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Kanan Jarrus, Jedi Knight, wielder of white hot laser swords, was acutely aware that he needed to up his game.
He could still manage to dab bacta ointment on his hand—no need to see to locate the welts rising on his finger. The sting faded immediately, and within a few hours his hand would be good as new.
The burn to his pride might take a little longer.
He felt Hera’s determined stride down the hallway before the door to his bunk whooshed open, so at least he still had that sense going for him. She’d crossed the bunk before the door could close again. “Did you find the bacta? Here, let me see.”
“It’s fine. It’s wrapped.”
“Let me look at it, Kanan.”
“Hera.”
She stopped in her tracks, and he bit back the stab of guilt. What a day for petty, self-inflicted injuries. “It’s okay,” he finished, hoping she heard the apology behind the words.
Hera stayed quiet for a few seconds, watching him, assessing, and then let it go. “The hold’s fine. A little scoring on the connection plates, but no real damage. Sabine got the fire out right away.”
What had he been thinking? He’d been thinking that if he concentrated really hard, he could probably manage some simple welding. Then he’d paid so much attention to the welding that he hadn’t noticed the loose rag hanging over the edge of the scrap ion transformer.
“I’m so sorry, Hera.”
“It’s all right.”
“No, it’s not. I should have told you what I was doing, and somebody should have watched over my shoulder. I just didn’t want to bother—”
“Kanan,” she cut him off.
“Yeah?”
“Did it work?”
“Huh? No, I caught the hold on fire.”
“I mean whatever you were trying to weld, before that. Was it working?”
He grinned, a grim, self-satisfied thing. “Yeah.”
“Good.”
“You still want to look at my hand?” he offered, recompense for setting her ship on fire.
“Nah. You already wrapped it.” And that was her own small offering of forgiveness, because as far as Hera was concerned, when something went wrong, you looked at it and then you fixed it. You faced problems head on. He half expected her to kick him out of the bunk and tell him not to come back until he’d finished the welding.
But she didn’t. She was taking her cues from Kanan, the way they all were, while Kanan pretended to be calm and wise. Then he nicked his face with the razor or stubbed a toe in the hallway and let all the grief and fear come rushing back. And he wouldn’t let anyone help him with that part, because Ahsoka hadn’t returned with them and Rex had taken double shifts for a solid week, and who was he to complain about an actual stubbed toe?
They thought he had too much pride.
Hera wouldn’t put up with this silent act for much longer, though. Better face things head on, he guessed. “You want to ask me something. Just ask me.”
“Your Jedi skills tell you that?”
“No.”
He could use the Force, though, for a lot of the day-to-day stuff that would require most people to see. He could tell what she was thinking, what her eyes and mouth and spine looked like, just judging from her feelings. Most people would have to go the other direction to figure it out—visual clues that were often misleading. He had an unfair advantage in reading people. But he didn’t need that kind of insight to read Hera.
Right now she was keeping it together. Grief and hurt lingered around the corners of her Force signature, determinedly banished. Efficiency reigned supreme—the desire to get things done, mingled with her unwounded, unguarded affection for him. She didn't look at him and fall into panic. He was still her Kanan. She'd just been happy to have him back. That, and her refusal to push him into talking about his own wounds when he wasn’t ready, helped hold him together. She kept his edges from unravelling—on the outside, at least.
He felt a rush of happiness for her, and a rush of anger that she should be so grateful for the galaxy's leftover scraps.
Hera watched him for a moment (brows furrowed in her thinking frown, he was sure), then decided not to lose her opportunity. "You seem to be making it around the ship okay, though everyone's tried not to leave a mess. Is the day-to-day stuff working?”
He nodded, mirroring her mood, all business. "I can still feel things."
"You mean—” she almost hesitated, but it was him, and she knew he’d clam up if she got delicate. "You mean you can feel things with your hands, or you can feel things in the Force?"
"Both. I can feel along the walls to figure out where I am, and that helps. But mostly, I can tell what's there through the Force. Not colors and details—not yet anyway--but general shapes and positioning. The nature of the thing."
Now she did hesitate. She didn’t know what to ask. How capable are you? She wasn’t exactly going to say that. After a moment, she asked, "Is it enough?"
He considered. Enough for what? Enough to get around, make do, fight? Sure, with a little practice he could do that—which made him luckier than virtually anyone else who had taken a hit like this. Enough to be satisfied? No. No. He wanted to see her face again. He wanted to watch her roll her eyes or the skeptical quirk of her brow as he teased her. It wouldn’t be nearly as fun to provoke her now. He wanted to see what Sabine was doing—he could smell the spray paint when he walked by her bunk, and he knew she was trying to cope with what had happened to them while she was off duty. Something was going on with Ezra, too, and he shouldn’t have needed eyes for that one, only Ezra kept pulling on his “optimistic” mask every time Kanan walked into the room. He wanted to see Zeb glower at some prank. He even wanted to see Chopper again.
But for now, he didn't know the answer to her question. So he levelled with her. "It's enough to manage. I don't think I'll be a burden. But… I miss seeing you. All of you."
He didn't mean for his voice to get that quiet tone. He didn't mean that sudden bright spark of grief that welled up inside her. She squeezed it thin and smothered it, but he couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t stand wearing her down like that. He needed her to be all right, because he was worn down, himself. “But Hera—” he reached out and caught her wrist without fumbling once— “I can still feel you."
She came to him without a word of warning, just slid onto his lap and put her hands firm on either side of his face. Then they were kissing, lips feeling lips, his thumbs running across her face and pushing off her headphones and rubbing the familiar cones of her ears through the pilot's cap. Lips on skin, and he found that he'd misjudged her—another unexpected moment when lack of sight really had failed him. Her cheekbone tasted like salt. That made him desperate, desperate to kiss away that damp line, her brows, her head, her lekku. Her cap was off and she let out a quiet sound, something between a hum and a moan, and he felt it then, that thing they did when they stopped trying to fix themselves and made each other better, instead.
She didn’t dare kiss his eyes. There was still a chance—dwindling, but still there—of infection. Instead she kissed his brows, tracing them delicately. He could feel another desire in her, to surge up against him and cradle his head and kiss those brows over and over. But if she did that, he would see the depth of her grief. She wouldn’t put that on him.
“Wait—” she said, but her hands didn’t stop moving under his shirt. It took him a moment to process the word. “Wait." She slid off his lap and moved towards the door, and there was the quiet click of the lock.
And the other, even quieter, click of the lights being extinguished.
Then she stood in front of him again, wrapping her arms around his head. He found her waist, kissed her stomach. He would undress her slowly, palms and mouth and every piece sliding against every piece of her body, and this had always been enough—Hera, here with him in the dark.