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Zeb likes the crew of the Ghost a lot, but that doesn't change the fact that they are cursed.
Every job he and Kal have ever run in tandem with Spectre cell has gone awry in some crazy way. The only difference this time is that it seems like the Spectres' Ashla-blessed ability to squeak out of danger isn't going to extend to Zeb and Kal like it's always done before.
“Captain 1, Ghost is ready to get the hell out of here, waiting on you, do you copy?”
“Copy, Specter 2,” Zeb pants into his comlink, ducking a blaster bolt and laying covering fire for Kallus to dart past him in the corridor. “Get your crew out, we're takin' an alternate exit.”
“Zeb -”
“Just go!” Zeb yells, and cuts the link to Hera Syndulla, the best pilot he's ever met and definitely who he'd like to be flying him out of danger right now. Instead, he's got a bank of escape pods and no time to think.
Kallus smacks the controls for the first one in the lineup and turns to lay cover fire so Zeb can clamber inside. Zeb flips toggles like mad, priming the single-use propulsors. “Kal!” he bellows. “In!” He punches the launch control and Kallus barely hops through the hatch in time -
-Accompanied by a blaster bolt that sizzles past his neck, leaving a proximity burn, and slags directly into the console, lighting up sparks everywhere and blacking out multiple readouts.
Zeb yells profanities and immediately slaps the sparks out to prevent fire from catching, but he can already tell the pod is kriffed in some fundamental way. It lurches so hard that Kallus is thrown into the wall and Zeb barely stays upright.
Kal staggers to the console. “Lost nav and stern propulsor,” he yells. “It was programmed for planetfall but it's -”
Zeb can already tell they're off-course from Geonosis proper, but that's about all he can tell as they're both flung around again, losing contact with the console and slamming into the walls and ceiling as if the artificial gravity isn't active at all. And in the chaos and sirens and red flashing lights he just has time to think This is it and Don't kriffin' puke, don't go out like that and Kal, Kal, Kal -
The quality of light out the viewport changes from vacuum to atmosphere, screeching past white-hot, and then there's a huge CRUNCH and Zeb blacks out.
He wakes to Kallus screaming.
Zeb can't have been out long, maybe a minute at most. It takes a horrible, red-hued, flashing moment to orient himself, but once he figures out which way is down he realizes that the escape pod is no longer moving and... he isn't dead. And from the sound of it, neither is Kal.
“Hey,” Zeb croaks, pushing himself up on shaky arms. “Kallus-”
Kal lets out another awful noise, muffled this time as he grits his teeth and tries to move.
“Don't move, stop, lemme see.” Zeb's head swims but he makes it upright enough to get a good look – which makes nausea roll through him again, because human legs definitely don't bend like that. “Karabast,” he hisses.
Still disoriented and aching like – well, like a planet's just slammed into him – Zeb takes stock of their situation. The pod is beyond repair, crushed and smoking at the nose end. It's tipped into the ground at a crazed angle, leaving nowhere flat to lie or stand, so Kallus' broken leg is actively being compressed by the angle he's fallen into. Zeb rips open the emergency storage compartments and finds them minimally stocked, not too surprising for a decommissioned orbital station. They're lucky there are any supplies at all.
“Okay,” Zeb pants, already regretting what he's about to do. “Yer not gonna like this.” He yanks a securing strap off the side of the storage locker, winds it around his hand, and leans down to shove the bundled plastifiber webbing in Kallus' mouth. Kal looks up at him with watery-eyed alarm and Zeb can tell that the sound in the back of his throat wants to be a strident no.
“C'mon,” Zeb says, and wraps his arm around Kal's chest, claws into the steep angle of the pod's floor, and heaves them both towards the hatch.
Kallus shrieks bloody murder.
“Sorry,” Zeb grits, knocking the hatch open and hauling them both out into abrupt, shocking cold. “Sorry mate, gotcha, c'mon, gotta get the pressure off that.” He lays a rapidly panting Kallus out on a churned-up snowbank and glances around. They're inside what appears to be an iced-over cave, watery sunlight and fresh flakes of thick, wet snow falling down through a hole punched into the landscape by their crashing pod. The cave is rocky, barren, full of spindly ice structures and not much else.
“Karabast,” Zeb mutters again, guts twisting. Of all the places to crash. If they don't figure out something fast, they'll be dead of exposure in hours. At least they have air.
At least they're not dead already.
Driven by adrenaline and survival instinct, Zeb hauls himself back into the escape pod and starts tossing out everything that could possibly be of use. It's not great. The emergency heating unit has a dent in it and a low battery gauge; the compartment that should have held survival rations is empty; the transponder beacon is in pieces. The repair kit is still there, though, and after a hard look at the transponder Zeb thinks he might be able to fix it. It would be a long shot, but the crew of the Ghost have a reputation for being good to their allies. They might make a pass or two of the system to search for the escape pod. There just needs to be an active signal for them to pick up.
Zeb grabs their two bo-rifles last, slings his own over his back and holds Kal's as he climbs out of the pod for the last time. Outside, Kallus has managed to get up on one elbow, breathing hard, and is poking at the camp heater's controls.
“You got it?” Zeb asks, dropping down next to him.
“Couple hours' charge at most,” Kallus manages, his voice breathy and his teeth already starting to clatter. “Could you – rig the pod's fuel line -”
“Busted,” Zeb says shortly, and Kallus huffs.
“So we're going to die,” Kallus chatters. “In about... ten hours. A day at the outside.”
“Nah,” Zeb says, dropping Kal's bo-rifle next to him and showing him the transponder. “I'll get this going, we'll be set.”
“To call who?” Kallus asks. His face is far paler than usual. “The Empire's still in the system, and that's an Imperial unit. Keyed to their frequencies.”
“Jailbreaking it's no problem, you know that.” Zeb crouches next to Kallus. “Ghost'll come looking. You know they don't leave people behind.”
“We're not their people,” Kallus insists.
“Hey.” Zeb puts the transponder down and reaches out to touch Kallus' face. The man flinches. Zeb frowns. “Get your head together, Kal. Why ya givin' up so fast? We can make it, always have.”
Kallus tries to muster a glare at him. Then he just closes his eyes, panting hard still.
“Karabast,” Zeb sighs. He picks up the medkit, but there aren't any pain tabs left in it. Just bacta-free topical numbing cream and a lot of bandages. Resisting the nausea it triggers, Zeb makes himself look at Kallus' leg again, assessing.
“Gonna need to set that,” he says.
Kallus makes a noise that Zeb's sure he will deny was a whimper.
“Okay. Look.” Zeb shuffles down Kal's body to his feet. “Quicker I do it, quicker it's done. You wanna count?”
“No, I don't want to count, Garazeb,” Kallus snarls. “I'm not a ch-AAGH!”
Zeb swallows back the bile that rises in his throat at the feel of bone-crunch under his hands. Kal's leg is at least straight again. He looks around for anything sturdy he can line up against the limb – then freezes, as another sound echoes distantly through the icy cavern. It's a shriek, seemingly in response to Kallus' shout, but it sounds like the being making it is... bigger.
“Great,” Zeb mutters.
“We're going to die,” Kallus says flatly.
Zeb growls at him. “You're so fast to give up hope.”
“I'm just realistic -”
“Gimme that.” Zeb takes Kal's bo-rifle and sets it to staff mode. It'll be awkward, but it'll have to do.
“What – I might need that,” Kallus says, glancing with alarm at the distant shadows of the cave.
“You need to stop shriekin' like a dust siren,” Zeb says, lining up the rifle and unrolling some bandages. It takes him a moment to wrap the weapon securely to Kal's leg, and while he does it, Kal makes some interestingly contorted faces, but he does manage to keep himself down to only a few pained groans. “Anyway, you got yer sidearm.” Zeb looks pointedly at the blaster still strapped neatly against Kal's opposite thigh.
“Not -” Kallus pauses, panting. “Not as high a caliber. Not a strong deterrent. Against being eaten.”
“I'll eat you,” Zeb grouses, smacking Kallus' unbroken shin and going back to the transponder.
Kal actually manages a brief, laugh-like huff. “Not in these temperatures you won't,” he says.
Some of the tension in Zeb's shoulders lets go. If Kallus can still be amused by Zeb's bad jokes, he'll be okay. At least for the moment.
Zeb pokes at the transponder. After a long few minutes of silence, Kallus says, “It's getting dark. Going to get colder soon.”
“As long as I've got enough light to see what I'm doing with this,” Zeb grumbles.
“Need me to do it?”
“No,” Zeb grunts. “Need you to hush up so I can -”
In the distance, another animal cry echoes through the tunnels. And shortly after, another, responding.
After a moment, all Kallus says is, “Hurry.”
Zeb silently agrees.
-
The first time it happened, Zeb couldn't say what possessed him to do it.
He'd heard Kallus have hundreds of nightmares over their time together. He'd gone through all sorts of stages of feelings about it – annoyance at being woken up frequently, then getting so used to it that he slept through most of them, then becoming so much more attuned to Kallus as a friend that he started waking at the sound of Kal's distress again but only feeling sorry for him. He'd adopted a habit of getting up to use the fresher every time he woke up to Kallus' pained noises; the routine sounds of the waste unit cycling and the wall-mounted hand sonic buzzing would invariably make Kallus wake up just enough to dispel whatever tormented him in his dreams. More often than not Zeb didn't even need the fresher, he just hit the machines' buttons and went back to his cot.
Then, Coruscant. Then a week turned into two, and a month, and more, without returning to the subject of intimacy. Kallus had nightmares. Zeb pushed buttons in the fresher. Until, for no primary reason that Zeb could put a finger on, that just wasn't enough anymore.
Zeb woke to the sounds of Kal's pain. Kallus had never been loud; he made the same noises in his sleep every time, some combination of grinding teeth and illegible mumbles broken up by short, sucked-in breaths and small moans. He would twitch as though trying to block a blow. Sometimes Zeb would lie there and watch him in the dark before getting up.
Zeb watched him that time. Maybe he was feeling particularly maudlin. Maybe he was just lonely – a feeling he'd become deeply acquainted with over the years since Lasan. Sometimes being around Kallus helped the loneliness but sometimes the arm's lengths at which they held each other just made it profoundly worse.
Some part of Zeb, the old-fashioned idealist, had maybe thought that sex would bring Kal closer. But sex, Zeb knew perfectly well, was not necessarily intimacy. And Alexsandr Kallus was more afraid of intimacy than anyone Zeb had ever known.
Kallus rolled in his sleep, arm twitching outward as though to ineptly punch an invisible assailant. He let out a quiet grunt and a slur of words, of which Zeb could only make out a single, strained, “Stop.”
Zeb got up from his cot. He stood in the center of the tiny ship, between the dark doorway of the refresher and the cot opposite him.
He didn't step over to the fresher.
He braced himself, expecting Kallus to wake up swinging. Zeb had learned from a very young age not to wake old warriors unexpectedly. His grandfather had once gone offworld with a detachment sent to aid the Wookiees during a conflict. After he'd come back, he'd frequently muttered “too many legs” in his sleep and would come awake hollering and reaching for a rifle. So Zeb expected no less from Kallus, who was far angrier and more broken than Zeb's grandfather had ever been.
Zeb didn't expect for the lightest of touches to cause Kallus to freeze utterly still, eyes flying wide open in the dark.
Kallus stared at Zeb, every muscle locked tight, barely breathing.
“It's me,” Zeb said, quiet and uncertain.
Kallus didn't respond.
“Havin' a nightmare,” Zeb said lamely, as if Kallus didn't know.
The question finally seemed to enter Kallus' eyes: what are you doing?
And Zeb thought about that cursed tunnel in the bowels of Coruscant, and the panic and pleading in Kallus' “what are you doing” down there, and Zeb realized, finally, that unless he pushed a little, nothing was ever going to change between them. He'd only ever pushed once, and wondered ever since if he'd been wrong and cruel to do so. But the look on Kallus' face in the darkness of the powered-down ship... if anyone in the galaxy needed pushing, it was this man.
“Budge up,” Zeb said with renewed self-assurance, shoving Kallus' shoulder.
Kallus whispered a nearly silent “what?”
Zeb made some space for himself. Not enough, really, but the cots were on the floor so he would just have to be hanging half-off onto the hard metal. He laid down and rolled Kallus firmly back into his arms once he was settled, getting a defensive grunt from the human and a truly disbelieving stare.
“Go to sleep,” Zeb told Kallus.
Kallus whispered, “Why – what -”
“Go,” Zeb repeated, letting a bit of growl enter his voice, “back. To sleep.”
Zeb never did look at a chrono that night. He didn't know how long Kallus laid there wide awake and silent in his arms. He knew that he must have fallen asleep first, and that when he woke hours later he was alone and Kallus was sitting in the pilot's seat, running nav calulations.
But there had still been a little lingering warmth in the spot next to Zeb.
-
“Got it,” Zeb says triumphantly, pushing down his unease. Fixing the transponder has taken much too long; their window of hope that the Ghost will try to find them is rapidly shrinking. Zeb tugs the antenna up to full extension and twiddles the controls. “Full frequency spectrum. Anyone can pick it up.”
“Empire included,” Kal chatters. He's been remarkably still for the last hour, only shuddering every now and then, but Zeb's been making sure the most functional side of the camp heater is turned in Kal's direction. Zeb's got fur; he'll be fine.
“If Imps pop up, we'll smack 'em back down like we always do,” Zeb says with far more assurance than he feels.
Kal just sighs, “Zeb.”
“Nah,” says Zeb, “we're not havin' this conversation. Optimism, mate.”
“Your endless bounty of it never ceases to baffle me,” Kallus says. The corner of his mouth tries to twitch upward, though; he has been more easily accepting of Zeb's optimism lately, a little softer in his tone even when he argues for the side of doom and gloom, and Zeb is pretty sure it's more that the routine of their banter is a comfort than that Kallus truly believes the absolute worst at all times. Zeb sometimes surprises himself with his own level of optimism, but he's stubborn and contrarian and so Kal's insistence on always assuming the worst has pushed Zeb to the opposite end of the spectrum for so long that now it comes naturally. And it's better, assuming that things will turn out all right, no matter what Kal says. It feels better. Zeb sleeps better, trying to see the good around him instead of the bad.
Then the camp heater lets out a pathetic falling buzz and flickers several times before clicking off.
“Ah,” Zeb says.
“Right,” says Kal, hugging himself tighter. “Optimism.”
“Don't mock me,” Zeb tells him. He sets aside the transponder and stands up, creaking his half-frozen bones. He's been too still, working on the transponder; his feet shoot pains up his legs as he wriggles them, forcing circulation to his toes. He shivers and shakes himself to get his blood moving, looking around the cavern and unslinging his bo-rifle out of habit. He starts roaming away.
“Where're you going?” Kallus asks. It comes out whiny.
“Establishin' a perimeter,” Zeb says. He wanders towards where he thinks the animal cries came from before to see what the cave exit looks like.
“We ought to be sharing body heat,” Kallus calls petulantly.
“Yeah, yeah, keep yer shirt on,” Zeb calls back – and then a small glow of light around a corner catches his eye. He moves towards an ice formation that has a glowing crater in its center, a thin curl of steam rising from within. He reaches inside and nearly flinches as his fingers touch warmth.
Zeb lifts out a fist-sized rock and gives it a once-over, curious. Maybe a meteorite, maybe a piece of the surrounding landscape broken off and superheated by their own crash? Either way, it's warm. He heads back to Kal.
“What's that?”
Zeb tosses Kal the rock. “Dunno, but it throws heat. There you go, get warm.”
“Probably – radioactive,” Kallus chatters, but he catches the rock and examines it before wrapping his hands tight around it and tucking it against his chest.
Out in the distant depths of the cavern, a chuffing roar echoes. They've heard a few of these in the last hour, but this one seems closer. Zeb lifts his rifle.
“You really think we'll survive whatever that is in there?” Kallus asks through his shivers. “And the temperature's dropping – we don't know how long this thing will last -” He squeezes the rock.
“Kal,” Zeb sighs. “I know what yer doin', so stop.”
“What?”
“Trying to get me to admit defeat,” Zeb says.
Another roar, way off in the dark.
Zeb looks down at Kallus only to find the man looking up at him, his expression an odd combination of hurt and longing. Kal opens his mouth a couple of times, then says, “No, I... I mean it. You think we'll make it?”
Zeb's heart pangs. He crouches next to Kal. “Hey,” he says. “Yeah, I -” He pauses, rubs the back of his neck with one hand. “Well, I dunno,” he says finally. “But if I don't think it's possible, then it definitely won't be. So I gotta at least think there's a chance. You get me?”
Kallus looks him in the eyes for a long moment. Finally, he nods. “Then I'll choose to believe you,” he says quietly. “For now.”
Zeb reaches out and runs a hand over Kal's hair. “Good.” He cups the side of Kal's face before letting his hand drop. “Too bad you shaved yesterday,” he says, trying to lift the mood a bit. “You'd be happier for the scruff now.”
Kallus huffs at him. “Are you going to conserve body heat with me or not, Garazeb?”
Zeb chuckles. “Yeah, yeah, just lemme -”
Another creature roar echoes – much closer now, shivering some flakes of ice from the ceiling.
“Karabast.” Zeb swings his rifle out into ready position, rounding on the cave.
Roar, quake, ice chunks fall.
Kallus unholsters his sidearm just in time for their first glimpse of the creature whose cavern they've gatecrashed. “Ah,” he says. “Kriff. Zeb?”
Zeb primes his rifle, faces down the giant, axe-faced lizard-beast currently roaring at the smell of warm prey, and knows, above all else, that Kallus will have his back. His heart rate soars. He bares his teeth in a grin. They won't die today – at least, not yet.
-
The second time it happened was after the fourth time they had sex.
Twice, they'd suffered the indignity of immediate cleanup. Deconstructing whichever cot had gotten damp, running it through the tiny sanitary unit, Zeb sitting awkwardly next to the box while it whirred and while Kal ran away to poke at the navigation console even if the computer didn't need any input.
Then there'd been a strenuous mission, a tight timeline, a skin-of-their-teeth escape – and they'd fallen into the post-mission frenzy that was starting to become inevitable, all hands and sweat and groaned curses – and then, after... breathing hard, jelly-jointed, minds still hazy... Kallus had held onto Zeb's arm.
And even after they'd cooled down, were breathing normally, felt a little more sane – Kal kept holding onto Zeb's arm.
And Zeb had said, “Should probably clean up.”
And Kallus had pushed his face against Zeb's shoulder so that Zeb could barely hear him murmur, “Stay.”
So Zeb stayed. They'd slept like that, Zeb eventually reaching over to pull Kal close, arm around his bare waist. And as far as Zeb could tell, the galaxy didn't end because of a few stains – and Kallus didn't dream.
-
“You idiot, why'd you stand up?”
“You needed the – aghhh – backup!”
Zeb sighs as he double checks the makeshift splint against Kal's leg. “We gotta get out of the cave. That thing'll be back, probably with friends.”
Kallus groans but nods. “The transponder signal will reach further outside the ice anyway.” He pushes against the icy ground.
“Hey, nah, just got you put back together again,” Zeb snaps. “Lemme figure the way out before you break yourself more.”
“How do you plan -”
“Can't be that hard,” Zeb says, and stabs his bo-rifle into the ice next to Kallus. “Got these.” He waggles his claws.
The inward curvature of the ice walls proves him wrong, unfortunately, but at least Kal has the decency not to laugh at Zeb falling on his ass. Much.
“You'll hurt yourself,” Kal calls when Zeb goes to try again. “We definitely won't get out of here with two broken legs.”
Zeb turns to him with a huff of frustration. “Any better ideas, big brain?”
“Don't climb the walls, climb the pillars,” Kallus says, pointing at the ice structures that are, granted, much closer to the giant hole in the ceiling.
“You kidding? Those'll never hold our weights,” Zeb says in disbelief.
“I think they're sturdier than they look,” Kallus says. “At least this one here, and that one – they're load-bearing. For the ice overhead. They have stone cores under the ice, see.”
Zeb takes a closer look, grumbling, and yet again has to swallow the annoying fact that Kal is right. He looks over the two pillars Kallus had pointed to and picks the one he trusts fractionally more.
Out in the caverns, the axe-lizards shriek again – closer, and multiple of them.
Zeb looks between the pillar, the bleak night sky beyond, the dark cavern tunnels, and Kallus shivering on the icy stone ground.
“All right,” he says, cracking his knuckles. “One go at this. Hop on, and hope this works.”
As Kallus struggles upright against the escape pod, transponder clipped to his belt, he says, “Usually I let you have hope enough for both of us.”
“Give it a shot. Might need more hope on our side this time.”
Kallus loops his arms around Zeb's neck, chokes back a pained cry as he hoists himself up, and says, “For you, I'll try.”
“Best I can ask for,” Zeb rumbles, heart pounding. The lizards are closing in, footsteps rumbling the ground. Kallus' grip is tight, his weight awkward but bearable.
Zeb takes a running jump to the pillar and starts to climb.
-
It kept happening. Zeb tended to be the one to initiate sex but Kallus tended to be the one who stayed after and held Zeb in place, and if that was the excuse he needed then so be it. Zeb couldn't deny him, but also couldn't quite figure out how to say that Kallus could have the holding without the excuse, if he wanted; that he could come to Zeb any time, could occupy the space under Zeb's chin and pressed up against his heart without asking, clothed or not, in the dark or not, in front of the rest of the galaxy or hidden-alone, Zeb didn't care. Zeb didn't know how to broach the subject that he was starting to sleep badly without Kallus to hold onto.
Zeb didn't know how to tell Kallus that he cared about him, so much more than he'd ever said out loud that it was starting to become painful all crammed up inside Zeb's chest and stomach.
So when Kallus stood up from the nav console after one grueling intel run, bruise-eyed with lack of sleep, and Zeb couldn't stand the self-cannibalizing gnawing in his gut any longer, Zeb took hold of Kal's arm and dragged him to bed. And when Kallus hoarsely tried to apologize that he was too tired for sex, Zeb had just turned the ship's lights off and dragged Kal down to the cot with him, still dressed. And when, after a long, still moment, Kallus had muttered that he hadn't even cleaned his teeth yet, Zeb had kissed him.
They'd kissed before, of course. Bruising and hurried, panting the hot, sharp breaths of survival. Wanton, sometimes, and sensuous others, always with intent, always in some momentary competition, hearts pounding.
This time Zeb brushed his hand over Kal's cheek in the dark, both of them exhausted, and Zeb kissed slow and soft like he hoped Kallus could hear his thoughts. Like he hoped the kiss alone could be enough, after all they'd been through, to make Kallus understand the feathered creature that kept growing and squirming and crying out in Zeb's chest.
The kiss couldn't communicate all that. Zeb knew it couldn't. But... Kallus kissed back. And it was unspeakably good, and it made Zeb's chest go quiet and light in a way he hadn't felt for... years.
After that, they'd combined their cots into one pallet, and never slept alone again.
-
Zeb almost misses the action of the caverns down below. At least it had kept them warm.
They've tucked themselves against the lee of a rocky overhang, but the wind sometimes changes angles and catches them with fresh slashes of snow. The single small meteorite throws enough light that Zeb can see frost forming in Kal's eyelashes. The human's lips are slowly turning the color of Zeb's lips.
Zeb shuffles a little, as if he could get them any closer together. He can't. Zeb is sitting behind Kallus, knees drawn up against the human's sides, arms wrapped around Kal's chest, blocking in as much of the heat of the meteorite as they can possibly retain. Kal's face is bowed to the light, his hands – ungloved, why ungloved this time of all times, when Kal favors gloves so often? - tucked up by his chest to hold the hot little stone close to his core. Limbs can be lost, he'd said, without doing permanent harm. Organs matter more.
Personally Zeb thinks that limbs matter plenty, and he's getting more worried about Kal's leg by the minute – it's stretched out, covered by snow now, unable to be bent up close to the heat source. Zeb doesn't like that Kal hasn't been able to feel his leg for a couple of hours. Kal has assurred him that the numbness is preferable to the pain.
It's been... how long? Eight hours, maybe, since the crash. There's nothing they can do anymore but wait. The transponder's signal is as strong as it'll get. The meteorite might extend their survival by a few hours, but without true shelter, water, and medical care, they're going to die. Sooner or later.
Zeb wants to say so many things. He isn't sure how. He hugs Kallus close instead, and tucks his face against the side of Kal's face, and is sorry it's come to this.
“Zeb,” Kal sighs.
“Just thinkin',” Zeb says, muffled.
“Be careful, that's dangerous,” Kal says, and Zeb can hear the faint smile in his voice.
“Hush it, you.”
Kal huffs. He moves his hands to Zeb's arms, burying fingertips in cold fur. After a long moment, he says, “I'm sorry I pushed so hard to join the Ghost for this mission. I should have seen the potential for a trap, but I was just... I was blinded by my own interests.”
Zeb nuzzles. His nose hurts from the cold, and Kal's neck isn't exactly warm, but it blocks the wind. “Yeah?” he asks. “Somethin' special to you about a lotta dead bugs?”
“Yes,” Kallus murmurs. “Actually. Yes.”
They sit in silence.
Zeb says, “Might be running out of your last chance to talk about it. If there's somethin' weighin' on you. Dunno if your people ever went in for something like confession, but... sometimes on Lasan, the old-timers, they thought telling the Ashla your regrets was the only way to die at peace.”
“No,” Kallus says. “No beliefs like that. And I don't... I never intended to tell... anyone. But. You're not anyone, are you. You're...” He trails off.
“I'm yours,” Zeb tells him, eyes closed. If they weren't going to die he might not have said it, but now it's been said, and it wasn't even that hard to get the words out. “And you're mine.”
It's a long moment before Kallus says, hoarsely, “Didn't take you for a romantic.”
“You haven't been payin' attention, then,” Zeb says, and kisses Kal's neck.
Kal sucks in a breath. Zeb can feel from the way his breathing has changed that his chest is tight with emotion. There's nothing Zeb can do but keep holding him.
After a while, Kallus starts talking, raspy and low.
“After Lasan. I had several career choices. I was... highly desirable. Scouted by multiple departments. Internal investigation, diplomatic interference. Routing rebel sympathizers in all sorts of different sectors. Lothal was especially appealing. It... I probably would have gone to Lothal, realistically I should have gone there, but – Lasan sat poorly with me. And there was another project, a similar project, being spoken of regarding Geonosis. I pushed for placement there. I thought – I was still naive enough to think – that the way Lasan was handled was the fault of a few bad actors in positions of unearned authority. I thought, if I tried again, if I were promoted enough, I could... make it go differently. Argue for negotiation over massacre.
“I don't know anymore. I don't know what I thought I could do. In hindsight I know I walked directly into the same trap they always used to trim compassion from the higher ranks. I filed certain recommendations based on the information I was granted access to, and the next thing I knew I was black-bagged from my quarters and taken for questioning about supposed rebel sympathies. I was accused of being a double agent for the Geonosians. I was charged with treason.
“After I escaped, the first thing I sought out was any information about Geonosis – and all I found was vague reporting about some sort of plague that had ravaged the population. So when Captain Syndulla mentioned a mission to the old orbital station, I just thought... with a proper infiltration team, I might be able to slice the data stores, see if there was still anything... and I didn't expect zero life signs. That's not... that's no disease. That's not even what was done to Lasan. That's – not attempted but successful genocide – and the only way the Empire would have kept me, let me live, was if I'd looked at that plan and said yes, do it, without a single question asked, without hesitation – and what kind of person is that? Every single Imperial officer above a certain rank gets faced with that question, I think, and while I was... imprisoned... I was struck with the realization that every single person operating at that level of power passed that test. There have never been isolated bad actors. The Empire is evil. Fundamentally, by design, only evil is allowed to succeed to authority.”
Zeb squeezes Kallus a little. “Don't gotta convince me.”
Kallus is shaking in his arms. The cold, Zeb thinks; Kallus wouldn't want Zeb to acknowledge any reason other than the cold. “I could never have saved them,” Kallus says, voice thick. “Couldn't I? If I'd been more stealthy in my approach. If I'd known better beforehand. Could I have saved them, working from the inside? I still don't know.”
“You couldn't've,” Zeb says, firm and assurred. “No matter what ya did. The Empire'd already decided Geonosis had to go.”
Kallus breathes heavily in silence for a while. Face down in Kal's neck, Zeb can't see if Kal is crying. There are hitches deep in his chest, and Zeb feels each one like a blow. He holds tight. The meteorite isn't warm enough.
Abruptly, voice thick and wet, Kallus says, “They kept me as a training tool. I should've been executed but I was – valuable. They'd sunk so much training into me already. I was useful for the – for the advanced students – to practice on.”
Zeb had thought himself beyond shock at what the Empire was capable of. Vast, institutional acts of sterile cruelty are its very building blocks. But he's never considered that the Empire's torturers are all, at one time, baby torturers, students of the art of interrogation... and that in order to learn, they have to practice.
Kallus says, “I didn't know how long I'd been there until I got out. Withholding basic information like time – it's standard, and I knew – I mean, that's why I was useful, because I knew the methods, so they had to be more clever. To get to me. But it – it went both ways, so I picked my target, built a rapport with him... until he helped me escape. I thought I was being merciful when I killed him. They'd have just put him into my place after I was gone. A bolt to the back of the head – he didn't even know it was coming – was that mercy? I don't know anymore, I don't know.”
And now Kal is hiccuping out the words like he's drowning, and Zeb can't pretend he doesn't know Kal is sobbing, but there's nothing Zeb can do. They're going to die soon, too cold to feel pain, and Zeb hasn't even had the spine to say -
“I love you.”
Kal makes a faint keening sound, rejecting it.
“Kal,” Zeb says, wiping away his own tears against Kal's shoulder. “D'you hear me?”
Kal shakes his head, jerking in wet breaths.
“You know what's right,” Zeb says, voice thick. “Y'do. The Ashla's got a home in yer heart. Maybe you don't always get everything right, but – but you're tryin' harder than anyone else I've ever known. That matters.”
“Zeb -”
“It kriffin' matters, Kal,” Zeb sniffs. “More'n I know how to say. I don't know how I couldn't love ya. You gave me the chance to be a person again.”
“I took it away in the first place.”
“If not you, the next guy.” Zeb squeezes Kal maybe a little too tight, but he can't care. “Wasn't that the big revelation, huh? That the gears just turn and if you try to fiddle with 'em they crush you to paste and replace you with the guy who won't stand up for the right thing? That Brood cell was waiting for me from the minute the Empire decided it needed Lasan's quarries an' lumberyards, nothin' to do with you.”
Kallus makes an angry, helpless sound. He's holding onto Zeb's forearm too tight.
“An' then you came and you made me so kriffin' mad I remembered how to feel anything. I remembered how to care because'a you. I'd'a died without you, Kal, and you know it. All these things you think are proof you failed, or, or that yer evil or somethin', they're just proof you're tryin' to be decent. Gettin' it wrong sometimes and gettin' punished for no reason sometimes, but kriffin' trying. And I love you for that.”
For a long while after that, neither of them speak. Kal gets his breathing under control eventually. Zeb's chest feels messy and awful, but he's said at least some of the things he needed to say. He wishes that saying them made him more at peace with the idea of death, but instead voicing his feelings has made him desperately sad that this is the only chance he'll get. He just wants more time.
At length, so quiet Zeb almost doesn't hear it over the wind, Kallus says, “I'm so tired, Garazeb.”
And even though he knows it's a bad idea, and his mouth twists with grief, Zeb says, “Get some rest. I've got you.”
“I know you do,” Kallus says. And then, “Thank you.”
Zeb chokes out, “Hush.” And then he leaves his face in the crook of Kal's shoulder, blames the quaking in his limbs on the cold, and tries not to cry while Kal drifts into stillness.
-
Zeb wakes to the sound of rumbling. A high whine, a flash of light. A bassy thud that shakes the ground.
Voices.
Voices?
Urgency seizes Zeb's lungs. He pries his eyes open and notices that there's color to the sky – night has passed, and the snow's stopped. He bends his frozen knuckles and shakily unwraps one arm from Kal's body to reach over his shoulder for his bo-rifle. If it's the Empire – if those are the voices of troopers – then Zeb will just have to hold them off as best he can, try to steal their shuttle. If he can't... well, he isn't letting Kallus get taken. Or himself.
“Kal,” Zeb croaks, shaking him. He doesn't even let himself consider the possibility that Kal's already gone. He extends his claws and pokes Kallus' chest with them.
Kal makes a faint, groggy noise.
“Wake up,” Zeb hisses. “Someone's found us.”
“Wh.”
“Gotta go see,” Zeb says, levering himself away from Kallus and pushing to his feet. His whole body screams with ache and he stumbles a bit.
“Zuh.”
“C'mon, Kal -” But Zeb looks down from the blurry horizon to see that Kallus is already slumping over without Zeb to hold him up. “Karabast,” Zeb hisses. “Just hold on.”
Zeb takes a few shaky steps out from around the lee of their shelter. The rising sun makes it hard to tell, but – there – a flash of color, a straight line of pure electric blue. Lightsaber.
“Here,” Zeb tries to call out. His throat is raw. He swallows and tries again, managing a ragged, “Here! Over 'ere!”
The crew of the rebel freighter Ghost emerge from the misty dawn like saviors from a tale. Zeb can barely get full sentences out, but he manages to tell them Kallus is dying. His eyes have gone blurry all over again. It's hard to believe any of this is real.
“We've got him, big guy,” says the little Mandalorian artist. Zeb's always liked her. “Look, Kanan and Rex can carry him back – what about you? You hurt?”
“Dunno,” Zeb says, except that everything hurts.
“Lean on me,” says the Mando girl, and Zeb wouldn't believe she could hold him up except that she does. Her armor is warm.
The rebels hurry Zeb and Kallus into the warmth of their ship with kind words and efficiency. Captain Syndulla runs ahead of the rest. By the time the Jedi and the old clone warrior are laying Kallus down in one of the bunks, the ship's already shuddering its way up out of the atmosphere.
“Man, you guys sure are lucky Hera wanted to do another pass,” says the younger Jedi. Ezra, Zeb remembers hazily.
“Ezra, not now,” says his teacher, Kanan. “Go make some tea.”
“Fine,” Ezra says, and swans away.
Zeb crouches next to the bunk where Kallus is blinking groggily and starting to tremble. “Hey,” Zeb tells him, and picks up one of his hands. The other is still clenched tight around the hot little meteorite. “We made it. Always do, don't we?”
Kallus' eyes focus on him with some difficulty. Water spills over his lower lashes, streaking over his too-pale skin. The tears could just be reflexive, as he starts to warm up.
“Zeb,” Kallus croaks.
“Gonna get you fixed up,” Zeb says. Around him, behind him, the members of the Ghost's crew are moving – to get medkits, tea, blankets, Zeb isn't sure. It's hard to pay attention to anything.
“Don't wanna die,” Kallus whispers.
“'Course not,” Zeb says. “Only I'm allowed to kill ya, right?”
Kallus' face scrunches up. He tightens his hand around Zeb's. “I don't want to die,” he repeats, and more tears slide down his face. Angry red patches of returning circulation are starting to bloom in his cheeks. “I don't want to die anymore.”
“Kal,” Zeb whispers back. “Alexsandr. You're not gonna.”
“Stay,” Kal begs.
No one on the Ghost has any problem with the way Zeb climbs into the bunk next to Kallus, gathers him into a tight hold, and stays there until the cold has fully melted out of both their bodies. It makes it slightly awkward for Kanan and Rex to get at Kal's leg to bind it properly and inject him with bacta and painkiller, but all the same, no one tries to make Zeb leave.
They'll need to eat and drink soon, and to discuss what to do next with each other and with Captain Syndulla. A small fire's been lit in Zeb's belly, fanned from an ember that's been lingering since the fall of Lasan – he thinks he's ready to take all this rage he has inside him directly to the Empire, to throw in his lot with the rebellion. He and Kal have done a lot of good in the fight against the slave trade over these past few years, but no amount of gangs they neutralize will ever make a dent compared to the amount of sentient flesh the Empire trades in. And now knowing what the Empire did to Kallus personally, that little fire's blazing hotter than ever.
Zeb thinks Kal might be up for it now, too. Before, both of them had been too afraid of the specters of their pasts. The things they'd lost, the ways they'd been hurt. Now – they have something to lose again. Which means they have something to fight for.
But Zeb isn't quite ready to have that talk yet, not as long as Kal is sleeping in his arms and Zeb's head is still ringing with I don't want to die anymore.
Because it sounds an awful lot like I love you, too.