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Hera smiled as she heard Kanan join her on the bridge. They hadn’t been traveling together for long, but there was a certain comfort in his quiet presence. Maybe it had to do with what she’d seen him do on their first mission together, the thought that he might be - or more accurately might have become - a Jedi. Underneath the armour of dirty jokes and snarky comments, behind the alcoholic tendencies, there was a genuinely good person that Hera wanted to get to know.
He sat in the chair next to her, watching as the stars slowly moved around them out in the blackness of space. They were a little while away from their next hyperspace jump point, but Hera loved to see the stars just as much as she loved to see the sky in the full bloom of sunrise or sunset. The infinite space made her feel free and small and unimportant, but so significant at the same time. In all that darkness, in all that empty space, she was alive.
“Can I tell you a secret?” Kanan asked.
Surprised, she turned to look at him. The ship was on autopilot, so she didn’t really need to be on the bridge, but she liked it anyway. “Of course.”
Kanan nodded, his lips pursed slightly. The silence between them stretched and Hera thought that maybe he’d changed his mind when he gave a deep sigh. He leaned forwards and rested his elbows on his knees, his hands coming together to form a triangle between his fingers and thumbs.
“When I was 13,” he started, “I started going by the name Kanan Jarrus. My birth name is Caleb Dume.”
It didn’t surprise her as much as maybe she thought he thought it would. She could see on his face that her lack of reaction was both welcome and a bit of a shock to him. She nodded, encouraging him to go on, but he didn’t.
Hera smiled softly. “Caleb.” She rolled it around on her tongue and it tasted like sugar cubes. “It’s a sweet name. Why did you stop using it?” She could guess, but she wanted the truth from him.
The corner of Kanan’s mouth quirked up slightly at her smile, but his brows soon furrowed. “How much do you know about the Great Purge?”
Sighing, Hera leaned further back in her seat. “Not much. I know that the Emperor said that the Jedi betrayed him and tried to kill him, but I don’t believe that. Or if they did try to kill him, I believe that they had a good reason. Why do you ask?”
Kanan looked conflicted, like the emotions inside of him were fighting. Part of him wanted to tell her the truth, she could see that much, but another part wanted to hide. He was scared either way, but he was trying to trust her.
“I was 13 when it started. My Master and I were on Kaller.” He flicked his eyes up to meet hers. “Have you ever been there?”
She shook her head.
“It’s a snowy planet. Cold.” He chuckled slightly. “I remember complaining to my Master about how cold it was when we first got there. ‘Use the Force to warm yourself’, she told me.” When he saw Hera’s confused lifted eyebrow, he laughed. “Yeah, I still haven’t figured that one out either. Anyway.” He sighed again. “We were facing down an army of droids. The Separatists had a base on Kaller that needed to be destroyed in order for the Republic to secure the planet, but we were badly outnumbered. Master Billaba sent me back to our base to send out a distress signal while she stayed with Commander Grey and Captain Styles. I ran as fast as I could to get to the base, pleaded with anyone who could hear my transmission that we were losing the battle and couldn’t hold out for much longer.”
A distant look had come over Kanan’s face, his eyes slightly misty. Hera didn’t know if he was lost in the memory or lost in the emotions that it brought up, but he wasn’t entirely with her anymore.
“I got a reply from one group of clones. They showed up and I was certain that we were going to die.” He raised his hands and rubbed them against his eyes, holding his head up with his fingertips on his forehead before continuing. “There were five of them and I was… not convinced that we would be able to defeat the droid army with only five more clones. But… we got cut off from the route back to my Master and I was thinking, this is it, this is where I die.” He dropped his hands again. “And I was wrong. I saw those five clones take out an entire battalion of droids by themselves. They fought like nothing I’d ever seen before.”
A memory tickled at the back of Hera’s mind. Five extraordinary clones…
“They sent me back to Master Billaba ahead of them. I told her that our reinforcements were coming and that we would be fine. Styles or Grey, I can’t remember which one, asked me how many soldiers I’d gotten and I told him. He reacted the same way that I did. ‘We’re gonna die’, but then they attacked. They took out three droid tanks and sent them over the cliff. One of the clones moved one by himself, he was that strong”
A clone with the strength to move an entire tank. Hera knew that was familiar.
Kanan had a rueful smile on his face. “We were winning because of those five different clones. Master Billaba sent me with them to take the base, but they stopped running just a few meters away from her. One of them said that Master Kenobi had killed General Grievous and that the war was over. They were happy and excited, but I… I don’t know, I was all mixed up inside. I was happy the war was over because it meant that we’d get to stop fighting, but… it was all I’d known for the past five years. I was raised in that war, I didn’t know anything else.” He sighed. “And then they went quiet. The one who’d reported the end of the war said that the only thing on the com channels was ‘Execute Order 66’, over and over again. They were all so confused, but I felt this dread wash over me. I looked back at Master Billaba and saw that our own troopers were firing on her.” His voice caught in his throat and Hera saw the tears in his eyes.
Leaning forward, Hera took Kanan’s hands in her own and held them tightly. “You don’t have to keep going if you don’t want to. It’s okay.”
He shook his head. “I need to,” he whispered.
“Okay.” She squeezed his hands.
Taking in a deep breath, he went on. “I ran towards her, trying to get back to her and help her, but she looked at me and screamed for me to run. I watched as our troops, our friends, killed her. So, I did what she told me to. I ran.” Tears were slowly trickling down his face, but he didn’t react to them. “I ran into the woods. I knew that they’d come after me next, so I ran as fast as I could and did my best to get as far away from them as possible, to hide in the trees, but… I heard them behind me. Two of the troopers that I’d brought to help us, they were following me. And one of them kept yelling at me not to run, that they didn’t know what was happening either, but the other one shot at me. And it wasn’t a stunning bolt, it was a killing one. I don’t know what happened, I think the first one attacked the other one because he shot at me, but I just kept running. I only stopped when I found myself at the edge of a cliff. There was a roaring waterfall and it was a long jump to the other side. The clone trooper caught up with me and was trying to reason with me, but I was so scared.” Kanan shook his head. “I’ll never forget his face. He took off his helmet to talk to me, and he had this tattoo on his face, it was-”
“Half a skull,” Hera interrupted, a gentle smile spreading across her face.
Kana looked up at her in surprise, his eyelashes still wet. “How did you know?”
“He and his troop saved me and my uncle from Imperial guards on Ryloth. Helped the freedom fighters to start a rebellion against the Empire and against the clone troopers still on my planet.” The curling accent of her people slowly seeped into her voice. “His name was Hunter.”
“He tried to tell me that I could trust him,” Kanan said.
“I think that you could have,” Hera said. “He was telling the truth when he said that he didn’t know what was happening.”
“I didn’t, though. I just kept on running. I jumped across the river and spent the next few days hiding in the forest.”
They were quiet as they both took in the information the other had given them. They let go of each other and sat back in their chairs.
“Small galaxy, huh?” Hera said.
Kanan huffed out a chuckle. “Yeah.”
“I still can’t believe that they let a little girl fight in the war.”
Confused, Kanan raised an eyebrow. “A little girl?”
“One of the five clones.” Hera counted out on her fingers. “There was Hunter, the skull face tattoo one; Tech, the one with the goggles; Wrecker, the strong one; Echo, the one that was part droid; and Omega, the little girl. She was the one that convinced her brothers to stay and help us.”
“There was the skull face one, the strong one, the goggles one, and the droid parts one, but there was another clone with them, not a little girl. A fully grown clone with a gun, the one that shot at me.”
Hera nodded. “That must have been Crosshair. Omega told me about her missing brother, too, and about how he hadn’t been able to resist the order.” She shook her head. “I’m slightly jealous. You got to see the Bad Batch in all their glory.”
She noticed a change in his demeanor, a slight stiffening of his body and a colder feeling between them. She realised the implications of what she said and reached for his hand again, leaning forward.
“No, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”
He stayed silent, but he relaxed again.
“I can’t even begin to imagine what you’ve been through.” She sighed. “I’m sorry, Kanan.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
He nodded. “I know.”
Hera looked at him and thought about what she knew now. A child soldier, an abandoned kid, who grew into a scared, scarred, but still loving man. She could see the layers of protection that he’d wrapped around himself for years starting to peel away. The bluster of the cantinas, the rough edges chipped at by hunger, the dirt and grime of the streets, all hiding the kind soul of a Jedi. She’d been right about him, about wanting to get to know him, but she was sad, too. She almost wished he was the smooth talking, cocky sonofabitch that he pretended to be. She understood the drinking now, the harsh words, the barbs on his heart.
“Thank you for telling me.”