Star Wars Rebels: Hera & Kanan

Chapter Three

Hera let out a contented, breathless sigh as she plopped down into her pilot's chair. "Whew! That was fun."

"I'm glad you think getting shot at is fun," Kanan grumbled, leaning an elbow on the back of the co-pilot chair.

"What are you complaining about? You're a great shot- it's like you can't miss." She paused, affecting a spurious expression of suspicion that didn't quite reach her shrewd gaze. "And the blaster bolts...they never even come close to hitting you."

He shrugged. "That's one of the benefits of stealing from smugglers when they're blind drunk. Remind me to tip that bartender a little extra, the next time we're on Bothawui."

Her expression made it pretty clear that she wasn't buying it, but it didn't matter. Admitting the truth of what she already suspected was out of the question.

"Well, at least those cluster bombs won't fall back into Imperial hands- and they won't go to the Hutts, either. Win-win." Hera cocked her head to the side slightly, considering for a moment, and then she smiled and said, "Actually, win-win-win, because we get paid."

"Sounds good to me. My drinking credits have been dwindling, and I could definitely use a drink."

The first two weeks of Kanan's employment on the Ghost had been interesting, to say the least. For one thing, Hera's assertion that she "meant to do something" about the Empire had been a colossal understatement. It had immediately become apparent that she was very involved in something, maybe some kind of partisan group- and when he asked her about it, she'd told him to mind his own business. Of course, that had piqued his curiosity, but Hera was no slouch when it came to keeping secrets. After two weeks, the only thing Kanan knew for sure was that she had contacts with whom she exchanged intel, sometimes via the holonet and sometimes in person (and he was, of course, barred from attending those meetings). Occasionally, she would come back from a meeting with a task- or a mission, as she called it.

He was more amused by it than anything else, but he didn't let her know that- she took her role in whatever she was doing very seriously. He'd been on his own in the galaxy since the age of fourteen, and he'd seen a lot of people trying to be heroes. If those people hadn't been murdered outright, they'd quickly vanished, never to be seen again. He figured that Hera had only been off her homeworld a year or two at most, and she was still suffering from the worst affliction an Imperial citizen could suffer from- optimism. Although to be fair, Kanan was (as far as he knew) the sole survivor of the Jedi Order, the majority of which had been wiped out by Palpatine over the course of a couple of hours. He had every reason not to be optimistic when it came to the Empire.

Still, he was certainly no fan- the Empire had, after all, murdered the only family he'd ever known- and he was perfectly willing and able to help Hera, regardless of how futile her actions might be. Besides, it wasn't like he had anything better to do.

Hera's wonderful voice called him back to the moment: "Listen, I was thinking...we really ought to have call signs. I shouldn't be calling you 'Kanan' on ops...we need to keep our identities as obscure as possible. The longer we can keep ourselves from being identified by the Empire, the better."

"Makes sense. What did you have in mind?"

She smiled a little sheepishly and said "Well, the ship is the Ghost, so...I was thinking maybe 'Spectres'. I'll be Spectre-1, you'll be Spectre-2, and Chopper will be Spectre-3."

"Yeah...'Spectre'- that's pretty cool-sounding," Kanan said, nodding approval. "But..."

"But what?"

"Well, for one thing, I don't think Chopper is going to be too thrilled when he finds out that he's Spectre-3. He's already tried to kill me four times, you know."

"He hasn't tried to kill you. You're exaggerating," she scoffed.

"Oh, no? How come you never warned me that he has an electroprod?"

She cleared her throat, looking guilty for all of three seconds. "Well, he never uses it on me...it might have slipped my mind."

"Did it?" He raised his eyebrows, giving her a pointed look.

"Anyway," Hera said, no longer interested in the subject of her vicious droid, "what was the other thing?"

"What?"

"You said that Chopper wouldn't be happy about being Spectre-3, 'for one thing'. What was number two? And you're right, by the way. About Chop. You better watch your back."

Kanan narrowed his eyes at her. "Yeah, thanks for the helpful advice. I was going to say that maybe you should be Spectre-2."

A frown line appeared between her eyebrows. "Why is that?"

"Well...you're the one with all the contacts and all that. Better let the guy who doesn't know anything pretend to be the leader. If they think I'm the leader, and I'm captured, I won't be able to tell them anything because I don't know anything. You know?"

Hera rubbed her lower lip thoughtfully with one finger, and Kanan wondered- not for the first time, or the last- what it would be like to kiss her. Unfortunately, when she looked up at him again and caught the admiring look in his eyes, her expression turned wary.

"That's not a bad idea..." she murmured, looking away from him.

"See? And you thought hiring me wasn't going to pay off."

"I never said that."

"Maybe you never said it," he said, "but you definitely thought it."

She grinned. "I will neither confirm nor deny the truth of that statement."

"Why am I not surprised?" Kanan smiled back at her, and for a moment he felt something he hadn't felt in a long time- not since those miserable early days on Kaller- he felt homesick. Why did Hera's smile suddenly make him long for a place to call home? He shook it off. Nothing a strong drink couldn't fix. "Let's go get rid of those cluster bombs and get our credits, Spectre-2."

Hera swiveled her chair and began flipping switches, firing up the Ghost's engines.

"Copy that, Spectre-1."

Notes:

Thought this would be fun to write. Kanan must have known that Hera was into something from pretty early on, I would imagine- he's not an idiot- and I wanted to explore a little bit about what he thought about that. She didn't tell him, as we know- he only finds out because the Alliance comes to their rescue above Mustafar at the end of season one. I'm going to be re-working this fic to be more in line with season four, and her mission plays pretty heavily into that. But I just can't see him getting too worked up over it, based on how he was in "A New Dawn". I think he probably would have figured that whatever she was involved in was fairly small- as we saw in season two, he clearly was not expecting it to be a huge military operation. And given his background and disposition during this time period, plus the fact that it's really early on in their relationship and he doesn't know her that well, I feel like he'd look at Hera as being sort of naive. Of course, that changes, and I think understanding where Hera is really coming from is probably a part of Kanan's personal growth and of feeling like he has a purpose again.