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bikananjarrus · 19 days ago

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kanera week 2024 - day 2

prompt: reunion

rating: gen | word count: 3.5k | ao3 link

[note: sorry for the delay on this one! this was supposed to be much shorter than it is, but, well. you know how it is. this is a kanan lives au feat. post-battle reunion on endor (and more kanan + ghost crew feelings about the end of the war than expected, hence why this is about 2k longer than planned!). ezra is still missing and jacen has not been born yet in this au]

They stood together at the top of the Ghost’s lowered ramp, foreheads pressed together, Kanan’s hands resting on her waist, Hera’s curled into the lapels of his jacket. Kanan refused to think this was the last time he would hold her like this.

Base was alive and bustling around them. Officers ran back and forth across the landing bay, handing off reports, updating orders, some of them practically doing hurtles over droids that trundled through with supplies. Ground teams prepped for landing on Endor’s forest moon. Pilots rushed to their ships, readying to launch to their first jump point and wait for the go-ahead from General Solo’s ground team before following General Calrissian’s assault on the second Death Star. Hera was one of those pilots.

They had minutes left before Kanan needed to join Zeb and Kallus with their ground team, and Hera needed to ready the Ghost for take-off.

He knew that anyone could see up the Ghost’s ramp, see the two of them embraced as they were. It wasn’t exactly like his and Hera’s relationship was a secret. But he knew how much Hera valued keeping things professional in public. As a general, she had an image to maintain. He respected that. And at times, it made it all the more fun when they got a chance to sneak off for a few precious moments of alone time.

But right now, he didn’t care if anyone saw them. Hera must not have minded either, because she didn’t seem too keen on letting him go.

Her fingers tightened almost imperceptibly around the front of his jacket. “Promise me you’ll be careful.” While he couldn’t see her face, he thought her chin might be trembling, because her next words came out in a wobbly whisper. “Promise me you’ll come back to me.”

Kanan pressed a kiss right between her creased brows. “I promise, love.” Another kiss to the tip of her nose. “I’ll have Zeb and Rex watching my back. Kallus, too, I suppose.” That made her chuckle and he smiled in turn. “I’m more worried about you.”

A firefight on the ground was one thing. Dangerous, of course. At times unpredictable, hard to navigate a battlefield, especially in unfamiliar territory. But, even with the odds stacked against them, a ground fight allowed more opportunities to turn those odds in their favor.

A dogfight in the blackness of space was another thing entirely. The whole battle map was laid out before you, with nothing to stand between you and the laser-fire of enemy ships except skill and the cold vacuum of the cosmos.

Hera was the greatest pilot he’d ever seen. But all it took was one wrong move and she would be nothing but stardust.

“You’ve got Zeb and Rex. I’ve got Sabine and Chopper.”

“We should’ve just offered to smuggle Chopper onboard the Death Star. He’d have that thing imploding in no time.”

Hera laughed softly again, sweeping one hand up to cup his jaw. Her thumb brushed over the apple of his cheek, then a little higher to the edge of the scar that ran beneath his eyes. She kissed him with sound reassurance. “I’ll be careful,” she vowed against his lips. “Promise.”

She kissed him once more, and then started to pull back. Kanan didn’t want her to—but if they didn’t separate now, he wasn’t sure he’d have the strength to walk away from her.

Kanan’s hands were still loosely gripping Hera’s when he heard the familiar rumble of Chopper’s wheels against the ramp, just a moment before Sabine announced her presence with a boisterous, “Who’s ready to blow up another Death Star?”

He chuckled, at last letting go of Hera to stretch his arms out for Sabine instead. She stepped fully into his hug. He ruffled the back of her freshly cut mullet (he’d sat in the ‘fresher with her while she’d cut her hair the other night, describing the process and the bright orange to buttery yellow gradient she’d dyed it with) and she swatted at his hand playfully, twirling out of his grip.

“You know, for some of us, this is a first time experience,” he pointed out, barely containing a grin. “Some of us were in a coma when the first Death Star blew up.”

He could practically feel Sabine and Hera rolling their eyes simultaneously.

Sabine gave his shoulder a playful shove. “Yeah, yeah, we know. Please—tell us again how you very heroically almost got blown up.”

Kanan laughed, then reached through the air until he found Hera’s hand again. He joked about his near-death—very, very near-death—experience on Lothal years ago now; they were in a place now that they could all make fun about it. But he gave her fingers a light squeeze, silently conveying that, despite his joking, he knew how serious it had been. How close she’d come to losing him. She wouldn’t lose him this time, either.

She squeezed his hand back, thumb pressing into the back of his fingerless gloves and the burn scars underneath. “It’s time to go.”

His chest tightened at the words. “Yeah.”

Still, he didn’t let go. He could feel her gaze on him, drinking him in.

For the millionth time since Malachor, Kanan wished he could see her—really see her. He wanted to rememorize the exact shade of green of her skin, her eyes. He wanted to see the half-smile she got when she was planning something brilliant or devious or both. He wanted to see the way her cheeks flushed when he kissed her, wanted to see the exact way her mouth curved around the syllables of his name.

Since that wasn’t possible, he instead sank into the Force. It danced around her in a steady, but brilliant flow, and he grounded himself in that feeling, breathing easier with each of her exhales.

Kanan kissed her one more time. “I love you.”

“And I love you,” she whispered back.

They stood close for a few precious seconds more. Then in one swift movement, he pulled away, striding down the ramp to put distance between them.

“Be careful,” she called after him.

With a two-finger salute and a cheeky grin, he replied, “Aye aye, General. See you on the other side.”

The next thirty-six hours passed in waves—time speeding by in the blink of an eye one hour and dragging onto eternity the next. The chaos and necessity of battle made it relatively easy to focus on the mission at hand. But that didn’t stop Kanan from casting his mind out into the Force whenever he got the chance, searching for Hera.

Over and over, he sensed that she was okay. He was sure, down to his bones, that he would know if something was wrong. Her presence in the Force was as familiar as his own; he would feel it if something happened.

But that didn’t stop worry from gripping him like a cold hand latched around his spine.

Especially when the battle ended. And it did end.

Blaster fire stopped whizzing past his ears and cheers—from rebel and Ewok alike—erupted around the battlefield. He could feel others jostling around him, sense their upward gazes, hear the affirmation from all around him, “Look! The Death Star! They did it!”

Kanan couldn’t see it, of course—but he’d already known. He’d felt it when it happened, the Death Star’s destruction. Countless lives snuffed out at once; Like the exhale of a giant beast. The sensation of a distant space explosion beneath his feet; but maybe that was actually the tremor of Endor’s moon, shaking with the force of the blast.

More than that—through the Force—light.

Kanan had never felt the Force like this. He didn’t realize how…muffled it had been up until now. Akin to suddenly having a great, downy blanket torn off in one’s sleep. The contrast was sharp, bright. But refreshing.

The Force was what it was. It wasn’t light or dark on its own; it just was. And while no one being could truly have so much power as to control the entirety of it, Emperor Palpatine must have been powerful indeed to cast so much darkness over the Force for all these years.

Kanan staggered under the lightness he felt. He sucked in a deep breath, lungs expanding all the way. The sensation stretched his face in a wide smile, tears of pure, unadulterated joy pricking at his eyes.

“We’re free,” he whispered.

He swore he felt the brush of a ghostly hand on his shoulder.

Master, he thought, closing his eyes. We’re free. For a moment, the smell of smoke dissipated from the air, replaced only with the greenery around him and the spiced floral scent that had floated around Master Billaba in days long passed.

Her presence drifted away on the breeze and Kanan’s heart lifted with it.

With one thing left to do, Kanan reached for his comm on his belt, toggling it to their crew’s private channel. “Spectre One to Ghost. Come in, Spectre Two.”

Silence followed for a few impossibly long seconds. His throat tightened, and he tried to swallow down the fear.

Maybe the Death Star’s explosion had overridden any other feeling in the Force. Maybe she had been caught in the blast and he didn’t even know—

A crackle of static. Followed by her smiling voice, “Ghost to Spectre One. We read you loud and clear.”

He sighed in happy relief. “Copy that, Ghost. You all good up there?”

This time it was Sabine’s voice over the comms, sounding more victorious than she had in a long time. At least since before the Empire destroyed Mandalor, Sabine having just barely gotten her family out in time. “Better than good. You?”

Kanan twisted in place, reaching out with the Force. He had gotten separated from Zeb, Kallus, and Rex in the fight. “I’m fine. The others—”

“We’re all safe,” Zeb’s voice sounded over the channel. “I’ve got Kal and Rex here with me.”

“Glad to hear it. We’ll be joining you planetside shortly,” Hera said. And then, even though they were still on comms with everyone else, she added just for him, “See you soon, love.”

While he waited for the Rebel fleet to start landing on the moon, Kanan busied himself helping with triage. Andor and Erso had been put in charge of setting up a temporary med station while they waited for their primary medical frigate to arrive in friendly space. He helped with getting the wounded to the tented off area.

After helping the team who was clearing major debris out of the way, Zeb found him, Kallus and Rex trailing behind. Kallus gave his shoulder a comforting squeeze, but he was hauled into a hearty hug by Rex a second later.

“We did it, Commander,” Rex said, his gruff voice even rougher than usual, tinged with emotion as it was.

“We did it,” Kanan echoed.

Rifling in his pack as he pulled back, Rex grabbed Kanan’s hand and pressed something into it. “Here. Just in case you’re getting tired. I see yours fell off your belt.”

Kanan recognized the weight and feel of his extra probing cane immediately.

(Sabine had painted it, of course, telling him, “Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t look nice.” Still, she’d taken care to layer the paint over and over in a design comprised of swirls and whorls, the paint just raised enough that he could make it out with the touch of his fingertips).

“Thanks,” he said with a grateful smile. He was a bit worn out, having relied on the Force to see the entirety of the battle. And the cane he kept attached to his belt had gotten knocked off at some point during the day, lost amongst the foliage of Endor.

For the moment, though, he hooked this one onto his belt too. He had one more person to greet.

Kanan turned to where he could sense Zeb, and no sooner was he facing Zeb’s direction before the lasat was barreling into him, enveloping him in a huge hug.

Zeb was one of the few people in the galaxy who understood what Kanan was feeling in a way that many others didn’t—the Empire that had almost entirely destroyed both their peoples’ in its rise to power. Though the fight against the Empire had been happening for over two decades, to have it finally snuffed out with one last battle…it was hard to put the impossibility of that into words. So Kanan knew he wasn’t imagining the way Zeb was quietly shaking, or the soft sniffles that punctuated the air near his ear.

“Me too, big guy, me too,” Kanan said, voice muffled by Zeb’s shoulder. There would be more time later for them to sit down and properly honor both the Jedi and Lasan. For now, he just squeezed one of his oldest friends back tightly.

It was Zeb who pulled back with a quiet, “Kanan.” Then Zeb was putting his hands on his shoulders, turning Kanan away from him—towards something else. “The Ghost is coming down.”

With Zeb’s hand on his back guiding him, they headed for the wider part of the clearing that Zeb had helped clear out for the ships coming planetside. As they got closer, close enough that he could pick the familiar rumble of the Ghost’s engines out from the rest, Kanan picked up his pace, leaving Zeb and the others behind.

New voices and shouts of excitement and victory rose up as others finished their landing cycles, and pilots descended from their ships, running to reunite with their own friends.

Kanan stopped where he was sure he wouldn’t be in danger of getting squashed by the landing ship, and waited, heart thrumming in his chest.

He heard the Ghost land, felt the shudder under his feet as the freighter touched down, followed by the low whine of the engine’s powering down. The scent of fresh carbon scoring was faint in the air. There was a gentle whir as the ramp lowered.

From the second he sensed Hera at the top of the ramp—right where they’d stood together early yesterday—Kanan was moving. Her feet touched solid ground and he was instantly there to scoop her into his arms.

She clung to him, burying her face into the crook between his shoulder and neck. Overjoyed, her laugh echoed around him as he spun her.

They were here—they were alive.

Somewhere behind him he heard Chopper warbling and Sabine letting out a surprised yelp as Zeb pulled her into her own bone-crushing embrace.

But everyone else felt far away compared to the woman in his arms, radiating joy and laughter and utter relief.

Kanan set her down but kept her close. Close enough to kiss her soundly, cupping her face between his hands. Her cheeks were wet with tears, lips salty with them.

“Hey, hey,” he soothed, touching his forehead to hers the way he had yesterday. “I’m here. We’re here, we’re safe. It’s over, Hera. It’s over.” He pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth. “We did it, love.”

“We did it,” she sniffled. She laughed again, the sound watery with her tears. One of her gloved hands was tangled in his half-down hair, the other caressing his jaw.

She kissed him again, before wrapping him up in another hug. Kanan closed his eyes and just held her, his heart content.

Celebrations took place later that night, and Kanan barely left Hera’s side. He spent most of the night with his cane in one hand, and holding Hera’s hand with the other. He gave and received more hugs than he ever had in his life; they cheered and danced and sang; he smiled and laughed until his cheeks hurt and his ribs were sore. He couldn’t remember a time he’d felt this much joy at once.

At one point, a bunch of them gathered around a radio one of the pilots had carried into the Ewok village. They listened as the news carried across every available channel in the galaxy: the Emperor was dead and the Empire along with him. The galaxy was free.

After hours of music and fireworks and celebration, Hera tugged him away from it all, off to a distant, quiet platform of the village. Some of the rebels were slumbering in the village that night. They had already decided they would make their way back to the Ghost eventually to sleep in their own bed.

Hera sat down against the tree trunk that jutted through the center of the circular platform. She took his cane, and he heard her folding it up as he settled down next to her. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and she leaned her head against him immediately, taking his free hand between her own.

Kanan took a deep breath. As much as he relished the celebrations, the quiet was a relief. He let himself drift for a moment—listening to the rustle of leaves all round them, soaking in the cool night breeze, the scent of distant fires tickling his nose.

“It still doesn’t feel real,” Hera murmured.

Kanan hummed in agreement, rubbing his thumb back and forth against her index finger.

Mirthfully, she scoffed. “I have no idea what I’m going to do tomorrow.”

They both knew there would be plenty to do—too much, even. The Empire was finished, but the work wasn’t. But he knew what she meant; it was the principle of the thing. After spending the last twenty-three years under the thumb of Imperial rule, the future was frighteningly full of possibilities.

“Sleep in for once?” he suggested. He was an early riser naturally; he liked doing his meditation in the morning. Hera’s early schedule was all thanks to her alarms and the strict schedule of a rebellion leader.

“Mm, sleeping in would be nice. Maybe breakfast in bed afterwards. When’s the last time we did that?”

“Too long ago to remember.” He nudged his foot against her own playfully. “I could be persuaded to do breakfast in bed. Depending, of course—” he stroked his fingers down the one lek curled pliantly over her shoulder, delighting as she shivered against him, “—on what’s on the menu.”

“Oh, I don’t know, dear, you tell me.” He could hear the smile in her voice as she twisted to nip at his earlobe lightly.

He chuckled, turning his head to capture her lips with his own. They kissed until the tips of his ears warmed and they were both a little breathless.

With a last peck to her temple, he leaned his head back against the tree trunk, willing his heated blood to cool and Hera tucked deeper into his side.

They sat in companionable silence for a while. Another bout of fireworks started lighting up the sky again, and Kanan had to imagine the bright colors as their booms filled the night.

The thought popped into his head unbidden, I wonder how they’re celebrating on Lothal right now. It was like being doused with cold water.

It’s not like this was the first time he’d thought of Ezra, even today. His thoughts drifted constantly to his padawan—really, former padawan; Ezra had more than done enough to prove himself worthy of the title of Jedi Knight.

But the ache of missing Ezra and the sudden longing to be on Lothal—the closest planet they could call home—dug sharply into his chest.

“Kanan?” Hera asked. He didn’t realize how tense he’d suddenly gotten until she was smoothing a hand over his chest. “What’s wrong?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. I’m okay. It’s—tonight’s been perfect.” He exhaled through his nose. “Except…”

“Ezra,” she finished for him quietly. Quickly; like she’d been thinking about the missing member of their family, too.

“Yeah. I just…I wonder if he could sense it, where he is, the Emperor dying or the Death Star. Or if he’s just too far away from us that he doesn’t know.”

Hera squeezed his hand and pressed a soothing kiss to his cheek. “He knows we’re out here. That’s all that matters.” He nodded, but couldn’t bring himself to speak. She pressed on, “We’ll find him, we will. I really believe that.”

“I know we will,” he responded, the words heavy on his tongue.

All their leads on Ezra’s whereabouts had turned into dead-ends over the last several years of the war. But he believed Hera, he believed in her hope. And he believed in the Force, trusting that he would’ve known if something truly terrible had happened to Ezra, no matter how far away he was.

Then Hera said, “We can pick up where we left off with the search right away tomorrow.”

And at the promise of having a tomorrow, Kanan could only pull her impossibly closer.

Safe among their friends and the trees of Endor’s moon, they welcomed the first dawn of a free galaxy, together.

[end]

#thinking about kanan at the battle of endor and thinking about them all finally seeing the end of the empire got me emotional #kaneraweek2024 #kanera #swr #star wars rebels #kanan jarrus #hera syndulla #my writing #now the question is: will i get anything written later tonight for day 3. time will tell!

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