Chapter 14: The Doubt

14 BBY- 5 Years after the Rise of the Empire

"Hera. Hera, we need to talk."

An exasperated sigh echoed through the ship. "Not right now, Kanan. I'm making stew." A hesitation. "…Plus, I don't really like how that sounds. It sounds too… serious, or something."

"It is serious," Kanan pressed.

He stared down at the holocron in the box, mildly panicked.

"Very serious," he added.

A few seconds later, huffing and with arms crossed, Hera appeared on the bridge. "What is it?" she asked nervously. She looked away as a tint came over her cheeks. "Is everything okay? I mean… are… are we okay? Are you… have I… I dunno, have I been—wait. Did you open the box?!"

"Yes, but that's—"

"Kanan!" she snapped, rushing forward. She yanked the box from his hands and slammed it shut. "You know Vizago told us specifically not to open the box!"

"I do know!" he defended, throwing up his arms. "But that's not important, I'm telling you, I just knew I had to open the box, and when I did—"

"You bypassed the only condition he gave us!"

"It was important! I felt it, I—"

"You felt it? You broke the rules! Kanan, what if—"

"Hera!" he said, loud enough to make her jaw slam shut. He took the box back, opened it, and reached inside. He pulled out the holocron and held it for her to see. "It's a holocron."

The little twi'lek stared back at him blankly.

"I'm sorry. A what?"

"A holocron," he said again. "You know, one of the ancient archives of the Jedi Order?"

"No," she said flatly. "I don't know."

While he stared at her, dumbstruck, Hera reached forward and snatched the holocron out of his hands. She held it up to her nose, scrutinizing it with one eye squeezed shut.

"What's it do?" she said suspiciously, as though she was still miffed about him opening the box, but he knew she'd already forgiven him.

"It… stores information," Kanan explained, suddenly feeling very ill at ease.

She tapped it with her finger. "What kind of information?"

"I dunno… Jedi stuff, I guess."

She held it by her ear and shook it, looked at it one last time, and then shrugged. "Doesn't look like much to me."

Kanan watched anxiously as she put it back in the box, closed it, took the box from his hands, and put it back on the dash. "No more opening the box, as per Vizago's instructions. You shouldn't have even done it in the first place."

"But Hera—"

"I'm gonna go finish the stew," she said, turning and walking back out of the bridge. "Please don't open the box again. We really want this power cell deal to go off without a hitch."

Then she left.

"Shit," Kanan hissed under his breath. He looked back to the box. What was he supposed to do now?

He couldn't let this fall into the wrong hands. Though he didn't know for sure what exactly was on it, he did know that it must be something very important. All Jedi matters were, and if they were stored on a holocron instead of in the textual archives, then they were especially important.

Who would want to buy something like this? And how had Vizago even gotten his hands on it in the first place? The ounce trust he had in the Devaronian was souring.

Luckily for Kanan, he had the next several hours of flight through hyperspace to figure it out. They weren't due to meet Ranzar Malk and his crew for a long time. Hopefully, enough time to come up with a plan. Or something.

"We really gotta talk about this holocron thing," Kanan said as he walked into the storage room.

Hera looked up at him from her spot on the floor, peeling potatoes. She frowned. "What about it?"

"It's dangerous," he started, settling cross-legged on the floor next to her, taking a potato and a knife. "Or, well, it isn't, but it could be, if it got into the wrong hands. How do we know what this Ranzar Malk guy wants with it?"

"Probably nothing," Hera said. "If it's as important as you say it is, he's most likely just getting a hold of it for another buyer."

"Great," Kanan muttered. He couldn't help but sulk as he peeled the potato in his hands.

"When you say it could be dangerous," Hera said after a while, voice curious, "what do you mean?"

"Well… I dunno. It has to do with the Jedi, so it might carry sensitive information, secrets, or whatnot. Stuff that… wouldn't be good if it got into Imperial hands."

He neglected to mention the danger of it falling into Sith hands, in particular.

But Hera was finally beginning to follow him. "So, do you think something catastrophic could happen if the Imperials got it?"

"I'm not sure anyone other than the Imperials would have a use for it, so, yeah. It must be them. They're probably up to something."

Now Hera was the one sulking.

"Well, we can't have that," she mumbled.

A few minutes of silence and peeling potatoes passed.

"Alright," Kanan started. "What if we just asked Ranzar what he wants with it?"

"Brokers never share confidential information like that," Hera pointed out. "C'mon, Kanan. That's black market basics."

"Oh, sorry to disappoint. I don't usually dabble in illegal pastimes, unlike you."

She tossed a potato skin scrap at his face. It stuck.

Grimacing, he peeled it off of his cheek. "Very mature."

"Want me to do it again?"

"Nope."

Hera smirked smugly. Then she tossed the peeled potato into the pot. It landed with a plunk and sent lukewarm broth spattering over her face.

"Aw, dang it," she muttered.

Kanan's first thought was that he wouldn't mind licking it off for her.

His second thought was, wait, what in the hell—

"Well, if there's anything we can do, we could ask to meet his buyer, and talk to them about it," Hera said, wiping off the broth with her sleeve.

"That's an idea," Kanan coughed, frazzled. He swallowed and willed his cheeks to stop flaring. "But why would they tell us why they want it if Ranzar wouldn't?"

"They probably wouldn't, either," Hera admitted. "So, I guess that doesn't really get us anywhere." She dropped another peeled potato into the pot and picked up a new one. She was much faster at this than he was. But then again, potato-peeling hadn't really been in the syllabus for Jedi training.

"Maybe we could find out. Without them knowing. Look at the records or something, tap into their communications records."

"The Ghost is a smuggling ship, Kanan," Hera deadpanned. "Not a super-secret spy ship with super-secret spy techno-whizza-majigs."

They finished peeling the rest of the potatoes and moved on to chopping some lyckee carrots. Hera pulled out a bottle of some weird crimson seasoning she'd brought from Ryloth and sprinkled in a scanty pinch.

"Are we gonna be able to taste that at all? You've barely put any in."

"Trust me," Hera chuckled. "It's kala'uun curry, the spiciest on all the planet. You'll taste it."

"I just don't like this," Kanan groaned, dropping the carrot and the knife and letting his face drop into his hands. "We never should've accepted Vizago's deal in the first place. He's a scumbag, if you ask me, and he's never up to any good."

"Well, where else would we have gotten the power cells? Fulcrum said that Rinn needs them within the month, and his intel is always reliable." Hera objected. "They need the cells, fast. And Vizago's got the best connections at the best prices."

Kanan faltered, keeping his face in his hands. He didn't really know this Fulcrum, but he did know Vizago. And he knew that he really, really didn't like him.

He felt like he couldn't truly tell her how bad the situation was. Without his background knowledge, she couldn't understand just how dangerous it would be if the Empire got their dirty hands on the holorcon, how absolutely detrimental it would be, without telling her about himself. About… the Jedi.

And deep, deep down inside, maybe so deep that it was the Force telling him and not himself, he knew the truth would have to come out one day.

The thought was nauseating.

Hera could hate him. Or she could think he was pitiful, or loathsome, or stupid, or a coward. In fact, probably all of the above. He'd dug himself deep enough into this lie— what if she never forgave him for keeping it this long?

All she had ever, ever asked of him was for honesty. That was it. And Kanan wasn't sure she'd ever really given it to her.

His master would reprimand him for doing such a thing. She would say he should have told Hera upfront, should've been truthful. It wasn't fair to Hera. She didn't know how much danger she was in just by being with him, how much risk he was putting her in, when Hera probably thought it was the other way around. It was wrong, and Depa would have told him as much.

His stomach felt like it was turning inside out, doing backflips ad somersaults and all kinds of crazy nonsense, and he felt very, very nervous, jittery. Like he'd downed five cups of caf and now his bloodstream was vibrating inside his veins.

Kanan… liked Hera, and he didn't want her to think of him as weak, as detestable, as deceiving. As a liar.

Even though that's exactly what he was.

"Hera…" he began weakly, sucking in a shallow, stomach-churning breath.

She cut him off with a wave of her hand. "I've got it. When we get there, we'll ask Ranzar if we can meet his buyer. Tell him it's something Vizago asked us to do, just to make sure everything went smoothly in the transaction. That way, we can talk to them, and get an impression of what kind of person they are."

"…How will that help us?"

"We can make a judgement of their character," she explained. "It's not the greatest idea, but it's something. If we get any weird, sinister, evil-poo-doo vibes from them, we'll call off the deal. If not, we give them the holocron, no problem."

Kanan gave her a look that showed he wasn't particularly convinced.

"Tell you what," Hera sighed, seemingly at a loss. "For now, let's just make this stew, then relax a bit. I've got a couple books around here somewhere, if you want to kick back and read, or you could just take a nap. We've got plenty of hours left in hyperspace, and we're stressing about this too much right now. Especially you," she said decidedly, scooping up her chopped carrots and dumping them into the stew.

Kanan swallowed. His panic was spiking and he needed to just spit it out, just tell her.

He shook his head slowly. "Hera, I… there's…"

"Look, Kanan, let's just think about it later, alright?" she pressed gently. "We had a late night last night, and that short nap in the fields doesn't really count as rest," she coaxed, and quite convincingly, if he might add.

Her sweet voice and honeyed tone was an excellent persuasive tactic that worked on him every time and relief settled over his spiking panic like seafoam over sand. Reluctantly, he started to calm down. Worry less. Listen to her.

Maybe he was just taking the opportunity for an excuse. Maybe he was using it to hide from her again.

Hera had been right about the kala'uun curry, and the stew was very spicy. Delicious, creamy, and hot, but very, very, spicy. Kanan only managed to save his taste buds from falling off by taking turns of three speedy bites and then guzzling water as soon as he swallowed.

"Weak," Hera teased.

"Not true," Kanan coughed, teary-eyed and red-faced. "You're just desensitized."

"That's not a good excuse."

More spluttering. "I—I've got a stomach of steel. I could probably survive—", a hacking cough, "—for a week on a cup of caf and a chunk of that ryloth chocolate alone."

"Whatever you tell yourself, Kanan."

Hera went to check up on the bridge while Kanan cleaned the dishes. He kept his thoughts to himself. It was hard to ignore the feeling of creeping dread of what he knew he had to tell her, so he focused on scrubbing the stains out of the stew pot instead.

"We still have a couple hours left," Hera said, coming back into the storage room. "I'm gonna clean out some of the dirt from Chop's shoulder detail. But there should be some good books in the sleeping quarters in the top left drawer under my bed, if you don't feel like sleeping."

"Thanks. I'll take a look."

With a carefree smile, Hera was off, leaving Kanan with a clean stew pot and his regrets.

He wouldn't be able to sleep like this. No chance.

With nothing else to do, he went into Hera's quarters, trying to ignore the mildly uncomfortable feeling it gave him being in her room on his own, and looked for the books. As per her instructions, he found them in the top left drawer. Pulling them out, then read their titles one by one:

Introduction to Electrodynamics

The Principals of Quantum Mechanics in Space, Vol. 4

Fundamentals of Galactic-Thermal Physics and Hyperkinetic Theory

So… Hera's choice of reading was… interesting, to say the least. Damn impressive, that was for sure. But he guessed it only made sense that she was a nerd. How else could she pilot such a clunky ship all on her own?

Though physics wasn't necessarily right up his ally, Kanan settled for Intro to Electrodynamics, thinking it sounded the least complex, and went into the spare sleeping quarters that he'd partially claimed as his. He sat on the bed with his back propped against the wall and turned to the first page. Then he cleared his throat and began to read.

Electromagnetism, or classical electrodynamics, is a branch of theoretical physics that studies the interactions between electric charges and currents using an extension of the classical Blagtonian model. In this book, we shall work exclusively in the domain of classical mechanics, although electrodynamics extends with unique simplicity to the other three realms, including friction in hyperspace, nebular pulls, and planetary magnetism (according to Loonker-Jel's interpretive galactic-velocity formulae ), respectively.

We will rely heavily on the theory of relativity (introduced by Bin-korl Flarg approximately 7294 years prior to the modern galaxy), although the theory is superseded by newer quantum galactic principles (developed by Blagan, Schradonger, and others). For objects that are both of high velocity and minute mass (or of a relation to E=Fq=kQr2, as is common in modem particle physics), a mechanics that combines relativity and quantum principles is in order; this relativistic quantum mechanics is known as quantum hyperspace field theory. The electrical repulsion between two electrons in one hyperspace lane is 1042 times as large (according to the Zaleen model P= εσA(T4-T04), etc.,) as their gravitational attraction, and if atoms were held together by gravitational (instead of electrical) forces, a single hydrogen atom would be much larger than the known universe.

Heckin'… damn. Gee whiz.

What a bore.

Kanan had to read the first sentence twelve times over again before it finally started to soak in, and by the time he moved on to the second, his eyelids were already drooping. The physics was so uninteresting and lackluster it made even the old Jedi texts he had to read as a youngling look appealing.

After about twenty minutes, he finally managed to get through the first page.

Green headtails and orange overalls appeared in the doorway.

"Whatcha reading?"

"Intro to electrodyno…mics?"

Hera bounced on the balls of her feet. "Oh, I love that one!"

She scrambled to his side and hopped onto the bed. She pressed close against him to look over his shoulder, making every nerve suddenly stand on end in his body.

"Oooh, you're reading about magnetic fields! Those are the coolest, honestly."

"Magnetic fields?" Kanan echoed. He wasn't sure if he'd even read that word yet.

"Yeah. I think it's such an interesting way to illustrate the magnetic influence experienced by electric charges in relative motion. I mean, what better way than to use the lines to show how a charge that is experiencing a force perpendicular to its own velocity is moving parallel to a current of other charges? It's just brilliant, honestly."

Kanan was too distracted by the shining glee in Hera's eyes and how soft her lips looked to even begin to try to comprehend what she was saying about charges and electricity and whatnot. If anything, her intelligence and brainy smart-ness just turned him on even more.

She hummed as though impressed. "You've picked a really good one. This is definitely the most interesting of all of them."

Her eyebrows knitted together as she zoned in on one paragraph. Kanan didn't miss the way she subconsciously bit her lip as she leaned closer into him.

Sweet kriffing Force, this girl was going to be the death of him.

Frankly, all the physics was all nonsense, but of everything going on in his head, from what the swelling feeling in his chest was, to how lovely and very attractive she looked, to how near her cheek was to his shoulder, to how he could feel the heat from her body was closing in on his, the physics was the only thing that made any sense. And it didn't even make sense! Physics was confusing!

"And the whole concept with rotational force? Genius! Magnetic fields completely surround everything and exert forces on any electric charge in motion. And that's not even where it ends, because that magnetic field's location can vary its strength or its direction. It's just bonkers."

Kanan wasn't even sure she was talking to him anymore. She was lost under a spell of physics and ships and… science.

When he calmed himself enough, he finally mustered the courage to try to engage in the conversation. He wanted to say something about the physics, something smark like yes, he did know what a magnetic field was, and yes, the electric charge can be exerted on, and yes, he thought it was bonkers, too.

But just as he opened his mouth, Hera wriggled in closer, sending his heartbeat skyrocketing.

She leaned into him so that her cheek was squished against his shoulder and the top of her head just brushed against the stubble on his chin.

Was she… crazy?

Surely, she must hear the absolute thunder that was Kanan's heart right then, hammering away in his chest, because she was pressed that close against it. And she was so warm. And so close. And he really, really wanted to put his arm around her and tug her even closer.

But he shouldn't, and he should have self-control, because Hera was, after all, just his work partner, his ship-mate, his professional colleague, of sorts, and relationships were a very serious issue, both for his traditions and Jedi customs and, and—all of those things, so he really shouldn't think about such things—

"Huh, that's weird," Hera said, and Kanan thoughts immediately started whizzing faster, because oh Force she was hearing how bad his heart was pounding and that he was sweating and she was going to realize that that's not normal, and that what it must mean was that he—

"I didn't realize that the fields were produced by electric charges. I thought it was the magnetic moments of elementary particles, according to the fundamental quantum property."

Then she kicked off her boots, snuggled in closer, draped one leg over his, and took the book from his hands. She turned the page and kept reading.

Inside, Kanan screamed.

"Oh, never mind. I was right. The charges and elementary particles are just interrelated. My bad."

Slowly, and very, very awkwardly, Kanan settled into his new-found predicament. His arm did manage to shift itself so that it rested lightly over her shoulder with wrist dangling loosely. He managed to steady his breathing, but not quite his heartbeat, and get comfortable.

It felt… nice.

But that chafing feeling deep down within rubbed at him, his conscience, or trace of the Force, maybe, a pang whispering to him that he still needed to tell her something. To confess.

"Hera," he started, but as soon as her name fell through his lips, his resolve started to crumble.

"Hm?"

"I…"

His voice faltered. He looked down at her from where she leaned against him, charming and excited and huddled close with her gaze glued to complex words about physics and science and magnetic-things.

It was a sight that melted him from the inside out. It softened his heart and soul until he was almost certain he was slipping, like honey between his fingers in the Lothal summer. She was stunning, and she was doing things to him that he couldn't even comprehend.

"Kanan," she said suddenly, nicely, although a touch confused, "what is it?"

He was still struggling to find his words, something he was usually so good at, so fast at, throwing little quips and prods here and there, and yet now he couldn't find any.

Hera closed the book with her thumb wedged between the pages and looked up at him. "Is everything alright?"

"There's… I-I…"

Then concern trickled into her pretty eyes. She frowned slightly, and Kanan found himself wanting nothing more than to kiss the crease between her brows to shoo it away, but he knew it would be clumsy and it would be inappropriate and that's not what he should be thinking about right then.

Then the ship jostled to a halt, and Kanan's world was spinning so fast he didn't even realize it until Hera pushed away from him to get to her feet.

"We're here," she said, setting down the physics book. She bent over to tug on her boots, which had previously discarded on the floor. Kanan very quickly found himself red in the face and looking the other way.

Just as she finished, she whirled back around, smiling. She fell forward onto her hands, palms planted flat on either side of his hips, trapping him.

"We'll talk as soon as we get back, yeah?" she asked, "Unless you really need to now. The deal can wait, if you want."

Her smile was so thoughtful, so innocent, that all he did was shake his head weakly.

"That's okay. Let's… get those power cells, first."

"Great," she said sweetly, and it crushed his heart. He was just delaying, again.

"I promise we'll figure out this holo-box thing. It won't get into the wrong hands," she assured him.

Then she pressed a hasty, feather-light peck to his cheek before ducking away and practically sprinting out of the room.

She… what?

It stung his cheek where her lips had disappeared. The touch kissed his heart with butterfly delicacy and sent his head spiraling, again.

The aroma of her rose and meiloorun perfume with a hint of that spicy Ryloth curry lingered in the air, making the back of Kanan's neck tingle. It slowly started to fade, leaving him alone in the room—colder now, without her there—with his thoughts.

He was falling. And he was failing.

He was falling for Hera, and at the same time, he was failing her.

And he wasn't quite sure how he could recover from either. But he knew that he'd fallen.

And he'd fallen hard.

Here's the citation for the physics stuff (you thought I knew science? Think again, kids. I study history.) I found in a book. Can't catch me plagiarizing.

Griffiths, David. J. Introduction to Electrodynamics, 4th ed. Glenview, Illinois, Pearson Education, 1989.