for_everyone | (no subject)

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She's awake. Her face is flat against some smooth surface, the smell of it quick to help her remember the mat. The sandcrawler, the Jawas. One arm is tucked beneath her, the other out, her fingers also pressing into the mat. She feels the fabric of her hood tucked against her forehead, her lekku, and there's something on top of her, lying horizontal across her, set just above her elbow. Hera can hear slow, steady breathing, can feel it along the back of her neck. It's all she can hear. The crawler has stopped.

Hera opens her eyes. There's bright white light, coming up from the grate beneath them. She shifts, turning over, and realizes what's lying across her is Kanan's arm. She must have moved closer to him in her sleep. Hera lifts herself up, and slowly tries to move his arm off from her and back to his side, quietly and gently enough to not wake him. Maybe that's something she should think about, be bothered by or – not. But for now it doesn't hold her interest. She rolls back to the edge of the mat, looking down into the room below, but though the lights are on, and the combustion chamber reignited, there's no one inside.

Now she hears more – voices. Scurrying footsteps outside. Have they arrived somewhere? Hera doesn't feel like they've slept that long. She pulls out her chrono – nearly four hours. It's the middle of the night. What's gotten the rest of them up?

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"I know," she murmurs.

"Hopefully this didn't slow us down too much."

"If anyone knows how to make up time in one of these things . . . "

Okay, it's probably not the Jawas, but maybe?

Well, Hera's not offering to drive.

"I don't think we were stopped very long before we woke up."

She's pretty sure she woke because that once again constant churning sound around them had gone quiet.

Kanan exhales heavily.

"That's something. But now I'm really not inclined to nap to kill time."

He could meditate, but that'd leave Hera basically on her own, conversation-wise, and that's . . . he'd really rather not.

"We should get more sleep while we have the chance."

But she's not exactly feeling very restful, either.

"Uh. Do you want me to . . . "

He trails off.

"I mean, if you do want to get more sleep I can probably . . . help."

"What?"

. . .

Right, so this is even more awkward than he thought it sounded in his head. Still, it's probably worse just to leave it there.

"Meditation techniques? With the -- uh . . . guided meditation techniques?"

"Oh."

She stays quiet for a moment, and then -

"Maybe - if I can't later -"

Really, if she doesn't feeling like sleeping, she's not going to feel like meditating much, either.

"All right," Kanan says quickly, looking -- at all the red lights limning the room around them, that seems pretty safe right now.

Sort of.

"Yeah, I'll -- be here. Then. If you want . . . "

Kanan stops talking.

Again, Hera falls silent. Briefly. Listening to the churn of the crawler, feeling out its forward movement.

"Do you know very much about them?"

It's another few seconds, and then, "The Tusken Raiders."

"Not a lot, no. The usual rumors, stories of violence and depradation, the occasional fearmongering gossip about them eating other sentients."

That last one is probably unlikely.

"You?"

"The same," she answers. "Not the eating but. Violence. Torturing those they don't kill outright. I guess there's only so much anyone can know, if that's the case."

"The Jawas seem to get on with them. Or . . . at least this group of them?"

Maybe they're seasonal, the conflicts. Or there's a complex web of interconnected relationships that plays into trade vs conversation vs violence.

Maybe they just don't like outsiders?

"Maybe they're not seen as invaders."

Hera's pretty quick to jump to that possibility.

Kanan doesn't smile, just huffs out a considering breath.

And after a minute --

"I have to think that at least helps. And it could be the whole story, too. I just -- I wonder."

The first space travelers to reach Tatooine was by now ancient history. If things had ever been different, when it came to outsiders' encounters with the Tuskens, Hera had never heard of it.

"I -"

But then she hears that thought in her head before she says it, and cuts it off. There's no way she'll make it sound like what she means.

Kanan just looks back at her, waiting for a long moment to see if she'll continue on her own.

Then --

"What?"

"No, I don't -"

She lifts her hands, pressing them to her forehead, trying to make this work.

"Maybe I could - kind of understand that, sometimes."

Oh.

Yeah.

Ryloth.

"I can see that," Kanan says slowly, carefully. He, too, is trying to make this work, to understand without giving offense, or taking any. Because she's right. The Twi'lek would have been a lot better off if outsiders -- invaders -- hadn't decided they'd be easy to make a profit from.

"For -- and it's not a terrible strategy. I mean. It wouldn't have been."

"I didn't mean..."

She's not sure what she meant. Hera takes a deep breath. closing her eyes against what little light they have. "I don't mean it's right. And if we'd ended up facing them, I would've gone down fighting if I had to.

"But I... I can understand seeing invaders. And wanting nothing to do with them."

And she does wonder, right or not, what might have been different had Ryloth's visitors and invaders alike encountered a more violent response.

"Survival makes for hard choices," Kanan says, after a long moment of silence.

"Maybe the Tuskens turned down 'right' in favor of 'effective'. I -- can see why people make that choice, I think. I don't agree with it, but -- "

Everyone has to draw their own lines. Civilizations, too.

"That can be a dangerous way to think."

But she's not disagreeing. And she'd be lying if she said she'd never thought like that. Sometimes there are only bad choices - and sometimes that's an excuse. And she's not entirely sure what she can decide, about the Tuskens, or for them.

"It's been effective in keeping them safe," she murmurs. "Out of the hands of slavers. In their lands, mostly. But it hasn't kept people away from here."

They're just another danger, something common in the Outer Rim. "And so many beings don't want to be here in the first place."

"Even the Hutts don't really want to be here, I'd guess. It's just . . . convenient."

His tone twists that last into a dirty word.

"But somehow that doesn't seem to have helped the Tuskens any. Or the Jawas."

Or anyone else, for that matter.

"The Hutts had a choice about it."

She had to wonder how many had gotten caught between the Tuskens and the slavers.