Chapter Text
“Kanan. Kanan. Kanan.” He had dirt in his hair, sifted down into the scalp. “Kanan, where are you?” The air was chilly and damp. His fingers felt it, and the end of his nose. He wiped away a sneeze on his shoulder.
Then a face above him and the dirt disappeared from his head and his back. A searchlight shone behind her. He could make out the left half of her face in its light. “Kanan, let’s go.”
“Master!” He’d seen her shot down. He’d seen it. And he’d felt it. Hadn’t he?
“No,” she told him. “That was just an illusion for the soldiers. Necessary to our escape. Let’s go now.”
Oh. That made so much more sense. She leaned over him, the arc of her robe obscuring the light in his eyes, and offered him her hand. “Kanan, it is time to leave.”
Then he heard it. Kanan. “This isn’t right.” That questioning look he knew so well on her face, mostly concerned, a little amused. He was rocking the transport again. “You’re not Master Billaba.”
She frowned. “We have to leave now.” He could sense her concern through the Force, and her presence, genuine. She didn’t reveal herself. But now he knew, with utter certainty, that something dark was here, and this was a trick.
Her hand outstretched again. He couldn’t reach up to take it. He was asleep, or under sedation, and this was some illusion...
“NO!”
And with that supreme denial, Kanan woke himself.
A dark rooftop. Still cold. Well, this reality was a bitter disappointment, but at least it was real.
“Are you coming or not, Kid?”
He looked up. Well, to the side. He was hanging upside down from his knees on some sort of piping next to the roof vent. A long time ago, he would swing like this for ages on the younglings’ playground.
Kasmir, of course. “I thought this was the chance you wanted.”
He did. He wanted to eat and bathe and be warm, so desperately. Kasmir held a blaster out to him. “I’ve heard even you baby Jedi are good. Can you do as much with this as you can with that laser sword?”
Yes! Would he remember how to use the blaster? Had he learned yet? Uncertainty paralyzed him, and he couldn’t reach out and take it. His legs hung on, but his arms wouldn’t work.
“Come on, can you shoot upside down? Take it.”
But he couldn’t, and he realized in the whirl of Kasmir’s approach and his own inability that he hadn’t woken up at all. The dark thing had stalked him into this place, too, working itself close to him. It needed his trust. It needed him to say yes.
He had to wake up. Really wake. “No.”
And he was awake. Or was he? The floor of a warehouse. No blanket. His back hurt. All the sensory details that the last place had been missing. He would have preferred the first world, but this reality would have to do. He stretched in place, popping his back. Okadiah sat on the bench, working at something in leather. “Rise and shine, m’boy. It’s the early shift for me, and you’ve got to open the bar.”
A shift he might have skipped, in this position. But Okadiah needed him. And he couldn’t…
…Wait. This was wrong, too. He shouldn’t be here anymore. He should be on the Ghost, with Hera and Zeb and Sabine and Ezra and even Chopper. Kanan knew it—he could almost see it. He was on the Ghost.
And he couldn’t move. And he couldn’t wake. But Hera was on watch tonight and if he managed to call out, she would hear him and wake him. He didn’t have to move—he only had to call for help.
But he couldn’t. Okadiah offered him a hand, not Okadiah, a presence menacing in its amiability.
“Hera! HERA!”
She shook his shoulder. Her hand, gloved, but definitely her hand. “Kanan, what? What? I’m here.” Thank all the stars and all the Force. She leaned over him in a rush of relief and the smell of soap, and he realized.
The bunk. It hadn’t shifted under her weight. Because she didn’t weigh anything. And he wasn’t awake.
He marshalled all of his terror for one last strike. He still couldn’t move. All he had to do was shout, just one yell, one REAL yell, and it would be over. He tried. And failed. And failed.
Watched the curve of her breast, leaning in, and screamed bloody murder.
“Hera.” More a sneeze than a shout, too feeble for anyone to hear, but it did the trick. Kanan woke to his own voice. The lights on the consoles drifted slowly into place as his eyes woke up as well. He blinked against the dryness.
He stayed stiff for a moment, horrified, scanning. Then he melted into mere fear and pulled the covers back over himself in one protective swipe. That cycle of nightmares had broken the way a fever breaks, leaving him in a cold sweat, but steady. Nothing dark was here. He had woken himself with her name.
Against his back, Hera slept the deep sleep of early morning. He hadn’t stirred, had barely made a sound. Well, there was no need to wake her now. Kanan turned over, pulled her in loosely, put his nose against her neck, safe. They’d gotten the soap all wrong in his dream.