Kanan: A Bounty Hunter

Mirror and Image

Two years. Two years of missions and harrowing escapes and building trust and adjusting to working together. Two years of laughing, arguments, cold silences, and heartfelt conversations.

Two years.

The mission had gone bad. That was no surprise. Plenty of missions had gone bad. They were dealing with either the Empire or criminals. Of course something went bad.

But neither of them had been injured like this before. And the stress and trauma of it was fraying their connection.

Hera was completely laid up. One leg broken, ribs either cracked or fractured, and a concussion that had Chopper poking her sporadically to ensure she really was alright given her malfunctioning chasse. Kanan was also concussed, more severely, and would randomly space out sometimes in the middle of a word, which hardly helped matters. Both of his arms were broken and one hand had several broken fingers. Chopper poked Kanan often, more as punishment for returning Hera in such a state than actual concern. Kanan put up with it. He, frankly, agreed that most of this was his fault, so he let Chopper do as the droid willed. Mostly.

They had been grounded at a med station for three weeks before they both finally agreed on something and left. By that point, Kanan was letting out a sigh of relief for getting away, because while the bacta was wonderful, and both he and Hera could likely take off their respective casts within two weeks, he couldn't hide much longer that he was healing faster than normal. The Force's many blessings that Kanan could really go without. The technicians and medics were already noting that Kanan was taking to the bacta very well and that was more attention than he ever wanted placed on him.

All the staying still, not having something to occupy him, was bringing up dark memories best left forgotten. The arguments and hissing matches with Hera were almost a blessing. But their escape to the Ghost just left him without an escape. Either from Hera when their arguments got heated or the memories.

Two weeks after leaving the station, two weeks of rolling Hera back and forth down the hall from the cockpit to her room to the galley or the fresher. (Hera refused his help in the fresher. Kanan was fine with that and sent Chopper in if she was taking too long.) After five weeks of healing, Kanan had removed the casts on his arms and was already doing light work to build up muscle. He kept his hand wrapped. And though his concentration still wavered from time to time, it was clear that he was mending faster than Hera, who still had at least another week with the cast, if not more, and still had ribs healing.

Mostly, while they argued and shouted, Kanan was able to keep his head. Remain the brash cowboy, the muscle of the team, let the frustration release with bickering and sarcasm, rather than fester into something larger or dangerous. Release so he wouldn't have to meditate to show or see how shaken he really was by the disaster of an op.

"Kanan, I don't understand," Hera sighed quietly, sipping the broth Kanan had made for dinner.

"There's a lot that neither of us understand," he replied, only the slightest touch of bitterness underlying his voice. So very much he didn't understand.. And never got the chance to learn. Too close. The darker memories were too close. Stars, it was like it was Empire Day. He needed a drink to forget…

"Kanan…" Hera gave a baleful look. "I know we've been arguing about what went wrong, who was at fault, what could have gone differently. That's part of the trauma of all this happening and neither of us has ever had a mission go so badly."

Order Sixty-Six. Kanan shuddered and didn't choose to correct her. She never asked and he never shared. That was a line he enforced and she knew better than to cross it. He had left that part of himself behind and he would never look back.

So he only nodded.

Hera let out a frustrated sigh. "It's been two years, now. We've done many missions and operations; we've been nearly killed numerous times. What happened on this last mission is no different than any we've done before."

Kanan looked pointedly at her cast, then her ribs, then his hand. He didn't want whatever understanding she was about to give. He wanted to wallow in his misery and guilt so he could release it with a fine sarcastic argument.

But Hera, being Hera, let his obvious attitude problem wash right over her. She wanted an end to the arguments, so she was going to work for it and she wouldn't let him wiggle away from that. She only narrowed her eyes and kept pressing on. "I've seen you use your Jedi abilities more than once. Even when we met and faced Vidian, you were able to do things only a Jedi could. Yes, it's rare, I acknowledge that. You've abandoned being a Jedi. But I just don't see why you didn't use those abilities on this last mission. You always tell me that it's instinct. So why didn't this last mission trigger that instinct of yours?"

Kanan hissed in a breath, taking a second to wonder if he could fake losing his concentration to avoid the question. Except that wouldn't work, she'd either see right through him or she'd simply repeat herself…. And it was Hera. He didn't want to lie to her.

Didn't mean he'd have to answer however.

"It's difficult to explain," he growled, looking away.

"Difficult doesn't mean impossible to explain," Hera raised a brow knowingly.

"Hera…."

"This isn't the first time you've avoided the question," she cut him off. "I've let it slide, but neither of us can afford that any more. What makes you instinctually use the Force and what doesn't?"

Kanan let out a frustrated sigh and ran his good hand through his loose hair that he couldn't tie back. "Hera, we've been over this. I've given that up. I can't let anyone know I'm a Jedi."

"Yet you've risked it before."

"Not by choice."

"I know. That's what I'm trying to understand."

Kanan stood, frustrated. He didn't want to talk about this.

"I'm going to bed," he announced instead. It was a mean blow, because Hera couldn't chase after him.

Too bad she had anticipated him. Chopper's electrical prod sparked and Kanan, on instinct, easily dodged. But Chopper remained in his way. Unsurprisingly. "Hera…"

"It can't be as simple as instinct," she said softly. "Instinct should have had you doing something. We were both hurt, and badly. But we didn't have to be if-"

"If what?" Kanan barked back, patience at an end. "If I had used the Force?" He scowled horribly. "In front of all those people? Word would have gotten out, Hera, and I can't afford that. Yes, I had instinct, and it was work to limit it!"

"Limit-"

"Do you know what instinct was? Leap a hundred feet to you, then shove the raining debris aside! That's my training. That's my instinct. Instead it was small deflections, something that no one would notice, to makes sure there was still damage and we'd survive. And in the middle of all that, I got conked on the head. Which lead to you getting a concussion."

Which was the core of why he blamed himself. He just didn't have enough training. He never did. As a result, Hera had been hurt.

Hera blinked, wide-eyed, mouth slightly open. Clearly she hadn't been expecting such an answer. Kanan attempted to take the opportunity to escape. Unfortunately Chopper was still there, poking with the sparking prod to keep Kanan in place. He was so tempted to just hop over the droid for a quick getaway, after all, Chopper was no threat to Kanan. But he was reluctant to since both he and Chopper had an understanding where Hera was concerned and he didn't want to give up the progress he'd made just because he didn't want to talk about this with dark memories hovering at the edge.

So he glared at Hera in hopes that she would call off her pet droid.

She didn't.

Chopper laughed.

Kanan scowled.

"I understand the secrecy," she said softly. "It's no secret that Jedi never do well under the Empire's mercies."

Kanan didn't bother to dignify that understatement.

"But that was a serious risk to our lives. Surely it would have been easier-"

"No." Kanan was firm, crossed his healing arms and refused to give an inch. "What I did was for the best. We'll survive and heal. That's a win."

Anger flashed in Hera's eyes, real anger, since he was never this difficult with anything. But she took a breath and tried again. "Kanan-"

But he wouldn't let her. He wanted this topic closed. "All it would take is one, Hera. Just one. One with loose lips and the Empire would know."

"People still remember the Jedi," she shot back. "People would stay quiet, they wouldn't know-"

"The Jedi are traitors," he shouted back. "Ten-thousand Jedi versus several quintillion beings across the galaxy. No one knew the Jedi. We were around and fighting, but we were still only legends. Who do you believe? Hooded monks you've never seen or interacted with or the evidence our beloved Emperor provided? Only the Emperor ever said anything about us. And we were never even given the chance to refute. If anyone, Hera, anyone, knows I'm a Jedi, I'll be hunted down and sent to Mustafar!"

Then, Kanan did hop nimbly over Chopper and headed to his bunk and locked the door.

Stars, he needed to meditate. He couldn't put it off any longer.

Hera looked to Chopper, surprised. Kanan had never shown anger like that. Frustration, aggravation, lighter shades of anger, but never that cold fury or hot rage that anyone could experience. She had never seen that level of anger from the former Jedi. Kanan, even with everything falling apart, always seemed composed, even when frustrated or aggravated, he always held back. And because he could control himself, even Hera at her most angry, could hold back as well. It kept everything civil.

But... then... She hadn't pressed the button before. The Force button. The giant white nerf in the room that he announced without saying a word was a forbidden topic. Oh, she'd mentioned it once or twice, calculated a safe question. But nothing like this.

She knew what was going to happen now – how she was going to find him: passed out drunk on his bunk. She wouldn't accept that, wouldn't let that roll off her back, but she wasn't quite sure how to move on from here. She would never see the Jedi as traitors, not after what happened on Ryloth, but she more than understood what so many years of media coverage of the Jedi Betrayal had created: now holos and flimsies were sold with Jedi as shifty, morally corrupt individuals. Seeing a film meant putting up with a Jedi being the bad guy, the Force being parlor tricks. She could only imagine what children of this generation thought of the Jedi. And now they were sent to Mustafar.

… What was Mustafar?

She'd never heard of it. But it was a place or planet that clearly meant something. She sent a glance to Chopper, but her droid was already plugging in to the holotable, bringing up records, researching. Hera reviewed what little existed.

It was hardly a Core world, which always had reams of data on population, industry, history, trends, and all sorts of things. Even Midrim and Outer Rim worlds would have histories, what people originated there, who discovered and populated the planet, etc. This meant that Mustafar wasn't populated. She dug through historical records, looking for discovered planets, those that might be caseous or uninhabitable, but good for resources. Nothing. The more she looked, the more she got the sense that someone had spent a long time trolling the Holonet to remove any possible reference to this Mustafar.

Bounty hunter: a person who hunts for bounty.

Bounty: A reward, usually some form of monetary compensation, placed on the return, capture, or death of a being.

To be a bounty hunter, one must view the people of the galaxy as things. Objects of value to be earned. Bounty hunters are a solitary bunch. Some few work together – Black Sun perhaps, or the Mandelorians – but because of the view of seeing others as monetary gain, one has little need for others that don't have said gain over their head. Contrary to their loner tendencies, however, bounty hunters are only ever successful if they have a pliable, workable network of information: contacts, people. More successful bounty hunters know every barkeep, every barmaid, every rogue and scalawag in the galaxy, and know how to apply pressure or sweet-talk or otherwise get information from their network.

Because the network is so critical to a bounty hunter, starting out is perhaps the hardest part of the profession, because one has to build that network.

Kanan Jarrus, a few months shy of nineteen, was acutely aware of his deficiencies in getting a network. He was also aware that, full beard or not, he looked painfully young to be a bounty hunter. He spoke as little as possible, wore a helmet with a deliberately broken filtration system to alter his voice, and more than likely overcompensated with his DL-18, but the blaster fit almost perfectly in his hands and it had the right heft and pull. The ammo was cheap, too.

He had been bounty hunting for almost a year, based on a do-nothing planet on the northern edge of the Mid Rim named Hadjyl. He had little money to speak of, but it was better than crawling through dumpsters for food, and bigger money would come once he made a name for himself. He didn't plan on being the next Boba Fett – miracle bounty hunter since he was a kid – but Kanan would be happy if he was good enough to get paid and get drunk.

It wasn't like there was anything else to live for.

Kanan slept above a dive bar, never leaving his room without his helmet to keep what illusion he had about being older than he was, and when he wasn't squandering his money drinking cheap swill that would someday kill enough brain cells to give him amnesia, he was very carefully building a reputation for himself in his work. He made a point of never taking a death contract, and challenged himself by always taking his bounties alive. Life as a taxi driver, and before that life as a bouncer, had taught him the value of not standing out, and he thought he had figured out how to live without a certain, irritating, forsaken part of his psyche deciding to let loose whenever he got too bored. Or, if it did, he could simply move to the next planet – take his reputation with him – and start over. His only real goal was to get good enough that the swill would taste better.

That morning he checked the Holonet for any new bounties in his sector (preferably his planet, it was a little embarrassing to have a bounty and then use public transit to get where he needed to go). The Imperials hadn't posted anything new, but Kanan wasn't exactly interested in helping the Empire. Local law had a few new contracts, and there was a new player on the market: FSCREDB. He couldn't find what the initials stood for but it had a list of names and various compensations, as well as last known locations. For a startup they had a lot of details on their bounties, but one of them was last seen on Hadjyl, and the price was a fair bit higher than anything he had scored as yet.

"Well," he mumbled, "Might as well give it a try."

He put on his helmet with the broken filtration, strapped on his DL-18, and moved downstairs. The bartender gave him a glance and little else, and Kanan didn't even nod his head. Bounty hunters weren't friendly, and bounty hunters weren't social; both traits suited Kanan just fine. One of the ugly hookers that worked the bar was already outside, leaning against the bar and trying to look attractive. She was good enough in bed but Kanan had to be six-sheets to the wind to look past the burn scars in order to get it up; she offered him a small smile, and behind the mask Kanan felt guilty that he only ever had drunk pity sex with her that one time. She was a person just like him... but the thought of being connected to her was too much of a risk.

For work, he simply moved from one dive bar to the next. Hadjyl was the name of the planet, but also the only viable city on the whole rock: the butte the city was built on was the only inhabitable part of the planet, almost a mile above the clouds and the only place where the noxious fumes of said clouds didn't make breathing catastrophic for any species with lungs. Hadjyl was big, but nowhere near as big as Coruscant. With such a limited search radius, Kanan needed to only wander from one bar to the next, drink in a corner, and keep his eyes peeled for the face on the holo. His contacts list was pitifully short; he would have to do most of the legwork himself. That meant less time to lush, and he wasn't looking overly forward to the stretch of sobriety.

Kanan checked in with the first three bars on his circuit. He was known to them as both a customer and an extra fist in a fight if things got ugly. None of the owners had seen the bounty. One asked what the poor sap had done.

"Don't know," Kanan said. "Only care about the money."

Sighing, he moved through the other bars, ordering one drink, sipping it over the course of an hour, and then moving on to the next when he didn't find his bounty.

Said bounty: human, dark skin, dark hair, not much older than Kanan himself. Eyes were much older, bags indicating long stings of no sleep. Name was Sukryan, female. There wasn't a rap sheet, that usually meant runaway, save the name on the poster was FSCREDB, not a concerned parent. Corporate espionage? Who knew? … Who cared? The girl had enough credits over her head that Kanan could be drunk for a month, and the idea was too appealing to ignore.

The first two days amounted to little more than dive bars and the occasional cafe. Hadjyl was a planet that mined the fumes of the clouds, dangerous, dirty work that paid poodoo and left little room for the finer things in life. Drinking and whoring were the only coping mechanisms, and Kanan watched the different shifts cope with everything they had. The bounty was nowhere to be seen, though, and Kanan studied the holo at the end of his day before turning in, looking at the dark rows of hair and the strong lips, broad shoulders and the heavy bags under her eyes. She was a looker, but it was marred by the wariness in her eyes. How was she Kanan's age? Who had that look on their face so young?

Kanan looked at himself in the mirror and grumbled. Who besides him, he corrected. But it wasn't like people like him were around anymore.

On the third day he moved north, skirting the edges of the city and slowly approaching the docks for the floating factories that mined the clouds. The dirigibles could fly for a month into the fumes of the clouds, workers on the clock a "reasonable" ninety percent of the time before docking with their month's pay to blow off at the bars and—Kanan stopped midstep, turned and ducked down an alley and to the edge of the butte, looking west to the docks. Were any ships docked? No, but one was coming in on the horizon, would be there by the end of the day.

Something in Kanan pulled, a feeling he would never be able to describe to someone who hadn't felt the same way, a mix of anticipation and rightness and understanding.

He raced back to the street and set his pace. He could make it to the dock with plenty of time to spare; he could stake out the layout and make a plan, and then he would watch the workers get off the dirigible.

His perch was one of the antennae, two hundred feet up in the air and precarious by any definition. Kanan's helmet had some optics but he lifted up some quadrobinoculars to zoom in even more. He watched the giant floating factory slowly slide in to dock, easily almost a mile long and half as wide, smoke billowing out of its stacks and pumping and acrid smell in the air that his beat-up old helmet couldn't filter. For the size of the dirigible there were only three exits, all on the port side, and up to a thousand workers filed out. They were all covered in soot and grime, faces empty from exhaustion, as they obediently stood in line to get paid and then take their money to spend on all the dive bars in Hadjyl: four days shore leave before they shuffled back for another queue of work.

A thousand faces to watch was a bit much even for Kanan, but he'd spent three days staring at the holo and memorizing the face, and it was easier because of the pay lines to track who he'd covered and who he hadn't.

Unloading took three hours, and it was – of course – the last person who disembarked that was the bounty. Sukryan was taller than the holo suggested, and much, much thinner. Time on the run had not done her well.

Kanan straightened from his perch and took aim. Not with his DL-18, but with his tracker. The distance from his spot on the antennae to her was ridiculous, but he took his time, aimed, and breathed in and out slowly... focusing... focusing...

He felt something, in the back of his mind, right before he fired. He checked his readouts quickly, fumbling for his reader and nearly falling off the thin excuse of a wire he was attached to, to check the tracker. It was only slightly self-guided, aim – especially at this distance – was half the fight, but he watched for several seconds as the little blip flew across the air and stuck. Phew.

Backup in place, he started to climb down.

On the ground he kept a good, even paranoid distance between himself and the bounty, worrying over the something he had felt. The Force? He'd shut it down and shoved it so far away from him that he sometimes didn't recognize when it was pulling at him, and he couldn't be sure – it had been so long since it had last hit him over the head, let alone the last time he had called upon it.

The bounty checked into the low houses above one of the hundreds of dive bars and disappeared upstairs. Kanan set up surveillance on a roof across the street, infrared showing where her apartment was. The bounty collapsed to bed and obviously fell asleep. Kanan debated getting her now, but that feeling from before made him a little gun shy, and he wanted to know more about her before he moved in.

He ordered more than a few drinks at the dive bar – he didn't get full-on smashed, but he wanted his face known as a harmless patron – if a guy who wore a helmet and half-broken armor did hard drinking could be harmless. He didn't ask questions about Sukryan, didn't get in trouble, just sat in a corner and pretended to stew over his misfortune like everyone else in the bar and everyone else on the rock.

It didn't take much acting.

He dozed on the roof as the liquor burned through him and the next morning watched the infrared for the bounty to wake up. When she did she simply stayed in her room. He waited the whole day but she didn't go out, scanners said she spent hours sitting on her knees in one place. Meditation? Who did that anymore?

That brought up more than a few painful memories, and Kanan shook it off with a swig from his flask he carried with him for just this kind of bad day. That night he entered the bar as a customer again, drinking hard and asking the barkeep if there were any good whores to keep him warm at night. Didn't need to be a whore, either, he said, any female in the vicinity would do.

Curiously, the bartender said there were no females to be seen in this part of town. Protective of the bounty – that didn't usually bode well. Either she had good dirt on the guy or the guy was loyal to her. The first he could have handled but the second made him uncomfortable. He didn't like the idea of capturing someone who was an honestly good person, though he'd done it before, and something in the back of his mind didn't sit right. He watched her meditate well into the night, before going down at closing time to have something to eat and talk to the barkeep. Kanan went down from his roof again and stood at the door to the bar, tweaking the audio speakers in his helmet and filtering out different sounds before tuning in to the conversation on the other side of the wall.

"How many days you back?" That was the barkeep.

"Three; well, two now." Rich voice, female, low and just soft enough to barely be picked up by his equipment.

"You look half dead now, don't know if you'll survive another trip."

"It's worth it. Two more rounds and I'll have enough to get off planet and start something."

"If you live that long."

"I will."

Something in the surety of her voice niggled in Kanan's mind, and he was starting to feel even less certain about this job – but it wasn't like he had anything else to do, and he was running out of money for his booze. That she was planning a future somehow made him jealous – he'd lost his future years ago, and the thought of someone actively working towards their own hurt in a way he didn't like. Kanan held that feeling close, used it as his excuse to justify capturing her and shipping her off to the FSCRED, whatever it was. He took a deep breath and went back to the roof. Best to get her when she was asleep. He would need a nap himself before he planned his assault.

He dreamed of the Temple that night, running around with his friends, the studies and the lessons and the practice, sinking into the Force just because, the sensations of connecting to the galaxy. Then Order 66 came. Kanan woke up and immediately wretched, hating himself for still being so affected, wondering when he would ever just get over it and move on. He grabbed his hip flask and nearly took a swig before he remembered he needed to be sober for the job, and with an absurd amount of effort he put it away and turned his helmet back to the window.

The bounty was meditating again, or sitting like she was, and something prickled along his senses, making him gun-shy again. He wasn't comfortable attacking someone meditating, it brought up too many memories.

Frustrated that he would have to wait until morning, he opened up his wrist computer and did some poking. The reward had increased since he last checked, but there was no new information otherwise. He called up a map of Hadjyl and planned his assault. If he couldn't bring himself to attack at night when she was sleeping, and she didn't leave her room, then it would have to be when she reported at the end of her shore leave. He calculated the most likely route and made a few small traps – little more than distractions to give him the chance to swoop in. The work on the dirigible factories had done most of the work for him, she would be an easy snatch, but he still played it careful. Experience from long before he tried being a bounty hunter had taught him that things never went well.

Unease still burned deep in his gut, and hesitation made him move slowly. He wasn't in the place to pick and choose his bounties, and space knew after all this he needed a drink. Kanan paused, looking at his plans, feeling his hesitation, and grit his teeth. He would make himself take in this bounty.

He pulled out his comm and placed a call to the FSCREDB. "You'll have your bounty on Hadjyl tomorrow. I'll signal when to rendezvous."

There. Now he couldn't back down.

… He still felt sick inside.

He spent the rest of the day increasing his carbohydrates, proteins, and vitamins. Better to have high energy when his equipment was little more than a broken helmet, a wristcomm, and his DL-18. That night he didn't sleep, and that morning he was very aware of how badly he wanted a drink. Two days without, and one more to wait for her to leave her hole in the wall. Kanan wanted to rub his eyes, but he didn't dare take his helmet off on his rooftop perch. He sat, watching his bounty, mind only half working.

The next day he sprang his trap. He watched her leave her dive bar for the first time since entering it; she look much healthier for her rest. Kanan was on street level, following at a distance as she walked down the alley to a main street. Good, public eyes made targets less likely to fight. He increased his speed and decreased his distance, subtly drawing his blaster and hiding it under his hip-length duster. Sukryan turned a corner and Kanan made his move: pulling up to her side and shoving the end of his blaster into her back.

"Move and you're dead," he said, vocal output distorted with his helmet.

She looked at him, eyes black as her hair; long, thin nose whose nostrils flaring was the only sign of her reaction. Nerves of steel this girl. "What do you want?" she asked.

"Not me. The FSCREDB."

"The FS... what? What does that even stand for?"

"No idea. They're just paying me to bring you in."

Kanan saw her realize what was happening. "Bounty hunter," she murmured. And then, curiously, she didn't try to run or beg for her life or put up a fight. She just sighed, a long, deep noise that resonated with the ones Kanan favored when things were going particularly bad. The bounty took a deep breath and leveled a long gaze at him.

"You will let me go," she said, voice low and slightly flat.

"Sorry lady," he said, "They won't pay me that way."

Her eyes widened, and then she repeated herself: "You will let me go."

There was a tickling in the back of Kanan's senses that he barely noticed and was easy to shrug off. He didn't even have time to think about what that meant before she wrenched out of his grip and ran away.

Okay. That was... weird.

But he'd planned on her running, and simply gave chase, raising his blaster and taking aim at the corner of a roof for one of his traps. Even running his aim was true and the wire snapped, sending a small cascade of dirt pots and balcony adornments (which had taken him hours to find, Hadjyl was so sparse in its decoration) down, startling the crowd and making them back up and thicken, wondering what had happened. Sukryan was forced to stop, but not for long as she bounded up the flimsy structure of a market stand and made an impressive leap up to a window ledge, starting to scamper up. Kanan followed her up to the roof. She had a good distance on him, but malnutrition and poor health were a poor match to someone who spent the better part of a year running after people. It was a healthy five minute chase, and the adrenaline pumped in Kanan's veins, eyes dilating and an honest smile starting to break over his lips. This wasn't fun exactly, but there was energy in his body at last, a high that alcohol could never match, and for several seconds he felt like he was on Mygeeto, or Kardora: happy he had found his place in the galaxy.

Master Depa started to fill his mind, he was thirteen and whole again, but the memory faded as quickly as it has spawned, and the bitterness that followed soured his mouth as he ran. No longer lost in the memory, he leapt thirty feet over the gap of two buildings, not even blinking that his target had done the same, and took aim with his blaster.

The DL-18 recoiled in his hand, and the shot landed on the runner's hip, sending her skittering down to the gravel of the roofs. Kanan slid on his knees to a halt, free hand reaching into his belt for binders and slapping them on one of her wrists before she even fully registered that she had fallen.

He was angry, angry that he had lost himself during the chase, hurt at the losses in his life and desperate to take it out on the bounty.

But that would be hollow. Shallow. Empty.

And he was already empty enough.

"Please," the woman said, "Let me go. I'm the last of my kind." She looked up at him, brown eyes dark and determined, not desperate but stressed.

"So am I," Kanan answered bitterly. "It just looks like I'm a little better at surviving."

The bounty snorted as her second hand was bound and Kanan hoisted her to her feet. "What's your species?" she asked. "I never knew near-humans could resist a trick. Toydarians, Hutts, yes, but I thought all humans and near humans were-"

"Wait," Kanan said quickly, his spine turning to ice. "What do you mean trick?" Not possible not possible not possible not possible not-

"A mind trick," the bounty, Sukryan said.

"... You're a Jedi?" Kanan demanded, reaching out and grabbing her shoulders.

Sukryan blinked, a little taken aback by Kanan's surprise, and her eyes – so much older than her age – aged even more. "Never made it passed Initiate," she said.

Another survivor? Another survivor? How? How?!

Kanan stared at her, through his helmet, mind nothing but blank incomprehension. He didn't dare reach out to the Force and see if it was true, part of him thought this was a trick, most of him didn't dare to hope, he couldn't decide what do to now that he knew his bounty was-

"The Jedi are dead," he growled, voice low and menacing – even more through the filtration. "You trying to..." to what? Have a death wish? Be hunted for life? Evoke imagery of traitors and villains? Kanan couldn't understand why anyone would claim to be a Jedi, a Force-Wielder, a talking execution. "Why would you say that?" he demanded.

Sukryan's face was hollow now; like it was when she first disembarked from the dirigible. Pain flittered across in a way far too familiar to Kanan.

"What does it matter?" she countered, voice broken. "You capturing me means my death," she turned, looking away. "Damn it. I almost had enough credits to start living again..."

She was just like him. A survivor. Trying to live. Trying to... But now what should he do? Kanan was fraught with indecision as he realized the enormity of what was in front of him: someone who understood, who had survived, a kindred spirit: someone who knew what it was like to hide such a big piece of one's self from the galaxy, to hide and live in fear and stress. Someone he could talk to, to reach out and know, to bond with... except that was a disaster waiting to happen. Two Force-sensitives on the same planet was just asking for an early death, and Kanan belatedly realized what the FS part of FSCREDB probably meant, and if there was some kind of center looking for Jedi that meant it was being run by the Empire, and that meant...

Kriff.

He spun her around and unclipped the binders. Sukryan looked at him in open surprise. Kanan didn't have time to explain, to tell her what he was, to share that part of himself. Years of survival kicked in, and this was the only kindness he could offer, because all he could do now was what his Master had bid him do: run. "Get out of here," he whispered, the distortion of his helmet making the words nearly incomprehensible. Sukryan blinked, twice, trying to understand what was happening.

And then an air ship fired across the roof, forcing her and Kanan both to duck for cover.

Kanan landed clear on the other side of the roof, sliding across the gravely surface before crashing into a ventilation pipe. He sprung to his feet, snapping his head around, looking for Sukryan. She had stopped on the other side, and her weaker health made her slower to get up, and stormtroopers in white wired down to the roof and took aim with their blasters. The airship hovered over them, downdraft whipping around them and making hearing anything over the roar of the engine hard. Sukryan was in their sight, no one was turned to Kanan, and for a split second he realized now was his chance to run.

Run.

Run, Kanan.

Damnit, run.

Get out of there.

And instead, against his own sanity, he strode forward, shouting, "Hey! This is my bounty! Butt out!"

Adrenaline was pumping through his veins, he couldn't really believe he was doing what he was doing. They were stormtroopers, the whole point of the helmet and broken filtration and full beard was to be invisible from them, and now he was walking towards them.

But... he couldn't let Sukryan be captured and executed. Not like he almost was. Not like his master...

The rush made his mind work twice as fast, he stepped in front of the injured Initiate and planted his feet, blaster drawn. "Back off!" he shouted.

"That will hardly be necessary, bounty hunter."

Kanan looked passed the stormtroopers, saw a guy in a grey uniform, hat perfectly tilted on his head, thick mustache and narrow chin.

"I have to deliver this bounty to the FSCREDB," Kanan said quickly, putting confidence and authority in his voice, still shielding Sukryan. "I don't want you stealing my bounty."

"You have no worries there," the ranker said. "We are the FSCREDB. We received your message the other day and are glad to see that you have, in fact, caught your bounty."

Kriff. KRIFF, his own actions had brought this down on him, and he had to figure a way out of this and fast.

"I said in my message that I'd signal when to rendezvous, I haven't signaled yet and I don't like people interfering with my hunt."

The ranker lifted an eyebrow, face disinterested. "The hunt is over, it is not?"

"So?" Kanan demanded, wincing that the indignation made him sound so young. He was giving away his age and he couldn't afford to. He shut his mouth before something else happened.

"I understand your kind have... peculiar rituals when it comes to capturing your bounties, but the Empire has this funny quirk of being efficient, and rituals need to wait as a result. You've captured your target, bounty hunter; accept your payment and leave us."

"You didn't give all the information," Kanan said, hoping his desperation didn't bleed through his voice, praying to someone long dead that he could at least do this one thing. "You didn't tell me what she was."

The man's eyes narrowed. "And what, pray tell, is she?" he asked.

Kanan couldn't say it. Not out loud. If this guy didn't know, then he was as much as signing her death warrant by saying she was a Jedi, Force Sensitive, but there was no way this guy didn't know. Instead, he said, "What does FSCREDB stand for?"

The ranker smiled, a bland, empty, soulless smile that was everything the Empire represented. "Force Sensitive Capture, Research, Experimentation and Death Bureau," he replied, voice somewhere between bland and oily. "This heretic will be taken to Mustafar to be executed. She has no hope of escape, I assure, you; Mustafar is where the Hero with No Fear, Anakin Skywalker, was executed."

Force Master Skywalker...

A hand touched his arm, thin and light and meaning so much. Sukryan said nothing, only glanced at him for the briefest of seconds, before turning to the Empire and stepping forward. Only now did Kanan really see how young she was, how thin her shoulders were, how small her frame was. She spoke two words.

"I surrender."

No. No!

"No!" Kanan lifted his blaster and was clocked on the head from behind, his focus so intensely on the ranker and the girl that he didn't realize the stormtroopers had moved in around him. He tumbled to the gravel of the roof, stunned and stars in his eyes.

"He was under my control," Sukryan said. "I thought he would help me survive. Obviously I was mistaken. That strike will dispel the mind trick."

"If you say so," the ranker said. "But we cannot allow even the memory of insubordination. Throw him over."

Arms, fists, grabbed Kanan and he was struggling to get his motor skills back under control. He heard the girl yell, regained his vision enough to see something – a force collar – clipped to her neck as his elevation changed against his control. Stormtroopers filled his line of site, white and black armor, murmurs of him being heavy, and then he was thrown over the edge of the roof, six stories down to his presumed death. They were likely watching, Kanan had seconds to decide how to fall, and he cushioned himself enough to do what he did best: survive.

He woke up hours later, well into the night, with a headache and a sickness that wouldn't shake him. He staggered back to his room and drank until he woke up four days later in a foreign bed with three girls and two boys, all naked and somehow inside each other. He was sick in the sleazy bathroom and gone before anyone else woke up, and he took the first bus he found off planet.

He would never hunt another bounty again.

Author's Note: Geez, what a downer! Written a while ago, this fic is what we call a "mood" fic, where you have to be in the right mood to read it because, well, it's such a downer!

Kanan's life wasn't happy before Hera, he was only really just existing, and this fic fought with us to be written; it WANTED to be written but neither of us were sure when and how it was all supposed to happen. It finally worked out though, and now we wait for the second half of season 3 as we fight through the school year (which kind of sucks for both of us).

Also, we're going to see Rogue One this weekend. Please, no spoilers!