for_everyone | (no subject)

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The advantage of Hera's typical technique is that it's controlled, and understated. She draws as little attention as possible to the act while she's carrying it out, giving her time to plant evidence and leave the area before most have even realized what has happened. But, once in a while, a particular job calls for a little more showmanship than this. Her work is never supposed to leave any uncertainty as to what it means, and who is behind it. But sometimes, there can also be value in sheer brazenness.

Which means that Hera's most recent target, Captain Orfanidis, was stabbed in the chest in his own quarters aboard the ISS Laran. At least the follow-up requires slightly less work – Hera doesn't even bother hiding her weapon. She hopes they find it. She hopes they find her DNA on it. She hopes they know exactly who did this, and that they walk in fear of when she'll do it again.

But if she plans to do it again, it also means she has to get away. Which is why she waits just long enough to ensure Orfanidis is dead before she drops her blade, and checks her time, before she steps back out into the hall. The moment she does is just as the ship's assigned cleaning "staff" is passing through. They're all wearing shock collars, so that they don't need a monitor, and are dutifully keeping their eyes down. Already disguised accordingly, it's easy enough for Hera to step in among them, and walk with them as they pass through the staff quarters.

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Thrawn passes it over, moving to stand just in front of his desk, scarlet eyes fixed on the half-Betazoid as he waits for Hera to do her work.

Hera approaches the lieutenant, her stance taut even as she leans over him, keeping herself read to move or strike if she needs to.

She holds the object under the man's nose, and flicks a latch on its side, before quickly straightening and taking a step back again.

Kanan hisses in a sharp breath as he comes to, body already bracing for the pain of the agony booth, because clearly he failed at --

Wait.

"What did you do?" He tries struggling to his feet through the lingering pain of the stun and its removal.

"I can't be here."

Hera steps forward again, careful with her footing, ready for him to charge or attack her.

"Sit down." She doesn't move to force him down, yet, but it's also not a request.

Kanan snarls up at her, then attempts to leap to his feet, charging at her in a wild attempt to get past her to the door.

Anticipating this, she hooks her leg around and twists out of his way, shoving at his shoulder as she does to use his momentum to topple him forward.

In the same flat tone, "That's a waste of time."

Thrawn is standing next to him a moment later, grip hard and firm as he twists the man's arm behind his back and returns him to te chair.

"Do you enjoy futility? Certainly your Empire seems to, time and time again."

His voice, it must be said, is very dry.

Kanan doesn't bother wincing, even though the fall and the twisted arm hurt. It's nothing next to what's coming, he can tell.

(He thinks he can tell, anyway. It's what he'd do.)

"You can't be stupid enough to think I make a good bargaining chip."

Hera steps out of the way, waiting to speak until the man is back in the chair.

"We don't bargain with Terrans."

Kanan spits, sneer still curling his expression. Disdain drips from every syllable out of his mouth. Or he tries to make it sound that way, at least. Mostly he just wants them to get to it.

"You think you can torture information out of me? Please."

Thrawn tsks softly under his breath, sharing a long and weary look with Hera.

"Such a paucity of imagination. Honestly. For someone with your reported talents, this is really quite disappointing."

"But completely expected," she says, but in Sy Bisti.

Switching back to English, "From a Terran officer. What could they offer to make you turn against your people?"

"My people left me," Kanan spits back, "so they're no longer my people. I am Terran. I will live and die that way."

"And there is our leverage," Thrawn murmurs, also in Sy Bisti.

Then --

"Are you certain you weren't taken? Terrans tend to do that, when other beings have something they want. I'm sure you've noticed."

Hera glances away at 'taken.'

It's not something she would normally do. Normally she'd give her emotions as little room as she could manage. But now she lets that pang, that recognition, linger a little in her mind.

Maybe it's pointless. But it probably can't hurt.

Kanan casts her a quick, sideways look, almost as if he can't help himself. He shoves the curiosity out of his expression as fast as he can, though, and sets his jaw.

"My father was a man of honor."

"I'm sure he never regretted your birth," Thrawn says mildly.

Everyone in this room is well aware that the opposite must have been true.

Having caught his glance, Hera looks back to him.

"Terrans don't have honor."

"None that you can understand."

He sneers again, looking from Hera to Thrawn . . . and then back again.

"I heard what they called you."

She keeps her eyes on him. "You were never going to be one of them."

"I swore an oath!"

His voice cracks very slightly on the last word, and he looks away, because this is another thing everyone in the room knows to be true.

"I won't tell you anything."

There's another flare of emotion, not quite as voluntary this time, and much more quickly tamped down.

But her voice is still flat as she says, "That's not why I took you."

"Do you think you're likely to inquire why, precisely, you are here . . . lieutenant, I believe it is?"

There's a hint more smoothness to Thrawn's mild voice, a taunt that he makes no effort to conceal.

"What?" Kanan snaps, unsettled by the tone, by the glint in those scarlet eyes, or . . . maybe it's something else.

But --

"Are your kind taking slaves now, too?"

Hera swears, in Sy Bisti. There's not much force behind it, just a soft snarl against the back of her throat.

"When I thought you were Terran, I wanted you alive to tell them what I did."

She leans forward slightly now, to better meet his eye line. "I thought you'd run like a coward, the way a Terran does. But you didn't."