Chapter Text
“Kanan says you think I was cheating, when I did this with him.”
Ezra felt his eyes widen in panic as he shook his head quickly from side to side in instant denial. “What? No! I mean, I might have asked if he was sure.… I mean… He wasn’t supposed to tell you that!”
Hera smiled. “He didn’t. You just did.” She reached into one of her pockets and pulled out a piece of fabric, a large square of black material. She rolled it along the diagonal until it formed a strip a few inches wide. “Would it make you feel better if I wore this?” she asked.
“No.” He shook his head. “You don’t have to do that. I believe you.”
She shrugged. “Well, it’d make me feel better. Give me a hand?” She held out the piece of cloth to him, and when he accepted it, turned her back to him and waited.
Ezra hesitated. She had removed her goggles and headset for the occasion. Very carefully, he covered her eyes and tied a knot at the back, below her lekku, making sure that it was loose enough to be comfortable — or at the very least, not uncomfortable — but tight enough not to leave a gap at the bottom that she could see though. She had asked for this, after all; he wasn’t going to make it easy for her. “Is that okay?” he asked hesitantly.
Hera turned to face him, raising a hand to her face to touch the blindfold as she did. She nodded, and smiled. He scrutinized the expression, expecting to see uncertainty there. The blindfold worked in much the same way as Kanan’s mask to disguise enough of her facial expression that he couldn’t be certain of what he was seeing. Instead, he reached out with the Force, trying to get a read on her emotions, but nothing of any note came though.
“So,” she folded her arms and faced in something like his direction. “When I did this with Kanan, he took my arm and I led him around the ship. We can do the same, if you want.”
Ezra frowned and shook his head. “I don’t need…”
“I know,” she assured him. “But if you want, you can close your eyes.”
“No.” His head was still shaking, turning rapidly from side to side in vehement refusal of the offer. “No.”
Hera nodded. “Okay, okay that’s fine. But we’ll still do this…” She reached for him, missing at the first attempt. As she tried again, he moved his hand into the path of hers to allow her to find him. She gripped his forearm, moved down to find his hand, and placed it on her own arm, just above the elbow. “But you’ll be able to keep an eye on me, so you know I’m not cheating.”
Ezra frowned. “I don’t think you cheated,” he said.
Hera turned to face him and smiled, “Ever done this before?” she asked.
He looked at his hand, gripping her arm loosely. He had led Kanan in this way, once or twice, back in the early days after his injury. It had always felt awkward, the unaccustomed hesitancy in Kanan’s steps as he followed him probably less to blame than Ezra’s uncertainty, and the constant thought in the back of his head that one day he would be the one to be led.
That day was not today. He pulled his hand back. “I don’t need that.”
Hera reached for his hand again. He stepped back, deliberately moving out of her way. She paused, considering. “I’m not saying you need me to lead you, I just thought…” she broke off, then sighed. “Okay, ready?” She turned in the direction of the door and began to walk.
Ezra watched, fascinated, observing the differences in her steps without vision. Hers were not the uncertain, shuffling steps of Kanan in those first weeks and months; there was a confidence to her stride, she picked her feet up from the ground and walked with a normal gait, but more slowly than he was used to, her steps appearing measured, careful. As she approached the wall, she raised a hand and touched it with her fingers, then turned to face him.
“Coming?” she asked.
He hesitated for a few seconds more, then crossed the room to join her. Her hand slid slowly down the wall until her fingertips found the door control panel.
“I showed this to Kanan,” she said. She pointed to the wall, just above the panel. “If you feel here…” She reached for his hand and this time he allowed her to take it and place his fingers on the smooth metal of the wall just above the panel. She moved them from one side to the other. “Feel that bump?” she asked.
He repeated the motion, fingers moving back and forth on the wall; there was indeed a small but noticeable raised portion. He moved his hand a little higher, and then a little lower. It appeared to be a raised line running vertically up the wall. He moved a little closer, examining the wall with his eyes. The room’s light source was behind him, and he was trying to see in his own shadow, but he could see no difference in the texture of the metal.
“It’s where two sheets of metal join. They’re fused together to make a single sheet, but you get one every two feet, everywhere on the ship. And you get one just above the door control inside and outside every room. Move your hand down, and you find the panel.”
She did just that. Ezra watched her fingers run over the tops of the buttons there, not pressing them yet, simply touching them.
“You know this already,” she said. “But two buttons, the large one to open or close, then the smaller one underneath to lock and unlock. On the other side, the door chime is just below that.”
Ezra nodded, staring at the buttons. He had never really considered them in any detail.
“You can see it’s locked because the light around the edge goes out,” she added, applying a small amount of pressure to the lock button. “But you might not have noticed this…” She reached for his hand again, still touching the wall above the panel, and moved it down to the lock button. “Press it,” she said.
He did as she asked, the light illuminated, indicating the door was unlocked.
“And then press it again, feel that little bit of slack before anything happens? You only get that when it’s unlocked and you’re pressing to lock it, otherwise it puts up that little bit more resistance.”
He pressed the button again a few more times, feeling the difference. She was right, he hadn’t noticed that before. “I never lock the door anyway,” he said. “Zeb might not be too happy if he arrived back late one night and he was locked out of his quarters.”
Hera shrugged. “Well, if you ever do need it, now you know,” she told him.
He pressed the button again, unlocking the door. “Yeah, I guess.” he said. She was right, of course, and she meant well, but somehow he couldn't bring himself to muster too much enthusiasm for the ability to lock and unlock a door; something any child would be able to do without even thinking. Of course, he was going to find that more and more; things that he hadn’t even considered becoming impossible tasks. He didn’t relish that thought.
On the other hand, the fact that he had a solution for one of those tasks ahead of time could only be a good thing.
He just wished he could make himself believe that.
“Ready?” Hera asked him. She turned back as though to look at him through the layers of material shielding her eyes.
His scowl was an involuntary reaction that he smoothed away instinctively. He released a short puff of a sigh and ran his fingers one more time over that invisible join in the wall. “Yeah,” he told her, sounding more reluctant than he had intended.
Hera opened the door, stepped through, then turned to the left. She placed her hand on the wall again. “Remember those bumps?” she asked. “Every two feet. I measured it.” She set off walking, hand held at around waist level, lightly brushing the wall with her fingertips as she did. “Kanan’s room,” she said as her fingers bumped audibly on the much more visible join between wall and door. “And mine,” she indicated the other side of the corridor with her free hand, not taking her other from the wall.
Ezra trailed a few steps behind her, copying her slow and measured steps, hand also running along the wall. He kept his eyes open, watching her closely, deliberately tuning out the ship around him and concentrating on Hera, on his own steps, the distance from one door to the next, the feel of those previously unnoticed distance markers.
He couldn’t bring himself to close his eyes.
The reluctance made no sense, he was safe, he was in a familiar environment, and the one other person on the ship was Hera, who right now wouldn’t be able to see him if he did make a fool of himself.
“Lounge,” she told him, tapping her fingertips on the door as she passed.
“Engine room,” Hera said, resting her hand on the railing that ran around the top. She smiled in a way that made Ezra feel nervous. “Want to take a look?”
He leaned over and peered down into the room below. “I’ve seen the engines before, Hera,” he said. “You don’t have to…” He stopped; she was already halfway down the ladder, climbing one rung at a time rather than sliding, as she might ordinarily. Ezra watched nervously from the top, but she descended with no problem, jumped the last two rungs and landed on the ground with a metallic clang. With no other choice, he followed her down.
She stepped away from the base of the ladder, moving out of the way as she heard him approach. The engines were powered down, and the room silent. She indicated them with a wave of her hand, then turned away and walked to the far side of the room. There, she brushed the wall with her whole palm, moving quickly in a small arc until she located the visible groove in the wall that marked the edge of a control panel. She applied a little pressure, then released it, allowing the panel to open.
“It’s not just the engines down here,” she said. “The wiring in this panel controls the lighting all over the ship. There’s other controls for it too, obviously, but if there’s a problem here, nothing works.” She tapped on the wall right next to the open panel. “Also, for some reason, if the hot water goes out, you have to reach sidewise from here inside the wall to fix it. I don’t think that’s in the original design, someone made some modifications.”
Ezra folded his arms and leaned against the wall. “You’re not gonna start poking around in there, are you?” he asked. “Because you really don't have to. You’ve proved yourself.”
“No, I’m not.” She closed the panel again with an audible click. “I know my way around the ship pretty well, but I’m not going to do that. Especially not when everything’s working fine at the moment.”
No, of course not. No way someone could be trusted to mess around with complex wiring systems when they couldn’t see what they were doing. One more thing to add to the long list of things he wouldn’t be able to do anymore. He felt vaguely ridiculous for the bitter stab of disappointment that struck him unexpectedly. “Yeah, good thing I’m no good at repairs anyway, huh?”
Hera turned to face him, lips pursed, thoughtful, then she opened the access panel again. She reached inside with both hands and found the main circuit board, then brushed over it lightly with the tips of her fingers, reading what she found there. Ezra leaned forward slightly to peer inside, but the panel was full of shadows that made it difficult to work out what he was seeing.
“Main lighting,” she said. “Three sub-circuits, one for crew quarters and lounge area, one the cockpit.” As she spoke, her fingers touched the relevant parts of the circuitry. “Third one, everywhere else; corridors, cargo bay and engine room, storage. Now, if I do this…” she felt at the circuitry inside the panel, Ezra squinted and leaned further forward in an attempt to see what she was doing. She located a small wire, held it between her thumb and forefinger and and tugged it out of its socket.
The room was plunged into instant darkness, so thick and impenetrable that Ezra couldn’t make out even the slightest shadow of movement before his eyes. He froze, still leaning forward to look inside the panel, but suddenly staring at nothing at all. He blinked compulsively, feeling his eyes straining, desperately working to make out shapes in the darkness.
His hand still touched the wall, at one of those joins that Hera had pointed out to him; he left it there as he turned his head. Above him, to his left and right, he could make out two glowing shape attached to the walls; the emergency lighting kicking in. He could see it, but couldn’t anything else, and he didn’t know if the lights were faulty and not bright enough, or if his sight had deteriorated that much.
He turned away from them, looking back to Hera, and saw nothing at all, not even a shadow, and he knew, he knew that she had turned the lights out and that any moment now, she would undo whatever it was that she had done, but somehow all he could do was keep very still, and try to keep breathing.
It lasted only seconds, before Hera reconnected the circuit and the lights came back on. “See? It can be done,” she told him with a breezy smile. “It’s just a matter of knowing how.”
Ezra blinked and turned away as the sudden brightness, after straining against the dark, stung his eyes. He opened his mouth to answer, but only air came out. He was suddenly very glad she was still wearing the blindfold.
Hera cocked her head slightly in his direction, listening to his reaction. He could see her confusion melting into concern as realization dawned. “Ezra?” she said, her voice suddenly full of concern. “Are you..?”
He grinned widely, hoping the expression would be audible in his voice, even if he was still shaking. “Yeah,” he said, and forced a laugh. “Ha. Okay, you’ve proven yourself. I believe you now.”
She closed the panel again, and relaxed slightly. “I thought you said you already knew I didn’t cheat.”
He felt his cheeks color a little and smiled nervously. “Well, yeah, of course I did. But if I hadn’t, this would have proved it. That’s what I meant. Obviously.”
“Obviously,” she repeated. “So, moving on?”
She turned to leave, taking a slightly different route than the one she had used to approach the panel. Ezra remained where he was, giving himself a moment to breath, to calm the illogical panic that had risen in the sudden darkness, then turned to follow her, just in time to see what was about to happen, just too late to do anything to prevent it.
“Hera!” he called, rushing forward as her foot caught on the edge of a medium-sized rectangular metal box that had been carelessly left with one corner pushed against the wall for maximum trip potential. She caught the side of the box as she moved forward. Her hand, still touching the wall as she counted joins, clenched into a fist around nothing as instinct drove her to try to grab at something to regain her balance. As it failed, both hands reached out ahead of her, instinctively trying to cushion her fall.
She fell almost in slow motion as Ezra raced across the room, reaching out with both his hands and the Force to catch her before she reached the ground. He failed at both, and at the last moment used the Force to push the box out of the way, to at least soften her fall slightly. One hand and one knee touched the ground simultaneously with a sound that echoed around the room, probably the whole ship, for what felt like minutes.
Without comment, Hera picked herself up, dusted herself off, and winced as she bent her knee.
“You okay?” Ezra asked.
Hera frowned. She raised a hand to remove the blindfold, but hesitated with her fingers touching the cloth and allowed her hand to drop back to her side. She smiled, a little shakily. “Object lesson,” she said. “Tidy up after yourself. I was down here making a few improvements a few days back, I was supposed come back and finish it, but with everything…” she shrugged. “I forgot.”
Ezra folded his arms tightly across his body. She had forgotten to finish the work because of him. He wondered what other problems his news might have caused, and what it still might cause. “Hera, I…”
She laughed, clearly unhurt and recovering now from the surprise of the fall. “At least it’s my own fault,” she said. “All those times I told you and Zeb to pick up after yourselves finally sunk in.”
After Kanan had lost his sight, Hera had instigated new rules onboard, the most important of which was keeping the floors clear of mess and clutter, even things that you needed. If it wasn’t built into the ship, it needed to be packed away. Nobody had objected, though on occasion they had forgotten. It had never caused an accident.
She reached out to her right, hand moving through the air to locate the ladder to climb back into the main section of the ship.
“It’s okay, Hera, You can take it off now,” Ezra told her.
She either ignored or didn’t hear him, and took another step, swung her arm again and found the ladder.
“Hera, take it off,” he said. He couldn’t stand it anymore. He had never wanted to do this in the first place, from the first time that Kanan had suggested it, the idea hadn’t sat easy with him. “Please?”
She paused, turning to face him, then slowly raised a hand to her face, and pulled the blindfold down until it hung around her neck. She blinked and looked around the room before settling her gaze on Ezra. “Okay,” she told him.
Silently, he followed her up the ladder and into the main section of the ship.
“Ezra, wait.”
As soon as he entered the crew quarters area, he had headed home. Now, he stopped, hand on the door control to enter his quarters as they passed them, and turned to face her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”
He shrugged. He didn’t know whether she meant the tripping up, or the lights. Neither one had exactly contributed to an overall feeling of hopefulness about the situation.
“Can we talk?” she asked him.
He moved his hand away from the door control and looked at her. The blindfold still hung loose around her neck and he felt his eyes drawn to it. “Sure,” he said. He turned back to open the door, but thought better of it, moved away and walked to the lounge. Hera followed him.
He seated himself at the table. Wordlessly, Hera collected two mugs, dropped something into the bottom of each one, and filled them with hot water. She carried them back to the table, sat down and pushed one in Ezra’s direction.
He reached for it, and peered down into it. Steam rose from the hot liquid, instantly warming and damping his face. In the center, a teabag floated, infusing the water with a fruity taste. He looked at Hera, curious.
“Jogan tea,” she explained. “It’s something Kanan and I do, when…”
“I’m not Kanan,” he interrupted. He was nothing like Kanan. Even if one day they would both… it wasn’t the same. It…
“I know,” Hera told him. She smiled. “Kanan makes the tea for me, and he makes it better than this. I don’t have the patience to brew it properly.” She reached for a spoon, and dunked the tea bag several times, before fishing it out and dropping it, sodden and steaming, onto a plate that Ezra had left discarded there since breakfast.
He reached for the spoon and copied, before taking an experimental sniff. It smelled okay, not great, but drinkable.
Hera picked up her mug and held it between both hands, not making any move to drink it. “What happened?” she asked.
“I don’t… What do you mean?”
“Something happened, in the engine room.”
Ezra reached for his mug, more to give himself something to do than to drink. His fingers tapped on the surface, feeling the warmth transmitted through. “You fell,” he said.
Hera shook her head. “Before that.” She frowned, thoughtful. “The lighting circuit,” she said. When I turned out the lights.”
Ezra placed his mug back on the table and turned his face away from her.
“I wanted to demonstrate something that you’d be able to see happening,” she explained. “I was inside the lighting panel, and if I’d switched them off in the crew quarters, or somewhere else, you’d never have known. I was showing you it’s possible to do that kind of thing without…” she stopped, and sighed deeply.
Ezra fought the urge to leave. He reached for his drink again, brought it to his lips and took a sip. The water was scalding hot, and despite the strong fragrance, tasted of very little. “I know,” he said.
Hera slid a hand across the tabletop and rested it on his forearm. “Talk to me,” she told him.
Ezra took another sip of the flavorless drink. There was nothing to say. Or at the very least, nothing that he knew how to put into words. The sudden darkness had surprised him. He hadn’t been ready for it, and although he had known what was happening, an irrational fear had risen in him anyway; the same one he contended with every night when he switched off the light, because he knew that in the morning when he switched it back on, vision would return, but sometimes it was still difficult to believe it. “How’s your knee?” he said instead.
He watched her hand duck underneath the table to touch the injured knee. She winced slightly, and shrugged. “I’ve had worse.”
That would have been worse, if he hadn’t thought to push the metal box, with its sharp, angular corners out of the way before she reached the ground. She probably didn’t realize that, she had still been wearing the blindfold at the time, she hadn’t seen him do that. If she had been hurt, properly hurt, it would have been Ezra’s fault.
“It was just a fall,” she said. “It happens. It’s not the end of the world.”
He tapped his fingers on the side of his cup. It was easy for her not to care. For him, things were a little different. “Maybe not to you,” he said.
Hera’s lips parted as though to say something, but no words came. She took a small sip of her tea instead, inhaling deeply as she did, then set the cup down and stared at him levelly across the table. “You’re right,” she said.
And he was. But so was she. It had been just a fall, and he had had much worse many times before, before he had even heard the words Sacul Syndrome. It was entirely possible to injure oneself while fully sighted. It was entirely possible, as Kanan had proven, to be completely okay while unable to see.
He sighed. “No, I’m not,” he admitted. “I’m…” He reached for his drink again, just to give himself something to do with his hands. He had no intention of drinking it, but his fingernails made a pleasant sound as he drummed them on the side of the mug. He inflated his cheeks and released the air slowly through pursed lips. “You can’t be a coward, growing up like I did. Doing what I… what we all do now. You can’t be afraid or you can’t do anything, you know?”
Hera watched him speak. When he paused, she nodded. He got the feeling that it wasn’t so much an agreement as encouragement to continue.
“But I couldn't even bring myself to close my eyes on a ship where I know I’m safe. You were trying to help me, to show me things and I couldn’t do it.” He took a deep breath, fingers still drumming compulsively on the side of the mug clenched between his hands. He felt as though that were the only thing keeping him in the room; that, and Hera’s magnetic stare. “Then when you turned the lights out earlier…” He took another deep breath, thinking of the sudden darkness again, the sudden and complete inability to see.
His future.
Hera reached across and touched his arm again. “It frightened you,” she said. “I’m sorry. The emergency lighting should have been…” she stopped, thinking. “It wasn’t enough, was it? You couldn't see… could you see anything at all?”
“I wasn’t scared,” he said, instinctively. It was a lie. He needed to leave. He should end this conversation now, before it got any worse. Hera had already basically interviewed him about the implications of his condition, she had known, or she should have known what would happen. Of course, she hadn’t been able to see at the point either, maybe she had overestimated the light levels on the room at the time. The idea that she hadn’t done it deliberately made him feel marginally better.
“If I can’t handle that now,” he said with difficulty, “what’s gonna happen when…” He stopped. He wasn’t ready to talk about that yet. Or think about it. He wasn’t entirely sure why he was still there.
“Kanan’s going to teach you everything you need to know before then,” Hera assured him. “And what you said earlier? It’s not cowardice not to want this to happen.”
But it was, and it was also stupid. He finally let go of the still-full mug of jogan tea and climbed to his feet. It was happening, he couldn’t do anything to change that, it was something that he was going to have to come to terms with. He turned and walked quickly out of the room, leaving Hera staring after him.
He slowed at the door to his quarters, considering slipping inside and locking the door, but continued walking instead, out of the ship and into the air outside. He carried on, not stopping, not looking behind him, until he reached one of his favorite hiding spots, and ducked inside.