A/N: So I wrote this for a fic exchange on tumblr. One of the prompts I had to choose from was "Kanera fix-it." Obviously, that's the one I just had to do. It took blood, sweat, and tears to get this done. I don't think it's my best work exactly, but I don't think I've ever poured my heart into any one fic this way, so it's kind of my baby for now. It was very cathartic to write; kind of helped me start to get over my Kanera blues. I think by and by I'm going to use it as like a starting point for a whole bunch of same-'verse, happiness-AU fics. I intended to hold onto this until I had a couple of those started, but I have the self-control of a four-year-old, so...

It's EXTREMELY, AU, obvi, so maybe parts of it don't make sense because I'm terrible at world-building; that's where I'll ask you to just suspend disbelief with me and imagine a 'verse where Kanan got to live and he and Hera got to be happy. Very special thanks to RagnarDanneskjold for reading/commenting/babysitting/kindly encouraging me through the agonizing process of getting this written. And to WestwardGlance for saving me from making a couple of plot errors I would have hated myself for if I'd ever found them. Y'all rock.

Morning Light, Part One

Life.

He'd been aware of it since before—what? He couldn't remember exactly. But before that—he'd been aware of this new life before that. At first he hadn't known what it was—it had been a soft pulsing, a subtle shift in the Force. Specifically: a subtle shift in the Force around Hera, a small, radiant light he'd never noticed before. He suspected maybe it was—but he didn't dare to hope, and he didn't dare to ask. She might not have known yet herself. He sensed that it was…early, still.

And then he sat meditating on Lothal's plain, facing the sunrise, and his mind was clear and everything was quiet. It was the calm before the coming storm, he knew. Hera knelt beside him and her hand touched his shoulder and it became undeniably apparent then: that subtle shift in the Force was a light, warm and bright, carried safely within her womb.

He couldn't remember much of what happened after that, but the light—he held fast to that when he could neither move nor breathe nor hear the sound of Hera's voice. The light kept him tethered to life.

The only sign of life right now was the too-slow rise and fall of Kanan's chest. If Hera squinted hard enough, she could see the slight motion even through the murky bacta. She glanced at the array of vital signs monitors. Almost everything was flashing red or yellow. She'd begged the medical staff to disable the beeps and alarms.

"It's a miracle he made it here alive," the medic said for the dozenth time. The med-droid nearby rattled off a string of probabilities and damning prognoses. Both Hera and the medic, a Nautolan man named Danek, frowned intently at the droid. Danek shook his head. "Exactly how did you manage it?"

Hera stood in front of the bacta tank, weary to the core. She wrapped her arms around herself, breathing deeply against waves of nausea as she watched Kanan's limp body hang suspended in the blue-tinged substance. He'd be there for months, Danek said—if he survived at all. But thanks to the Force and Ezra, he'd survived this long. Hera thought about that moment; the moment Kanan's eyes had cleared and he'd seen her, the moment the fire raged at his back, the moment Ezra summoned unknown stores of strength to pull Kanan from the blaze as it tried to swallow him whole…

She tilted her head just slightly in Danek's direction. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you," she murmured.

"Hrmph." Danek shifted, a datapad in his hand. "This…may not be the ideal time," he started uncertainly, "but while you're here, there's the business of your post-mission physical."

Upon returning to Yavin, Hera had been required to submit to a battery of tests to evaluate her physical and mental fitness to return to duty after her failed X-Wing assault, her torture at Pryce's hands, Kanan's near-death, and everything else. She passed, of course, if only out of spite. "Yes?"

"There were some irregularities in your bloodwork." Hera didn't so much as arch an eyebrow, forcing Danek to his next statement: "You're pregnant, General Syndulla. About eight weeks."

Her breath caught inaudibly; she hadn't spoken the word pregnant to herself yet, let alone heard anyone else say it. "I know."

She'd first suspected it when they were still on Lothal, just hours away from proceeding with their plan to liberate Capital City. Even with their victory there, she hadn't let herself dwell on any excitement she might have felt knowing she was carrying a child. Kanan was on Yavin, condition unknown, and there was still too great a chance that—that—

"Danek," she said suddenly, turning to him. Her features were lined with worry. "I was…" Beaten, electrocuted, drugged. She couldn't force the bitter words out of her mouth. "You saw my file."

Danek's wide, round eyes softened with compassion; he understood everything she wasn't asking. "There is nothing in the bloodwork to indicate that your pregnancy is in any danger. It's still early, but we can perform an ultrasound exam to be sure."

Hera nodded gratefully. "Please." She turned back to the tank—back to Kanan. She wanted only good news to tell him. She allowed herself to press a hand low on her abdomen. "Please," she whispered. She stood there for a long while, willing him to come back to her.

The memories came back slowly. After a while, Kanan remembered the fire. It was vague; he mostly just remembered the heat and the Force and the calm conviction that he had to do this. Ezra's life depended on it. Sabine's. Hera's—and, by extension, their child's.

He'd been able to sense that small light even then, juxtaposed sharply against the roar of the blaze. He'd stood with his hands outstretched. Behind him, death. In front of him, life.

And he thought he could remember seeing. Really seeing. Hera's face was etched plainly in his mind's eye; ever since going blind, he'd only been able to summon fuzzy and indistinct memories of her. This was different.

Wasn't it?

He wanted to open his eyes, but he couldn't. His body couldn't quite respond to his mind's commands yet, but he was thinking. He was remembering things. That was probably good.

He could still connect with the Force, though not for long. But he sensed that everyone was safe—tense, maybe, but safe—and he sensed that little flicker of life every time Hera was near. It was flourishing now, strong and bright. She was scared.

He wished he could tell her it'd be alright.

"She's really not alright," Zeb said plaintively, "even though she says she is. You should see her—standing there giving orders and doing briefings like she didn't just toss her breakfast. Or lunch, or dinner...It's all the time, really."

Zeb scratched the back of his neck. He felt stupid talking to Kanan—talking to the bacta tank—but he'd heard stories of people understanding things while they were unconscious, and just in case those stories were true, Zeb knew he needed to spill this to Kanan. Things with Hera were getting out of hand.

"She has to get these injections every few days," he explained quietly. He looked over his shoulder, terrified he'd see the angry Twi'lek standing behind him. He didn't, so he continued. "Something about hormones and blood-type and preventing—a loss. I don't know. Sabine explained it all. Hera won't talk about it. Not because she doesn't want it or anything—every so often you catch her doing that thing with her hands, the touching—" Zeb's own hands flailed uselessly in front of him. "Like expecting women do. She just won't slow down and she won't talk much about it and nobody knows what to do. It's a real Kanan-type situation."

Zeb cleared his throat and crossed his arms. "So do whatever freaky Force thing is gonna get you out of there and come and talk her down, would you?" Kanan didn't move or respond or anything, of course. The room was just eerily quiet. Not even the vital signs monitors were making noise today. "You're missed," Zeb said. "By all of us. And—if your baby turns out to be a girl, Ezra and I will be seriously outnumbered, Kanan. So get your kriffing self back to the ship and do your part to even things out, okay?"

Hera wasn't okay—he could feel it in his bones. He couldn't focus on the source of her distress—whether it was physical or emotional. Maybe it was both. She just felt so...wrong. He wondered: had something happened—?

No. She was still carrying that light and life with her.

But her own light in the Force was dim, anxious. He'd felt her like this before. He'd held her close during the nights when she'd been too worried to rest. He couldn't do that now, but he could think of what he'd say to her, over and over:

I'm here, I'm here, I'm here.

Little by little, he felt her unwind.

Sabine's careful composure was starting to unwind. She prided herself on being able to remain detached and calm in situations where others might fall to pieces, but this was brutal to watch. Every nerve in her body was tense and straining, aching, screaming with empathy. Several times, she had to press a hand over her mouth to stifle a gasp.

No wonder the medics had waited to do this until Hera was off-base on a mission.

Kanan, heavily sedated and mostly unconscious, was lying face-down on a durasteel table, his body rinsed clean of the bacta. The med-droids and medics were smoothing and grafting the skin on his back, still in the process of healing from the horrific burns. He had months left in bacta, they said, maybe three or four. They'd pulled him out several times to do this procedure, but this was the first time Sabine had been with him. Ezra had tried to warn her—he really had—but she was still choking on panic when Kanan, even as sedated as he was, cried out in pain.

Danek, thank the Force, was calm and collected. "Talk to him," he encouraged. "Might do you both some good."

Sabine was sitting on a stool pulled up to the head of the table, and she was holding Kanan's hand. She wasn't sure why—she just thought maybe, if the roles were reversed, it'd be nice to have someone to anchor to. "Hey, Kanan," she started. She sounded strained, even to herself. She glanced up at Danek, self-conscious, and he smiled encouragingly. She shrugged. "Well—this sucks. But you already know that." She paused, hating how her voice sounded in the otherwise-quiet room. "Um. So, don't believe anything that Ezra's told you about what happened on Lothal. There were not a hundred Purrgil. There was some weird Jedi stuff, though. You…would have been proud. Ezra did it—he saved Lothal. That part is true, so." She stopped, clearing her throat, blinking rapidly to keep tears from welling. "Another thing he might have told you but probably also embellished: he and I are…you know what? I don't know what we are, but we're figuring it out. Together." She made a sound that was almost a laugh even as a few traitorous tears slipped down her cheeks. "Hera is so smug about it."

Kriff, she thought. Hera.

Sabine sighed heavily, sobering. "She's pregnant, Kanan. Five months now, I guess. Just starting to show. She's stronger and healthier than she has been in weeks, thank gods. It got rough and she just kept right on being Hera—you'd have killed her. I don't know if—I think she's happy? Or she would be, if you were...so just kick it in high gear with this whole bacta thing, okay? Hera needs you. We all do."

She couldn't go on, but Danek was right; talking to Kanan had proved oddly cathartic. He didn't respond—couldn't—but she still felt somehow that he heard her, even despite the drugs and the pain. She stayed with him until they put him back in bacta. Just before he was fully submerged, she swore she saw his eyes flicker open for half a second and she gasped.

The scar tissue left by Maul's blade was completely gone.

The feeling of total disorientation was gone. He'd long since figured out that he was in a bacta tank; he'd had the pleasure a few times before. Never for this long, but the experience was an unforgettable and distinctly unpleasant one. Bacta was warm, but it was also thick. Suffocating. Even though there was a breathing apparatus over his nose and mouth, Kanan felt like he couldn't breathe at all, like he was being swallowed alive. He wasn't, of course; that was just the claustrophobia talking.

One day, he realized that if he was lucid enough to feel claustrophobia set in, then he was probably being weaned off of sedation. Slowly. But still. That was progress. He was able to orient himself to the sound of voices in the room, sometimes. When it was Hera speaking, always. Her melodic alto was what he'd fallen in love with in the first place; he knew that if he was in a room full of a million beings, he'd still be able to zero in on the sound of her voice, bacta or not.

He sensed her presence often, though less often now than before. She wasn't avoiding coming to see him. He was sure of that—just as he was sure of the tension swirling in the Force around him. Something was happening. Hope and hopelessness warred for dominance in the hearts and minds of the beings serving in the Rebellion. Kanan could feel it. And he heard worry very plain in Hera's voice when she spoke to him. (She'd been doing that for a long time—telling him things whenever she came to check on him.) He was still too sedated to make out most of what she said, and he was submerged in liquid besides, but he could tell she was worried and she was tired. Exhaustion radiated from her. She was heavily pregnant now, and the demands of carrying a child coupled with the demands of her duties to the Rebellion were almost too much—but Kanan could sense her resolve, the thing in her mind that kept driving her forward, her inner voice that said, We're not done yet.

And he wanted desperately to ask her what was so important that she kept pushing herself this hard, but even if he'd been able to do so, someone came running in to call her away. She was all business in an instant, and Kanan swore he heard the other person tell her something about "plans" and an "Imperial weapon."

That couldn't possibly be good.

"It's probably good you're still out," Ezra mumbled. He stood in front of the bacta tank, all but squirming. "'Cause you'd be so pissed about this. I'm so pissed about this, but Hera was never going to listen to me. And Sabine—" He huffed a sigh, dragging a hand over his head. "She had that crazy, scary look in her eye like when she's itching to blow something up."

He'd had the unique displeasure of listening to Hera argue her way into joining the battle group hurtling toward Scarif. It had made him uneasy watching her pregnant self, along with Sabine and Zeb, board the Ghost and take off. The odds of their survival, he figured, were not good. Not when they might be up against—the thing that Cassian Andor and Jyn Erso said they were up against. Or were looking for the plans for. Or something. The finer points of the issue were fuzzy to Ezra; he'd spent the last several days chewing pain-killers after a blaster injury left him unfit for duty.

His terror was the only thing not dulled by the medication. "I don't know how you freaking do it, Kanan." He scuffed the toe of his boot on the ground. "Watching Hera just...fly off into danger all the time. Or vice versa. Whatever. How do you guys do that? It's driving me nuts knowing that Sabine is there and I'm here and—" He stopped again. "I know it's been a process with you and Hera—learning how to let go and trust and all that. Yeah...I'm gonna need you to teach me how to do that. I may be able to handle you in lightsaber combat, but I'm not that strong yet, so..."

Giving up on words, Ezra reached out with the Force to try and get a sense of where Kanan's mind was. He was just on the edge of consciousness, though not quite there. But Ezra could sense his master's presence more strongly than he had in months, and the hum of their connection to each other was once again a constant in his mind. That was encouraging, but Ezra knew they were all going to need more than "encouraging" if they were going to get through what was coming next. He didn't know what it was, exactly, but it wasn't good; they needed Kanan back now more than ever. He touched a hand to the glass, and the numbers on the vital signs monitor surged. Ezra gasped, wild with hope.

"Come on, Kanan."

"Come on, Kanan!" She'd yelled at his retreating back. "This is crazy, even for you! Not to mention dangerous!"

He couldn't remember what they'd been doing; it was years ago now. But he remembered the note of fear in her voice. So well hidden, but there all the same. He'd turned sharply on his heel to face her, looking deep into those clear, green eyes he loved so much. "I will always come back, do you understand?"

He meant it as much then as now.

"Now!"

The Ghost went screaming into hyperspace, Sabine's trembling hand at the lever. Pale-faced, she looked at Hera. "What—what—"

"I don't know." Hera unbuckled her restraints and turned her seat, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. She held her aching head in her hands. "I don't know."

Hera thought she'd heard confirmation that the Death Star plans had been received by Raddus's ship, but she didn't know that for sure. And even if they had—the Devastator was gone now. The Tantive IV might have gotten away, but whether the Death Star plans were aboard was anyone's guess.

"You two okay?"

Hera and Sabine both jumped when Zeb commed from the turret. Sabine leaned over and pushed the talk-back button. "Fine," she answered, sounding anything but. "You get cooked up there?"

"Nah. But the calibration on this thing is all out of whack; I'm gonna stay up here and fix it. Send Chop, would you?"

Hera pinched the bridge of her nose and motioned to Chopper. He rolled out without having to be asked twice. " Got it. Thanks, Zeb," she said aloud. "We're en route back to Yavin."

"Copy."

The com channel went silent and Hera really looked at Sabine. There was a gash across her forehead; the Ghost had taken a few hard shots, and she'd fallen into something while she was running from the nose gun to the cockpit. Dried blood was smeared across her forehead and down her temples. Some still oozed from the cut. "Let's get that looked at," Hera said. "You probably have a concussion." She frowned. "Why weren't you wearing your helmet? Did you suddenly decide to stop being Mandalorian?"

Mercifully, Sabine decided to ignore the sharp irritation in Hera's voice; she knew it was just a response to the stress of this awful day. "There was a reason I took it off—I don't remember."

That was half a lie; Sabine did remember feeling so panicked and hot during the battle that she couldn't breathe. She just didn't remember at what point she'd thrown her helmet off, or even where it was now.

Hera massaged her own temple. "Well—let's go down to med-bay. Is your head the only thing?"

Bruises from her restraint harness criss-crossed her ribs and she felt rattled far beyond what she'd ever been; Sabine shuddered to think of how Hera must be doing. "Yeah," she said. Hera nodded, standing slowly. She wavered as she took a step forward, reaching back for her seat's headrest so she could steady herself. She groaned softly, kneading the side of her prominent belly with one hand.

"Hera?" Sabine half-stood, panicked, but Hera shook her head.

"He decided to wedge up into my ribs," she explained wearily. "Poor baby's had a rough day."

"You should go lie down," Sabine said. Her tone was severe. "I'm not kidding. I can clean up this cut, or Zeb can. You've got to—"

"I can't rest," Hera snapped, "not knowing what's out there. I—"

An insistent beep interrupted the conversation this time, an incoming one-way transmission from Yavin. Hera leaned over the console to read the text and felt all the blood drain from her face. She started to wobble at the knees and Sabine was there in an instant, helping her sink down into her seat.

"Hera—what is it?" Sabine pressed anxiously.

She forced the words out through stiff lips and the only thing she could really hear was the sound of blood rushing in her ears. "An emergency transmission. The Tantive—Leia Organa—they've been captured."

"Manda." Sabine swore. "We're—we're finished."

Hera nodded weakly. "They'll be starting preliminary evacuations soon." She spoke like she was in a daze.

They stared at each other, the implications settling heavily between them. Sabine sat back down and she reached across the aisle to hold Hera's hand. They stayed like that until Hera had to land the Ghost, and Sabine still had blood on her forehead when they disembarked, walking slowly down the ramp. They'd just stepped onto the tarmac when a medic came running toward them, screaming, "General Syndulla! You need to come to medical—STAT!"

Kanan.

"No, no, no, no, no," she whispered. She felt like she was slogging through mud, walking through a nightmare as Sabine grabbed her by the arm and they followed the medic. She started preparing herself for what she knew she was going to hear: We're sorry, general, he's gone.

They walked in and the bacta tank was empty.

Hera felt her knees buckle and darkness crowded her vision and she was finding it harder and harder to breathe and she heard Sabine call her name as if from far away. The younger woman tried to help her stay upright, but it was another pair of arms that kept her from falling, catching her when she started to sway.

"Easy, easy," Kanan said. He lifted her, supported her weight like she was nothing at all, like she was as slim and unencumbered by pregnancy as she had been the last time he'd touched her. Like he hadn't just spent six months in bacta, in a coma.

A harsh sound tore at her throat; overwhelmed, overwrought, relieved sobs made her entire body shake as he held her. She wanted to tell him everything: how much she'd missed him, how much she loved him, how it both thrilled and terrified her to carry their child these long months, how much danger they were all in, how it was all about to come crashing down, how the Empire was about to win—

"I know, Hera. I'm here now." He kissed her forehead as he carefully laid her down on an exam table. The medical droid came over, starting to fuss about taking Hera's vitals, but she ignored it, gazing up at Kanan. He looked perfect and healthy and strong. His hair was long again, thanks to the regenerative properties of the bacta, and he must have shaved before she'd come back, because instead of the wild beard that had grown in over the last few months, he was sporting the neatly-trimmed goatee he'd had for years before Malachor. And his eyes—the dark scar still spanned across his temples, the bridge of his nose, his eyelids. But his eyes were teal and clear and seeing.

Hera started crying all over again.