Bargains AU concept 1
Feb. 14th, 2019 08:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardSome scenes from the Bargains AU concept! I’ve been working on this on and off since July or so and it’s still very fragmentary, but these scenes are relatively complete (though were written in reverse order). The first scene I originally wrote as an Ahsoka POV, then rewrote it with a Hera POV a few months later; I’ll just post the Hera one now so that I can post the second scene along with it.
About 4K below the break; these are bargains AU concepts 9 and 4.
*
I should be flying right now! Hera thought, trying to fight down her irritation as she hurried down the corridor. She had gotten to fly more than this at the ISB Academy, where cadets were required to log flight hours in a variety of vehicles. After eight months with the Free Ryloth fleet, she could count on one hand the number of times she had been in a cockpit. The fleet had a limited number of starfighters, all of which were currently assigned to other pilots, with a waitlist that Hera hadn’t been able to even get on. She had finally managed to convince one of the squadron commanders to give her a trial and had been in the port hangar about to climb into a V-19 Torrent when her father had commed her.
At least when she had been at the Imperial Academy she hadn’t been expected to play her father’s heir. If her mother had been here, she could have done this, but Alecto was off with Aunt Clotho and Aunt Sinthya on a supply run, and with her father over on the New Dawn arbitrating a dispute amongst the Cseh Syndullas Hera was the highest ranking Syndulla on the ship.
It was a little bit of a relief in its own way. Hera didn’t enjoy the formalities that still came with being a curiate Syndulla, but it meant that her father wasn’t treating her like glass anymore.
But she still would have rather been in a starfighter cockpit.
She paused in front of the medbay doors to catch her breath, listening for a moment to the sound of voices from within. A woman who sounded vaguely familiar; Hera thought that she must have overheard her speaking to Cham Syndulla once or twice. The other being inside was speaking too softly for Hera to tell if they were male or female or something else, or even if they were speaking Basic.
She took a deep breath, then touched the control for the door. As it slid open, she got a glimpse of a tall Togruta woman looking in her direction, and a human male with his head turned away from the door.
“Hello,” she said in her unaccented Basic. “I’m Hera Syndulla, my father –”
At the sound of her voice the human swung around, his eyes going wide, and everything else Hera had been about to say vanished from her mind.
It was Kanan.
Kanan with bruises on his face and his hair cropped short, his cheeks hollow and scarred, with the Imperial cog on his shoulder, but unmistakably the boy Hera had been in love with back on Naboo, the boy who had thrown himself between her and an Inquisitor so that her aunt could get her away. The boy whom Hera had been certain had died for her.
She wasn’t even aware of moving, just that all at once she was in his arms, her hands cupped around his face as she kissed him frantically. “You’re alive,” she gasped. “You’re alive, I thought you were dead, I was certain you were dead, I thought they’d killed you, I thought he’d killed you, you’re alive, you’re alive –”
Kanan didn’t say anything, just buried his face in her shoulder, his grip on her so tight that it made Hera’s bones ache. Hera coaxed him into raising his head so that she could kiss him again, then ran her fingers gently over the scars on his cheeks – two shallow slashing lines, one on each cheek, and not new. For an instant Kanan met her gaze, long enough for Hera to see the fear in his eyes, then he turned his head away.
There was blood splashed across the Imperial cog on his shoulder, and something on his belt which had to be a lightsaber.
Hera leaned up to murmur against his ear. “It’s all right. It’s all right, love, it’s me. I don’t care. You’re safe. I love you.”
Kanan looked at her again, then he nodded, very slightly, and bent his head to kiss her. Hera relaxed into the kiss and into his arms as she returned the embrace.
Her voice light and curious, the Togruta woman said, “I take it you two know each other?”
Hera flinched; she had forgotten the other woman was there. Kanan’s arms tightened around her before he released his grip so that Hera could turn to face the Togruta. She took his hand immediately, closing her fingers around his and feeling unfamiliar calluses on his palms.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized, getting her first good look at the Togruta. The woman was younger than she had expected, in her early twenties and probably not much older than Kanan. Like him, she was wearing a lightsaber – two of them, in fact. “I’m Hera Syndulla, Cham Syndulla’s daughter. My father sent me to ask if you need anything, and to tell you that he’ll be here to talk to you as soon as he can. He’s arbitrating a matter on another ship in the fleet right now and can’t leave immediately.”
And she was guessing that he hadn’t known that Kanan was here, or he would have sent Neso or Elpis instead of her. Or Uncle Themarsa, but Hera supposed that Themarsa had already met them before vanishing into the surgery with the injured rebel they had brought with them.
“I’m Ahsoka Tano,” the Togruta said, giving Hera a thoughtful look that suggested she already knew exactly who Hera was. “And you know Kanan already?”
Hera couldn’t help but turn to look up at him again, at the new lines around his eyes and the faint streak of white in his hair. He’d broken his nose again, she noticed for the first time. “We were – I was –” She had to pause to take a breath, her grip tightening on his hand. “I was the reason he was caught.”
“That’s not true,” Kanan protested, sounding startled. He also sounded like he hadn’t been speaking very much, his voice low and rough. “I would have gotten noticed whether or not you were there.”
“But you wouldn’t have been there if I hadn’t –” She bit her lip on the rest, seeing the worry in Kanan’s eyes. It took her a moment before she could say, “I thought you were dead.”
“So did I,” he said quietly.
Hera looked up at him again, barely aware of Ahsoka watching them both curiously. She had been in the Imperial service long enough to recognize an Inquisitor’s uniform when she saw one, inasmuch as they had a uniform. All her father had said was that they would be playing host to a couple of rebels who had just broken someone out of Imperial custody; Kanan had to be that someone, going by the fresh bruises on his face and the scared look in his eyes. Hera had watched that Pau’an Inquisitor on Naboo take him away barely conscious but alive; he must have been given the same offer that she had five years ago.
“It’s all right,” Hera told him softly. “It’s all right, love, it’s over.”
Kanan bent his head to hers, clearly exhausted and on the edge of collapse. He closed his eyes briefly; Hera was ready to make her apologies to Ahsoka and take him back to her room when he suddenly raised his head, his teeth set against his lower lip.
Ahsoka took a step forward, her eyes narrowing. Hera felt Kanan flinch at her approach, but he didn’t step away. She fought back the urge to put herself between the two of them and just held onto Kanan’s hand; his grip on hers was hard enough to hurt.
“The Emperor –” he began, then had to stop, gasping for breath. His pupils were blown wide with terror, his whole body braced to bolt if anyone in the room made a sudden movement.
“You don’t have to tell me now,” Ahsoka said hastily, watching Kanan like she could tell as well as Hera how frightened he was.
He shook his head, a half-hearted, broken movement like he had forgotten how to do it properly. “I don’t know if I can do this again,” he admitted quietly. He shut his eyes, breathing hard, then looked at Ahsoka again. “The Emperor – Palpatine – is a Sith lord,” he said. “He was responsible for –” He swallowed. “He made the Temple his palace. One of the masters was able to wipe most of the Archives, but not – not the holocrons, some of the other Jedi artifacts. But a Sith can’t access them. An Inquisitor can’t either, not even the ones who used to be Jedi – that’s most of them. There are a few who weren’t. The Emperor thought that they would still be able to because they aren’t really Sith, but they – but he – but –” He was shaking, his eyes shut again; his accent blurring from the Outer Rim drawl Hera was used to into something closer to upper-class Coruscanti. “He killed all the Jedi. He killed us. But it meant that he couldn’t have access to our secrets, and he wanted that. When the Hunter found me, he – he –”
He was crying silently, tears running down his cheeks. Hera squeezed his hand, trying to let him know that she was there, that it was over.
Her voice very gentle, Ahsoka said, “He made you open the holocrons.”
Kanan nodded without opening his eyes. “They’re – alive,” he said haltingly. “Not like we are, but not like the kyber crystals either. They – knew. They – they – it was like torture for them, even with me doing it, not him.”
“And the Emperor hurt you to make you do it,” Ahsoka said.
Kanan nodded again. “I couldn’t not do it,” he whispered. “And they had me drugged so I would fight him less. But it was the worst – it was –” He stopped, gasping for breath, then went on, “I couldn’t not do it. But I didn’t – I didn’t know what to do.” He finally looked at Ahsoka again, his expression pleading, and repeated, “I didn’t know what to do. And the Hunter –” His voice cracked, the agony in his eyes worse than anything Hera had ever seen. “I didn’t know what to do,” he whispered for a third time.
“It’s over,” Ahsoka told him gently. She took a step forward, like she meant to comfort him, but Kanan flinched back and she stopped.
“You’re not there anymore,” Hera told him fiercely. From the look in his eyes he was barely aware that she was there, but after a moment he squeezed her hand.
“It isn’t your fault,” Ahsoka said. “I know you didn’t have a choice. It’s over now.”
Hera leaned up to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth, which made him blink and look down at her. “You’re safe now,” she told him, tightening her grip on his hand. She looked at Ahsoka and said, “I’m going to take him back to my room. Do you – my father sent me here to ask if you needed anything.”
“I’m all right,” Ahsoka said politely, most of her attention still on Kanan. “I’ll wait here to see what the doctors say about my friend.”
Hera nodded, then tugged gently at Kanan’s hand until he looked down at her. She led him out of the medbay, aware of the way he was still trembling.
Fortunately it wasn’t far from the medbay to the Residency. Hera got him into her room, then ducked quickly into the room next door to borrow some of Doriah’s clean clothes from a curious Xiaan. Doriah got to go out with the starfighters, even if Hera was still grounded.
Kanan was still standing in the center of the room where she had left him when she came back. He looked terrified and hurt and exhausted, the bruises on his face dark against his amber skin.
Hera put the clothes down on the bed and went over to him, closing her hands around his. “It’s all right,” she told him. “It’s me.”
Kanan made a rough sound in the back of his throat and put his arms around her, pressing his face against her shoulder. He cried utterly silently, his tears soaking through the fabric of her shirt as Hera rubbed his back and murmured to him. When he had cried himself out, he leaned heavily against her, trembling so badly his teeth were chattering together.
Hera pressed a kiss to his forehead. “Let’s get you in the shower,” she told him. “You’re freezing.” She hesitated, looking at the blood splashed across the Imperial cog on his shoulder. “Are you hurt?”
She probably could have asked that before they had left the medbay.
Kanan shook his head, his eyes red and swollen from weeping. “Not lately,” he said. He followed Hera into the refresher, tensing again when she laid her hands on the front of his uniform.
Hera hesitated. “Do you want me to go?”
He covered her hand with his. “No. No, I don’t want you to go.”
Hera smiled wanly at him, then leaned up to kiss him gently before she turned to helping him get out of his uniform. Beneath it, he was bruised and scarred and had clearly been beaten badly at some point, but not freshly injured.
“Can I – do you want –” Hera touched her fingers to the hem of her own shirt, looking up at him through her lashes. “I can wash your back for you,” she added, and saw the corner of his mouth lift a little.
“I’d like that.”
Hera smiled at him, then took his hands in hers and guided them to her shirt. Kanan took another gentle kiss from her mouth, then stripped her carefully out of her clothes with the same delicacy she remembered from their nights together back on Naboo. His trembling slowed, then stopped entirely, though his breathing was still a little too fast, the fear not gone from his eyes. Hera kissed him again, barely aware of her own nakedness as she led him into the small shower. It wasn’t meant for two, but it fit them both without difficulty.
They were kissing again as Hera fumbled for the controls, breaking apart as water opened up above them. Hera smiled hopefully at him; he didn’t quite smile back, but there was a little more lightness in his face than there had been a moment ago. Hera leaned out of the shower to grab a washcloth as Kanan found the soap.
“It’s not the baths back at the Spotted Shaak,” he said, sounding more shy than she had ever heard him before.
Kanan had once extremely thoroughly debauched her in those baths, and the reference made Hera’s cheeks heat. “Well,” she managed to say, “I don’t think we were exactly trying to get clean then.” She waved the washcloth vaguely at him, then took the soap out of his hand.
He was thinner than he had ever been before, though with more muscle. He was still breathing fast, flinching when Hera accidentally put pressure on a half-healed injury. And his back –
Hera had to stop, breathing hard, when she saw the marks on his back. The tattoos on his neck.
But Kanan was clean when they finally got out of the shower, slightly more relaxed and less desperate than he had been before. Even in Doriah’s borrowed clothes he didn’t look much like he had back on Naboo, the fear in his eyes still there.
“Are you hungry?” Hera asked him. “Do you want something to eat?”
Kanan shook his head. “I don’t think I could,” he said. “Maybe later.”
They curled up together in Hera’s bed, Kanan with one hand folded firmly in the hem of her shirt. “I love you,” he said quietly. “I missed you.”
“I love you too,” Hera told him.
Kanan didn’t respond, and Hera realized with a start that he was already asleep. She bent her head over his, pressing a kiss to his cropped hair. He was here. He was hurt and he was terrified and he was traumatized, but he was here. That alone was more than Hera had ever thought she would get again.
*
They had cut his hair.
That was what Hera chose to concentrate on, sitting on her bunk with Kanan asleep with his head in her lap, one hand fisted in the hem of her shirt. His breathing was steady, the lines of fear and pain gone from his face in his sleep, but he held onto her as if never wanted to let go. There was still something stiff about his shoulders; Hera could feel how tense he was when she touched him.
He was clean, his hair still damp, smelling of the harsh soap they made in the fleet; he’d let Hera wash his back and kiss him in the shower, his whole body braced for rejection or at least remark. Hera had – she’d held her tongue on that, at least, which had taken all her willpower. He’d been hurt. He’d been hurt so badly, and it wasn’t fair, none of it was fair.
And they’d cut his hair.
There was a light tap on the door and Kanan jerked awake, his eyes widening in panic.
“It’s all right,” Hera told him hastily. “It’s all right, it’s for me. Go back to sleep.”
He looked at her, hesitating, and Hera leaned down to kiss him. “It’s all right,” she repeated. “Go back to sleep.”
After a moment he nodded, releasing his hold on her shirt so that she could get up. He burrowed back down into her wealth of blankets, watching her as she made her way, barefoot, to the door, to find her father outside. He raised his brows in concern when he spotted Kanan behind her, but didn’t say anything until Hera stepped out into the corridor and let the door slide shut behind her.
“Is that him?” he asked quietly.
Hera nodded. “He’s – he’s not hurt. Physically, anyway, it’s just…bruises. And scars. But –” She bit her lip, then confessed, “He’s scared, Daddy. He’s so scared. He’s here, he’s safe, and he’s still so scared. He was never scared before.”
“The Empire hurts people,” her father said gently.
“I know that,” Hera said miserably. She wrapped her arms around herself, even though the temperature in the corridor wasn’t much cooler than in her room.
Her father hesitated, then added, “If you don’t feel safe with him –”
“I do!” Hera said, startled. “He’s not going to hurt me. He’s just…he’s just so scared.” She bit her lip, the tears she had been holding back the past few hours suddenly welling up. “I don’t know what they did to him, Daddy, but – they hurt him. He’s so scared,” she said again. “He’s here and he’s still scared. He’s with me and he’s still scared.”
“Scared of you?” her father asked, his eyes narrowing.
Hera opened her mouth to deny it, then had to think about it. “No,” she said finally. “Not of me. Everyone else, I think, even Ahsoka, but not me.”
Not the way he’d been curled up in her lap, utterly exhausted. Not the way he’d let her strip him carefully out of his Inquisitor’s blacks and climb in her tiny shower with him. Not the way he’d let her touch him – not just his scars, but touch him at all, when he had flinched away even from Ahsoka back in the medbay.
“He wouldn’t even have been there if it wasn’t for me,” Hera said miserably. “He got caught because he was with me – because he had stayed on Naboo for me. He didn’t want to be there. He wanted to leave.”
He had wanted to leave with her, to go away somewhere where the Empire wasn’t the overbearing presence it was on the Emperor’s homeworld, and Hera had wanted – Hera had wanted –
She had wanted him. She had wanted him enough to betray her oaths for him, to desert the service for him and the chance to fly that entrance to the ISB Academy had denied her. She had been ready to do it, and then – and then –
Then her aunt had come for her, and the Empire had come for Kanan.
“Hera –” her father began.
She jumped as the door behind her slid open, then turned as Kanan came carefully into the hallway. In bare feet and borrowed civilian clothes, his cropped hair standing up in fluffy spikes, he looked harmless – more wounded than dangerous, thanks to the faded bruises on his face and neck. He’d left his lightsaber in the room, at least.
“Sir?” he said shyly.
Hera slipped her hand into his. “Daddy, this is Kanan,” she said. “Kanan, this is my father, Cham Syndulla –”
“I know of you, sir,” Kanan said, still shy. “Master Windu spoke highly of you back at – back at the Temple.” He stumbled for an instant over the words, though Hera thought it was lost in her father’s start of surprise.
“You’re a Jedi,” he said.
Kanan nodded, suddenly anxious; Hera felt his hand tighten on hers. She watched her father fight a short, obvious battle with himself over whether or not to inquire further before finally saying, “I thought well of Mace Windu, and any friend of my daughter’s is a friend of mine. You are welcome here, for as long as you care to stay.” He inclined his head slightly to Kanan, then gripped Hera’s shoulder briefly with one hand before turning away.
Hera watched him go, then touched the door control and ushered Kanan back into her room. He came pliantly and without protest, but she thought that he was a little more relaxed now than he had been a few minutes earlier. Maybe it had merely been that he wasn’t certain of his place on this ship without speaking to her father.
They curled up together in bed again, Kanan holding onto her with less desperation than he had displayed before. After a few minutes, he turned his head a little and nuzzled hopefully at her neck.
Hera smiled. “Are you sure, love?” she whispered. He had been hurt badly, there was no question about that. She hadn’t been certain if –
“I love you,” Kanan said, and then, shyly, “I missed you.”
Hera crooked a finger beneath his chin and tipped his head up so that she could kiss him. They hadn’t been sleeping together long when he had been arrested, not long enough for the newness of it to have worn off, for them not to be enchanted with each other every time. “I missed you too,” she said against his mouth. “And I love you too.”
He looked at her through long lashes, delicate for a man’s, then smiled back. Hera touched the hem of his shirt, giving him the chance to pull away if he changed his mind; when he didn’t, she ran her hands up beneath it. She had already seen him naked so she knew how thin he was, where all his new scars were; it kept her from showing any surprise now. She just kissed him, holding him close to her, smiling as his hands skated over her hips to her waist. The first time she had ever kissed him, back on Naboo, she had felt impossibly daring. She felt a little like that now, kissing Kanan over and over again as they undressed each other. It hadn’t been that long since the last time, not really – eight months wasn’t a long time. But so much had changed since then.
Not this, though.
About 4K below the break; these are bargains AU concepts 9 and 4.
*
I should be flying right now! Hera thought, trying to fight down her irritation as she hurried down the corridor. She had gotten to fly more than this at the ISB Academy, where cadets were required to log flight hours in a variety of vehicles. After eight months with the Free Ryloth fleet, she could count on one hand the number of times she had been in a cockpit. The fleet had a limited number of starfighters, all of which were currently assigned to other pilots, with a waitlist that Hera hadn’t been able to even get on. She had finally managed to convince one of the squadron commanders to give her a trial and had been in the port hangar about to climb into a V-19 Torrent when her father had commed her.
At least when she had been at the Imperial Academy she hadn’t been expected to play her father’s heir. If her mother had been here, she could have done this, but Alecto was off with Aunt Clotho and Aunt Sinthya on a supply run, and with her father over on the New Dawn arbitrating a dispute amongst the Cseh Syndullas Hera was the highest ranking Syndulla on the ship.
It was a little bit of a relief in its own way. Hera didn’t enjoy the formalities that still came with being a curiate Syndulla, but it meant that her father wasn’t treating her like glass anymore.
But she still would have rather been in a starfighter cockpit.
She paused in front of the medbay doors to catch her breath, listening for a moment to the sound of voices from within. A woman who sounded vaguely familiar; Hera thought that she must have overheard her speaking to Cham Syndulla once or twice. The other being inside was speaking too softly for Hera to tell if they were male or female or something else, or even if they were speaking Basic.
She took a deep breath, then touched the control for the door. As it slid open, she got a glimpse of a tall Togruta woman looking in her direction, and a human male with his head turned away from the door.
“Hello,” she said in her unaccented Basic. “I’m Hera Syndulla, my father –”
At the sound of her voice the human swung around, his eyes going wide, and everything else Hera had been about to say vanished from her mind.
It was Kanan.
Kanan with bruises on his face and his hair cropped short, his cheeks hollow and scarred, with the Imperial cog on his shoulder, but unmistakably the boy Hera had been in love with back on Naboo, the boy who had thrown himself between her and an Inquisitor so that her aunt could get her away. The boy whom Hera had been certain had died for her.
She wasn’t even aware of moving, just that all at once she was in his arms, her hands cupped around his face as she kissed him frantically. “You’re alive,” she gasped. “You’re alive, I thought you were dead, I was certain you were dead, I thought they’d killed you, I thought he’d killed you, you’re alive, you’re alive –”
Kanan didn’t say anything, just buried his face in her shoulder, his grip on her so tight that it made Hera’s bones ache. Hera coaxed him into raising his head so that she could kiss him again, then ran her fingers gently over the scars on his cheeks – two shallow slashing lines, one on each cheek, and not new. For an instant Kanan met her gaze, long enough for Hera to see the fear in his eyes, then he turned his head away.
There was blood splashed across the Imperial cog on his shoulder, and something on his belt which had to be a lightsaber.
Hera leaned up to murmur against his ear. “It’s all right. It’s all right, love, it’s me. I don’t care. You’re safe. I love you.”
Kanan looked at her again, then he nodded, very slightly, and bent his head to kiss her. Hera relaxed into the kiss and into his arms as she returned the embrace.
Her voice light and curious, the Togruta woman said, “I take it you two know each other?”
Hera flinched; she had forgotten the other woman was there. Kanan’s arms tightened around her before he released his grip so that Hera could turn to face the Togruta. She took his hand immediately, closing her fingers around his and feeling unfamiliar calluses on his palms.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized, getting her first good look at the Togruta. The woman was younger than she had expected, in her early twenties and probably not much older than Kanan. Like him, she was wearing a lightsaber – two of them, in fact. “I’m Hera Syndulla, Cham Syndulla’s daughter. My father sent me to ask if you need anything, and to tell you that he’ll be here to talk to you as soon as he can. He’s arbitrating a matter on another ship in the fleet right now and can’t leave immediately.”
And she was guessing that he hadn’t known that Kanan was here, or he would have sent Neso or Elpis instead of her. Or Uncle Themarsa, but Hera supposed that Themarsa had already met them before vanishing into the surgery with the injured rebel they had brought with them.
“I’m Ahsoka Tano,” the Togruta said, giving Hera a thoughtful look that suggested she already knew exactly who Hera was. “And you know Kanan already?”
Hera couldn’t help but turn to look up at him again, at the new lines around his eyes and the faint streak of white in his hair. He’d broken his nose again, she noticed for the first time. “We were – I was –” She had to pause to take a breath, her grip tightening on his hand. “I was the reason he was caught.”
“That’s not true,” Kanan protested, sounding startled. He also sounded like he hadn’t been speaking very much, his voice low and rough. “I would have gotten noticed whether or not you were there.”
“But you wouldn’t have been there if I hadn’t –” She bit her lip on the rest, seeing the worry in Kanan’s eyes. It took her a moment before she could say, “I thought you were dead.”
“So did I,” he said quietly.
Hera looked up at him again, barely aware of Ahsoka watching them both curiously. She had been in the Imperial service long enough to recognize an Inquisitor’s uniform when she saw one, inasmuch as they had a uniform. All her father had said was that they would be playing host to a couple of rebels who had just broken someone out of Imperial custody; Kanan had to be that someone, going by the fresh bruises on his face and the scared look in his eyes. Hera had watched that Pau’an Inquisitor on Naboo take him away barely conscious but alive; he must have been given the same offer that she had five years ago.
“It’s all right,” Hera told him softly. “It’s all right, love, it’s over.”
Kanan bent his head to hers, clearly exhausted and on the edge of collapse. He closed his eyes briefly; Hera was ready to make her apologies to Ahsoka and take him back to her room when he suddenly raised his head, his teeth set against his lower lip.
Ahsoka took a step forward, her eyes narrowing. Hera felt Kanan flinch at her approach, but he didn’t step away. She fought back the urge to put herself between the two of them and just held onto Kanan’s hand; his grip on hers was hard enough to hurt.
“The Emperor –” he began, then had to stop, gasping for breath. His pupils were blown wide with terror, his whole body braced to bolt if anyone in the room made a sudden movement.
“You don’t have to tell me now,” Ahsoka said hastily, watching Kanan like she could tell as well as Hera how frightened he was.
He shook his head, a half-hearted, broken movement like he had forgotten how to do it properly. “I don’t know if I can do this again,” he admitted quietly. He shut his eyes, breathing hard, then looked at Ahsoka again. “The Emperor – Palpatine – is a Sith lord,” he said. “He was responsible for –” He swallowed. “He made the Temple his palace. One of the masters was able to wipe most of the Archives, but not – not the holocrons, some of the other Jedi artifacts. But a Sith can’t access them. An Inquisitor can’t either, not even the ones who used to be Jedi – that’s most of them. There are a few who weren’t. The Emperor thought that they would still be able to because they aren’t really Sith, but they – but he – but –” He was shaking, his eyes shut again; his accent blurring from the Outer Rim drawl Hera was used to into something closer to upper-class Coruscanti. “He killed all the Jedi. He killed us. But it meant that he couldn’t have access to our secrets, and he wanted that. When the Hunter found me, he – he –”
He was crying silently, tears running down his cheeks. Hera squeezed his hand, trying to let him know that she was there, that it was over.
Her voice very gentle, Ahsoka said, “He made you open the holocrons.”
Kanan nodded without opening his eyes. “They’re – alive,” he said haltingly. “Not like we are, but not like the kyber crystals either. They – knew. They – they – it was like torture for them, even with me doing it, not him.”
“And the Emperor hurt you to make you do it,” Ahsoka said.
Kanan nodded again. “I couldn’t not do it,” he whispered. “And they had me drugged so I would fight him less. But it was the worst – it was –” He stopped, gasping for breath, then went on, “I couldn’t not do it. But I didn’t – I didn’t know what to do.” He finally looked at Ahsoka again, his expression pleading, and repeated, “I didn’t know what to do. And the Hunter –” His voice cracked, the agony in his eyes worse than anything Hera had ever seen. “I didn’t know what to do,” he whispered for a third time.
“It’s over,” Ahsoka told him gently. She took a step forward, like she meant to comfort him, but Kanan flinched back and she stopped.
“You’re not there anymore,” Hera told him fiercely. From the look in his eyes he was barely aware that she was there, but after a moment he squeezed her hand.
“It isn’t your fault,” Ahsoka said. “I know you didn’t have a choice. It’s over now.”
Hera leaned up to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth, which made him blink and look down at her. “You’re safe now,” she told him, tightening her grip on his hand. She looked at Ahsoka and said, “I’m going to take him back to my room. Do you – my father sent me here to ask if you needed anything.”
“I’m all right,” Ahsoka said politely, most of her attention still on Kanan. “I’ll wait here to see what the doctors say about my friend.”
Hera nodded, then tugged gently at Kanan’s hand until he looked down at her. She led him out of the medbay, aware of the way he was still trembling.
Fortunately it wasn’t far from the medbay to the Residency. Hera got him into her room, then ducked quickly into the room next door to borrow some of Doriah’s clean clothes from a curious Xiaan. Doriah got to go out with the starfighters, even if Hera was still grounded.
Kanan was still standing in the center of the room where she had left him when she came back. He looked terrified and hurt and exhausted, the bruises on his face dark against his amber skin.
Hera put the clothes down on the bed and went over to him, closing her hands around his. “It’s all right,” she told him. “It’s me.”
Kanan made a rough sound in the back of his throat and put his arms around her, pressing his face against her shoulder. He cried utterly silently, his tears soaking through the fabric of her shirt as Hera rubbed his back and murmured to him. When he had cried himself out, he leaned heavily against her, trembling so badly his teeth were chattering together.
Hera pressed a kiss to his forehead. “Let’s get you in the shower,” she told him. “You’re freezing.” She hesitated, looking at the blood splashed across the Imperial cog on his shoulder. “Are you hurt?”
She probably could have asked that before they had left the medbay.
Kanan shook his head, his eyes red and swollen from weeping. “Not lately,” he said. He followed Hera into the refresher, tensing again when she laid her hands on the front of his uniform.
Hera hesitated. “Do you want me to go?”
He covered her hand with his. “No. No, I don’t want you to go.”
Hera smiled wanly at him, then leaned up to kiss him gently before she turned to helping him get out of his uniform. Beneath it, he was bruised and scarred and had clearly been beaten badly at some point, but not freshly injured.
“Can I – do you want –” Hera touched her fingers to the hem of her own shirt, looking up at him through her lashes. “I can wash your back for you,” she added, and saw the corner of his mouth lift a little.
“I’d like that.”
Hera smiled at him, then took his hands in hers and guided them to her shirt. Kanan took another gentle kiss from her mouth, then stripped her carefully out of her clothes with the same delicacy she remembered from their nights together back on Naboo. His trembling slowed, then stopped entirely, though his breathing was still a little too fast, the fear not gone from his eyes. Hera kissed him again, barely aware of her own nakedness as she led him into the small shower. It wasn’t meant for two, but it fit them both without difficulty.
They were kissing again as Hera fumbled for the controls, breaking apart as water opened up above them. Hera smiled hopefully at him; he didn’t quite smile back, but there was a little more lightness in his face than there had been a moment ago. Hera leaned out of the shower to grab a washcloth as Kanan found the soap.
“It’s not the baths back at the Spotted Shaak,” he said, sounding more shy than she had ever heard him before.
Kanan had once extremely thoroughly debauched her in those baths, and the reference made Hera’s cheeks heat. “Well,” she managed to say, “I don’t think we were exactly trying to get clean then.” She waved the washcloth vaguely at him, then took the soap out of his hand.
He was thinner than he had ever been before, though with more muscle. He was still breathing fast, flinching when Hera accidentally put pressure on a half-healed injury. And his back –
Hera had to stop, breathing hard, when she saw the marks on his back. The tattoos on his neck.
But Kanan was clean when they finally got out of the shower, slightly more relaxed and less desperate than he had been before. Even in Doriah’s borrowed clothes he didn’t look much like he had back on Naboo, the fear in his eyes still there.
“Are you hungry?” Hera asked him. “Do you want something to eat?”
Kanan shook his head. “I don’t think I could,” he said. “Maybe later.”
They curled up together in Hera’s bed, Kanan with one hand folded firmly in the hem of her shirt. “I love you,” he said quietly. “I missed you.”
“I love you too,” Hera told him.
Kanan didn’t respond, and Hera realized with a start that he was already asleep. She bent her head over his, pressing a kiss to his cropped hair. He was here. He was hurt and he was terrified and he was traumatized, but he was here. That alone was more than Hera had ever thought she would get again.
*
They had cut his hair.
That was what Hera chose to concentrate on, sitting on her bunk with Kanan asleep with his head in her lap, one hand fisted in the hem of her shirt. His breathing was steady, the lines of fear and pain gone from his face in his sleep, but he held onto her as if never wanted to let go. There was still something stiff about his shoulders; Hera could feel how tense he was when she touched him.
He was clean, his hair still damp, smelling of the harsh soap they made in the fleet; he’d let Hera wash his back and kiss him in the shower, his whole body braced for rejection or at least remark. Hera had – she’d held her tongue on that, at least, which had taken all her willpower. He’d been hurt. He’d been hurt so badly, and it wasn’t fair, none of it was fair.
And they’d cut his hair.
There was a light tap on the door and Kanan jerked awake, his eyes widening in panic.
“It’s all right,” Hera told him hastily. “It’s all right, it’s for me. Go back to sleep.”
He looked at her, hesitating, and Hera leaned down to kiss him. “It’s all right,” she repeated. “Go back to sleep.”
After a moment he nodded, releasing his hold on her shirt so that she could get up. He burrowed back down into her wealth of blankets, watching her as she made her way, barefoot, to the door, to find her father outside. He raised his brows in concern when he spotted Kanan behind her, but didn’t say anything until Hera stepped out into the corridor and let the door slide shut behind her.
“Is that him?” he asked quietly.
Hera nodded. “He’s – he’s not hurt. Physically, anyway, it’s just…bruises. And scars. But –” She bit her lip, then confessed, “He’s scared, Daddy. He’s so scared. He’s here, he’s safe, and he’s still so scared. He was never scared before.”
“The Empire hurts people,” her father said gently.
“I know that,” Hera said miserably. She wrapped her arms around herself, even though the temperature in the corridor wasn’t much cooler than in her room.
Her father hesitated, then added, “If you don’t feel safe with him –”
“I do!” Hera said, startled. “He’s not going to hurt me. He’s just…he’s just so scared.” She bit her lip, the tears she had been holding back the past few hours suddenly welling up. “I don’t know what they did to him, Daddy, but – they hurt him. He’s so scared,” she said again. “He’s here and he’s still scared. He’s with me and he’s still scared.”
“Scared of you?” her father asked, his eyes narrowing.
Hera opened her mouth to deny it, then had to think about it. “No,” she said finally. “Not of me. Everyone else, I think, even Ahsoka, but not me.”
Not the way he’d been curled up in her lap, utterly exhausted. Not the way he’d let her strip him carefully out of his Inquisitor’s blacks and climb in her tiny shower with him. Not the way he’d let her touch him – not just his scars, but touch him at all, when he had flinched away even from Ahsoka back in the medbay.
“He wouldn’t even have been there if it wasn’t for me,” Hera said miserably. “He got caught because he was with me – because he had stayed on Naboo for me. He didn’t want to be there. He wanted to leave.”
He had wanted to leave with her, to go away somewhere where the Empire wasn’t the overbearing presence it was on the Emperor’s homeworld, and Hera had wanted – Hera had wanted –
She had wanted him. She had wanted him enough to betray her oaths for him, to desert the service for him and the chance to fly that entrance to the ISB Academy had denied her. She had been ready to do it, and then – and then –
Then her aunt had come for her, and the Empire had come for Kanan.
“Hera –” her father began.
She jumped as the door behind her slid open, then turned as Kanan came carefully into the hallway. In bare feet and borrowed civilian clothes, his cropped hair standing up in fluffy spikes, he looked harmless – more wounded than dangerous, thanks to the faded bruises on his face and neck. He’d left his lightsaber in the room, at least.
“Sir?” he said shyly.
Hera slipped her hand into his. “Daddy, this is Kanan,” she said. “Kanan, this is my father, Cham Syndulla –”
“I know of you, sir,” Kanan said, still shy. “Master Windu spoke highly of you back at – back at the Temple.” He stumbled for an instant over the words, though Hera thought it was lost in her father’s start of surprise.
“You’re a Jedi,” he said.
Kanan nodded, suddenly anxious; Hera felt his hand tighten on hers. She watched her father fight a short, obvious battle with himself over whether or not to inquire further before finally saying, “I thought well of Mace Windu, and any friend of my daughter’s is a friend of mine. You are welcome here, for as long as you care to stay.” He inclined his head slightly to Kanan, then gripped Hera’s shoulder briefly with one hand before turning away.
Hera watched him go, then touched the door control and ushered Kanan back into her room. He came pliantly and without protest, but she thought that he was a little more relaxed now than he had been a few minutes earlier. Maybe it had merely been that he wasn’t certain of his place on this ship without speaking to her father.
They curled up together in bed again, Kanan holding onto her with less desperation than he had displayed before. After a few minutes, he turned his head a little and nuzzled hopefully at her neck.
Hera smiled. “Are you sure, love?” she whispered. He had been hurt badly, there was no question about that. She hadn’t been certain if –
“I love you,” Kanan said, and then, shyly, “I missed you.”
Hera crooked a finger beneath his chin and tipped his head up so that she could kiss him. They hadn’t been sleeping together long when he had been arrested, not long enough for the newness of it to have worn off, for them not to be enchanted with each other every time. “I missed you too,” she said against his mouth. “And I love you too.”
He looked at her through long lashes, delicate for a man’s, then smiled back. Hera touched the hem of his shirt, giving him the chance to pull away if he changed his mind; when he didn’t, she ran her hands up beneath it. She had already seen him naked so she knew how thin he was, where all his new scars were; it kept her from showing any surprise now. She just kissed him, holding him close to her, smiling as his hands skated over her hips to her waist. The first time she had ever kissed him, back on Naboo, she had felt impossibly daring. She felt a little like that now, kissing Kanan over and over again as they undressed each other. It hadn’t been that long since the last time, not really – eight months wasn’t a long time. But so much had changed since then.
Not this, though.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-02-15 04:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-02-15 05:05 am (UTC)