had been for the past two days. There was concern in his eyes when he glanced at the signed material along her lek. “Don’t even start,” she snapped at him before he could open his mouth.

She was in enough pain that she would have asked him to get them in the air if it didn’t seem cruel to ask him to get them back en route to his own death. Hera wasn’t sure when she started caring about what was cruel and what wasn’t nor did she care to take it under heavy consideration. She had a job to do and she was going to fucking do it.

Her teeth pressed into her bottom lip, leaving a heavy indention on it as she yanked back at the yoke and pulled them into a rapid ascent out of the atmosphere. Just a few minutes and they’d be back in hyperspace and she could deal with the searing pain along her lek and it would be fine. Hera held her breath, looking at the navicomputers, gauging the amount of time before she’d hit the Corellian spine.

Gentle fingertips brushed at the top of her lek and she stiffened.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” She asked in an angry huff, shoulders jerking away.

“You’re bleeding,” his voice was that stupid tone of gentle and resigned that she was growing to hate.

“I’m fine,” she snapped back.

Kanan used a firm grip to push one of her shoulders back against the seat; if she’d ever doubted whether or not he could overpower her, she certainly had no doubts now. “Just shut up and let me fix it while you do whatever you need to do.”

He didn’t wait for her to answer.

Hera tried to keep her focus on the stars, her knuckles blanching beneath the firm grip she’d affixed on her yoke. His hands were too gentle, fingertips too soft as he freed tchin from the oppressive baffleweave, slowly unbinding her lekku, centimeter by centimeter. The dull ache she’d been accustomed to for too long seemed to ease with each layer peeled away. He came to the area where she’d been grazed, the baffleweave fused to the sensitive skin and he lifted some gauze from the medkit, a bit of sterile water with it. Where Hera would have simply yanked at the fused material, tore away at the flesh beneath, Kanan worked delicately and patiently, using the dampened gauze to ease the fused fiber from her skin.

With that unnerving gentle touch, he applied a thin layer of bacta and then wrapped the end of tchin in soft gauze.

She exhaled a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

His fingers moved to tchun and she stiffened again, “What are you – “

“Just. Shut. Up,” he repeated, his words more firm this time. Deft fingertips loosened the baffleweave from the base of her lek, this time his fingertip trailing just at the edge of the newly bared skin as he unwound the offensive and oppressive material. While the ache that she’d become accustomed to in her lek gave way just as it had with tchin, a newer and more intense ache began to blossom within her; an ache she’d never really felt before.

With a shaking hand, she’d reached out to ease the hyperspace lever forward, sending the stars into streaks. She couldn’t move, couldn’t formulate a coherent thought. Whatever he was doing to her, she needed him to stop but she definitely didn’t want him to.

The baffleweave fell to the ground with a rustling noise. His fingertips stayed affixed to her skin, tracing the markings that she’d long hidden beneath the oppressive material.

Kanan’s voice changed somehow then, still soft and still low but sweeter too, “Why do you hide under all of that?”

“Why do you hide?” She shot back and though she wanted it to sound angry, it didn’t.

“I don’t have a choice,” he answered idly, the tip of one finger still tracing soft circles and lines along her lekku.

“And you think I do?” Hera scoffed and then she did pull away. She turned her chair to face him, stood up until they were eye to eye, or at least as close as she could get since he was so impossibly fucking tall and she was not. “You think I want to be doing this? Flying a man to his death and bound up in all of that and constantly reminded that I’m just an inferior species with – “

Her words were cut off by his lips crushed against hers in a hard kiss.

Hera’s right arm drew back reflexively, fist balled tight with intention to meet his jaw but it stayed frozen in place. Her head was spinning. This guy, this roughneck, this fucking human, this not Jedi, was kissing her. She’d never been kissed. She hated it. She hated him and the things he was making her feel and all of the things he was making her think and she didn’t want him to stop.

She felt his tongue against the bottom of her lip, trailing along her lower lip and she parted his lips to his, welcomed whatever thing he was trying to do now. The ache from her lekku were gone and whatever he was doing was spreading an ache between her thighs and low in her belly. She found herself pressed into the durasteel of the cockpit wall, his weight heavy against her frame.

Slowly, her fists unclutched and her hand found his way into his hair. She’d never really felt hair, not except for when she was tugging a handful of it in the middle of kicking somebody’s ass for being just another jerk human. His hair, though, his hair was nice. She found the tie that bound his hair back and she pulled on it, possibly too hard because he groaned against her mouth – or maybe that meant that he liked it, because his hips pressed hard into hers just after. Her fingertips wound through the long strands and she twirled it around her finger.

Everything was spinning around them, she couldn’t catch her breath but had no desire to breathe at the same time. This is stupid, she told herself. You are so fucking stupid, Hera, she kept repeating, even as she stripped away her flight suit in the mere millimeter of space left between their bodies. Their lips broke long enough for him to strip away his tunic and toss it to the ground.

There’s hair on his chest, too. It was a delightful discovery and one hand splayed against the broad span of his chest, against his well-muscled physique that had been hiding beneath the heavy fabric. There was the distinct sound of a buckle being undone accompanied by the backs of his fingertips brushing against her bared abdomen as he worked at the belt and then button and zipper of his pants. Rustling beneath them told her that they’d dropped around his ankles.

Part of her wanted to tear her lips from his, to stop twining and rubbing their tongues in the overwhelming kissing but it felt so good. She wanted to look at him, to see what he looked like beneath his clothes but she didn’t want to change her mind. He was a dead man and she was just barely alive; and yet whatever he was doing to her, it was like her heart was beating for the first time in a long time.

And she fucking hated him for it.

Then his hands began to wander her lithe body; they brushed along her sides and appreciated the curve of her breast; rough fingertips against hardened nipples, pinching gently, flicking along them until her back was arching into the cool durasteel. His free hand dropped to the place she ached the most, tracing along the slit between her legs, gliding easily against her hot and wet skin. There was no asking permission, no pause or hesitation; she simply parted her thighs just enough for him to do whatever he wanted to do to her.

When his fingers sunk inside her, she whimpered. It hurt but it felt good. Out of their own volition, her hips began to play to his hand, begun to seek out more of the beautiful pain that he was bringing her. Where his fingers shifted inside her in long and insistent strokes, she felt the pad of his thumb brushing against her, against the sensitive bundle of nerves and her legs started to tremble beneath her. Her whimpers grew louder, the ache grew more intense, her heart pounded harder, her breathing staggered.

The asshole pulled his lips from hers, those striking teal eyes boring into her half lidded gaze as her mouth hung open. He didn’t look sad, he didn’t look smug, he looked intent on breaking her – and he did. He fucking broke her. She cried out loud, hips writhing beneath his unrelenting fingers, body jerking beneath the insistent strokes of his thumb until her legs were giving out beneath her.

There was an indescribable feeling of emptiness when he pulled his hand away that lasted mere moments. The strength she knew he’d been holding back became plainly obvious when he hoisted her in his arms as if she weighed nothing, draping her legs around his hips. She felt him against her thigh, rigid and hard and what she guessed was large; she ached for it anyway.

She didn’t ache for long.

Without hesitation he eased against her, pressing inside her but only just so. Fuck he is big, she thought to herself because he was already stretching her, already invoking that dizzying and delightful pain that his fingers had brought only precious minutes earlier. That pain that gave way to her toes curling and body shaking and – he withdrew the little bit of rigid girth he’d pushed into her and then pulled her harder against him, forcing more of himself inside her with one hard and unrelenting stroke. That was the pain she wanted, this was the kind of pain she wanted to feel – not the constant pain of knowing what she was and what she should have been and what she’s done and what she should be doing. She wanted to feel nothing at all except for this idiot fucking man and his brilliant fucking cock, hammering into her and stretching her in ways that shouldn’t feel so impossibly good.

Those lips of his, those soft lips and hot tongue with the hard bristles at his chin dragged their way down her neck in hot open mouthed kisses until he came to her breasts. His mouth covered her hardened nipples, laving his tongue along her in hard and firm stripes, suckled the tender bud into his mouth and grazed it with his teeth. His hips found an unforgiving rhythm against hers, sending white hot flashes of pain searing through her abdomen, up along her spine.

Out of nowhere, her body seized beneath his weight, shuddering and halting. A strangled cry left her throat. She felt the insistent drive of his hips keep pressing insistently but his movements became more wild, less controlled. A visceral groan tumbled from his lips and vibrated against the flesh of her breast and she felt warmth spread through her low abdomen, accompanied by spasms and jerks and twitching inside her. She was so wet, wet everywhere, the insides of her thighs sticky and warm. Slowly, his hips stilled but his length remained fixed inside her.

She’d been clutching a handful of his hair in her fist and she hadn’t even realized it. This stupid fucking human male who’d just done this to her and she let him and forcedammit – she wanted to do it again and again and again. She’d never done it before and now she never wanted to stop.

Silence lingered between them, her legs tangled around his waist, his half hard cock inside her, her fist still clenching a handful of hair. His arms were still wrapped tightly around her, as if he were holding onto her for dear life.

As if he was holding onto her like she was the only bit of life he had left.

And she was.

His forehead rested against her chest and there was something that tugged at her, this man so incredibly close to her heart that it rattled her conscience. Her fingertips traced along his jaw, to the tip of his fuzzy chin – that hair more coarse than the rest -  and she lifted his eyes to hers.

The sadness was there again.

She blamed it on the pheromones or the hormones or whatever it was that he’d done to her but she let a gentle smile turn up the corners of her mouth, “I should shoot you for that.”

The sadness faded slightly and was replaced with a nearly imperceptible smile, “I guess there’d be worse ways to go, TK Numbers.”

Her brow furrowed for a moment and she realized that maybe he’d heard her last name but he didn’t know who she was. The pad of her thumb traced over his lower lip. “Hera,” she uttered softly, “my name is Hera.”

Chapter Text

Lambda class shuttles, while built for hyperspace travel, weren’t built with comfort in mind. If sleep was to be had, it was against a durasteel slab – something that Hera had been no stranger to for nearly a year – or against the floor of the cargo hold, or maybe slumped over in an acceleration seat. When Tarkin had requested that Hera transported Kanan – no, the prisoner – to Mustafar without crew, he knew exactly what he was doing. The woman would go without sleep, or minimal sleep at best.

It was just another way that he needled her, another way he reminded her that she was inferior.

Hera had reasoned that letting their prisoner pound her into the durasteel walls was her way of needling him back. It was her way of saying your academy students couldn’t take me, even when they tried, but I willingly gave myself to your prisoner. It was the only bit of power she had against Tarkin, against the Empire, against the cruel things she had to do like flying Kanan – no, the prisoner – to his end.

The wall of the cockpit could have been an accident, a not-so-innocent mistake. The way that she’d run her thumb along his lips, the way that she’d given her name to him, just as she’d given him her body – that wasn’t an accident. Each time he spoke it thereafter, the small piece of her that was left in the cold shell formed by the Empire broke. A whisper in the back of her mind that told her what she was doing was wrong grew louder with each time he said her name. Each time he played with her name on his lips, he reminded her that she wasn’t just TK Numbers or whatever ridiculous thing that he’d called her.

Somewhere, under all of it, she was still Hera.

The problem was is that Hera knew what she was doing was wrong. Lieutenant Syndulla had a job to do and a family to protect and she wasn’t this thing that Kanan beheld with such awe. She was cold and cruel and she’d murdered people – her own people – in the name of the Empire. Maybe it had started in self preservation but now? Now she did it because she was told to. She didn’t deserve his awe.

Just like he didn’t deserve to die.

The shuttle was still on course, nearly at the ends of the mid rim. He hadn’t uttered a word to her about changing her mind, he hadn’t pled for his life, hadn’t tried to overpower her. The sadness was still in his eyes but now where there’d been sadness he also gazed upon her with warmth. She hated him, she hated fucking humans and their superiority complexes and how miserably inefficient they were. This one though, he wasn’t like other humans. He didn’t look at her like she was a piece of meat, he didn’t talk to her like she was fortunate to be able to breathe his air. His eyes were gentle, his touch was soft – stars, his touch – some of the ways that he’d touched her, she’d never been touched like that. Hera hadn’t even considered that kind of touch. But the other ways he touched her – the way he clung to her so fiercely, how his arms were so strong and warm when she should have been chilled to the bone – he felt safe and he made her feel safe too.

Hera glimpsed the chronometer. Just a couple more hours before they’d have to drop to realspace and shift their course toward Mustafar. She shifted on the pile of clothing that they’d strewn their naked bodies upon and his arm reflexively tightened around her waist. He was so warm. Gently, she allowed her fingertips to trace up the fine hair along his forearms, soft and sparse. It dissipated as it came to the curve of his bicep, well sculpted as if etched by an expert hand. She made it to the top of his shoulder, the slight notch where the joint met the broad span of his back and then if she moved down, over the dip of his clavicles, she’d find that patch of hair, thicker than his arm, that spread out over his well-chiseled chest. It wasn’t the same as the hair of his head – she couldn’t pull it or twirl her fingers around it but for some reason, this was the spot she liked most.

Splaying her palm against his hot flesh, her fingertips diverged in several directions, curling and tracing slowly through the soft dark brown curls. His heartbeat was rhythmic beneath her palm. The rise and fall of his chest was even but it was more shallow than only a few moments before. Slowly, she traced her eyes along his chest, along that notch at the middle of his sternum just before his throat. There was an angry red welt just above it that she’d drawn out with her lips – she was covered in similar welts drawn by the intensity of his kisses. Above that, the coarse hair of his chin, the stuff that tickled along her shoulder and her breasts when he kissed every inch of her skin that he could reach.

And then there was a sleepy grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.

If she’d cared to move her eyes any higher, she would have guessed that somewhere beyond the slightly crooked arch of his nose – likely broken a time or two – that she would have found herself lost to a suggestive gaze hidden under that distinctly heavy brow. She didn’t care to move her eyes any higher, though. She was content to stare at his mouth, to part her lips only slightly in invitation.

Beneath her palm, his heart began to beat faster.

This kiss was more gentle compared to the first time he’d kissed her. His lips closed around her bottom lip, soft and sweet, as if he were sampling the taste of her mouth for the first time. His fingertips immediately began to trace along her lekku, starting at the base and working their way down in a feather light touch. His tongue flicked out of his mouth and traced along the corners of her mouth, slipped into her mouth for only just a moment and then withdrew, beckoning her to him.  She answered the call in fervor.

The gentle kiss dissolved into desire, tongues twining and thrusting against each other, teeth closing around lips and tugging gently with insistence. His hands skimmed along her lithe waist, followed the slight curve of her hip and paused for only a moment. His body shifted on top of hers and his hands gripped the outsides of her thighs so hard there could be bruises. She tensed in his grasp; while she’d never let anybody take her in her time with the Empire didn’t mean that those fucking humans hadn’t tried. It was only an unwanted memory, an uninvited visceral reaction.

She was giving herself to him. To Kanan.

He pulled back, concern painted across his expression, and asked her in a soft rumble, “Are you okay?”

Hera gave him the slightest of nods but didn’t miss that his weight shifted slightly off of her. He didn’t ask questions which suited her just fine because she wasn’t going to answer them. His lips came back to hers for only the briefest of moments and then they trailed along her jaw, to the ridiculously sensitive flesh of her neck. The hairs of his chin scraped along her flesh and continued to move lower. A low whimper left her lips when she felt his hands start to ease her thighs apart, more gently this time, as if asking permission.

She answered by relaxing beneath his touch.

This time, his lips didn’t stop at her breasts, save for a soft and slow kiss. His lips continued downward, over the concave of her abdomen, tongue flickering out along her navel as if to tease her. Her breathing staggered as her eyes fell closed. This was something new, each time he touched her was something new, but this one had set her skin ablaze. His mouth moved lower still.

How was it possible to ache for somebody so intensely? How could her body so badly need somebody that she didn’t even know? Gentle hands splayed against the insides of her thighs, paused, and then lifted her hips just slightly from the ground, draping her legs over his shoulders instead.

“What are you – “ she started to ask, her voice vastly less breathless than she’d preferred.

The question was lost to a low moan when he pressed his lips against her in a hot and open mouthed kiss. Electricity shot through her body at the new sensation, her toes curling and flexing. Tingling traveled along every nerve to the tip of her lekku, which were starting to curl in pleasure. If she’d had more than two seconds to form a coherent thought, she’d have wondered the last time she’d felt her lek be anything but stiff and contained.

His mouth moved fervently against her center, sucking and licking, kissing and teasing. He drew her clit into his mouth and grazed it only lightly with his teeth and she gasped in delight. Every little sound she made, he seemed to be able to commit to memory near instantaneously. The sounds that she made like that; the little gasps and high cries, he used against her relentlessly. The soft whimpers, he didn’t seem content with; he’d repeat what he was doing but adjust it somehow until soft whimpers turned to something more guttural.

She felt the impending warmth and fullness low in her abdomen, that feeling of all of the tension in her body building in one delicious ache, burgeoning and blossoming and threatening to rip her away from reality. But still she ached for him. Four years of being a silent servant, of doing what she was told to do and not asking for anything more – four years of being given scraps had left her powerless. Somehow, though, with this man between her legs and giving her this unspeakable gift, Hera found her voice.

“Please,” she murmured, hand tangling into his hair, keeping his mouth right where she wanted it, “Kanan, please, I want your fingers.”

Warmth flooded to her face and rushed all the way to the tips of her lekku. She was glad that he was seemingly content to keep his face buried between her legs so he couldn’t see her embarrassment for simply asking for something. She was even happier when he responded to the request with ferocity. Fingers plunged inside her, definitely more than one because it stretched her sore muscles in delightful pain. There was something he did with them, the way he hooked them inside her, some place that he pressed against her so ruthlessly in long and intentional strokes that left her shuddering in his arms. His mouth and his fingers, and the way he groaned when she tugged his hair – something that she’d decided that he definitely liked – it all brought her to her end too soon.

Reality dissolved.

The only thing she saw was this man, this beautiful human man, with eyes the color of a sea and a gaze that screamed silent adoration, with a soul so gentle that she’d been compelled to give him the only gift she could – the gift of knowing her. When he kissed his way back up her body and their lips finally met, she was only vaguely aware of his arousal pressing into the inside of her thigh. With large and strong hands, he grasped her hips and rolled so that she was on top of him.

He gave her the power over what happened next.

When she kissed him, he tasted of salt and sweet and she sampled it with fervor. Even the edges of the hair along his chin tasted of her and she kissed him there too. In one smooth motion, she sunk onto his rigid erection, taking him in one easy stroke and she felt his heart slow beneath the palm of her hand for as if all he needed to find contentment was the feeling of her welcoming him in. Her movements were clunky and unfamiliar; a reminder that she was definitely new to this but he didn’t seem to mind. No matter what she did, he simply gazed up at her, face screwed up in pleasure.

Just as he used the little whimpers or cries or soft gasps that he made so mercilessly against her, Hera found herself using the beat of his heart beneath her hand to guide the roll of her hips into his. Though he was lost to pleasure, she was lost to him, even more lost to herself. The accelerating beat of his heart was guiding her movements to bring him to the same ends that he’d brought her to.

Not so coincidentally, it was also the beating of his heart that guided Hera to the fact that she would not take him to Mustafar.

His heart needed to go on beating.

-

Tshindral was not yet under Imperial occupation; Sullust wasn't far away and it drew greater attention. Hera knew of the planet from studying her route in the quiet hours where Kanan sat along side her, eyes closed and jaw set in grim determination. He rarely slept, especially the closer they drew to their target. Too often, she’d taken the time to touch him, to draw more pleasure from him but just as eagerly to give it back. Part of her thought of it as the only way she had of taking away his pain.

Loathe as she was to admit it, even to herself, it felt good to let somebody touch her the way that he had. It hadn’t been just the sex; it was the tenderness of his hands, the way he regarded her as an equal sentient instead of an inferior species. It was the way he talked to her in hushed tones and asked for permission and made her feel equal.

That’s why he wouldn’t make it to Mustafar.

The outer atmosphere of Tshindral was hazardous to the hulls of most ships. There were no escape pods on her Lambda, nor any orbital docks that she could simply leave him without landing. However, the planet below was no stranger to hives of scum and villainy. Kanan had made it a long time on his run from the Empire. While Hera didn’t know the details, Tshindral would be his best chances of finding another route to run, somehow to get away and never be caught again. She had a feeling that those hives had been the closest thing that he'd known to a home before he fell into her custody.

She couldn’t protect him but she could save him.

“No Imperial fuel depots on this planet,” he commented dryly, glancing around the port that they’d settled into, “no Imperials at all, actually.”

Hera was acutely aware of his gaze on her.

Wordlessly, she slipped from her seat and back to the passenger bay of the shuttle. She punched in the code to one of the lockers and withdrew the case containing his lightsaber and the weird cube. If they’d had more time, she would have asked him what it was. Her hands rested over a pile of credits; her own that she kept stashed away when she shuttled long trips and then she grasped them too. He was standing behind her when she turned around.

Him and that fucking velvet tread of his.

She thrust his belongings into his hands, along with the credits. She pulled her blaster from her thigh holster and laid it atop of the things. Hera kept her eyes fixed toward her objective as she brushed past him to open the ramp to the shuttle.

“Go,” she said firmly, “go now.”

Kanan didn’t move.

Emotions pricked at the corners of her eyes and she didn’t know why. She didn’t have feelings for him, not outside of the feelings of what she was doing was wrong by sending him to Mustafar to die. Hera didn’t have feelings of anything anymore, this was just an exception to the rule. “Will you quit fucking staring at me and just get off the damn ship before I change my mind?”

Still, he didn’t move.

The silence was stifling and heavy and it hung onto her heart with a grip like a vice. She would not look at him, she would not touch him, she would not follow him.

Kanan could still live; Hera had died a long time ago.

I want you to see the dead and the destruction and remember this. You are a servant of the Empire. This is your life now. Should you ever consider deserting – Tarkin’s words replayed in her mind every minute of every day when the small voice in the back of her head tried to proclaim what she was doing was wrong.

“Hera,” he finally breathed her name and it was like a breath of fresh air that combatted the sulfuric rancor of the planet beyond the ramp. “What will happen to – “

“It doesn’t matter. Just go. Now.”

Another heartbeat of silence and then, “You can come with me. I can keep you safe.”

A bitter laugh erupted from her lips and she couldn’t help herself. This man, this fucking idiot human, had no clue what she was or what she had done or what she was capable of doing. He’d seen her naked, he’d seen some soft side of her that died four years ago and had miraculously reemerged for a minute. He was born infected with the Force and apparently gifted with a fucking heart of gold. If he knew what she really was, what she’d really done – he would shoot her with her own blaster.

Maybe part of her wished that he would.

Hera grasped his shirt and shoved him toward the ramp, “You’re going to have thirty six hours tops to get off of this planet. I can say you overpowered me but they’re going to come looking for you. If they find you, it isn’t my fault.” She paused for just a moment, hesitation and indecision halting desire, and then she crushed her lips into his one last time. With all of the strength she could muster, she shoved him backward down the ramp and it was hard enough that between the combination of her kiss and the element of surprise sent him soaring onto his ass, credits and belongings scattering around him.

She slammed the button to close the ramp and scampered to the pilot’s seat to lift off before one of them could stop the inevitable.

There was no pausing or looking back as she made her hasty exit from the atmosphere. She programmed her computers to continue the route and sunk back into her seat. At her feet, the baffleweave of her uniform lie crumpled in wait. Tears blurred her vision as she ran her fingertips against the soft skin of her lekku for only a brief second. She bent over to retrieve the material and set to bounding her lekku back as they belonged.

Earlier, she’d thought that Hera Syndulla had died a long time ago; now she knew that she’d just died again.

But at least this time, she’d done it so Kanan Jarrus could live.

Chapter Text

Hera’s voice was cold and steady as she spoke over the comm, “Thus far, there has been no trace of the prisoner.”

That’s rather unfortunate, Lieutenant Syndulla. Tarkin was domineering, she could see the cold gaze in his eyes despite the fact that there was no projection, only his icy voice. It seemed to be a permanent expression, between that and calculating manipulation. If he was able to free himself from his binders, it’s curious that he’d waited as long as he had to escape imprisonment. Don’t you agree?

It wasn’t a question that was intended for Hera to speculate upon. It was a statement of accusation. There was only response she could give, “Yes, sir.” For once, she was glad that she only had one programmed response. Hera didn't have an answer as to why he would have waited to escape, what the logic behind the wait would have been - she didn't exactly have a plan when she'd decided that she'd do something good for a change - she'd only acted. 

There was a long pause and she tried to focus her eyes on the starlines before her. Without the prisoner, she’d assumed that she’d be changing course to return to Gorse or perhaps another core or mid-rim system for another tedious assignment. She hoped she’d be returning to another tedious assignment.

Very well, then. Lieutenant Syndulla, you will maintain your course and destination. Perhaps Lord Vader or one of his Inquisitors can assist us in retrieving the prisoner you so carelessly misplaced.

She involuntarily shivered and she felt her heart sink into her stomach. Her mind had been invaded once before, her thoughts examined and indexed against her will. Though she’d never personally seen Lord Vader, the Grand Inquisitor alone was frightening enough. They would know what she'd done; beyond setting Kanan free, they'd know more than that. The intimacy, the decision she'd made to give herself to him, all of her memories would become theirs. Still, she said the only thing that she could, “Yes, sir.”

Only a diode that shifted from red to black indicated the end of the conversation.

Though fear gripped her now, she set her jaw in determination. Hera had known what she was doing when she let Kanan go. He was a good man, a man who didn’t deserve the things that the Empire would do to him. He didn’t deserve to die for something he couldn’t control. It hadn’t been like he was speaking out against the Empire, he wasn’t waving his lightsaber around or doing anything crazy – he was just trying to live.

Hera, though, she’d done terrible things and she’d done them to people just like Kanan. She’d done them because somebody told her to do it. Maybe there had been a choice – even if her parent’s lives had been threatened – she’d killed hundreds, if not thousands of people in the name of the Empire. She did it without question.

Perhaps, somehow, this was her penance.

His life for hers.

At least then her parents would be free and so would she.

-

Lambda class shuttles weren’t built for this shit.

Hera wasn’t even fifteen minutes portside of Sullust where she’d intended to land to refuel when her shuttle came under fire. The vehicle, a Corellian freighter by the looks of it, was fast – if not unskillfully piloted – and the weapons array was impressive for what otherwise looked like a factory build. The ship itself was shaped like a gem with a bubble-like cockpit that extended into a forward gunner; the same nose turrets that fired on her now.

With well-practiced skill, she banked starboard to avoid the onslaught of most of the shots. Her scopes were alight with distress, red flashing from every angle of the console. She muttered to herself that she knew her shields were failing, that her stabilizers were compromised – Hera didn’t need the lights and sounds to remind her. She’d lost sight of the freighter, which meant it was either above her or behind her; there was no reason for the pilot to go under her; they were trying to take her out, not cut her off.

That worked to her advantage.

Throwing her afterburners to full power despite the protestations of the bulky shuttle, Hera ambled toward the atmosphere of Sullust at full speed. Either she’d land hard and live to tell the tale or perhaps she’d get lucky and find the wide mouth of one of the many active volcanoes on the barely habitable planet. The freighter would have to be crazy to follow her down at the speed that she’d set, to follow the trajectory that she’d put herself on.

If they wanted her dead, there was a sixty-two percent chance that she would do it like this anyway. The firing had stopped but her scopes still registered the rogue freighter behind her. There hadn’t been time for her to consider what they might be after; Lambda class shuttles were clearly identified throughout the galaxy as Imperial. Most sentients were too intimidated to fly too close to her even in the most cramped of skies – so either this freighter had it out for the Empire or it was the pirates she’d encountered on Woostri. Perhaps it was friends of the fool that she’d ended while attempting to refuel.

Despite her rapid descent, her pursuer hadn’t let up, hadn’t veered from the same dangerous vector she’d set. Whatever they wanted to happen, they were intent on seeing it through to the end. If she was going down, they were going down with her, apparently.

Attempting to communicate via comm would be useless. She had no desire to try to focus on her landing and scan the channels for whatever band her pursuer was following. The ground was coming at her now, fast and furious, the freighter still ambling after her aft. She banked hard to her right and pulled back on the yoke with all of her strength. She activated the rutters to send the ship sailing belly first toward the ground; she would be only a couple hundred meters shy of a broken fault oozing magma if her rapid mental calculations were correct. Hera was rarely wrong.

Rarely.

What she hadn’t taken into account was the final shot fired by the freighter that would send her shuttle lurching forward. She hadn’t taken into account the soft ash that covered the ground that sent her shuttle skidding that couple hundred meters toward the molten lava that she’d been trying to avoid; and she certainly hadn’t considered the massive edifice of stone that her shuttle smashed into that had been hidden beyond a large cloud of ash.

Hera’s body lurched forward and her chest smacked hard against the control yoke. Her head smacked into the console just before her webbing yanked her back into her seat. Blood immediately started to trickle into her eye and she weakly wiped it away. Another fabulous landing, she thought to herself and reached blindly for the latch to release her webbing.

It wouldn’t give.

Smoke began to pour into the cockpit, thick and black and heavy. The smell of burnt durasteel and plasform wafted toward her and burnt her nostrils. Hera began to cough violently, feeling her airway spasm in protest of the toxic fumes in combination with the fatal heat burning at the back of her throat. Beyond the dark of the smoke that enveloped her, she’d sworn that she saw something glowing blue; light cutting through the darkness. Certainly it had to be effect of the fumes, of the crash, of hitting her head because then there was Kanan, his lightsaber ablaze.

There were worse ways to go, she supposed. Visions of an absurdly attractive human man was significantly better than facing whatever awaited her on Mustafar. Her coughing stopped. Then there were hands on her and something pulling at her and she went into a panic. Blindly, she swung her arms at the offender, struggled against whatever had made their way onto her ship.

A voice cut through the cacophony of alarms and flames and the sound of her choked struggles; it was punctuated by the sound of charging blaster.

“I know you’re going to hurt me for this later.”

And then there was nothing at all.  

-

A tender touch drew Hera from the darkness and she shifted only slightly beneath it. She was so warm, some material – something soft and heavy –  enveloped her flesh in a cocoon of gentle warmth. Her head ached slightly but rested against a soft cushion that felt as if it were made of shimmersilk. Careful fingers traced her brow with light and loving strokes. Wherever her dreams had carried her, it felt like home.

She never wanted to wake up.

The bed that she laid upon shifted slightly and she curled into the person at her side, sought out more of the softness that the beautiful dream had brought her. How long had it been since she’d dreamed like this? Since an idle corner of her mind had permitted her a little bit of light in the years of darkness? She wasn’t ready to let it go.

“Hera,” a low voice echoed through corners of her mind; a whisper in the wonderful world her mind had concocted. She held onto the word and felt a smile cross her lips. Hera. This was the sweetest of dreams, a dream where she was the girl she was supposed to be and not the monster that the Empire had created. Hera. She was a person. Not a monster, not a murderer, not a prisoner to her parents fates.

She was Hera.

“Hera,” the voice was more persistent this time and she felt herself clinging desperately to the dream. She didn’t want to be the person the Empire created, she didn’t want the life that she’d been enslaved to. She didn’t want to live that way anymore.

She didn’t want to live –

Her eyes snapped open.

Hovering over her was Kanan, those ridiculous eyes of his boring into hers and shining with concern. Short strands of hair hung around his face that she hadn’t noticed before, the ends of them looked almost singed. Her brow furrowed and the ache in her head grew and tension wound through her lekku and they stiffened along her sides – stiffened along her –

Hera bolted up from the bed, sore muscles protesting through her chest and back as she did. Her hands flew away from his and she started a hurried surveillance of her surroundings. Her legs were bare and covered with a soft sheet, her lekku unbound, she was aboard some foreign ship in a bunk and Kanan was there.

Cautiously, he put a hand against her shoulder, “Take it easy. That was a hell of a landing but I have a feeling you didn’t take the time to account for the ash on the ground,” he said gently, “I think you’ve got a couple broken ribs and the wound on your head is still touchy but you’ll be okay.”

Her brow furrowed in confusion and she tried to think back to how she’d gotten here – she’d left him on Tshindral and she was on Sullust. How could he possibly know that she’d –

“You shot me down?” She hissed at him, her voice was no more than a roughened whisper and the words came out feeling like glass. Any further accusations were halted by violent coughing, pain searing through her chest with each gasping breath she took.

“Take it easy,” he said again and his face said he looked like he knew he’d possibly lose a limb but he reached out to her anyway, rubbed along her back while she struggled to halt the fit of coughing in front of him. She snatched a glass of water from his hands in violent haste when he offered and took a cautious sip.

“You. Shot. Me. Down.” She repeated, each word laced with venom and pain.

There was a slight grin tugging at one corner of his mouth, “Think of it as aggressively suggesting that you land?”

Though she had a million things that she wanted to yell at him, hundreds of questions she could ask him, and at least a dozen ways that she wanted to kill him. Another coughing fit halted any of it. What she couldn’t muster in words, she shot at him in an angry glare. He had no clue what he’d done.

“I’m sorry about the shirt,” he offered, “when we get far enough out, we can stop and get you something that actually fits. The rest of your stuff, I left on the shuttle to burn. I swear I didn’t do anything when I took them off; I just wanted to get rid of – “

Hera stopped listening halfway through. Her shuttle had burned? He burned her uniform with the shuttle. She didn’t understand what was happening. What had he done?

“ – and I’m sorry I shot you. You were fighting me and the straps of your seat were jammed and I needed to get you out of there.” He finally finished and seemed to search her face in earnest for some sort of a response.

Was he expecting her gratitude?

“You shot me down and you shot me?” Even her whispered words were incredulous.

Kanan held his hands up in surrender, “Hey, it’s not my fault you’re stubborn.”

She glared at him again, “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? When the Empire finds me – “

His expression shifted and he tilted his head slightly, as if examining her or trying to gauge her thoughts, maybe her loyalty to the Empire. He was smart enough to know that it wasn’t infallible; she had let him go.

Finally, he answered her, “As far as the Empire knows, you’re dead, sweetheart. And I’m the one who did it.”

Chapter Text

If looks could kill, Kanan would have been dead at least ten times in as many minutes.

Unfortunately for Hera, looks didn’t kill and she was still too pathetically weak to cause him actual physical harm. Her chest protested each breath, particularly along her right side where the webbing had so efficiently held her to her seat when she made impact – Kanan liked to remind her often that he cut her out of it, right after she hit him square in the jaw – and her throat still felt like she’d swallowed daggers. The coughing only started any time she took a deep breath or tried to do anything important like move.

Hera sat propped against the back of the bunk with her arms crossed over her chest and a permanent scowl etched into her face as she glared at him. There was a slight smile that seemed to constantly turn up the corners of his mouth when he’d glance at her; it grew bigger when she’d waste enough strength to shove his hand away out of frustration. He was unnervingly kind and a massive pain in her ass.

And, as it turned out, a bit of a drunk as well.

While liquor hadn’t ever been for Hera, it certainly did more for the pain in her side than the ridiculous tablets from the medkit. The first time he’d offered her a sip from the flask he’d kept in his pocket, she’d taken a lot more than a sip. He’d told her to take it easy and she used what bit of voice that she’d had for the day to point out that humans are lightweights and she went on comfortably numbed while he became a somewhat sloppy drunk.

He wasn’t the worst she’d seen but she’d definitely seen way better.

It turned out that he had his own pain; similar to the kind that she had, the type of pain inflicted by wounds unseen and horrors unspoken. His manifested in spectacular nightmares. She wasn’t a stranger to nightmares of her own but hers were more silent, more gripping – she’d wake slowly in a cold sweat with vivid memories of firebombs flashing through her visions. Kanan’s dreams were more violent, more visceral – he’d slept in a room across the corridor but his groans and screams carried as if he were laying next to her.

What was it that he saw when he was gripped in the dark?

Though she didn’t know much of the Jedi, Hera didn’t think he looked old enough to have been a target when the great Purge happened, especially for the amount of abuse he seemed to have put his body through. She’d seen the scars, blaster bolts that were through and through on his hip and his back.  She’d watched him drink himself stupid at least three or four times in the past week alone.

Then there were the times when he wasn’t being stupid. He kept water by her bedside. He’d somehow managed to smuggle meds that were more agreeable to her system on some backwater planet, along with some Rycrit broth and jerky like he'd taken the time to look up what Twi'leks actually needed to thrive and not just survive. He tended to the wound on her forehead with a gentle hand and a tender touch, even under her icy glare.

It’s why he was a pain in the ass.

She’d given him a second chance for a reason – she could plainly see that he was good and she’d shoved him off the ship with more than enough credits and weapons to defend himself. Why the moron had used his second chance to save her, she had no clue. If she’d had the voice to tell him he was a fucking idiot, she would have done it.

In the meantime, she would just continue to glare at him for throwing his life away.

-

There’d been a lot of questions that Hera had wanted to ask Kanan when the fits of coughing subsided and her ribs quit protesting her huffing at him in anger; the first one that came though was not the one that she’d intended to ask. Her fingers traced along the durasteel corridor, eyes drinking in the flawless Corellian craftsmanship. Most of the ship even smelled new – like engine grease and fresh leather. The lounge even had an untouched Dejarik table with plastiform coating waiting to be peeled away.

“Where did you get this ship?” Hera asked in a breathless voice and it wasn’t because of any injuries from a wreck.

Kanan shrugged and smiled that lopsided grin, “I bought it.”

Hera’s eyebrow arched, “You mean you stole it. Are you a fucking idiot?”

His grin grew wider, “If I had a credit for every time a woman asked me that, I probably could have afforded to pay full price for her.”

Her arms crossed over her chest and she stared him down; it seemed by his reaction that it was a look he was already accustomed to, “What did you pay for it?”

“I’m not sure. How much did you give me before you shoved me off your ship? That hurt, by the way. Except the kissing part. The kissing was nice,” his voice dipped suggestively and she wasn’t a fan of the way it sent a shiver down her spine. She wasn’t going to let him distract her and she certainly wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

“First of all, that was a one-time thing – “

“That happened seven times,” he interrupted her, a dark glint shimmering in his eyes.

Hera scowled but continued anyway, “Second of all, you can’t tell me that you paid fifteen hundred credits for this ship. It easily costs ten times that.”

“You never know,” he answered, leaning back against the dejarik table, “I’m a fairly persuasive guy.”

She eyed him for a long moment and then realization came to her, “You did not.”

Kanan laughed heartily, “You’re right. I only paid him five-hundred. Had to put fuel in her somehow.” His smile melted only a little when he caught her glaring at him again, “Hey, I do what I have to in order to stay alive. I wouldn’t have to if I didn’t have it to deal with – so it owes me.”

It wasn’t something she could exactly argue with, at least not the part about the Force. “You realize,” she started and inched her body just closer to his, “that you got this ship for a hell of a deal.”

His body seemed to gravitate toward hers automatically, “Mmhm. Top notch engines, lots of room. Several bunks.”

She placed her hands aside his hips on the dejarik table, lips mere centimeters from his, “I suppose I owe you some gratitude.”

The way that he swallowed, she would have sworn he was a man who’d gone without a drink for days; it was slow and hard and suddenly the man with the mouth was floundering without words. It was slightly amusing, how cracked he was for her.

Her fingernail scraped a pattern up the center of his abdomen and toward his chest, “Thanks for buying me such a nice ship.”

His head was lowering as if he was going to bring his mouth upon hers and then halted when the blood flow suddenly shunted away from his dick and back toward his brain – a place that she suspected rarely saw blood flow with him – “Wait, what?”

Hera stood back with a slight shrug, “My credits, my ship.”

“You gave me those credits!” He protested, spine straightening.

“I gave you a chance to run and you ran after me and shot me down like an idiot – so now we’re both dead,” she answered crossly, “you had your chance, Jarrus, and you wasted it on me.”

It was his turn to cross his arms and glare at her except his height and the heaviness of his brow lent to a much more foreboding presence, not that she shrank under it. “Yeah, about that, why don’t you explain how it’s a waste when it’s clear that you aren’t an Imperial?”

“You don’t know anything about me,” she spit back at him, “you have no clue what you did.”

“Then enlighten me, Hera,” he retorted, his voice edged with frustration.

Silence hung between them, so heavy it was palpable and finally she shook her head. If he knew what she really was, who she’d really been – he’d drop her at the next depot. His kind were dead because of the Empire, because of soldiers that followed orders and killed without question. She was no different than those people.

Wordlessly, she left him standing in the lounge, still leaning against the table as she returned to the cabin that she’d declared hers.

-

“Orange? Really, Kanan? Are we trying to make the target on my back bigger?”

From the other side of her cabin door, she could feel the smug grin on his face as he drawled out, “As good as you look in black, I’m fairly certain that orange is less obvious.”

Hera rolled her eyes and tossed the garish garment aside. She picked up a pair of trousers with gray webbing along them, gold in color. She held them up against her waist and frowned when they seemed like the might be too large. The color was still loud but something appealed to her about them. Carefully, she set them atop her bunk. Her hands stilled at the next pile of crap that he’d bought her, “Red?”

“You could look like Life Day!” He chortled. She could tell by the snort that preceded his laughter that he’d been waiting for that one.

“I hate you,” she muttered and pulled off the undershirt of his that she’d been wearing.

“Y’know, it took me a long time to find all that. Do you know how many cases I had to shuffle through to find stuff that looked like it would fit you?”

Hera pulled on a beige colored tunic, fitted along her upper arms but looser around the bottoms. Her brow creased a little bit. It felt bizarre, having clothing that didn’t bind her from head to toe like her Imperial clothing had. “Do you have a point or are you just making noises with your mouth to make them?” She asked, slipping the gold colored slacks from her bunk to examine them again.

There was that tone in his voice again, the tone of suggestion that made her crazy but made her something else, too. “I’m just saying, a guy goes out of his way to go shopping for you, I think he deserves a show,” the words sent a shiver down his sign.

Hera set about pulling on the pants, “I’m fairly certain you’ve seen it all before. What was it? Seven times?”

“I have an awful memory,” he lamented, “consequences of too many bar fights.”

A slight smile pulled up the corner of her mouth and she wasn’t sure if it was the fit of the pants or the thought of Kanan, drunk and furious, swinging gleefully at any fool that crossed his path. Just as quickly, she was angry with herself for even contemplating the fact. He was still a fucking idiot and he’d still put an even bigger bounty on his head, if such a thing were possible.

And he didn’t know what she was.

“Is there something else that’s supposed to go with these pants? They’re….complicated,” she said, holding a large piece of golden material up that looked like it was supposed to attach to something. There was a brown vest that she eyed, soft but obviously new – it was likely what was missing but if she could distract him – and herself – from the current line of thinking that she was on, it was for the best.

“You should definitely let me help with that,” he was still teasing through the door, “that way I know how to get you out of it later.”

Despite her better judgment, Hera smacked the control to open the hatch and Kanan stumbled inside with a stupefied look on his face. Clearly, he hadn’t been expecting her to let him in and she enjoyed this little power that she had over the not-Jedi. “I’m making this perfectly clear right now,” she said, extending a long finger in his direction, “you are not getting into my pants, Jarrus. You’re getting me into them.”

In answer, he leaned forward to kiss the tip the extended finger, his teal eyes sparkling with mischief.

Hera had half a mind to slap him but instead, she turned her back to him and finished tucking the shirt into her trousers. She shrugged on the brown vest, a little stiff feeling and then his fingertips were along her sides. Though he fumbled and obviously knew about as much as she did about how to put the thing on, there was a certain deftness to his touch that she couldn’t deny.

She was actively not thinking about being pressed into cold durasteel.

She was actively not thinking about wrapping her legs around his hips and forgetting about stupid shit like clothes.

Kanan spun her around in his arms, a dizzying move, and worked at some buttons along her abdomen too. What he’d brought her wasn’t just a vest – it was a full flight suit with armor forged of soft leather that could possibly mold to her form with time – if she even lived that long. He didn’t stop after affixing the final fastener of the suit, though. His fingertips lifted to the scarf she’d tied around her head and he slipped his arms around her neck to loosen the knot at the nape of her neck. His breath tickled the tip of her nose and her lips.

“What are you – “ She started but her mouth felt impossibly dry.

Why was he so close?

“Just trust me,” his voice was no more than a low rumble. He dropped the scarf to the ground and pulled something from behind his back that she couldn’t see; just a flash of the same off white color of the tunic, maybe a little darker.

Fingertips trailed against her lekku and her voice hitched in her throat. She cursed herself when she felt them curling up on their ends. Sometimes she couldn’t help but think that the damn things were better off bound with some of the stunts that he pulled. Then he was easing something around tchin and then tchun and she wondered if he was doing just that; placing them back in binders. Maybe he didn't understand as much as she had given him credit for.

For some reason, though, she waited. She let him touch her and tease her as he slid something sturdy but also soft along the length of her lek. After a few long moments – too many moments because her mind was going there again – he pulled his hands back. Her lekku were still free, she noticed it as soon as he looked down, jade contrasted against the off white and the brown of the leather – but they were supported too. It was a cap like those she’d worn at home. It was a cap from home.

“But how?” Hera asked softly, her hand running along the top of her head and slowly down tchun that was curling up on its end.

“Just seemed like something you needed,” he uttered, his face only centimeters from hers. He smelled of engine grease and leather, cheap whisky and the generic soap of the ‘fresher. His fingertip forged the same trail that her hand had just made as their gazes remained frozen on each other’s.

Carefully, Hera took his large hand in her smaller one; he made her feel so petite. She dragged her fingertips along the inside of his palm and his fingers extended outwards reflexively. With great intention, she lowered her head to kiss the tip of one of his fingers.

It was the closest he was going to get to a thank you.

For now.

-

The first time Kanan had let her fly the ship, she was certain that he’d been taunting her – she spent a full five minutes waiting for his terms and conditions. Hera had suspected that it involved something about trying to get her out of her flight suit and refreshing his memory. He was just a typical human male.

Except he wasn’t typical at all.

“Like you said, it’s your ship,” he simply shrugged off her wariness and dropped into the co-pilot’s seat like he was content to be there.

Nobody should ever be content in a co-pilot’s seat on any Corellian ship, ever. The only place to be on a ship of that quality was directly at the helm and completely in control. Her fingers danced over the console, alight with several different scanner arrays, the latest reconnoiter that she’d seen on the market. There was a control to mask the ship’s signal – one that she’d seen almost nine years ago.

That had been a different lifetime.

Still, it could be of use if they would make it long once they left the Western reaches of the Outer Rim. The ship was responsive, it flew smooth and perfect under the guidance of her expert hand. That same grin that she’d had to bite back every time that gravity tried to drag her down spread wide across her face as she made rapid spiraling ascents and then dove with the same grace into wide loops. Controls at the top of her yoke gave her remote access to the nose gun and she fired them off at a small asteroid sitting in the path she’d intended to take.

It turned to stardust before her eyes.

The ship had been made for her; it felt like an extension of her soul, spread out amongst the stars where she’d always belonged. Hera didn’t know a time in her life that she’d ever felt so free, not even as a child on Ryloth. Even under the shadow of the Empire, even knowing that someone, somehow would figure out that she was still very much alive and now harboring a known Force sensitive – or was he harboring her? – she still felt weightless.

Time had passed in an unknown increment by the time she turned her eyes back to his and his gaze was fixed on hers. It was that gaze that she’d seen on the Lambda all those weeks ago. The look of awe and adoration; that cocky grin of his curled up at only one side of his mouth that made him look absolutely absurd. “You were born for this, weren’t you?” The question was gentle and genuine, that façade of the carouser and womanizer withered away.

Hera answered him with a gentle and genuine smile.

Chapter Text

Hera sat quietly in the pilot’s seat, wearing only Kanan’s undershirt but swathed in a blanket and chilled. While the smaller and enclosed space of her bunk may well have been warmer – they’d started running low on fuel and lower on credits – the chair was her favorite place on the ship and the shirt, she was still working out her reasons for wearing it. She scanned over the datapad that Kanan had managed to snag his last trip dirtside on the small excursion shuttle was mounted aft.

From her time in the Empire, Hera knew that things found on the holonet were anything ranging from half truth to full out lies; bombings that they ran were declared accidents on worksites. Political opponents that had been executed were simply found dead 'of natural causes' in their own homes. Anything that she may have found on Ryloth on the holonet wouldn’t be reliable at all; but it wasn’t the information that she was looking for.

It was the absence of information.

When Kanan had shot her down, he didn’t know what he was doing. He didn’t know the cost that her life came with the lives of others and he didn't know why she’d become an Imperial. Hell, even Hera didn’t even know what would happen if she was really thought dead; Tarkin could have just as easily taken it out on her family either way. He'd threatened their lives if she defected. He didn't give a contingency on if she died. The holonet held no information, though. There was nothing on trade or the blockade or rumors of insurgents or accidents. 

Ryloth as quiet as it had been for the past four years. 

In quiet, there was probable safety.

Possible safety.

What she’d done, she’d done to protect her parents.

Hera would tell herself that every day for the rest of her life but she would never die believing it. Her father would have been disappointed in her. He would have told her to fight and resist. Her mother – it was wondering what her mother would have thought and not knowing that hurt her the most. It still hurt that they never came for her. It hurt that they wanted to say goodbye.

Maybe they were already dead.

It would have been easier to believe but somehow Hera knew that they weren’t. She wasn’t sure if that feeling brought her relief or more anger. She tried not to linger on it too long. Even as she shoved the thoughts from her mind, she knew all too well that they'd be back again soon enough.

A low groan from Kanan’s cabin echoed through the corridors and into the cockpit. Hera idly scrolled for a minute but her heart felt heavy with every sound that he made. Being low on credits and low on fuel meant being low on liquor, too. Kanan’s nightmares had always been impressive to her but since he’d scaled back on his drinking, they only seemed to consume him with greater ferocity. Once, she’d asked him what he dreamt of and it was one of the rare times that he quit talking.

Hera didn’t push the issue.

If he wanted to keep his past to himself, she was fine with that. She didn’t much care to share hers, either. They could work together and figure out how to stay alive and that would be a good enough partnership, she’d supposed. Except he was rapidly turning into something more than a partner to her, unbeknownst to him; she cared about him, she had feelings for him that she’d never experienced for anybody else in her life – let alone a human. There wasn’t a label she was willing to consider for the feelings; in someone who’d spent years trying to stuff herself into a stiff black box and a mold that she couldn’t fit, emotion was still very much something of a foreign concept to her.

Still – she cared about him.

That care was what carried her to his cabin. Even opening the door didn’t pull him from his dream. She settled on the edge of his bunk, the blanket pulled tightly around her. The curve of his biceps twitched with barely contained activity, his legs did the same accompanied by a fitful kick. His heavy brow was deeply creased and beaded with sweat. Thick tendrils of hair stuck to his sweat dampened forehead.

She frowned, reaching out carefully to brush the hair from his face.

One strong hand flew up and grasped her wrist tightly and she gasped at the preternatural motion of it all. Hera withdrew, waiting for another hand to strike but nothing came. She opened one eye to find his opened wide in terror, still hazed over in sleep. She relaxed and reached out with the other hand instead, “It’s me,” she whispered through the darkness, “it’s just me.”

The hand around her wrist tightened for a moment and then relaxed, letting her go. Kanan said nothing, only wore the look of abject horror that she couldn’t tell if was a residual expression of his dream or if it was a reaction to how he’d woken up. Either way, Hera had no plans to dwell on it. She edged toward the head of his bunk and eased her body just beneath his, gently guiding his head until it came to rest against her abdomen. Tension flooded from his body like water that had breached a dam. Her fingertips twirled through the sweat dampened hair and she stopped occasionally to scrape her fingernails along his scalp lightly; something of one of those seven 'one time things' she remembered his body responding well to.

That heaviness of fear that stifled the room when she’d entered shifted to the calm of a fading storm.

Kanan’s hand founds hers through the dark and their fingers intertwined and tangled. The touch seemed so much more intimate than anything they’d done before – but she didn’t pull away. He held to her and she held to him. The urge to kiss him struck her and it wasn’t exactly unnerving or unpleasant, just unexpected; she didn’t want to kiss him as a prelude to something else, she just found herself wanting to kiss him because she could.

Instead she held back, her free hand tracing through his hair and the other clutching his hand. She wasn’t his go-to version of self-medication but maybe until they figured things out, she could be the next best thing.

-

“I hope you know that as long as you do that,” Kanan spoke, his voice thick with sleep, “that I’m not moving from this spot.”

Hera smiled gently, fingers still running through his hair. He’d been asleep for the better part the cycle, his breathing deep and even and his body more relaxed than she’d ever seen. She’d dozed a little herself, lulled by the warmth of his body and the strength of his grip on her hand. “I’d be useless if I had hair,” she admitted quietly, “I think I’d play with it all day.”

A sleepy grin spread across Kanan’s face though his eyes remained closed, “Funny thing, I think that about lekku…except I’d prefer them to stay on you.”

It was a good thing that his eyes were still closed because Hera felt her face flush with furious warmth that spread to the tips of her lekku. Leave it to Kanan to turn a quiet and easy moment into something that made her mind go there within less than two minutes of waking up. Still, she continued to run her fingers through his hair. “The good news is that I can do this all day because it’s not like we’re going anywhere anytime soon without fuel,” she said quietly, trying to shift the subject and her train of thought. She was very much half naked in his bunk.

It would be all too easy to –

“Right. A job,” he groaned and his fingers loosened on hers, “I guess my vacation is over.”

Just as she’d opened her mouth in protest, his eyes opened too and she set her jaw again hoping that she wasn’t painfully obvious. While he’d slept the better part of a cycle she had only dozed – a couple more minutes wouldn’t have hurt anything. Finally, she forced out some sort of coherent thought, “I don’t understand this job thing. You get that the Empire is going to be looking for both of us, right?”

Kanan shifted above her until he was hovering just above her bared legs, cocky grin on his face, “You realize that the Empire has been looking for me for eight years, right?”

“Okay, fine. But now they’re really looking – you disappeared and then I got shot down? I don’t think you understand how much of a target that makes you, Kanan.” Any desire that Hera had been feeling moments ago dissipated into tension. She didn’t understand how he could be so blasé about being a high value target.

“I don’t understand how you getting shot down makes me a bigger target,” he answered and he didn’t seem bothered at all by the topic of conversation. As a matter of fact, he’d taken it upon himself to trace long strokes up the side of her thigh. He didn’t stop when she didn’t push his hand away.

Hera sighed. It was impossible to explain to him without telling him everything and she didn’t want to tell him everything because she cared about him. Telling him the truth – or facing the truth – wasn’t something she was ready to do yet. She shifted into his touch when his hand slid along the backside of her thigh and crept just an inch higher.

“Is this something you really want to talk about right now?” He asked, his voice an octave lower than normal.

Talking about it at all was something that Hera would gladly avoid but they still needed fuel and fucking for the next four hours – which would happen if she gave into him – was not going to get them anywhere. But his hand felt so good as it ventured higher to the curve of her ass and thought was quickly failing her. “Plan,” she finally mustered, blurting out the word with great pains, “we need a plan.”

Kanan gave a firm squeeze of her ass and pulled his hand away, “You’re going to be one of those Captains, huh?”

Her brow furrowed, “Captain?”

“Yeah. It’s your ship, isn’t it? That makes you the Captain,” he explained slowly, emphasizing that the ship belonged to her.

The lines between fantasy and reality were quickly blurring so she held onto the one thing that she could; her ship. They needed fuel to make the ship go, fuel came with jobs, and Kanan claimed to know how to get a job to get the fuel. Still, she decided to pay her new crewmate handsomely. “Don’t get carried away, we need fuel,” she murmured.

“Huh? What’re yo- “ Kanan’s words were cut off by her lips on his. A moan of understanding vibrated between their mouths.

She nudged his lips apart with hers, tongue running along his upper lip as she kissed him with fervor. Her fingers that had been tangled in his hair now bunched the strands in a fist, tugging gently to draw more groans out of him. When she was rewarded with his tongue against hers, she shifted her body further beneath his, rewarding him with just the slightest bit of pressure against his groin. They were not getting carried away.

His hips ground against her thigh as he kissed her with fervor. Kanan’s fingertips were pressed so hard into her hips that she’d feel their presence long after his hands were gone. Everything about him was dizzying, was devastating to her senses, and disorienting to reality.

They were not getting carried away.

Kanan seemed to remember that before she did.

When he pulled his lips from hers, her body gravitated back into his of its own accord. The mischief sparkling in his eyes hinted at the fact that he would taunt her relentlessly for getting carried away. Clearly, there was some obscure but intelligent part of his brain that knew better though because he simply raised his hand to run his thumb against her lips and said nothing at all.

Once he’d left her in the cabin, Hera sunk into the back of his bunk and let out a shaky breath that she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

Maybe the fuel could have waited just a few more minutes.

-

“If somebody hadn’t nabbed me on Gorse, I had enough credits saved up to not be in this predicament,” Kanan was teasing her and the grin on his face said that he would gladly go to perdition as her prisoner, no matter the circumstances of his imprisonment.

He really was an idiot.

Somehow he was becoming her idiot.

Hera didn’t mind.

“If somebody hadn’t shot me down, I had enough credits saved up to actually be able to afford this ship,” she answered back idly. She maintained a straight face but slid him a glance that she knew he’d be able to read as her returning his good natured ribbing. She’d been scrolling through the datapad as Kanan threw out potential systems that he’d scouted in the past for jobs.

Between her knowledge of the Empire’s operations and his knowledge of the black market and the underground, living a life of how to avoid the Empire, Hera thought they could actually have a shot at making it for more than a few days; maybe they'd make it a few weeks. That was, if they ever found fuel or picked up a job. Her finger continued to scroll idly, eyes making the occasional search for mentions of Ryloth as she did.

“Whoa,” she said, stopping as she came over an article. Her brows knitted together as she read the stories that the Empire had put out. She knew there’d be more to the story than what was listed but it was news nonetheless, “Vidian is dead.”

Kanan’s brow raised on his forehead, “Vidian? The guy from Gorse?”

“I think guy is being generous,” Hera answered dryly, “says he had a relapse of Schumer’s syndrome. There’s a related article here though, something about Cynda being no longer mined for Thorilide.”

“Huh,” Kanan mused aloud, “I wonder how that happened. Vidian was ready to kill my friend in the mines. Said he was too old and inefficient.”

Hera looked in his direction, “What stopped him?”

A slight grin turned up the corner of Kanan’s mouth in answer.

She shook her head, “You really do have a death wish or something, don't you?”

“The opposite. I had every intention of running as soon as I made it back dirtside. And then this Imperial pilot swept me off my feet. Literally,” he grinned and then stopped for a second. He looked like he’d come to a realization of sorts. “I have a contact on the outer rim, runs some smuggling operations. Milk runs, weapons, all kinds of stuff. I never did much for him before because I didn’t have a ship – but together we could pull that off.“

“While the Empire is looking for us?” Hera asked warily.

“You can scramble the ship’s signature. They’re not going to know we’re aboard and if we’re changing transponder IDs every time we come in contact with an Imperial,” Kanan countered and then added, “I mean, you’re the one who worked for the Empire. It could work, right?”

She considered it for a moment and then gave a reluctant nod, “If we spread our jobs around the systems it would be hard for the Empire to recognize a single ship. Avoid blockaded planets, stay away from the core planets.”

Kanan snorted, “I don’t do the core.”

“Okay, so say we do this – we’re still a long way from Lothal and we don’t have the fuel to get there,” she pointed out.

“Vizago owes me,” he shrugged. “Why don’t you use those fancy pilot skills of yours and whip up some fake transponder IDs while I get in touch with him? He’ll front us the fuel to get the job started.”

It was the best they could do, at least for now, and it was better than the plan they didn’t have only a few minutes earlier. Kanan left her side but not without running along a lek to send a shiver down her spine. She half heartedly batted him away and turned back to the console and the computers.

The ship was merely labeled as a VCX-100, no broadcast name, only title tabs. She frowned. Not only was displaying the ship’s model as the identifier a bad idea in general, she didn’t like the idea of any ship of hers not having a name. She threw in a few fake names, generic names that belonged to a thousand different ships. They weren’t the name of her ship, though.

Running her hand lovingly over the yoke of the freighter. It shouldn’t be hers, she didn’t even know how it was hers, or how she’d gotten here. She should have been dead, Kanan should have been too – they were two spirits, living on borrowed time.

She smiled at the thought and then entered an ID into the main input.

Being a Ghost would suit her just fine.

-

The Triellus Trade Run was a hyperspace lane that Hera knew well. It was one of the ones that her father had often used and if she dropped from Hyperspace at Arkanis, she could take the Corellian run and be on her way home instead. The idea of coming so close to home and having to stay so far away settled low in her gut, tugging at her heart. She replotted her course. There were a million different ways they could smuggle their cargo to Lothal and she didn’t have to get that close to Ryloth.

It was just less efficient for fuel.

Hera would make up an excuse if Kanan asked, though she doubted he would. He seemed content on doing whatever tinkering he was doing beneath the console while she learned the ins and outs of her ship and plotted their course. It would be a long trip but at least it would be made with fuel in their ship, food in their bellies, and caf in their mugs.

There might be some other ways to pass the time too.

Kanan emerged from beneath the console, a self-satisfied grin painted across his expression, “You want to call her the Ghost, then we make her a Ghost.”

“What are you talking about?” She asked, plotting in the last of their coordinates on the navi-computer.

“I picked up a spare part or two while I was fueling up. I’m not too sure the Umbaran starfighter that I picked them off of will be happy but I managed to wire it to make it work.”

“I still have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said archly and wondered if he’d started on that bottle of whisky she’d seen stuffed in with the caf.

“Flip on your transponder ID,” he nodded in the direction of the console.

Hera did as she was told. The screen flickered to life and Kanan pressed a button just beside her hand; an indicator blinked and her transponder ID muted. Knitting her brows together she looked up at him, “Did you just – ?”

“Mask your ship’s signal? Why yes, Captain. I did.” Now he wore the expression of a man who knew he was getting lucky later.

He wasn’t wrong.

“That’s an illegal upgrade,” she argued weakly. Hera wasn’t angry about it, she was quite the opposite. Now the ship could tail a Star Destroyer and to anybody who wasn’t paying attention to their actual surroundings, they’d be no more than another bit of solid matter amongst the stars. The ship had truly become a ghost.

“Wanna see how many more we can get away with?”

She chewed on her lower lip as she looked up at him and took the words into consideration. “I think what I want to do right now is get us into hyperspace,” her voice was low and soft, “and then we can discuss at length what we should do next.”

“It’s a long hyperspace trip,” he said, his hand covering hers.

“Almost a week and a half,” she echoed.

“Not a lot of jumps on that route,” he continued, his face dropping to hers. He was a man at her mercy and she wouldn’t want it any other way.

“It’s a lot of idle time,” Hera agreed, her gaze falling to his mouth.

Time slowed for a brief moment as if he were going to kiss her and then he pulled away with a devilish smirk, “Better get those navicomputers programmed then, Captain Hera.”

-

Hera lay spread out beneath Kanan, her arms resting over her head as she’d been told; apparently now she was his prisoner as he’d said with that shit eating grin of a man intent on driving her mad. Her chest rose and fell in rapid and shallow breaths as he hovered over her, not touching one centimeter of flesh to hers.

His naked body was glorious to behold and she certainly wouldn’t complain about the view. He was carved to perfection, the deep vs of his abdomen giving way to parts that she desperately wanted to touch and explore. He’d promised her a turn when he was done with her.

The problem was that he hadn’t even started.

Warmth pooled in her abdomen and ache blossomed in her thighs as his breath tickled the valley between her breasts. It was amazing how he’d gone from a man desperate to lose himself to her before she’d shoved him off the ship to a man who seemed to think he had all the time in the world as he teased her mercilessly now. Her knee drew up, not breaking his rules of keeping her hands to herself.

“I may have to change the rules,” he said in a low drawl, lips close enough to her skin that she could feel each nearly whispered word.

“Just. Touch. Me.” She pleaded breathlessly, parting her legs further to him, trying to tempt him in.

“Just touch you?” He asked, and slid his hand up the outside of her thigh in compliance, “or is there something more that you want?”

As if he wasn’t impossibly sexy to begin with, as if the fact that he’d mind-fucked somebody into giving up this amazing ship, and given her refuge from the Empire that she was beginning to believe would actually be safe wasn't enough, he was asking her what she wanted. She wondered if he even knew what that meant to her, to be given a choice. He couldn’t possibly know how hard it was for her to force the words out of what she did want.

Still, she managed. “Kiss me,” she murmured, his lips at the concave of her abdomen, nearing the crest of her hip.

“All the way back up there?” He teased gently but pressed a gentle kiss against her hip bone. “Or is there somewhere else I should kiss you?”

In answer she drew her knee up farther, an impish grin on her face.

“Oh,” he said as if he had no clue what she’d been alluding to. His lips dragged lower along her hip and to the crook of her thigh, “Like here?”

Hera whimpered a weak response. Everything he’d done to her before had felt so good but of all the ways that he touched her, that way had left her the most shaken. His breath was hot against her flesh but his lips would not make contact.

“I’m afraid I didn’t understand you, Captain.”

“Kanan,” she murmured, the tickling sensation of his breath making her back arch off the bed. She lifted her head to look at him in irritation, her arms still firmly fixed above her head as she’d been told,  “Please put that mouth to better use before I throw you out the airlock.”

He answered by keeping his eyes fixed on hers as he licked a long stripe against her cunt. If she didn’t know anything about human anatomy, she would have sworn the man could draw his own orgasm from the sensation of her skin against his tongue alone. He lavished her clit with unfathomable praise, drawing loud cries and shuddering gasps from her with each pass of his mouth against her hot flesh. Everything he did to her, he seemed to enjoy as much – if not more – than she did.

Fingers danced up the inside of her thigh and he slipped one inside her, her hot and wet flesh welcoming him with ease. She ground her hips into his hand, silently begging for more. It became obvious that no matter how much she writhed against him that he wanted to hear the words. He wanted her to want things and he wanted to hear those wants aloud.

Hera didn’t know what words to use, how to tell him to do that thing that hurt and felt good and left her vision fuzzy. She didn’t even know what he did to her to make her do it. One of these times, she’d pay closer attention. For now all she mustered was a breathy, “Harder.”

Harder did the job.

Another finger hooked inside her and she made it mere moments before she asked – no told – him again, “Harder, Kanan.”

A third finger pushed inside her and it was the delicious pain that she sought, that stretching and pushing and falling sensation she’d craved every time she thought of him like this. The pressure built steadily, his lips closed around her clit and his fingers working in her in aggressive strokes until she tightened around him.

Her legs trembled over his shoulders as he continued to work her tight muscles, to fight against her body’s physiology that drew his fingers in deeper, only prolonging the intense orgasm that had overtaken her. If the groan that vibrated against her skin was any indication, he was desperate with need.

Taking a handful of hair, Hera tugged gently to drag his mouth back up to hers. She could get used to being the Captain. “I want to taste myself on your lips,” she murmured, “but first, I want you inside me. Now.”

Kanan complied without question, slick fingers guiding his erect cock to her cunt where he began to sink into her slowly. He still felt big, almost too big, and it still took time for her to take him in. Her legs wrapped around his waist to allow him more purchase, to let him ease deeper with each prolonged stroke.

“Does it feel like this every time?” She asked breathlessly in between the savory kisses she ravished him with. Maybe the question was too innocent, maybe she should have been embarrassed. Somehow bared to him like this, though, she felt bolder.

The best that she could get out of him was a low groan punctuated by a grunt. Her words seemed to make him crazy, his long and measured strokes now erratic and harsh. There was something she liked about it, the way she could use her words to make him lose all control. His hand grasped the underside of her thigh to pull her harder into him and she gave him her cries freely. Her lips moved to his ear and she nipped gently at the lobe of it. “You didn’t answer my question,” she whispered, “does it always feel like this, Kanan? Will it always feel this good when you fuck me?”

It had started out a serious question but now she was just goading him. She wanted to feel the way he unraveled inside her, the warm stickiness between her thighs from his cum and hers. Her teeth grazed lightly along his neck as she whispered filthy things against his flesh. The harder he fucked her, the less coherent she became.

Kanan drew himself up, his hand tangled with hers. He drew her hand downward with his to her clit and together they touched her until she began to tighten around him. His fingers drew away from hers and he grasped both of her hips tightly and began to buck wildly into her. She moved her fingers along her clit, her gaze locked with his and mouth agape. They were both loud, both crying out each other’s names as the pressure continued to mount.

Her finger slipped easily over her clit with just the right mount of pressure and she arched hard into his arms, nearly shouting his name, “Fuck, Kanan.”

It was all he needed to spill inside her. He hammered into her so hard that the little flashes of light clouded her vision with each desperate stroke. Her muscles tightened and clenched and he drove through them with abandon. Hera didn’t even know if it was possible to have an orgasm while she was having an orgasm, but if it had been, she definitely was because she only soared higher and higher.

His weight collapsed over hers, their chests heaving together, both desperate for air. She could feel his heart beating hard against hers; a response to her invocation. Somewhere in the haze of their afterglow, she found herself thinking that not only was she glad his heart was still beating but that she could still feel it.

Hera laid content under his weight, fingertip tracing up his sweat slickened skin. Her eyes were closed with a placid smile alight on her lips. This could be good, the two of them. If he was right and they could pull these odd jobs, they could live this way amongst the stars and everything would be fine.

“I don’t know,” he said, disrupting her thoughts.

Her brow furrowed and she opened one eye to look at him, “Hmm?”

“I don’t know,” he answered again, his voice thick with exhaustion. What was it about sex that put human men to sleep so effectively? Then again, she wasn’t one to speak because she could have easily drifted off there beneath him. “If it always feels like that,” he answered, “you can tell me in a few months.”

Smiling gently, she let her eyes slip closed again. He shifted around her and pulled her into his arms like she was nearly weightless. There in the dark of her cabin with the hum of a hyperdrive as their lullaby, Hera allowed herself to hope that they really had a few months to find out.

Chapter Text

Hera grinned as her fingers slid over the controls for the nose turret. They had their heading to jump and it was clear. She didn’t really need to shoot down the last two TIEs. Her fingers depressed the buttons and one hexagonal wing went ablaze in spectacular fashion, sending her target veering into the second TIE. Obviously that pilot was new because they should have never been following that close.

“Hey, I know you like shooting these guys down,” Kanan’s voice came over the comm, “but I’ve got vastly more interesting ways that you can spend your time.”

She counted to five before slamming on the hyperspace lever and flipped the comm on, “Really? You’ve learned new ways to keep me entertained?”

Kanan swung her seat around, earning a yelp of surprise. She would never get used to how deadly quiet he could be when he wanted to. He placed his hands on either side of her shoulders, leaning over close enough to send a shiver down her spine, “I don’t need to learn new ways.”

His voice was low and suggestive.

Hera relaxed back into her seat, practically melting beneath him. She was powerless to the man before her, a human male that she would have never predicted herself falling for, let alone falling so hard. Her lips brushed his gently, anticipation thrumming in her body, “And what did you have in mind, Kanan?”

He dropped to his knees before her and nudged hers apart, kissing a trail down her neck. Her eyes slipped closed under the hot kisses. “Think I’d rather show you,” he rumbled against the sensitive flesh.

Weaving her fingers into his hair, she opened one eye to reach for the controls that set the alarms that had become rote memory. She scraped her fingernails along his scalp with her free hand, tugging gently at his hair in erratic intervals. He slipped an arm around her waist to drag her down in the seat and she pressed a hand against his chest, “Wait,” she uttered, “the controls. I’m almost –”

Kanan laughed and moved his lips back up her neck, the pinnacle of patience. “Stars, I love you,” he whispered, so low she almost didn’t hear it beneath the hum of the hyperdrive.

There was a slight pause and Hera could tell the words had come unbidden. No preamble, no hesitation, no dancing around the subject. The words were real and true and they were the most dangerous kind. Kanan didn’t know what she was – or what she’d been – and she’d never told him. She loved him but he couldn’t love her.

Not when he didn’t know who she was, who she really was.

She turned her face into his, buried into the crook of his neck and nudged her nose against his. Their lips met, soft and sweet. Hera wanted to let him love her, she wanted to say it back. This was all too much, too new, too exhilarating. Not saying it back meant that he could take it as she didn’t love him, saying it back meant that she was leading him on and letting him believe that she was something that she wasn’t or at least hadn’t been before him.

“You don’t need to say it back,” his voice reverberated between their lips, “I already know.”

Hera pressed her hand into his chest, pulling her head back from his, “Wait, what?”

There was his boyish grin. Either he was messing with her or he was giving her an out. Her fingers wound through his hair and she wanted so badly to take the out. But there was something in his eyes that called to her, something that beckoned her to answer his declaration. He wanted to hear the words as much as she wanted to say them.

She kept telling herself that he didn’t know her, that he didn’t know what she’d done. Kanan didn’t know that she’d run bombing attacks on innocent planets and that she’d killed people and followed orders like a good soldier of the Empire. The voice withered in her mind there beneath his gaze. Her heart spoke louder.

It was useless trying to deny what they both already knew.

“I love you, too.”

-

“Hera,” Kanan’s voice was a warning. It was that tone of frustration that he took with her sometimes that said she was getting too trigger happy again and that she was going to compromise their job or worse. She elected to ignore it as she often did.

They were just a few meters from the ship and Manda was barely an Imperial occupied planet. A few less troopers on the planet was easily a winning situation; for her and for the galaxy, too. She fired off her blurrg at the stormtrooper closest to her and smiled to herself when they crumpled to the ground. She reasoned with herself that she’d just take out a couple more and then she’d listen to Kanan. She moved backwards toward the ramp and toward the mutterings of her frustrated lover.

“It’s fine, love,” she said with a grin as her heel found the ramp, “we’re out of here, anyway.” She leveled her blaster on another trooper, the one who seemed to like it could actually hit its target on occasion.

Before she could fire off another shot, though, Kanan grabbed her arm and yanked her the rest of the way onto the Ghost. She glared in his direction as he smacked the controls to pull up the ramp, “It was fine,” she muttered. She glanced back out of the cargo bay trying to gauge if she could get in one more shot without hurting her baby. The last thing she saw was a trooper with his head cocked to the side as if studying his assailants. She holstered her blaster with a scowl as the ship lurched forward and the door sealed closed.

Now she had to deal with the other enemy.

Hera sighed and pulled herself up the ladder into the cockpit.

“You have got to learn when to stop,” Kanan said pointedly but relinquished her seat. “I get that you don’t care for them but when we’re on our way out is not the time to decide you want more target practice.”

It wasn’t the first time she’d heard the lecture.

Kanan had been the one who’d given her the safety of the Ghost. He gave her anonymity and an escape and a way to fight back. He’d given her the gift of fearlessness and fighting back against the Empire that plucked her away from her family and put her through nearly five years of hell. If she could drop one of them for every person that she’d killed – maybe somehow it would make her galactic ledger even.

Not that Hera had taken the time to explain that to him, she couldn’t even begin to explain that to him.

The best she could do was give him a faint smile and flush of her cheeks, “Got carried away. Sorry.”

For Kanan, her ridiculously stupid and absurdly perfect counterpart, the light to her dark – the apology was usually enough. Sometimes there’d be the additional lecture about not getting herself killed and that he loved her too much to lose her and she’d let him rattle on until he felt better about it. She’d behave for a couple weeks and then she’d do it all over again. It was something she couldn’t quite control, the anger that simmered just beyond the surface. No matter how happy she was with him and how content she was to smuggle weapons or people or just about anything throughout the outer rim at his side, she still needed to get revenge.

Hera could feel his eyes on her and she wasn’t sure which lecture she was going to get today. His expression was nearly unreadable, which was unusual for him and she found it slightly unsettling. Not one to act oblivious when she felt like he was gawking at her, Hera turned to look pointedly at him in question. She might as well just get the argument over with.

They weren’t at all averse about arguing just as they weren’t averse to making up, though they both liked the making up part significantly more. Maybe it’s why they worked well; they could be angry at each other, sometimes really angry, but they were still really good at smoothing things over when they were done – even after all their time together.

Finally, Kanan broke the silence hanging between them, “You ever going to tell me what you’re so angry about?”

The question caught her off guard.

It was a new opening statement in Kanan Jarrus’ lecture series centering on reasons why Hera didn’t need to spend an extra ten or twenty minutes shooting TIEs out of the sky or dropping an extra handful of stormtroopers. Most of the lectures focused on making sure that they got out of their locale safe and in one piece. Sometimes the subject it was because he loved her and he didn’t want her to get hurt. Occasionally he’d attempt the underlying argument that the Empire, and subsequently the targets that she’d wasted their time taking out, weren’t worth her time.

Her anger was a new subject, indeed.

“Thought you and the Force weren’t friends,” she said and it sounded cooler than she’d intended.

“Yeah, well, just because I can involuntarily feel how much you hate the Empire doesn’t make me a fucking Jedi. It just means that you’re really angry,” even though she’d sounded controlled, he was stubbornly patient. If he hadn’t bristled the one and only time she’d teased him about a Jedi thing, she’d probably do it more often. She didn’t really know the Jedi but they seemed the obnoxiously patient type.

She shrugged nonchalantly and glanced over her console, “Shouldn’t you hate them too?”

“Anger doesn’t get you anywhere either,” he answered quietly, “it’s just better not to care.”

Hera glanced over at him and frowned slightly, “I don’t understand how you can’t care.”

“I do care,” he said, focusing his gaze back on her, “I care about you. The Empire took everything from me. You think I want to give them the satisfaction of getting the last thing I have?”

Loosing a soft sigh, she gave the slightest of nods. He didn’t know that she had parents to care about anymore; he just assumed she was the same. She may as well have been the same because she couldn’t care about her parents. To do that only made her angrier; at them, at herself, and at the Empire. He was right and she knew it.

It was just better to let it go; to let them go.

She feigned a small smile, “So I don’t ever get to shoot down TIEs?”

Kanan chuckled slightly, “I won’t tell you that you can’t shoot down any. Just – just don’t let them have that kind of control over that. I don’t like it. I don’t like feeling how it makes you feel.”

That was Hera’s signal to change the subject.

“I know what you do like,” she answered in a low voice, easing the hyperspace lever forward. She rose from her seat and dropped into his lap. She draped her arms around his neck, “I know a whole lot of things you like.”

“Mmm,” was the best answer she could get out of him. His muscles felt tense beneath her. Had she really affected him that much with her anger? Was it really that palpable for him? If he could feel all of that, how could he not know what she really was?

His arms wound around her tightly and he pulled her body into his. It wasn’t a move meant to seduce or suggest; he was just holding her. Kanan’s face buried into the crook of her neck and she nestled her cheek against his, just letting him wrap her in his embrace. She didn’t know how not to be angry or how to let things go.

She didn’t know how he had, outside of drinking himself into an oblivion which he’d long given up doing on a routine basis. They had other ways of dealing with his darkness and his nightmares were never that bad with her at his side.

Maybe if she could find a way to tell him one day the things that she’d done, maybe if he’d accept them, if he could forgive her – maybe he could ease the darkness inside her, too. Maybe that was the only way that she’d ever not be angry.

Like he could hear her thoughts, his arms tightened around her more, “What?”

Hera was tempted to tell him, to at least try. But then what if she lost him? Just like he didn’t want the Empire to take away the thing he had left, she didn’t want it to take away what she had left. She knew she was kidding herself to think she’d ever be able to tell him the unspeakable things she had done. Instead she just pressed her lips against his temple and settled her cheek back against his. “Nothing,” she murmured, “I just love you.”

-

Though she’d gotten past the point of caring about what systems had a heavier Imperial presence when they made their milk runs, Hera still dutifully scrolled the datapad while Kanan tossed out proposed destinations. Most of it was simply looking for news of home; part of it was her keeping her end of the bargain that she would try not to be so angry.

The fewer Imperials there were on a planet, the less likely she was to get wound up in taking more than her share of them out. In the absence of telling Kanan why she was angry and having to face her own demons, it was a solid compromise. At least, Hera thought so.

“What about Nal Hutta?” Kanan tossed out, “There’s a presence but the Hutts keep that space pretty tight. The pay on that one would keep us fueled for a month.”

Hera pulled up a different holonet page; stuff on Huttspace could be tricky business. Usually checking out the stuff in that system required checking more than one corner of the holonet. She was scrolling casually down a page when her hand froze over the datapad. She felt the color drain from her face as a headline caught her eyes.

Empire Day Celebrations Moved to Tann Province on Ryloth after Mining Accident

She couldn’t force herself to focus to read the story. She couldn’t find focus at all. How many people would that bring to the Province? Hera could register Kanan saying something to her but couldn’t hear what he was saying. She knew what those types of gatherings meant, she knew why they drew crowds that large into one place at one time.

The message was there and it was loud and clear.

Somehow they knew. They knew she was alive.

The datapad was pulled from her hands and they fell to her lap. Tears brimmed the corners of her eyes. If her parents were still alive, if they had been safe, now they weren’t and it was her fault. It had to be her fault. How could the Empire know, though? The ship wasn’t registered to her name and they’d never been able to identify her sailing through the systems. They’d never been detained on a planet.

Hera wanted to believe that she was reading too much into it. Even if the Empire didn’t know that she was alive though – they were still planning to glass Tann Province. Maybe her father was still alive, maybe he’d done something to revolt and this was the Empire’s way of shutting down Free Ryloth once and for all.

“Hera,” Kanan said slowly and there was dread in his tone. His intonation alone was enough to confirm her worst fears.

She glanced up, tears still threatening but not yet spilt.

“They’re looking for you,” he sounded as scared as she felt. “They’re saying that you’re wanted for terrorist crimes on Ryloth and that you were spotted on Manda.”

Then the tears came.

Because for once, the Empire wasn’t lying.

Hera wordlessly left the cockpit, just barely evading his grasp as she did. While she’d been fast enough to get away from him in the cockpit, she wasn’t fast enough to get the hatch to her cabin closed before he shoved his way in there.

“Hey,” he tried to pull her into his arms and she pulled away. He cornered her against her bunk and grabbed her hands tightly, “Hey, it’s fine. They’re not going to find you. We’ll be okay.”

She shook her head fervently, no words coming out only emotions she didn’t want him to see. When she tried to pull out of his grasp again, he only held her closer. He didn’t know, he couldn’t know, and now he would. He did.

He just didn’t know it was the truth.

“You still have someone at home,” he said, his voice gentle, “don’t you?”

His words only drew more tears.

Even if she did have somebody at home, even if they were still alive, they were about to not be and it would be her fault. She’d gotten reckless on Manda, somebody had spotted her, and now Tarkin was seeing to it that his promises were kept. Worse, she couldn’t show her face anywhere because the Empire had declared her a terrorists and wanted for those acts. There’d be a bounty for her, if not a death warrant.

Her recklessness may well have cost her their jobs, the only way they’d been able to survive. Nobody would want to deal with them now, not if they knew she was involved.

Kanan didn’t push it any further. He held her stiff body close to his and let her cry. Even long after the tears had dried up, she didn’t dare move and she couldn’t bring herself to speak. The moment would come that she’d have to find the words and she’d have to find the will to tell him the truth – hiding it from him was no longer an option.

Hera just needed a little more time before the Empire took one last thing away from her.

Chapter Text

Though Hera had expected Kanan to push her away with every part of her soul she laid bare, he only held onto her tighter. Every dark thing she’d told him, he’d reasoned that she did what she needed to do to protect her family, that she was never a willing member of the Empire. He didn’t know that she was complicit in some of the things that she’d done.

At least not yet.

“You’re sure that this Empire Day thing is an attempt to corral everybody into one place to make a run?” Kanan asked gently, “Maybe there’s a different reason.”

She could tell by his tone that even he didn’t believe his own words.

Hera pulled his arms tighter around her and felt his chin come to rest at her shoulder. Maybe if she held on tight enough, he wouldn’t pull away. Maybe it was simply that he gave her strength to even tell him the truth. His fingers wound with hers, silently urging her on.

“There’s a final exam before you graduate from Skystrike. They use it an exercise to test leadership,” she spoke softly and hesitantly, “they don’t tell you where you’re going before you get there. None of the other students even really cared to ask, outside of just being curious where we were. It was supposed to be an exercise to test leadership. But for me, they were testing my loyalty.” She paused, trying to withhold a shuddering breath, “Kanan, I knew where I was when I ran my lead. I knew it the second we entered the system. I lead a bombing run on Lessu knowing exactly what I was doing. I gave the Empire my loyalty because I didn’t want to die and because I didn’t want my parents to die. And the entire time I was doing it? All I could think was how angry I was at my parents for letting the Empire take me and for not finding a way to save me. I know what my father is capable of; he couldn’t have possibly tried – and so I killed all those people. The things that the Empire is saying, that I committed terrorists acts? They’re right, Kanan. It’s not a lie. I committed terrorist acts against my own people.”

She held her breath and waited for him to pull away from her. He didn’t move. His arms didn’t stiffen around her nor did the deep and even pattern of his breathing change. “And then what?” He asked, his voice low and gentle.

It was words Hera would never forget, the words that frightened her now because she knew that she was right in thinking that Tarkin intended to make good on his promise to kill her parents. “Tarkin called me to the ground and made me look at what I’d done. He promised that if I ever defected, if I didn’t stay in line, that he’d do it to the Tann Province but worse,” her voice broke and her resolve was fast fading.

Again, Kanan asked, “And then what?”

“You know what,” she said, exasperated by how calm he was listening to all of it. He should have been furious with her, he should have been pushing her away, pushing her off the ship and yet he just listened. Irritated with him, she started to wriggle out of his arms, “I don’t understand how you aren’t angry with me, Kanan. You’re cracked if you think any of this is okay.”

“Not much to be angry about when I’m alive,” he answered gently but refused to release his grip on her. “What happened after you graduated?”

“I did what I was told to do,” she answered flatly, as if the answer was obvious enough. She paused and turned her head slightly to glance at him. It took her a long moment but then she realized what he was trying to ask her, the answer that he was trying to draw out, “I did everything I was supposed to do until I let you go.”

There was a slight huff from Kanan, “I don’t know if I’d call it letting me go when you shoved me off that shuttle. But you saved my life and you had no reason to.”

“You didn’t deserve to die. You can’t help what you are. Or were.”

“And you aren’t the person that you think you are, no matter what you did to survive. Maybe you did those things, Hera. You can go on believing that you were acting in cold blood or as an agent of the Empire but you and I both know that you were young and scared and doing what you had to in order to survive. You are not what the Empire tried to make you. The only control that they have over you is your anger, Hera.”

She snorted, “They have control over my parents, if they’re still alive. They have control of my people that they’re going to bombard. They’re still in control of my life.”

“They have things that they can threaten you with. Fear is how they control people,” he brought the hand that had been draped around her waist up to turn her chin in his direction. “You aren’t the person they tried to make you be. You will never be that person. Now, you can choose to be afraid of them and let them use that fear to control you or we can figure out how to put a stop to this together.”

Hera pulled out of his grasp, “What? No. You aren’t getting involved in this. If anybody is doing something about this thing, it’s me. I’m not letting them – “

Kanan took her hands into his, “We’ve caused the Empire all kinds of hell together. Why would we stop now?”

“I don’t understand why you care. You said it was easier not to – “

A faint smile traced his lips, “I can be wrong sometimes. Not often but occasionally. Very rarely. Maybe three times in my entire life.”

Hera shoved his hands away, “You’re wrong all the time and you’re stupid because we’re both just going to end up dead.”

He gave a nonchalant shrug, still smiling faintly, “At least we’re dying together. As far as I’m concerned, there are worse ways to go.”

-

“This is impossible,” Hera muttered to herself, glancing through the transparisteel of the viewport. The Imperial presence on Ryloth was nothing significant; at least not yet. They’d remain scant until Empire Day when they reigned hell down on the Tann Province. Hera knew from her time with the Empire exactly how they worked.

Still, Kanan and Hera a week to figure out how to infiltrate the planet, get warning out, or rally an impossible army.

The presence on the ground would be higher, though, that much Hera had been certain of. There would be convoys of ground shuttles stationed on the planet to move citizens to the Province for the so-called celebrations and those operations could well be under way from the farther reaches of the planet. If they tried starting to mount a counterattack from the ground, she may as well just turn herself over to the Empire.

The thought of turning herself into the Empire drew her up short.

She started scanning her datapad and the holonet for Imperial channels, information of who the current leadership was in Ryloth. After a few minutes of searching, she found her answer. It was still Delian Mors, the woman who had a thing for jade skinned twi’leks and the bitch who had sent her to the Academy and away from her family. If Hera was going to die trying to save her family, she couldn’t think of a better way to go than taking Mors out with her.

“You’re supposed to be trying to not be angry,” Kanan warned her calmly. He’d been sitting aside her with his eyes closed in some sort of meditation. He still fervently claimed being not a Jedi but he was putting up with the Force as a one-time exception, or at least that’s what he’d said. She was fine with that, they needed all the help they could get, but at the same time it was unnerving that he could feel her so much more easily when he was trying to be attuned to the Force.

Hera shot an irritated glance in his direction, “It’s not exactly something I can shut off.”

Kanan opened one eye to look at her. The other eye came with it when he seemed to take notice of the scowl on her face. Slowly, he rose from his chair and put his hands on her shoulders, “Close your eyes.”

“I don’t meditate,” she grumbled.

“It’s not meditation. Just…close your eyes,” he sighed. “Come on.”

Making sure to make it clear that she was irritated, Hera did as she was asked. She felt his hands gently massage at her shoulders for a moment. “If you’re doing what I think you’re trying to do we don’t have time for –“

“Will you shut up and let me help you?” He said, squeezing her shoulders gently again, “Just trust me, okay?”

Reluctantly, she settled under his hands without saying another word. Letting go of her anger was impossible. She’d tried everything from letting her fuck her senseless to sharing a bottle of cheap whisky with him to numb her anger. If neither one of those helped, she was nearly certain that nothing would.

“Whatever you were thinking about, the person that was making you angry. Think about them again,” his voice was low, really not more than a whisper.

Part of her wanted to argue that they were supposed to be avoiding her being angry, not invoking her to be angrier. But Hera did as she said, thinking of the gross woman who was cruel and cracked out on Ryll, who had taken her from her family and sent her to the academy. She wanted to hurt her the same way that she had hurt Hera, the way the woman had hurt her family.

Kanan obviously felt something different within her because his hands traced soothing lines down her shoulders, as if he were comforting her, “That’s not anger. What are you feeling?”

Hera kept her lips pressed together and tried to even her breathing, “Hurt.”

“Hurt is better than anger,” he said gently, “Why? You don’t have to tell me why, just think about it.”

“Because she took me away from my family,” Hera answered with immediacy. She didn’t offer the fact that her family had hurt her too by just letting her go. That was something she couldn’t bring herself to vocalize.

There was something so warm about his grip on her shoulders, the way he held her arms, something soothing as he spoke. Something he was doing to her eased the pain somehow, she thought. His thumbs drew slow circles along her shoulder blades, “Does being angry at that person make the hurting that you feel stop?” 

Hera shook her head but said nothing, her body relaxing beneath his hands.

“Now tell me this: what do you want more? Do you want to save your family and your people or do you just want to hurt her?”

“My family,” she answered with certainty, “She’d be better off dead but I don’t care what happens to her. I just want to see my mother again. I want my parents to be safe. I want them to be alive.”

She felt Kanan’s lips atop her head and then his hands achingly absent from your shoulders. Something felt different about her, too. Her brows furrowed as she looked over at him while he settled back into his seat, “What did you do?”

Kanan gave a lopsided smile, “I didn’t do anything. I told you a long time ago that those tricks only work on weak minds. You did all of that on your own.”

Hera eyed him warily for a moment and then gave the faintest of smiles. The situation was still incredibly hopeless and the odds that they made it out of this alive were unbelievably low. But maybe even if they didn’t make it out of the other side of this fight, maybe she could die Hera and not the angry thing that the Empire had tried to turn her into.

-

They’d been going over possible plans of attack for hours. They were both exhausted and thin on patience, especially after coming to one dead end after another. There was only one thing that Hera had left, the only plan that she’d thought feasible and the idea that she liked the least, “Moff Mors has a thing for Twi’leks…like me,” Hera said slowly, “specifically.”

Kanan bristled slightly, “You’ll have to explain what that means before I even consider this plan.”

“I can only assume that the full extent of her thing isn’t exactly good,” she continued, treading cautiously, “but I know that she has a holorecorder on the premise. If we can get in there then I can possibly try to reach out to my parents, if they’re still alive, and then they can tell people to fight back.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head, “absolutely not. If you show up in that place, they’ll recognize you immediately and you’ll be on your way to an Imperial holding cell. If not dead within seconds. It won’t work.”

“Listen, I know it doesn’t sound great but this is our best chance. How else are we going to warn my parents? Warn all those people? We need a way in fast and the best way is to try to reach out to my parents. I know the woman was dealing with my father long before I was ever taken from them,” she tried to explain. “Plus, she’s not going to recognize me. The woman is addicted to Ryll. She can barely function. I’ll just be another one of her Twi’lek companions.”

“There has to be another way to reach him,” Kanan said resolutely.

Hera shook her head, “I don’t think so. They’re going to be monitoring anything that is incoming – “

“If they’re alive,” he interjected.

“If they’re alive,” she echoed, “but if they are alive, an incoming transmission over an Imperial channel isn’t going to trigger any suspicion.”

He sighed heavily and pinched the bridge of his nose, “This isn’t a good idea. I can’t protect you going into that place.”

“I don’t know. Maybe we can find a way that we both get in. You said your stuff works on weak minds, right?” She asked, “You can do the mindfuck thing on stupid people?”

“I can try,” he said slowly, “I’m distant from the Force. Sometimes it works but it’s never going to be a guarantee. Just because I’m sensitive to it doesn’t mean I’ve mastered it. I never got the chance and the Force is finicky.”

Hera was quiet for a long moment. She didn’t like the idea of subjecting herself to Mors and putting herself in that position but she had to do something and she’d rather do it with Kanan at her side. An idea struck her, “It’s an Imperial owned place. She’s over the top and it’s not like your traditional Imperial compound, not really. If I show up looking like one of her prizes and we find you a disguise, whomever is guarding the place isn’t going to be looking at my face. I can distract and you can still get on the grounds with me.”

“No,” Kanan said immediately, “I know what Imperials do with Twi’leks and I’m not – “

She allowed a slight smile as she interrupted him, “I’ll have you know that I’ve broken enough arms and crushed at least one trachea from anybody that’s ever tried to lay a hand on me. You just got lucky you didn’t end up with them.”

“Wait a minute, you’re saying that you – when we – “ he’d lost his ability to formulate a coherent thought and it made her smile wider.

“I’m just saying, I can handle myself, Kanan. Let them look. But if you’re there with me, if you look like one of them, we have a better chance of getting in there together.”

The displeasure of the idea was etched deep into his face, “And exactly what kind of disguise are we talking?”

“We’ve dropped enough stormtroopers without a problem. If I show up in your possession and you’re wearing one of those things – “ she started to explain but he cut her off again.

“Oh, I don’t care about the disguise you want me to wear. I’m talking about you,” the slight tug at the corner of his lips said he was teasing, if only slightly.

“Probably as close to as naked as I can get,” she answered with a shrug. “Like I said. The point is that they aren’t looking at my face and Mors will be too cracked on Ryll to notice.”

Kanan cocked his head as if to consider it. He still didn’t seem convinced, “How do we land at the compound? They’re not letting us on that moon with the Ghost.”

“You’re going to have to use those powers of persuasion to get us an Imperial shuttle. We pull the operating numbers off the pilot, you call in the identifiers and the rest of the codes that I know. I can fly us in and we’re on the ground. That’s the easy part,” she explained.

“And the Ghost?” He asked warily.

“We leave it on the opposite side of the moon, keep it hidden and scrambled just in case.”

He seemed to contemplate it for a moment before he spoke, “I’m not a fan of this idea. We’re walking straight into their hands. I think it would be better if I land on Ryloth and try to find your parents myself. You can stay in orbit and wait for my signal.”

Hera’s nose wrinkled, “They’re going to be looking for activity like that, Kanan. I know how the Imperials work. A random human, who fits the identity of a fugitive Force sensitive on the run, looking for Cham Syndulla? It’s too obvious and dangerous.”

“What if you can’t raise your parents?” The question was gentle and hesitant. The real question – what if your parents are already dead? – hung heavily in the air between them.

“If my parents were already dead, the Empire wouldn’t be doing this,” she said softly. It was a question that she’d pondered herself, something they’d brought up as a possibility several times. It was something that she’d tried to use to talk herself out of the insanity that they were considering. Hera knew she was right though, that her parents were still alive; there would be no reason for Tarkin to order an attack on Tann Province if her parents were dead. There would be no incentive for him to draw her out like that.

With a heavy sigh, Kanan gave a nod of assent, “Then I guess we’ve got a plan.”

A sad smile traced her lips and she met his gaze with hers, “Kanan, you don’t have to do this with me. This is something that I need to make right.”

Kanan stood and pulled Hera from her seat and into his arms, “What? And miss out on dying with you? No way I’d miss it for the world.”

Chapter Text

“Just in case you’re curious, that is most definitely not a blaster in my pocket and I am very happy to see you,” Kanan muttered in a low and modulated voice through the helmet of the stormtrooper’s uniform. It was clear by even the altered voice that he was not really in a joking mood. 

They were both tense and terrified.

It was one thing to take on the Empire from the safety of the Ghost or from several meters away with blasters in hand. It was something completely different to be walking straight into their hands. Hera tried to steel herself to the eyes that she knew would be wandering and any potential wandering hands as she passed by.

She couldn’t blow their cover by breaking somebody’s arm.

“For the record, I prefer the flight suit. I will gladly spend forty-five minutes undressing you for the rest of my life if it means that nobody else gets to see what you look like under all of that ever again,” he continued to talk under his voice as they made their way up the footpath to the entrance.

“Kanan, love,” Hera spoke under her breath, “I really need you to shut up now.”

“Yeah, well, I need you to put clothes on so I guess we’re even,” he grumbled. As they neared the gate, he nudged her forward with the blaster he was carrying, trying to look the part she supposed.

Hera stumbled forward and kept her gaze fixed to the ground, the perfect picture of submission. Inwardly, she was making plans to take out at least one of the guttkurs on their way out.

“CD0818 with a delivery for Moff Mors,” Kanan spoke in an even voice and then waited for the two troopers at the gate to respond.

One seemed to scan over a datapad and then glanced up. From what Hera could see out of the corner of her eye, he wasn’t looking at Kanan. “We don’t have a scheduled delivery,” the trooper said slowly. His ugly bucketed head was still focused on her.

“You do have a scheduled delivery. I’ve been instructed to deliver this one myself,” Kanan said, his voice steady and monotone.

Both troopers stood up straighter, “We have the scheduled delivery. You are to deliver this one yourself.”

They made it only a few meters away from the troopers before Hera exhaled the breath she’d been holding, “You couldn’t at least tell them to take a long walk out of a short airlock?”

“Not how that works,” he answered her. She thought she could hear a smile in his tone. “What are we doing when we get inside?”

Hera smiled to herself. Now she would get a chance to show him what she could do, “Just stay by me. Use your little tricks to keep anybody else from interfering. I’ll get us into Mors study or wherever she keeps her holorecorder.”

There was a slight grunt of assent beneath the helmet but Hera wasn’t going to take the time to explain Twi’leki to him and how she could work her way around the palatial building without so much as drawing the attention of anybody who wasn’t a Twi’lek. Together, they continued into the building and Hera took a deep breath as she did.

The last time she’d been here, she’d been taken away from her family.

Now she was there to save them. She just had to keep telling herself that.

Two Twi’leks were at the front door, both of them with headdresses that bound their lekku too tightly; they wouldn’t ever be able to answer the questions she needed to ask. She said something under her breath in Ryl and both of the women’s face flushed and eyes widened, looking back toward Kanan. Of course they’d be terrified to speak anything other than basic in the presences of somebody they thought was an Imperial.

“Kanan,” Hera said gently, keeping her eyes on the two women with a soft gaze, “I need those straps off their lekku – can you?”

There wasn’t an answer but she could tell by the way pattern of his breathing shifted from shallow and rapid to deep and even that he’d received her message loud and clear. The straps that had been binding the lekku of the woman on her right fell away, but not the woman on the left.

She heard a terse apology under his breath.

“Good enough, love,” she whispered and then twitched her lekku toward the woman on her right.

The woman smiled a small smile and answered in the same manner; speaking in the silent language of the Twi’lek people. Hera asked where to find Mors study and the woman gave her directions. Hera told both of them silently to stay where they were and promised that she’d be back to free them. The women who’d looked like they’d been through hell only moments ago had gazes that were alight with hope.

“This way,” Hera said in a low whisper, heading in the direction that she’d been shown.

Kanan followed behind her and they wound their way through the home. Hera tried to keep her eyes fixed to the ground, tried to avert her gaze from the women scattered around the home who looked just like her. On occasion, she’d twitch her lekku at the women, tried to tell them that it was okay.

“You’re talking to them, aren’t you?” Kanan finally asked as they rounded into an empty corridor.

“It’s an entire language,” she answered, her voice as equally quiet, “that’s why they try to keep our lekku bound.” Hera paused for a moment, glancing around and then nodded off to the right, “The turbolift, we need the fourth floor.”

Kanan pressed the button and stood at her back, closer than he’d been before. “Now I’m the one having a hard time not being angry,” he admitted.

“Don’t be. We’re getting them out of here on our way out,” she whispered. The turbolift doors opened and Hera heard an audible gasp as they did. Her blood ran cold at the gasp and she lifted her eyes in response, fearing that they’d been found.

"Hera?" A stunned whisper floated from the lift.

Hera's eyes flitted up immediately and she found her gaze fixed on her mother’s.

What Kanan sensed, Hera didn’t know, but he’d managed enough to have the sense to push Hera onto the lift in her stunned silence, playing the perfect part of Imperial Trooper. “Remain on the lift,” he said in a low voice to Hera’s mother.

Eleni withered at the command.

Only a moment after the door closed, Hera spun to her mother and threw her arms around her tightly. She fought the tears that threatened to spring to her eyes but her mother was stiff under her embrace. Hera realized it was Kanan that was causing her to be so tense.

“It’s okay, mom. He’s not one of them. He’s helping me,” she explained quietly.

Eleni’s face shifted from that of her daughter’s and up to Kanan and then back to Hera. Only a moment later, Hera found herself gathered into her mother’s arms. It was something that she was certain that she’d never feel again. Her mother was alive, she was safe.

Finally, Eleni pulled away from her, “I don’t understand. How are you here? Why is he helping you? What are you doing here?”

The turbolift opened and both women immediately straightened up, eyes fixed to the ground. Hera twitched her lekku silently in her mother’s direction; a bidding to just follow them. Now that she’d had her mother in her sight, there was no way she was letting her go and there was plenty of time to explain things later.

Eleni stepped off the elevator and Hera followed suit with Kanan following close behind. Hera felt a nudge of the blaster at her back and she followed the nudge, grasping her mother’s hand as she did. Somehow, Kanan had found them an empty room.

Hera glanced around the room, sticking to the walls as Kanan secured the door behind them. “Mother, is there surveillance around here?”

Eleni shook her head, “No, not here. Mors doesn't like the Empire to know what she does in her free time.”

Resisting the urge to hug her mother again, Hera forced herself to focus on the task at hand. There was plenty of time for a reunion later, “And Mors? Is she here? We need to get to her study.”

“I still don’t understand, Hera. What are you doing?” She spoke to Hera but her eyes still lingered on Kanan. Hera could see the question in her eyes and a vague trace of distrust.

Hera took her mother’s hands in hers, “He’s not one of them, I promise. He can – there’s things he can do that other people can’t. He saved me from the Empire, mother. I can explain all of it later but right now they’re planning an attack on Tann Province and I need to reach father. They have to fight back.”

Eleni’s eyes fell back to Hera, her gaze softened. “I don’t know that the people will listen to your father anymore, Hera.”

Her brow furrowed, “What? Why?”

“When you were taken, Mors, she had promised your safety and that she’d prove to us that you were safe in exchange for information. For a few months, he gave it to them just that we had proof that you weren't – “ Eleni’s voice trailed off, “he lost the trust of the people a long time ago. Even when he stopped giving them information, nobody would listen.”

Hera shook her head, “They have to. They have to listen. They’re all going to die, mother. They’re forcing everybody to the Tann Province for Empire Day. They’re going to destroy the city. They’ll kill father. We have to at least try.”

Eleni’s hands wrapped around her daughter’s tightly, “Then we will try. Mors is in her study though. I don’t know how we can try to reach your father with – “

“I can take care of that, ma’am. Mrs. Syndulla, erm – “ Kanan’s voice cracked slightly.

A furious warmth rushed through Hera’s cheeks and lekku at Kanan’s sudden and completely obvious loss of calm. She pressed her lips together with a slightly downcast gaze.

“Oh,” Eleni said gently and her hand squeezed her daughter’s gently. She looked up at Kanan and gave the slightest of nods, “You may call me Eleni.”

Hera glanced back at Kanan and saw him give the slightest of tense nods. She couldn’t help but think that his armor should be clattering as nervous as he was. If they made it out of this alive, she swore to herself that she’d never stop giving him grief for making a complete fool of himself in front of her mother.

Stars forbid he ever met her father. He’d never be able to handle it.

Kanan had his head cocked to the side and Hera could just tell by his posture that he was trying to figure out how to introduce himself and she shook her head at him. “Later,” Hera told him and then turned back to her mother, “I need you to get us to the study. Kanan can help us with the rest. Then we can get a message out to father and get out of here.”

Eleni nodded to Hera, “Alright, follow me. Just keep your eyes down and don’t say anything.” She paused for a moment and looked up at Kanan with a warm smile, "And I trust you'll handle the rest?" 

Another clearing of his throat and a ridiculously tense nod indicated that he would. He was definitely never going to hear the end of this.

Hera stopped short of following her mother from the room to jam her elbow into Kanan’s side. “Obvious,” she hissed under her breath before turning to follow her mother out of the room.

“I couldn’t help it!” He muttered back at her and then reassumed his position as Imperial Trooper.

The three walked down the corridor in silence until they came to the doors of the study. Eleni gave a knock that seemed more like a pattern or code than a traditional request to enter. The door slid open and just beyond, the woman that had been responsible for ripping Hera away from her family was there. Two Twi’lek women were draped over a couch in the corner of the room as if they were decoration or art to be admired. It made Hera’s stomach churn.

“Eleni,” Moff Mors said, her voice slurring as she looked up from her living display of art, “my dear. You know that it’s not your turn yet.”

Hera felt anger bubbling up in her and then a gentle hand against her back. Kanan was trying to draw her out of her anger. She took a deep breath as her eyes remained fixed to the ground. His hand drew away and he brushed past the two women, mother and daughter, to stand before Moff Mors.

“There’s some concerning activity outside the compound, I need you to come with me.”

Mors eyed Kanan warily with that glassed over gaze, “Excuse me? Are you giving me orders?”

Kanan took a deep breath and waited a long moment before repeating, “There’s some activity outside the compound. You must come with me.”

Hera watched as Mors, who had seemed to be reaching for something beneath her credenza paused with tense muscles and then just as suddenly she relaxed, “I will come with you.”

The slightest gasp came from her mother and it made Hera smile to herself. While Hera had precious few memories of the Jedi and nothing truly vivid, her mother had many more. Her mother would know what Kanan was. Eleni had kept her gaze fixed to the floor as Kanan escorted Moff Mors away while Hera looked after Kanan.

Please don’t die, she thought in Kanan's direction as he left the room. Hera didn’t know if the Force worked like that but she hoped it did. She needed him to know that she needed him.

The moment the door closed, Hera was at the panels to lock the door.

“Mother, call up father now,” she called over her shoulder.

While Eleni set about attending to the holorecorder, Hera spoke in hushed tones to the two women on the couch, promised them their freedom and to wait down by the main foyer. Eleni interrupted her to tell them to take the ‘back way’ whatever that may have been – the women needn’t be told twice. When she turned back to her mother, she was well on her way to sending the message through to her father.

Hera allowed herself another soft smile.

Her mother was really right there.

Moments later, so was her father.

Eleni, my love.

“Cham, my heart, Hera has come home,” Eleni spoke in a hushed tone.

What? How?

Hera stood alongside her mother then, “Father,” she spoke in the equally hushed tone that her mother had, “we don’t have time. I’ll explain everything as soon as I can but you have to rally the people somehow. The Empire is planning an attack on Empire Day in the Tann Province. They will have already started ground shuttles from the other regions.”

The people –

“Father, you have to make them listen,” Hera said, her voice edged with desperation, “if the people overthrow those forces on the ground, if they take over the shuttles, the Empire won’t be able to hurt as many of our people. They have to fight back. And everybody in the Tann Province, you have to – they have to get somewhere safe.”

“They would be safe underground, my love. Take them to the northern passage. Not a soul can be in the streets,” Eleni said. “It is the only way. Hera is safe. Now is the time we fight back. You can regain the trust of our people and Free Ryloth can rise once again.”

I will do what I can.

“No,” Hera said firmly, “You have to make them listen, father. Take the projections, do whatever you can. If you don’t make them listen – “

I understand, my daughter.

Though she’d never seen eye to eye with her father, she longed for his embrace just as she’d had her mother’s, “I’ll be home as soon as I can, father. I swear it.”

Hera watched as her mother smiled at her father and she saw the longing there. Being at her mother’s side now and knowing that she must have been here because of her, knowing that her father had sacrificed the trust that the people of Ryloth that they’d placed in him to be sure of her safety, Hera couldn't help but feel guilt niggling at her. She would move the stars to make it right.

“Mother, we have go,” Hera said insistently, her mind partially fixated on making sure that they got out of the compound, the other part of her thoughts worried for Kanan’s safety.

Eleni nodded but her eyes still lingered on the projection of her husband, “I’ll always love you, my husband.”

“Tell him when we get home,” she pleaded with her mother, who finally gave a nod.

Her father’s projection disappeared.

Before Hera could pull her mother away from the study, she found herself enveloped in her mother’s embrace again, “I am so proud of you for finding your way home.”

Hera wanted to tell her not to be, she wanted to confess to all of the awful things that she’d done, but she allowed herself just one more moment to cling to her mother. She’d saved them. She’d saved her parents and her father could save her people. They would be okay.

“Let’s go home, mom," she said quietly and she meant it. She wanted to go home more than anything in the galaxy.

The hallways were empty as the two quickly made their way back toward the direction in which they’d come but Eleni took Hera’s hand and led her in a different direction, “Somebody may be watching for us,” she explained in a hushed voice. Hera followed her mother through twisting stairways and corridors, into a room concealed behind a large tapestry that led to what appeared to be a turbolift meant for service only.

“You friend,” Eleni said gently, depressing the button for the main level, “he is a Jedi?”

“Something like that,” Hera answered with a slight flush to her cheeks.

“He is also more,” her mother persisted, a knowing look in her expression.

Hera’s face darkened more and she gave the slightest of nods.

Eleni smiled and wrapped a hand around her daughter’s, “Maybe we wait until all of this settles down to tell your father, okay?”

Looking up at her mother, Hera managed a gentle smile.

Before she could say anything more, the doors of the turbolift opened and the two women started to step off, only to face the bombardment of blaster fire. Hera cried out Kanan’s name and dropped to the ground to dodge the fire. She reached out to grab for her mother’s hand, to pull her back into the lift but it wasn’t there.

She searched frantically through the smoke of the blaster fire and just outside the turbolift doors she found her mother, slumped to the ground and unmoving. Hera scrambled to her side and pulled her into her arms. “No,” she gasped, tears springing to her eyes. The blasters were set to stun. They had to be set to stun. “Mom, no. Come on. We have to get out of here.”

Her mother was limp in her arms, not stirring to her voice. It didn’t mean anything, she could still be stunned – she would be fine, she was –

“Hera!” Kanan called out. The blaster fire that had been aimed at them turned in the direction of his voice. Two quick shots downed whoever had been shooting at them. Then Kanan was at her side, tugging on her arm insistently, “We have to go. They know we’re he –“

Hera clung to her mother, head shaking and tears falling down her cheeks, “I am not leaving her here.”

“Let me,” he said as gently as he could but urgency overwhelmed his tone. He shoved the blaster into her hands and then he scooped her mother up into his arms with ease. “Hera, we have to get out of here now.”

Trying desperately to find her focus, she lifted the blaster to shoot on any potential threats but her eyes were blurred with tears. If anything had happened to her mother, she’d never forgive herself. “What the hell happened?” She asked, glancing around the corner as she followed Kanan through the corridors.

“Unexpected party when I was handling Mors,” Kanan called over his shoulder, “this way. I’ve already got most of the other women on the shuttle. There’s two out front. If you wanna be pissed off, now is the time.”

Hera didn’t have to be asked twice as she bolted ahead of Kanan, and easily found her marks at the end of her blaster. An alarm was blaring on the grounds but any response would be too late. They’d be on the other side of the moon before any decent response was able to mount.

They’d made it onto the shuttle, where eight other women were crammed into the small space. Hera joined them and stopped in the bay to attend to her mother but Kanan pushed her ahead, “You’ve got to fly us out of here. I’ll take care of her, I promise.”

Without any time to be reluctant, Hera ran to the front of the shuttle and took over the controls. She had to believe that if anybody could help her mother now that it would be Kanan. While she’d never cared one way or another if was actively avoiding being a Jedi, she’d never hoped for the Force to be with him more than she had in that moment.

Chapter Text

Getting back to the other side of the moon, back to the Ghost, was no longer an option for Hera. There were eight women on board who needed to go home and her mother – Hera was trying to not think about her mother. Tears still blurred her vision and she took short and shallow breaths as she dropped into the atmosphere on Ryloth. Her vector would take her to the northern tunnels that her mother had told her father to take the people to. The women would be safe there.

And she actively wasn’t thinking about her mother.

It had all happened so fast, too fast – none of it made any sense to her. The way that her mother had led them, that was supposed to be the way that was safe – nobody should have found them, nobody should have shot at them.

She should have gone before her mother.

So much for not actively thinking about her mother.

As she broke the atmosphere, she felt her heart break at the sight of Tann Province, at the vision of her home unfolding before her. She’d dreamt of this moment for so many years, a moment where she’d return to her family. She’d let go of those dreams too soon at Skystrike. She chose bitterness instead. She chose to be angry at her mother and father for leaving her, for forgetting her – when it turned out that they’d both given everything they possibly could just to know that she was still alive.

After too long, too incredibly long, she landed the shuttle gently just at the entrance to the northern tunnels and opened the hatch. She’d expected to see the throng of the women they’d saved hustling off of the ship when she turned to face the crowded cargo bay. Despite the opened door, they were all still there. They’d all remained motionless, all of them with their eyes fixed on the human male wearing the armor of the Imperial. They were staring at him but it wasn’t fear that was on their faces.

It was sadness.

Wordlessly, they all parted as Hera advanced toward Kanan, still holding her mother in his arms. His head was hanging and she told herself it was in concentration. She told herself that the stark red blood against the shining white armor of the stormtrooper’s uniform wasn’t too much and that his head was bowed doing some sort of mystical Force thing. He was trying to do some magic Jedi whatever to make her stop bleeding, to keep her heart still beating just so she had enough time.

But the color of her mother’s skin was too pale.

Her limbs were too lifeless.

And Hera knew.

Hera dropped to her knees in front of Kanan, in front of her mom, trying to find where she’d been hit, frantically searching for something that she could fix. “Momma, no,” she whispered in a choked voice and the tears of the strangers around her swallowed her up in sorrow. Her hands continued to search, to struggle to find a place that she could staunch the flow of blood or – or do anything – until Kanan’s hand took hers to still it. Her wide green eyes flew up to meet his, tears coming freely and brow furrowed in question.

Isn’t there something you can do?

It was a question she already knew the answer to.

The look on his face said so many things – I tried, I couldn’t, I’m sorry, I failed you– and she shook her head fervently, refusing to accept any of it. “No, no, please,” it had meant to come out as a plea for help but it only came out as gasping words, punctuated with sobs. An unfamiliar hand touched her shoulder and she shrugged it off, another tried and she pushed it away more aggressively.

One of the women knelt at Hera’s side, careful to keep her distance, “Please,” she spoke in Ryl, “let us take her home for you.”

“No,” her words were harsh, “I will take her home myself. Just go.”

Kanan’s hand tightened on hers, “Hera, you can’t. They’re looking for you. We have to leave soon. I know that you don’t – “

“Let them have me,” she said coolly, her eyes still focused on her mother’s face. Her vision was still blurred with tears. Sadness was quickly fading to anger. They took her from her family and she found a way to get her family back and so the Empire took her family instead. Her head fell against her mother’s stomach and she squeezed her eyes tightly, trying to stave the unstoppable flow of tears.

“Hera – “ Kanan said her name again, this time it was more gentle, more soothing, “she made it home because of you. She’s not there anymore.”

So much for trying not to cry harder.

“Let them take her to your father – let these women get to safety,” he murmured, “and then you and I – we’ll make sure that they feel this. We’ll make it as right as we can.”

Again, her head shook but no words would come out. She had just gotten her mother back and now she had to let go again, let her go forever. It wasn’t fair. After a few moments more, Kanan’s body shifted beneath her and he rose from the acceleration bench he’d been seated on. Her mother remained in his arms.

He was making the choice for her; he was making it so she didn’t have to say goodbye.

Distantly, she heard the women thanking Kanan in Ryl, promising to take her mother home. Whether it was the numbing grief that had consumed her or a vivid imagination, she’d sworn she’d heard Kanan thank them and wish them safety in her own native language.

Maybe another time, she’d care to ask.

Hera looked down at her hands, splotched in her mother’s blood and scuffed up from their hurried escape. She looked her arms and her legs and too much of her bared skin and numbness gave way to boiling rage. This is what the Empire had reduced her mother to, it’s what they’d reduced her people to – and it’s what she’d allowed them to reduce her to.

She wasn’t going to let it happen ever again.

-

Hera stood under the spray of the shower, as miserably hot as Kanan preferred. Her face was pressed into his chest and his arms were wrapped tight around her as she tried to force the last bits of grief she could from her bones. She didn’t have time for tears and she didn’t have time for what should have happened – she needed to plan. They had five days before Empire Day and her mission now had gone far beyond saving the people of Ryloth.

The Empire was going to pay for what they’d done to her.

Everything they’d done to her.

If only the tears would stop.

Kanan’s head rested atop hers, the ridiculous man that he was still standing there in his basics even though she’d stripped down to bare skin. He kept apologizing, kept saying he should have done something different, saying that he should have tried harder, that he could have done better – like he was apologizing because he couldn’t work miracles. She’d told him it was okay a dozen times but she didn’t understand how he could think there was anything he would have done differently.

His hand moved in languid strokes along her back, “It’s not going to happen again.”

Hera scoffed through her tears, “Well, I only had one mom so I guess not.”

He kissed the top of her head, no chiding words for her bitterness or anger. Whatever he seemed to want to say to her, he must have decided to hold onto it for later. The water chilled before her breathing evened or the tears stopped and so he pulled her from the shower and wrapped her in a towel. When he dropped the sorry excuse for clothing that she’d been wearing in the waste, she didn’t miss it.

It even turned up the corners of her mouth, if only slightly.

Only Kanan wouldn’t care for the scant crap that they clothed her people in.

“Come on,” he said gently, nudging her into the direction of her cabin. She felt listless and restless all at the same time. Like she never wanted to do anything again but couldn’t stop thinking of ways to get revenge. All it resulted in was her standing in one place, watching has Kanan sacrificed one of his so-called beloved shirts by stretching out the neck and slipping it on over her head and tensed lekku. He waited until she was in her bunk before he climbed in beside her.

His arms were warm and his embrace was tight. The tears were finally gone but the ache was still there and yet somehow, he soothed her. There were uttered whispers that he’d loved her and he was going to make it right and all these things that she didn’t understand but she was too exhausted to try to process. The last thing she thought before the bone-racking sadness claimed her to sleep was how her mother was proud of her for finding her way home.

And how she could never go home again.

-

Hera woke with a start, the ambient lighting flooding beneath the cabin door telling her that it was still in the middle of their night cycle. She’d been dreaming something but she couldn’t remember what, only that it left her with a greater ache in her heart. She exhaled heavily at the realization that reality was no better than whatever nightmare she’d been having.

She just wanted the pain to stop.

“You okay?”

Kanan sounded as if he’d never slept.

She lifted her head from his chest, from the sound of his beating heart, her gaze meeting his. Through the faint light, his eyes looked puffy too. He looked like she felt. Being in pain was something that Hera didn’t handle well, dealing with emotions and feelings; those were things that the Empire had taught her to ignore. She found that she was incredibly ill equipped to deal with something like this.

She didn’t want to feel anything.

She wanted to turn it off.

She didn’t know how.

Shifting her body in his arms, she moved just enough until she could brush her lips against his. The kiss started timid, a silent plea for him to quiet her mind. His fingertips curled around her arms as if he was going to push her away but she nudged his lips apart insistently. Her fingertips wound into his hair and she tugged at a handful, harsher than she normally would, and he groaned against her lips.

“Hera,” he murmured half-heartedly, hands cautiously stilled at her hips, the edge of his shirt that she wore slipping up beneath his grip.

Words wasn’t want she wanted. She wanted to feel anything but emotion. If she wanted to feel pain, she wanted it to be physical pain.

Her nails dug into his shoulders as she shifted her body beneath his. Her teeth grazed his bottom lip and then pulled gently. She wrapped a leg around the back of his thigh trying to draw his body into hers.

Still, he hesitated.

“Please,” she finally whispered through the dark, her voice tight from the ache in her chest and the emptiness she felt. “I just want it to stop hurting. Make me stop hurting, Kanan.”

Before he could deny her, she raised herself on her elbows and crushed her lips against his again, hand tangled into his hair, fingernails digging into his hip at the hem of his basics. His body tensed beneath her hands momentarily and then he melted into her. Their lips met and twined, hands tangled together in a race to sloppily bare each other’s bodies. What she wanted wasn’t about taking their time, wasn’t about him making her crazy with his mouth or his hands, about teasing and appreciating and touching.

Hera licked her fingertips and then wrapped those fingers around Kanan, guiding him against her, into her without preamble. He answered her call in long and harsh strokes, gripping her hips tightly and driving loud cries from her lips with each staggering thrust. Her fingertips wound with his over her head and she held to him tight, held onto the feeling of him moving so roughly inside her, the way his chest heaved against hers, the shared rapid beats of their hearts.

They’d counted on losing each other yesterday – it was the only loss she’d prepared herself for.

Now she never wanted to imagine that loss again.

He tried to pull his hands from hers, struggled to reach between her legs to bring her to pleasure but she wanted nothing of it.

“I just want to feel you,” she whispered breathlessly, wrapping her legs more tightly around his waist.

Kanan’s face buried against the crook of her neck, lips kissing and teasing along the sensitive flesh as his hips began to move with abandon against hers. Her whimpers became cries, the ache in her heart was replaced with the delicious ache of him pounding into her harder than he ever had before. Somehow, Hera managed to think in the haze of emotions giving way to a pain that was more tolerable, that Kanan must have fucked his way through this kind of hurt before.

Though she’d refused to let him touch her, even without him doing so, she felt herself starting to tighten around him. She hitched her hips upward, letting him drive into her deeper until she was lost – lost to everything but the dizzying sensation of the best kind of pain, lost to the feeling of him spilling and spasming inside her, lost to the heat of his cum pooled between her legs.

Hera held to him tightly, her body trembling and shoulders threatening to shake and he tried to scoop her into his arms but she refused to let go. She’d never let him go. The Empire had claimed the last bit of her heart that they ever would. Tonight she’d grieve, she’d let Kanan take her pain away when she could convince him, and somehow, someway, she’d find a way to let go.

Tomorrow?

Tomorrow she’d formulate a plan to stop the Empire from breaking up another family ever again.

Chapter Text

If Hera had learned anything of use from the Empire, it was how to set her emotions aside. She’d allowed herself the dark of night to mourn her mother’s loss, to work out her grief through tears and sex and fitful sleep. As the ambient lighting shifted from that of their night cycle to their day cycle, Hera rose with new resolve. No medication would ease the ache in her chest but the Empire had taught her how to ignore it. There would be no replacement for the emptiness that losing her mother had left in her soul but the Empire had shown her that being empty meant being efficient.

The Empire had tried to turn her into a murderer and a monster; they’d tried to break her and perhaps they had, if only for a moment in time. But what Hera knew now, her resolve forced to return in the harsh light of day is that she wasn’t broken. In the Empire’s attempts to control her and control her family, they’d only constructed a means to their end.

They hadn’t created a monster; they had created a weapon – one that was now primed to backfire on them.

Or two weapons, as Kanan had said that she wasn’t doing anything without him. He was being absurdly insistent about it. The man who spent too many nights at the bottom of a bottle, haunted by what she was suspected was the Empire and whatever they’d done to him; the man who was happy to outrun them forever was now stubbornly sticking by her side. It was different than their casual decision to die together only a couple of days earlier; his resolve was grittier and his determination was more directed somehow.

What had changed was a question for later.

If they had a later.

Hera had been in a haze when they’d boarded the Ghost the evening before but she was grateful to wake up to the Imperial shuttle still in their possession connected at the airlock. While she hadn’t had any specific ideas when she woke up as to what she was going to do, now she had at least one. She was going to see to it that the shuttle was returned to the Empire, right where it belonged.

“We need detonators,” she said under her breath, hunched over her datapad.

“What?” Kanan asked from beside her. He’d been quiet this morning, silently sitting alongside her. While his body looked relaxed, his expression read of a man who was poised to respond should her resolve unexpectedly give.

He’d be waiting for a while if he thought that was going to happen.

“Detonators,” she repeated, “we need detonators. A lot of them.”

 Kanan’s brows knitted in confusion, “And why do we need detonators, Hera?”

“Because I’m going to blow up a Star Destroyer,” she answered flippantly, as if the answer was just another one of their smuggling jobs, like it wasn’t treason to say such things.

“Blow up a – are you crazy? We can’t blow up a Star Destroyer!” Kanan exclaimed in surprising exasperation. Hera wasn’t sure that she’d ever managed to eek out that particular tone of voice from him before; she’d seen it once with the crazy guy on Cynda though.

“You don’t have to blow up a Star Destroyer,” she shrugged, “but I’m going to.”

“I already told you, we’re not pulling any suicide missions,” he said firmly. He’d spun his chair so he could stare intently at her, “We’re not doing anything that involves you getting hurt.”

“Too late for that one,” Hera muttered, but it was the only acknowledgement she was giving her sadness today. She had more important things to do than to give into grief, “Besides, I didn’t say it was a suicide mission.”

He eyed her warily, “How do you intend to blow up a Star Destroyer if it’s not a suicide mission?”

Hera glanced down at her datapad. She hadn’t exactly gotten that far yet. Maybe it was a possible suicide mission. Regardless of how, Hera had made her decision that the only fire in the skies over Ryloth for Empire Day would be that of a burning Imperial Star Destroyer. Even if her father had been successful in rallying the people on the ground and the transport shuttles had been shut down – Hera was going to do the one thing that she’d never done in her years spent with the Empire.

She was going to make her voice heard.

She was truly going to protect Ryloth.

Finally, she gave him an answer, however vague it was, “Detonators. A lot of detonators.”

Kanan huffed, “So you have an idea but not a plan.”

He didn’t wilt under the glare she shot in his direction, if anything he seemed bemused.

“I didn’t say it was a bad idea,” he said, holding his hands up in surrender. “I just said you didn’t have a plan.”

“I’m making a plan,” she answered in an annoyed tone, “that’s why I need the detonators.”

“Okay, and what are you going to do with the detonators once you get them?” He asked, his voice still slightly more agitated than the tone she was used to.

“Blow up a Star Destroyer,” she said matter-of-factly, like she wasn’t going from step one to step twelve. “I could figure out the rest of it if you’d quit asking me questions.”

“Maybe I’m asking because you should let me help,” he retorted, “because I said no suicide missions and what you’re doing is planning a suicide mission.”

Hera wrinkled her nose slightly, “Not intentionally.”

“Not at all,” he said firmly.

She crossed her arm over her chest, still glaring at him. “Fine,” she was irritated and she made no effort to hide it, “then what’s your plan?”

He flashed a smug grin, “We need a lot of detonators.”

“If you think the fact that I love you means that I won’t shoot you for irritating me, you’re very wrong,” she grumbled, turning back to her datapad. Clearly she was going to have to come up with this plan on her own.

Kanan started to pull the datapad from her hands and she pulled back to keep it from his hands but he managed to snatch it from her anyway. He sat it aside, “Look, we can do this together and we can do it without dying. Please let me help you.”

“I did. You said the exact same thing that I said,” she answered crossly, “that’s not helping.”

“But I only said it because you were right,” he pointed out. It annoyed her that he knew the best way to assuage her irritation was by pointing out that she was right or admitting any fault. “We do need a lot of detonators. And we have an Imperial shuttle to move them on.”

“I know this.”

“But you’re planning on flying that shuttle full of detonators straight onto the Star Destroyer yourself and I’m not letting you do that,” his gaze fixed on hers. “The Empire deserves to take a hit for what they did. They don’t deserve your life for it. They’ve already taken enough.”

Hera’s gaze fell to the ground between them and gave a slight shake of her head, “Please don’t – just don’t say anything about that. Not right now, not until this is over. All I want is a plan.” Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw his hand reaching out to her and she spun her chair away from him. Comfort was not what she wanted right now and she knew that it was also more than she could handle.

The Empire taught her how to ignore her emotions without support and that was how she was going to do it.

“Fine,” she finally sighed, “I’m not flying the shuttle full of detonators onto a Star Destroyer – how exactly do you suggest that we get it on board then? I’m not letting you fly it, either.”

There seemed to be a bit of hesitation behind his tone when he answered, “What if I get it on the Star Destroyer without being on board?”

The words piqued Hera’s curiosity just enough to lift her gaze. She knew what he was suggesting; she also knew how much he loathed the Force and she knew that just the day before that he struggled with the binders on one of the women’s lekku. How was he expecting to guide an entire shuttle?  Hera was already thin on patience and gentleness was something she couldn’t muster, not today, “Do you really think you can do that?”

If the question bothered him, Kanan didn’t show it. “I’m not going to fail you again,” he said softly, “we get the detonators, we load up the shuttle, set it on the trajectory and I can do the rest.”

Hera didn’t know what he meant when he said that he’d fail her but it was just another question to add to the long list for another time. Sending the Empire a message was her singular goal now and nothing else mattered until it was done. She had to trust that Kanan could do what he was proposing.

In the meantime, she’d come up with a backup plan of her own just in case.

-

Hera watched from the cockpit as Kanan descended through the cloud cover over Ryloth in the Imperial shuttle they’d stolen. There’d been some spare uniforms tucked in a cargo container aboard that they’d discovered while prepping it for their plan. Initially, she had no intentions of trying to determine if her father had been able to mobilize anybody on the ground – her plan was going to keep Ryloth safe – but it gave her an opportunity to make sure her backup plan was ready to go without Kanan poking around.

Kanan would be safe, that’s what she kept telling herself. He was human, he had the codes if he needed them, and he wasn’t landing – he was only doing a flyover. There were still two days before Empire Day and not a Star Destroyer to be seen; there wouldn’t be until a few hours before the attack. Just long enough to recall their forces from the ground before they started the bombardment. It would be good knowledge to have, though, whether or not her father had been able to rally their people.

Somebody would have to keep the fight against the Empire going after she was gone.

She lingered for only a moment longer to make sure he wasn’t making a hasty return and then dropped down the ladder into the cargo bay. Tucked into the corner was a crate of detonation devices that she’d hidden in a crate that she usually used for the ration bars that Kanan despised. There would be no worries about whether or not he’d go poking around in it.

Activating the antigrav on the crate, she pushed it toward the edge of the cargo hold and stopped at one other crate; their regular armament. They had eight proton torpedoes, a slowly pilfered stockpile from the jobs that they’d done for Mizago. Hera gingerly eased two from the crate and put them atop the crate of detonators. She glanced at the chronometer; she needed to move faster. There was no telling how long Kanan would circle or how quickly he’d be back.

Hera set about the task of disengaging the Phantom and parking it just outside the cargo hold. She’d never try to get the Ghost aboard a Star Destroyer if Kanan couldn’t navigate the Imperial shuttle; but the Phantom was small enough and the maneuverability would serve well to get into one of the bays without getting hit. Plus, leaving the Ghost behind that Kanan still had his way to run.

It was a contingency plan. That’s all it was.

Even if she had spent more time detailing her contingency plan that she had their actual plan.

Carefully, she stacked two smaller crates in each corner of the Phantom’s smaller hold and filled each of them with a single proton torpedo. She stacked a third and fourth crate atop the torpedoes, each filled to the brim with detonators. If things worked out the way she had planned, it would start a rather spectacular chain reaction – especially if she landed along side a row of bombers.

Satisfied with her work, Hera re-engaged Phantom and dropped into the hold in what seemed to be just the right time. The moment she’d climbed back up to the cockpit, she saw the shuttle re-emerging from the cloud cover of Ryloth. She sighed softly to herself as he closed the distance between them. Hera found herself torn between him wanting to find his way in the Force to pull this plan off and hoping he wasn’t strong enough to pick up on her plan, the niggling guilt at the back of her mind for preparing herself to sacrifice it all if she had to do so.

It was a contingency plan but it was also the suicide mission that she’d promised him that she wasn’t planning.

For the briefest of moments, she allowed her mind to wander to what might come next for them if they pulled this off and they both made it out of this alive. Perhaps some of it was the relationship that they’d developed – the relationship that was still blossoming between them – somehow though it had only been months that they’d had together, she couldn’t imagine anybody else at her side. The plans they were making today though, it meant more than a life on the run for their future; it meant a life lived in defense. She’d found that she was giving heavy consideration to even acting out of offense instead of avoidance.

That wasn’t something she could ask of Kanan, no matter how much she loved him.

Glancing out of the viewport with a sad smile tugging at her lips, she watched as he landed the shuttle a little more roughly than she would have landed. There was a good reason that she was the pilot, apparently. Hera dropped back down the ladder and opened the doors to the cargo bay, searching his face for answers without ever asking her questions.

“That good, huh?” She asked hesitantly, unable to gauge his expression.

He gave a slight shrug, “Hard for me to say. I don’t know how many people are supposed to be there – it doesn’t seem overpopulated but there’s more people there than I’d prefer.”

“Not overpopulated is a start,” she ventured, “it means that some of the outlying regions are either already underground or that they didn’t show. And even if they do, we still have a plan.”

They had two plans.

“We have a plan,” he confirmed and tried to force a slight smile though she could tell that he felt as heavy as she did.

Silence lingered between them and Hera felt a pang in her chest as she took in the man before her. How was it possible to care so much for somebody that she still knew so little about? Even more, how had she fallen so impossibly in love with a human man? It was without thought that she found her way to the bottom of the ramp and into his arms. Reaching up on the tips of her toes, she brought her mouth to his, a gentle and brief brush of their lips and then another, this time longer and lingering. When his arms wrapped around her tightly to pull her body into his, she parted her lips to deepen their kiss. It was the only way that she could silently will him to know all the things that she’d never be able to say if she had to go with Plan B.

When physiologic need forced their lips – but not their bodies – apart, Hera felt warmth rush to her cheeks. They had work to do and yet she found herself captive to this man that she loved, captive to the thoughts of passing the hours until the Empire showed in a different way. Reluctance forced her from his grasp but she kept their fingers tangled together. “Later,” she promised gently, “we should load up the shuttle.”

“Let me,” he said, pulling her back into him. “I have some things I want to work on.”

Hera figured that things meant Force things and she gave the slightest of nods. Plan A deserved every chance for success – she wanted it to succeed. “Can’t get too much done when I’m distracting you,” she murmured, the palm of her hand resting against his chest.

Kanan grinned that lopsided grin, lowering his forehead to hers, “I don’t know. Maybe I should see what I can do with a distraction.”

“As much as I like the idea of a challenge, I don’t like the idea of you trying to do Forcey things with explosives while I’m distracting you.” She brought her lips to his, lowering her voice as she did, “But I’m fairly certain that I can relinquish control and let you scan the holonet for information while I provide the distraction after your done with all of this.”

The groan that reverberated between their lips was an answer to the affirmative that her alternative was acceptable.

He wasn’t the only one who had a talented mouth, after all.

After a final squeeze of his hand, Hera loosed their fingers and sauntered back up the ramp letting her hips sway just a bit as she did. She smiled slightly to herself as she caught one last glimpse of him as she ascended the ladder back to the cockpit. He was still wearing that lopsided grin.

She wanted Plan A to work.

Plan B was only the contingency.

In the meantime, with the scant hours they had left before the Empire arrived, she’d make sure that he knew how much she loved him for all the things that he’d given her, all the things he’d done for her. She’d spend those last hours wrapped up in him, every inch of their skin pressed together, the lips barely breaking for air, and simply just holding each other.

When the Empire came, either Plan A would work and they could plan for a future together or not. If it failed, she’d execute Plan B and he wouldn’t be left with a doubt in his mind that she loved him with everything she had left.

Chapter Text

“Scanner is picking something up on vector seven-five-two.”

Kanan’s voice and the intensity beneath it stirred a whole maelstrom of emotion inside Hera, none of which she had the time for. She glanced at her reconnoiter and then out to the skies; as expected, a Star Destroyer blinked into existence. No convoy had been surrounding it but the Destroyer was large enough to contain a forty vehicle flight of TIE bombers; an additional hangar bay could house a twenty vehicle flight of traditional TIE fighters.

It was a sufficient armament to level Tann Province; but the Empire didn’t settle for sufficiency, only efficiency. If Kanan had given her a warning about another signal coming in, Hera hadn’t heard it because her eyes were already fixed to the sky and waiting for the second Star Destroyer to drop into realspace. She didn’t have to wait long.

The destroyer belonged to Tarkin.

Plan A and Plan B it is, she decided grimly.

Hera’s eyes slid over to Kanan’s and she tried not to smile sadly. She’d prepared herself for this. She’d already silently said her goodbyes and now their time was up. There was determination in her voice as she spoke but her tone was gentle, “We can still do this.”

“I know we can,” he answered but there was something different in his expression. Something she couldn’t quite read. It was this intense combination of concentration, determination, and peace; then when he turned to her, she saw love. He rose from his seat in one smooth motion, “Ready to blow up a Star Destroyer?”

A faint smile traced her lips. She was ready to blow up two. “Don’t do anything crazy, Kanan. Just aim for the one on heading eight nine. If we get the trajectory right, the first Star Destroyer will take out the second,” she answered. Hera hadn’t done the math to truly calculate the trajectories for a collision course and if it would be the easier and logical way to take out the two Destroyers. She already had a plan and there was no use in wasting precious time to figure out a third.

“I’ll only do what I have to,” he promised, hovering over her.

Hera started to push herself up from her seat but she found that she couldn’t. It was as if the air around her had embraced her body and held it in place. She tried to stand again and she glanced up at Kanan, with that same indescribable look on his face, “Kanan, stop it.”

Kanan spun her chair until she was facing him and she struggled against his invisible embrace. She thought in any other circumstance that he would have apologized for holding her down like that, that he knew that she didn’t like that kind of thing – but now was different. “I promised your mother that I wouldn’t let anything happen to you and I meant it. If you think I’m letting you out of this cockpit, you’re wrong,” his voice was low and steady.

There were tears of frustration and sadness and anger and fear threatening the corners of her eyes. He’d promised her mother? Had Kanan been the one to receive her mother’s final words? Was it promise that he’d merely made to a corpse? Hera was angry at herself. They didn’t have time for this. “Stop. holding. me. down,” she spat at him.

“I want you to stay here until I give you the signal. I can get the first destroyer down with the shuttle but once I’m in the air with the Phantom, I’m going to need you to cover me when I say. They’ll shoot me down in a second,” he said softly, “and with the firepower you left me in the bay, I’d rather make the fireworks, not be them.”

“Stop,” she said again and this time it was more pleadingly. The subconscious prickling feeling of being held down was quickly being superseded by the thought of losing him instead.

It was only a brief moment that he took to hunch over her seat and crush his lips into hers, hard and hungry and passionate. In the same amount of time, she felt the invisible grip on her arms release and she brought her hand up to his cheek, cupping it and returning the kiss with the same heat and intensity. Then she drew her hand back and slapped him hard across the face.

Kanan staggered back only slightly, a lopsided grin on his face, “That’s my girl.”

“Yeah? See if I’m still your girl when I can move the rest of my body,” she threatened him but it was at his back because he was already making his way out of the cockpit. Hera tested the restraint that had been holding her down and it was still there. How had he managed to go from not being able to manage some binders on a lekku to holding her down without even trying. She tried to struggle against it again, and she had range of motion in her arms but not even enough to draw her seat back around to confirm that the light blinking at the corner of her vision was the Phantom disengaging.

Her eyes were drawn upward to the shadow over the viewport, the Imperial shuttle in movement and just above it, the Phantom. The grip on her body released and she quickly swiveled her seat around and set to work on firing up her weapons systems. She pressed the comm button to signal the Phantom.

“Kanan Jarrus, get your ass back here – “ her voice was nearly frantic as she watched the two ships move in eerie synchrony. A few more kilometers and the Empire would take notice.

“I’m not planning on dying, Captain Hera,” his voice was that same lazy drawl but edged with a slight intensity. “But if I’m going to do this, I’m going to need you to shut up so I can concentrate. Just wait for me to tell you when I need you. Unless you’re wanting this not to work.”

Hera clicked the comm on to bite back a sarcastic remark but then clicked it back off. She blinked away tears as she watched the rutters on the Phantom engage, just out of the scanner’s capacity of the smaller Star Destroyer. Part of her wanted to flip from channel to channel, to scan the Imperial communications but she didn’t dare miss a message from Kanan. The silence was deafening as she watched the shuttle, afterburners alight as if it were being piloted making a perfect trajectory toward the Destroyer.

In what seemed to take an eternity, Hera watched as the behemoth of a ship welcomed the shuttle home through its magnetic screens.

And then nothing happened.

She moved her hand to depress the comm button to address Kanan but then she could tell by the flare of the afterburners on the Phantom that he’d fully opened the throttle. His voice sliced through the heavy silence like a vibroblade, “Hera, now.”

Before she could answer, he was hurdling at Tarkin’s destroyer at full speed. She threw her own throttle wide open and took to the sky. The Ghost was faster than the Phantom, possibly she could cut him off and stop him from doing what she was going to do. What good could it do them, though? They’d still shoot him out of the sky and he’d be the fireworks, just as he said.

The infuriating man had known damn good and well what he was doing when he’d taken the Phantom. He’d allegedly promised her mother that he wouldn’t let her get hurt but didn’t he realize how much that he was hurting her by doing this? She blazed after him.

“I don’t need you on my ass, I need cover from the TIEs,” he grumbled into the comms.

“There aren’t any – “ she started to argue but then moments later, the first wave came out of the bay of Tarkin’s destroyer – only eight if they were following their typical wave counts. The Phantom was small and they couldn’t scan the Ghost to logically reason a deployment of anymore. “Dammit, Kanan,” she hissed into the comms and sped past him in the Phantom, overtopping him as she did. She took aim and fired at the first two; rookie pilots who didn’t know how to stay on their same vectors. Hera only needed to hit two in order to send them blazing down toward the orbit of Ryloth. The other fighters straightened out.

Hera didn’t dare move from her vector or engage the other pilots. She kept her eyes trained on the threat and her ship squarely in front of the smaller excursion craft. The feeling that she was once again flying Kanan to his death was one that she couldn’t shake. Tears pricked the corner of her eyes. There was no saving him this time, no shoving him off the ship with a handful of credits and a means to protect himself.

This time, he was trying to protect her.

Two of the remaining six TIEs broke off and split in direction, circling with the intention of dividing the two ships to conquer them. It was a move that Hera knew well. Reluctantly she broke off her shielding vector and spiraled upward rapidly. She banked to portside and fired on the first TIE, setting it ablaze with ease and then looped upward again until she was flanking Kanan. She’d set herself up for a perfect shot on the second TIE as soon as he broke off the vector that would send the blazing debris spiraling into Kanan.

The TIE wasn’t moving.

“Kanan I need you to drop point three,” she said in an agitated voice over the comms, “I hit this guy and he’s going to veer into you.”

“On it, Captain,” he said back and should could almost hear the cocky grin in his voice.

If she ever got a chance to see him again, in this life or another, the first thing Hera planned to do was punch him square in that cocky grin.

The second thing she’d do was kiss him breathless, draw the air straight out of his chest and never let him go anywhere again.

As soon as he was as out of her trajectory, she leveled her aim on the TIE and took fire. She dove into a graceful descent to assume her forward position. Hera didn’t care if the Imperials could hear their comms, let them hear her voice. “I don’t suppose you have a plan of how you intend not to die that you’d care to share,” she said quietly.

There was silence over the comm and Hera held her breath. Her eyes were still trained to the remaining four TIEs but her heart was on the Phantom. He didn’t have a plan not to die. He had a plan to protect her and a promise to keep, apparently.

“Just wait for my signal,” he said, his voice just as quiet. A moment of silence lingered and then he spoke again, “If you pull up your navi, there’s programmed heading out of here. You’re going to take it when I tell you to.”

They were closing in on the Star Destroyer and the TIEs weren’t taking evasive actions but they weren’t engaging either. Another wave would be coming soon – a larger wave.

Tears on her cheeks, Hera pulled up the navicomputers and sure enough, he’d already programmed a vector to jump; two others were below it, contingencies for if her path was blocked. “Whatever happened to you not wanting to miss out on dying with me?” She asked, her eyes training back up to the TIEs.

“You know what happened,” his voice was soothing, “anything you do, I’ll always be at your side.”

Hera hiccupped and she tried to shove the emotions back down but the tears wouldn’t stop. Her thumbs remained poised over the triggers for the nose gun and she picked off another two of the TIEs simply because she could and she knew that the wave was coming. They were well within range for Kanan to make it to the magnetic screen of the second destroyer as she leveled her aim on the final two TIEs. The first destroyer still hadn’t gone off and she worried that Plan A had failed due to some other error that they hadn’t accounted for.

If the plan hadn’t worked, what was the point of going through with any of it. The cost was too much. The Empire had taken her mother, they were going to take her city, she didn’t want them to take Kanan, too. She couldn’t let them.

“Kanan,” she managed to choke out, “just – return to port. We can – “

He didn’t answer or if he did it was lost to the loud swarming of the thick black cloud of TIEs and bombers that poured out of the guts of the Star Destroyer.

Hera started firing wildly on them, one after the other, trying to maintain her cover for Kanan. When one spiraled to starboard side, she knew that it was heading straight for Kanan. She did the only thing she knew she could do to save him, if only to let him get aboard the Star Destroyer.

“Admiral Tarkin, this is Captain Hera Syndulla aboard the Ghost, personally wishing you a happy Empire Day,” she spit into her comms.

Kanan’s voice snapped to life inside the cockpit, “What are you doing??”

“Buying you time,” she answered back and tried to keep her attention away from him. Her emotions, the tears on her eyes, streaming down her cheeks and soaking into the collar of her shirt, she couldn’t do anything about – but Kanan? She could protect him as long as possible. She veered off his path and toward the hulking command deck in a spectacular display of aviation.

Two TIEs took chase to her and she dove into a rapid descent just before the observation deck, threatening to careen her beloved ship straight into the durasteel structure. She pulled up three seconds short but left the two TIEs on her tail to careen straight into the surface of the destroyer. She spiraled back upward, a blaring fuck you to Tarkin and all of those in command.

“Still quite the pilot, I see,” a cold and conniving voice filled her ears. It didn’t fill her with rage, though, not like it used to. It filled her with glee.

“Better than any of yours,” she answered confidently.

“Ah but you’ve forgotten who trained you,” Tarkin answered through the comm.

“You’ve forgotten why you wanted to train me,” she retorted, “the only thing you did was give me all the Empire’s secrets. Now I’m going to use them to destroy you.”

Calculated laughter, so fake that it sounded as if it had been produced by a broken toy, echoed over the walls of her cockpit. “One pilot against the entire galaxy? While ambitious, I think you forget the might of the Empire that you served. An Empire that you may serve again if you surrender now.”

Hera snorted, “I’d rather die.”

Before Tarkin could deliver his response, there was a brilliant and blinding flash just to portside that sent Hera careening off the taunting course that she’d circling beyond the command deck viewport. “Kanan!” she screeched into her comms, fearing that it had been his final farewell, the explosion of the Phantom rocking the hull of Tarkin’s destroyer that had caused the brilliant flash.

When she finally regained some grasp on her vision, she squinted her eyes to see that it was the first destroyer that had blown apart into two separate pieces. One was careening straight toward the nose of Tarkin’s destroyer and the other was hurling toward the moon above Ryloth. With Tarkin forgotten, she circled back to the portside of the destroyer, eyes searching desperately through the mess of burning and confused TIE fighters.

Some of them still took sloppy aim on her; all of them missed.

Hera accelerated toward the magnetic shields, trying to find Kanan in the chaos. The Phantom was nowhere to be seen. If she could break through the shields and get into the bay maybe there was enough time to get to him, enough time that he could clamber aboard the Ghost and they could take their vector to safety.

Tarkin’s destroyer veered upward, the aft dipping and she pulled up hard on the yoke to avoid the ship’s erratic rocking. The remaining piece of destroyer must have finally made contact, she assumed. Again, she called Kanan’s name over the comms, tried to assume a different approach into the vehicle bay. Her chest was aching but the tears were dried up, leaving only desperation in their wake.

Another wave of shuttles were expelled from the guts of the hangar bay, this time with Lambdas. Escape pods were pouring out of the Star Destroyer in extraordinary fashion. She exhaled heavily – they’d done it. They’d stopped the attack on Ryloth. Kanan didn’t need to die for this – she called out for him again, “Kanan, please,” she said over the comm, her voice frantic. “Where are you?”

Static crackled through the comms, interference from the downing Imperial communications towers, she suspected. Still, only silence lingered. She was staying until he told her to leave – and if he couldn’t tell her to leave, then dammit if she wasn’t dying with him. She flew circles around the remaining TIEs, fired on several of them to send them careening into the orbit of her homeworld. Every time she circled the vehicle bay, her view was only obstructed by debris and more escape pods.

Finally, finally, his voice cut through the crackling, “Hera, now.”

“Not without you!” She snapped back

“Hera, go,” he said more urgently through the comm, “Anything you do, I will always be by your side, I promise. But you have to go now.”

The tears returned in full force and her throat constricted. She’d done what she’d been ordered to do; she’d delivered him to the Empire, a ticking time bomb, the destruction that they’d feared in the form of a man born with a power he didn’t want and gifted with a heart of gold. Hera pulled up her navicomputers. “You swear you’ll always be at my side,” she managed the words through her tightened airway.

“You’ll want me to go away,” he answered in earnest.

“Never,” she replied softly. Her hand closed over the hyperspace lever, “I love you. Always.”

Hera didn’t wait for his response because she knew he loved her, too. The back of the Ghost rocked nose forward just as the stars streaked into blue lines; the force of an explosion from Tarkin’s destroyer. They’d done it – they’d stopped the attack and sent the Empire a message. She had gotten her fireworks over Ryloth.

The one thing she wanted though, she didn’t have.

The chair at her side was ominously empty, the air of the cockpit dreadfully cold.

I will always be by your side, I promise.

But he wasn’t and he would never be again.

For the second time in her life, Hera was alone.

Chapter Text

When Kanan had programmed her navicomputers, Hera wondered idly if he’d been drinking. Tatooine wasn’t exactly a safe haven; the entire planet was a hive of scum and villainy. Even before the Empire, her people had been trafficked through this planet by the Hutts. The entire planet was a hazardous situation but fortunately she’d lacked any propensity to care about hazardous situations.

Hera tossed the lid to the now emptied Corellian whisky bottle across the galley. It was the least lonely room in the entire ship. Sure, they’d defiled it a few times while waiting for caf, but it didn’t carry the heaviness of the memories that the other rooms did. Conveniently, it was also where he’d stashed his weak ass liquor. There’d even been more than one bottle, which meant that she could get sufficiently wasted.

At least for a cycle or two, she could be numb, and then she could decide what to do next.

“Always at my side, my ass,” she muttered to herself, drawing her knees against her chest. The tears stinging at the corners of her eyes signaled it was time to crack open another bottle. She dragged one out of the crate and twisted off the lid and sent it sailing in the direction of the last one. It’s not like she wasn’t just going to empty this bottle too.

Maybe Tatooine had actual liquor. Maybe that was why he sent her here.

She snorted to herself before she took a drink.

Fuck him. Fuck him for his heart of gold and his stupid eyes and his goddamn hands and for making her care when he was the one who said not to care about anything. Fuck him for thinking he owed her mother anything like protection and that killing himself somehow equated to protecting her. Fuck him for leaving her alone. Again. She took a long swig from the bottle in her hands.

It tasted like Kanan.

Closing her lips around the mouth of the bottle would be the closest thing she’d ever have to kissing him again.

Hera’s hands curled more tightly around the bottle and she clutched it to her chest like it were a piece of him. In a way it was. She settled her head back against the wall of galley and closed her eyes in an attempt to shutter the tears that wouldn’t stop falling. She clutched the bottle against her broken heart and waited for the alcohol induced numbness to come.

-

Tinkering at the top of her ship pulled her from the light and fitful sleep that she'd finally fallen into. Hera staggered out of the galley and toward the ladder for the cargo bay. When she smacked the door open it was bright, too fucking bright for her eyes. She held up her hands and peered out from beneath them to see a large sandcrawler.

She knew those fucking things anywhere.

Unholstering her blaster, she tromped down the ramp and raised it toward the dorsal side of her ship, “Get the fuck off my ship before I drop you.”

A jawa scurried out from the belly of the ship. There didn’t appear to be any parts in its hand. She watched it scampering back toward the sandcrawler and she shot at its heels for good measure. It stumbled face first into the sand and she glowered in its direction when it turned to look at her.

To make her point clear, Hera dropped onto the ramp of the ship, still gripping her blaster as she watched it journey back to the clunky and oversized vessel. Later, she’d have to run diagnostics to make sure that the little shit hadn’t made off with some sort of converter or essential part. Right now, she was content to sit under the heat of Tatooine’s two suns and wait for the sandcrawler to move on.

If only she’d brought the last of the whisky with her.

Hair of the bantha, Kanan had called it; the cure to what ailed you was more of the thing that ailed you in the first place.

While what actually was ailing her was the whisky, the cure she wanted was gone.

At least she was still numb enough to come to that conclusion without tears. For now. A few more days, she knew from experience, and the tears wouldn’t come ever again. She’d done this before, suffered a loss that seemed insurmountable, felt an emptiness that threatened to engulf her. The Empire had done this to her before. She’d survived.

Hera could do it again.

This time, she just had a little help getting there.

After the jawas faded from view, she staggered back up the ramp and slammed the door closed. She paused on the way back to the galley, right outside Kanan’s cabin. Her hand rested against the hatch and she leaned her forehead against it. There wasn’t much that he’d owned to begin with, just a few clothes, his lightsaber, and his thing – what had he called it? She was too fuzzy to remember.

Hera pressed the button to open his cabin. Why it was his cabin, they’d never really figured it out. The only time they used it was to fuck when they were being impatient and climbing into her bunk seemed like a chore that would take too damn long. She dropped to her knees at the open drawer; his clothes were still there, one white shirt with a stretched out neck, strung over the top of the drawer. Her designated shirt, he’d claimed, like seeing her in any of his shirts ever gave him cause to complain.

Shifting the clothes out of the way, she looked for the real reason that she’d come into his room. The case was there and she pulled it from the drawer but it was notoriously lighter than she’d remembered. She unzipped the pouch. Only the cube was there.

His lightsaber was gone.

“You fucking idiot,” she muttered to him, even though he wasn’t there. She dropped the case back to the opened drawer. He was planning on a fight if he’d made it aboard that ship and couldn’t pull off their mission. She’d delivered him straight to the Empire, just as previously ordered, only with a slight shipping delay.

At least he’d blown the fucking thing out of the sky, at least he’d died the way he wanted to and not at the hands of that creepy Inquisitor or worse. Hera wanted to let the thought bring her some sort of inner peace, some knowledge that Kanan got to die Kanan and he got to die fast, in an explosive surge of flames that took the Empire down with him.

The only thing that the thought did was make her want to drink more before the tears came back again.

So she left his cabin to do just that.

-

The Corellian whisky had nearly run dry. Only a few milliliters remained at the bottom of a bottle; a final kiss goodbye. Hera wouldn’t touch it. Instead, she traipsed through the sands leaving the Ghost behind, in search of a local shop to procure some decent liquor instead. She’d give herself another couple days to wallow and then she’d figure out her plan. The two suns overhead were blazingly hot and she had Kanan to thank for the fucking goggles that helped dull the ache running through her head and lekku.

She wanted to be angry at him but she’d seemed to have run out of anger.

Hera hadn’t wanted him to survive that explosion. If he did, if he’d made it out somehow, the Empire would get him. They would have pulled him from the wreckage and delivered him to Mustafar and done Force knows what with him. She knew better than to hope that he’d survived it. It didn’t mean that her rapidly sobering mind hadn’t found a way to hope that he had; maybe he’d gotten to an escape pod and he was on Ryloth – somewhere trying to find her dad. Maybe he was floating around on a TIE and she should go back to look for him.

All of it was stupid hopes and worthless dreams.

That’s why she needed more to drink.

Mos Pelgo was made up of all types; there wasn’t a supremacy which suited Hera just fine. It didn’t change the fact that all kinds of eyes were on her. She may have looked like an easy target in her state but Force have pity on the fool that tried to touch her right then. Hera picked up a deep amber bottle of liquor that she’d seen in her father’s study. She didn’t know what it tasted like and she didn’t particularly care; she just knew the stuff was strong.

It had caused her father and her Uncle Gobi to break out into song at least one time.

Hera tossed down the credits on the counter and didn’t bother to wait for the change before striding back out of the store. Still keenly aware of the eyes trained on her, she kept her eyes fixed straight ahead. She wasn’t in the mood for distractions and she didn’t really want to get into a fight. Numb was what she wanted, numb was the only thing she wanted.

Almost the only thing, anyway.

The wolf whistles and comments in her direction fell on deaf ears. Fortunately, nobody seemed to be willing to mess with a Twi’lek whose lekku were rigid down her back and a scowl permanently etched into her face. She was fairly certain that she looked like shit, too. Still, shit for a Twi’lek was still at least ninety percent more attractive than any human on most days.

The jawas’ sandcrawler sat on the edge of town, surrounded by a small group of people and speeders. She’d been happy to see them there; it meant that her ship would be left untouched. They seemed to be running some sort of shop. A man was asking about a droid speaking Bocce and then another man made a statement that caught her attention.

It’s a C1 astromech. That thing is older than the Empire, you’re crazy if you think I’m paying that much.

Hera’s eyes flitted past the crowd of people and she shoved a Trandoshan aside who sneered at her. She didn’t really care. Her eyes widened and she had to tighten her grasp on her liquor bottle to keep from dropping it into the sand. “Chopper!” she exclaimed as she lurched forward toward the little C1, his little orange dome as battered and seemingly covered in the same detris that it was when she’d last seen him so long ago.

Really, it could have been any C1 but she knew it to be her droid from the mismatched ambulatory strut. She didn't need to hear it respond in fluently filthy strings of binary to know that it was her best friend.

The droid whumped excitedly, his mechanical arms flailing about. If it hadn’t been for the restraining bolt affixed to his dome, she suspected that he would have already been at her side.

A jawa prodded her with a long stick and she scowled, “Don’t make me drop you,” she muttered at the thing, “how much for my droid?”

The jawa rambled off a price and it was more than she could reasonably afford but really, Hera had no plans, so she didn’t care. She dropped the credits into the jawa’s hands and waited for them to bring him forward. She called after the fuzzy little creature, “And take that fucking restraining bolt off of my droid.”

Maybe she wouldn’t be completely alone after all.

-

Chopper whirred softly in the corner; plugged into the Ghost’s systems after demanding to do some serious upgrades. He needed to be powered up, anyway. Whatever the jawas had done to him to keep him subdued had seriously fried his circuits. Tomorrow, Hera could go back into Mos Pelgo and pick up some parts.

She took a cautious sip of the Savareen brandy that she’d bought. The stuff tasted like crap but just a little had done the trick. Hera was comfortably numb, slouched back in Kanan’s seat and staring up at the stars through the viewport. If she’d had the coordination to get herself up the ladder into the dorsal guns, she would have considered that a much better vantage for stargazing but Kanan’s seat was the second best place in the ship.

Her hand ran over her bared shoulder, against the hem of the stretched out shirt that she wore. Though she’d worn the thing more than Kanan, to her it smelled like him. Maybe it smelled like them.

Staring at the stars, she couldn’t help but wonder if there was someway that he’d known that she wouldn’t be alone when he sent her to Tatooine. How could he know, though? He didn’t know anything about Chopper, about most of her childhood. She hadn’t ever told him any of those things and he’d never bothered to ask.

If she’d had a second chance, she would have done all of it so much differently. At least some of it. She wanted to know him fully and she wanted to bare herself to him in every way possible.  If she’d had a second chance, she would have fully surrendered to Kanan Jarrus without a second thought.

Hera knew that he’d fully surrendered himself to her a long time ago; she just hadn’t ever taken advantage of it.

A soft sigh left her lips before she took another sip.

Just beyond the horizon, Hera watched as a shuttle dropped into orbit, hurdling in her general direction. Her brow furrowed as she tried to make out the shape of the shuttle through the combination of her bleary eyed vision and the darkness of night. The cup of brandy slipped from her hands when she realized it was Imperial.

They’d found her.

How could they have found her here, in the middle of nowhere?

Hera scrambled to her feet, getting tripped up in the blanket that was swathed around her. She smacked the underside of her chin against the console and winced at the sudden flash of pain; something wet dripped down her jaw and she was almost certain she’d busted the skin open. She didn’t have time to think about it. She quickly started fumbling with the startups, working to bypass them.

The shuttle was coming in closer.

“Shoot it down, you idiot,” she muttered to herself, taking control of the yoke. If she couldn’t get herself off the ground fast enough, she could at least take them out.

Hera decided to chance it with the dorsal guns, stumbling down the corridor and toward the ladder. She hoisted herself up as quickly as she could, ignoring the sensation of spinning around her. She swung the turret in the direction of the oncoming shuttle and slipped her fingers over the triggers.

Thank Force for targeting systems, she thought to herself because there was no way she had decent aim right now.

Just as she’d locked onto the shuttle, it sent a shot down in her direction but poorly aimed as it landed about five hundred meters off her portside. Hera’s brow furrowed at the poor shot. She was a sitting bantha, not a moving target. The Imperial pilots weren’t great but they weren’t that bad either. Maybe it had been a ploy to cause her to hesitate.

They weren’t that smart either.

The amount of time it had taken her to hesitate allowed the ship to go careening into the sand not far off from where it had fired. It skidded to a violent halt and though she kept the turret trained on the shuttle, she didn’t fire it. That wasn’t the landing of even the worst Imperial. That was barely a landing of a decent pilot.

It was too dark outside, she couldn’t see anything from the now darkened shuttle. She slid down the ladder and stopped in the cockpit to grasp her blaster before dropping into the cargo bay. Hera blindly smacked for the door to the ramp, missed and then smacked again. The pain in her chin was killing her and there was a nice little pool of red now soaking along the collar of her shirt.

She’d deal with it after she dealt with whoever had just disrupted her previously scheduled pity party.

Advancing slowly on bared feet through the cool sand, Hera kept her blaster trained in front of her. Her vision was still bleary but she wasn’t in the mood to negotiate with unwanted guests. Her eyes adjusted slowly to the darkness and she could just make out the silhouette of one person still a couple hundred meters away, hands raised in the air and no weapon that she could see.

Hera’s hands started to tremble slightly as the silhouette came closer.

“Pretty sure this is how we met,” a familiar voice called out through the darkness.

Her lower lip started to tremble along with her hands.

The voice drew closer and through the bleariness of her impaired vision and the blurriness of tears, a face came along with the voice.

“Just don’t shoot me this time,” Kanan said in a lazy drawl with an exhausted grin on his face. He was battered and bruised but very much alive.

Dropping her blaster into the sand, Hera clumsily stumbled through the masses and mounds to find her way into his arms. She threw her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist, sending him staggering backward into the sand and onto the ground. The lekku that had been rigid down her back with tension for days were now wound tightly around each other. Maybe it was a dream, maybe it was just really good booze, but he was here.

Kanan was holding her, saying things that only Kanan would say, acting like he didn’t just die for a couple of days after essentially telling her goodbye. His hand rubbed familiar and soothing circles against the small of her back, another gently caressed her thigh. “We need to get you inside,” he tried to urge her to move, “it’s freezing out here.”

Hera made no effort to move but she released the grip of her arms around him only slightly, hands starting to probe along his shoulders and arms, along his neck and his face, through his long and messy locks. Her thumbs stopped along his lips and she shook her head, the world spinning as she did. At some point she’d made a plan to punch him square in his cocky smile if she’d ever seen him again and then she was going to kiss him.

Now she just wanted to keep touching him to make sure that he was real and that this wasn’t some sort of cruel alcohol induced delirium.

“I told you that I’d always be by your side no matter what,” he murmured against the tips of her thumbs, “and I meant it.”

Letting her hands fall to her lap, her knees astride his hips, Hera tried to contemplate his words with her fuzzy mind. She drew back her left hand, her weaker side, and punched him in the jaw.

Kanan huffed slightly, hand coming up to nurse his jaw, “I guess I deserve th– “

He was silenced by her lips on his, raw and passionate. Her hand rested over the hand against his jaw and she drew him deeper into the kiss. Their fingers twined along his flesh and she felt his hand come against her cheek and trace along her jaw and then still at her chin. He pulled away from her then.

“You’re bleeding,” he uttered.

“I’m fine,” she lied.

Hera had been anything but fine.

“Come on,” he said gently, easing her off of his lap long enough to get himself to his feet. He pulled her into his arms and off of the ground. “We’re getting you inside.”

“Kanan, you made sure to disable the transponder and mask the – “ she managed to slur out.

His chest rumbled against hers in a gentle laugh, “Yes, Captain Hera. I made sure that the Empire couldn’t track us here. I don’t know how you can be this wasted and think of things like that without trying.”

Hera scowled though he couldn’t see it, “I am not – “

“Don’t think I don’t know what Savareen brandy is. Nasty stuff,” he interrupted her, “most humans can’t handle more than a couple of fingers but neither can Twi’leks.”

“Know-it-all,” she grumbled as he settled her down in the cargo bay. Her eyes focused in on him in the harsh light of the bay and she felt her heart flutter in her chest as she did. There was a nasty gash across his forehead, a couple bruises along his cheek and a singe with some dried blood along one arm of his tunic; but he was alive.

His eyes lingered on hers and he seemingly did his own precursory exam of her, “You’re beautiful but you look like crap.”

“Yeah, well, lose your mom one day and your boyfriend a couple days later and see what you look like,” she retorted though the words were empty. The sting of her mother’s loss was still there but the other – well, it wasn’t every day that somebody came back from the dead. She couldn’t exactly describe how she felt.

“Boyfriend, huh?” Kanan asked with a smile tugging at his lips.

“I’ll hit you again,” she threatened weakly.

“We don’t have enough bacta for that,” he smirked and pulled at her hand to guide her toward the ladder, “which clearly, that needs. What the hell did you do?”

“Fell while I was getting ready to shoot you down,” she answered casually, her words still slightly slurred.

There was a slight chuckle in response to her words, “That’s my girl.”

--

They’d barely made it to the galley where Hera kept the medkit before their path veered toward the fresher instead. Their lips and tongues collied in frenzied kisses, pulling apart only long enough to shed another layer of clothing before meeting again. Hera didn’t care what he turned the temperature to, had barely even noticed if the water was blazing hot when he pressed her back into the cold durasteel of the shower wall.

Kanan ran his wet fingers between her legs for only a half of a heartbeat before he hoisted her legs around his waist and buried himself inside her. Rivulets of water with bits of sand and dirt and dried blood pooled down between their chest, washing away the dark memories as their bodies rocked together. His hands gripped her hips tightly and lips trailed gingerly along the cut at her chin and then up along her jaw. He paused beneath the flesh of her ear to tell her how much he loved her, to promise again that he’d always be by her side.

Hera believed him this time; he’d come back from the dead to prove it.

Her fingernails scraped lightly against his scalp, wove through his still tangled hair gently and along his neck. Though she believed that he’d always be by her side, she tugged insistently at his jaw until his eyes were level with hers and then she told him, “I’m never letting you go again.”

“Figured I’d only be able to get away with that once anyway,” he murmured and brought his mouth to hers once more.

Their bodies moved in an intricate dance; the rhythm of their hips was slow and steady but laced with furious intention and passion. Their movements weren’t directed at finding release, about seeing which one could make the other crazy with need; it was about holding onto each other. Fingertips revisited old scars and soothed the new ones, his lips kissed the salt away from her cheeks and hers grazed the broken and bruised skin along his forehead. Each tender caress was a silent expression of love, each graze of their lips, a promise of tomorrow and the days after that.

When love gave way to need, they moved in feverish unison, his fingers and hers fighting for purchase over the sensitive skin along her clit as he thrust into her with abandon. Her vision blurred at the edges, this time a welcome alteration brought on by the intoxicating feeling of her impending release and not tears or liquor. Her lips brushed against his ear, “Don’t stop, Kanan,” she whispered in a rough voice, knowing that all it would take was the low whisper to drag him down with her. She was starting to clamp down on his thick cock, electricity starting to tingle up her spine, “Fuck me harder,” she purred breathlessly against his ear.

Kanan, the amazing lover that he was, did exactly as he was told. His hips pounded into hers as his fingertips pulled to spread her thighs farther apart. He hammered into her taut muscles wildly, unable to fully maintain control through her orgasm. He came inside her before her muscles had completely relaxed, hips bucking in staggering thrusts as he did.

Her legs were still trembling when he let her legs slip back to the floor.

Gently, he traced his thumb beneath her chin and dropped a kiss over the staunched wound. “Come on,” he said gently, “let’s get that cleaned up.”

-

Hera woke to a delicious soreness between her legs and a less friendly ache in her head and lekku. She was never drinking Savareen brandy again. She shifted in her bunk and noticed the chill against her back and frowned. She knew that she’d fallen asleep before Kanan, her body finally succumbing to the effects of the pain tablets he’d coaxed into her and the residual alcohol in her system but he’d been there the two separate times she’d woke in the middle of the night.

She started to sit up but her head protested and she settled back down against the bunk with a slight groan. Draping her arms over her eyes she let out a soft sigh. He should have just stayed in bed so she could prod him out of it for some more of the dumb pain tablets and some water.

A sudden clattering followed by loud cursing and the gentle and rhythmic whomping that she knew as Chopper’s laughter floated into her cabin from the corridor.

“Hera,” a slightly irritated voice called out from beyond her door, “Why is there a droid on your ship trying to kill me?”

The slightest of smiles turned up the corner of her mouth despite her pounding headache.

She should have probably warned him about Chopper.

Chapter Text

Hera smiled as she traced her fingertips along the left side of Kanan’s jaw, a spectacular pattern of deep purple with bluish edges that reached just into the edge of his goatee. She withdrew her fingertip and lifted her head to gently kiss the blossoming bruise. It was only fair that she kissed it to make it better; she had been the one to put it there.

“Quit admiring your handiwork,” Kanan smirked, wrapping an arm tighter around her waist.

“No,” she grinned, “I don’t think I will. That was left-handed, too.”

“Oh thank Force you took it easy on me,” he grumbled. He shifted onto his side and wrapped his hand around the back of her thigh to drag it around his hip. And he was hard.

“Seems to me like you’re a bit of a masochist, Kanan,” she murmured, pressing every inch of flesh that she could against him, fingertips trailing between them to grasp his rigid shaft. “Unless this is just a coincidence?”

“If you think that I’m ever at anything less than a semi-solid state in your presence, you haven’t been paying attention,” he quipped before lowering his lips to hers.

Hera parted her lips eagerly, allowing his tongue to sweep into her mouth and rub feverishly against hers. She stroked him in long and intentional strokes, not fast enough to get him riled up but not so slow that he’d stop her anytime soon. She blindly dragged her finger over the velvety smooth skin at the tip of his cock and withdrew her hand at the feeling of the moisture beneath her fingers. She took another swipe at the skin with her index finger before pulling her lips from his to taste the bit of precum at the tip of her finger.

Kanan always fell apart at the simplest things that she did and she loved him all the more for it. He groaned as if it had been her tongue on the tip of his dick rather than the tip of her finger. In response, she kissed her way down his chin to his sternum, her hand preceding her lips on the way down. Kanan grasped her wrist tightly to stop her and slid the fingers of his free hand gingerly beneath the edge of her chin where it wasn’t busted. “If you’re doing that, I’m doing that too,” he said in a rough voice.

It was sexed-up Kanan for turn your ass around and let me have you and Hera was more than happy to comply with the demand. With practiced ease, she shifted in the bunk until her knees were astride his chest and she started to wrap her hand around him again. Before she could lower her lips to his throbbing cock, his body shifted downward in the bed and she felt him shifting until it was his head between her knees.

With a harsh pull backwards, she was fully sitting on his face and his tongue was attacking her cunt with hungry ferocity.

Hera’s back arched and she threw her head back, hard enough that it caused the dull ache to increase in intensity but not enough to stop her lekku from nearly curling up on themselves. Her breathing staggered as he lapped furiously along her clit, the different angle than normal leaving her original plan momentarily forgotten. Her hips ground into his tongue of their own volition, seeking more of the dizzying pleasure from the greedy swipes of his tongue.

If anything, Kanan seemed more than fine with Hera’s forgotten intentions. He grasped one strong arm around her hips and pulled her harder into his face. She wasn’t sure how he could even breathe like that but she wasn’t about to stop him to make sure that he could. She was so already so wet and her mouth watered for the taste of her on his lips and his chin. While his tongue and what he did with it was dizzying and so fucking good, she ached for more.

“Kanan, I want your fingers,” she whimpered softly.

The moment he pulled his mouth from her flesh, it was like the opposite of an orgasm. She went from nearing that dizzying detachment from reality to nothing. His words pulled her back into delightful disorientation again, “Then earn them, Hera.”

Without protest, she leaned over and ran her tongue in a long and firm stroke along the top-side of his cock. Her fingertips teased at the opposite side, tracing long lines against him. His groans vibrated against her core and she shivered in delight. Her mouth closed along his swollen and engorged head, tongue tracing the ridge and flicking along the cleft that still tasted of precum. When she lowered her mouth onto him, taking him about a third of the way into her mouth in a long and slow motion, she was rewarded with a finger teasing along her entrance.

Hera whined against his flesh but refused to remove her mouth. She had a clear objective now and she would not fail. Bracing herself on her right hand – mostly because the left one was still sore from her handiwork – she wrapped the left hand around the base of his cock and began to suck fervently, working her hand in time with her mouth.

Kanan’s hips bucked at the same time two fingers slipped inside her and she happily took the length forced to the back of her throat. It had only been a few weeks into their relationship when Kanan figured out that if anything, Hera was stubbornly competitive, and when he said that she couldn’t possibly swallow it all she’d taken that as a personal affront – and a challenge.

She hadn’t heard him complain yet.

His fingers were working furiously inside her, the angle perfect for the way he stroked her mercilessly, the way he rubbed against her in unrelenting rough strokes. His lips were closed around her clit and his hand was gripping her ass tightly, and a moment later pulled his hand away to give her a firm slap. The first time she’d done it, she’d been more than a little surprised by the fact that it was a bit of a turn on and less surprised that he did it because he found that with just the right pressure that she’d be walking around with a perfect print of his hand on her ass for at least a couple of days.

When a third finger worked its way inside her, her mouth tore from his cock with a loud moan and she couldn’t bring herself to focus on what she was doing. She could never keep it up as long as he could when they did this. He’d groan and grunt against her flesh but never once pull his mouth from her – Hera got to a point where all she could do was stop and let him fuck her furiously, bring the world crashing down around her and then she’d try to pick up where she left off.

Most of the time she’d just find herself bent over with a firm palm pressed between her shoulder blades and a throbbing cock pounding into her without mercy. She was just fine with that, too. At least normally anyway. Right now, she wanted to taste him. Determined to draw every last drop of cum from his cock, she thrust her hips hard back against his fingers and his face, greedily seeking out the release of pressure that was building relentlessly between her legs.

A light graze of his teeth against her clit sent her toppling over the edge.

Her mouth came down on his cock as she rode out her orgasm, sucking fervently at his throbbing length, left hand working him in the hard and rapid strokes that she knew would lead to his undoing. Kanan answered her by suckling her already sensitive clit between his lips again. Her cunt clamped down tighter on his fingers and she whined against his cock, the sound coming out as a garbled cry.

The vibration of the little sounds he drew out of her against his cock set him off and he came without warning, spilling into her mouth. Cum dribbled down her chin as she sucked and lapped furiously in between whimpers and whines. Though he’d gotten her to cry out loud enough that Chopper would be warbling down the hall at any moment, it seemed like he wanted her to scream. His hips bucked and thighs twitched with each pass of her tongue as she was unwilling to leave any trace of him behind.

Kanan redoubled his efforts between her thighs to make her come again, fingers shifting inside her, one slipping out and another sliding toward her ass. She eased her hips back into him, holding her breath in anticipation. The rough hair of his goatee scraped against the sensitive flesh of her cunt as he worked his fingers inside of her, mouth moving with insistent demand. It didn’t take long before she was falling apart, falling over until his arm was bracing her hips to keep her upright.

He wasn’t done with her yet.

Hera was moaning his name loudly, hysterical tears pricking the corner of her eyes and body trembling above him. Her thighs were shaking and her muscles were weak and she was falling apart and it was so much, almost too much but also never enough. She was alternating between cries of don’t stop and his name, the visceral sounds she made crescendoed as she reached her breaking point.

Three things happened at once: Hera came with a scream of Kanan’s name, her hips surging away from his lips and his fingers as she was overwhelmed with pleasure; the door to her cabin slid open accompanied by an angry string of binary; and Kanan posed the question why the fuck does it have a blaster?

Scampering back up to the head of the bunk, her orgasm sufficiently ruined by her droid, Hera settled back down but in between Kanan and Chopper. Blindly she reached for the blankets to throw over both of them, but thankfully Kanan already had that covered. “Chopper, it’s fine,” Hera said pointedly, “calm down.”

I heard my organic scream. Screaming is not in the indices of my organic’s normal emotional responses. I will eliminate the cause of the threat.

“What did it say?” Kanan hissed, hidden behind her shoulder.

“He,” Hera corrected him and then she turned back to Chopper, “You will not. It’s fine. I already told you, Chop. Kanan is good.”

This unit does not recognize an organic named Kanan. This unit only recognizes a threat with excessive amounts of hair that must be eliminated.

“Chopper,” she said warningly, “put my blaster down and go finish the last updates on the new targeting system. I swear tomorrow that I’ll go into Mos Pelgo and get some new circuitry to replace the chips that the jawas messed up.”

And a new ambulatory strut.

Hera glared at her droid as he focused and refocused his photoreceptors on her. He moved her blaster over the workbench in a slow and exaggerated motion but didn’t drop it. She cleared her throat and gave a more pointed look.

Can I please have a new ambulatory strut?

“Fine, I’ll look for one. But you have to be nice to Kanan,” she said patiently.

The blaster dropped.

Fuck that. I’m fine with the one I have.

“Chopper!” She snapped but the droid was already on his way back out of the cabin, his high pitched warbling echoing through the corridors.

“Did he just cackle?” Kanan asked, finally raising his head from behind Hera’s shoulders. “What the hell did you program that thing with?”

“You be nice too,” Hera said, extending a long finger in his face. “Chop has been through a lot. He might be kind of cranky sometimes but he’s good and he’s making some upgrades to the ship that will help out a lot.”

“Help you out,” he grumbled, settling back down beside her. “He’s trying to kill me.”

She gave a trace of a smile and lifted her head to kiss him gently, “I’m pretty sure that I tried to kill you once or twice and look how we turned out.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better,” he rumbled against her lips.

-

Kanan’s hands were magical, Hera was convinced. With the ease of someone that may as well have his own lekku, he slid his palms along her skin with just the right amount of pressure to ease the niggling ache but not compel her body to go sailing back into his arms. She’d previously given herself the day to wallow in pity with plans to work on moving forward tomorrow, so that’s what she was doing – except wallowing was no longer necessary because now she had Kanan and his incredible hands.

And his extraordinary heart.

They’d been idly talking about everything and nothing for what felt like hours, in between fits of physical desire. He’d told her about being apprenticed to a Jedi Master, about how that master had saved his life on the day of the great Purge. In return, she told him about her brother, lost to an Imperial assault on their home. Kanan spoke of his life on the run and then things he needed to do to get by; she confessed to trying to fit into the Imperial mold no matter how much she hated them and how she’d even almost convinced herself that she could be the best.

They’d laid their souls bare slowly, one secret exchanged for another, until the only thing that remained was a greater love for each other.

He'd gone by another name; she’d flown resistance missions. The only things he had left of his life before was his lightsaber and his holocron; the only thing she wanted of her life before was her family’s Kalikori. He’d never known his parents; she’d never gotten along with her father. The topic of her parents had brought a hush between them for a long while, his hands just moving gently over her lekku. He hadn’t forced the issue of her mother, as if he understood that she’d bring it up if she wanted to talk about her.

“She talked to you?” Hera had finally mustered the words to the one question that nagged at the back of her mind, “Before she – “

“No,” he interrupted her words so that she didn’t have to say them. “It’s a thing,” the word had become their new euphemism for his talents, “she wasn’t at peace and I knew why. So I promised her I would protect you.”

Hera tried to ignore the sting of tears at her eyes. She couldn’t believe she’d had any left to cry after the past couple of days shat she’d had. Still, her voice was thick with emotion when she spoke, “And then she was? She was at peace?”

“She was at peace,” he repeated.

As if she were weightless, she found herself scooped into his arms. Any other time she may have scowled at him for such a thing, using his disproportionate strength to handle her as if she were a child that was small or needy or incapable of asking for the comfort of his embrace if she needed it. Right then, though, she was grateful that he had. Her face buried against his chest but the tears never slid down her cheeks.

His words hadn’t made her mother’s death any less unbearable but they had made knowing she was gone only slightly more tolerable. She’d gone at peace. Kanan had seen to that. It was a gift she’d never be able to thank him for and she knew she needn’t try. Hera lifted her head to kiss the swollen bruise along his jaw and twined her fingers with his as she settled her head back against his chest.

Somehow this man with his magical hands and his extraordinary heart had managed to stop the ache that lingered in her head as ease the ache that had been overwhelming her soul.

-

“Chopper,” Hera sighed, standing at the doorway of her cabin as she took in the display of madness before her. Kanan was sprawled out in the hallway, two plates with what looked like it was supposed to be nerf steaks and red root mash and something else scattered across the floor. Her droid loomed ominously over him warbling loudly with his electroprod poised to shock the man again. “He was not trying to poison me. It's dinner. Real food. He was cooking for me.”

You have ration bars. This hairball is only implementing human male attempts to induce screaming again.

“And that’s fine,” she answered plaintively, “do you really think I’d let him if it wasn’t?”

I believe that he has compromised your logic. It is not normal for my organic to scream.

“Well, this time it is,” Hera tried to explain. Finally she hopped over a piece of the food lumped to the durasteel floor and dropped to her knees between Kanan and Chopper, realizing there was no way that her droid was letting his prisoner go without more aggressive interventions.

The droid’s photoreceptors trained on her and he retracted his electroprod. I do not like this one.

“I know buddy,” she said gently, running her hand along his battered orange dome, “but I do. A lot.”

The noise that emitted from the astromech was something between a purr and a growl.

Hera smiled, “Clean this up for me and tomorrow and when we go to Mos Pelgo tomorrow and try to find a new ambulatory strut.” Bribing Chopper with an impossible upgrade, it seemed, was going to be the only way to make her droid halt his homicidal intentions. She just wouldn't explain to him that the likelihood that the jawas would have the ambulatory strut necessary at a price that was considered even partially reasonable was almost non-existent.

If a new ambulatory strut is conditional on my acceptance of the unwanted hairball, I refuse the offer.

“It’s not,” she said a little more firmly, “it’s conditional on whether or not you clean up this mess.”

Chopper turned to train his receptors on Kanan and then back to Hera as if making a decision.

Quickly, she thought to add, “And not trying to kill him under any circumstances.”

The droid took a moment to process the request, What about causing physical harm if he causes my organic physical harm?

“He’s not going to,” Hera said gently.

Another moment to process and Chopper spoke again, Acceptance is not required for the replacement of for this unit’s ambulatory strut?

“No, it isn’t. Just clean up the mess and no more trying to kill Kanan.”

“I swear if I could speak binary,” Kanan grumbled from the ground, eyeing the droid warily as he pushed himself up.

You barely speak basic. Chopper whomped at him and rolled away in the opposite direction.

Hera smiled as she rose to her feet, watching as Kanan flicked bits of red root paste from his shirt. A moment later, he was wrapping his arms around her with little bits of what was supposed to be their dinner squishing onto her shirt. “Hey,” she exclaimed, attempting to squirm away from him.

Kanan grinned impishly, “Looks like we’ll both have to get out of these clothes now.”

"Don't think I don't know what you're trying to do," she answered, stilled in his arms but palms still poised to shove him away. 

He dipped his head as if he was going to kiss her but stopping just shy of her lips. The way his breath tickled her skin caused her flesh to rise in rough bumps, "If you know what I'm trying to do then why are we still out here?"

In answer, Hera shoved him into her cabin and closed the behind them – this time with a code that Chopper couldn’t by pass.

Chapter Text

Hera was fully engrossed, searching the holonet for any news of Ryloth or a story to explain away their firework show for Empire day when she felt lips brush against her bared shoulder. She smiled slightly but made no effort to move. “Behave,” she said gently, still scrolling the page, “it’s a working day.”

“I don’t like the sound of working days,” Kanan rumbled into her skin, “that means that I have to go out there where your droid can kill me.”

“Chopper is not going to kill you. He’s not even going to try,” she answered idly, “he promised.”

“Did you make him promise that he wouldn’t hurt me?”

She lifted her head and wrinkled her nose, trying to recall the exact conversation that she’d had with her droid. “I actually don’t remember,” she admitted, “but he’s half your size. You’ll be fine, love.”

“Not when you gave him that much amperage,” Kanan scoffed, rolling her over onto her back. He eased his body over hers and paused only to kiss the tip of her nose before dropping off the side of her bunk, “If I die because of your droid, it’s going to be your fault.”

“Mmhm,” she acknowledged absently, still scrolling. There wasn’t a word of any of what had happened on Ryloth but there wasn’t any word of Tarkin either. Hera lifted her eyes from the datapad to Kanan as he was pulling on his pants. Her eyes danced over his bare chest and she shook her head, “You’re making it impossible to work.”

With an obnoxious grin, he pulled his tunic over his head and she’d sworn that he was flexing his abdominal muscles just to tease her further, “Not my fault you can’t focus, Captain.”

“Actually, it is,” she pointed out and then sat her datapad aside. Hera tried to change the subject, “There’s nothing of Tarkin on the holonet. You’re sure he was on that Destroyer when it went down?”

“I barely made it off that destroyer and I was in the vehicle hangar. If he made it off, he’s in a bacta tank for the next ten years,” he said, stepping to the side of the bunk. “Hera, if they were looking for you, for us, our faces would be all over the holonet. They’re busy trying to spin this.”

“I just want to be sure,” she sighed, sitting up on the edge of her bunk. “We need to do something, I just don’t know what.”

“When you say do something you mean – “

Hera opened her mouth to answer and then closed it again. She wasn’t sure that he’d like her idea or that he’d even want to go along with it. He was content to run smuggling jobs and slip through blockades. An offensive against the Empire was likely an actual death wish and he’d already stopped her from one suicide mission.

“You can tell me what you’re thinking,” he urged her softly. “I already told you I’m by your side no matter what.”

A faint sad smile traced her lips, “What if it’s a suicide mission?”

His brow arched, “You’d have to have an objective to be planning a suicide mission.”

“I want to fight the Empire,” she stated as if it wasn’t literally treason to do so. “I don’t want anybody else to lose their family or to be put through what we’ve both been through because of them again,” Hera waited expectedly for Kanan to tell her that she was crazy, that they weren’t going to do it. She’d already started planning what she was going to do if he’d told her no.

“Okay,” he shrugged casually.

The answer caught her off guard, “Wait, what?”

“You want to fight the Empire, that’s fine,” he repeated, “but it doesn’t have to be a suicide mission. Wouldn’t be much of a fight if we’re dead. I’ve already blown up a couple of Star Destroyers. What’s a few hundred more?”

Her smile grew wider, “You’ll fight with me?”

Kanan shook his head, “I already told you once today. I’ll say it again if you’ve already forgotten, though.”

Hera smiled, she already knew. He was at her side no matter what. She slid off her bunk, lodging herself between the bulkhead and his body, “Make me some caf and I’ll make sure that we aren’t working all cycle.”

“You know I don’t believe you for a minute, right? I’ve seen what you’re capable of when you’ve got a mission.” He answered, hands settling on her hips.

“Throw in some flatcakes and I’ll make it halfway believable?” She countered.

“Only if you keep your droid out of the galley.”

She gave an enthusiastic nod in response, “Deal.”

Kanan stepped out of her cabin and she smiled softly at his back as she went. 

Then only a second later, Kanan was back in her cabin and closing the door. He glanced up at Hera with a boyish grin, obviously seeking words to play it cool instead of plainly stating that he was avoiding her droid that she could hear loudly ambling outside the door. Wordlessly, he gripped her wrist to pull her into his body, “What if I said I knew a better way to start your day?”

Hera melted into him unwittingly. She really should work, “What if I said I know that you’re trying to use me as a sentient shield to protect yourself from my droid?”

Kanan dropped a kiss to the crook of her neck, long and lingering and soft. The heat of his mouth sent a shiver down her spine where it met his hand slipping beneath his too large shirt still hanging off her body. “What if I just do this and we ignore the part about your droid?” The words vibrated against her flesh and set a fire ablaze beneath her skin.

Blindly, Hera smacked at the release for the hatch and angled herself in between Chopper and Kanan, backing him blindly down the corridor.

Acting as a sentient shield for the unwanted organic will only work for an ineffective amount of time.

“It will work long enough,” Hera answered and she was slightly embarrassed at the breathless quality of her voice, even if she was only talking to her droid.

There was a grumble to the affirmative as Kanan hoisted her into his arms, fingertips slipping between her thighs and barely brushing over her as they made it into the lounge.

My sensors indicate that the unwanted organics digits are being placed where they do not belong Chopper warbled after them.

“They definitely belong there,” she called back and then brushed her lips against Kanan’s ear, “Shower?”

“It’s like you read my mind,” he answered in a rough voice, spinning to press her into the back of a wall long enough to open the door.

They’d barely made it inside before she was stripping him of his shirt and pushing away his pants and his basics. He helped her out of her shirt and dropped it to the ground. Neither one of them made an effort to actually start the shower. Kanan pressed her into the wall once more, hand slipping between them and two fingers slipping inside her.

He held her other hand gently over her head with one strong arm as he blazed a trail of kisses down her neck.

Hera looked through half lidded eyes at their reflections in the mirror and a deeper flush ran to her cheeks. Her eyes trailed over his perfect ass, the rippling along his arm of muscles as he worked his fingers inside her. “This,” she said in a low whisper, “is a really good view.”

“Hmm?” A hum of a question against her collarbone where she could now see that he’d left one of his little marks.

“Mirror,” was the best she could muster but apparently it was enough. In a dizzying motion, she found herself with hands pressed against a durasteel countertop and Kanan’s body covering hers from behind. His hand was already snaked around her waist and fingers back inside her before she could ever protest their absence.

“I like this view better,” he rumbled, spreading kisses along one lek, his tongue flickering out to tease the markings along the way. The rough fingertips of his free hand moved to her breast and pinched her hardened nipple, pulling just gently as he did.

Hera’s eyes started to slip closed, lost to the sensation of all the wonderful things he was doing to her until his hands stilled. She opened her eyes to find his gaze intently fixed on hers through the mirror and then he started again. The message was received loud and clear without a word spoken.

I want to see the moment you break.

His thumb brushed her clit and fingers worked harder, their eyes still locked on each other’s as he touched her nearly everywhere all at once. Her hand covered the one between her legs, pushing harder against the back of it, silently pleading for him to touch her more roughly. He responded by slipping a third finger inside her, fucking her mercilessly with his fingers.

With her free hand, Hera touched the breast that he wasn’t, a breathless smile tugging at her lips as she did. She could feel his shuddering breath against her back when she did, the throbbing of his cock against her ass. Finally her gaze fell from his and she watched their hands instead, watched as their slick fingers worked her cunt and their hands fought over her breasts, at the little marks he left over her flesh – her legs nearly gave out beneath her when she came.

There was no easing her through it, no waiting until her muscles relaxed. Kanan withdrew his fingers immediately, and replaced them with his rigid cock, forcing through protesting taut muscles. At just the right angle, she could watch his thick length slamming into her from behind and it only further served to curl her toes into the ground, to prolong the orgasm he’d started. Using a handful of hair as her anchor, she kept herself upright, watched as he fucked her with abandon from behind.

It was his turn to watch the mirror instead of watching her, she could see. He adjusted the angle at which he drove into her, gripped her hips tightly to pull her back against him so hard that her breasts and lekku bounced with each thrust. She could see how wet she was, the way he’d spread her slick along her cunt, the inside of her thighs with each drive of his hips into hers.

“You like this, don’t you?” She asked of her lover in the mirror through half lidded eyes, keeping her voice low, “like watching your cock drive into me?”

The best he could muster was a grunt and to fuck her harder. It was Kanan’s equivalent of keep going.

Her head rolled back against his shoulder and she arched her back, trying to permit him a better view. Her lips brushed the underside of his jaw, “Fuck me harder, Kanan.” She kept her voice low, let Ryl creep into it just slightly, though it sounded nearly fake given the amount of time it had taken her to lose the accent. He’d never know the difference if the snap of his hips against her ass was any indication.

“Keep going,” he’d managed to grind out. There was perspiration beaded along his forehead and she could tell he was already holding back, that he was dedicated to drawing out his pleasure in her body and her words for as long as he could.

Hardly one to deny the man she loved, she tugged hard at his hair to earn a small groan before she continued. “That’s right, love,” she whispered, voice lilted in Ryl, “keep watching your cock stretch me. You see how wet you make me? The way that you – “ Hera faltered, feeling the intensity of her words and the blissful pain of his length manifest in blinding pleasure.

This time, Kanan was powerless to the clench of her cunt around him, his hips bucking wildly and erratically as he spilled inside her. Each thrust spread their cum over her thighs in long hot and sticky drops. Finally his hips stilled but he didn’t dare move; he was still too busy admiring his work.

Their sweat slickened skin remained pressed together and his arms closed around her waist, entangling with hers as they both fought for breath. Finally Hera found words, however breathy they were, “Now I really do need a shower.”

Kanan huffed a bit of a laugh and dropped a kiss against her neck in answer.

“Think you can keep your hands to yourself?” She teased, still unmoving.

“After you talked to me like that? I’m not even going to try,” he answered honestly, dragging her backward into the shower.

-

Hera sat down her datapad with a deep sigh, her vision blurred from staring at the damned thing for too long. She wanted to fight the Empire, she wanted to do good in the galaxy to counter any and all of the bad that she’d done but she had no place to start. When she’d been with her father, when she’d helped the Karthakk group, there were vast undergrounds, most of them related to Free Ryloth. Finding any of those groups now on the Holonet was almost impossible without her father’s help.

The only thing her father would likely tell her is to come home and she didn’t want to go back to Ryloth.

She couldn’t.

Not with her mother gone.

“No luck so far?” Kanan asked from her side. He’d spent the better part of his day examining some of the upgrades that Chopper had done to the system. He seemed mildly impressed how her droid had seemingly integrated himself with the ship. He seemed more impressed that the droid had seemed so focused on his work that he’d only taken the time to threaten only a dozen times.

Dejected, Hera gave a slight shake of her head. “There’s not even a good place to start,” she lamented, “the Empire is everywhere. We can’t be the only two people in the galaxy willing to do something about it.”

Kanan was quiet for a long moment, his brow furrowed in something akin to concentration before for long moments before he spoke again. “It might be nothing but back on Gorse, there was a man who came into the cantina I worked at – “

“The same one you lived in,” she said with a pointed glance and slight smirk.

“Yes, that one,” he grinned back at her, “anyway, he was looking to meet somebody. He seemed really kind of skittish at the time but he kept glancing up at the ceilings and moving around the room like he was hiding from somebody. The person he met, I never really saw their face. They just wore a hood and stayed in a corner.”

“That could be anything, Kanan,” she interrupted with a slight sigh.

“But it wasn’t,” he said, holding his hand up, “the second that the person who he’d met with left, stormtroopers came in and arrested him. They said it was on charges of sedition.”

Hera’s brow rose in curiosity, “You think that he may have been there to meet with somebody who wants to do something like what we want to do.”

It wasn’t a question but a statement.

“I’m thinking that it’s the closest thing we have to a lead and we know that the Empire is only sort of there,” he shrugged.

A faint smile traced her lips as she pulled up her star charts and navicomputers. It wasn’t a lot to go on but it was a start. “You really think we’ll find something there?” She asked.

“My friend, Okadiah, he knows everything about Gorse. If there’s something there, he’ll have noticed it,” Kanan nodded. “It’s as good of place as any. Plus, I have credits stashed up and some stuff still there…if Oak hasn’t tossed it all but I bet he hasn't.”

With one last glance at her star charts, Hera answered with the slightest nod of her head and programmed her navicomputers. There was a pang of certainty that this was the right path for them as she eased the yoke of her ship toward their plotted course.

“Gorse it is?” Kanan asked.

With a gentle smile she answered, “We’ll start where we began.”