A/N: At the end of "Mystery of Chopper Base", when Kanan and Hera are embracing, they each shift a little bit— he lifts his head and settles it back down, and she steps even closer to him. I have this headcannon that, even though we don't hear them (and I think the intent is that we're not supposed to) they're each saying "I love you". This is a zoom-in of each of their thoughts during that last final goodbye, so I suppose it's more of a "Before-math" (haha), but I thought it fit well with this fic.

"Hera…"

She stiffened at the sound of his voice. It was soft, entreating, raw and implicative, all at the same time. It was the voice that knew her as well as she knew herself, and it seeped through her skin and soaked into her soul. Hera blinked away any expression, pulled her shoulders back and her mouth into a tight smile before turning around to face him. He would not see her crumbling into a thousand separate pieces.

"I told the Commander that the site is secure and operations can resume," she said brightly.

He was wringing his hands; a rare, old tic of his that only popped up when he was extraordinarily anxious. The action betrayed how desperately he wanted to believe in his next words. "We're going to be okay. You know that, right?"

He had cut to the chase, seen right through her act, as he so often did. Well, two could play at that game. Hera shifted her weight, raising an eyebrow and placing a hand on her hip as her lips pursed in doubt. "You realize I know when you're lying, right?"

Kanan deflated, and she sighed, taking a step closer to him. The Twi'lek tried to shirk the emotional armor she had been wearing all day. In that moment, she was not Phoenix Leader any more than he was Jedi; they were only Hera and Kanan, with no roles to play.

"Whatever you're facing, I wanted us to face it together," she said.

"We'll see each other again," he assured. "I promise."

His hands were strong and warm on her shoulders, and when he pulled her into his arms, she let him; for once, Hera didn't have the energy to fight. She wasn't sure if it was a promise he should make, and they both knew it was a promise he couldn't keep. But it was a promise, nonetheless, and at the moment it was all she had. She clung to it as tightly as he clung to her, and the Twi'lek didn't know if the embrace signified an apology, a vow or a goodbye. Too weary to decipher it, she let her head rest against his chest, her eyes finally falling closed. Hera tried to savor the moment with her love, knowing that it could very well be their last. It was a familiar position, and it brought some modicum of comfort, in the tumultuous day they had been living.

Kanan was relieved to feel her relax. The Jedi couldn't have been more grateful for their height disparity, as he wore a look of apprehension as clearly as he did the green tunic. He held Hera tightly, ashamed that Sabine had needed to be the one to alert him to her grief. The Twi'lek hid her emotions scarily well; he liked to think that he had solved the science of reading her, but when she was really trying, even he had trouble discerning her mood. It was what made her such a strong leader, but he sometimes worried she held herself to impossibly high standards, the kind that caused a person to implode without so much as a warning spark.

He realized that he might have left without ever realizing how worried she was, and he hated himself for it. He had been so caught up in the realm of the Jedi that he had forgotten what anchored him to the world around him: his crew, but especially its pilot. And though he hadn't been looking for it before, and though she had been trying her best to hide it from him, Kanan now felt Hera's pain crashing in the Force like a Seelos sandstorm. He pulled her tighter, as if he could protect her from it; as if he could protect any of them from what was about to come.

But to do that, Kanan knew had to go to Malachor. He was finished with running from the Inquisitors; he had to take an offensive stance. It was the only way to protect Hera and her crew, the base, and the Rebellion that she held so close to her heart. As much as he didn't want to leave her, he cared about her and those things too much to sit back doing nothing, waiting for the Inquisitors to discover them. He couldn't remember the last time one of them had pursued a mission without the other, and he knew that was a massive emotional component for both.

And he was taking Ezra, too. Ezra, who was just a kid; Ezra, whom Hera had come to see as a son.

Ezra, the Padawan to whom the Dark Side called. His vision in the Temple had buzzed incessantly in the back of mind. Kanan did not know what Malachor would hold, but a deep, instinctual part of him, a part he was trying to hide from Hera as desperately as she had tried to hide her sorrow from him, dreaded it.

Hera had enough weighing on her; thanks to the Force, he knew that better than anybody, and wouldn't dream of adding more to the pile. Perhaps he would share his concerns with her when they returned; with any luck, she could tease him about how he had been worried for nothing.

Even as he imagined it, a sinking feeling in his stomach told Kanan the reverie wasn't true. But for now, he was content just to be her rock, to let her weight fall onto his chest, and with it, absorb some of her distress. It was the least he could do.

Until Malachor, it would be all he could do.

After Malachor, he didn't know if he would be able to do anything for her at all.

"I love you," he murmured. He had promised her his love long ago, wordlessly and without even realizing it, but now he felt the pressing need to say it out loud.

Hera's voice was small. "I know, love."

At least there was one promise he didn't have to worry about breaking. The promise that he would see her again was a foolish one, he knew it the second it left his lips; but the space between them had felt so hollow, he desperately needed to fill it with something. Kanan didn't need the Force to tell him that Hera needed him and Ezra to survive.

He refused to let himself think about the alternative.