#but anyway just HERA being the one to bring the ghost crew all together i’m sooooo 🥺🥺🥺🥹🥹🥹😭😭😭💖💖💖

[bikananjarrus]

thinking about hera syndulla on this fine friday 💚

[tarisilmarwen]

Rebels Rewatch: “The Lost Commanders”

After the harrowing peril of the premiere we settle in for a more laid-back and chill adventure with some old familiar faces.

We open with the Rebels discussing what to do next, after the shankening that Vader handed them last episode.

(And let’s appreciate for a moment how, if not for becoming distracted by Ahsoka, Vader would have completely decimated Phoenix Cell in its entirety by himself.)

Ezra blurts out his ideas before remembering that he needs to have a modicum of proper decorum.  (I love his awkward little salute and Sabine shaking her head all cutely long-suffering.)  Clearly he feels comfortable enough to be himself in this formal, militarized environment.

“You are never shy with your opinions, Ezra Bridger,” has all the hidden consternated tones of, “Why did we let this feral gremlin child into the Rebelllion.” lol, Sato is just so confounded that this is his life now, he’s the commander of ragtag teams with literal fifteen year olds.

This episode is the first of what I’m going to affectionately call the “Friendship Fetch Quests”, in which we go have mildly interesting adventures and do something seemingly innocuous that gains us an ally that will wind up being important later.  Season Two is mostly this, if we’re honest.  We go to this location, we do this character’s Loyalty Mission, we gain them as an asset to call upon later.  It fits very well with the overall theme of connection and family, of making friendships and bridges that benefit the cause.  Ezra’s unique Force ability is literally the power to connect, so it makes perfect thematic sense that the show emphasizes the connections made to bring so many disparate people together and unite them in the fight against the Empire.

Anyway, Ahsoka decides to aim the Ghost crew at Rex, not telling Kanan beforehand that she’s sending him to meet some clones which is... a bit of a questionable decision.

“There are questions... questions that need answering.”  Aaaaaand take a shot every time there’s a Lord of the Rings shoutout in this show, we’re gonna be seeing a lot of them.

The fanfare is slightly altered this episode, vaguely TCW-sounding?

The Ghost suffers a Plot Contrivance so that Hera and Chopper can stay in orbit while the rest go down to the planet.  And MY GOSH this is pretty.

I know I keep harping on the soft, watercolor-like quality of the textures but seriously, the Ralph McQuarrie style is all over these backgrounds.

Ralph McQuarrie being one of the original concept artists for the OT; his designs and art style were largely recycled, reused, and repurposed for Rebels.

You can already tell Kanan is suspecting what they’re about to encounter.

Multiple other people have already pointed out that the AT-TE has a lot of Studio Ghilbi Howl’s Moving Castle vibes.  I’m just gonna reiterate them.

I love this moment right here with no music or dialogue, just the soft sound of the wind chimes.  Very zen.  Very lovely atmosphere.

I still haven’t actually seen TCW in its entirety, full disclosure, so I was not nearly as excited about this reveal as the Tari Husband was.

(He was sooo excited, lemme tell ya.)

HGKAJHSFKAHSFSA KANAN BEING CONFRONTED WITH A WALKING PTSD TRIGGER FROM HIS PAST AND HIS IMMEDIATE FIRST THOUGHT IS TO STEP IN FRONT OF HIS PADAWAN.

A couple people have pointed it out but Kanan’s posture here is mirrored to Depa’s in the Kanan: The Last Padwan comics.  (AKA the superior tragic Kanan backstory *glares at The Bad Batch*)  One hand forward, one hand with lightsaber back, shielding the padawan.

Love that.

Lol awww, Ezra being excited about the Gen 1 Clone Trooper helmet and then disappointed when Rex tells him not to touch it.

Kinda dig that Ezra’s the one doing the talking.  Kanan has obvious issues with clones but Ezra doesn’t have that bias, and he’s naturally likable, so it’s easy for Rex to give in to him, at least somewhat.

*continues to grumble about The Bad Batch retconning Rex’s characterization here*

No, listen, this is why new writers need to be given refresher courses on the characters before they come on board and shows with interconnected continuities need to have detailed arc and plot maps to follow, sure we can infer and theorize that something or other sapped Rex of his motivation and drive to fight but then that’s fandom carrying the water and doing the work for the writers and I hate that, don’t do the writers’ work for them we deserve better than that!

*ahem*

But I’ll refrain from going into that rant.

Kanan’s expression. :(  He hates every minute of this.

This is a nice dolly shot around here.

THIS WHOLE CONVERSATION. :(

Ezra the empath, trying to understand why his master is so agitated.  How he shrinks slightly when Kanan yells.  How Kanan says he doesn’t want to discuss it but does so anyway because Ezra just has that effect on people?

THE ABSOLUTE PAIN AND RAW EMOTION IN KANAN’S VOICE AS HE TALKS ABOUT ORDER 66 AND WATCHING HIS MASTER DIE.

*grumbles a little bit about TCW Season Seven making this line of Rex’s into more of a self-cope than the honest truth*

This whole sequence with the Joopa hunt is technically completely superfluous but it’s soooooo much fun. :D

The camerawork, the dialogue, the animation, the sound design and music, the Old West adventure-feel of it, the badass little moments and characterization bits for Sabine and Zeb and Kanan and Ezra...

It just makes me smile.

Speaking of the music though, this has such a classic Hollywood sound.  Bombastic strings and brass, soaring into high notes and dancing.

(Favorite bit of this sequence is Kanan kick-jumping his rod into Ezra’s hands and Ezra immediately turning around and jamming them both into the line.)

Sweet.

This shot. <333

Zeb deciding to roll with Gregor’s compliment. <333

A brief snippet of Ezra’s theme here, when Kanan calls Hera.  I’m actually not going to grumble about Hera’s backstory later being filled in a little, that was undefined enough that the fleshing out didn’t change anything vital.

Instead I’m going to note this very pretty flute line here.

Rex and Ezra’s friendship is criminally underrated.  I bet Rex sees shades of a younger Ahsoka in him and Ezra just sees a cool old guy with great stories, another strong male influence for a teenage boy who needs them.

Ezra still can’t help talking Kanan up though.

<3333

Ezra playing peacekeeper.  (Not for the last time.)

As I said, still haven’t fully watched TCW but I do appreciate that Wolffe and Gregor are both obviously damaged by their wartime experiences, Gregor by going just slightly batty, Wolffe by being a paraonoid anxiety wreck, white bites the Rebels when he calls the Empire.  Rex having to remind him, “[The Jedi] weren’t the ones that betrayed us.” and “The war is over.” are like so many self-regulating mantras he must have practiced, to remind both him and the others of the truth.  The chip’s influence lingers, even though they’ve all had it removed.

Ezra looking between Rex and Kanan like an anxious child in the middle of a custody battle lol.

This sequence is loose with the animation, bouncy like the first season, but the quick movements and shot choices emphasize the frantic nature of them needing to shoot the probe.

A veeery small excerpt of the Imperial March here as we close out.

This episode (and it’s following companion) is soooo rewatchable.  It has the fun chill vibe of the first season with an emphasis on heavier character development and background stakes.  The clones are well-integrated into the plot, used mostly to trigger and discuss Kanan’s personal traumas, while also hinting at the crap the clones have gone through themselves.  There’s an almost self-defensive anger in Rex’s voice when he insists, “I didn’t betray my Jedi. [...] We all have a choice.” because for the clones... they didn’t.

I’m one of the people who likes the chips, who likes it being literally mind control rather than just genetic conditioning that turned the clones on the Jedi, like in Legends.  The way I tend to sum it up is thus:

With Order 66 being just one order in many that the clones followed unquestioningly because they’re just that loyal and obedient, it makes the clones seems more monstrous.  With it being a literal brainwashing device overriding their free will, it makes Palpatine more monstrous.

That he would choose clones instead of droids, because the Jedi would see the clones as human, as friends, as worthy of protecting and fighting alongside, and thus would be more blindsided, and the clones would be loyal and dependable friends right up until the chip kicked in and blanked them out, giving no warning, snaring the Jedi into the perfect deathtrap...

Hgnnnh the feels.

Ezra-as-everyone’s-therapist would continue through the season but for now let me just appreciate that Kanan’s issues are so deeply rooted it takes a few episodes to solve, lol.

Anyway, this episode is great.

[yubsie]

That Can Be Enough

A simple question from Sabine makes Hera and Kanan realize they probably should have made things official a while ago. 

Read on AO3

or...

Hera poked her head into Sabine's room, being careful not to intrude too much into their latest crewmember's space. Anyone who'd spent that much time at an Imperial Academy had to relearn that she did deserve her own space and shouldn't expect people entering it without warning. "Kanan's making a supply run. You need anything?"

Sabine hesitated. "I should be okay."

Hera glanced around at the walls. The Ghost was home, but the bunks weren't the coziest thing right off the factory line. She'd worked on the common areas, but until recently they mostly used this room for storing extra boxes that really could have been in the cargo hold just as easily. "If you want to make this place a little more your own, you're allowed. You're sure there's not anything you need for that?"

"You mean it?"

"You're home now. We do things differently here." She wasn't going to start calling her family yet. She didn't think the girl was ready for it. But she could be, if she wanted it.

"Well in that case..." Sabine pulled out her datapad and started making a list.

"Kanan will... do his best." It was a lot of specific colours. Kanan didn't have the eye for that. "It'll be close, anyway. Any favourite foods we should be stocking up on?"

"Maiya sweets should travel okay." Sabine looked up at her. "When's your anniversary? Just so I know."

"My what?"

"Your wedding anniversary."

"Oh, I'm not..."

Sabine looked away. "Oh, sorry, I thought you and Kanan..."

"No, we're... we're just..." Now that Sabine put her on the spot, she actually wasn't sure what they were. "We're just something."

#

Kanan did better than she expected at getting the right colours. They were all at least close enough to the shades Sabine requested that she said she could work with them on whatever it was she was planning. So that just left them with the big discussion.

"What are we?"

"Reb... els?" Kanan asked slowly.

For a man who could sense her feelings, he could sometimes be really bad at following her. "Not the crew. You and me."

"I guess I never really thought about it. Jedi didn't."

And there were always so many other things to worry about. So much else going on. She knew she was happy with him, but she never stopped to think about actual nouns. "Sabine thought we were married."

Kanan opened his mouth. Closed it again. Opened it again. "Jedi definitely didn't."

"I know." But Kanan wasn't a Jedi anymore. He often reminded her of that. There were no Jedi anymore. Or they couldn't do any of this. "But should we?"

"Do you... want to?"

She hadn't thought about it. She couldn't put a definite timeline on when they started being... whatever it was they were. She remembered when the sex started, of course, but that wasn't all of it and it hadn't been in a long time. Somewhere along the way, the feelings had gotten bigger than that and she really didn't know when. It just felt right. Felt natural. She knew him and he knew her and they worked well together because of it.

She'd been so busy fighting a war that she hadn't even noticed their relationship becoming... well, a relationship. But when she thought about it, Sabine was definitely seeing something. "I hadn't even thought about it. It wouldn't change anything, really." They were living on the edge. Constantly on the run from the Empire. No one had enough contact information to notify the other if something went wrong on a mission. They couldn't risk visiting the sort of medical facilities that would question whether the person making decisions had any legal authority to do so.

Kanan brushed a finger along her cheek. "It would piss off the Empire if they knew."

The Jedi wouldn't approve, but the Empire would approve even less. And... she reached up to run her fingers through his hair. Hair. He was human. She wasn't. Any relationship where they looked at each other as equals would be unthinkable in the upper echelons of society. "Are you suggesting we get married just to thumb our noses at the Empire?"

"Isn't that why we do anything?"

Sometimes they did things just to keep themselves flying. But it was their motivation for a great number of things that they did. They wanted things to change, after all. "A lot of things I guess."

"Also because we love each other."

There was that. She might not be able to define their relationship, but she could feel it. Getting married would be a convenient definition, too. But mostly... they did love each other. That was, she seemed to recall, the usual reason for two people to get married. "And because we love each other."

#

It was easy to say they were going to make it official. The trouble with making it official while on the run from the Empire was the official part. They probably weren't in any databases. They'd managed to keep their actions fairly covert. But right after springing a cadet from the Academy? That was a good way to trip some alarms.

But it wasn't like they were planning a big blowout wedding. All the family they needed was right here on the ship. As the captain, she could technically officiate a wedding.

Not her own though. Not if they were going to do this properly. And if they were going to get married, she didn't see the sense in doing it any way but properly. There had to be officiants out there who could handle this without it becoming a trouble.

Her finger hovered over the comm. She had one contact who seemed likely to be the expert on such legal quagmires as this. Not one of the contacts that provided missions often, but she had some sort of government connection. She'd been willing to help when she needed resources for other missions in the past.

"Captain? I wasn't expecting to hear from you." Not knowing where her contact was, she hadn't expected her to pick up so quickly. For all she knew, it was the middle of the night. The standard rebel vocal distortions would hide any bleariness.

"I hope I'm not overstepping, E."

"Are you having trouble with a mission?"

"No, it's a.... personal mission." Kanan would be appalled to hear her call it that. But she was starting to realize the logistics involved were going to take it to that level. "I find myself in need of someone who can perform a wedding ceremony without tripping any background checks."

The voice modulation was not meant for the sound that her contact made at that. There was an edge to the frequency that clipped. Then E coughed and returned to her usual tone. "Yes, I should be able to find you someone. There are a lot of places on the Outer Rim that know the value of discretion."

At least it wasn't far to go. She wouldn't have been able to justify the fuel for something like that. But it might be good for them to step away from Lothal. Not for too long, of course. There was so much work to be done here. But it could confuse the Empire, throw them off their trail.

Especially if they could manage to avoid doing any active rebelling on their way. On the other hand, it would make sense to make use of the time away. A supply run, at least, even if they didn't end up picking up an actual mission on the way to the altar.

Overthrowing the oppressive regime was more of a honeymoon activity anyway.

#

"You need a bachelor party." Zeb didn't sound like he was in the mood to argue with it.

"Does that mean I should be throwing a bachelorette?" Sabine was settling in, at least. Enough to suggest simply ludicrous notions. She was going to fit right in with the sort of plans Kanan tended to make.

"That really won't be necessary," Hera insisted.

"Who would we even invite?" Kanan added. "We're the only people we risk seeing regularly."

They did have a lot of smuggler contacts. A few pirates. Sometimes they even worked with other rebel agents, but not often this far out. Hera didn't know where they were more active and that was entirely the point.

"We could break some out of prison. That's my kind of party."

"I was just going to suggest paintblast. Zeb's idea is way better."

She seldom found herself in a situation where people were endorsing Zeb's idea. She didn't like it.

"Come on Kanan, it's a Lasat tradition!"

"Prison breaks?" Maybe if they ever succeeded in liberating the galaxy they could call that a tradition. A hard one to continue if they eliminated the Imperial prison camps.

"Having a good old fashioned booze up. We have to celebrate your last night of freedom."

Hera shot him a dirty look, but Kanan had her back. "My last night of... from Hera?"

"I mean she's already the captain, but getting married is different."

Kanan tapped the table. "How is it different. Explain."

She wasn't actually considering inappropriate uses of the airlock. But it was useful to let him think that. And entertaining to watch him squirm. This could count as a party right here.

"I mean... it's..."

"Zeb have you ever been married?"

"Well... no."

"Maybe you shouldn't comment on what an awful thing it is if you don't have any experience."

Hera laid a hand on Kanan's arm. "No one is forcing either of us to do this." The fact that they were at war with the Empire was making it very difficult. Maybe the fact that it did feel like the Empire didn't want them to do it was a bit of a motivation. She would never make a decision out of this just to tweak Palpatine's nose, but the fact that he'd be livid did bring her a certain measure of joy.

Mostly she just took joy in it because she wanted to do it. They probably should have done this a long time ago. There had to be a reason that Sabine assumed they already had within a day of being on the Ghost.

"I think they make a great couple." The opinion of a fourteen-year-old girl wasn't usually the decider in the matter of matrimony, but it was nice to hear that she felt comfortable voicing it.

"Are there any Mandalorian traditions you want to incorporate?"

Sabine hesitated. "Most of our traditions involve explosions. Or ritual combat. Or ritual combat through explosions..."

"Maybe we won't do that." It wasn't much of a defiant statement of life in the face of an oppressive regime if they added knife fights. Last night of freedom indeed. They were still fighting for their first night of freedom.

"I'll make you guys a present though."

Technically she'd already given them a massive one by making them realize they should do this. "Only if you want."

Sabine flexed her fingers. "I haven't gotten to create proper art in ages. It'll be fun."

Hera was curious what she was going to come up with using the colours that Kanan had bought, but she was sure it would be heartfelt.

"We could use the explosions to break out some people for the party," Zeb suggested.

Maybe it had been a bad idea to let the two of them meet. Too late now.

#

It was definitely better to plan this without the kids around. Too many suggestions.

"E said someone will be able to help us out on Garel." There were enough people moving through there that they could blend in with other travellers. And pick up some supplies while they were at it. So that was the most important part of the logistics established. They could actually make this official. Of course, now they had to figure out the rest of the details. They weren't really going to have a guest list, but the officiant would have questions about what they wanted in a ceremony.

"What's a Twi'lek wedding usually like?"

Nothing like what they were going to have. "It's a full clan affair. You would meet with the elders to make your case for joining." Which would involve speaking to her father and that certainly wasn't going to happen. She'd never really thought about whether she even wanted that big event. She wanted to fly, she'd never really pictured herself getting married. But then there was Kanan.

"Would I be expected to take your name? I'm not against it."

Hera leaned over and kissed his cheek. "The only name I need you to take for me is rebel scum, and you did that a long time ago. You couldn't do it without the clan... also kanan'syndulla translates to foul breathed spearman."

Kanan gave her a goofy smile that was presumably never seen in the Jedi Temple. "I might love you enough for that."

"I love you enough to not ask you to. We're still plenty married if we have different names." They were honestly halfway married already, but it was good to have a symbol sometimes.

"Okay. We've figured out what we're not doing. Jedi didn't get married, so I've got no traditions to work from either."

This might be why they hadn't already gotten formally married. "There must be a generic ceremony of some sort. Just... promise to love each other and then eat."

"That's an important part of a wedding, right?"

"The most important part. Especially now that we have a teenager." They might still need most of that clan banquet. And then Zeb wasn't technically an adolescent, but he did manage to eat like one a lot. At least Chopper didn't need to be fed. He made a cheap guest. Assuming he didn't murder anyone while they were there. This was probably enough other activity to keep him entertained.

"Okay. So food. Promise to love each other. Both keep our own names."

"You don't have to do any demonstration to prove that you will be a worthy addition to the clan." Hera was reasonably certain that no human would ever meet that standard in her father's eyes. No matter how many stories she'd heard about Jedi in the Clone Wars, often from his own mouth.

"I don't have to what?"

"It's not a trivial thing, getting married. The bigger difference between the influence of two clans the more... set in their ways the elders can become." Stubborn, really.

"So coming from a clan I just made up..."

"It's not even that. You could be the king of Alderaan and it still wouldn't have any status on Ryloth itself." Hera shook her head. "But we're not getting married on Ryloth, we're getting married in a random spaceport chapel on Garel."

Simpler. More them. This didn't need to be an entire elaborate undertaking. "Okay, none of those traditions. I guess we need to wear... something."

"No way to find a Twi'lek wedding robe out here." It would look strange in the chapel anyway. Without the rest of the trappings it didn't make sense. She'd always pictured wearing one like her mother's on the rare occasion she even thought about the possibility of marrying.

"Jedi would wear robes to other people's weddings but I can think of about five different reasons that's a terrible idea."

"Given that we're trying to avoid attracting too much attention." She knew he still had a lightsaber in the room he didn't tend to sleep in, but it was too risky to ever bring it out. Jedi robes would be an even bigger giveaway. "Do you even still have those?"

"Well... no. And I think Master Yoda would die all over again if I wore them to break the Code this blatantly."

Breaking the Code. She knew he didn't call himself a Jedi anymore. But that was still a big step. "You're sure you want to do this?"

"I'm attached to you whether we get married or not. This is just making it official. I made that choice a long time ago."

She wasn't sure when exactly either of them had made it. She'd never meant to get attached either. She was supposed to be focused on the mission. But he made it easier just by being there. Made her stronger. They were a good team. "Okay... that still doesn't get us closer to figuring the clothing out."

"Do we even own any formalwear?"

That was an excellent question. Hera stood and walked over to the closet. No robes, of course. And she certainly didn't own a dress. "There are a couple shirts in here that don't have grease stains."

"Alright. Good start. I think we're supposed to wear pants to get married."

The pants could come off later. But if the goal was to avoid getting arrested on their wedding night, they definitely wanted to avoid indecent exposure charges. "There has to be something in here that didn't start its life as part of a flightsuit." She pushed through the layers. If nothing else, she must have worn a disguise at some point. That orange fabric didn't blend in very well.

"What about these?" Kanan held up a pair of plain brown pants of a reasonably smooth fabric.

"Clean. Untorn. That's practically black tie in our circles."

"I'm not sure I have anything better than my usual pants..."

Hera looked him up and down. "The usual pants are just fine."

"You're sure? They're kinda..."

Hera smiled. "Flattering. Let's go with... flattering." A little tight, really. She appreciated it. He could pull them off. She could...

Well, definitely appreciate them. That seemed like the ideal thing for him to wear if they were making a formal commitment to their relationship.

"Okay, pants. Shirts. Both are clean. Is that all we need?"

"Technically." They owned boots. They were going to wear boots. That wasn't worth discussing. They could just clean the dirt off the boots. "Unless you have a real desire for a flower crown."

"We should get one for Chopper."

Hera snorted. "Zeb has to be the one to give it to him. I've got plans that involve you not getting murdered by my droid."

#

Chopper requested the flower crown. At length. Which left them in the unexpected situation of having to find a florist. Hera hadn't thought to ask E about that when requesting a discreet officiant. She felt vaguely ridiculous ordering it. but the florist decided they just weren't going to ask.

Probably a good life choice. Especially after the series of menacing beeps and whistles the droid made when Zeb had the audacity to comment on his new accessory.

The delicate circlet of purple flowers was the only thing that really marked them out as being here for anything other than mundane supply shopping. There wasn't exactly a wedding district to the port. They were just headed for an ordinary-looking office.

Hera glanced down at her datapad. "We're looking for Rov Melmin"

An Ithorian opened the door and waved them in quickly. "Of course, my friends! Come in, come in, quick now." His mechanical voicebox was surprisingly bubbly. It was possible with the technology, of course. But not a variation she had ever encountered before.

They stepped through, with Zeb, Sabine and Chopper following close behind.

"Do you know if anyone is following you directly?" he asked.

Kanan gave him a puzzled look. So much for the Force making all things clear. "Excuse me?"

They were technically wanted by the Empire, of course. But even after Zeb's idea of a bachelor party, they didn't have enough of a trace on them for it to be a major concern if they weren't on Lothal. At least if they weren't going anywhere too public for this.

"How clean was your escape? Do you think there are slave trackers on your heels?"

Hera glanced over at Kanan. She should have realized what this looked like. On the other hand, they shouldn't go around admitting that they were actually just on the run from the Empire because of that little bit of sabotage. So sure. Runaway slave. She could play that role. It would be more convincing with her childhood accent, but she didn't want to speak marriage vows in a different voice than she spoke to Kanan with their entire relationship. "We came farther to be sure of it."

"That was smart. I'll still make sure the perimeter sensors are engaged."

"Thank you," Kanan said.

Perimeter sensors would still be useful for their actual need for discretion. Though if the Empire disrupted this she might just take the Ghost to Coruscant and deal with Palpatine herself.

It was no banquet hall. The walls were painted a generic sort of colour that might have been white at some point. Melmin kept the place clean, but age still did its work. The floor had been swept recently, but there was no hiding that that particular shade of green hadn't been in fashion since the days of the Republic. A cheap polymer desk. A terminal several years out of date but somehow still running. It probably couldn't even patch into the latest version of the Holonet. Which at least made it a little more difficult for the Empire to tap into anything on it. E was onto something when she suggested this place.

No altar. But they had their flower droid and the rest of the family.

"Your friend didn't tell me anything about what sort of ceremony you wanted. Do you just want the papers or..."

They could. But if they were going to the trouble of making this official, it seemed anticlimactic to just fill out some forms. "We want something. We just... haven't really had a chance to discuss what."

"I"m sure it's been a very turbulent time. I realize that we can't carry out any of your cultural traditions here. Do you have any particular preferences, Mister..."

"Jarrus. I'm from all over."

Definitely not asking the Jedi for any input on a wedding ceremony, but the less detail the better on that front.

"Very well." Melmin scrolled on his datapad. "I have something basic I often use in these situations. Take a look."

Kanan leaned in close to read it over her shoulder. She glanced up at him and nodded.

"Yeah, we can work with this."

"Do we just..." with such a small guest list, it was strange to even know how to start.

Chopper gave a series of beeps and circled around them. As good an opening as any. Hera reached for Kanan's hand.

Melmin nodded at them. "In these turbulent times, love is the most precious treasure anyone can find. I don't know what path has brought the two of you to this place, in this time. But you are here, and you are together, and for now, that can be enough. I cannot promise you the road will get easier. But I am here to help you promise to walk it hand in hand."

"Kanan." She raised a hand up to his chest and looked into his eyes. They were really here. A place she never would have expected when they first met. "I promise to be by your side through the good and the bad. To love you whatever the galaxy brings us."

The words on the datapad were a good start. But she did have thoughts of her own to add. "I don't know what the future holds, but I know it's better for having you in it. Whatever battles may come, we'll face them together. Our fates may be in the hands of the goddess, but I place mine in yours as well."

The last line though, what more could she say than what was on the screen? "I swear to remain with you until our star burns out."

"Hera. I promise to be by your side through the good and the bad. To love you whatever the galaxy brings us. I never thought about having a future until you showed me there could be a brighter one. I'm stronger beside you. May the Force be with our union. I swear to remain with you until our star burns out."

"Then by the power granted me, I pronounce you husband and wife."

She'd seen human weddings in holodramas where the groom had to be told to kiss the bride. Kanan needed no such instructions. Chopper gave a triumph whistle while Zeb and Sabine clapped.

Tomorrow, they could get back to fighting for a better future. Today, she could just enjoy committing to her future having Kanan Jarrus in it.

[bedlamsbard]

Here is the first sequence of the Other Side AU concept!  (yes, the nickname is borrowed from Fringe.)  There is...a lot of crying.  The AU is Backbone-based, but takes place before Backbone.  I am not caught up on current new canon post-RotJ and prefer Legends there anyway, so this takes more from the EU than canon on that front.

About 5.1K below the break.

***

“You know, it’s not too late to change your mind,” Luke Skywalker said. “We do have other candidates.”

Zeb grumbled something softly under his breath that was probably, “Sounds like someone who doesn’t know her very well.”

Luke flicked a glance at him, but most of his attention was on Hera.  “This is dangerous,” he said, almost apologetic.

“And the Rebellion has been a blue milk run,” Hera said.  “I’m fine.”  She folded her hands together and looked across Luke’s right shoulder.  She didn’t know him very well, had never had any particular inclination to get to know him, and at the moment didn’t feel particularly encouraged.  It wasn’t fair to him, but Hera couldn’t particularly bring herself to care, not when even being on the same ship as him brought a dull stab of pain to her heart.

Not fair.

Nothing was fair, especially nothing about the Rebellion.  But she wished he hadn’t had to be on the Ghost for this.

Luke hesitated again, then said, “All right.”  He took a deep breath.  “Are you ready?  I’ll probably only get one shot at this.”

“I’m ready.”  She looked at Zeb, who nodded slightly, and Chopper, who groaned a long protest.  She had told Jacen goodbye via holo a few hours ago; he didn’t quite understand how Mama leaving now would be different than Mama leaving normally, and Hera hoped that he wouldn’t have to understand for many years, if ever.  She had tried to explain it to her father in the same holocall and wasn’t sure she had succeeded.  Sabine had understood but had told her it was the worst idea she had heard since – well, you know, she had said, and looked like she had wished she hadn’t mentioned it.

“All right,” Luke repeated. He looked a little unnerved, which Hera took vindictive pleasure in and then felt guilty about.  “If this works, I’ll open it again every ten days – right here, all right?  It can’t be anywhere else.”

Teach your mother to feed nunas, Hera thought, giving him a sideways look.  She just said, “I understand.”

Luke nodded, swallowed, and raised his hands, releasing the artifact he had been holding.  It was a little bell-shaped construction of crystal and metal, both substances etched all over in runes that no one had been able to fully decrypt.  It could, Hera knew, very easily kill her if what they had managed to decrypt was wrong.

It hung suspended between Luke’s palms, glowing a bright, vivid blue.  A rising hum made all of them but Luke wince, Zeb’s sensitive ears flicking in disgust.  Hera kept her eyes on it, trying not to blink as the light brightened until it was all that she could see.  Her stomach turned over, but it wasn’t any worse than doing a barrel roll in an A-wing.

All at once, the light was gone.  So were Luke, Zeb, and Chopper.  Hera looked around the Ghost’s common room, making the differences in the familiar space.  Zeb’s big wooden chair was gone; the walls were bare of Sabine’s artwork. So they had probably gotten the timing right, at least.  Hera stepped towards the holotable, running her fingers over its surface and searching for the deep scar near the rightmost edge of the frame.  It was there.

Hera took a suddenly shaky breath.

Ten days, she reminded herself.  It was both a lot of time to get this wrong and no time at all. She put her head to one side and listened to the now only half-familiar sounds of the Ghost.

She hadn’t spent much time on the ship recently, and mostly it had been almost as empty as it felt now. It made Hera think of its namesake, of her old crew’s namesakes, every corner of it haunted.  She thought with enough time it might get better, less raw, but so far the war hadn’t given her that time.  Instead, she let herself be moved around the Rebel Alliance as needed, sometimes with what remained of her crew, sometimes not.  Even Chopper didn’t always stay with her, much to his protests.

This, though, had needed to be done on the Ghost, and Zeb had brought it to her from where it had been docked on Lothal for the past six months.

Luke had been right. There had been other candidates. But they all thought this might work best with her, because there weren’t many options for where she had been more than a decade ago and in a position where she would probably be willing to help.  Han Solo and Chewbacca on the Millennium Falcon, maybe, but that was a much longer shot than Hera Syndulla.  Any Hera Syndulla.

She took another deep breath, trying to calm the sudden rapid patter of her heartbeat, and moved towards the hatch leading towards the cabins and the cockpit.  There was no rumble of the engine; the ship was docked somewhere – solid ground, Hera thought, though it could have been a space station.  The air filters seemed to be drawing a little heavier than usual, which suggested they were dirtside.  Some stations triggered that too, though, if their own filters weren’t good enough.

The short corridor between the common room and the cockpit was empty.  Hera rested her hands briefly on the cabin doors as she passed them, but there was nothing to tell her which was being used.  The cockpit hatch slid open with only the tiniest of jerks, which Sabine had repaired years ago.

Hera stepped inside, resting a hand on the back of the pilot’s chair as she looked around.  The back left chair was plain, without the distinctive paint job Sabine had given it; the back right was still the old matching chair, not the one they had had to replace six months before they had gone to Lothal.

There was a pair of black gloves sitting on the dashboard.

Hera frowned at them, trying to decide what about them struck her as familiar.  She didn’t own a pair like that at the moment, but she probably had in the past.

The scene outside the viewport was one Hera had seen hundreds of times before; the blank gray durasteel sheeting of a docking bay wall.  She leaned forward to peer out, searching around for some indication of where the Ghost was docked, but there was nothing.  It could have been any docking bay on any thousands of the planets in the galaxy.

Hera hesitated for a moment, then leaned down over the dashboard, intending to get into the Ghost’s systems to find out where – and more importantly, when – she was.  She hadn’t gotten further than turning them on when the hatch slid open behind her.

Hera turned quickly, self-conscious and achingly aware that this wasn’t her own ship, to come face to face with Kanan.

*

She had forgotten how handsome he was.

Hera still had a precious handful of holos of him, but most were from those last few years, and she had trained herself out of looking at them too often because of the dull, anguished hurt that accompanied the action.  Jacen was looking more and more like him as he grew up, but Hera didn’t see her son often either.  Increasingly the war made time feel like it was slipping through her fingers like sand; Hera held onto it with unexpected desperation, both for her own sake and for the Rebellion’s.  Palpatine’s death should have made it easier, faster; it wasn’t like that at all.  Days both flew by and spread out; sometimes Hera felt like she blinked and it had been years, sometimes she turned around and what had felt like months had only been a handful of minutes.  It was both too long and not long enough since – since Lothal.

Kanan was younger than she had expected, twenty-two or twenty-three, clean-shaven and with short-cropped hair.  There was warm affection in his clear bluish eyes as he looked at her, though Hera couldn’t miss the scars flecking his face, scars that she knew Kanan – her Kanan – hadn’t had when he had died.  He wore all black, a high-collared, long-sleeved shirt open at the neck and tight black trousers, with an unfamiliar lightsaber slung at his hip.

“I didn’t know you were back from HQ yet,” he said.

Hera opened her mouth to respond and couldn’t.  She was crying without meaning to, tears rolling down her cheeks; she had told Zeb she could handle this and she had been wrong.

Kanan took a step towards her, his expression going alarmed. “Hey,” he said gently, “what’s wrong? What happened?”  He put a hand to her cheek to wipe away her tears, warm and strong and alive, and Hera cried even harder. She wanted more than anything to step into his arms; he even smelled the same, and she could have been eighteen again, twenty-two, twenty-four, twenty-seven – young and with the whole galaxy spread out before her, possibility endless, in love and with a future that could have held anything, instead of a present constricted down to a war that ground on long past when it should have ended and a child growing up without her.

Below them, the Ghost’s hatch opened.  Kanan turned his head slightly, frowning, and despite the tears blurring her vision Hera saw where a notch had been taken out of his ear.

Hera tried to breathe in gasping breaths, trying to get herself together enough to speak.  “I’m not her,” she managed to say.  “I’m not –”

She saw realization start to form on Kanan’s face, though he didn’t take his hand away.  Light steps sounded on the cockpit floor as a new arrival stepped off the ladder, followed by the sound of a blaster clearing its holster.

“No, you’re not,” said Hera Syndulla, a girl barely out of her teens wearing an ISB officer’s crisp white uniform, her green skin startling bright against the stark fabric. She held her blaster with practiced ease, right hand wrapped around the grip, left hand bracing the butt.  “Who in blazes are you?”

*

Hera could barely remember being that young.

Given her counterpart’s occupation, the other woman’s youth probably shouldn’t have even registered with her, but Hera couldn’t get past it.  When she had been that young, she had been blinkered by single-minded focus on the mission, on an end goal of destroying the Empire.  She hadn’t thought to regret it until years later, crying her heart out in that cave on Lothal.

Does he know you love him? she had thought, in that first split second when Kanan had stepped away from her, his clear-eyed gaze flickering between the two women. Do you know you love him?

And then she had seen Kanan bend his head to the other Hera and her expression soften, her body curving towards him without touching, and Hera had known that both of them knew. It was a sharp stab of jealousy that shouldn’t have bothered her after all this time, when there was nothing she could do about it.  Imperials or not, they were lucky to have that.

Hera leaned her forehead against the cool metal of the cabin door and sighed.  They had locked her into one of the empty cabins after they had searched her and taken her blaster and other possessions away.  It happened to be Sabine’s cabin, but of course Sabine wasn’t here yet so there weren’t yet explosives tucked away into every nook and cranny of it, “just in case of an emergency,” Sabine had told her once. “What kind of emergency are you expecting?” Hera had demanded.

Three days later Maul had broken onto the Ghost and taken them captive, so she might have had to take that back if they had actually had any opportunity to use all those explosives.

She could just barely hear Kanan and the other Hera talking to each other, but couldn’t make out the words through the heavy metal door.  They hadn’t given her much of a chance to say anything before they had locked her in here, but at least they hadn’t acted like most Imperials Hera had known and stunned her first.

She sighed and left the door to slump onto the bench built below the upper-level bunk, leaning an elbow on the table and her chin against her palm.  The room seemed bare without Sabine’s colorful paint jobs; Sabine hadn’t lived on the Ghost for years, but she hadn’t stripped the walls, either, and she still kept some of her things onboard.

Sabine would still be on Krownest now, Hera thought, if she had gotten the dates right.  Ezra would be back in his tower on Lothal.  The Scourge of Lasan was happening right now and Zeb was there in the palace with the Lasat Royal Family.  Kallus would be on Lasan too, maybe already giving the order to use ion disruptors on the Lasat defenders.

Kanan was alive, and on this ship, and Hera knew that if she started crying again she might not stop.

It will have to be Alderaan, she thought.  Leia Organa had volunteered for this mission for just that reason, but during the target period she had been on Alderaan, and Luke hadn’t been certain that this would work simply by flying to the Graveyard.  It had been a shock to realize how few people with the clearance for this operation had been somewhere the Rebel Alliance could still access ten or fifteen years later.  They hadn’t even been entirely sure it would work on a ship, but it was the best option they had.  Hera had been certain that she could convince her younger self to help and equally certain that for the first twenty years of her life there was very little that could divert it, which wasn’t true for everyone else.

Obviously, she had been wrong.

She rubbed a weary hand over her face.  She was going to find a way out of this situation, get to Alderaan, and talk her way into seeing Bail Organa, however that was going to go.  Chandrila and Mon Mothma were another option, but for something like this she still thought Organa the better bet.  Ackbar wouldn’t have the access and Mon Calamari weren’t good spies, either.  Not to mention she didn’t have the faintest idea where he was right now.  Her father –

Hera couldn’t begin to imagine what had happened to her father, not if her counterpart was an ISB agent right now.

She looked up at the sound of approaching voices.  Just outside the door, she heard her counterpart say suddenly, her voice small and hurt, “You didn’t realize she wasn’t me?”

“Hera –”

“We’re not even dressed the same.  And she’s at least ten years older than me.”

Hera rolled her eyes and called, “I’m thirty-three.”

There was a sudden silence from beyond the door, then it slid open to reveal Kanan and the other Hera. The woman was still in her white ISB uniform, her cap matching white leather.  Her lekku were covered with wide straps of more white leather, completely obscuring their color.  The rank badge she was wearing gave her the equivalent of a first lieutenant’s rank. Kanan, beside her, was still wearing all black, but he had added a second layer of heavy black leathers and vambraces that bore the Imperial cog.

Hera looked at it and then away, fighting down her hurt.  There had to be a reason.  She knew Kanan.  He wouldn’t do this without a reason.  She had seen that kindness in his eyes, that genuine care; Maul hadn’t had that.  She hadn’t met any of them, but she doubted the Inquisitors did either.  He was still Kanan.  She would know him anywhere.

The other Hera was looking at her with the same sick hurt that Hera was feeling right now.  Hera made herself look at her, really look, because despite her first impression it wasn’t at all like looking into a mirror. Despite the obvious muscle beneath her uniform – Hera suspected she usually wore a field agent’s grays and cuirass, rather than formal whites – there was something oddly fragile about her.  She stayed a carefully measured length away from Kanan, as if both aware of his presence and certain she couldn’t show it in front of a stranger.  When she moved forward, it was with precision, lekku barely moving with the motion, and Hera thought suddenly, she grew up with humans.

“Is Daddy dead?” she said before she could stop herself.  She said it in Basic, not Twi’leki; if her counterpart had grown up with humans then there was no way to be certain that she was fluent anymore.

The other Hera froze, her eyes going wide with surprise. “What?”

“Daddy – Cham – is he dead?”

The girl flicked a startled look at Kanan, then shook her head. “No.  Not that I know of, and if he had died someone from HQ would have hauled me into an interrogation room about it for the next three days.  Why?”

“You grew up with humans,” Hera said. “He wouldn’t let that happen.”

“If you think that then you don’t know him that well,” her counterpart said bitterly. “I grew up in the Imperial Academy on Serenno.”

“I grew up on Ryloth,” Hera said. “At home, at the villa in the Tann Province – at the townhouse in Lessu, sometimes.  Until my mother was killed when I was thirteen, then my father sent all of us back to the villa until I was old enough to leave.”

The other Hera blinked slowly. “The Syndullas haven’t been on Ryloth for a long time.  Cham sent the family to the colony on Zardossa Stix after my mother was hurt in the Lessu Riots.  Then he tried to assassinate the Emperor, so the Empire wiped out the colony. I don’t know what happened to the others.  The Syndullas and the other clans fled Ryloth not long afterwards.  They’re on the Imperial Terrorist Watchlist.”

Hera blinked. “Mama’s alive?” she whispered.

The other woman looked aside.  “You’re not the one asking the questions here,” she said, but not before Hera saw sick hurt flash across her face.  She set the small holoprojector Hera had had in her pocket down on the table in front of her and activated it. “Who is this?”

“That’s my son,” Hera said, trying not to look at Kanan and failing. “Jacen.  He’s five.  He’ll be six in a few months.”

The other Hera’s eyes went wide with shock. “Your son?”

Hera nodded, swallowing back a familiar lump of regret.  “He’s staying on Ryloth with his grandfather now that Free Ryloth has been able to retake the planet.  They’re rebuilding the villa, but right now my father spends most of his time in Lessu. The townhouse wasn’t destroyed, just ransacked a bit.”

Kanan started to raise a hand towards the image, clearly barely conscious he was doing it, then closed his fingers into a fist against his side.  He said quietly, “He’s dead, isn’t he?  Your Kanan.”

Hera couldn’t look at him. She couldn’t look at him and her son at the same time, not when her mind was already picking out the similarities between them, seeing what hadn’t been clear from the precious holograms she hadn’t been able to bear looking at alongside her son.  How could I have forgotten? she thought.  Jacen bit his lip the same way when he was thinking hard, had the same heavy eyebrows, was going to grow up to have the same broad hands and elegant fingers.

She put a hand to her mouth, trying to hold back her tears.  “Yes,” she said eventually, when she was mostly certain of her ability to speak without stumbling over the words.  “He died. He died before Jacen was born.  He didn’t know – he never knew –”

She lost her battle to contain her tears and scrubbed her sleeve hard across her eyes.  The other Hera had drawn close to Kanan without seeming to be aware she was doing it, reaching for him as if searching for reassurance that he was still there and breathing.  They were holding hands when Hera got herself under control and looked up again.

She had talked about this with Zeb and Rex, with Sabine chiming in via holocomm, when she had been cleared for this mission.  They had talked about what she could bring with her, what had the best chance of convincing her counterpart and Kanan’s, and Rex had insisted she bring this.  I’m probably the only person in the galaxy who has any idea of what this is going to be like, he had told her.  And it’s not the same for a clone as it will be for you, but it’s as close as you’re going to get.

Hera opened her mouth to say the Empire killed him and stopped. The Empire killed him, and you’re working for them.  The Empire killed him, and you’re alive, both of you are alive, how can you be doing this when the Empire killed him?  The Empire killed him and he never knew he was going to have a son. The Empire killed him, and I loved him. The Empire killed him and he should be alive today, he should be with me now, he should have been able to meet his son.

She said again, “He died.”

“I’m sorry,” the other Hera said.  She sounded very young.

She was younger than Sabine had been when Kanan had died, Hera thought, and pulled her shirt cuffs up to scrub at her eyes with both hands.  She couldn’t remember being that young.

Haltingly, the girl said, “I know – a little – what that’s like.  I’m sorry.”  She was gripping Kanan’s hand so tightly that it had to hurt both of them.

Hera touched the base of the holoprojector, looking at her son’s familiar face, then, deliberately, flicked the hologram over to the next image.  It hurt to look at too.

Kanan stared at it, his eyes going wide.  “What –”

“There was a Sith lord named Maul,” Hera said, and was curious to see him flinch, recognizing the name. “Kanan was hurt fighting him.”

Kanan was laughing in that holo, grinning at something that the recorder hadn’t captured – something Ezra had said, maybe.  They had been on Atollon, just a few weeks before Thrawn had reduced the planet to little more than a cinder.  Someone in Supply had scored thirty crates of Yensid/Sacul Vineyards wines, apparently by accident, and they had split it up between everyone on Chopper Base who wanted some.  Not long after this had been taken, Hera and Kanan had taken a bottle and a few blankets and gone off to a quiet corner of the base.  Ezra had found them the next morning and declared himself scarred for life by the sight.

It had been a good night.

The other Hera was peering at the hologram with curiosity, looking between it and Kanan.  She caught Hera watching her and said again, “I’m sorry.”

Kanan shut off the holoprojector.  He paused with his hand over it, then pushed it towards Hera.  “You’re a Rebel, aren’t you?” he said.

“I’m an Alliance officer,” she corrected him, suspecting that it might be better to leave the “Rebel” part of “Rebel Alliance” off in this case.  She had anticipated explaining to a younger Hera and Kanan that given a decade’s time, the disparate groups of rebels scattered across the galaxy would pull together, that they had defeated the Emperor and taken Coruscant, and that there was – or would be soon, once the vote concluded in a few days’ time – a Galactic Republic again.  The possibility that she might have to explain this to a pair of Imperial officers, one an ISB agent and one an Inquisitor, had never occurred to her. “I came here because I need help.”

The other Hera drew herself up, settling her shoulders as if aware of the uniform she was wearing and its significance.  “Fighting the Empire?” she said, her voice suddenly cold.

“No,” Hera said. “In my time the Empire no longer exists, not as it was.  Since the Emperor died there have been a dozen warlords all struggling for power, all trying to take his place.”

The other Hera’s eyes went wide. “The Emperor…died?” she said.

“Yes.  He was killed by Darth Vader.”  At Kanan’s flinch, Hera looked at him and said, “A Jedi Knight named Luke Skywalker sent me here to retrieve data tapes on something called Project Cluster-Prism.  In my universe the only copies that we know of were destroyed along with the data vault on Scarif six years ago.  That’s all I need.  Just data tapes.  I’m not here to hurt anyone.”

“Why would I help you?” said the girl. “I’m an Imperial officer.”

“I’m not fighting your Empire,” Hera pointed out in what she hoped was a reasonable voice.

The girl looked away. Kanan stirred a little, uneasily, but didn’t say anything.  Eventually, the other Hera said, “I don’t have that clearance level.”  She swallowed, then said, “I need to think.”

She finally released Kanan’s hand and started towards the door, white-wrapped lekku nearly invisible against the white wool of her uniform jacket.  It was as though she wanted to be human, or, barring that, at least wanted people to forget that she was a Twi’lek.

“Why are you here?” Hera asked suddenly. “Why are you ISB?”

The girl stopped, bracing a hand against the wall.  She didn’t look back, just said quickly to the door, “When the colony was destroyed, I was sent to prison.  I was there for – for a long time.  My handler gave me a chance to get out, to apply for the Imperial Academy so I could start making up for some of the damage Cham had done.  So I did.  I had to. I’m ISB because my handler blocked my application to the Starfighter Corps; he wanted me in the Bureau.”

Hera bit her lip. “How old were you?”

There was a long moment of silence, then the girl’s lekku swayed just a little as she swallowed. “Fourteen.”

When Hera had been fourteen she had been racing blurrgs across the Tann Province with her cousins Doriah and Nury, or sneaking out of her room to work on her mother’s old racing pod.

“I’m sorry,” she said slowly.

“It’s done now.”  The other Hera took another shaky breath. “I’m where I need to be.”  She touched the control and the door slid open; she left with hasty strides, as if she couldn’t wait to be as far from Hera as possible.

Kanan stayed.  Hera looked up at him, drinking in the sight of him, because she was never going to have this again.  She was never going to see him again, never going to hear his voice, never going to touch him.

“Tell her you love her,” she said quietly. “Please.”

He nodded. “She knows,” he said. “I tell her every day.”  He hesitated, then asked, “How did he die?”

Hera looked down.  She closed her hands over the holoprojector, studying her gloved fingers.  “There was an explosion,” she said haltingly.  She never talked about it.  She would have to tell Jacen someday, but everyone else knew better than to ask.  She thought that Luke had wrangled the story out of Zeb or Rex, maybe Kallus, but wasn’t sure.  “We were – on a planet called –”  She hesitated, remembering that this Kanan was an Imperial Inquisitor, and corrected herself, “We were on a planet that a member of our team had close ties to. There was an Imperial factory there building a new kind of TIE fighter.  We had been doing groundside work, commando work, for weeks, but I left to go back to the Alliance and ask for a starfighter task force to wipe out the factory.  I got it. But we couldn’t get past the planetary blockade and I was captured.  Kanan and two others – his apprentice and a Mandalorian girl – came up with a plan to rescue me.  It almost worked.”

She scrubbed her sleeve across her eyes again.  “Kanan got me out of the Imperial Complex while the others stole a gunship.  We – we almost made it.  The Empire blew up its own fuel depot to stop us.  Kanan held the explosion back so that the rest of us could get away, but he – he couldn’t.  Get away, I mean.  And he knew that.”  Her voice broke.  “He sacrificed himself for us, and I still don’t know if he knew – if he knew – how much I loved –”  She had to stop.  She couldn’t go on, not now, not ever.

She was crying in gasping sobs, tears rolling down her face as she wiped at them with already soaked sleeves.  Kanan took a step towards her, hesitated, and then came the rest of the way, putting an arm around her shoulders.

It was too much.  Hera wept as though her heart might break, because it was broken, and Kanan was here, he was here.  He drew her close, and Hera turned her face against his chest and cried.  It wasn’t him.  Hera knew it wasn’t him, but at the same time, it was, and she didn’t know how to bear it.  She cried until all that was left were dry, hiccoughing sobs, and made herself pull back from him, wiping her sleeve over her face.

Kanan touched her cheek gently. “He knew,” he said.  “Believe me, he knew.”

“I would give almost anything to have him back,” Hera whispered.  It was a confession that she had never made out loud, had never intended to. Not anything, not quite, but almost anything.  Even years later there were days she wanted him so much that she couldn’t think past her grief and her longing, just go through her day on autopilot until something happened to jar her into full cognizance.  “I loved him so much, and I never told him.”

“He knew,” Kanan repeated.

Hera put a hand to her face. She couldn’t look at him; if she had to keep looking at him, she might scream.  But she didn’t know if she could look away either.  “Go be with her,” she said. “Please.”

Kanan nodded.  He hesitated, then leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead.  “I’ll talk to her about helping you,” he said. “I don’t – Hera’s here because she doesn’t see that she has any other choice.  I’m here for her, not the Empire.”

“She has a choice,” Hera said. “We always have a choice.”  She shook her head.  “Just – go be with her.  Tell her you love her.”

“I’ll tell her.”  For a moment he stood still, looking at her, then he turned and left.  Hera heard the door lock behind him.

She put her head down on her folded arms and wept.

[gondalsqueen]

Chapters: 18/18 Fandom: Star Wars: Rebels Rating: Explicit Warnings: Major Character Death Relationships: Kanan Jarrus/Hera Syndulla, Ketsu Onyo/Sabine Wren, Alexsandr Kallus/Garazeb "Zeb" Orrelios Characters: Hera Syndulla, C1-10P | Chopper, Original Characters, Kanan Jarrus, Ezra Bridger, Sabine Wren, Garazeb "Zeb" Orrelios, Alexsandr Kallus, CT-7567 | Rex, Mart Mattin, Wedge Antilles, Ketsu Onyo, Jacen Syndulla, Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, Ackbar (Star Wars), Lando Calrissian, Jan Dodonna, Ahsoka Tano Additional Tags: Pregnancy, vague mentions of abortion, future character death in the background, Season/Series 04, Established Relationship, Oral Sex, Chair Sex, Table Sex, sex during pregnancy, chapter 2 has lots of sex, Secrets, the best pilot in the galaxy, flying combat, character injury, canon torture, flight of the defender, rebel assault, Jedi Night, Major character death - Freeform, Grief, Morning Sickness, Counseling, Masturbation, Dreams, Traditions, Space family, Inappropriate bets, Lothal, Shopping, down time, Space Combat, Battle of Scarif, Rogue One - Freeform, hammerhead corvette!, Yavin 4, Stardust - Freeform, Alderaan, Death Star, labor, Childbirth, domestic life, Lothwolves, Dogfight - Freeform, Hoth, did i mention babies yet?, Babies!, One baby, Work/Life Balance, Advice, Bounty Hunters, Capture, this story has it all apparently, Return of the Jedi, Second Death Star, Existential Anxiety, parenting, Breakups, wine and cheesecake, wine and cheesecake needs its own tag, battle of endor, Battle for Coruscant, forces of destiny: an imperial feast, The New Republic - Freeform, Quests, letting go, Travel, ask me no questions i'll tell you no lies, but one of these days you'll get a surprise Summary: The end. Kind of. 

...

Something had happened to Ezra out there, something he wasn’t ready to talk about until after this vacation was over. None of them pried. He was...different, in a lot of ways. Grown up. He finally believed in his own adequacy. With that confidence came an edge of brooding that reminded her of Kanan, though. Hera hoped he stuck around where they could support him, whatever he was facing.

In other ways he was still their Ezra—surprisingly predictable given all the time that had passed, and still the baby of the crew until they adjusted their thinking and changed the way they treated him accordingly.

To no one’s surprise, he and Jacen got along well. Their bonding mostly consisted of wrestling, with some sword fighting and a little chase for variety. Hera could have done without the just-before-bed play that infallibly kept Jacen awake and hyper. She didn’t say anything, though, because the two of them had a lot of time to make up for.  

Tonight Jacen was trying to push Ezra into Alexsandr’s small fishpond. Since Ezra vastly outweighed him he was failing, but he made up for it by practically strangling his opponent in the process — by accident, Hera was pretty sure. Really, Ezra had bought this when he picked Jacen up off the ground and threw him over his shoulder.

Oh, and that was a knee in the face.

“Ow!” Ezra protested. “Kid, you are deadly!” He twisted out from under Jacen and somehow they both ended up on their feet, facing each other. Quick as a flash, Ezra tapped Jacen’s shoulder.

“Hey!”

“Block me, then. Like this.” He showed Jacen how to bring his hands up in front of him and deflect the blows. Then he tapped Jace’s knee. “Got you! This is how you block with your feet. Try to tap my knees.”

“Your shoulders, too!”

“Sure, if you can reach.”

Hera watched her son eye a nearby boulder. She hoped he was planning to climb on it and not throw it at Ezra.

Then they both went at each other, jumping towards a shoulder or knee and dashing out again, blocking on one side and darting in on the other. Ezra went easy on Jacen, but he sped up as they played and Jace kept pace with him.

The whole thing ended when Jacen got sick of it, yelled “ATTACK!” and somersaulted across the ground towards his target. He bumped harmlessly against Ezra’s legs, but in the attempt not to step on him Ezra backpedalled and, with a whirling of arms, ended up in the water.

Hmm. Somehow they had both ended up in the water.

“Bathtime!” Hera called.

“It’s not!”

“It is, in fact, a solid hour past BEDtime.”

Ezra hit the shower in Zeb’s place while Hera scrubbed the slime off of Jacen in the Ghost’s fresher. Forty-five minutes later they’d finished showering, cleaning teeth, a snack that he didn’t ask permission to get, and teeth a second time, and they were cuddled together on Jacen’s bunk reading their nightly chapter of whatever novel Jace had picked. Since he’d gotten old enough to understand them, he’d mostly chosen from a children’s series of adventure stories about — guess what? — Jedi. Hera, remembering her own childhood, couldn’t blame him.

She read: “Shuyen closed her eyes and took a deep breath, reaching out to the Force as she fell. She could feel the air rushing past her. The wind whipped at her face roughly, but it wasn’t enough to hold her up…”

Sabine passed by the door and stopped to listen for a minute. “Are you reading Knights of the Old Republic to him?”

“Yes.”

“That’s sending mixed messages, don’t you think?”

“He likes it,” Hera told her, aware of how defensive she sounded. “It’s a good story. Who am I to tell him what to like?”

Sabine held her hands up. “Fair enough. Carry on.”

Hera finished the chapter, the Jedi who had fallen off the cliff while being chased by Sith warriors arriving unscathed back at the temple. “That’s a good stopping place for tonight,” she told Jacen, smoothing his hair back. He’d started to grow it out and they were both learning how to manage the tangles that was causing, but right now it was clean and brushed and smelled like shampoo, and she breathed in the scent gratefully.

He nestled into to her side. “Mama?”

“Yes?”

“Is Rex going to come back?”

“No, baby, Rex isn’t going to come back.”

“But Ezra came back.”

“Ezra wasn’t dead, love,” she told him gently. “Nobody comes back from the dead.” She paused for a moment to let that sink in, then continued, “I know it’s hard. It hurts for me, too.”

“I like Ezra.” He was trying to think something out. Hera waited. “But...I’d rather have Rex.”

“I can understand that.”

“But that’s mean of me, right?”

“Well…” she answered as honestly as she could. “You don’t want someone to die. You just miss the person you love. I think it’s very normal. Probably not the best idea to mention it to Ezra, though. It might hurt his feelings.”

He nodded and she tucked him into bed with a song and a kiss. “Sleep,” she told him. “You are exhausted. Go to sleep.”

“Okay,” Jacen said around a big yawn.

Sneaking out of the room a moment later she passed by the open doorway of Ezra’s bunk and caught a snatch of conversation. “...her turn for a while,” Sabine was saying. Then Ezra: “Coruscant is good place to stay, anyway. We’re going to need to talk about defenses. Maybe exploratory missions, but that might be a bad idea. IF they even decide to believe me.”

Keep moving, Hera, she told herself. She went to the cockpit to give the monitors one last check for the evening and tried to remember that Sabine and Ezra were adults and it was perfectly reasonable for them to live on whatever planet they wanted to. But maybe, maybe, maybe she’d get them back for a while. It was worth hoping.

Ezra joined her a few minutes later, a mug of warm hubba juice in each hand. “Best place to watch the sunset,” he explained. The summer sunsets on Lira San were amazing, oranges and purples breaking through the thick cloud cover. Hera swung the copilot’s seat around for him and he passed her a cup.

“Two more days and then Lothal, right?” he asked.

“If that’s still what you want.”

“Yeah. Sabine says it’s changed a lot. I can’t even remember before the Empire came anymore.”

Hera smiled. “It’s a good place. Not perfect, but Azadi made it pretty welcoming even before the Emperor fell.”

“You guys were there a lot.”

“Second home, but it will be better with you back.”

“Yeah.” He shrugged, looking like his teenage self for the moment of the gesture. “Everything’s different, but it’s really good BEING back. I’m still trying to...fit in, I guess.”  

“Hey. You do fit in,” Hera told him, giving the chair a little kick to spin him towards her. “You’re one of ours. And Jace loves having you around. Chop and I are too busy to play with him as much as he’d like, and it’s been a while since we’ve had anyone else on the Ghost.”

“Yeah, Ezra Bridger, Jedi Knight, hero to six-year-olds everywhere.” He rolled his eyes.

Hera laughed. “At first that was the draw, sure. But he had a lot of...anxiety, too. He’d heard stories about you his whole life and he knew how important you were to all of us, and to have you standing before him in the flesh…” She shrugged. “But now I don’t think you’re Ezra Bridger, Jedi Knight. I think you’re his friend.”

“He’s really great, Hera. Thinks he can do anything. He...reminds me of you that way.”

She sighed. “He didn’t know you were a Jedi.”

“Okay.”

“He doesn’t know Kanan was a Jedi.”

A pause. “Okay.” Ezra didn’t push. Once he would have pushed.

“The hand game — those were forms,” Hera said. “Lightsaber forms. I’ve seen you practice them with Kanan.”

“Yeah, well…” Ezra ran his hand over the back of his hair awkwardly. “They’re kind of drilled into me, so I guess I just go there automatically when it comes to fighting. Is...that all right?”

“It’s all right,” she said, picking at the fraying edge of the seat cushion. “It’s good. There are so many things I’ve wanted to ask you about that.”

“About lightsaber forms?”  

She shook her head. “Ezra, I know this seems like a subject change, but...were you happy as a child? Or were you...confused?”

“What do you mean? I had kind of a rotten childhood.”

“Before that. When you were small, with your parents, and you could do things that nobody could explain. Did it confuse you or upset you?”

He considered her words carefully. “Let me think.” After a solid minute of silence, he said, “No. I heard things sometimes that I knew were true, and my mom said they were only my imagination. I think that’s not rare for kids, though. It’s just that in my case, they actually WERE true. The rest of the time, it was just fun to run and jump off of things without worrying about how I was going to land, or to know that people were probably going to believe whatever outrageous lie I told. Stuff like that. Hera… Jacen’s definitely Force sensitive. Does he use any of those abilities?”

“Oh…” she laughed to cover her worry. “Yes.” She’d watched for signs all of his life and could give a detailed list of ‘yes’es ‘no’s and ‘maybe’s. “He’s always been good at picking up moods, but I think he’s just a smart, social kid. Sometimes he knows things that haven’t happened yet, but only in a vague way — he has a feeling that someone’s coming to visit, or he knows we’ll find something around the next corner. He can climb and jump off of anything and he somehow hasn’t broken a bone yet. I don’t mean normal child risk-taking. You saw him take a dive off the Ghost the other day. And then there are the animals that seem to follow him around like he’s some kind of magnet.”

Ezra laughed.

“...which I blame you for,” she added.

“How is that my fault?”

“I haven’t figured that out yet, but the similarity is striking.”

“I’ll take it as a compliment.”

“I don’t want him to be a Jedi,” she said more seriously. “I don’t even want him to be a half-Jedi, partially trained. The Force asks...too much. We know how that ends and I won’t give him up that way. But… if I refuse to let him train when it’s available to him, he’s just going to do it anyway, and he’ll end up doing it behind my back, without my support. Or running off.” She thought of her own childhood. “It’s not my place to hold him back if that’s what he wants.”

“Well...does he WANT to be a Jedi?”

“He’s six years old. Every six-year-old wants to be a Jedi.”

“He’d be good at it. Kind. Flexible. Reminds me of someone else I knew.”

“Me too,” she admitted. “That scares me.”

“Hmm.” Ezra thought about that. “There’s not exactly a trade school for Jedi Knights. The few of us left with any ability have no idea what we’re doing. He’ll probably end up using those talents, but using them in some other field.”

“Maybe. But I don’t want to keep him locked away from the world — locked away from himself — because I’m afraid.”

“Hera, you’re not afraid of anything.”

She sighed and stopped picking at the worn corner of the pilot’s chair so he could see her hands shaking. “That’s not true, and I have changed.”

Ezra frowned. “You want me to train him?” he asked. “Is that what this conversation is about?”

“Not...yet. Not now. But I don’t want anybody else to train him.”

“Luke Skywalker is talking about starting a school.”

“NO. I like Luke. He’s a good kid. But he doesn’t understand the dangers… He hasn’t walked that path, and he doesn’t know what it takes to guide your student safely instead of just following the rules.”

“Hera, I don’t know either.”

“That’s okay. Falling is fine as long as there’s someone to catch you. You would never let anything bad happen to him.”

“Hmph.” Ezra crossed his arms and looked out at the clouds, that stone expression on his face. “I wish I could promise that.”

...

From Lira San they traveled to Lothal. Hera let Sabine show Ezra the sights because she had something else to show Jacen.

The bombed-out Imperial hangar wasn’t hard to reach, despite being perched on one of the dolmens at the edge of Capital City. If you took a shuttle, that is. Hera parked the Phantom halfway up the mountain and made them walk the rest of the way because “it will be fun!” Forty minutes into the uphill hike, Jacen wasn’t finding it particularly fun.

“Why couldn’t we just FLY up there?” he asked, perilously close to a whine.

“Because we’re taking a nice hike together and it’s going to be more enjoyable to see if you make it there yourself than if you just fly up and park.”

Poor kid — his hair was a sweaty wreck. “To be clear,” he said. “I AM getting a real birthday party tomorrow, with friends and cake and stuff, right?”

“Padawan’s honor. Sabine even made you guys those robes and staffs so you could dress up as High Jedi. Though I still don’t know what a High Jedi is.”

“It’s like a really wise, powerful Jedi,” Jacen explained. “Kind of like a wizard.”

She raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“It’s from Rangers of the Force.”

“I didn’t know you could read books that hard.”

“I listened to it.”

“Oh. Okay. Look, we made it.” Hera climbed the short flight of steps and crawled over the rubble blocking what had once been the workers’ entrance. Then she waited for Jacen to do the same.

“Whew!”

“It’s cooler up here.” Jacen spread himself dramatically on the floor.

“Yeah, we’re out of the sun.” She handed him the canteen and waited for him to take a long drink. “You recovered?” He nodded. “Good. Come see what Sabine did.”

He saw the mural as soon as he looked up, and his reaction was everything Hera had hoped for. A shout, and he rushed up to get a closer look. “It’s you guys!”

“Yeah.”

“You look like heroes! Like you’re from a holoshow.”

“Sabine makes good art.”

His brow creased in that thinking look. “Were you heroes?”

“Yes,” Hera admitted. “We were.”

“Sabine,” he pointed. “Ezra. His head looks small in this picture. Zeb and Chop. Hey, look at these lothcats! There’s you. Where am I?”

Hera touched her mid-section in the picture, right on the buttons of her flight suit. “Here.”

“So I came with you when you were heroes?”

“Sure.”

“So I helped save Lothal?”

“Let’s say you were along for the ride.”

But now he was pointing above mural-Hera’s shoulder. “That’s Dad.”

“Yeah,” she said softly.

“I don’t think I look very much like him.”

“Well, you’re shorter.”

“Hey!”

She grinned at him, but he shook his head and said, “Uh-uh. You’re sad.”

“Only a little sad.”

“You miss him.”

“Yes,” Hera said honestly, “but that’s not why I brought you here today. I need to show you something else, something… kind of secret.”

“Okay.”

Hera took a portable projector from her bag and placed it on the floor. “Come sit by me. Seven years old is big enough to see this.” They sat cross-legged on the ground and Hera switched on the projector.

“That’s Dad!”

“Yes.”

“What’s he got?”

Kanan was fitting together two metal tubes. He gave them a practiced twist, then ignited the lightsaber.

Jacen lost it. “WHAT?! Where did he GET that?”

“Hi, kid,” Kanan said to the recorder. “Thought I’d go through a few practice drills here, in case you ever need to see them when I’m not around.” He was talking to Ezra, but Jacen didn’t know that. Hera skipped past the part where he demonstrated the basic techniques and on to the segment where he showed the moves in practice by fighting ten combat remotes, leaping into the air, twisting, deflecting shots… He was using the Ghost’s hold as his staging area, which had irritated Hera to no end at the time because those remotes were firing live blaster bolts. The flip from the ground to the platform four meters above his head was awfully impressive, though, she had to admit.

“How did he DO that?”

Another of him and Ezra training together, both blindfolded, going through forms. Hera watched Kanan’s shoulder rotate as the blade spun, the twist of hips as he altered his stance. It was so familiar and so long ago, all at the same time.

“Mama, tell me.” He knew, but he didn’t want to say it.

“He’s a Jedi, Jace. He was raised in the temple on Coruscant and sent out to fight during the Clone Wars. One of the last Jedi Knights.”

“But...” he trailed off.

“I know it’s a lot to take in. Do you want to see a little more?”

“Yes!”

She’d edited this compilation carefully so they got no footage of actual battles. Next Kanan was tossing Sabine in the air over and over, a little Sabine — she couldn’t have been more than fifteen. He’d throw her impossibly high, and then she’d twist in mid-air, draw her blasters, and fire at a target. Jacen laughed. “Ah-ha, they’re good!” Another of that terrible competition he’d had with Zeb, where Zeb picked up Imperial speeder bikes and threw them at Kanan, who caught every one in mid-air. Okay, that probably wasn’t the best thing to include. One of Hera herself cradled in Kanan’s arms, the laughter near the microphone indicating that Ezra was recording.

“Ready?” Kanan asked.

“Go,” Ezra told him.

Kanan jumped up the Ghost’s ladder one rung at a time, tilted impossibly backwards, holding her. Hera from long ago shrieked in laughter. “I get five credits when I do this, right?” Kanan asked.

“Cheating,” said Ezra’s voice.

“I did TELL you I could do it.” Thunk, up another ring. Thunk, up the next. “See, what you want to do is bend your knees…” Kanan explained, annoyingly pedantic. “Then you absorb most of the shock, especially when you have to land rough.” He rolled at the last moment, still holding Hera, and came up on his feet on the upper platform, neither of them worse for the wear.

“Hey!” Hera-from-the-vid protested. “Warn me!”

“Okay,” Kanan said. “Roll up in a ball, I’m going to toss you to Ezra now so he can practice.”

“No, no, wait!” Ezra yelled. “Wait, let me put the recorder down!” The image went sideways and the recorder died abruptly on the sound of their laughter.

Jacen was watching with a wistful, half-jealous expression. “Nobody ever told me he was a Jedi.”

“Well…” Hera considered. “What DID they tell you?”

“Zeb says he could drink a whole gallon of milk in five minutes without throwing up.”

“Yeah, only part of that is true. And don’t try it.”

“Sabine said he loved you the very most, and he’d never let anything in the whole galaxy hurt you.”

She took a deep breath, willing herself to stay calm. “That is true.”

“And that he was a really good dad and he understood when people got upset or lost their temper and he wouldn’t yell at them.”

“That’s true too.”

“But he wasn’t really Sabine’s or Ezra’s dad, right?”

“No, but he...took care of them when they were kids. Big kids. And he taught them a lot of things.”

Jacen’s eyes lit with realization. “He taught Ezra how to be a Jedi! That’s why they were doing those slow moves with the lightsabers.”

Her kid was too smart.

But now he was mulling over something else. “...He was my dad.”

“Yes.”

“He never met me.”

“Technically, no, but he knew you were on the way.”

“How?”

“You know how you can tell where animals are, even the small ones? You found Alexsandr’s baby chicks when the rest of us were looking in the wrong place.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s the Force, Jacen. He felt you like that before you were born. I’ll bet you guys had whole secret conversations, what do you think?”

Jacen shrugged, clearly pleased by the idea. “So how come you never told me he was a Jedi? And you COULD have told me, lots of times.”

There was the question she’d been waiting for. “Because it wasn’t safe, Jace. The Emperor killed all the Jedi, even the little kids. Only a few of them got away, and then they had to survive by hiding because the Emperor was still hunting.”

“But he died when I was little.”

“Yes, but being a Jedi is still not exactly safe.”

“You mean people are still hunting them?”

“No, I mean they’re still...heroes. Which is good, but it also means that bad guys don’t like them much. You have to learn to keep yourself safe when you’re a hero, and that takes time. I wanted to wait until you were big enough to understand that a little.”

“So you’re saying I shouldn’t want to be a Jedi.”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying. If you want to learn to be a Jedi when you get older, I’ll be right there with you. But I want you to understand that there’s always more to these stories than what you hear. And I don’t want you to think that fighting makes you a good person. I didn’t love your dad because he was a Jedi. I loved him because he was kind and funny and understanding, and he couldn’t bear to see anybody in pain without trying to help. And because he never gave up on people. I see a lot of those qualities in you already. You don’t need a lightsaber to be a good person.” Oh, great, now she was sad again.

And Jacen had picked up on it. “Were you scared when he died?”

“So scared. But what do we say?”

“Be afraid,” he said quietly, “but do it anyway.”

“Right.”

A wolf howled nearby, in the middle of the day.

“That’s a lothwolf?” Jacen asked.

Hera nodded. “I think they’re coming to see you. I don’t know why, though.”

“I do.”

“You do? Why?”

“They say goodbyes are over. It’s time for hellos.”