Mon Coeur

Kanan walked down the Ghost's main corridor towards his cabin, returning from a long evening of working on Chopper Base's perimeter defenses with Rex. He slowed as he reached Zeb's and Ezra's cabin, listening with amusement to Zeb's loud snores. Beneath that, the slow and steady breathing of his apprentice reassured Kanan that Ezra was sleeping easily; Ezra's nighttime unease over the last couple of months had awakened Kanan on several occasions. Sabine's cabin was, of course, empty, and Kanan missed the smells and sounds of her late night creativity. Her absence weighed heavily on the crew, but he knew that she had been right to stay with her family on Krownest.

When he reached the door of his own cabin, he paused, turning his face towards the cockpit. Hera was still sitting in there, just where he'd left her hours ago, working on a datapad. He could feel her weariness and frustration. Kanan sighed. When she wasn't working on missions, she was entrenched in the far less exciting side of being a Rebel captain: datawork. It was one of the very few things she tended to procrastinate about. Her ever-increasing workload had also contributed to widening the gulf that had opened up between them since his return from Malachor. Kanan didn't try to fool himself, though; he knew that his six-month-long, deliberate detachment from her was primarily to blame. He was less clear on why he hadn't managed to directly approach the subject with her, however.

It wasn't that he hadn't tried, but he knew that he certainly hadn't tried hard enough. They were never alone, it seemed- whether because of Hera's workload, or her personal choice- or both- he could not say. And though everything appeared normal on the surface, their comfortable rapport and banter was subdued, and she never called him "love" anymore. He'd had no idea how deeply the absence of that simple, sweet term of endearment could hurt him.

But now, at this late hour, they were unlikely to be disturbed. It only took a second to make the decision. Kanan centered himself, and then headed towards the cockpit.

She didn't notice him step into the doorway, which was unusual; Hera normally missed very little. He could sense that she wasn't focused on whatever she was trying to read; her mind drifted, and she was having a difficult time keeping her attention on the task at hand. It seemed to him like a perfect time to interrupt.

"Hera," he said, and as always, the tone he used only when speaking her name reverberated in his solar plexus. He felt her sudden surprise.

"Kanan! I didn't even see you there."

"So I noticed."

He heard her set the datapad on the cockpit's console, followed by a rustle of her flight suit that suggested that she was rubbing her eyes. "How long have you been standing there?" she asked.

"Not long. I just got back," he replied. "Have you been sitting here this whole time?"

"It's all these messages...if I don't keep up with them, it takes me hours to get through them." She paused, and then said, "I didn't keep up with them." He heard a wry smile in her tone, and his mind immediately called up a memory of what that smile looked like.

"Do you want some caf?" he asked, trying to ignore the sharp pang he always felt at remembering that he would never see her smile again.

She was silent for a moment, considering, and then she said, "No. I probably won't get to sleep tonight at all, if I drink caf right now."

"Do you ever sleep, these days?" He tried to keep his tone light, but the words still came out sounding strained.

A heavy silence hung between them for a moment. Kanan's question indirectly addressed the fact that they had not spent a night in each other's company in quite some time- and they both knew it.