Saga Out After Curfew (Kanan/OC; Pre - Rebels; AU)

TItle: Out After Curfew
Setting: ~5 years before Star Wars Rebels and ~6 months after "All That Boom"

*If you haven't read the preceding fanfiction, "What's A Pretty Girl Like You Going To Do With All That Boom?" I suggest you start here: http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...h-all-that-boom-kanan-pre-rebels-au.50029011/

Out After Curfew

Partially shrouded in the shadow of a factory store house, Kanan and Illia stopped to assess their route. The hanger lay a few blocks ahead, but the curfew that fell on Garel was about to take effect, if they were caught, they would be arrested even without being in prohibited territory. Kanan kept one hand near his blaster as he peered around the corner of the building. He knew a storm trooper was on patrol in this block, but wasn’t entirely sure where the soldier would be in his rounds. Illia stepped up beside him.

“We’ve only got fifteen minutes left until curfew takes effect, we’re going to have to get moving if we don’t want to get arrested before we do anything interesting,” she whispered.

She smiled as she peered up at Kanan’s half shadowed face. She could see his mouth turned up just at the left corner, but all he gave her was a noncommittal grunt. Just then, boots sounded in a steady rhythm, the approach of the patrolling trooper. Kanan glance left, right, and left again, but in the echoing alleyway it was impossible for him to isolate the direction the sound was coming from.

“Kiss me, quick!” Illia hissed pushing into him and knocking his hand away from his still holstered blaster.

“What?!” Kanan managed to choke hoarsely, his eyes widening in surprise.

Without any hesitation, Illia pressed her lips to his, her hands holding his firmly at the wrists. At first, he resisted, shocked into a stone statue of himself, but within seconds his lips had softened and his mouth reach to fill with hers. Without warning, she pulled away again. The storm trooper had passed, completely ignoring them.

“Let’s move!” she whispered and started off in the direction of the Imperial hanger.

Kanan took a half second to regain himself, then trotted to catch up with the already running Illia. She glanced back once and caught a full smile cracking the stern expression he generally wore. Her own face split into a grin as she pushed her legs faster to reach the near cover of another storehouse’s shadow. Within minutes, they had reached the edge of the open hanger. Several storm troopers patrolled within the pool of light cast by the flood lamps. Hiding herself behind a tower of shipping crates, Illia peered between the boxes to get a better count of the guards. Moments later she turned to Kanan, only to realize that he was still grinning. Instinctively, she grinned back before turning to the matter at hand. The shipment of laser rifles wasn’t going to commandeer themselves.

“It looks like two guards and at least two more troopers loading the crates” she whispered. She could have just as easily touched Kanan’s shoulder and relayed her message through The Force, but at the moment she was concerned that she would be distracted from the mission by whatever emotions were causing him to grin like that.

“Good thing we’re taking the whole ship then. I’d hate to think that they were doing all that work for nothing,” Kannan’s voice was pitched low, but his sharp wit carried a tone of amusement tonight, where often there was only sarcasm.

Looking between the crates again, Illia watched as the storm troopers loaded the last of the seven crates onto the awaiting short range cargo shuttle.

“Everything’s loaded, let’s go” she urged.

At her signal, Kanan lobbed two smoke grenades into the hanger, completely obscuring the area in gray fog. Kanan and Illia pulled their goggles down and their scarves up over their noses before un-holstering their blasters and diving head first into the confused chaos at the mouth of the hanger. Kannan started firing immediately to draw attention away from Illia, who ran straight to the cargo ship. She hoped the pilot hadn’t had a chance to board yet. Seeing the back of the ship still open and the choking forms of two storm troopers, she kicked herself into high gear, speeding her legs as fast as they could go and dodging gracefully between the two soldiers, before turning back and shooting each with a stun charge from her blaster. They both toppled to the ground as she raced to the cockpit. Finding it empty, she began the launch protocol with the stolen Imperial code the buyer had provided. Blessedly it worked and she blasted the thrusters once, a signal to Kanan that it was time to get aboard the ship. The signal was unnecessary though as he was already shouting from the still open rear hatch for her to go. Illia quickly punched the cargo ship into gear and closed the rear door. Blasters fired all around them, but did little to damage the shielding on the cargo ship. They were sky bound before Kanan even made it up to the cockpit.

Illia reached over to program a cloaking signal that would keep the Empire from tracking them while they remained on world as Kanan flopped down in the copilot chair beside her. Out of the corner of her eye, Illia glanced to see if the grin was still there. At the moment, his lips were pressed tight, but she could see the corners of his mouth twitching gently as they tried to win an involuntary tug-of-war with the rest of his face.

“How did you know it would work?” he said, eyes focused straight ahead at the darkened sky before them.

“The trooper? He was broad casting missing his off world girlfriend. Besides, it’s human nature to look away when you see people kissing, it makes other people feel embarrassed,” she shrugged, but smiled mischievously before adding, “besides, I couldn’t resist the excuse”.

Her eyes darted to him for a fraction of a second just to see the shocked, but please expression that ran across his face before he gained control of his features once again.

“I’m going to go check on the cargo” he said, his voice not nearly as gruff as he was hoping it would be.

Quickly leaving the cock pit and closing the shielding door behind him, Kanan shook his head ruefully as the grin that he had been fighting won out fully across his face.

Kanan made his way back to the cargo hold and checked on the crates. All seven stood in neat rows, four and three, none of them seemed to have taken any damage from the shootout. Prying open the top of the nearest crate, he reached in and pulled out one of the laser rifles, checking its’ balance and pointing it experimentally at one wall. He could feel himself having lost the battle with the Cheshire grin. It felt foreign there, like someone had placed a mask on that he couldn’t take off, but at the same time, it felt good.

“Rendezvous coming up in three minutes” Illia’s voice crackled over the ship’s intercom.

Kanan placed the rifle back in the crate and replaced the lid. He shook his head again, as if trying to erase the smile with force. These smugglers were not the kind of people one joked with. Kanan could feel the shuttle coming to a landing. The rendezvous point was several clicks out of town, the deal was that the smugglers would meet them and that after the transaction, Kanan and Illia would abandon the shuttle in favor of a pair of land speeders, which they would take back to their own ship. He braced himself as the shuttle bumped gently to the ground and went to the control panel to lower the hangar door. He was met by no less than seven masked and armed smugglers. Each of their rifles trained directly at his chest. Kanan half raised his hands in mock surrender before shrugging and turning his back on the group completely. It wasn’t good to negotiate price if the smugglers felt that they had you at a disadvantage. Illia, as always, remained in the cock pit. The less faces these smugglers could point to if caught by the Empire, the better. Besides that, Kanan’s wit and no nonsense manner made him the better trader, although not the better negotiator.

Veltro, the group’s leader, stepped forward and boarded the shuttle. He motioned to Kanan to remove the lid on one of the crates, nodded in approval, then signaled with his blaster haphazardly for his crew to come take the crates off the ship.

“Here’s your money,” he slurred, handing Kanan a bag half full of credits.

Without opening the bag, Kanan knew they had been shorted.

“This isn’t what we agreed upon, Veltro” he growled, all traces of the smile finally leaving his face. His blue eyes flashed dangerously from under his dark brows.

“You were not careful,” Veltro said flapping his free hand in the air dismissively, “They know it is gone. It is all over the coms. Harder to move means less profit for me, less profit for you”.

“That’s bantha fodder and you know it.” Kanan replied, his tone level, but his eyes still shooting daggers at the smuggler.

“It’s business, it is what it is,” Veltro shrugged before turning away. He knew Kanan didn’t have a better option. Gritting his teeth Kanan clenched one fist around the bag of credits and punched the panel angrily to close the now empty hanger’s door behind the retreating smuggler.

“All clear” he muttered into the com panel before heading back to the cock pit.

Illia didn’t even turn when he sat down before asking, “How much did he short us by this time?”

“About thirty credits”

“Bastard,” her tone was serious, but her eyes still held a mischievous light as she guided the shuttle towards the area where they had hidden the land speeders earlier that day.

Veltro always shorted them, but he was careful to make sure that it was never enough that they would consider taking their “business” elsewhere. Although he would like to think that he was the only one who would buy stolen Imperial weapons, there were other, less wholesome options to try on Garel. Not that Veltro could be considered wholesome by anyone’s definition.

Illia landed the shuttle in a barren field twenty clicks out of town before removing the cloaking code she had put on earlier. It would take the Empire awhile to mobilize and find the shuttle out here and it was better for her not to leave the code for them to decrypt. They headed to the land speeders they had stashed earlier. Kanan took the front one, tossing her a helmet before buckling on his own. Illia mounted her own speeder with a swift kick, activating the anti-grav. She watched Kanan’s dark silhouette up ahead as they raced through the empty terrain, wondering at his thoughts.

Out of the darkness, the Valiant rose, appearing first as a rugged stone island amongst the reeds. As they neared, the ship took on more form and showed itself to be the sleek space cruiser it was. Illia signaled her droid, DC, from the computer at her wrist and watched as the bay door extended to admit the land speeders. Kanan landed expertly in the middle of the loading bay and waited for Illia to land and dismount, before dismounting himself. Illia typed in an all clear signal to DC and watched as the bay door swung shut again. She removed her helmet and turned, surprised to find herself face to chest with an un-helmeted Kanan. Caught off guard by his proximity, she took a half step back, bringing her own dark eyes up to his brilliant blue.

“Back in the alley…” he started, his voice trailing off, uncertainty pouring from him like a wave of cold water. “You said you could tell the trooper was missing his girlfriend when you… I mean, I felt…” His voice trailed off again, but his blue eyes searched her face, suddenly seeming vulnerable in the yellow light of the cargo hold. Illia shifted her helmet to one hand and reached out to hold his arm just above the elbow. She reached out with The Force and allowed the full emotions behind her words to reach him.

“I told you, I couldn’t resist the excuse,” she smiled up at him as she spoke, her smile making her dark eyes dance.

Kanan’s own eyes lit up as an unbridled smile covered his face. Through the connection Illia had made, Kanan could feel both her emotions and his own and was relieved and excited to realize that the mutual attraction he had been feeling, especially after they kissed in the alley, wasn’t just his imagination. Leaning in slowly he drew her closer to him and kissed her again, this time without any hesitation.

In moments, a series of whirls and clicks sounded over the intercom.

“Not now, DC,” Kanan growled towards the coms.

A more incessant series of whirls followed by a few trite beeps ensued. Illia sighed and disentangled herself from Kanan’s arms.

“He says we’ve got Imperial ships on the radar,” Illia’s eyes clouded with concern as she turned towards the ladder to the upper levels.

“I’m sure whatever it is, DC can handle it,” Kanan said grabbing hold of her hand, “Right, DC?” he called towards the comm.

Several beeps and a whistle responded.

“What did he say?” Kanan asked, he was still learning the droids vocabulary. Illia kept trying to explain that it was more a feeling then a language, but he wasn’t really in tune with the astromech just yet.

“He says they’re getting closer. They must be sweeping the area for the transport we ditched”.

“That was miles away, why would they be all the way out here?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to stick around to find out,” Illia tugged her hand free of Kanan’s grip. With a last, lingering look, she climbed the ladder that would lead her to the cockpit.

“Kark,” Kanan cursed quietly, watching Illia’s retreating form as she ascended the ladder. Once she was out of site, Kanan winced and pulled his shirt up to reveal a pair of glancing blaster wounds.

“Might as well get this cleaned up, since I don’t have anything more interesting to do,” he muttered climbing the ladder to go find a med kit.

“I’ve programed the autopilot to take us on a quick loop around the… what happened to you?!” Illia’s voice rose sharply with concern as she walked into the galley to find Kanan standing half naked with a wad of antibiotic bandage pressed against his side and half a roll of surgical tape dangling from his teeth.

“Nuffin,” came the muffled response, “ifs jus a skach”. Kanan attempted to cut the surgical tape with his teeth while holding tightly to the antibiotic bandage with his other hand.

“Here, let me help you,” Illia said gently taking the tape out of his mouth and using the scissors from the med kit on the table to cut it into strips. She carefully pulled away the bandage he had been holding to see the shallow graze marks of two blaster bolts running along his ribs. Any closer and the blasts might have done real damage, but as it was, the wounds would heal quickly, although Kanan would need to take it easy for a few days to make sure they didn’t reopen. Deftly, Illia cleaned up the two wounds, applied a fresh bandage, and taped it neatly into place with the surgical tape. By this point, Kanan had given up trying to help and simply leaned back on the table slightly, allowing her to take care of him.

“You know, I like it better when you do the doctoring,” he said smiling down at her.

“Makes a lot less of a mess then when you try to,” she smiled back up at him for a minute, before beginning to clean up the supplies, “Where’s your shirt anyway? I’ll have to see if I can repair the holes in it”.

Illia attempted to make herself as busy as possible cleaning up the medical kit supplies. She was aware of Kanan’s eyes on her and more unnerved then she had expected by finding him wounded and, well... shirtless. After the kiss they had just shared in the loading bay, she had a pretty good idea about how he felt about her, but things were going a little faster than she had expected.

Maybe that’s not a bad thing. She mused to herself.

“Illia,” Kanan said gently as she hurriedly put away the med supplies, all the while avoiding his gaze, “Illia, come here”. He offered a hand to her, his voice gentle and low, but she hesitated, stopping just out of his reach.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she replied, stopping her frantic cleaning spree and looking him in the eye for the first time since cleaning up his wound.

“You won’t hurt me, I’ve had much worse scrapes then this,” he said indicating his side with a slight nod of his head.

When she didn’t move, he took a step forward and caught one of her hands, bringing it to rest on his bare chest, “I promise, I’m fine. Besides, you’ll know if it hurts”. His other hand raised to cradle her cheek as he pulled her towards him. Moments after their lips met, she pulled back gently, but firmly.

“I’m serious, Kanan, you need to rest”.

“And I will, but right now I have other things on my mind…” he smiled at her, hoping to overcome her concern with charm.

Illia held back a moment longer, her dark eyes held by his aquamarine. With a sigh, she allowed her body to relax, pressing her mouth gently, but urgently into his. In that moment, she allowed both her own and then his desire to wash over her, until she felt as though she was drowning in an aquamarine sea.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. They weren’t supposed to allow themselves to give in to these baser emotions. All of the training they had under gone at the Jedi Temple had taught them to overcome these emotions, to with stand them’ and somehow keep themselves apart from what they were feeling, never to succumb. Certainly never to allow a connection through The Force to overwhelm her the way it was now. All of these thoughts flashed through Illia’s head in an instant and at the same time she realized that she did not care. They weren’t Jedi, would never be Jedi, and in all the years that Illia had lived at the Jedi Temple, she had never felt as alive as she did in this moment.

At some point, Illia realized that they had made it to Kanan’s room. His shirt was long gone and hers had too at some point, but it didn’t matter. In the years that Illia had been forced to live outside the Jedi Temple, she had broken many of the rules she had once believed in, made many connections and become attached to the people around her, and why shouldn’t she? The Jedi’s rules hadn’t saved them from almost total annihilation, why should she feel the need to hold on to an outdated mode of thinking when her life was here, now?

As Kanan slowly drew her down onto his bed, she decided to stop thinking about the past and instead focused on the connection between them, giving in to it completely.


Tags: Gemma, Chyntuck, Nyota's Heart

 

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! oh that was delightful. Thank you! I loved the action, the mutual sparks, etc.

 

Nyota's Heart Thanks! I actually wrote this shortly after starting "All That Boom" and I wasn't sure how readers would feel about getting this flash forward in the middle of the other story, so I'm glad you enjoyed it!

 

Double Squeeeeee - you have my heart melting. I loved the action and then with that romance --very very sweet. And you're right about public displays of affection -- Black Widow and Captain America used it on the escalator in Winter Soldier. Adored all of the kisses and how he convinced her that she would not hurt him. More romance between these two --- if you feel so inclined.

 

Thank you! The scene where Kanan and Illia are basically hiding in plain sight was one of the first I dreamed up when I created Illia, so I'm really glad you liked it.

 

Hee! The old "pretend to be kissing" trick, yes. It was also interesting to see more of Illia's thoughts on their attraction.

It's bittersweet, since she's able to move on and make a romantic connection, but believes they've lost the potential future where they could have been Jedi.

 

Kahara Yes, the idea that both Kanan and Illia would have been Jedi if not for order 66 is going to play into this quiet a bit. Good catch!

 

Heh. What did she mean by "interesting"? I officially approve of this woman. She knows what she wants.

I really enjoyed this, especially Kanan's struggle against the Cheshire grin. I'm looking forward to how you're going to build up to this scene in All That Boom. Like Kahara, I thought that there was something bittersweet about their situation -- they could have been Jedi, but instead they're stealing weapons on behalf of smugglers who keep shorting them The Jedi Code is a distant memory in their everyday life.

Oh, and a little moment that stood out for me was the interruption by the droid -- Threepio and Artoo all rolled into one