A/N: This is the first of three (planned) parts, but I won't even try to make guesses or promises as to when any others will get done. Happy Thanksgiving to those of you who celebrate!

Conversations

Hera heard the cockpit door open, but she was hours deep in reformatting the Ghost's navi-computer; whoever had just walked in could be actively bleeding to death and she still wasn't going to take her eyes off the screen.

There was silence for a few seconds as whoever-it-was waited for Hera's acknowledgment and didn't get it. They cleared their throat. "I was sparring with the kid, hand-to-hand. She's pretty good."

Zeb.

"Mm-hmm." There was silence again and Hera sighed. She was not hoping this would turn into a full-blown conversation. "But?"

Zeb shifted, leaning against the doorway. "I was looking at her—I'm twice her size and three times her weight. I could actually, literally, physically kill her, Hera. Easily. Very easily."

There was an edge in his voice—like he was irked, almost. "And why would you wanna do that, Zeb?"

"Kid's got a mouth on her," he groused. "She's been asking questions."

Hera felt impatience tingle along her spine. "That's to be expected. She's in an unfamiliar environment with unfamiliar people." She sighed, irritated. "Tell me what you're really driving at or get out. I'm up to my eyeballs in—"

"Questions about you and Kanan."

That got Hera's full attention. She finally turned around. "What questions?"

Zeb smirked. "You know what questions."

Her face flushed dark green. "You couldn't have brought this to Kanan's attention instead of mine?" Then Kanan could have told her and she wouldn't be having this Force-forsaken talk with Zeb.

"Kriff was he gonna do about it?" The Lasat gave a laugh. "He's not one to put any sort of finesse on a situation," Zeb said wryly, "and neither am I. Besides—" He stopped, frowning. "There are some things I think she'll want you to address. Being a woman and all."

His mouth turned in a way that kept Hera from snapping at him. Something was going on; something other than his near-constant teasing and insinuations about her and Kanan. He wouldn't have interrupted her work just for that. "Alright," she said. "I'll talk to Sabine later."

Zeb nodded as he turned to leave. "Sooner rather than later, maybe."

"No kidding," Hera muttered.

There was a vague sort of routine aboard the Ghost. If they weren't on a job, everyone tended to head to their quarters around twenty-two hundred. Hera knew that this was true of their newest recruit, Sabine, because she could hear the young woman's music switch on like clockwork every night. Hera didn't mind; the soft thumps of a bassline reminded her that her crew was growing, just as she always hoped it would. Zeb had been an easy addition. With Sabine…well, there were a few growing pains. Like this one.

Exhaling nervously, Hera knocked on Sabine's cabin door.

"Just a sec!" The music stopped. There was a heavy thud, a curse, and then the door whooshed open. Paint fumes hit Hera like a durasteel wall.

"Whoa," she said, coughing. Her eyes stung and watered, but she peered in the room and saw the walls looking drastically different than they had pre-Sabine. "You've really done some work in here."

Sabine leaned in the doorframe and pushed her painter's mask up, making her close-cropped hair stick up in every direction. Her expression was skeptical. "You said it was cool."

Hera smiled disarmingly. "I meant it." She paused. "Listen, if you have a minute, I thought maybe we could talk?"

"What about?" Sabine's eyes were guarded in an instant.

"Well—" Hera's stomach flopped and she felt heat on her cheeks. "I gathered from Zeb that you have some questions about…well…" She squared her shoulders, chiding herself. Now was not the time for squeamishness; she knew Sabine's history, and she knew she needed to be as straightforward as possible. "Well, about Kanan and me."

"Oh." Sabine blinked her surprise. She clearly hadn't been expecting anything like this. "Sure, yeah."

"How about the galley, then? I can fix us some caf."

The younger woman's eyebrows raised. "At this time of night?"

Hera sighed. "I'm borderline nocturnal at this point."

"Same." Sabine grinned.

A few minutes later, she and Hera were seated across from her at the galley table, steaming mugs of caf in hand. Hera cleared her throat. "First, I want to make sure—you're still settling in okay?"

"Um, yeah." Sabine shifted. "My ribs are all but healed and aside from a few nasty run-ins with Chopper, everything's fine."

Hera winced and laughed simultaneously. "Nasty run-ins with Chopper are par for the course around here, I'm afraid."

"It's all good. I think we reached an understanding."

Sabine didn't elaborate, and Hera wasn't sure she really wanted to know.

"So," she began after an awkward silence, "what's on your mind?"

"Well, like you said, I just kind of have some questions about how things work around here. I know I've only been on the crew a couple of weeks, but you—you know where I'm coming from, and you know I can't really do unknowns." Sabine folded her arms, preemptively on the defense.

Hera nodded. "Understandable. Go ahead."

"About Kanan."

Sabine's tone and phrasing caught Hera completely off guard. Her brows pulled together. "Okay, what about him?"

Sabine took a long sip of caf. "There are a lot of women who serve in the Empire, but there are a lot more men. And…a lot of those men are sleemos." She paused, reflecting. "Not all," she conceded. "But enough. Too many. And I think that's true galaxy-wide."

Hera frowned. She knew all too well how true that was. "I agree, generally."

"So, Kanan. Is he one of them?" The question was frank, guileless, and startling.

Hera's heart stuck in her throat and her thought process screeched to a halt. "I—is—has something happened to make you feel uncomfortable?" She sounded breathless and hated it.

"No," Sabine said quickly, "not at all." She flushed. "I've had a couple of close calls with men who didn't seem like sleemos but then definitely turned out to be, and I can handle myself, but I just kind of wanted to know if I needed to watch my back or anything."

Sadness and anger both stirred in Hera; what had this young woman been through in her short fifteen years? "Sabine," she said as steadily as she could, "I promise, on my life, that you are safe on this ship. Absolutely safe."

Sabine frowned slightly. "I've heard that before. And I'd be lying if I said that Kanan's whole grin-and-swagger thing isn't a little suspect."

"I know," Hera sighed. "I know you've heard that before. And I know that it will take a while for you to feel like it's true. But Kanan…" What about him? There was so much. "Kanan's 'grin-and-swagger thing' is a façade. Just like the one Zeb wears because of Lasan, just like the one you wear because of the academy, just like the one I wear because—because of why I left Ryloth."

Sabine rolled her mug between her palms, thinking. "That's fair," she said quietly, glancing at Hera. "Why does Kanan wear his?"

A loaded question, and she didn't even know it.

"That's his story to tell, and I know he'll tell you when he's ready," Hera answered gently.

"Has he told you?"

Yes, Hera thought, his actions told her long ago, the moment he used the Force to save her life. Her mind drifted for a few seconds as she remembered the wild gunslinger she'd met on Gorse. Sabine gave her a quizzical look and she snapped back to the conversation. "He has, but it didn't happen overnight." She paused. "Just as I know you trusting us with the whole of your story won't happen overnight."

Sabine nodded slowly. "Point taken." She took another long sip of caf, thinking. "It's not that I thought Kanan was a sleemo—at all. It's just that…I guess I've gotten used to…I don't know."

"As women, we're wired for caution," Hera said. "We have to be. And it's hard to be cautious while still trying to learn to trust. I get it."

"Thanks." She smiled almost genuinely and then glanced at Hera, running a finger along the edge of her mug, trying to look disinterested. "So…what's with you two anyway?"

What's with you two anyway was a discussion that Hera and Kanan had had with each other too many times. It was sensitive; moreover, it was private. She wasn't about to tell her young recruit that the Ghost's senior crew shared a relationship that didn't fit any label. But intuition warned her that hedging the question completely would cause her to lose credibility with Sabine, which she couldn't afford to do.

Hera ground her teeth. "I've known Kanan for four years," she began slowly, "and I can tell you that there's no one else in the galaxy I'd rather have in my co-pilot's seat. He's the only person I've ever been able to trust implicitly."

Sabine frowned. "That's a nice little non-answer."

"It's really the only one I have." Somewhere in the galaxy, Hera thought, was a therapist who'd all-too-willingly help her unpack the sad truth of that statement.

"Well," the younger woman said as she stood and stretched, "thanks. Like for all of it. I'm trying to—" She stopped short. "I'm trying."

"I know you are." Hera thought about how much a simple I see you would have meant to her at fifteen. "It doesn't go unnoticed."

Sabine's eyes flashed with gratitude. She turned away. "Thanks," she mumbled, moving toward the door. "I guess I'm going to hit the rack."

Hera stood, too. "Are you?" Her mouth turned wryly.

"Probably not. There's some sketching I want to get finished tonight."

"Get some sleep sometime."

"Yeah, I will."

As they approached their cabin doors, Hera stopped. "By the way," she said in her best Disapproving Captain voice, "how many credits are you losing to Zeb on the me-and-Kanan issue?"

Sabine flushed scarlet. She scooted into her room. "Only five," she called. "I wasn't stupid enough to bet more than that."

Hera shook her head. "Of course not."

Walking into her cabin, she was unsurprised to see Kanan on her bunk. He sat with his back against the wall, fingers laced behind his head, grinning like an absolute fool. Hera raised an eyebrow to say, Well?

"Sabine may have only bet five," he proclaimed, still grinning, "but I bet Zeb fifty!"