notallofus | (no subject)

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First, there's the smell. It's so strong, and it hits Kanan all at once as they climb up into the narrow passages of the enormous sandcrawler. Somehow he hadn't noticed it on the Jawas before, but now it was so much so fast that he had trouble keeping his eyes ahead. It wasn't sickening, but strange, and so much at once - like burnt spices, bitter mint, the sharp scent of salt soured with a stale sweetness, warm moisture like condensation on hot steel, and a metallic tang like blood. Even in his worst days when he was younger, when he'd slept behind dumpsters or collapsed drunk under a cantina bar, or even sharing close quarters with injured and battle-fatigued clone troopers, he'd never experienced anything like this. If the smell is getting to Hera, she doesn't show any sign of it, so Kanan tries to do the same. There's enough to worry about when navigating the sandcrawler without getting distracted by the smell.

The passages are dark and very narrow – at some points they can lean forward, at others he and Hera have to get down and crawl in order to follow Tsedec. This was not a place designed for anyone other than Jawas, which makes sense. Kanan can't help but wonder if any non-Jawa had ever been in this sandcrawler before. He also has to conclude that Jawas can see much better in the dark than he can. There are only occasional low lamps, and once or twice he realizes what he thought were low lights were actually a pair of yellow eyes peering out from a slat in the wall of the passageway. There's nonstop chatter, as well as the occasional call of higher-pitched voices Kanan thinks must belong to children, though they only ever see fully grown Jawas.

Eventually, they reach a room Kanan is sure must be the center of the crawler. Like the passages around it, this room is dimly lit, but there's some kind of combustion chamber at the far side of the room that's so bright Kanan has to blink his eyes against the orange-yellow light. The room is large, tall enough for Kanan and Hera to stand with still a few meters above them, a wide rectangle that was clearly used as a gathering place. Small brown mats were arranged around the floor, and the somewhat battered metal walls were decorated, with long hangings Kanan realized were woven both with thread and old wires, and the dim light not from the combustion chamber came from small, strung lights, made from narrow tubes and mismatched vials.

Tsedec asks them to sit, which they do, settling on two mats in a corner close to the door they had entered. Another Jawa brings them protein bars and small cups of water. Hera again offers payment, which this time is accepted. With that, both Jawas nod quickly to them, and head back to the door, leaving Kanan and Hera alone with their meal. Within a few minutes, there's a loud screech and a heavy thud as the crawler lurches forward. That thudding continues as the crawler moves, becoming steady and constant, though still loud.

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It takes a moment for her to discern his words beneath the strange kaleidoscope of sound around them. But before she understands completely, she reaches out, and curls her hand around his, pressing her fingers into his wrist.

That helps. She can feel his breath, can concentrate on making hers match his rhythm.

It's not that it's painful - in a way, it's beautiful, as much as it's strange. But it overwhelms her much more than the smell had, so much sound, low and high at once, deep vibrations that could rattle this small, tightly closed room. Yet when she closes her eyes, when her breathing falls in time with his, the sound coalesces. As though she'd been trying to hear every dissonant note, rather than letting them come together.

She thinks, at once, of the night sky. Deep, dense black with thousands, millions of tiny shards of light. She sees it so clearly, as though the sound were drawing it closer to her, making the stars sharper, the darkness deeper.

There's connection here, between the Jawas and their crawler, the air and the metal walls around them, the crawler itself and the sand beneath its treads, the two suns in the sky and everything else below . . .

Kanan can feel it all, letting the song wash over him, vibrations traveling up through his fingertips and down through his feet, both pressing against the floor (and the blankets). He can almost imagine he feels the pulse of Hera's blood through where her hand grips his, but that's ridiculous.

Surely.

He breathes deeply through his nose, exhaling through his mouth, and while it isn't a trance, he feels . . . quieter -- and more connected -- than he has in quite some time.

Their voices fade, after a few minutes, but then another takes a turn. They don't all lead - maybe five stand, and lead these voices, by the time it seems it's done. And it can't take that long really, an hour, maybe a little more. But it feels longer, as though all of it would need more time.

Hera becomes more comfortable with the sound as it continues. It lets her notice other details, the way the smell of the room changes, the a few repeated words and phrases that seem to direct the flow of their speech. She keeps her hold on Kanan, but with her free hand, she reaches down to the floor, pressing her fingers to it. She feels vibrations on the metal like ripples in water.

As they go quiet, and stay that way, the voices back to a soft chatter, their footsteps shuffling along the floor as they all rise from the mats - Hera feels exhausted. All that nervous energy drained out of her, it takes some effort for her to open her eyes.

When she does, she sees Tsedec standing in front of them, bright eyes watching them.

Edited 2018-12-08 00:27 (UTC)

Kanan, too, opens his eyes once the vibrations die down, exhaling gently. He tries hard not to start when he notices Tsedec, and mostly fails.

Good job, Force senses.

"Uh."

He swallows, throat gone dry with all his silences.

"Hi?"

Edited 2018-12-08 03:14 (UTC)

Hera lets go of Kanan's hand and leans forward from the wall.

She's really, really hoping their response wasn't too... strange? Noticeable? But however intensely she had felt that sound, she's sure what Kanan was feeling wasn't just that.

"What's going on now?" she asks. Tsedec gestures with his arms toward the door, and gives in answer in Jawa Trade that she can understand well enough to confirm -

"Sleep."

Kanan looks from Hera to Tsedec and back again. Twice. Part of his senses are still wrapped up in the music, and may be for some time. It was -- it was bigger than a story, and more than sound, and --

Anyway.

"Is there anywhere we'll fit?"

"I guess we'll find out."

At least this time, they don't have to move very far. It's back to crawling as they exit the room, but then Tsedc leads them to a ladder straight up through a wide tube, and then another long, low lit corridor, before stopping in the middle of it. They reach out and slide open a door, which was set into the wall so that to Hera, it had been barely visible.

The room is very small - the ceiling a little more than a meter off the floor. It's completely dark, except for a red glow that emanates from the floor, running just along the edge the walls, so that Hera can tell the room is maybe three meters wide. There's a block of darkness on the floor - as she steps into the room, she can feel that the floor isn't solid, but a length of metal grating, wide enough for her to just stick her fingers through.

The block of darkness, she realizes as she feels it, is a thick mat, softer than the ones they'd sat on before. It's long and wide enough for even the two of them to rest on, though they won't have much room beyond that.

Kanan follows half a beat behind Hera, extending one hand out so he doesn't bump into either her or a very close wall.

"It's . . . cozy."

He's going to get a neck cramp, he can already tell. That, or fracture his skull while forgetting that the ceilings are low. Still, this is keeping them from becoming either captured or dead, so he'll take it.

"Thanks."

"Thank you, Tsedec," Hera says, sitting up on the mat to look back at them. Tsedec watches them for another moment, and then says something Hera doesn't understand, before the door slides shut again. She's going to assume that that's some form of 'good night.'

With the door shut, they're in near total darkness. She leans back, lying down along the edge of the mat, tilting herself so that she could look down to the floor. Through the metal grating, she can see where the red light is coming from - the combustion chamber that had been part of the room they were just in. Hera realizes they must be directly above that room, the other lights in it having been darkened, leaving only the fire still glinting. It's also dying down, to that soft red.

Hera doesn't turn to face him. She doesn't see much point in that. But after a few seconds, a few churns of the crawler around them, she asks, "How are you?"

Edited 2018-12-08 03:46 (UTC)

Kanan, meanwhile, has twisted around so he can tuck his knees up without taking up too much vertical space, breathing deeply with his eyes half-closed. He can't hear the voices anymore, nor their echoes, but he can feel the thrum of the crawler around them, the rhythm of both is own breathing and Hera's, the slow pounding of his heart --

"That was -- that was amazing," he says quietly, still a little stunned. "I still feel caught in it, a little. Sorry."

He tries to turn to look at her, even though he really can't see in the mostly-darkness.

"How are you?"

"I don't know."

She stays turned away, her body right along the edge of the mat. With one hand, she reaches out, touching her fingers to the metal grating.

"I'm not sure what they thought of our... reaction."

Hera knows it probably doesn't matter. Kanan hadn't done anything that would make others think 'Jedi.' At least, not that Hera knew. Maybe the Jawas knew different, but it seemed that they were safe. Still, she's not sure she entirely understands what just happened.

"Well," Kanan says, after a long moment of silence, "they haven't tried to kill us yet. And I don't . . . "

He frowns, taking another deep breath. There's still a heavy scent in the air, but it's less oppressive than it was in the other room. And maybe he's getting used to the heat.

"I don't feel like anything's wrong. Not that that means much, but -- "

"All right."

Her lekku twitch, in lieu of shaking her head. "No, it means a lot, Kanan."

He smiles a little, there in the dark.

"Yeah, okay. But it isn't everything, so I vote we still keep an eye out."

Kanan fights the urge to stretch, because there's really nowhere for any of his limbs to go. He takes a deep breath, pressing his ribs into the mat, trying to feel the grating below that, just to have something to focus on.

It doesn't exactly work.

She stays quiet, still moving her fingers along the grating. The red glow below is growing dimmer.

"Did you understand what was happening? Any of it?"

Kanan opens his mouth, closes it, swallows once, and tries again.

"History, I think. Not the facts of it, but the . . . shape of it. The feeling of memory. They have a long past, the Jawas."

Edited 2018-12-09 01:33 (UTC)

"Once I got used to it ..."

She takes a breath after that. "It was like - I could see things more clearly in my mind. Just, whatever was already in my head, like the sound was helping me picture it."

Kanan holds his breath for a moment, focusing on the feel of it in his lungs, worried (maybe) about the question he's about to ask.

"Was it . . . was it good? What you were thinking of. While they were singing."

Hera presses her fingers, and her hand, down against the grate, shifting her weight so as to turn over. Away from the edge of the mat, and toward him. It doesn't make any difference - she can't see him at all. But she can hear and feel his movements well enough to know how little space there is between them.

"It wasn't anything in particular," she says. "The sky, star patterns. The desert outside."

The sound of Hera moving, turning over -- Kanan can recognize that even in the dark. She's close, so very close. His skin pebbles with goosebumps, if only for a few seconds. He shivers.

"The now?"

She doesn't answer. Hera looks down in the dark, roughly to where she thinks her hand is resting against the mat. She imagines how far she could move it, before she'd run into him.

"Maybe we should try to sleep," she murmurs.

"Maybe," Kanan agrees quietly.

He can feel his fingers twitching, and it would be so easy to reach out -- he can feel just where she is --

But no. They really need to be well-rested when they get where they're going.

So, without saying anything else, Kanan lets himself drift off to sleep. He can only hope Hera is able to follow.

Edited 2018-12-09 02:15 (UTC)

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