Hera Syndulla

Hera never brings him food herself. She does usually help prepare it – she has a better sense of the Terran diet than most, and when it comes down to it, she doesn't fully trust the others not to poison a meal they know is going to their half-Terran 'guest.' But she always finds someone she does trust to take it into him. And then, at first, she'd waited, leaving him to eat alone before she entered his room.

She kept to the first. But the second, she gradually eased. Hera remembered how total her isolation had been, and what had eased in her when she'd grown used to sharing meals. That was something she could do, even if she wouldn't serve him.

So the time she waits becomes shorter and shorter. Until today, when it's only a few minutes after seeing Muroc exit the makeshift cabin that she approaches. She nods to the guard, and then though she doesn't have to, she knocks on the door. She doesn't wait for an answer before entering the room.

It usually works out that Hera handles the credits, and Kanan did the 'heavy lifting.' Though any time he calls it that, she reminds him that it's only so heavy when the crates have antigrav. But it does mean that Kanan's usually out longer. Hera won't part with the cargo until they've been paid, which means that she's on the upper deck of the hold, sitting over the ledge, double-checking their payment for any signs of counterfeits and swiping through her datapad as she adds the new income to their budget.

And Kanan is, meanwhile, shoving crates down the Ghost's ramp, with the help of their buyers, a crew of Rodian junk traders. Chopper should also be helping, but he'd whisked himself away somewhere above deck, and it looks like Kanan and the others are handling things well enough that she's not going to bother trying to find him.

After about ten minutes, the last of the crates have been hauled off, and Kanan is shaking hands with one of the traders. He then retreats up into the ship as the Rodians exit, and hits the button to bring up the ramp. Hera looks up from her datapad, at first watching the ramp, and then, as it closes, turning her eyes to Kanan.

Not an option, Kanan.

It had always been an option.

Maybe what should shock her is that it took this long. Leave Kanan to the Empire, or hesitate long enough to be shot out of the sky, be captured or killed next to him. The mission came first. Hijacking the comm tower would mean nothing if there was no one left to send a message. It had to mean something. She'd heard that in his voice, when he shouted her name. So she'd closed the Phantom's doors, and flown them away. Kept her eyes ahead as she felt her crew watch her uneasily, having seen her leave one of them behind.

On the Ghost, Ezra sends out their message. An echo of the broadcasts of his parents from years ago. Their signal cuts out moments after the message ends.

A few hours later, Hera takes the Phantom out again, in a low, wide circle around the tower – or as it turns out, what's left of it. She knows Kanan and his captors will be long gone, though she still flies cautiously, slipping from cloud cover to mountain shadows. But all that's left is rubble, still smoldering in a bright haze that rises from the Lothal plains. Apparently reversing Sabine and Chopper's work had been too much for the Imps, or maybe they were just too impatient for it. Hera supposes it shouldn't surprise her. The Empire never saw a problem it couldn't blast away.

When she returns to the Ghost, they're already planning. But before anything else, they need to know where he is. The Imperial Complex in the capital is the likely, but not the only possibility. Especially not for –

If they know Kanan's –

And by now, they must know.

Get into the Imperial data network, find out where Kanan is. This isn't over, Ezra had said.

This isn't over. But whatever she might tell herself, with her even tone and her steady flying, the seconds are ticking away in Hera's mind, measuring out transport, arrival, preparation, interrogation –

Timing out the likelihood they'll ever see him again.

Hera's hovering near the door to her cabin.

She would hover near the door to Kanan's cabin, but she knows if she does that, he'll sense her there. And she's not –

He needs to rest. They all need to rest. They were lucky to all be alive. It had been an unbelievably, impossibly long day, ending with a massive shift for all of them. Meeting with Phoenix Squadron, with Fulc-

All right, it had been a more massive shift for some than others. And Hera's not sure how Kanan will feel about her after whatever the Empire had done to him, after her decisions both to leave him and to risk their crew – their family's lives to come after him. And then Ahsoka. She'd kept so much from him, and so much out of his hands, for so long. And she doesn't doubt herself for it, hasn't wavered in her belief that it was necessary, that it had protected them, all of them, not just her crew but the others slowing coalescing across the galaxy. She also believed that Kanan had been right, that they had needed to do more than cause the occasional nuisance to the Empire, than even saving a few lives. There had to be hope.

But Ahsoka's words still ring in her mind.
Your mission was to be unseen.

That hope was fragile as a single flame. What it needed was to survive. Keeping quiet had kept them alive, for the moment. But now there was Phoenix Squadron. There was Ahsoka. The threads of the web were beginning to connect.

And maybe what Kanan needs is to be alone. To think about it, and how he feels about it. And how he feels about her.

Hera doesn't want to be alone. But that's selfish. And she's not sure how to ask how he feels without revealing her own need.

So she lowers herself to the floor of her cabin, sitting up against the door, lekku pressed against it, and stares up at the ceiling. Trying to calm her mind, and trying to think of a way to knock on Kanan's door without having to knock on his door.

Insubordination. It's not a word she ever liked much, but she knows it applies. Her crew went against her orders, sought out Kanan even after she'd told them to stop, stole her shuttle, and traded Kanan's most desperate secret for what might be a lead. And what could she do about it, really? Lecture, scold. Hardly the work of a commanding officer. But then, what were they, really, and what was she? A modified freighter and a handful of beings the Empire had chewed up and spat back out again. That's not a military, not even a militia. It's just an agreement

Now they disagreed. Hera didn't relish the power of her command, it's why she so often preferred a discussion, or a vote. But she did carry a responsibility, to her crew, and to her cause. And nearly every rational piece of her was screaming that they couldn't take this risk. She couldn't send her crew to die in vain, couldn't put Kanan's life above theirs. He didn't belong to them.

They were all part of something bigger.

And they had disobeyed her. None of us want to give up on Kanan. It made part of her furious. Hera hated that she was ordering Ezra to give up on his teacher, ordering all of them to leave behind their friend, their –

But they were also the reason for it. The idea of going on without Kanan terrified her. She hadn't realized how much of herself, of her well-being and persistence she had put into him, she might as well ask herself to rip off one of her lekku and leave it behind. But it couldn't be about that. She had walked on before, and she would do it again.

And in another time, she might have told them to do the same. That they didn't have time for their sorrows. But they're not her soldiers, nor just her crew. They're her family, and this sorrow might be enough to break them. And she can't let that happen, either.

There might be a lead.

"All right," she sighs. "What did you learn?"

---

Strangers had always liked to talk to her. Especially when she'd been on her own, sometimes it was work just to avoid them. They were curious about a Twi'lek girl, alone save for her grumpy droid. The younger ones wanted to impress her with what they'd seen across the galaxy. The older ones wanted someone to confide in. Maybe for this young girl to remember them. And then there were those who simply needed someone, anyone, to hear them. Those were usually the ones she'd sought out herself.

Their stories weighed her down. She'd had to train herself to manage her emotions, and her reactions. Surprise, shock, concern, fear – it's not that she didn't feel them anymore, but that she had to remember what they looked like. What others expected to see in her. If she wanted the information.

Which, mostly, she did. Even if she didn't know it for sure when their stories started.

The one she heard now had come to her when she was sixteen, and co-piloting a cargo transport to Malastare. Their navigator was an old Sullustan, who sat with her in the cockpit while the rest of the crew played sabacc in the galley. He'd barely said a word more than he'd ever needed to, at least when the rest of the crew was around. But even at that age, Hera hadn't been surprised when he lingered back with her. When he began to talk.

It started with a confession. That as a younger man, he'd run with a group of marauders that robbed and scavenged their way across the Outer Rim. Low-profile compared to some of the pirates that had haunted trade lanes in those days before the Clone Wars, but prolific enough to get by.

Hera had thought, at first, that he'd wanted to impress her. She'd never seen being a pirate as much to brag about, but before she could say as much, he said a name –

Q'anah. A legend throughout the Outer Rim, though Hera had never known her as anything more than an old ghost story. A mythical pirate queen, whose exploits smugglers and pilots and freedom fighters like to tell around cantinas and campfires. Hera hadn't really known that story's beginning. Or its ending.

That Q'anah had really lived, once, decades ago. That she had thrived until being ensnared by a then young lieutenant from Eriadu. And that the same young lieutenant had ensured that anyone within range could watch and listen as she shrieked and wailed through her long, agonizing death. It had been more than thirty years since then, and the Sullustan's voice still shook as he spoke. He hadn't been trying to impress her.

He had just needed to speak.

And even then, Hera had known that lieutenant's name before it was said aloud.

"Kanan is on Governor Tarkin's Star Destroyer, the Sovereign."

Wilhuff Tarkin. They'd brought the Grand Moff himself back to Lothal.

She had a handful of seconds, to be sixteen, to be back in that cockpit, alone with the old pirate. Before Sabine speaks again -

The Mustafar system.

Before they're looking to her –

It's where Jedi go to die. They never come out. It's where every trail ended.

In that moment, she doesn't want to be a ship's captain. She doesn't want her crew looking to her. Hera wants to lock herself in her quarters and just start screaming. She thinks of Fulcrum's warning. She thinks of her father lighting her mother's pyre, of holding the fire herself. Will she leave Kanan to Mustafar? Will she send her crew to be slaughtered by Tarkin, Ezra to be another Jedi who never came back?

It won't be her last. That's what her father had said when she'd lit her first pyre. And he had been right about that.

And for another handful of seconds, Hera lets herself see that fire, lets herself imagine the lava flows of Mustafar, the screams of that pirate queen and her crew as they drifted into some distant sun.

Then, Hera opens her eyes to the floor of her cockpit. She raises them, looking back to her crew.

"We know where he is. Now we need a plan."

Hera and Jacen had spent most of the afternoon in the lake outside, with Chopper on the shore, occasionally beeping grumpily when he'd decided they'd ventured too far out. But Jacen had never been in the water before, and they hadn't had time to find a spring or river before leaving Ryloth. The shore had made things easier, so that Jacen could move slowly into the water, rather than diving in as Hera had as a child. And that was probably for the best – Jacen could be extremely curious, but was also shy, and far more cautious than Hera had maybe ever been.

So after they've changed and dried off their lekku, they walk back into the Bar, following Chopper to a table. Hera had promised hot, bitter tea after their time in the water, and Chopper, eager to do something he can participate in again, retrieves two model X-wings from the Bar, and brings them over. For the moment, Hera falls silent, sipping at her tea, and watching as Chopper and Jacen swing the X-wings through the air, making wooshing and blaster noises.

She doesn't smile as she watches, but follows their movements with her eyes.

And then there's what comes after any new plan is announced – preparation. Target practice, assessing equipment and supplies, reviewing skills that could come in handy. Hera has been reviewing what they know of the Empire's primary communications tower on Lothal, distance, surrounding settlements or Imperial installations, routes in and out, likely weather fronts, flight times. She'll know more once they've run reconnaissance, as she considers the prospect of a flying a pickup with the Phantom, and every possible way she could be fired on in the process.

Eventually, once she's learned all she can for the moment, Hera sets this aside. Leaving the Ghost's cockpit, she climbs down, through the ship. Chopper's in the galley, playing Dejarik against the board, and she directs him to run a diagnostic on the Phantom so they don't run into any of the problems they faced on Fort Anaxes. Chopper reluctantly trundles off, and Hera continues onward, down to the cargo bay, its door and ramp already open onto the warm Lothal fields. She doesn't have to look too long to spot a slice of blue light above the high grass, swinging along the tops of the grass, occasionally singeing it. As she approaches, the sounds of it, the blade of the lightsaber sizzling through the air, become clearer.

She keeps up her approach, though she waits until Kanan notices before she speaks to him.

"How's it going?"

Hera returns to the cockpit, helping Chopper set them on a course back to Lothal. It's a roundabout route of hyperspace lanes – the Empire knows they fled, and knows they're likely to return, so it's all the better to take their time and avoid any paths they're likely to be monitoring. It'll also take a large bite out of their fuel supplies, more than Hera really wants to lose right now. But she knows it's worth it not to cut corners, not when the Imperials will be out for blood, not just for the new TIE they'd destroyed, but for spiriting Tseebo and all the intel he had away from them.

And that intel –

She forces herself to be patient, to take her time setting out the coordinates, in working through Chopper's frustrations with her insistence they take every precaution possible. And finally, with their course laid in and the coordinates of their first leg ready, Hera takes the Ghost into hyperspace, the ship shifting forward, the stars beyond them blurring into streaks of blue and white.

Hera doesn't linger in the pilot's chair. She leaves Chopper to monitor their progress, and then climbs down out of the cockpit. As she makes her way through the ship, she notices a light from the nose gun turrets, and stops for just a few seconds. But then she keeps moving, onward to the cabins, until she comes to a halt outside Kanan's.

After they'd returned to Lothal, Hera had let Sabine and Zeb handle distributing the supplies among the refugees in Tarkintown. The Ghost had wanted her attention even before their run to Kaller – they were lucky that as eventful as the job had been, it hadn't included dodging TIE squads or other run-ins with the Imperial fleet. She first sets Chopper running general systems diagnostics, while she cleans off old data on the nav computer, then moves on to the engineering station. Chopper sends her the results of the diagnostics, then trundles down from the cockpit to help her lift away the panels for access to the hydraulics system.

She's finishing up the retuning when Chopper alerts her that Kanan and Ezra have returned. Hera only nods, climbing up from the maze of piping and leaving Chopper to reaffix the paneling as she heads down to the loading ramp. Hera hits the button to lower the ramp, opening the ship out onto the warm Lothal evening. She takes a few steps down, stopping short of the high grasses that surround the Ghost, and slips down to sit on the ramp, bending her knees and wrapping her arms around them. There's a light breeze and the tussle of lothcats nearby. And not too far in the distance are the outlines of the freight containers and decommissioned transports that have been converted into the makeshift homes of 'resettlement camp 43.'

And soon, there's the soft brush of footsteps approaching through the grass.

Things didn't go according to plan.

They had made it to Grakkus' palace without any trouble. It was an enormous building, square and clay-colored, with a cavernous, decked out entrance hall that was already filling up when they entered. The party had been easy to join, with plenty of edges and corners to slip into, to watch the other guests, and to follow the Hutt's triumphant entrance as he introduced his prize. The crowd wasn't given much of a look at it, surprising no one, only assurances that it was highly valued by the Empire. It looked like nothing more than a large black box, and they had watched as it was carted away, down one of the side halls. Chopper had slipped away to see if he could plug into the palace's computer system, while Hera and Kanan slowly set off toward their quarry. And then –

It's about an hour and a half later, and Hera can still hear the music from the party, the bass beating through the dusty walls, even a whisper of the talk of the revelers. Which is all the more impressive given that she must be at least two floors beneath it, in a small, dark cell. There's a flickering lamp in the ceiling, and a small, barred window in the door, filtering in the dim light from the hallway. Hera is sitting on the floor, her hands shackled to the wall on either side of her. She can feel the low buzz of the shock collar against her throat, but she's not paying much attention to it.

Instead, she has spent most of the last ten minutes trying to contort herself to get close enough to kick Kanan in the shins. He hasn't moved since he was stunned with some kind of electrorod Hera had never seen before. It must've really packed a punch, because he's been out for nearly thirty minutes, as Hera finally manages to shove her feet close enough to him to stamp against his leg.

"Kanan!" she hisses. "Kanan, wake up!"