Chapter Text
For a long time Hera and Kanan just stood still, holding each other in the quiet dark of the Ghost’s lounge.
The other members of the crew had gone to bed. Beyond the familiar confines of the Ghost, the rest of the Forlorn Hope still bustled with shell-shocked life; if nothing else, the bodies had to be moved out of the corridors. Hera had already gone to the medbay with her mother to check on her father – still in bacta – and on Doriah, but there was nothing she could do there. In the face of the clan’s collective mourning, it had been a relief to come back here to the Ghost and to her own people.
The battle hadn’t changed anything. She no longer had a place in the clan; she certainly couldn’t step into the one she had occupied a decade ago. The Syndullas weren’t not her people…but they weren’t hers, either. Her crew was. Kanan was.
He had been waiting for her when she had finally returned to the Ghost, scrubbed clean and changed out of his scorched, battered clothes and armor. Hera had been glad beyond measure simply to step into his arms and lay her head against his chest, concentrating on the sound of his heartbeat as she tried not to think about everything she had seen that day. Everything she had heard.
She, not Thamir Fenn, could have been the one that was so much space dust right now, and it could have been her mother’s – or her father’s – hand on the trigger.
Kanan could have been one of those lightsaber-slashed corpses they had pulled out of the cafeteria.
“I can’t do this anymore,” Hera said quietly, the words muffled against his chest. “I just can’t.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I want to leave,” she whispered. “I just want to go away.”
He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “We can do that. Now?”
“I can’t,” Hera said bitterly. “Not until my father’s awake. I just…can’t. And I won’t leave until I can say goodbye to Doriah, either. But I can’t stay. I don’t know how to be her anymore.”
“I know what you mean,” Kanan said, his voice equally soft.
Hera glanced up at him, wondering for a moment if it was his return from the Crucible that he meant, broken almost beyond recognition. He had put the pieces of himself back together for her, she knew; if it had just been himself, she didn’t think he would have been able to. But he just looked tired and a little sad.
She leaned up to kiss him softly. “It won’t be more than a few days,” she told him. “And then we can go.”
Go where? she wondered, and then, almost immediately, It doesn’t matter. Anywhere but here.
Kanan nodded solemnly, brushing the back of his right hand along the length of one of her lekku. Hera shivered all over, feeling a flicker of arousal despite her weariness. She kissed Kanan again, then slipped her hand into his and murmured, “I need to shower. Do you want to wash my back?”
His smile was bright and fleeting in the shadowed room. “I’m a little tired.”
“So am I,” Hera said. “I mean it literally.”
“Then yes,” Kanan said, and kissed her, catching her lower lip briefly between his teeth before he released it. Then he added quietly, “It will be good to sleep with you again.”
Hera tightened her grip on his hand as she led him into the Ghost’s small refresher. Two could fit in the shower if they were comfortable with each other; in the past they had had a lot of sex in the shower, and also twice strained muscles in the process. Kanan had a tiny scar along his hairline where he had slipped once, fallen out of the shower, and cracked his head open on the sink; Hera had landed on top of him and gotten away without even bruises. It had been one of the notable times she had been covered in Kanan’s blood without either of them being shot or stabbed or on any kind of battlefield.
He kissed her again after she shut the door behind him, stripping her out of her clothes with practiced ease. Hera smiled up at him as she slid her hands up beneath his shirt, careful of any fresh bruises, cuts, or burns.
It felt like it had been a long time since they had done this, despite the fact that it had only been a matter of days. Everything had happened so quickly that Hera still couldn’t get her head around it.
“I love you,” she said, and Kanan turned a sweet smile down on her.
“I love you too.”
Hera brushed a kiss over his lips, then helped him pull his shirt off over his head. She had been right to be careful; he did have fresh bruises, though nothing as bad as she had feared. The worst damage seemed to be the cuts on his face, now carefully salved with a bacta ointment that would hold off infection and with any luck keep them from scarring too badly.
The worst damage that Hera could see, that was. Kanan’s physical scars were the least of what the Crucible had done to him.
She flattened her hand against his bare chest, just to feel his heart beating against her palm, and had to hold back a shudder of horror.
Kanan covered her hand with his. “I’m all right,” he told her quietly.
“Was it bad?” Hera had to ask.
His gaze flicked sideways, which was answer enough even before he said, “Yes.”
“It was a Hunt,” Hera said uncertainly. “They wanted you alive.”
“Yes.” He swallowed. “I wouldn’t have let that happen.”
Hera froze. “No,” she said when she could remember how to breathe. She folded her hand into a fist and thumped it against his chest. “No!”
“Hera –”
“You promised me once that you wouldn’t leave me again. You promised.”
Kanan swallowed. “I know.”
“If you get captured, I can get you,” Hera said. “If you’re – if you’re gone, I can’t.”
Kanan put his hand over hers again, but Hera could feel him shivering.
She had put him back together once. She could do it again. “Promise me,” she said. “Don’t make me do this alone.”
“I promise,” Kanan said after a moment.
Hera slid the fingers of her free hand into his hair and dragged his mouth down to hers in a bruising kiss. After a moment she released him, her exhaustion rising back up, and just leaned against him. Kanan put his arm around her, holding her close against him.
“Most of the Inquisition is dead,” he said softly. “I don’t know if there’s anyone who didn’t come, but of the ones who did, only Patience and the Hangman are still alive. And they’ll be punished for fleeing.”
“Is that it?” Hera asked.
“No,” Kanan said, and she felt him shiver, his grip tightening around her. “There’s still Lord Vader. And there are some things far more frightening than death.”
“But we’ll face them together,” Hera said, raising her gaze to him. “Won’t we?”
“Yes,” Kanan said. He dipped his head to kiss her, his mouth soft against hers. “Together…and free.”
*
Five days later
Cham Syndulla woke to the taste of bacta in his mouth and a dull, unfamiliar ache in every part of his body. He lay still, pondering the wisdom or lack thereof of movement for several minutes, then finally compromised by opening his eyes. All this revealed to him was the ceiling, plain gray durasteel sheeting that could have been anywhere on the Forlorn Hope, or on any other ship for that matter. Probably even an Imperial one.
He turned his head, neck muscles protesting the motion, and found that he was in one of the Hope’s medbay rooms. Although Cham had only ever seen it hosting one person before, now he found it crammed full of as many cots as would fit, with mats laid out on the floor between them. Every single one was occupied.
Xiaan was curled up on the cot nearest him, a slim pink shape on top of the covers. Cham tried to say her name, but only a raspy croak came out; still, it was enough to send her jerking upright, looking frantically around before she saw him.
“Uncle!” she said, low-voiced, then slipped off the cot and padded tooka-footed over to him, moving carefully between the mats and the people sleeping on them. There was another figure on the cot where she had been lying, green lekku clearly visible on the pillow even though the sleeper’s face was turned away.
Cham felt his heart stop briefly, then realized that there were no markings on the lekku – and there was only one person Xiaan would share a bed with anyway, even in a room as crowded as this one.
Xiaan paused to collect a cup of water from a table by the door, then crouched beside his bed to help him drink. When he had taken a few sips, enough to wet his throat, he whispered, “Did I miss something?”
*
Hera lay in a tangle of skin-warmed sheets, her head against Kanan’s familiar chest and his arm slung around her waist. They were both half-asleep, sated from the slow, lazy love-making that had characterized the past few days. There was nothing much for either of them to do on the Forlorn Hope – both of them could help with cleanup and repairs, but that was about it. They had no official place here, no duties, no missions, no reports, no check-ins with the ISB or the Inquisition. It was unimaginably good to just be with each other, with nothing hanging over them for the first time that Hera could remember.
She was weighing getting up against just lying here for another few hours when there was a knock on her door. Kanan made an indeterminate noise of protest, his arm tightening around her as he called, “What?”
“There’s a message for Hera,” Sabine reported, her voice muffled by the door. “Your father’s awake. He’s asking for you.”
*
Xiaan and Themarsa, once she had found him, moved Cham to Them’s office, that being the only flat surface in the medbay not currently hosting wounded Twi’leks. From the look of it, Them and the other doctors had been bunking down there to catch a few hours of sleep in between their shifts, but there was no one there now. He and Xiaan gave Cham a brief precis of the events he had missed while in bacta, to Cham’s quickly-growing horror, before one of the other doctors called for Them and he stepped out.
“How’s Doriah?” he asked Xiaan quietly as the door shut behind his cousin.
She swallowed and tried to smile. “Uncle Them says that he’ll be all right, but he’ll have an awful scar. He woke up for a few minutes this morning.”
“I’m glad,” Cham told her, and Xiaan smiled again. She hopped down off the edge of the desk where she had been perching and put her arms around his neck in a careful embrace.
“And you?” Cham asked her when she stepped back. The bruise on her face had faded, but was still clearly visible. “Are you all right?”
Xiaan nodded solemnly. “It’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, Uncle. And he’s dead, anyway. His clan isn’t even protesting; the Amersus who survived are backing us up. They know it’s not a lie.”
Cham grimaced, suspecting that he knew exactly who was going to have to sort out the mess that Keto Amersu’s treason would have left in the Synedrion.
“There’s something else, Uncle,” Xiaan added, hesitating, and he raised his gaze to her.
“What is it?”
She touched the tip of her tongue briefly to her teeth, looking aside, then settled her shoulders and met his eyes. “The Mercy Kill’s gone. And Secchun Fenn killed her son – Thamir, not Nawara. The one the Empire took.”
“Gods of our ancestors…” Cham murmured.
“I think most of the Fenns survived,” Xiaan went on. “They were able to evacuate the Mercy Kill, mostly – Secchun and some of the others were on the Hope for a few days, but they all left for other Fenn ships. They didn’t want to stay here, not after –” She paused, looking unhappy, then went on, “But – she killed her son. On an open comm channel. Everyone knows.”
“Did Hera hear?”
Xiaan nodded. “I didn’t. I mean, I heard it later, but not while – Hera heard it. And Auntie. No one here will talk about it.”
She looked up as the door slid open, admitting Alecto. Xiaan slipped out of the room as Cham stared up at his wife, then Alecto stepped forward and leaned down to put her arms around him, pressing a kiss to his cheek. “Good of you to finally show up,” she murmured.
“I believe I’ve been here the entire time,” Cham told her dryly, lifting an aching arm to return her embrace.
“Well, now you can be here and do something useful. The clan’s trying to stage a coup, you know.”
“They what?”
“They really don’t like having me in charge,” Alecto said. “So you can do it, dear.”
“Good gods,” Cham said, already exhausted. Dealing with the other clans in the Synedrion would be bad enough without adding the Syndulla family heads into the mix, many of whom had been uneasy with Alecto’s entrance into the curial family even back on Ryloth.
“I’ll let Sinthya get the word out that you’re conscious again,” Alecto said brightly. She perched on the arm of Cham’s chair, which creaked warningly, and slid an arm around his shoulders.
“And my coma was so restful, too.”
“Technically,” she said, “it wasn’t a coma. Or so Them and Ooleya tell me. Something about drugs and bacta and you not killing yourself by trying to get up too soon.”
Cham shook his head, winced, and said, “Alecto, my love – I missed you.”
Her expression softened, and she leaned down to press a kiss to the top of his head. “I missed you too, you idiot.”
*
Ezra had been following the thread of not-quite-sound for what felt like a while now, tracking it through the Forlorn Hope’s seemingly endless and hopelessly confusing corridors. It didn’t help that many of them had been damaged in the attack, so he kept running into places where airtight blast doors locked down parts of the ship that were still open to space, or others blocked off by makeshift barriers which revealed bulkheads and decks damaged by blasterfire or explosives behind them. Ezra kept having to backtrack and find another way around. He wasn’t certain what he was looking for, but whatever it was, he wanted to find it.
He had just come to another of those makeshift barriers, this one put together out of pieces of broken furniture haphazardly stacked up with a hand-lettered DO NOT ENTER sign balanced in front of it, and had just started to turn around when all of his senses rang at once, as if someone had rang a bell directly next to his head. Ezra grabbed for the wall, his head reeling, and leaned heavily against it. His whole body seemed to be vibrating, but the deck was steady under his feet and there were no alarms going off; whatever had happened, only he had felt it.
And whatever had caused it was behind that barrier. Ezra could still hear it – it was almost singing, in a weird way, a wordless but not unpleasant tone that felt familiar, but not like anything he had heard before. The only thing he could compare it to was Kanan’s holocron, and that couldn’t be right.
He probably could have gone and gotten Kanan, since this definitely seemed to be a Force thing, but –
Ezra cast a quick glance around the hallway to make sure there was no one else there, then ducked beneath the barrier.
The corridor beyond looked like a bomb had gone off, walls bowed outward, deck and ceiling buckled, the former creaking unnervingly under his feet as he made his way carefully forward. Ezra put a hand over his nose and mouth, coughing; while the bodies – or whatever had remained of them after the bomb – had been removed, there was still dried blood spattered across the corridor in swathes like thrown paint. He almost missed the black marks scored into the floor, nearly but not quite obscured by the remnants of the explosion, and crouched down, putting his free hand out to touch them.
For an instant he saw something, or felt it – the shadow of what had happened here, a black-clad figure with a burning red blade in their fist, dragging it along the floor as he advanced on the ship’s defenders. An Inquisitor.
Ezra shook his head to clear it of the vision, unnerved, and straightened back up. He wiped his fingers on the hem of his jacket as if cleaning off something unpleasant, but it didn’t have the desired effect. At least the Force hadn’t shown him the Inquisitor actually killing anyone. Not yet, anyway.
He took another cautious step forwards, wondering what else was here. If the Force had called him here, something Ezra still wasn’t entirely certain of, then there had to be a reason for it. It couldn’t just be the Inquisitor; they’d been all over the ship. Kanan had refused to let him see the room where he and Ahsoka had disposed of most of the Inquisition; Ezra had snuck in anyway and immediately regretted it. It felt…wrong.
This corridor didn’t feel the same way. He could sense that something bad had happened here, that people had died here, but it didn’t have that same sense of stepping in something rotted. It still made his skin crawl, though.
He winced as the deck creaked beneath his feet. The metal was pitted and scarred, even cracked in some places; Ezra moved forward slowly, trying to avoid the worst of the damage and bracing himself to jump back if he had to.
He was about halfway along when something caught his eyes. Ezra turned his head, not certain what it had been until he saw the red glint from a place where the wall had been cracked from the ceiling almost to the deck, as if it had been rock instead of metal. As he stared at it, something flashed deep from within the recess of the crack, in a way that made no sense given the angle of the remaining lights in the corridor.
Too curious to ignore it, Ezra made his way carefully over to the crack in the wall, stepping around what looked uncomfortably like a blood stain and two dents the size of his head. He put his hands on either side of the crack in the wall and leaned close, peering at whatever it was that was shining inside.
It was a crystal. A red crystal, no longer than the knuckle of his smallest finger, and it had been jammed into the crack in the wall somehow. As Ezra leaned in, his foot brushed something on the floor and he glanced down, spotting angular shards of black metal that looked strangely familiar. It took him a moment to realize that they were the pieces of a broken lightsaber.
Well, it wasn’t like he hadn’t already known that an Inquisitor had been in here.
Bracing himself against the wall with one hand, he tried to fit his fingers into the crack to get at the crystal, then when they couldn’t fit, tugged his glove off with his teeth and tried again. All he could manage to get in were his fingertips, and not much of them, scraping the backs of them open on the sharp-edged metal.
Frustrated, Ezra pulled his hand back, absently sucking the blood off his knuckles. He had no idea what the crystal was or if it was important, but –
He’d had to come here. He’d had to. Well, he had chosen to, and he supposed he could have chosen not to, but, well. He didn’t know what the Force was or what it wanted, not really, and he had figured out that it could be dangerous sometimes, really dangerous, but he didn’t think it was hostile to him. It had wanted him to come here, and he had chosen to come.
Had he chosen?
He frowned suddenly to himself. He had, hadn’t he? No one had made him do this. He could have been back on the Ghost right now, watching Sabine repaint her armor or Zeb go through the Ghost again to make sure that they hadn’t missed a single piece of Imperial hardware. He’d had a choice.
Frowning to himself, Ezra put his hand out again, but this time laid it flat over the crack, blocking the crystal from his sight. He thought about Kanan’s cell back in the Crucible and the lock outside it, the one that only the Force had been able to open. He had done that. He could do this, too.
Ezra shut his eyes, biting his lip as he concentrated. He felt something – not with his outstretched hand, but with his mind. Then, all at once, he felt the crystal slip free to come flying against his palm.
Ezra closed his fingers around it as he drew his hand back, opening his eyes again. Even as he looked down at the crystal the red seemed to bleed out of it, leaving him holding a colorless shard of something that he could feel as a soft, curious hum against the surface of his mind, strangely warm against his bare skin. Whatever it was, it wasn’t just a shiny piece of rock.
“Okay,” he said quietly to the empty air, “weird.”
*
Even deep in his meditation Kanan was aware of Hera’s scent on his skin, the memory of her body against his, her hands in his hair, the sounds she had made, the sharp tingle of the scratches she had left on his back. He was as aware of it as he was of the murmur of conversation between Zeb and Sabine in the lounge, and beyond that, the bustle of life in the Forlorn Hope’s hangar bay as mechanics and pilots worked on their battered starfighters. Even beyond that, expanding his perceptions, he could feel the other inhabitants of the old frigate. There was a lot of pain, a lot of grief, but it felt…good. It felt alive. Kanan still wasn’t used to reaching into the Force and feeling that, even after all the years he had been away from the Crucible.
He opened his eyes a few seconds before a knock sounded on his door, aware of an unwelcome but not unexpected shift in the Force.
“Kanan?” Zeb called, his voice muffled. “Someone here to see you. You want us to send her away?”
Kanan rubbed at his forehead, his gaze flickering to the two lightsabers laid out parallel to each other in front of him. He started to reach for them, then hesitated, drawing his hand back as he unfolded himself from his meditative posture. The holocron was sitting out too, a warm, pleased presence in the back of his mind despite the fact that he hadn’t opened it. He could have put it away; he hadn’t had the heart to, not when its relief at being out was so evident.
Kanan brushed his fingers over it as he stood up, wincing as his knees creaked. Zeb was waiting on the other side of the door when it slid open, frowning deeply. “So?”
“No,” Kanan said tiredly. He was pretty sure he knew what this was about. “I’d better talk to her.”
He followed Zeb down through the cockpit and into the hold, where Sabine was standing at the top of the ramp with Chopper beside her. She was out of her armor for once, though she still wore her blasters; even with her arms crossed across her chest Kanan had the distinct impression that she would rather have had them in hand. Ahsoka Tano was at the bottom of the ramp, her expression inscrutable.
“I was wondering when you’d show up,” Kanan said, coming up beside Sabine. He rested a hand briefly on her shoulder, nodding to her when she flicked a wary gaze up at him. Chopper grumbled, low.
Ahsoka arched a brow. “Am I that predictable?”
“About me?” Kanan said. “Oh, yeah. You’d better come inside.”
Sabine shot a startled look at him. “You sure about that?”
“I’m not having this conversation out here,” Kanan said.
He jerked his head at Ahsoka, who stepped up onto the ramp. Her brows narrowed a little as she realized he wasn’t wearing his lightsabers, but she didn’t comment on it. Kanan took her up through the cockpit to the living quarters, to his cabin rather than to the lounge, since the last time he had seen it Sabine had covered every flat surface with paint cans, paint pots, paint pens, her armor, and the contents of several boxes of art supplies Kanan hadn’t even known she had.
Ahsoka stepped warily into the room behind him, her gaze flickering quickly and curiously around. She spotted his lightsabers almost immediately, along with –
“Where did you get that?” She put a hand out, catching the holocron out of the air as it flew towards her.
Kanan crossed his arms, resisting the urge to snatch it back. “My master gave it to me.”
“The Hunter gave you a Jedi holocron,” Ahsoka said disbelievingly. She didn’t actually follow that up with looted from whose corpse?, but she thought it so strongly that Kanan heard it in the Force anyway.
“No,” he said, meeting her gaze. “Depa Billaba gave me a Jedi holocron.”
She blinked once. “And the Hunter let you keep it.”
“He didn’t know about it.” Kanan held his hand out for his lightsaber, watching Ahsoka tense as he closed his fingers around the hilt. The other he left lying where it was. “Or this. They were on the Ghost when he brought me in.” He flipped the hilt around once in his hand, then hooked it onto his belt.
Ahsoka’s mouth tightened. She looked back down at the holocron and winced a little, as if the holocron was telling her exactly what it thought about her doubt. “Why keep them from him?”
“Why give him that?” Kanan said. “My ma – he never set foot on the Ghost. Not once. I had no reason to tell him. He had every other part of me,” he added quietly, then winced, wishing he hadn’t said as much. It wasn’t like Ahsoka hadn’t guessed already; he just didn’t like admitting it.
Ahsoka let the holocron rise up from her palm, floating there as she frowned at it. “Can you open it?” she asked.
Kanan crossed his arms again. “I can.”
“And can a holocron be corrupted the way a kyber crystal can?”
“I’ve never tried to bleed a crystal, so I couldn’t tell you,” Kanan said flatly.
“Can you open a Sith holocron?”
“I don’t know what you think the Crucible was like, but Lord Vader wasn’t exactly handing them out as party favors to the Inquisitors. Especially not to me.” He raised a hand, catching the holocron as it floated from Ahsoka back to him. It landed in his palm with a distinct sense of relief that vibrated through the Force. He put it down on the meditation cushion behind him and said, “What do you want, Ahsoka?”
Ahsoka’s gaze lingered on the holocron for a few seconds before she looked back up at him. “I want to talk to you.”
“We’re talking.”
They hadn’t spoken since the battle, which Kanan wasn’t particularly surprised by. He hadn’t been in any mood to seek her out and she hadn’t come looking for him. That had mostly been a relief.
Ahsoka crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him, her mouth set. Finally, she said, “When I leave, I want to take Ezra with me.”
Kanan arched an eyebrow. “Why?”
She met his gaze, her voice even as she said, “Because I don’t think the future of the Force should be decided by an Inquisitor.”
“Yeah,” Kanan said, “that’s what I thought you were going to say.”
“What you did a few days ago no Jedi could have done,” Ahsoka said. “No Jedi would have done.”
“You were all right with it.”
“I didn’t –” She hesitated for an instant before she finished, “I didn’t think it would be like that.”
“You wanted Inquisitors dead,” Kanan said softly. “You got that. You were doing your fair share of the killing, too.”
“That’s not the same thing!” She swallowed. “Are you going to deny it?”
“What do you want me to say?” Kanan asked. “Do you want me to say I’m not an Inquisitor? I can’t –” He let his breath out. “I can’t do that, and have it be the truth. I was one for a long time. I can’t wash away that stain. But I am a Jedi too.”
“And if that was all you were I wouldn’t have a problem with it. But you’re not just a Jedi. And I’m not sure you know how to be anything other than an Inquisitor anymore.”
Kanan flinched, but it didn’t matter if Ahsoka had seen it or not; she would have felt his reaction in the Force. “Pretty fine words for someone who left the Jedi Order,” he said.
“You were the Hunter’s apprentice longer than you were Depa Billaba’s,” she said. “Do you even know how to –”
“If I do anything to Ezra that the Hunter did to me, Hera and Zeb both have my permission to shoot me in the head,” Kanan snapped. “And they’ll do it, too. He trained me, but I’m not him.”
“You’re not Depa Billaba, either.”
“And you’re not Anakin Skywalker.” He let the words hang in the air between them as Ahsoka drew in a sharp breath. “Neither of us are our masters, and Ezra won’t be me. Or you. I think it’s up to him to decide which of us he wants, not to you or me.”
*
Ezra kept hold of the crystal all the way back to the Ghost, feeling it pulse between his cupped hands like a tiny heart, though every time he snuck a look at it, it didn’t seem to be anything more than what it appeared to be – a tiny, angular crystal with a hard edge that dug into his palm even through his gloves.
Zeb and Sabine were in the hold when he reached the ship, Sabine sitting cross-legged on the floor with a few cans of paint in front of her and her helmet in her lap. It was covered in bits of tape that obscured the design, but Sabine wasn’t doing anything with it, just resting her crossed arms on top of it and her chin on top of them, most of her attention on the ladder leading up in the main body of the ship. She glanced up as Ezra ascended the ramp.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” Ezra said, and nodded at Zeb, perched on top of Kanan’s parked speeder and scowling. “Where’s Kanan?”
Sabine jerked her chin in the direction of the cabins.
“Is he, uh – still with Hera?” Ezra had only made that mistake once and didn’t want to repeat it.
“Hera went off to see her family,” Zeb said. “He’s up there with Ahsoka now.”
“He’s what?” Ezra said, his mind still on Kanan and Hera.
“Not like that, you pervert,” Zeb said, and Sabine snickered.
Ezra flushed, heat rushing to his face. “I didn’t say anything!” he protested. “I, uh – what are they doing?”
“Well, they’re definitely not –” Zeb began, cackling like a Kowakian monkey-lizard. “Since Hera would kill them both – well, probably just Ahsoka, she’s pretty attached to Kanan –”
“Who’s the pervert now?” Sabine muttered as Ezra desperately wondered if there was any way to leave the Ghost, come back, and start this conversation over from the beginning. To Ezra, she said, “They’re arguing.”
“About what?” Ezra asked warily. As far as he was aware, Kanan and Ahsoka hadn’t spoken to each other once in the past few days.
“What do you think?” Sabine said. “They’re arguing about you.”
“Me?” Ezra echoed, his heart sinking. He wasn’t sure that he actually wanted to investigate further, but made himself go towards the ladder anyway. “Uh – I’d better go see what that’s about.”
Sabine shrugged. “Well, so far they’re just arguing. No lightsabers yet.”
Zeb was still cackling softly to himself as Ezra climbed the ladder – mostly one-handed, bracing himself with the hand that still had the crystal clenched in it. He pulled himself up into the cockpit and then paused, listening at the door before he went into the corridor and paused outside Kanan’s door too.
He could hear raised voices, but they weren’t shouting at each other; he couldn’t make out more than a few words.
“– Inquisitor –”
“– like you know what –”
“– murderer –”
“– not a Jedi –”
Gritting his teeth, Ezra raised his fist and knocked on the door. The argument stopped abruptly, then the door slid open to reveal Kanan standing on the other side of it. He looked more concerned by Ezra’s sudden appearance than angry at the interruption. Behind him, Ahsoka was standing with her arms crossed over her chest; she looked angry.
“What is it, Ezra?” Kanan asked.
“Uh, I know it’s probably not a great time,” Ezra began awkwardly, “but I found something.”
Kanan’s brows drew together. “Found what?”
Ezra opened his fist and showed him the crystal. “It was like it was calling to me,” he explained awkwardly, horribly aware of how insane that sounded. “It was in one of the boarded-up areas of the ship, I think a bomb must have gone off there or something. It was stuck in a crack in the wall –”
Ahsoka came over to peer over Kanan’s shoulder, frowning suddenly. “Do you know what this is?” she asked Ezra.
“Uh, a rock?”
“It’s a kyber crystal,” Kanan said.
“Oh,” Ezra said. “What’s a kyber crystal?”
Kanan quirked an eyebrow, clearly amused, and clarified, “It’s a lightsaber crystal. It must have come out of one of the Inquisitors’ lightsabers; I know we haven’t found all of them.”
“There was one on the floor,” Ezra said. “Broken. I think it got caught in the explosion.”
He held the crystal up to the light between two fingers, surprised to see that it had taken on a bluish tint. “It used to be red,” he told Kanan. “But it changed –”
“It’s attuned to you,” Kanan said.
“Oh,” Ezra said again. “Is that good?”
Kanan smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s good.” He glanced up at Ahsoka, challenge in his gaze.
She was frowning again. “Ezra,” she said, “do you want to stay here?”
He stared at her. “What, with the Twi’lek fleet?”
“She means with me,” Kanan said, his voice light and dry. “Since as a murderer and former Inquisitor I’m not exactly the best influence.”
Ezra switched his stare from Ahsoka to Kanan. “You’re a murderer?”
“Several times over,” Kanan said. “With extenuating circumstances.”
Ezra considered this briefly, then shrugged. “So?” he said. “I’m a thief.”
“That’s not the same thing,” Ahsoka said. Her mouth was set tightly and she glared at Kanan, everything about her stance conveying quiet fury. “Why do you even want an apprentice? Do you really think you’re fit to teach?”
Kanan’s gaze slid sideways to Ezra before he looked back at Ahsoka. “Not particularly,” he said. “But I think it’s what the Force wants me to do. I’ve spent a long time ignoring it.” He touched the lightsaber on his hip; Ezra was curious to see Ahsoka stiffen even further, though she didn’t reach for her own lightsabers. “I can’t do that anymore. Besides,” he added wryly, “the kid’s grown on me.”
Ahsoka shook her head, frowning, and looked down at Ezra, “What do you want, Ezra?” she asked, gentling her voice. “You don’t have to stay with Kanan – there are other options. You don’t have to be a Jedi if you don’t want to be. If you’re worried about the Empire, the surviving Inquisitors, there are people you can go to, somewhere you’ll be safe –”
Ezra closed his fist around the kyber crystal again and crossed his arms. “I don’t want to be safe,” he said. “There’s no such thing. My parents got arrested out of their own home. This is someone’s home,” he added, tapping a foot against the deck but hoping she realized he meant the Forlorn Hope, “and it definitely isn’t safe. And I’m not going anywhere with you. You made that offer before, remember?”
Ahsoka’s frown deepened. “Things have changed.”
“Do you even want an apprentice?” Kanan said sharply. “That’s what you’re offering, isn’t it? Because there’s no one else left alive, unless you’re counting the First in there, and I wouldn’t.”
She grimaced. “That’s not –”
“And if you’re talking about letting an Inquisitor loose in the galaxy,” Kanan added, his voice soft and dangerous, “I’d start with her, not me. If you can find her again.”
“That is none of your concern.”
“You made it mine when you let her live.”
“We would both be dead if it wasn’t for her.”
“Yeah,” Kanan said. “I know. That doesn’t mean I like it.” He took a deep breath and looked at Ezra, his expression serious. “No one is going to make you do something you don’t want to do. Ahsoka –” He hesitated, then went on, “– Ahsoka is better than me and she doesn’t have my history. She would be a good teacher for you if that’s what you want.”
Ezra unfolded his arms and looked at the kyber crystal again, then looked up at Ahsoka. “The first time I met you, you broke into my parents’ house,” he said. “The second time you basically kidnapped both of us. I don’t trust you. I trust him.” He looked at Kanan’s serious, concerned face. “I want him. I’ll stay, thanks.”
*
“Father?”
Hera touched the door control before she could let herself hesitate, biting her lip as it slid open to reveal her father sitting in a chair in front of the office’s cluttered desk. He looked tired and ill, drawn pale and older than Hera had ever seen him before, but a smile lit his face as he saw her.
“Hera,” he said. “I am glad to see that you are still here – I wasn’t certain that you would be.”
“Neither was I,” Hera admitted. She crossed the room to him and knelt down beside his chair, fighting her urge to turn around and run instead. She wanted Kanan, wanted the Ghost and the freedom of the stars – she didn’t want to be here. “How are you feeling?”
“Better now that I’ve seen you.” He touched her lekku lightly and Hera flinched despite herself. Her father stilled for a moment, then drew his hand back. He went on, “Your mother tells me that you fought beside us in the battle against the Empire and saved many lives.”
“I fought,” Hera said, not wanting to talk about something that still made her feel like a traitor. She had nightmares of being in Thamir Fenn’s place, her father or her mother or even Kanan’s voice telling her I love you and goodbye before her TIE or the Ghost or the Phantom exploded around her and she woke up, gasping. Sometimes she woke Kanan out of his own nightmares, sometimes his crying woke her out of hers. They made quite the pair.
“So did Kanan,” she went on, and saw her father grimace.
“Yes,” he said, “I had heard that the Inq –” He paused before Hera could say anything and corrected himself, “– that the Jedi saved your mother’s life.”
It caught Hera’s breath for a moment. “Yes,” she managed to say, “yes, Kanan did that.” It still wasn’t Kanan’s name, but it wasn’t a title she had expected her father to offer him.
Her father looked relieved that they had covered and moved past that topic of conversation. He went on, “I hope that no one onboard this ship – or on any other – has mistreated you in any way.”
“Most people have other things on their minds,” Hera said. “No, Father, no one’s…mistreated me.” She took a deep breath and said, “I’m leaving.”
Cham blinked, startled. “What?”
“I’m leaving,” Hera repeated. “As soon as Doriah’s awake and I can say goodbye to him. I don’t belong here.”
“This is your place, your people –”
“Not anymore,” Hera said. “If you had found me seven years ago when I was still at the Academy, or even before Kanan went to the Crucible, then maybe. I don’t know. I’ll never know now. I don’t know what I am anymore, Daddy. I don’t know how to be this person. I don’t know how to just be Hera, and I can’t find that out here.” She hesitated, but when he didn’t respond, she said, “I do know what I’m not, and that’s someone this fleet needs. It needs someone who can be Syndulla, and Twi’lek, and Ryloth. I don’t know how to be any of those.”
“You can learn,” her father said, his voice a little shaky.
“I don’t even know how to be Hera Syndulla without the word ‘agent’ in front of my name,” Hera said. “I can’t go back to being that little girl who left Ryloth, and I can’t be who I would have been if I had stayed, if you hadn’t sent us away. I don’t want to be.”
Her father drew his breath in.
Hera bit her lip, wondering whether or not she should have said it at all, but she couldn’t take it back. “I don’t know who that woman would have been, Daddy,” she said gently. “I don’t know if I would have liked her. But it doesn’t matter because I can’t be her. You and I will never know what she would have been like. I just…I need to go away from here.”
Cham was quiet, his expression troubled, and Hera thought for a moment she had gone too far. But it was the truth. There was nothing else she could have said.
Finally her father sighed wearily. “What will you do?”
“I don’t know,” Hera said softly. “I’ve got a ship and a crew. There’s a lot that can be done with that.”
“If you need money –”
“No, Father,” Hera said. “I won’t take your money.”
The Syndulla family was wealthy, one of the wealthiest – possibly the wealthiest – on Ryloth, and they were still rich, since even before the Clone Wars they kept a large portion of their wealth offworld. Her father had transferred more of it to independent offworld banks after the Clone Wars, before the Empire had tried to clamp down on interplanetary bank transfers from interdicted planets. The ISB had managed to find and shut down a few of the Syndulla slush accounts, but most had never been accounted for. Hera had no idea how much of that fortune remained, however, not when her father must have financed most of the Syndulla portion of the Free Ryloth fleet out of his own pocket.
“I know you want to help me,” Hera went on, “but I have to do this on my own. We have to do this on our own.”
“You don’t need to,” Cham said. “That’s what the clan is for.”
“I need to, Daddy.” Hera straightened to her feet, wincing as her knees popped.
Her father put his hand out again, maybe to steady her, maybe not, but either way didn’t touch her. He said, “When will you leave?”
“When I can say goodbye to Doriah,” Hera said. “I don’t know if he’ll understand, but I can’t leave without talking to him.”
“He may,” Cham said. “You won’t leave without speaking to me or your mother, will you?”
“No, Daddy,” Hera said. “I won’t leave without saying goodbye.”
“What will you do?” he asked again. “Will you fight?”
“I don’t know,” Hera said. On impulse, she leaned down and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Thank you for not arguing with me, Daddy.”
“Believe me,” he said, “I’m still considering it.”
That startled a laugh out of Hera despite the fact that her father had meant it seriously, and she was still smiling a little as she hit the control for the door. It slid open, revealing the being on the other side, and Hera felt her smile slide away.
“Oh,” Ojeda said.
It was the first time the two women had come face to face since the lockdown.
“I was just going,” Hera said.
“No, I –” Ojeda hesitated, somehow managing to make even that look graceful. “I heard what you said. We should probably talk.”
Hera arched her eyebrows, surprised by this concession. “All right,” she said. “If you like.”
*
The back of Flower’s neck prickled as Hera followed her out of the medbay. Training and experience kept her step light and her body relaxed, but she was painfully aware that there was an ISB agent just behind her.
“Has anyone ever told you that you walk like an Imperial officer?” she said without looking back. The words were an effort; she was used to teasing and cajoling and flirting, not confrontation.
There was a moment of silence, then Hera said, “It’s been a problem in the field.”
“What a terrible problem to have,” Flower said, keeping her voice light and without malice, but she heard Hera’s step falter for an instant anyway.
There was a small room just off the medbay that the nurses, doctors, and medics had been using as a lounge. Flower tapped on the door; when there was no response, she put her head in to ascertain that it was empty before stepping back and gesturing Hera inside, the same way she would have done with a client back at the Lake House. ISB, just like most of her clients, and it wasn’t difficult at all to imagine Hera in ISB field grays or dress whites. It was more shocking to see her in street clothes, never mind the fact that Flower had never seen her in uniform.
Hera went, her shoulders and lekku tight. Flower followed her in, making sure that the door had shut and locked behind her before she turned around to regard her cousin. Hera was watching her with her arms crossed over her chest, her gaze wary, and Flower thought again, she was born to be ISB.
She had, quite literally, no idea what her cousin would have been like without that. Of course, Flower couldn’t even imagine herself without the House, so it was likelier to be the fault of her imagination than anything else, but still…
“I don’t know what you want from me,” Hera said in Basic, her voice quiet.
“Well, that makes two of us,” Flower said. Hera’s Basic was unaccented – or more precisely, she had picked up a very light Naboo accent, the kind of accent that most humans wouldn’t register as anything in particular. She fought down a surge of irrational jealousy; her own Basic had just enough of a Ryloth accent for humans to find it charming and exotic, but not rustic or off-putting. The House didn’t want its courtesans to sound too much like humans.
“Do you want me to apologize?” Hera said cautiously.
Flower had to think that over. “No,” she said finally. “It isn’t your fault.” Even if she still remembered the shock of the first client who had grunted Syndulla in her ear when he was on top of her. The first. Not the only, certainly not the last. The realization that Hera had been the Twi’lek at the ISB hadn’t been anywhere near the shock Agent Beneke had clearly meant it to be, at least not once Flower had actually had a chance to think about it. Of course it would be Hera. It was always going to be Hera.
She wondered if Hera knew about it, then considered the wariness in her cousin’s eyes and decided that there was no way she didn’t. Most Imperial officers wouldn’t have tried anything with her, not a fellow ISB agent and certainly not an Inquisitor’s mistress, but they would have made their feelings known. Flower knew they had made their feelings known and been rebuffed, at which point they had come to her.
Hera looked at her for a long moment, then away. “Like I told my father, I’m leaving,” she said. “You won’t have to see me again.”
“Why are you leaving?”
Hera’s mouth twisted. “Aren’t you the one who told Doriah that I don’t know how to be a person?”
Flower grimaced. “That’s not exactly how I put it.”
“Well, it’s still true.” Hera shrugged, a gesture that was probably meant to be matter-of-fact but ended up just looking awkward. “I’m not – I don’t think I’m as bad as some officers I’ve known, but that doesn’t mean I should be here. And I don’t want to be.”
“Does that bother you?” The question slipped out before Flower could stop herself. She had known a lot of ISB officers; the answer to that particular question had differed between them. Not that she had ever asked them in so many words.
There was a shadow in Hera’s eyes. “Not as much as it should.”
The two of them stood in awkward silence for a few moments, then Flower said, “I want to ask a favor.”
Hera blinked and looked at her. “Of course.”
“You don’t know what it is yet.”
Hera shrugged again; it looked more natural this time. “I owe a lot of debts. And – I probably owe you a few.”
Flower felt her jaw tighten despite all her years of training and didn’t respond to that. “I left people behind at the Lake House, and there’s someone Ahsoka wants to get out especially. I want you to help. You probably know Theed better than anyone else here.”
Hera nodded slowly. “We – my team and I – can do that.”
“Good. Having a few humans along will probably help. Especially ones who can pass in an Imperial uniform.”
“Kanan can do that,” Hera said.
Flower hesitated. “The – Inquisitor?”
“He’s – he’s not, anymore,” Hera said. She looked suddenly uncomfortable, her gaze wary again.
Flower bit her lip. “I – I have a question.”
Hera nodded.
“Why –” She hesitated, but she had to know. “Why did you sleep with him? You had a choice, and Inquisitors are –” She saw the flash of hurt in Hera’s eyes and bit back the word monsters, saying instead, “You had a choice.”
“I love him,” Hera said simply. “When I was – when I was in the field for the first time six years ago, I – he was the first thing I ever really wanted, wanted him badly enough that it hurt. I don’t know if you know what that’s –”
“I do,” Flower said, and Hera blinked at her again.
“He was the first thing in years that I wanted and got,” she said. “And he went to the Crucible for me. I had a choice. I chose him. Monster or not.”
Flower thought about that, then nodded. “Do you know what you would have done if you’d ever come to the Lake House and seen me?”
Hera bit her lip. “I know what I’d like to think I’d have done,” she said slowly. “But I don’t know. Not really. I’m – I am sorry.”
“At least you’re honest,” Flower said. “About that, anyway.”
“I’m sorry,” Hera said again. “Ojeda, I’m –”
“I guess we’ll never know, will we?” Flower said. She turned her back on her cousin, her lekku prickling, and left Hera standing alone behind her.
*
Hera made her way slowly back to the Ghost, weary and heartsick and aching as if she’d just run the obstacle course back at the ISB Academy. She passed Ahsoka on her way into the hangar; the other woman regarded her thoughtfully but didn’t say anything, for which Hera was profoundly glad. She was in no mood to have a conversation with anyone who wasn’t part of her crew, least of all the woman who had kidnapped Kanan and then nearly gotten him killed fighting the Inquisition.
Kanan was standing on the Ghost’s ramp, presumably to watch Ahsoka leave. He had started to turn back, but stopped when he saw Hera, his expression brightening. Hera quickened her pace a little to reach him, automatically glancing around the hangar to see if anyone was watching before remembering that it didn’t matter anymore. She stepped forward into his embrace, wrapping her own arms around him as she leaned her cheek against his shoulder.
He kissed her forehead, just below the hem of her cap. “Are you all right?”
Hera nodded.
“How’s your father?”
“My father’s fine,” Hera said tiredly. “My cousin thinks I’m a monster, and I can’t say I disagree with her.”
“Sounds like the conversation I just had,” Kanan said.
Hera glanced up at him, seeing the lines of strain around his eyes. “Well –” she said. “If you are, you’re my monster.”
He laughed and ducked his head to kiss her. “I can live with that.”
“I came to terms with the blood on my hands a long time ago,” Hera told him, which he knew already and which there was no way she could have told Ojeda. “I just…maybe I am a monster.”
Kanan cupped her cheek in his hand. “No, you’re not,” he said. “I’ve known monsters. You’re not one.”
“Tell that to my cousin,” Hera said.
“I thought Doriah and Xiaan –”
Hera shook her head. “Not them. Ojeda.”
Kanan’s face did something complicated; she had told him about Ojeda and the Lake House. “Oh. Well – you’re still not a monster.”
Hera just kissed him again, then took his hand and led him inside the ship. She closed the ramp up behind them, wanting the illusion of privacy that the open hatch denied her. She and Kanan went up the ladder into the main area of the ship, following the sound of voices.
They found Ezra, Sabine, Zeb, and Chopper all in the lounge, Sabine sitting on the floor with her armor and an alarming number of paint cans spread out around her and Zeb and Ezra at the holotable, Ezra spinning a gleaming blue crystal between his hands. Chopper seemed to be providing commentary on Sabine’s paint choices.
“Looking good,” Kanan told her, peering down at the chest plate half she was balancing against her knee as she peeled tape off with painstaking care, revealing a design Hera hadn’t seen before. “What is that?”
Sabine got all the paint off and held up the armor plate so that he and Hera could get a better look at the symbol painted there. “It’s a starbird,” she said. “Or a phoenix on some planets, they get mixed together. It’s a legend, a creature that lives in the heart of a star. When a star goes nova, the starbird seems to die, but it’s actually renewing itself, turning into stardust so it can be reborn in a new star.” She grinned up at them. “Like us.”
“Maybe without the part about dying in flames first,” Kanan said.
“It’s metaphorical,” Sabine said. “Though if you want to be literal about it, I have some thermal detonators –”
“Not on my ship,” Hera said firmly.
“The vacuum of space is right there, we don’t need to do it on the ship.”
“No one’s blowing anyone up today.” Hera wrapped an arm around Kanan’s waist, and looked around at her crew, smiling. “It’s a good story, Sabine,” she said. “I like it.”
“Can I paint it on the ship?”
“No, you may not.”
“So,” Zeb said, “What do we do now?”
Sabine rested the armor plate on her knee and looked back up at them. Ezra put the crystal down and laid his hand over it, his expression quizzical. “Yeah, I was wondering that too.”
Chopper chortled agreement.
Kanan and Hera looked at each other. His expression was calm, but they were standing close enough together that Hera could feel the lightsaber on his belt digging into her hip. She loosened her shoulders and raised her chin, making the decision she had been turning over for days now.
“We fight,” Hera said.