for_everyone | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

"All right." Hera drops down from the nose of the Ghost, having spent the last forty-five minutes cleaning and mending the nose gun canopy. "How's it going, Chopper?"

Chopper blats, a shower of sparks spraying from under the ship. Hera walks around to join him, kneeling down next to the droid to get a look at the panel he's reattaching. "We should probably look into getting this replaced –"

Before she can finish, Chopper blats again, rolling toward her with his unignited welder. Hera raises her hands, but doesn't move.

"– I was just going to say, you're doing a great job in the meantime."

This gets a contented, 'I already knew that' sort of chirp, and Hera steps back as Chopper resumes his work.

"Can you keep watch out here? I need to talk to Kanan for a while."

Chopper waves a free arm at her, and Hera steps away, out from under the ship and into a spill of moonlight. Interruptions were doubtful, in any case. They'd chosen a cavern far from any of Ovanis' cities, offering nothing of value but a place to rest. No ship could approach without being heard, as echoes crashed easily through the high, curved mountains. In fact, few pilots could even land a fighter, let alone a freighter, among the caverns here.

But Hera still glances up once to the moons. Then she turns, and heads up the ramp, into the Ghost. She walks through the crates they'd stacked in the cargo hold, up the ladder, tracing her hand along the table as she passes through the galley, and then against the wall as she walks along the cabins.

When she reaches Kanan's door, she curls her hand into a loose fist, and knocks.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He looks up from his repair of a fiddly bit of lightsaber, carefully turning off his soldering equipment and tucking it away. In the midst of that --

"Come in."

The doors slide open, and Hera steps through, moving to lean against the wall as they close again.

"The repairs are mostly done." Her glances briefly to what he's working on, not pausing as she speaks. "Chopper's just finishing it up."

He looks up from his work, twisting off the last closure and putting the hilt back together.

"So we've got some downtime coming up, tucked away in these caverns?"

"Looks like it."

She folds her arms, her eyes flickering down again to watch him piece the lightsaber together.

"I was thinking, since we'll have the time..."

Hera lets herself trail off for a few seconds. But then she raises her eyes again, and takes a deep breath. "Maybe we should take the time to ... work on, what we talked about before."

Kanan looks up at her quickly, as she finishes speaking.

"We could," he says, only a little reluctantly.

"And you're right, maybe we should. It's just -- I'm not sure how pleasant it's going to be. And I don't want -- "

"I don't think it's ever going to be pleasant."

Hera shifts, standing away from the wall, taking a couple steps closer to him. "But I trust you. I'd rather do this here, with you, now. Not -"

She breaks off, and blinks away again.

Kanan winces, and doesn't even struggle to keep his face blank, or composed.

"No, this will be . . . less unpleasant than that, I think. At least that's been my experience."

So.

He stands at that one.

"But, uh. Maybe you should be the one sitting. For this."

Hera nods.

She steps closer to the bunk, but instead of sitting at once, she unfolds her arms, and holds out her hand toward Kanan.

He reaches out in return automatically, taking her hand in his and holding on.

"What is it?"

Hera waits a few seconds.

And then she smiles, and uses her grip on his hand to pull his arm. "Move so I can sit."

"Oh. Right."

It's not that he's distracted, it's just that he's . . . . apprehensive.

He is also not faintly flushed.

"Go ahead."

Kanan finishes moving out of her way, in the direction her tug indicated.

Centering himself in the Force is going to be a challenge just now, he knows it.

Hera steps over to take a seat on the bunk next to him. For the moment, she keeps her hand in his.

Once she's seated, she looks up to him, her smile only slightly faded, and asks, gently, "All right?"

"Who, me?"

Kanan manages a smile, though it's strained around the edges.

"I'm fine. Just hoping I'm not a terrible teacher."

Edited 2017-12-02 04:54 (UTC)

"Kanan, you are the only person I would trust to do this."

And not just because he may be the only person who could do it.

Kanan's fingers clench around Hera's hand, just for a second.

"I know."

He breathes.

"All right. To start, we'll do a quick breathing exercise. If you practice it, it'll help keep your mind and body and the outside world more in sync. Like centering. So you'll have the best position possible to . . . keep probes out."

"All right."

Hera starts to breathe more slowly, perhaps becoming more conscious of her breathing, or trying to align with his.

One deep breath, for a slow three count, then an exhale. Then inhale for four, exhale for four.

He goes up to a six count, then stops.

"You can keep going, if it doesn't feel like it's working, but much more than a ten-count is . . . distracting."

Hera breathes with him. Her shoulders begin to relax, some of the tension sinking out of her.

Her breathing slows as he speaks, but she only looks back to him, and nods.

"All right, good."

He smiles, and it's only a little forced around the edges.

"Now. What's the most protective imagery you can think of? Something that makes you feel safe -- a person, a place, a situation? Some people imagine walls, some well-fortified shuttlecraft, others a peaceful stream or a desert sandstorm . . . It varies."

Hera blinks away, images flickering through her mind. The stone halls of her home in the Tan Province. The desert canyons she wandered as a girl. Her mother, resting alongside her, the rise and fall of her breathing, singing softly with her. Dappled light along Chopper's plating as he hid with her beneath smuggler's panels. Rainstorms turning up dust, the Ghost's controls pressed against her hands, firelight spinning shadows along the walls of that crashed Separatist ship, the brush of Kanan's eyes, even when she's not looking back at him.

She takes another deep breath, and closes her eyes, as they fill with the moonlight over the Ghost tonight. Of it crawling along the slopes she'd climbed, when she'd slipped away from her parents.

Softly, "The night sky." Her eyes flutter open, and she looks back to him. "Or the view from my ship."

"The latter sounds good. It'll give you . . . other techniques to try, depending on how the probe tries to work around it."

He takes another breath. This is going to be so uncomfortable, probably for both of them.

"Right. So, focus on that image, on the feeling you get when you're in the cockpit, how impregnable it feels when you're flying evasive maneuvers. And when you feel like you've got that fixed firmly in your mind, I'll . . . try to get in."

“All right.”

Hera lowers her head again, and closes her eyes. She begins her slow, deep breathes, at first counting them off in her mind, and then letting the seconds slip away. The darkness beneath her eyes fades into the silent vault of space. Stars flare up in the, tiny sparks of light kindling in the dark, gathering into a slow spin of distant systems and old constellations.

It’s not hard to imagine, to see it clearly in her mind. But keeping it silent, letting it encompass her thoughts, pressing out intrusions like the sounds of the ship around them, like considering how the stars in her mind should be aligned and wondering when Kanan will be begin - whatever he’s going to do, that’s more difficult.

When she seems settled into it, her breath rhythmic and deep, her presence bright and sharp in the Force (as ever) --

Kanan reaches out gently, tracing her defenses with a light touch, and then delving into the thoughts within. Not deeply, not this time. A memory of today's earlier work will do well enough, for this beginning.

He feels a little nauseated, because this is Hera, and it feels wrong to be this intrusive, but --

But no one can build a defense without any practice, and to really do that, there has to be an actual opposing force at work.

And so --

There's a sudden, sharp breath when he first begins, but it quickly returns to its slow, steady rhythm.

In her mind, however, staying focused is even more difficult. She holds, as much as, as stubbornly as she can to those stars, to the grand stretch of space she could watch from her cockpit. But it flashes and fades, sometimes as dim as a holo. It's a strange, unwelcome feeling, being unable to control what she thinks, and her grip on Kanan grows slightly tighter.

Hera clings to the stars for just over a minute, before bright sunlight and the sound of blasterfire bursts through. She opens her eyes, quickly gasping again.

Kanan withdraws his own touch through the Force as if he's been scalded, about the time that Hera starts gasping.

"So . . . now you know what that feels like. Well . . . usually it's worse than that when someone's really trying, in the kind of scenario where no one cares about subtlety."

He winces, just thinking about it. And about testing Hera with it, which is almost inevitable as she improves.

"Which . . . I'm fairly sure the people doing this kind of thing in the Empire don't."