Star Wars: On the Job

Chapter 10: Ultimatum

The door to the cockpit swooshed open. Inside, the air held an edge of stagnancy. In the ten minutes she had been in the fresher the cockpit had grown colder. Kanan spared a quick glance as she entered, closing the door behind her. She'd traded her orange flight suit for a worn out gray one that she only wore when the laundry was getting full. It had a long patch on the side of the right leg where it'd gotten caught on the chassis of a V-35 landspeeder. It wasn't as thick as her usual suit and she shivered, settling into the pilot's seat.

Kanan had resumed his usual posture, legs stretched out and arms crossed over his stomach. His eyes were half closed staring at the eerie fluctuations of hyperspace, but really he was watching Hera.

After a second's hesitation, she tapped the display in front of her.

"I just checked," he murmured without moving. "No new warnings. An hour and thirty left to go."

Hera turned off the screen without looking at it. Her eyes flicked up at the viewport and down to her hands. Thankfully, she had remembered to grab her gloves in the galley. She flexed her fingers until the leather squeaked. Beside her, Kanan was as still as stone. The room breathed, but he didn't. With a controlled breath, Hera released the tension in her hands. There was no point in delaying it.

"I owe you an apology," she said to the control yoke. Her voice was steady, but tentative.

"What for?" he asked.

"I never should have kissed you," she said. "I never should have..." Her mouth opened and closed without words. Then, "I never should have kissed you in the cargo hold. I never should have asked you to kiss me after that. I never should have–" she gestured vaguely in his direction. He looked at her hand and then back at her face. "I never should have done that."

His eyebrow raised a fraction. His whole body was tight, like a lump of unformed plasteel had settled in his stomach. "I'm not upset, if that's what you're worried about," he said.

"It's not. It's..." she said too quickly and then pushed out a sigh, realigning her thoughts. "I think it'd be better if things went back to the way they were before."

"So you want to forget about everything that happened today... between us," he said.

Hera nodded once. She was still talking mostly to the control yoke, but at least angling her face in his direction now. "It's a bad idea, Kanan," she said. "What I'm doing needs all of my attention all of the time. If you can understand that again, then I'd like us to keep going like we were before."

"Like we were up until today." His voice was flat.

"Yes," she said.

"Just as friends."

"As shipmates," she corrected.

The corners of his mouth pulled down. Not a traveling companion. Not a revolutionary. Crew. It was what he'd said when he first came aboard the Ghost, and even though she wasn't asking for anything more than that, the thought offered little comfort.

The carefully arranged features of Kanan's face flickered until his dark eyebrows pulled together like a storm cloud. "What is this really about?" he asked.

Her back stiffened at the accusation in his voice. "It's just like I told you: I have a mission and a responsibility. I can't let anything jeopardize that."

"Not even this?" His finger darted between the two of them.

"No, Kanan, not even that," she sighed patiently.

He leaned back and tightened his arms over his chest. "You mean especially not that."

Hera couldn't keep her nose from wrinkling. "What do you mean 'especially?'"

Kanan's eyes flicked over her from head to foot. "You're scared," he said.

She took a deep breath and smoothed out the prickles forming on her skin. "I'm not scared," she defended with infuriating calm. "I'm doing what needs to be done."

"On the surface, maybe, but underneath all that self-sacrifice you're scared of something."

Usually, Hera didn't take the bait for an argument, but her emotions were running higher than normal. Her face tightened when she met his eyes. "Scared of what?" she demanded.

He shrugged. "I don't know. Why don't you tell me?"

"There's nothing to tell. I'm being completely honest with you."

"No. You were being completely honest with me twenty minutes ago when you..." Kanan pressed his lips into a twisting line before he got too detailed.

Hera ground her teeth. Behind her back the tips of her lekku curled forward. "That was a mistake, Kanan. One I'm not going to make again."

He made a disgusted noise.

"I'm trying to do the right thing," she said.

"Oh yeah? And who was the one doing the right thing then?"

Hera's open mouth made no sound.

Kanan jabbed a thumb at himself. "That's right. It was me. I was looking out for us. Just like I'm always looking out for us!" He abruptly leaned forward and rubbed his face with his hands. "That's not right. I mean, I am always looking out for us. But aside from you going a lightyear a minute, I just don't understand why this is such a terrible thing." He gestured to his chair when he said the word "this."

Hera ignored the jab and the angry edge in her voice surprised even her. "It's a terrible thing because romance and war don't mix, Kanan. Being intimately involved has the potential to get us into real trouble. Just imagine if we'd been sleeping together back on Gorse. Do you think Zal would have trusted us if we were hooking up behind her back? Do you think we would have been able to take down Vidian if we'd stopped to make out?"

"You're blowing this out of proportion," he groused.

"I'm not! And that's what you don't understand. When Vidian had you on that table? When he had me in that stasis field? How much more easily would we have given up vital information if we were watching not just our partner, but our lover being tortured?"

"So that's it? You think you can't trust me to keep a secret?"

"I know you can keep a secret." They locked eyes and the unspoken passed between them with more recognition than they'd ever given it before. –The control room of Forager. Debris stopped in mid-air. Kanan's wry smile, his finger to her lips. "Shh. Don't tell anyone..." – Without looking away, Hera took a deep breath. "What I need to know is that you're going to put the mission first. Every time."

Kanan held up his index finger. "First of all, I'm not a part of your 'mission,'" he said making Hera's eyes tighten in disdain. "And second of all, do you really expect me to put some mission before you and your safety?"

"Yes," she said with deadly gravity. "There's more on the line here than just you and me and whatever-it-is-that..." Her words ran out like a train without a track. He was staring at her intently with those piercing eyes, like he could see straight to the core of her. Hera gathered up the armor of her resolve; she pictured Ryloth and her mother. "What I'm fighting for is too important. If you get distracted you lose. That's the way war works, Kanan. I've seen it."

"Well, I've seen it, too," he bit back. "And the results are pretty damn lonely."

Hera flinched, shaking her head like she'd been hit. The anger flickered in Kanan's face. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but in the end he said nothing.

Hera dropped her head and tightened her hands into fists. When she raised her head again her face was like a dagger.

"You know my terms," she said. "You can either accept them and stay on ... or not."