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“Here” Zeb said. “This will protect us from the worst of the storm.”
He helped Kallus sit down on a rock in the little cave they’d found now that they had reached the surface of the moon they had been stranded on, the Imperial never stopping to hold the little meteor he had Zeb had given him tightly against his torso. “Th-thanks” he said, through chattering teeth.
They might have found some shelter from the icy outrage outside, but it was still cold in here. Zeb felt it too; his fur and natural Lasat complexity might keep him from feeling the effects as badly as Kallus obviously did, but he too found himself looking longingly at the outline of Geonosis, visible in the sky. “Make sure you keep warm” he remarked.
“I’m t-trying” Kallus attempted to snap back.
Zeb raised an eyebrow at him. “Doesn’t seem like you’re doing too good a job there. You don’t have any better ideas than clutching that meteor?”
Kallus sighed, his breath becoming a little cloud in front of him. “During my military training, we, er… we learned a trick to stay warm in such situations” he mumbled.
“What is it, then?” Zeb asked. He’d also had extensive military training, but all meant for on Lasan, which in general was a warm planet.
To his surprise, Kallus looked hesitant. “Er…” he stuttered, “well…”
“What?” Zeb said, a little more forcefully.
“We, er, combine…” Kallus started, “body heat.”
Zeb stared at him. “… what?”
Kallus sat up a little straighter. “We… have to… you know” he mumbled, having the grace to look indignant about the prospect as well.
“Karabast” Zeb grunted. “No. Absolutely not.”
Kallus narrowed his eyes at him. “Listen, I do not like it any more than you do, but we have no idea when either the Empire or your rebel friends will find us and we do want to be alive for it.”
“Urgh, fine” Zeb conceded, throwing his hands in the air. “Let me guess: it works best if we take off our clothes too?”
A faint blush crept onto Kallus’s cheeks. “Actually it does, but –”
“NO” Zeb said forcefully.
“– I think we can draw the line there” Kallus went on.
“Yes” Zeb growled.
A rather uncomfortable silence fell, in which Zeb covertly studied the little spots of pink in Kallus’s cheeks. He had never seen the Imperial blush before.
To be fair, he had never seen him display any emotion other than smugness or anger.
Kallus shivered again, almost wrapping himself around the little meteor.
“So…” Zeb started, and the Imperial looked up at him. “Since I’m larger, and better suited for extreme temperatures, I guess I should be… outside.”
“That… I guess that makes sense, yes” Kallus said, looking away.
Zeb uncomfortably shuffled closer to him, wrapping his arms around him to pull him in. “Can you take off that thing?” he asked, knocking on Kallus’s chest armour. “And just that?”
“Yes, yes, of course” Kallus said at once, leaning away to take it off before tentatively leaning back again.
For a while they just sat in silence, Zeb very aware of the body in his arms. Kallus was sitting rigidly, though each time he shivered he seemed to come a little closer, until eventually he was pressed into Zeb enough that the latter could feel his heart rate. It was rather high, compared to how he had felt Ezra’s or Sabine’s or Kanan’s before.
“My name is Alexsandr, by the way” Kallus said unexpectedly.
Zeb gave him a surprised look. “I thought it was Kallus?”
“That’s my surname” Kallus explained. “For protocol reasons, not many people use or even know my full name.”
“Then why are you telling me it?” Zeb asked, bemused.
“You told me yours.”
“You already knew.”
“But you didn’t know that.”
They fell silent again, Zeb rather thrown off by this sudden revelation. For the first time in all the years they had encountered him, he suddenly saw Kallus as a person instead of an Imperial. And to his surprise, he almost liked him.
“I have to say… you’re more honourable than I thought” he admitted.
Kallus smiled wryly. “Contrary to what you seem to think, the Empire isn’t the enemy. We want to bring peace and order to the galaxy, something much needed after a war as impactful as the Clone Wars” he said. “I joined the military because I believe in those ideals.”
And there was the usual anger again. “Oh, you brought order to Lasan and Geonosis all right” Zeb snorted humourlessly.
Against his expectations, Kallus didn’t retort or taunt him, instead looking away in silence.
“What?” Zeb prodded. “Loth-cat got your tongue?”
“I do not deny that sometimes the means of establishing that peace and order are… harsh, or get out of hand” Kallus said, looking back at him. “But you’re not innocent in this either. Those many Stormtroopers you’ve killed, pilots you’ve shot down… they’ve got a family too, you know. They leave people behind too.”
“Huh” Zeb reacted thoughtfully, taken aback. It felt strange, having this exchange while holding the Agent against his chest. “Guess I never considered that.”
“Because you never look past the white helmets?” Kallus said coldly.
“Well, isn’t that the point of that armour?” Zeb replied. “Reducing them to simple, expendable soldiers?”
Once again Kallus surprised him by falling silent, looking troubled.
Zeb took a deep breath to ground himself again. “Can you be honest with me, Alexsandr?” he said in a softer voice. “Do you look at a Stormtrooper’s face? You know, underneath the helmet?”
Kallus looked up at him with a look of astonishment on his face, seemingly thinking for a moment before replying. “… no.”
“Ironic” Zeb snorted.
“Ironic?” Kallus echoed.
“That the clones, as clones, seemed to have had more individuality than your Stormtroopers do.”
The Imperial gave him a scrutinising look. “You have a clone in your rebel ranks, don’t you?”
“What’s it to you?” Zeb growled, immediately hostile.
Kallus chuckled shortly. “You don’t have to protect him, I was there when you took him aboard, remember?”
“Oh… right” Zeb muttered. “You know him.”
“Yes” Kallus confirmed. “Rex.”
“You use his name” Zeb said, looking at Kallus in surprise.
“Yes?” the agent reacted.
Zeb couldn’t help but grin at his confused expression. “I thought you Imperials only saw the clones as numbers.”
“I have deep respect for the clones” Kallus said. “I remember seeing them on Coruscant when I was just a boy; strong, strategic, loyal. They inspired me to join the military myself.”
“Huh” Zeb mumbled.
“You might not believe it, but it truly pains me to see what has become of Rex, Gregor, Wolffe, and many others” Kallus went on. “So set in their belief in the old Republic that they cannot see how the Empire is its successor; an improvement, not an adversary.”
“No,” Zeb countered, “they see the Empire for what it is: an oppressive, power-hungry force.”
“We do not oppress” Kallus said, frowning. “All systems that have joined us have done so of their own volition.”
Zeb raised a mocking eyebrow at him. “Sorry, did I say oppress? I meant obliterate.”
This still doesn’t seem to get the rise he keeps expecting out of the Imperial.
“Lasan was an exception” Kallus said calmly, a little more softly than he’d spoken before. “Like I said: things got out of hand. It wasn’t meant to be a massacre, it – it shouldn’t have been.”
His voice caught just slightly on the last part of the sentence, startling Zeb – and he found himself secretly touched that the agent would admit this.
“No” he agreed, and decided to leave it at that. “But the systems voluntarily joining you; do you really think it’s the people who make that decision? Do you honestly believe it’s not a bunch of opportunistic government officials who could use a larger army backing them up in wiping out any ‘insurgence’ against their own corruption?”
“If that were the case, there wouldn’t be so many systems in which we would have been hailed as heroes” Kallus said. “Also by the people.”
Zeb snorted. “People are fickle. Your Empire swoops in, promising them jobs and stability; of course the poor would rejoice. But when those job turn out to be little more than slavery and the stability just an increase of rules and limitations on the common folks’ lives, they realise that those ideals are just that: ideals. Don’t forget that it’s those very systems that initially hailed you where we now find more and more people who turn to our cause.”
Kallus just sighed in response. “I guess we shouldn’t expect to agree on this” he murmured, looking away.
“You could say that again” Zeb snorted. Why was it so easy to hold a conversation with his enemy?
“If we would, we would be sitting here as friends, not enemies” Kallus said.
“Would we?” Zeb reacted, taken aback.
“I think so?” Kallus said, looking back at him with an expression so alien to the Imperial’s face that it took Zeb a moment to recognise it: uncertainty. “I mean, you have a military background, you could have gone far if you had joined the Imperial Army.”
“Or you could have joined the Rebellion” Zeb returned. Especially after Lasan, he’d be damned before he would ever join the Empire. “We could have used someone of your calibre, with your insights and intel.”
And to his utter astonishment, Kallus looked thoughtful at that, no hostility like Zeb had undoubtedly shown at his proposition, as if he were actually considering it.
“Huh” he merely said, staring blindly at the raging snowstorm. It was the only response he gave, and Zeb fell silent as well, joining him in looking outside.
Kallus shivered again, and suddenly Zeb was very aware of the human’s body in his arms, pressed against his own. Kallus felt harder, more muscular than any of the humans on the Ghost. Solid, like Zeb himself.
It only now struck him that humans don’t have fur. They had localised hair, of course, and he noticed some tiny blond hairs strewn around the parts of Kallus’s skin that weren’t covered by clothing, but it wasn’t a proper fur, it didn’t cover him.
His shivering had diminished in frequency and intensity since they had huddled, and he was starting to feel pleasantly warm against Zeb’s frame. Lasats had a slightly higher base body temperature than humans, of course, but at least he didn’t feel like a block of ice anymore.
Zeb had never thought he would ever even so much as think it, but holding the Imperial felt… comfortable.
***
An unexpected sound woke Zeb up, and it took him a second to realise where he was. In an icy cave. On a Geonosian moon. Holding Imperial Security Bureau Agent Kallus.
He immediately shot away from the Imperial, Kallus doing the same. It took him another second to remember that they had huddled together on purpose, and for a reason.
But he didn’t get the opportunity to consider that shocking memory, as the sound had only come closer, and now he was alert enough to recognise it.
“That’s a ship” Kallus remarked, beating him to it.
“Yeah,” Zeb said, “but whose?”
Neither of them answered the question, both dreading the possibilities.
Eventually Zeb got up, helping Kallus upright as well. “Come on.”
They look around the corner of the cave, and to Zeb’s immense relief it’s the Ghost that’s waiting for him put in the snowstorm, warm and full of life and familiar.
“Ah” Kallus said. “Your friends did find you.”
He sounded disappointed, but not like he was mad that his enemy won the race; almost like he had genuinely hoped for Zeb to come with him with the Empire.
“Like I said they would” Zeb replied, trying to make sense of the Imperial’s tone. “You know, we will treat you fairly.”
Kallus gave him a lightly ironic chuckle. “I’ll take my chances with the Empire… Zeb.”
It was the first time he had ever said his name, and it caused a current of something to shoot through Zeb, almost making him say something truly crazy like I’ll miss you.
He managed to pull himself back together, simply nodding at Kallus instead. The agent returned the gesture, and Zeb started to walk away, but it felt wrong, it felt like too cold an ending of this bizarre situation they’ve shared.
He stopped short just before he would get in the line of sight of the Ghost, turning back around. “Goodbye, Alexsandr.”
And then Kallus did something Zeb had absolutely never expected him to do: he smiled.
Epilogue
Konstantine’s Star Destroyer is in hot pursuit of the Ghost, the deployed TIE fighters not enough to best the rebels, but adequate for keeping them from jumping to hyperspace.
“I have them locked, sir” an officer calls from the lower level of the bridge.
“Good” Konstantine says smugly. “Fire at will.”
“NO!” Kallus shouts, panic suddenly clawing at his throat. Zeb is on that ship.
And then he becomes aware of the others on the bridge again, all staring at him as if he’s gone crazy, and he realises that the word must have come out unusually fierce, almost desperate.
He quickly changes track. “Remember, we need them alive. Engage tractor beam.”
Konstantine doesn’t seem overly convinced. “You never were this concerned about these rebels’ well-being before.”
“They are now part of a larger rebellion” Kallus says. “You’ve seen it. If we capture this cell instead of destroying it, they could lead us to their base.”
The words come easily, and it’s not a lie, not really, he does really want to find that rebel base. He thinks.
“That is a good point” Konstantine agrees. “All troopers: do not shoot to kill. We need the rebels alive.”
He turns back to the front window, his back on Kallus, who breathes a secret sigh of relief.
***
“Found it!” Zeb calls, walking into the Ghost’s cockpit.
“I told you it was probably just somewhere in that mess in your room!” Kanan says, annoyed. “We didn’t need to go back to that moon for a wild mynock chase!”
“I just had to check, okay?” Zeb reacts sheepishly.
Kanan continues grumbling, but, to Zeb’s relief, doesn’t question his motives any further, muttering something about training Ezra as he leaves for the back, where Ezra, Sabine and Chopper have been doing Ashla-knows-what, leaving Zeb free to sink down onto the copilot chair and look at the familiar patterns of hyperspace.
“What were you looking for?” Hera asks.
“Just, er…” Zeb stalls, frantically trying to remember the exact details of the excuse he used to get the Ghost to return to the Geonosis system. “I thought my bo-rifle was missing a piece.”
Hera just raises her eyebrows at him.
“It… it got damaged in the fight with Kallus” Zeb says quickly. It wasn’t a complete lie. “I had to check.”
Hera’s sceptical look doesn’t change. “So…” she says slowly, deliberately. “Was he still there?”
“What?” Zeb asks, confused.
“Kallus?” Hera presses on. “Was he still where you left him?”
Zeb lets out a long, slow breath, a whirlwind of emotion going through him. “No. I guess the Empire came for him.”
He was relieved for that, of course, not wanting his adversary to freeze to death. But why does he also feel disappointed, then?
“Shame” Hera murmurs. “I wouldn’t have minded finding him frozen.”
“Yeah…” Zeb grunts noncommittally. “Hm…”
Suddenly Hera looks at him sharply, and he realises too late that she was testing him. “Zeb, what really happened on that moon?”
“I told you” Zeb says, face growing hot as he rubs his neck, fiercely grateful that most species’ eyes cannot register a blush on a Lasat. “We got stranded there, I spared him because he was injured and I didn’t want to just execute him, and we called an uncomfortable truce in order to fight off the locals.”
It was an outline of what happened. He purposefully excludes mentioning that he and Kallus huddled together, that he spooned the Imperial to keep both of them warm. Hera doesn’t need to know that. Nobody does.
“And then you didn’t bring him along” Hera says, and her tone is disapproving.
“I tried to get him to join us” Zeb returns. “I told him we would treat him fairly; he would be incredibly useful to the Rebellion. But he wanted to wait for the Empire to find him instead, and, in honour of our truce, I let him.”
“That’s all?”
“Yep.”
Hera hums sceptically.
“What?” Zeb inquires, annoyed at her scrutinising.
“You have that look in your eyes” she muses, her expression more concerned than anything.
“What look?” he asks, confused.
“The same look Rex sometimes has” Hera explains. “When we mention Ahsoka.”
Now Zeb is really non-plussed. What is she talking about?
“Kallus is an Imperial, Zeb” Hera says softly. “The very thing we’re fighting against. He would betray all of us in an instant. Don’t forget about that.”
“I’m not” Zeb bites back, feeling insulted but also strangely caught at her words.