cage fight AU concept 2

[bedlamsbard]

Some concept writing! This is a continuation of the cage fight AU from some months back, with a time skip between that sequence and this one. Alas, no more actual cage fights.

About 4.6K below the break.

*

Doriah woke instantly at the sound of the door sliding open, but the familiar sound of Xiaan’s footsteps followed immediately afterwards. He was already slipping back into sleep when she stopped by the side of the bed and said, “Hera’s gone.”

Doriah sat straight up. “What?”

Xiaan was dressed but looked tired, regarding him like she couldn’t quite decide whether or not it was worth panicking. “Hera’s gone,” she repeated. “She took Chopper and the Imperial shuttle and she left.”“When?” Doriah threw the blankets off and looked around for his clothes, which Xiaan dutifully handed him. “Where?

“Just now. I followed her to the hangar.”

“And the deck crew just let her go?”

Xiaan shrugged. “She’s Syndulla.”

Doriah could have screamed, but that was undeniably true. The deck crew were all Syndulla clansmen, none of whom would have even considered refusing Cham Syndulla’s daughter anything unless given direct orders otherwise. “But where did she go?”

Xiaan just looked at him, frowning.

Doriah slapped a hand to his forehead. “She went after that human of hers,” he realized. “The one being held at the secret Imperial base in the middle of nowhere.” He stared in horror. “She went alone?”

“She took Chopper.”

“He doesn’t count!” Doriah yanked his shoes on with more violence than necessary, then strode across the room to the door.

Alecto’s room was next to theirs, Cham’s across from it. Doriah banged on first one door, then the other, and was standing in front of Cham’s when the door slid open, revealing his uncle. “What is it?” he demanded.

Alecto’s door slid open behind Doriah. “What?” she said blearily.

“Hera left,” Doriah said. “Xiaan says she took Chopper and the Lambda not half an hour ago.”

“She what?” Alecto demanded.

Cham was already striding back into his cabin, reaching for the comlink on his desk. When the officer on the bridge responded, he demanded, “Did the Lambda just launch?”

Sounding confused, the officer said, “Yes, Syndulla, about twenty minutes ago –”

“And you let it?”

“Were we not supposed to?”

Cham swore viciously and cut the connection.

Alecto had followed Doriah into the room. “We’re going after her,” she said, and when Cham was silent, added, “Cham, we’re going after her. We can’t let her go to an Imperial base on her own –”

“Or at all,” Doriah added.

Cham’s expression was haunted. “I can’t take the fleet to Mustafar,” he said. “Hera – she took the Lambda, she knows Imperial protocol. She’ll be able to slip through the blockade. Nothing else we have can.”

“They’ll catch her,” Alecto said, appalled. She turned back towards the door; Cham was there suddenly, his hand on her arm.

“We have to trust her,” he said, low-voiced. “I can’t risk the fleet.”

“You bastard,” Alecto said softly, but she didn’t move, the agony of that moment clear on her face.

Xiaan put her hand into Doriah’s, her fingers gripping with desperate strength. “She can do it,” she said. “Hera can do it.”

·          

Please, Hera thought as Chopper finally got the door open with a muted warble of success. Oh, please.

The cell was dark when she peered into it, but she could hear breathing, slow and labored enough to make her lekku twitch. Hera fumbled her handlight out of her pocket and shone it down into the cell, illuminating a lump on the floor that after a confused moment she realized was a person.

Not just any person. Kanan, it had to be Kanan. It had to be.

Hera hurried down the steps into the cell, Chopper following her, and fell to her knees beside the lump, which was lying curled up with its – his – back to the door. She put her hand on his shoulder and felt him flinch away before she whispered, “Kanan, it’s me, it’s Hera.”

He went still beneath her hand.

“It’s really me,” she promised him. “This is a rescue.”

“Hera?” he finally whispered, his voice hoarse.

“Yes,” she said, resisting the urge to throw herself on him and weep. “It’s me. You’re going to be all right. I’m going to get you out of here.”

He finally twisted around to look up at her. Hera almost swore; he had clearly been beaten at some point recently, one eye swollen nearly shut and dried blood caking a cut high on his cheekbone. His long hair hung limply around his face, strands of it caught in the shock-collar around his throat.

He was also manacled hand and foot, with a chain that passed through a ring on the floor.

“Hera,” he breathed, squinting at her through his good eye. “You can’t be here.”

“That’s tough, because I am.” She caught his face delicately between her palms, careful of his bruises and the cut, and kissed him. Kanan reached for her with a soft clink of chains, his hands resting on her forearms as though he couldn’t bring himself to embrace her, like he just needed to touch her to know that she was real.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” she said again, then turned to call softly over her shoulder, “Chopper, get down here and do something about this.”

Kanan regarded the droid’s approach with confusion. “Am I hallucinating or is this the drugs?” he asked.

“He’s real,” Hera assured him. “They gave you drugs? Interrogation drugs?”

He shook his head and winced. “Not interrogation drugs. Hello there,” he added to Chopper. “Friend of yours?” he asked Hera, sounding mildly plaintive.

“Kanan, this is Chopper. I built him – rebuilt him – when I was little; my father found him at the colony and brought him with him to the fleet. Chopper, this is Kanan. Can you do something about those chains?”

Kanan nodded solemnly to Chopper and held up his hands as Chopper extended his laser cutter, not even blinking as sparks flew from the metal. “You shouldn’t have come here,” he told Hera.

“It’s a little late for that,” Hera pointed out dryly.

The manacles on his wrists fell away and Chopper switched to the ones on his ankles. Kanan rubbed at his wrists, casting a wary glance at the door. Hera took one of his hands in hers, frowning at the welts there where the skin had been rubbed raw. “Have you been in chains the whole time?”

He shrugged, then winced.

He must have fought, Hera thought. Even after they had brought him here. She couldn’t think of any other reason that a relatively harmless young human would be shock-collared and chained to the floor in the midst of a secret Imperial base.

It was the shock-collar that was worrying her. She wasn’t certain that Chopper could cut it off, not without setting it off and certainly not without hurting Kanan, but she didn’t want to leave it on Kanan until they got back to the stolen shuttle either. There was too much chance that someone would realize he had escaped and trigger it before they reached the ship. They would have to risk it.

“The collar –” she began.

Kanan reached up with both hands and yanked at either side of the collar. It came apart with a crackle of failing electronics and he slipped it off, grimacing as he tossed it aside. “It shorted out a while ago,” he said to Hera as she stared. “I didn’t feel like letting them know.”

Hera frowned, because she could have sworn he hadn’t actually touched it before he had pulled it off, but that was impossible. Either way, she didn’t have to worry about it anymore.

“Can you walk?”

He nodded. “I’m not sure I can run, but I can walk.”

That was better than Hera had hoped for. She helped Kanan to his feet and handed him one of her blasters, then kissed him quickly for luck.

“Please don’t tell me you came here alone,” he said.

“Of course I didn’t, Chopper’s here.”

Since it was too late for any meaningful protest, all Kanan did was give her a long-suffering look. Hera put her shoulder under his and wrapped an arm around his waist, drawing her other blaster with her free hand. She had to help him up at the stairs to the corridor; he was trembling a little, his face set with lines of strain and grim determination that aged him prematurely. The trembling went away as they made their way down the corridor, Chopper rolling after them, but the strain on his face remained.

He cocked his head a little at the distant sound of the alarm klaxon, which he must not have been able to hear from his cell. “Was that you?”

“They teach you how to build bombs at the ISB Academy,” Hera said.

Kanan sighed. “Hera, do you know what this place is?”

She frowned up at him. “It’s a secret Imperial base. The Empire has a lot of them.”

“It’s the headquarters of the Inquisition.”

That explained why Hera hadn’t seen any stormtroopers. “Then why are you here?”

“Because he is a Jedi.”

Hera jerked her blaster up with a gasp. The Pau’an Inquisitor who had captured Kanan on Naboo was standing in the corridor junction in front of them, watching them with a faintly bemused smile on his face. Hera hadn’t even heard his approach.

It took her long moments – too long – to register what he had said.

Kanan was already pushing in front of her, putting himself between her and the Inquisitor. “Leave her alone,” he said, his voice coming in harsh, panting gasps. “Leave her alone. She doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

The corner of the Inquisitor’s mouth curled a little.

“Leave her alone,” Kanan repeated stubbornly. “I’ll – I’ll do what you want. Just leave her alone.”

“Kanan, no!” Hera hissed, grabbing his arm. She didn’t know what the Inquisitor wanted from him, but whatever it was she didn’t want him to get it. She raised her blaster and fired, close enough to Kanan’s ear that he flinched.

The Inquisitor swayed easily out of the way of the bolts and went on as if nothing had happened. “I think not,” he said. He considered the two of them, then added, “She doesn’t know, does she? You’ve never told her what you are.”

Kanan bit his lip. “Just let her go,” he begged. “You can have me – I’ll do whatever you want, you can do whatever you – just let her go.”

Hera dug her fingers into his arm. “Stop that. I’m not leaving you.”

Kanan was still holding the blaster Hera had handed him, but he didn’t make any attempt to raise it. His expression was sick with nerves and fear; he was trembling beneath Hera’s hand.

Three weeks, Hera thought. This was the being who had probably tortured Kanan every day for the past three weeks. She didn’t want him to have another hour with Kanan. She didn’t want him to have another minute.

The Inquisitor ignored her words the same way he would have ignored a child’s pet tooka hissing and strolled another few steps forward, making Kanan flinch back against Hera. “I believe I have you already, my boy.”

Kanan shuddered all over like he had been doused in ice water and Hera thought suddenly, It wasn’t just torture. He had done something else to Kanan too, hurt him somehow in a way that wasn’t physical –

Behind her, Chopper prodded at the back of her leg with one arm. Distracted, Hera glanced down at him, and saw him extending –

A detonator. Of course he’d held onto one when she had been planting charges earlier. Hera had a few extras in her satchel, but the Inquisitor wasn’t paying any attention to Chopper. He was barely paying any attention to her for that matter, but she couldn’t risk it. She gave him a slight nod.

“I’ll do whatever you want,” Kanan told the Inquisitor, utter desperation in his voice. “I won’t fight you anymore. Just let her go, please, let her go.”

The Inquisitor’s yellow eyes suddenly lit up, his lips curling in a horrible smile that revealed his sharpened teeth. Kanan flinched back against Hera, his whole body radiating despair and dismay.

“Fight me?” the Inquisitor repeated. “Now that would be a sight to see.” He reached behind himself – Kanan flinched again – and removed something from the back of his belt. “Fight me,” he said again, but this time it wasn’t a question, “and I will allow the girl to flee until our duel is concluded.”

“Yes,” Kanan said before Hera had even had a chance to process the Inquisitor’s words. He was still shaking, but he forced the words out in a snarl. “I’ll fight you. Hera, run.”

“What?” Hera said, still trying to keep up with what had just happened. Chopper was still prodding at her too, which didn’t help matters either. Between her blaster and her grip on Kanan, she didn’t have a free hand to take the detonator he was trying to give her.

“Hera, run,” Kanan said, low and earnest, then slammed both hands forward in a shoving motion.

Taken by surprise, the Inquisitor went flying backwards, landing in a crouch a dozen meters down the corridor. Hera grabbed the detonator from Chopper, hit the trigger, and threw it without bothering to check what kind it was; it exploded in a cloud of smoke and she swore.

“Chopper!”

The next detonator he passed her was heavier.

Kanan, startled, said, “What are you –”

“We’re leaving!” Hera snapped, depressed the trigger, and flung that detonator too.

Kanan thrust his hand out towards the cloud of smoke; something came flying into it, then the detonator exploded. Her ears ringing, Hera stumbled briefly, then grabbed Kanan’s hand and dragged him down the corridor, hoping that there was an exit down here somewhere. “Come on, love, come on –”

She hadn’t been sure Kanan could run, not the way he had been moving a few minutes earlier, but he managed it now, his breath coming in ragged pants from behind her. She hoped viciously that the explosion had killed the Inquisitor; the detonator had gone off nearly in his face, so with any luck –

Chopper ground to a halt in front of her and Hera nearly tripped over him, barely catching herself with a hand on his dome. “What?” she demanded, then glanced up and saw the closed door. “Well, get it open!”

Grumbling to himself, Chopper rolled away from her and started to extend his manipulator before stopping abruptly with a sound of distinct distress. Hera looked down, startled: there was no jack for a droid to plug in, nor were there any door controls.

“Kanan?” she said. “We might have a prob –”

He had been watching the corridor behind them, but turned at her voice. He looked the door over and said, “Oh. I can do this.”

“What – how?”

He didn’t answer, just stepped past her and shut his eyes. He was holding a metal cylinder in one hand, his fist clenched tightly around it as he raised his other hand towards the door. As Hera watched, the door cycled smoothly open, revealing another corridor beyond it.

“Go,” Kanan said; opening his eyes.

Chopper didn’t need to be prompted, just rolled through the door. Hera followed, glancing warily over her shoulder.

The door startled to slide shut as Kanan lowered his outstretched hand; as Hera started to cry out in alarm, he ducked through the closing panels, stumbling for an instant before Hera caught him.

“Are you all right?”

He shook his head. “How much further?”

“Chop?”

She glanced down at the map he projected between them, though their current location was only a best guess rather than a certainty. “I think we’re not far,” she told Kanan. “Or if we can steal another ship –”

He jerked his head up suddenly, staring at the closed door behind them. “Run,” he said.

“Not without you,” Hera said. She looked hopefully around for a control panel she could shoot out, but this side, like the other, didn’t boast one. “Can you seal the door?”

Kanan hesitated, eyes slanting shut as he frowned, then he nodded abruptly. “Yes. Stand back.”

Hera took a few steps backwards, wondering what he was going to do.

Kanan put his shoulders back, then flipped the cylinder he was holding around in his hand and depressed something on it. A blazing beam of blue light extended from it and Hera gasped: a lightsaber.

Jedi, the Inquisitor had said, and suddenly it was real to her in a way it hadn’t been before. Kanan is a Jedi.

He plunged the lightsaber into the door, holding it in place as the smell of molten metal rose, then he drew it out and deactivated it. “He can cut through the door, but it will take him a little longer,” he said. He took a step towards her and stumbled, his face drawn with strain.

Hera caught him, putting her shoulder under his. “Almost out, love,” she promised him. “Can you walk?”

Kanan nodded, grim-faced, and drew himself up. Hera folded her hand into his, feeling him trembling.

“I’m going to fall over later,” Kanan promised, “but I can run.”

There was a sound from behind them, then a gleaming red blade appeared from within the door. It began to move, starting to carve a hole out from the sealed door.

They ran.

Hera palmed another detonator as they ran, ready to turn and throw it at the first opportunity. Up ahead there was another door, but this one had a control panel and a jack. Hera caught her breath, meaning to tell Chopper to open it, but Kanan held up his hand and the light on the control flickered from red to green. The door slid open.

They stumbled through it and Hera turned immediately to shoot into the control panel, sealing the door. Chopper crowed in relief; Hera turned to see the second-best thing she had seen in her entire life, the Imperial Lambda she had arrived in. They’d finally made it out.

Chopper rolled up to it without being told, lowering the ramp for them before zipping up into the cockpit. By the time Hera and Kanan had followed, he had already gotten the engines started for her.

She was lifting the Lambda up as the doors burst open beneath them, the skeletal figure of the Pau’an appearing from within them. Kanan, bracing himself in the co-pilot’s seat, jerked upright, his eyes wide and terrified.

Hera triggered the ship’s guns.

The platform beneath them erupted in gouts of flame, pieces of it vaporizing instantly or shattering to slide into the lava below. Hera didn’t stop to look if she had taken the Inquisitor out at the same time, just jerked the ship upwards at its top speed, sending it climbing up out of the atmosphere. Chopper had already done the hyperspace calculations; Hera didn’t wait to see if any of the star destroyers stationed in orbit around the planet were turning their guns on her, just sent the ship into hyperspace as soon as they were clear of Mustafar’s gravity well.

As the starlines outside the viewport dissolved into hyperspace, she turned towards the co-pilot’s seat. “Kanan?”

He raised his gaze to her, his lips parting as if to speak. Then he slumped over in a dead faint.

·          

He was only out for a few minutes, not even long enough for Hera to have come to a decision about whether to leave him in his seat or drag him to a more comfortable position. She was leaning worriedly over him when his eyelashes fluttered, then he saw her and froze with the panicked stare of a prey animal.

“Kanan, it’s me,” Hera said quickly. “It’s Hera, it’s all right, you’re safe.”

The tightness in his shoulders eased a little. “Hera?” he said, as if he couldn’t believe it.

She nodded. “It’s me,” she said again.

He reached for her and Hera let him take her in an embrace, wrapping her arms around him in turn. He buried his face in her shoulder, his whole body trembling beneath her hands, and started to cry.

Hera rocked him back and forth, murmuring against his ear, meaningless nothings in Basic and Twi’leki, I love you, I love you, I love you –

It was a long time before his quiet sobs trailed off. He raised his head from her shoulder, resting a hand against her cheek as Hera looked at him. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“Would you like me to put you back?” she inquired, and he let out a choked sound that was half-gasp, half-laugh.

“No, I – no.”

She kissed him, careful of his bruised face. “I love you,” she told him.

“You’d better hope you do, after that –”

Hera shut him up with another kiss. “Are you hurt?” she asked him when she finally drew back. “There’s a medkit –”

Kanan shook his head. “It’s nothing a medkit can help with,” he said, and suddenly looked very tired.

“I can at least get some bacta for that cut and those bruises,” Hera said. “There’s a doctor where we’re going, he can look at you – he’s my uncle,” she added at Kanan’s raised eyebrow.

“I’m glad you got away and back to your family,” he said gently. “I wasn’t sure – they wouldn’t tell me anything. But I thought he would have rubbed it in my face if they’d caught you.”

He had to be the Pau’an Inquisitor.

“I’m sorry,” Hera told him helplessly. “I didn’t know where they were keeping you, it shouldn’t have taken me this long to find out –”

Kanan looked at her in stunned surprise. “Hera, you’re here,” he said. “That was rash and reckless –”

She kissed him again. “You’re rash and reckless,” she said after a few moments, finally pulling back. “I’m going to go get the medkit. Don’t go anywhere.”

Kanan’s voice was mild. “I don’t think I could move if I wanted to.”

Hera winced. She straightened up and made her way to the back of the cockpit, where one of the ship’s two sets of emergency supplies were stowed. As she was rummaging through it, Kanan said quietly from the front of the cockpit, “Hera, I love you,” with a slightly stunned quality to the words.

Hera stopped rummaging, a jar of bacta salve in one hand, then went back to him. He looked up at her, exhausted and beaten and tortured, and even though she had already said it Hera repeated the words, “I love you. I won’t leave you again. Don’t you dare do something stupid for me again.”

He gave her a loopy grin. “No promises.”

·          

Since Kanan wasn’t injured enough to need immediate medical attention, Hera had Chopper plot a circuitous route back to the fleet to hopefully shake any Imperial pursuit. She spread out a crinkly emergency blanket on the floor of the cockpit while Kanan was in the refresher doing his best to clean himself up. When he finally emerged, still shaky but less bloody, they curled up together on the blanket.

The bacta had already started to work; the bruises on his face had faded even in the past hour, the cut looking older and less fresh. Hera rested her head against his chest after making sure that it wouldn’t hurt him, relieved just to have his arms around her.

“You’re a Jedi,” she said quietly after some time, and felt Kanan go suddenly tense.

“Yes.”

“I thought all the Jedi were dead.”

Soft-voiced, he said, “Most of us are. Maybe everyone else. I don’t know. That’s one of the things they kept asking me.”

“Did I get you caught?”

He shook his head. “Someone saw the fight – recorded it, maybe, and he saw it. I’m not usually – I don’t actually fight like a Jedi most of the time. But someone who’s seen Jedi before can tell.”

Hera thought back to the fight, which seemed a million years ago now, and the brutal efficiency with which Kanan had taken out his opponent. She had thought he was just a good fighter.

Hesitantly, Kanan said, “Does it matter to you?”

“No,” Hera said immediately. She leaned up and kissed him. “I remember – you told me that the Empire killed everyone you knew. And…” She hesitated over the words. “I didn’t know, but it isn’t – it isn’t a surprise, really? If I had to pick someone I knew to be a Jedi, it would be you.”

Kanan slanted a glance at her. “Everyone you know is an Imperial officer.”

“Well, right now there’s also everyone I’m related to,” Hera said. “Who you’re going to meet.”

He grimaced.

“They’re not so bad,” Hera said. “Well – I mean, my parents might be mad at me, since I, um, stole this shuttle and ran away. But mostly they’re just glad I’m alive, so I’m sure they won’t be mad very long.” She kissed him again. “And I’m sure they’ll like you. My father used to know Jedi back during the Clone Wars.”

Kanan frowned briefly. “Is your father – your father isn’t Cham Syndulla, is he? The freedom fighter?”

Hera blinked, surprised. “He is. I – why? Did you know him?” He had said that he had been in the Clone Wars, all those weeks ago – lying in bed together at the Spotted Shaak, sweat-slick and post-coital.

He shook his head. “I was still back at the Temple during the Ryloth campaign, I wasn’t even an initiate yet. I was only in the war during that last month. But my line-master – my master’s master – was Mace Windu.”

Hera sat upright. “I met him!” As Kanan stared up at her, she added, “I was very small then. We had to flee the estate and go into hiding in the wastes, underground where the Separatist bombers couldn’t get us. He came to ask my father for an alliance. And then at the parade in Lessu, later – he was there, and two other Jedi, another human and a…a…” She frowned, trying to remember. “A Togruta? The other Jedi’s apprentice, maybe. I don’t think I met them.”

“Skywalker and Tano, I think. I’m not sure. I wasn’t paying much attention to the war then.” He quirked a grin at her. “At the beginning the crèche-masters were trying to keep it from us. Everyone thought it would be over soon, and they didn’t want the younglings to know about it.” He frowned again, like he had suddenly remembered that all those people were dead.

Hera leaned down over him. “Are you feeling better?” she asked, changing the subject.

Kanan nodded, arching an eyebrow. “Don’t ask me to run any races. Or duel any more Inquisitors.”

“I think if there were any on the shuttle they would have popped up by now.”

“I’d have sensed them.” He reached up to curve a hand over her hip, arching up into Hera’s kiss. “I’m pretty sore,” he warned her.

“I just want –” Hera hesitated. “I just want to be with you. We don’t have to have sex. We’ll be back at the fleet in a few hours. And I have a cabin to myself.” Which her parents probably wouldn’t be thrilled about her sharing, but she didn’t particularly care.

“Beds are much nicer than floors,” Kanan said. He squeezed her hip gently. “Though I’ve done some of my best work on floors.”

“Pervert,” Hera said, kissing him again. She lay down beside him, curling her body into the warm curve of his arm as they kissed.

“Maybe,” Kanan breathed against her mouth a moment later. “But you love me.”

“I do,” Hera said, and smiled.

·          

Hera’s parents were, as she had expected, furious with her. They managed to keep it from showing until Hera’s uncle Themarsa had taken Kanan into the medbay to get checked out. Hera took the tongue-lashing without complaining, then admitted to her parents that it had been the Inquisition she had broken into and gotten yelled at some more.

It was a long time before Themarsa finally released Kanan, his expression suggesting that he would have preferred to keep him there overnight. It was even longer before they were finally curled up in bed together – both of them fed and showered, Kanan already asleep with his head against Hera’s shoulder as soon as she had turned out the lights.

He’d been hurt. He’d been hurt so badly that Hera hated to think about it, badly enough that Themarsa had taken her aside and told her firmly that he wasn’t allowed to do anything strenuous for the next few days, including any particularly athletic sex. At least her uncle hadn’t said it until her parents weren’t in the room.

Hera pressed her lips softly against his hair in a silent kiss. He had been hurt, and he would bear some of those scars for the rest of his life, but he wasn’t there anymore. He was here. He was safe with her, and that Inquisitor wouldn’t touch him again. Hera wouldn’t let that happen.

He’s traumatized, Themarsa had told her gently. And he’s going to be traumatized for a long time, even if he doesn’t admit it to you or anyone else.

Hera kissed Kanan’s hair again, then put her arms around him and shut her eyes.