Three Months After A New Dawn

Hera sat at the Dejarik table in the common room, at what was rapidly becoming a ludicrous hour, sipping her beloved caf and listening to the sounds of her shipmate returning from a lengthy five-hour foray into Garel City.

A crash and several loud thuds came from the cargo hold, followed by a string of curses.

Well, there went her carefully stacked crates. Kanan was definitely not sober. When he told her he was "meeting a contact", he had somehow completely failed to mention that he was meeting said contact at a cantina (although she knew better than to be surprised). It was, at least, the first time in several weeks that Kanan had returned to the ship truly intoxicated. She wondered idly if Kanan's contacts were really contacts at all, or if they were actually women who were keeping him company. Hera doubted that her own strictly platonic, frequently businesslike companionship was enough to keep a man like him completely entertained. Not that he hadn't tried. But it didn't take long for him to realize that she was more amused than anything else by his attempts at flirting with her. She had been almost disappointed when he gave up.

She decided that she would make him clean up the crates with a hangover. Then again, she mused, punishing a Jedi with manual labor tended to be a very unsatisfying business. Knowing him, he would have them re-stacked perfectly before she was even out of her bunk in the morning.

Hera still wasn't absolutely one-hundred-percent certain that Kanan was a Jedi- he hadn't said anything to her or blatantly used his abilities. But nothing ever seemed to pose any physical difficulty for him. He made impossible shots with his blaster, and always avoided blaster bolts that would have hit anyone else. He was reckless to a degree that bothered even the frequently reckless Hera, likely because he knew he could be. It went well beyond what a normal person was capable of. She had recalled the incident aboard Forager many times, wondering if she had been mistaken about what she'd seen. But there could really be no mistake about it; Kanan had moved an enormous, collapsing metal catwalk with a wave of his hand. She would have been killed. She should have been killed. And yet, there she sat, very much alive.

"Hera!" Kanan shouted. A pause, as he tried to sense her, or whatever it was that (probable) Jedi did. "Are you still here?"

She rolled her eyes. "Where else would I be?" she called back. "You don't need to yell."

Chopper grumbled from the corner, where he was working on some of the electrical components of the sublight drive. It didn't take a lot to irritate Chopper, and he continued to make it very clear that he was still mightily irritated by the interloper. He zipped out of the room and down the corridor.

Sure enough, just a few seconds later, Hera heard Kanan yelp. "CHOPPER! If it weren't for Hera, I'd turn you into scrap metal!"

Chopper, in return, offered some choice suggestions about what he would do to Kanan, were it not for Hera.

She heard a metallic clang, followed by a second yelp from Kanan. Then she heard Chopper's version of an evil giggle, as he zoomed off to work in the bowels of the ship.

Kanan stumbled into the doorway, looking disheveled and very aggravated. His hair had escaped the usual ponytail- something she had not yet seen. The reddish-brown locks hung around and in his face, and it suited him. She felt a surge of warmth deep in her belly, but her face remained completely impassive as she sat there, regarding him with an unimpressed gaze. He looked back at her, eyes unfocused, scowling.

"Your droid," he growled. "How attached to having him around are you, really?"

"I'm pretty attached to Chopper. If you harm a single circuit in his dome, you'll be in big trouble," Hera warned.

He raised his eyebrows and a smirk crept over his lips. "Trouble, huh? I like the sound of that. What kind of trouble?"

"The kind of trouble that gets you pushed out the airlock while we're in hyperspace."

Kanan ran a hand through his hair with an arrogant grin. "I don't think you'd actually shove a handsome guy like me out the airlock."

"Try me," she said, growing irritated. Her irritation, however, had less to do with his smarmy attitude, and a lot more to do with the fact that she could not bring herself to deny that he was handsome. So what if he was? She had met plenty of good-looking men, and it had never mattered a bit. But it definitely mattered now, and that fact rankled her constantly.

Hera wasn't a very good liar, mainly because she simply couldn't be bothered with coddling other people by telling them what they wanted to hear. As such, she was always rather bluntly honest, which had never made her very popular with the type of people who were unable to stomach the truth. That was fine with her. She extended that same level of honesty to herself, as a matter of principle, and she approached her truths with the same composure and determination that she faced everything else in her life.

There was no point, therefore, in denying the attraction she felt to this mess of a man. She often wondered what it said about her, that she wanted someone who probably needed a whole lot more than she was capable of giving. On the other hand, maybe she was just what he needed, simply because she wasn't the coddling type. But she had no intention of taking on that kind of project. She had enough to do as it was.

"Well," she said, "I thought we'd seen the last of him; it's disappointing to find out that drunk Kanan is still as annoying as ever. And he also seems to be having some trouble staying upright, this time. Was there anything left in that cantina for the other customers to drink?"

"There was only one bottle left," he slurred. "They'll have to fight for it."

"I'll bet," she smirked. Hera wasn't above making fun of him, but she had no intention of admonishing him for his drunken behavior. She could see that there was some deeper issue at work, and she strongly suspected that it had everything to do with his Jedi past. The Jedi were all dead- executed as traitors, the Empire's propaganda said, for plotting a coup. Hera often wondered what had happened to Kanan. How had he survived?

When Kanan saved Hera's life aboard Forager, her shrewd mind almost immediately calculated his value to both her, and to the small but ever-growing Rebellion that she was working for. She saw him for exactly what he was- a mess- but she also saw just as clearly what he could become. The darkness that had likely surrounded him for many years had, at its center, a bright light.

Over the three months since leaving Gorse, Hera had learned very little about the Jedi. But she had learned a fair amount about the man who called himself Kanan Jarrus. She knew that wasn't his real name- he hadn't needed to explain that. She would have considered him very stupid indeed, if he had been going around using his real name under the nose of the Empire, and he wasn't stupid. On the surface, he was like many of the men she'd encountered in the Galaxy: cocky and flirtatious. She didn't blame him. Given his abilities and looks, he had more right to that sort of personality than most others she'd met.

But in close quarters, day in and day out, pretenses can't be maintained. Kanan Jarrus was broken and heart sick. When he thought she wasn't looking, she had seen the sadness and loneliness in his face. He was always kind to her, always thoughtful and respectful. She trusted him more than she'd ever trusted anyone outside of her family, although she wasn't entirely sure why. And something in Hera responded to the brokenness in Kanan. She had been surprised and pleased to discover that they were forging a bond of true friendship.

Unfortunately, though, the trust and fondness that had grown between them over the past three months had a created something of a fertile soil for other things to grow, too.

She had caught him several times now, gazing at her with a look in his eyes that could only be characterized as trouble. She'd seen variations on that gaze many times before. She was, after all, a female Twi'lek. All sorts of male beings had looked at her with lust in their eyes. But the look in Kanan's eyes was much more than that. It didn't scare her- Hera had been through far too much in her life to be frightened by the look in a man's eyes. It did worry her, though. Romance, aside from being inherently risky, could also be very dangerous for a couple of people trying to thwart the Empire. The Empire exploited emotional weaknesses; she had heard of wives being tortured to extract information from husbands, and vice versa. Hera had never been in love before, but if it was anything like what her parents had had together, she wondered if she would be capable of keeping her mouth shut while watching the Empire torture someone she loved. Talking wasn't really an option, though. And that made love a liability.

Hera shook herself from her thoughts. Kanan was still standing in the doorway, propping himself up with his arms splayed out, his hands gripping the sides of the door. He was watching her intently.

"Want to sit? It might be better than falling down," she suggested, indicating the bench next to her.

"I don't fall down," he grumbled, as he started shuffling over to the seat. He threw himself into it, sliding down until his chin rested on his chest. "Well, Cap'n Hera, I guess you're probably pretty fragged off about me getting so drunk, eh?"

As she laughed softly, his eyes widened in surprise. "I don't care that you get drunk, Kanan," she said. "I care about why you get drunk."

He nodded slowly, clearly wary of a trap. "Well, sometimes you just need a drink."

"Sometimes you do," she agreed. "But 'sometimes' seems to happen a lot, for you. You know that you can talk to me, Kanan...don't you? I would never betray you to the Empire. I would die first."

He lifted his chin to look at her from beneath his dark, angular brows, the drunken haze clearing a bit from his blue-green eyes. This was obviously not the type of thing he was used to hearing, and his gaze softened considerably.

"I've never met anyone like you before, Hera."

She laughed. "I'm not surprised. People like me don't spend much time hanging around in disreputable cantinas, if it's not for a job. You were in the wrong place, if you were looking for someone like me."

Kanan's smile was sad but genuine. "That's the problem. I wasn't looking for someone like you. I would have disappointed someone like you."

She cocked her head to one side. "But you haven't disappointed me, Kanan."

"It's hard to disappoint someone who already has pretty low expectations of you," he offered, making a face like he had a sour taste in his mouth.

Hera chuckled. "Is that what you think? That I have low expectations of you? Hardly. I expect a lot from my crew."

He studied her face for several moments, as if he was trying make a decision by finding the answer there. "Do you want to know about me, really?" he asked. "It could be dangerous for you, knowing too much about me. I shouldn't even be with you, Hera. Just being around me makes you a target, too. They could torture you...they could kill you…" he broke off, wincing at the thought.

Hera's voice took on a slight edge. "I'm not stupid. I know what the Empire does."

"Oh, I'm well aware of how smart you are," he said, the corner of his mouth lifting in a smirk. "It's not like you ever get tired of making me feel like an idiot."

She looked down at her cup of caf, still clutched in her hands, now gone lukewarm. "I don't think you're an idiot," she said softly. "I think you're much better than you obviously think you are. I believe in you, even if you don't believe in yourself."

Kanan let out a breath. She looked up. He was staring at her with a vaguely baffled, incredulous expression on his face. This was someone who had not heard kind, genuine things said about him in a very long time.

"It was eight years ago today," he murmured, barely audible.

"What was eight years ago?"

"The reason I got so drunk tonight. The explanation about what happened on Forager. If you really want to know, I'll tell you," he said in a flat, exhausted voice.

Hera didn't hesitate. "I want to know," she said.

Kanan averted his eyes, paused for a long moment, and then took a deep breath and began: "My real name is Caleb Dume." His voice was low but clear. "I was only 14 years old, just a padawan. My master's name was Depa Billaba, and she was more than a master to me. She was a mother, a friend. She was my hero. The clones we were with...they got an order over the comm: 'Execute Order Sixty-Six'."

Kanan stopped, his hands trembling slightly as they rested on his knees. He took another deep breath, and started again, staring at the floor. "Next thing I knew, my master and I were fighting off the same soldiers that we'd fought alongside, soldiers we had befriended and cared about. She told me to run."

He looked up at Hera with tears in his eyes, and she felt her heart break for him. "Every fiber of my being was telling me to stay, not to leave her, to keep fighting, to die fighting if I had to. She said it again. Run. So I did. I ran away like a coward as they killed her."

Hera kept her face as composed as possible, but she knew this kind of pain. She had lost her own mother at a young age. Her heart ached for him. "You weren't a coward, Kanan," she whispered. "She wanted you to save yourself. She wanted you to live."

He shook his head, speaking as if in a trance, staring through her. "No. I shouldn't have left her. But I got mine. They chased me. For a long time, I lived on the streets, eating garbage, scraps. I was dirty. No one cared about me, no one cared if I lived or died, except the clones who wanted to kill me."

He stopped talking abruptly, staring into the past with unfocused eyes. Then he suddenly returned to himself, and sat up on the bench. "I can't talk about this anymore," he said. "Not tonight, anyway. I shouldn't have even told you that much. Not only have I put you in danger, but now...what you must think of me."

Hera sighed deeply. "It's...it's a tragic story, Kanan. But none of it is your fault. And you are not a coward," she said, her voice hard. "What you did on Gorse and Cynda- what you've done every day since then- is the exact opposite of cowardly."

Kanan shook his head. "I'm definitely a coward. I can't even tell you…" he stopped abruptly, looking away.

"Tell me what?" she asked, immediately wary.

He shifted his glance back to her and smiled wryly, as if laughing at himself. "I damaged a power coupling trying to fix the hyperdrive." He looked away again, and Hera knew that was not what he had actually wanted to tell her. But it was just as well. Whatever he wanted to say, she wasn't ready to hear it.

"I thought Jedi were supposed to be good at fixing things," she said, grinning.

"Well, we all have our failings. Even Jedi. I'm going to bed," he announced.

Hera got up and offered a hand. "I'll help you get there," she said.

"Listen, Hera. Jedi don't fall down."

"And partners always have each other's backs." She helped Kanan get to his feet, and then stuck her head and shoulders under his right arm for support.

They made it to his cabin with only a couple of stumbles, and Kanan flopped himself into his bunk.

"Glad you like me, Hera," he mumbled, looking up at her. "Even if I'm bantha fodder."

She rolled her eyes. "You're not bantha fodder. And I hope I wake up to find those crates in the hold re-stacked, just the way they were before you knocked them over."

"I'll do anything you ask," he murmured, eyes closing. He opened them again suddenly, as if he'd just thought of something he had forgotten to say. "Hera. You're the only one in the Galaxy who knows the whole truth about me."

She must have looked surprised, because he smiled as his eyes drifted shut again. Soon enough, his breathing deepened, and he began lightly snoring.

Hera stood there, feeling very warmly indeed towards this lost soul. She had always had a need to help and protect the lost, the ones with no family or friends. That was how she'd ended up with Chopper. And joining the Rebellion? Well, that was all it was, but on a much larger scale. They were all lost and adrift, under the iron fist of the Empire.

She slipped out of his cabin and into hers, sitting down on her bunk. She rested her chin in her hand and replayed his story in her mind. She had known that Kanan was broken, that something in his past had hurt him deeply. But she hadn't suspected that it was as awful as what he'd told her. She imagined Kanan- or, rather, Caleb- the boy, terrified, living off garbage and rats, mourning the loss of the only parent he'd even known. Mourning the loss of his place in the Galaxy, and his family, the Jedi Order. He had been so young. Her vision shifted to memory, and she saw Ryloth during the Clone Wars. She painfully recalled her own mourning, as a young girl. So much suffering- for what? And here they were again, trying to start another war. Kanan knew nothing of the Rebellion, and it had to stay that way. A part of her felt incredibly guilty about that. What would he say, if he knew?

Hera curled up in her bunk and listened to Kanan's snores, knowing that she was not likely to get much sleep that night.