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The sound of crates clattering from a neat stack into a haphazard pile resounds from the cargo bay, followed shortly after by contentious voices -- and bleeps -- raised in a chorus of 'he did it'.

Kanan rests his face in his hand for a moment, eyes closed.

"Do you think they'll clean it up, or are they going to pretend we couldn't hear them and have no idea who could have made the mess?"

They can get back to mission planning in a minute, and should. But --

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Kanan stumbles into following her, kicking his chair backwards a little bit just because he wasn’t expecting Hera to move this fast.

“Wait, is there another one I don’t know about yet?”

Given the surprise of Ezra, this is not nearly as impossible as it might seem.

"Can we not have the conversation where anyone could hear us?" Hera snaps back, leading him into his cabin.

“I don’t know,” Kanan snaps back, fairly reflexively at this point. “Can we?”

Again, Ezra tends to lurk in the vents. Or rather, he used to, back in those first few days. He could choose to start doing so again at any time!

"Come on."

Hera pulls Kanan into the room, then shuts the door behind them. She lets go of him, resting back against the door, pressing her hands to her forehead.

"Look, I - all right -"

She lowers her hands, together, in what's probably meant to be a calming motion, though her own voice quavers slightly as she tries to keep it steady.

"I can see what you're saying -"

“You think I’m delusional?”

Kanan just shakes his head, moving over to drop heavily onto his bunk. He rests his head on his hand for a minute, then looks back up at Hera.

“Okay, we skipped a few steps, and instead of babies turning into toddlers turning into children we’ve got teenagers right out of the gate — emotional teenagers, I mean, and — “

There’s just no avoiding it now that he’s had the thought.

"No, Kanan, they are not our children, and we are not their parents."

She has to get that out first. This is a ship, and a crew, with something resembling a chain of command, and half of their 'teenagers' aren't actually teenagers.

"But -"

She takes a deep breath. "But okay, sometimes - now that you point it out, it does, it might feel a little similar..."

Kanan just shakes his head.

“Hera, I want you to think back about five minutes. Just five minutes, and the conversation we had then. And what Ezra and Zed and Chopper were doing in the cargo hold.”

He sits back, arms crossed in front of him. He can wait.

(Also it’ll let him settle this new information better, because he’s still not . . . Seriously, how is this his life?)

"I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just -"

She takes a deep breath. "There's a lot to think about here, and maybe we can be - calmer about it."

Edited 2018-02-19 00:01 (UTC)

Kanan takes his own breath, leaning forward to rest his head in his hands for a second.

Then, muttering toward the ground —

“I guess we could. Or I could, it’s just . . . “

You know, like Hera said —

“A lot.”

"All right."

Hera takes a second, then walks across the cabin, sitting down on the cot next to him. She puts her hands on her knees, keeping her eyes on the floor at first.

"First - look Kanan, I mean it. They all had families, or - might still have them out there -"

She exhales, the words catching in her throat. But she presses on, "We have to be clear with ourselves on that."

Kanan stays quiet for a minute, head still resting in his palm. Then he lifts it and looks up at Hera, mouth twisting up at one corner.

“There’s always that possibility, I do know that. And it’s not like I’d really know familial relationships firsthand, but based on everything people say about them, and how they look . . .”

He shrugs, then, the motion easier than he feels like it should be.

“You’d know better than I would, though.”

After all, Hera did have parents, and does, still. Even if they don’t really talk.

"My parents were radical revolutionaries."

She tilts her head back. "I don't know, maybe that's part of it, that there's no 'normal' version of it. But -"

Hera tightens her grip on her knees, looking back down to him. "I don't always know what I'm doing either, okay? I'm not always sure this is what we should've done. But, Kanan - we knew some of this."

“I guess I didn’t expect quite so much squabble management, or — emotional support.”

He tries to crack a wry grin and mostly fails.

"And I didn't think about - who exactly we were in this."

With the right people, a crew that sticks together can feel like a family. It wasn't something Hera had experienced before now, before they'd recruited their own crew, but she'd seen it in others. That was something she had felt, had even expected. But she hadn't quite viewed it like this.

"But yes, we share being peacemaker, and we worry about them, and sometimes I wish the rest of them could be more like Sabine -"

She breaks off a moment, then lifts her hands, pressing them to her face. "And now I'm worried about Sabine -"

Kanan winces.

“Is it anything I can help with?”

Because they may as well hit the real, practical problems first.

“But see? To me we sound kind of like parents talking about their children, figuring out what they need to learn, anticipating who is going to have a problem next and trying to get things in place to protect them from their own worst mistakes . . . “

"No, it's not even something specific, it's just -"

But then Hera seems to realize what she's saying, and presses her hands to her face again.

"I don't know, Kanan," she says, when she looks up again. "Plenty of that is what you have to do with a crew. Know what they need to improve, anticipate problems, protect them..."

“Does it usually involve their personal lives? Because my old — okay, so they weren’t crews the way we’re talking about, exactly — but most of the people I ran with cared about what affected the job, but not anything else.”

He rubs his hands over his face, sighing.

“But maybe you’re right. It just feels different this time. Heavier, you know?”

Maybe because he cares more. But — maybe not.

"I don't know, Kanan. I know you're right, it's never just been about the job, and I wouldn't want to change that."

She shakes her head. "But we also put them in danger, we ask them to risk their lives, we let them take those risks. We need them to."

Is that incompatible with a family, with something like a parent? It never was for Hera, but she's not sure what that means, really.

Edited 2018-02-19 03:57 (UTC)

“The — “

Kanan cuts himself off, scrubbing his hand over his face again. His shoulders sag a fraction, and maybe that’s with relief.

“It feels familiar to me, I guess. I mean, the Masters were like that, with risks. We always knew what we were there for, what we’d all have to do someday.”

Hera nods, eyes turning back to the floor. "But isn't -"

She lowers her hands, folding them between her knees.

"Wasn't part of that why you weren't supposed to have attachments?"

“We still had friends, had — “

He cuts himself off, shaking his head.

“But yes, we weren’t supposed to have the kind of attachments we’d give up on a mission for, or throw away a mission for. Which . . . Is kind of like now, isn’t it. We care about each other, as a crew — and outside of that, too — but we still have jobs to get done.”

"Does it make you feel better to think of it that way?"

He is, after all, sounding calmer now.

“Less panicky, sure.”

That’s true, so far as it goes. But it’s still like playing Master to a whole bunch more people than Ezra, and he knows he still isn’t entirely ready for one apprentice, let alone something like three. Or four, if one counts Chopper, but Kanan is not about to do that. Chop’s annoying, but he’s got his stuff covered.

"That's a start."

She leans back, looking up to the ceiling, needing a break from Kanan's eyes. "I don't know. They're so young."

Hera sighs, then amends. "Two of them are young. But so was -"

She cuts that off, her eyes closing. "So were we."

"Zeb tries hard to be young at heart," Kanan says, his own eyes closing. "Sometimes I let myself get fooled."

"Maybe next time around children will be able to stay children. I guess that's something else to work toward."