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This planet is nice, Cal decides right then and there as he hops from rock pillar to rock pillar – some of them are decently sturdy, only giving him minor heart attacks when a pebble shifts under his heel and clatters off to the great below. Some are definitely not sturdy, and he touches down on those for only a few seconds. The ground is so very far below him, to the point that he can’t actually see it. Instead, there’s an ocean of grey mist obscuring everything.
He thinks this may have been a natural bridge at one point. Shame he couldn’t have seen it intact. It would’ve been massive, and a monument to nature really. Merrin would’ve loved to see it. She’d be less interested in how he got to this point, but whatever. He’s never been called an adrenaline junkie (to his face), but he still knows exactly what he is –
Warm, for one.
Cal pauses, balancing on a blade’s edge, to tilt his head towards the blazing yellow and purple sun. He basks in it, feeling a little like that bogling stowaway everyone pretends isn’t actually there despite them all feeding it under the table. Sometimes, when Cal’s alone in the cockpit, it sneaks in and hops up on the dash closest to him to share in the local light source. The two of them would co-exist peacefully – until BD got bored with whatever he was doing and would crash the party, scaring the bogling off.
The sun here shines so brightly. The mist is cool and refreshing. He feels weightless this high up. Untethered and unbound. It’s a little like climbing a Venator-class ship without a rig, hauling and catching his weight through his own strength alone and not a single iota of the Force to help. The only thing standing between him and death, were Cal’s skills.
And now, well, it’s still his own skills, because the Force won’t do much for him here. There are no vines or convenient handholds for if he falls. It’s almost perfect.
With the sun’s rays on his face, turning his hair the color of a bonfire, Cal raises his arms to the light and squints through his lashes. He puts his hands together, the tips of his index fingers touching his thumbs, and puts the beautiful sky in perfect frame. BD peers through his little makeshift frame and snaps a few holo-stills, adding a video that’s only a few seconds long to catch the drifting clouds. Cal grins and fist bumps the little droid in thanks before he continues on his ill-advised way.
Cere told him to turn back if things got treacherous but, he’s pretty sure her definition and his definition don’t line up. Why would he turn back? Up here there’s no howling winds like Zeffo, carrying screams and misery and pleads on the Force. No Imps shooting at him like every other planet they’ve touched down on for more than ten minutes. No Brood breathing down their necks. No fear of the Inquisitorius seeking them out this close to Wild Space.
It's just him, BD, and his own thoughts, his own memories, the Force a peaceful ocean all around him – and a great big mountain to climb. He’s most excited about that. It’s what made them land here in the first place. Merrin practically plastered herself to the cockpit’s windows, quietly excited at the sight of so much greenery on such a dynamic land mass. She went down to the lush wilderness near the beaches, and he went up, climbing and climbing until he was close to even with the middle of the mountain.
Imagine the view.
He laughs in delight at the sight of his goal so close and lines up his last leap carefully, taking it with a loud, joyful whoop! that echoes. He twists into a flip to add some air annnddd, whoops, that’s too much air! Cal crash lands on the awaiting trail head, just managing to tuck into a tumble in time to avoid breaking his ankles. He comes up laughing, though, bright and wild. There’s going to be a massive bruise later for sure and right now he’s got a wonderful layer of mud caked down half his body, but, man, what a rush. He wipes the mud off the best he can – and gives up when nothing’s coming off. Greez is going to just love this when he gets back to the Mantis. Something-something-potoli-weave-something.
BD beeps shrilly in annoyance, flicking his legs pointedly to get mud off them, splatting some of Cal’s face in a move that was totally by accident, he swears. Cal laughs again – he doesn’t think he’s stopped laughing actually, feeling light and happy. He feels it all the way down to his bones.
“Sorry, buddy. Got a little carried away, huh?” Cal holds out his arms for BD to jump into for easy access. He pulls out an oil-stained rag to carefully wipe the mud out of his joints. BD lets out a serious of high-pitched beeps that makes Cal gasp in mock offense. “I’m sorry, who messed with that webiest and nearly got thrown off a cliff? Definitely not me, so maybe you should watch what you scan before you try to lecture me about recklessness, you think?” BD trills. Cal sighs fondly and taps his cheek against the droid’s head before he tosses him back on his shoulder. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll be more careful.”
—
And he is careful, thank you very much.
There aren’t any more fun pillars to jump across, disappointingly enough, or any vertigo-inducing cliffs to climb. (Greez always complains about getting sick from just looking at what Cal is willing to climb.) All he has is this trail that he found. It wraps around the mountain and, well, he wanted to go up, but this thing just keeps going down, down, down. The mist sticks to his face and turns his hair a deeper copper. The air grows cool. The sunlight, a little weaker. BD beeps quietly, hunching small between Cal’s shoulders as everything muffles and the mist comes up over their heads like they’re slowly sinking.
There’s something off about this trail. Something he realizes both slowly and all at once, a dread that creeps up his spine like crawling fingers. The peaceful ocean of the Force has grown wary, ever watchful, and he follows suit – thinks about turning back actually, even though there’s no way for him to turn back. He’d jumped off that cliff knowing it was too high to make it back, and now he had to face the consequences of that.
His boot scrapes over something metal – the first sign of metal since they landed. His mood sours. Consequences. Right. Cal sighs, bends to pick up whatever it is, and oh.
Oh karabast, that’s an Imperial cog. Faded and old, but a damn Imperial cog alright. Nothing else is legible, just the washed out red and white of a warning sign. The cog mocks him. How – did this get here? Why – is it here?
There are no Imperials on this planet.
There’s no heavy machinery disrupting the wildlife and destabilizing the core. No Imp destroyed villages. No strip mining. No logging. No patrol. Not a single damn sign of any sapient presence minus the landing pad, but Cal can attribute that to this area as being a prime vacation spot because that landing pad pre-dated the Clone Wars and was nowhere near up to code. They came to this planet because they wanted a damn break, and of all the places in this relatively quiet sector, this was the only one talked about for how empty it was. It had no precious resources for the Empire, or even the Republic, to take and take and take. It’s mostly lilac oceans and one spot of sprawling civilization they avoided.
This place is beautiful and nice and empty – but apparently not.
Cal closes his eyes as he runs his fingers along the edge of the sign, only to give up quickly. Even reaching as far as he can go without losing himself, there’s nothing to find. This item is as impersonal as it gets. Disturbingly so. Sometimes outside items pick up echoes from animals, or even certain plants, since everything is connected through the Force, but this has nothing. In fact, he realizes he doesn’t remember the last time he heard a bird call. Definitely before they took this trail.
The sign is about, hmm, fifty or sixty years old, give or take a decade. Without a proper echo it’s hard to tell and the manufacturer stamp on the back is worn away enough not even BD can properly date it. Leave it to the Empire to stamp their cog on shit before they ever gained power. The arrogance. Cal winces, well, is it actually arrogance when it was apparently so well earned? he muses out loud.
BD helpfully reminds him of the definition of arrogance, and Cal nods. Okay. Still counts. Bastards.
“I don’t like this,” he admits. BD beeps. “Agreed. It got way too quiet. I heard birds earlier, you heard them, right? – have you heard anything since all this?” He gestures to the trail behind them, swallowed by unmoving mist. He sighs at BD’s answer. “Yeah, thought so.”
Down here, there is nothing. Only silence. Heavy, heavy silence.
Cal rubs his ear, like it’ll pop noise into existence, and he’ll hear something other than his own footsteps and BD. It does nothing. He drags a hand down his face instead, scrubbing roughly. Dank farrik. “Let’s keep going. I don’t think – I don’t think anyone’s here.” He can’t tell if saying it out loud makes him feel better or – no, who’s he kidding. It makes him feel uneasy and paranoid. (He tries not to think about all the time he’s thought or said, weird, this place looks abandoned, only to be immediately proven wrong.)
(His life is a mess.)
So, as established, they can’t go back the way they came. Cal usually doesn’t have a problem with that because it just means he has a built-in excuse to continue exploring. Oh, sorry, yeah, my way out got cut off by an Imp patrol, I just had to go deeper into the ruins, sorry, I’ll be back in a day, we’re ignoring it would’ve been five against one and I’ve taken on worse odds, yeah, be back in a day, bye! He doesn’t know if it’s his psychometry or just an inherent character trait of his (probably both), but he’s too curious by half and it gets him into a lot of trouble.
And that’s without BD’s input. Together, they’re worse.
The only way to go right now is down. He really doesn’t want to, but he leans the sign against a rock and goes anyway. The further they go, the colder it gets, and the oppressive the air feels until it’s like they’re walking through water. Also, annoyingly enough, the more signs of Imperial presence he finds
Wait, scratch that. He stops, eyes narrowed as they follow the pipework that’s now inlayed in the mountain side.
That’s not Imperial.
But it almost is!
He’s very familiar with Imperial construction – one, because he’s spent more time than he’s ever wanted crawling around their sewers and vents on various “requests” for Saw, and then two, because, disgustingly so, Imperial construction is just Republican construction. Why waste money, time, and power tearing down a perfectly good infrastructure when you could just paint over it and call it a day?
But this – this isn’t quite like that. He can’t put his finger on it. It’s familiar, but only vaguely. It looks as old as that landing pad.
How old?
“BeeDee?”
The droid obligingly scans the nearest, dirtiest piece of pipe – and comes up with better made than the signs they’ve found and, also, nearly four hundred years old. Which, karking hells, that’s the height of the High Republic. Cal knows the High Republic just as well as he knows Imperial. Better, actually, since he grew up around it and touched all the things the crechemasters desperately tried to keep him out of. (“Cal. Youngling. Please, don’t touch that. That’s from – no! Oh, plentyn, what am I going to do with you?”) But this place, this set up, this organization, isn’t either of those. It has hints of both, standing adjacent almost.
Something else built this place, Cal puts together. Built this place on this near-wild planet that barely has a name on the maps and then – something happened, it had to have happened, and the Empire swooped in, commandeered it, put their cog everywhere just like they did to the Temple.
And then they too abandoned it in the last fifty, sixty, however many years. Long enough for the poorly made things to rust and decay.
…Why?
Cal touches of the pipes and gets the expected nothing from it, not even a sense of what could be flowing through it – if there is anything anymore. He’s frowning when he takes his hand back, the tips of his fingers tingling.
All they can do is keep going down the trail with Cal occasionally reaching through the Force for an echo or a…something. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for. He feels the life energy of the planet humming under his feet, not as loud as it should be for a place so unravaged, but it does steady him in a way. BD bwoos worryingly in his ear. He knocks his head against the droid’s reassuringly – glad neither Greez or Merrin are here to make comments about tooka kits and headbutts. They’re both explorers, yeah, but this place outstrips even Nur on the unease inducing scale.
The trail bends around a ragged part of the mountain and, despite his misgivings, Cal continues to follow it – only to stop cold at the sight that greets them.
It’s not just a pipe network and some warning signs. Now there’s fences. Tall, rusted fences that would be hell to scale if they were still upright. They zig-zag down the rest of the trail to a rundown double booth, and then terminates flush against the mountain side. BD jumps off his back and skitters away, trilling in curiosity.
Cal is less curious. That dread that’s been an unwelcome ghost at his back multiplies tenfold. This set up is familiar to him. It reminds him of the chokepoints they used to set up on Bracca when a bounty hunter got in with the overseers and decided to herd them around like livestock in an attempt to flush out their prey. Those were the worst days for him, so paranoid that someone would clock him as a traitorous Jedi that Prauf and Tabbers caught on and did their best to keep him out of sight.
He tugs his poncho tight around him, folding his arms over his chest. Built into the mountain, at the end of the trail, is a set of heavy doors that’s seen better days. It’s opened, just a crack. Juust big enough for an eighteen-year-old to fit right through.
The Force whispers, telling him to turn back – and he would love to listen to it. He doesn’t like the look of those doors. But the only way out is through and up. If there’s a facility inside there, then there has to be an emergency exit up at the top, right? That would make the most sense.
Cal ghosts a hand over the last gate in the fence near the booth, feels a whisper of impatience, and notice-me-not, and everything-is-in-order, and find my, find my, you took my – ! that is indistinct and faint and lost to time. He could dig deeper for it, bring it to clarity, but he doesn’t.
He runs a hand through his hair and finally calls the Mantis.
“Hey, Cere, I found something. It looks like the entrance to an old Imperial facility. It’s built into the mountain.”
“Interesting that nothing came up on my scans. Is there a landing pad nearby?”
“Nope. Also, there’s no way to get here on foot unless you really, really like climbing.” He pauses. “And jumping. And getting covered in mud.”
“…Cal,” she sighs in exasperation. Cal just grins in response, amusement humming from both ends of their tentative Master-Padawan bond. It’s still growing, all stubby like fresh sprouts through soil. He resists the urge to send a childish poke across it, something he would’ve done to Master Tapal when his teasing was just a little too deadpanned for Cal to parse. They’ve gone through a lot these last few months, but the wounds from Trilla’s second death are still too raw for him to try and test boundaries. “I told you to turn back if that happened, and now you’re at an Imperial base.”
“It’s not a base, if that helps.”
“It doesn’t.”
“I got curious,” Cal says with a shrug. Cere mutters something that sounds suspiciously like, I should’ve known. “Can’t get back the same way I came, though. It was a bit tricky getting here in the first place. I’m going to have to go through the facility. Looks pretty abandoned. I’m sure it’s fine.”
“Famous last words!” Greez shouts.
Cere sighs again. “Don’t let them be,” she says, tone serious. The bond hums with it, and a little bit of concern-fear he’s sure she doesn’t know she’s projecting. “Ping the Mantis every hour. Call us if you run into any trouble. I’m serious, Cal. There’s a time for curiosity and that time isn’t now. We don’t know what could be in that facility. Do not explore. It isn’t worth it.”
“Yes, Mas – Cere.” He winces and hopes she doesn’t catch the slip. The last time he called her Master, he’d been delirious with pain, suffering a fever so high it felt like he was burning from the inside out. His sleep had been snatched away by nightmares that weren’t really nightmares because all of it was true, true, true – and he’d called out for his Master. Not Tapal, but Junda. And Cere had slammed her shields down so tight it actually pained him in return.
That hadn’t ended well for either of them.
It was a little better now, a couple months later, but, again, he doesn’t want to push it.
“I’ll be careful,” he swears.
“Please,” is all Cere says, sounding weary. It makes him feel guilty, being the cause of that.
“Those would be terrible last words,” Merrin muses distantly, tone utterly serious in a way Cal tries not to find charming but does anyway. She calls out, “Do not die, Cal Kestis!” just before the line clicks off.
Cal drops his head back, sighing gustily. This is not going to end well, not with what he kept from telling Cere. Not, not with what he feels from those doors. But he has no choice. Not if he wants to go home. He so desperately wants to go home already.
He shuffles reluctantly closer to the doors. Whatever’s inside the facility is seeping out, like old blood. It’s faint and, and old. Ancient – in the way his kyber sings his name, the words new, but the melody older than time itself. Ancient like the oldest echoes felt in the deepest parts of the Temple when this crechemaster turned their back and he let his curiosity, and the Force, guide him.
Ancient, like the way Vadar felt. In those brief moments when Cal expanded his thoughts and crashed against a wound in the Force, wailing and screaming pain and loss and betrayal. New and Old, and so very Dark.
He knows what it’s like to be put up against something more than him. To be looked at and found wanting.
The Force whispers back-back-back, and he tells it, I can’t.
Cal shudders, running both hands through his hair this time, tugging on the ends. He needs to get it cut; he thinks distractedly. He’s pulled from his thoughts by BD-1 calling him over, unsure and a little dejected over the lack of anything helpful. All he’s found is another sign, this time with the faint markings of WARNING in Aurebesh. That clear, precise Imperial cog in the corner. He holds out an arm for BD to easily climb back up, and carefully picks up the sign.
“That’s okay, buddy,” Cal assures him, rubbing his bare thumb over the edges of the sign, searching – seeking – listening. The Force answers him like always, even if it’s a little quieter than usual, (and it was always, even on Bracca when he thought everything was lost. It’d just been waiting for him to reach back.) but there’s nothing to hear, nothing to feel, nothing to think. “Between the two of us, we’ll get through this. Just like we always do.”
That gets him a few beeps of renewed determination – because they’re unstoppable when they work together! Cal smiles briefly, fond and amused, before it fades in anticipation of what comes next. He suddenly regrets not telling Cere about what might await him through those doors. He has no idea what it is exactly, but he knows it’s not good.
He drops the sign unceremoniously and steps over it to finally walk towards the entrance. Getting closer doesn’t help the ominous bad-dread-screaming. The air coming from inside is impossibly colder. It makes a mournful-like howl on the edges of the doors. His hand goes to his lightsaber without him even thinking about it and he unhooks it but doesn’t light the blade. Not yet. Cal takes a deep breath – then squeezes through into the darkness.
waitwaitwaitingwaitinglong
w a i t i n g w a i t i n g w a i t i n g
Cal stumbles on entry and nearly falls flat on his face. He manages to catch himself on his hands and knees instead, ‘saber hilt scraping against the ground to go along with the awful sound his knees make.
Dust puffs up on impact, swirling around him like smoke. It’s all he can do to gasp around the sudden pressure around his lungs. Like someone reached through the Force and wrapped a vice around them, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing until Cal’s choking, his breaths rattling around in his ribcage, sparks dancing on the edges of his vision. He palms his chest – he can’t breathe. He can’t breathe. He can’t –
It’s gone.
The vice releases.
The pressure lets up.
Cal coughs and wheezes, spits out chalky dust, dragging an arm over his mouth. Ew. BD beweeps in concern, his scanner flashing way too bright in the dark. “I’m okay,” he rasps out – and he almost believes it. “I’m okay. That was – really weird.” When he stands, he staggers hard enough to almost end up on the ground again. He holds fast, swaying like he’s drunk on rotgut. He covers his eyes, wincing, when BD tries to scan him again. “Stop, please, buddy. I appreciate it, but it’s way too bright. I’m fine.”
BD-1 expresses doubt at Cal’s assessment of his own wellbeing, which he didn’t have to do in that tone, thank you, but stops scanning him all the same. He offers a stim, but Cal waves it off it brush the dust off his hands instead. Already, the weird pressure feels like a distant dream.
It gets like that sometimes, when places have been abandoned after something terrible has happened. Just…He’s gotten really good at not being affected by it so deeply. Something he had to learn on Bracca when he was cutting into ships that once housed his family and his brothers, only for them to be cut down, only for them to betray them all.
He dreads learning why this place is so different.
He ignites his ‘saber to illuminate the room he’s literally stumbled into. It’s an open lobby, which throws him for a second before he shrugs, that makes sense, can’t have it open immediately into whatever secrets they’ve going on in here. There’s a ‘lift to the right that’s guarded by defunct security scanners. It goes in the only direction he needs (up) but the actual platform is missing. To the left is a corridor branching off into pitch-blackness that his ‘saber can’t penetrate from here. He refuses to get closer.
In the center is a hub of terminals and counter space with a dead holoprojector in the middle that probably housed a holo of the Imperial cog – so no one could ever forget who exactly they’re working for. Cal wrinkles his nose and hops over the counter to get access to the terminals. One of them has a few back up lights flickering near the base, indicating there’s at least some power. “Think you can slice this? Get a generator or two running?” he asks BD-1. The droid chirps and inserts his scomp link. It takes a few seconds longer than normal, but eventually the terminal sputters to life and a few ceiling lights flicker on. The ‘projector whirls, but the holo doesn’t turn on thankfully. Cal would rather be in darkness than have that stupid cog loom over him.
Cere told him no exploring. This isn’t exploring. This is making sure he doesn’t trip and break his neck stumbling around in the dark. But – the echoes are so loud. So insistent. They swirl around him, tugging on his senses. Cal hovers a hand over the working terminal and then the other over the counter next to it. He can feel the Force reach back. The memories soak through both objects, wanting so desperately to be re-lived. BD whirls caution, optics flickering in that way he does when he really doesn’t like what Cal’s doing.
He closes his eyes and touches the terminal – there’s a brief rush of regular workplace exhaustion, the slight smear of wariness, and then annoyance. kriff this. his leave was supposed to start yesterday but no, their orders just had to get extended. unbelievable. what’s the point of a contract if – Cal’s brows furrow. you don’t know either? hm, that’s weird. do you think it has anything to do with that thing waking up? I can’t imagine – an alarm shrieks wildly, making him flinch. what the hell? why is – ? shit! move! no! NO, YOU – and he inhales sharply, stumbles back. He died here, slumped over the terminal, the edges pressing between his ribs, stray blaster fire tearing through his throat. Some creeping wrongness filling their every limb as they struggled to breathe around blood filling their throat.
Cal wraps a hand around his own neck, stemming a wound that’s not there, his own breaths gasping and shallow. Everything aches. He feels the memories drip like blood, puddling into the ground, twining with someone else’s. A shared memory. They probably died one after another, shared last words, or last breaths. Maybe even reaching for each other, desperate for comfort in those last fleeting moments of fear and pain.
He shouldn’t feel for them, he tells himself. Even though this was long before the Formation, before the Purge, before Imps were Imps, they were…they were still Imps, okay? They weren’t – they were – something nudges the back of his mind. They were so scared. Not panicked, like he imagines someone would be during an emergency alarm. The man was security forces, he knew how to handle himself in a fight. But this – he was scared in the end. He hates that kind of fear. No one should ever die scared.
You have failed me, Inquisitor.
Yet they still do, and Cal can’t do anything about it.
It takes Cal a minute to release the phantom sensation of dying into the Force. It lingers for a second, nearly coalescing into another echo. This time tinged with Cal’s memories, but then it fades completely, taking the warmth of blood on his neck and the sucking breaths from his chest.
He doesn’t touch the counter. He doesn’t have the mental capacity to deal with another death so soon.
Instead, he tucks his hands close and goes to check the ‘lift. BD scans the call terminal, beeps out a negative when he doesn’t find a port or power. Hm. Interesting. Separate system then…it would make it hard for anyone to escape. No landing pad, no ‘lift, no bridge – huh. Cal peers up into the darkness. The recess the ‘lift would fit in is filled with debris and the platform itself is nowhere to be seen. When he tries to pull it down with the Force, he latches onto air instead. Either it’s too high or it’s missing entirely.
Okay, a different way out then.
“You didn’t happen to get a map of this place from that terminal, did you?” BD bwo-woops. “Didn’t think so.”
A puzzle. Cal likes puzzles – always has since the first time someone presented him with a knot of metal rings and told him only use the Force to solve it, all in an attempt to get him to stop touching things that usually had pretty strong and emotional echoes attached to them – but he has a feeling he’ll dislike this one.
He hops up on the ‘projector, the tallest point in the room, and turns in a little circle, surveying his options. And there, right above the freaky corridor, is a vent just slightly too small for him. Cal tilts his head, chewing on his lip, before he uses the Force to yank down an already loose support beam that’s attached right next to the vent. It doesn’t even go halfway, but if he could swing to it, he could grab onto it. He looks up. Ah-ha! He reaches for the bundle of inert cables hanging down like vines from the ceiling. It looks like blaster fire knocked them loose when the fight broke out so the sturdiness of them is shaky, but…
Anything to avoid entering the corridor. This whole place reeks of violence and death. It crawls under his skin and burrows down into his bones. But that corridor… that damn corridor –
Cal’s fingertips skim the cable. He huffs in frustration before he just uses the Force to pull it closer. There’s an odd buzzing sound as it moves through the air to slap into his palm, but he doesn’t pay it any attention, so focused on figuring out how much momentum he needs. Falling from that beam won’t be fun, so it needs to be perfect.
So, yeah. He’s not paying attention. The cable buzzes. BD shrieks a sudden warning a second too late. It slaps into his hand. The free end swings up, up, lands a glancing blow against his exposed forearm and then he’s –
He’s gone.
Cal chokes around a guttural shout, teeth gnashing, spine bending and twisting as electricity surges through him. His foot slips and he tumbles off the ‘projector to the ground, banging off the edge of the counter, to crumble into a painful heap, twitching and spasming. The echoes clustered on the floor – tucked under the desks, dripping off the terminal – reach, reach, reach for him, trying to worm between his shields. His mind is a blank white-out of pain and he almost lets them, almost drops his shields for the memories that just want so badly to be remembered.
But then BD-1 cuts his boosters and drops down heavily next to him, beeping anxiously, and Cal manages to pull himself together despite the pain. Gritting his teeth, he shores up his shields until he’s sure he’s not going to lose himself and he’s highly aware of dust between his teeth and blood on his tongue – he bit his cheek.
“Xah – karking hell,” he whimpers, squeezing his eyes shut when BD’s scanner beams over his trembling, miserable self again and again. Several other curses flit through his mind like flapping wings, but he doesn’t have the energy to chase them nor the air to voice them. He wraps a hand around his arm under the electrical burn that buzzes and sparks along his nerves, too real and too bright now that he’s not at risk of being overtaken by echoes, and he squeezes tightly, temporarily dulling the pain. His fingers twitch uncontrollably. He sucks in a sharp breath between his teeth.
Something nudges his elbow, and he peels his eyelashes apart to see BD. The droid tilts his head, popping out a stim canister with a worried sound. Cal doesn’t even think about it, he snatches it up and jabs it into his arm below the burn, right through the darkest part of his guild tattoo. The adrenaline burns through him, making the world so sharp he feels like he can see every mote of dust, and his heart leaps wildly in his chest before it evens out into something bearable. Cal sighs as the painkiller is a little slower to work, but eventually he goes limp and forces himself to breathe evenly – and carefully, there’s so much dust down here.
BD beeps right in his face. Cal huffs a laugh and rolls over to his back with a groan. “Electricity is the worst,” he declares around the painful way his muscles twitch. “This place is the worst.” Twice in less than what, ten, fifteen minutes he ends up on the ground in pain? Not a great start.
Cal hates getting electrocuted.
And he was right, that was a really karked up puzzle. Barely a puzzle at all.
He lays there for a bit longer, watching dust swirl like smoke between him and the glaring lights. They hurt now, so much brighter than they were before through his blurry vision and aching head. The cable is giving off sparks now, mocking him for thinking it was ever safe to use. That was his only cable. The rest are still securely attached to the ceiling.
Cal blinks slowly, letting his eyes stay closed for a beat, then two, then he opens them and hauls himself up, groaning and grimacing, the world swaying horrifically, and gets to his feet again – again – again. Because that’s what he does. He gets back up. Keeps going.
He digs out the little med kit Greez had shoved into his arms some point between Zeffo and Dathomir all those months ago – and he does try to keep it stocked up – and slathers on a thin layer of bacta over the glistening, oozing burn that eats into the edge of his tattoo, and then wraps some bandages around it to keep the bacta from getting contaminated. He rolls his shoulders and cracks as many joints as he can, flicking out sore wrists and stiff fingers. His muscles still contract and spasm in not-great ways, but it’s fine. BD waits until he’s (mostly) still again before he settles on Cal’s shoulder.
Shooting one last glare towards that karking cable, Call turns to the ominous corridor with no little trepidation. He raises his lightsaber to illuminate the way. The light wavers, his hand trembling in aftershocks. It feels like his heart isn’t beating quite right, but he doesn’t have the luxury to wait for everything to calm down. The stim – for as useful as they are despite Cere’s disapproval – is only a stopgap to real medical care. Or, well, as real as it can be with their limited supply on the Mantis. As long as nothing else happens, it’ll be enough.
(…what was it that Greez said? Famous last words. Yeah.)
“Ready?” he asks BD, his voice raspy and hoarse. Bee-woop. “Me neither.”
w a i t i n g w a i t i n g w a i t i n g
l o n g n o l o n g e r
hungryhungryhungryhungry
If Cal thought what seeped from the entrance was bad, this…this is worse. That had been a mere trickle. A preview of what came next.
This darkness – this swallows him whole.
Breaths catching in his chest, the Force quivers around him, no longer quiet and peaceful, wary and watchful, but thick and heavy in a way that makes him dizzy. No, no, no, not here, he thinks. A wound, like Vadar, torn open and weeping darkness and rage and terror and screaming and screaming and screaming.
He shudders and stumbles, tasting bile in the back of his throat. back-back-back. The light from the lobby is already so far away even though it feels like he’s only taken a single step over the threshold. His ‘saber seems to almost struggle in the oppressive darkness, the golden light dimming. BD-1 adds his own light, but, even then, they can only see a meter in front of them – and there’s not much to see.
There aren’t any lights here besides their own. Cal can’t hear the hum of distant generators – and he knows that he should. If that terminal had power and BD could access it, he should hear something besides his own breathing and the purr of BD’s servos. He doesn’t. There’s nothing. This place is quiet and cold and…and devastatingly empty.
closerclosercloseryescloser
He stops – at some point. A point. How many meters down the corridor, how many minutes passed, he doesn’t know. Cal cocks his head to the side. back-back-back, the Force whispers urgently. runrunrun-run-run-runrun. He feels it, a brush on the back of his neck, like fingertips on his nape. That dread again, trickling down his spine. He looks, looks, looks back and sees the lobby a pin prick of light down a dark tunnel.
And it’s oh, I didn’t realize we’d gone that far, and he feels. Wrong.
Cal turns forward again. Keeps moving. The darkness swirls with every step. It feels like he’s floating. Unmoored. Unbalanced. He tries to wrap himself in the peace of the Force, but all he gets is that back-back-back, urgent and scared and, and he’s scared too, but he can’t go back. Back is – xahx, his head hurts. His teeth ache. His left eye won’t stop twitching.
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a flash of white. He twists his lightsaber around and finds only deep grey walls. Another Imperial cog mocks him. He resists the urge to press the tip of his lightsaber into the mark, resists the want to burn it away. It won’t do anything. It’s just one cog out of hundred, out of thousands. He shakes his head, hand pressed to his temple.
out-out-out, yes, he’s getting out. run-run-run, he can’t run, not anymore. movemovemove, he is.
feastfeastfeastfeastyes
solongsolongsolongnotlongnownow
The walls press in, suffocatingly so. The dark gets impossibly darker, smothering his ‘saber light. BD’s light flickers once, twice, and comes back at half-power, making him squint. The Force is – it’s like walking into a blackhole. It’s like he’s, he’s walking into the presence of Vadar all over again. Wrong and twisted and sinking, sinking, sinking. Trilla, trying not to drown. Trilla, realizing towards the end, how deep and Dark the waters went, gasping for air and finding nothing but death meeting her on the surface. You have failed me, Inquisitor.
Cal trips over something and catches himself with a hand on the suddenly too-close wall running scared. she can’t face this – she can’t – a scream, her own, wrenched from an already ravaged throat – shoulder, burning, she collapses, catching herself on the wall, clutching the weeping, burning wound, her heart too fast, her vision going dark on the edges, cold, she’s so cold. don’t look. don’t look. don’t – she looks behind her, and the terror is a choking, terrible, horrible thing, no, that can’t be, that can’t – and he snatches his hand back, cradling it to his chest, panting as if he’d been the one running, running, running. (And he wonders, if running was better than hiding, in the end.) Another person who died scared. He doesn’t know what she saw, her memories collapsed under the sheer terror and disbelief and something else that was there, something more. That kind of overwhelming emotion was new to her, and it twisted the echo into something messy and unreadable without a lot of dedicated time. Time, he doesn’t have.
BD makes a sound of concern he waves off. He rubs his temple, frowning at the way his fingers tremble. His head throbs. His mouth is as dry as a desert. “Let’s keep going.”
Keep going.
runrunrun
run-run-run
c l o s e r c l o s e r c l o s e r
Cal walks for – he doesn’t know how long. Time is meaningless. BD beeps occasionally, but it sounds like he’s hundreds of klicks away and underwater. Cal hums in response, on the rare times he realizes BD even said something, but everything is just this a wall of cotton in his head. He can barely think, and when he does get a thought through, it’s indistinct like smoke. He should question it. He should…
He should ask the time. He’s supposed to ping the Mantis, right? An hour. Every hour. Has it been an hour? Two? Twelve? Days. Weeks. Years. And years and years, back fifty to sixty to hundreds, hundreds, time stretching out, out, out. His tongue is thick in his mouth. The air is stale in his lungs. And time is –
Time is meaningless. Not when he’s beenwaitingforsolong.
The Force keeps urging him back, but it’s
faded, muted, a whisper instead of a roar
Something else is
in its place.
Cal blinks slowly. Something else is in its place. That’s not…
That’s not right.
He stops abruptly, swaying like a tree in the wind, his lightsaber pulsating in time with his heart. He feels – a brush on the back of his neck. That dread. Icey cold fingers trailing across his skin. He squeezes his eyes shut, breathing harshly through the dark, dark, Dark air. That’s just BD, he thinks, hopes, wishes were true. Just BD. Nothing’s there. Nothing’s here. You are alone.
(But BD is tugging on the strap of his poncho, trying to get him to go back, back, back, he’s nowhere near Cal’s neck, but that has to be BD. It has to be.)
The hem of his poncho flutters, like something just skittered by. Soft patpatpats of claws, of feet. Something. Something.
He looks down into the darkness, blinks and sees – something – blinks and sees nothing – then
slowly, slowly, slowly looks up, head tilting back, throat exposed, and
There is still only darkness.
Deep, dark, sinking, sinking, sinking.
Cal…
Something looks back.
Command –
BD doesn’t, doesn’t raise an alarm. Cal reaches out and – and touches nothing. It’s all air. It’s all smoke and ash and the screams of the dead.
There’s nothing there.
Cal blinks again and exhales slowly, trying to center himself. The Force droops, curling small. He needs to run. Nothing’s there. He’s being paranoid. He’s alone. Has been.
For a while now.
alonealonealonealone – alone, yeah, alone.
back-back-back-back, why?
They keep walking. Cal rubs his eyes, feeling tired and exhausted, wondering when this corridor will finally end. He raises his ‘saber – and flinches as the light catches a new shape ahead. Then laughs, relieved and heart fluttering, when he moves closer and all there is, is a new set of doors. One half is off its tracks, the other is crumbled as if it’d been crushed, but, yeah, it’s just doors. Nothing else here. Nope! The ledge drops off sharply, there’s the faint edge of a step leading up.
Cal stares at it for a long moment, feeling…distant. Smothered. Tangled. Like someone’s replaced his brain with Merrin’s favorite blanket. Like, for a moment, everything was coming out of alignment.
Until BD karkin’ pinches him and he finally lurches, fumbling with his ‘saber, tapping it from palm to palm like he’s a youngling with a training ‘saber for the first time, before he manages to grip it tightly. He lets loose a string of swears that would, that would have Flank laughing to tears and Bunker both impressed and scandalized that their fresh-from-the-Temple Padawan-Commander already knew so many swears in so many languages.
(It’d become a game, after that, to see how many languages he could pick up and if any of the ‘troopers could pick it up faster. Cal tried to tell them he had an unfair advantage, no one else liked it when he picked things up faster than them, but Bunker reminded him, they were clones, their brains were literally made to pick things up just as fast, a little like you, verd’ika, and he – )
Cal exhales slowly and takes his heavy, heavy grief, and carefully releases it into the Force. It goes reluctantly, sticking like honey to the edges of Cal’s soul. But it, it goes – he thinks. His heart still feels heavy. He exhales shakily, sniffling.
This is all too much.
alonealonealoneforeverforeveralone
Bwoop? – Cal flushes. “I’ll tell you what some of them mean later.”
BD’s picked up way too many swears from him already. Maybe he can just not bring it up and the droid will forget about it? (Hahaha. Yeah right.)
He sighs, feeling a little more attached to his body thanks to BD, and finally shines his saberstaff down this new section of the corridor, and recoils violently at the sudden sight of transparisteel cells dotting the walls. His stomach swoops nauseatingly, but he steps through anyway on the balls of his feet, quiet even though he has no reason to be quiet. He’s the only one here. (right?)
The cells are unopened and empty, and that should be a relief except…they’re not really empty. Nothing is truly empty when there are memories.
These ones press against the cell doors just as effectively as a living being would press and shout and plead to be rescued, to be saved from the hell that this place is. Cal cringes and hunches in on himself. Loud. So loud. Like a crowd screaming. Like a hundred voices shouting at once.
And, when he looks closer, through the dust layered over everything, he sees that the cells contain more than memories. There are personal effects scattered in each cell. Not a lot. Just one or two things, like they’d been dropped in a hurry and forgotten about.
Important things. He passes a cell with a jewelry set inside – a draping many-chained necklace with some links broken and lost, bracelets and rings to match, and he knows that style. He knows that style, and he wonders, faintly, what a meeko-te was doing all the way out here when they rarely leave their home in the Core, even more rarely leave their jewelry behind.
Cal…
One cell has a dusty, dull mechanical eye. Another, earrings made of a crystal that shattered into a million pieces. Another has…a plushie. A loth-cat, it’s fur in patches and its glass eyes scratched and clouded.
Cal pauses on that one, his hand pressing against the transparisteel without his say-so. He doesn’t have to touch the stuffed loth-cat to feel a sick fear that starts in his stomach and bubbles in the back of his throat. The emotion fills the room like a crushing ocean in a drinking glass, spilling through all the cracks it can, desperate for escape. It’s almost too much even with the barrier.
I want to go home, whispers on the Force, small and quiet and scared.
Me too, he replies silently, achingly.
It’s not the first time he’s thought that, but it’s the first time in a long, long time it’s hurt this much. The Mantis could be home. Is home, he’s sure, but he’s having a hard time wrapping his heart around that right now, his thoughts pulling all over the place. He said it out loud once, back at a market. He said let’s go home to Merrin, meaning the Mantis, and she didn’t rebuff him. She’d smiled thin and wane and there was a careful sort of understanding, of hope, between them.
y o u h a v e n o t h i n g
you’re family now, Cal’ika. no gettin’ away from us.
but I…
aliit ori’shya tal’din. You are ours.
– and Cal sobs very, very softly at the sudden memory. His, this time. Why did he have to think about that now? About his – (Oh, right. Home. Home. Home that is gone. Home that will never be again. The Order. His Master. His brothers. His family – why did his family – ?)
His head hurts.
His eyes burn as he reluctantly steps away. Every cell he passes weeps this fear, this terror – he can barely stand it. His shields feel like flimsi, one wrong move and they’ll be shred to bits. A bracer sits in one cell, screaming defiant terror. A badge in another, soft and lost. A shimmering scarf muted with age. Another necklace with a large stone attached to it. A small, glinting thing.
Cal stops. Back-tracks. He stares at the glint in the pile of dust, breathing harshly. No. No way. He tries to palm the door open, but there’s no karking power, yhua’ythun. He forgets himself next, and attacks the door with his free hand, digging his nails between it and the frame, but that does nothing except earn him torn nails and bleeding fingers. He lets out a not-laugh, choking on it, a helpless sort of anger filling him before fizzling out and then he’s hollow and empty. BD nudges the side of his face, but Cal ignores him, closing his eyes and gritting his teeth, pulling at the Force. Sweat beads up on his forehead as the Force, the Force slips through his fingers like smoke no matter how quickly, desperately he grabs for it.
calm-calm-calm-calm
No. No. No. He needs to get in there. Cal threads his will through the Force, solidifying it – and, for a brief moment, it jumps to the call, a surge of help-help-help, like it always does – and he jams it between the door and the frame, pulling the door open centimeter by centimeter before the seal cracks and the door slams open. He almost falls over at the sudden lack of resistance.
The Force instantly slips between his fingers, scattering. But he’s not paying attention to that. At how quickly the Force goes muted and low. He hurries into the cell, heart in his throat. The glinting object is still there. It wasn’t his imagination.
It's a padawan bead.
Cal’s vision blurs, tears already on his cheeks before he realizes he’s crying. Some kept their padawan braid simple, only using colored ribbons or twine to remember the places they’ve been, the people they met. Others, though, others added beads and clasps instead. Things that clinked together when they breathed in meditation, when they were, were moving in battle. Cal had always planned on adding a clasp to his braid on the Albedo Brave’s next shore leave. Something iron-dark and a soft yellow like far-off stars, to show off the same loyalty and pride for the 13th Battalion that they had shown him.
But then the Purge happened, so obviously he never got that clasp.
find the commander! he’s here somewhere.
His hand trembles as he reaches for the bead – my master will come for me, she thinks helplessly. they said they would always be by my side. they will come. they will come. they – they have to come. come save me please. p-please. I don’t want to be here. pleas – Cal swipes his cheeks, and it does nothing but smear dust on his face. The tears keep falling. The woman’s echo – the padawan’s echo – is scared, terrified, wondering how much more can I take? and the answer is no more, no more as her-his-her heart withers and his-her-his terror expands and he opens his mouth to scream, to plead, to beg, please no, you said – ! you said! His breath catches in his chest and his knees buckle, sending him to the ground in a graceless heap. Cal’s knuckles creak around the bead, nails digging into his palm. My master gave me this. after we left Lanoscea. They’d been so proud, and I nearly cried. Pathetic, right? and no, those aren’t, those aren’t Cal’s thoughts. That’s not his memory. That padawan is dead. Her master never came.
His master is dead. His padawan has been reduced to this.
this is Cal Kestis, your Padawan-Commander.
soonsoonsoonsoonsoonsoon
He uncurls his hand, forcing himself to let go of the bead. It barely makes a sound as it bounces, but it’s still too loud.
His head hurts.
Cal lets out a sharp breath and staggers to his feet, knees creaking. He scoops up his saberstaff. It hums and dims unsettlingly. It doesn’t stop that bead from glinting still. Calling to him. Wailing anguish that resonates with him all too well. He can’t take it with him. He can’t – He takes it, using the edge of his poncho to pick it up. It barely muffles the echoes, but he manages to not get lost again as he puts it in his med kit where the extra layers might keep them quieter. He sags against the door when he tries to leave, his legs wobbly and weak.
BD-1 lets out a string of beeps and whistles that doesn’t make sense. They don’t have to be here, he insists. Why did we come this way? Up was the other way, the one he told Cal about. Cal frowns. “When did you tell me that?” he murmurs, and it scrapes out of his throat like he’d been screaming. BD cranes his neck to look at Cal with as much incredulity as the droid can muster. Which is a lot. Cal runs a trembling hand through his hair. “No, really. I don’t, I don’t remember you telling me that. When did we pass it?”
A few meters back. And he’s sharply reminded of… something. What that – Cal abruptly becomes aware of how cold he is. BD’s light lets him see his breath frost in the air like a binog on an early, frost-bitten morning. He clutches his saberstaff closer, and while it doesn’t provide much warmth, it still soothes something inside him. Cal steps back into the hallways, leaving the rest of the padawan’s memories behind. He looks left, then right down the cell-studded corridor, trying his best to focus, but his brain just won’t. BD, as if sensing his struggle, projects the map he’s been painstakingly creating since they landed. He highlights the section he apparently told Cal about and – Cal really doesn’t remember.
The calculations aren’t perfect, but they’re in favor of that section leading their way to freedom. BD is positive.
He takes a few steps in the right direction then hesitates. BD clicks and pinches him again, encouraging him to keep going, but he can’t. “We need to find out what happened here,” he says. The droid beeps out a negative, disagreeing vehemently. “Bee, that was a Jedi,” he says helplessly. “And a kid. They were – they were so scared. So many people. I can’t,” he breathes out shakily. “I need to know.
find the padawan! find the t r a i t o r o u s Jedi!
Cal flinches at the memory and rubs a knuckle roughly against his temple. Stop. Stop. He doesn’t want to think about that. He doesn’t want to think about any of them. He needs to, to find out what happened here. Put these memories to rest. Save them now like they couldn’t be saved before. He heads opposite of where he should go. BD beeps quietly but doesn’t stop him. Cal reaches up to cradle the droid’s head against his cheek – he says nothing, though, just lets the silence surround them under the wailing of echoes only he can hear.
back-back-closercloser-back-back-closerclosercloser
The corridor goes on forever before it finally ends on a door hanging on by a thread. Cal easily cuts through it, and it opens up into a large room. This room is – nothing. Nothing changes. Everything hurts and stinks and screams just the same. If it’s worse, Cal’s head hurts too much for him to notice. The echoes are so insistent, he has to squint through the din. They make the edge of the terminals and holoprojectors hazy.
BD jumps off his shoulders and heads over to the most promising set of terminals, determined to get something out of it. Above them is a large view-port, looking over a lowered chamber. He glances briefly at the chair in the middle and has to look away before he’s sick. It looks like the interrogation chair in Trilla’s memories. It’s surrounded by inactive security grids. The kind that burn you to a crisp at the slightest touch.
Cal rubs his fingers together at the remembered first-hand experience as he heads towards the large conference table in the middle of the room. There’s a holoprojector in the center of it. The chair at the head, facing the view-port with its back to a pair of double doors, is the biggest and, at one point, was probably the most cushioned. He skims a hand over the surface of the table. The fear-soaked echoes vying for his attention are hard to push down, not just for the emotions but because they’re new compared to the ones he’s looking for. All he’s gotten so far are memories of people working for an Empire that doesn’t exist (yet). He wants further.
And he finds it. It’s mundane in comparison. A flicker in the dark. But he manages to dig out excitement, satisfaction, this will grant me from a seat next to the head. It’s distant and old.
He extinguishes his ‘saber for a second, lets BD be the only source of light, and – he sits down in that chair, splaying his hands on the table surface where he feels the imprint of a memory. Cal closes his eyes and pulls the Force closer, closer, closer, tugging on it carefully when it’s reluctant to unfold. Please, he thinks, just one simple word with too much desperation he thinks – and it unravels, spreading out over the table like a wave.
Cal opens his eyes.
Figures sit all around him, murmuring to each other. They shift like a smoke and ash, ghosts of a different time.
There’s the sounds of terminals beeping and someone screaming again, never ending, in the background. No one seems to notice. Cal strains to hear the conversations, but whoever this echo belongs to, didn’t care. He looks, instead, to the head of the table, where the person there is in perfect detail. An older human, or near-human, with graying hair and cold, cold eyes. He’s wearing a neatly pressed uniform in a style he doesn’t quite recognize, but he doesn’t think it’s completely unfamiliar.
He feels a surge of pride – this is my boss now, I’m finally where I’m meant to be, for the good of the galaxy, I’m so happy – and he forces it down. Not his. Focus.
“These results are promising,” his boss says. Cal clasps his hands together, suppressing a smug smile. “Have you – .”
The echo wavers.
The ghostly, smokey figures collapse then reform.
He presents new data. His colleagues murmur appreciatively and congratulate him. He doesn’t look at the doors behind his boss. They brought in something…something new. He hasn’t seen it yet. He doesn’t want to. Instead, Cal keeps his eyes forward and smiles and says, “The new injections into the noghri subjects have progressed spectacularly. I predict we’ll have two full spawns in a month’s time.”
His boss swipes his ‘pad and smiles. It looks odd. He doesn’t question it. “Excellent. Now – .”
Collapse. Reform.
There are fewer people now. Just one scientist behind them, working with the terminal next to the large doors in the back, and then him and his boss – tired, exhausted, I can’t keep working like this, my nightmares – His boss stands at the view-port. One of the subjects is screaming. Cal thinks she’s been screaming for a few days now. The integration of the nanogene spore has never been pleasant, more so now with … He hears it in his dreams, nightmares, head, sometimes, those screams. They usually sound like his wife.
“There have been concerns,” his boss says without turning around. His hands are folded behind his back, fingers curled into fists.
Cal settles his hands on his lap, leans back in his chair, trying for nonchalance when all he wants to do is scream with that woman being forcibly turned into…into – what is a technobeast. It sounds familiar. Like something out of an old story. The man this echo belongs to knows, but he doesn’t linger on the thought. Just a flash of flesh and machine warped into one being. He swallows thickly.
“Concerns over what? Our experiments are going perfectly. Will continue to go perfect.”
They have no choice. He ignores the small percentage of spawn that are deemed successes, only to find them dead a few days later. Usually, their heads bashed in. Self-inflicted, the doctors say. When they blocked that avenue, they started finding them with their wrists or throats torn open. Blood everywhere. Tendons and muscles peeled apart. Also self-inflicted. Some of the others want to blame psychological issues.
He knows better.
He knows the thing they’re keeping. He doesn’t like it. The magicks used for their spawn are natural, are the will of the Force. The thing their Lord summoned is not. He will never accept that. But he will never be in a position to question it.
“Perhaps we accelerate the leviathan’s creation. Will that alleviate some concerns?” he asks.
His boss turns to look at him sideways. Cal notes that he looks older now. It’s been years. Maybe decades. The screaming stopped. Soft, mechanized sobbing has replaced it. The man makes a motion, and the sobbing cuts off. The speakers squeal with feedback until those too are shut off. He winces and doesn’t rub his ears like he wants.
“I’m – .”
Collapse.
Reform.
There’s something heavy in the air. Oppressive. Dark in ways that he’s never experienced before. (Except Cal…Cal’s experienced this before. He knows this.) Cal drops his head to the table, wraps his arms over his head. No one is screaming, but he still hears it. It’s so loud. His name, being called. Pleads for him to – savemesavemesavemeplease – save her. But she’s not here. His wife has never once stepped foot on his planet.
And he fears he’s never going to leave it again.
A hand, on his shoulder. He jumps and looks up. The scientist who normally looks after the thing their Lord summoned smiles at him. She looks terrible. Bags under her eyes. Hair in disarray. She’s skinny, cheeks hollowed out and skin stretched across her skull to reveal her near-human traits. He doesn’t…He’s almost positive that she’s not supposed to look like that.
“What are you still doing here?” he asks her. She’s not part of the night shift. And, well, neither is he. But he couldn’t sleep, and he couldn’t think, and he misses his wife so much.
There’s something wrong with her eyes. A sickly glow to them that he knows for a fact isn’t normal for her. “Sir,” she says. “You need to leave.”
Cal frowns in confusion. “What…?”
“It’s going to eat you,” she says, utterly serious. “You’re already half gone. You all are. I can’t stop it. No one can. It’s hungry, sir. So very hungry.”
Cal falls out of sync with the echo to reach out towards the woman. She grows fuzzy on the edges, her features indistinct except for those bright, bright eyes. He touches her, a brush of his fingers on her lapel, and it’s coming, you can’t stop it, it’s coming, it’s coming, closerclosercloser – The hair on the back of his neck stands on end as he takes his hand back.
Behind her, through the pitch-dark crack in the door he’s always ignoring – they’re not supposed to be open – two eyes stare back.
She opens her mouth
and she s c r e a m s.
Cal claps his hands over his ears, eyes squeezed shut as everything screams and screams and SCREAMS. Get out. get out. staystay. Get out! Run. dontrun. RUN. nononononono feastfeastyesFEASTFEAST
F E A ST
– collapse. Cal tips over sideways, scrambling out of the chair, the echo clinging to him like burrs, more-more-more-hear-feel-think-listen-listen-listen – no, no, no. No more. He doesn’t want this anymore. Please let him – He tries to pick them off and throw them back into the Force, to beat them back, let them go. Let go of me. But the echo clings to him, dread and terror seeping into his bones like they belong there, gnawing on the frayed edges of his psyche like a nexu with a good meal.
This is it, a voice whispers. This is inevitable. I can’t keep going like this, that unknown man, that man from a time hundreds of years ago, thought, realized, despaired, and Cal in the present shakes his head like he’s trying to get water out of his ears, but its just –
It’s just the ringing. The screaming. The echo, not quite gone. (He wants it gone. Let go.)
goseekgofindfindmecometome
letmefeastletmefeastsohungry
His throat hurts like he’s the one who’s been screaming – and maybe he has. He can’t tell. (BD would be freaking out right now if he was, right? Where’s BD? Where’s – ?)
He scrubs his face, eyes gritty with dust. Cal tries to wrap himself in calm, calm, calm even if the Force can’t give it to him, he will make himself calm because his heart is beating so fast he feels breathless. He has to – he needs to think. That was – that was the time of the High Republic. Their accents, their uniforms, the tech. That was who created this facility hundreds of years ago, he knows. They were, they were experimenting on people, on civilians, to create weapons. To create – oh.
Spawn. They were creating sithspawn. Cal’s only heard of them in legends, has only seen a glimpse of them in echoes so old he ends up speaking an entirely different version of Galactic Basic for hours afterwards.
This place isn’t Imperial or Republic, because it’s Sith. He covers his face, pressing his fingers along the edges of his eye socks as he moans. Impossible, he wants to say. But – how could he say that when hundreds of years later, a Sith hunts Jedi down like dogs? Takes them and molds them into weapons.
No one knows exactly how much influence the Sith have in the Empire, but Darth Vadar isn’t a secret, he’s a void damned nightmare out in the open, no longer hiding in the shadows, no longer worried about the Jedi because they wiped them out.
It helps him feel better to know that these ancient darksiders failed. He feels it under his feet, pressed into his shoulder that rests on the ground. It became too much for them. They abandoned this place. They left behind…They left – Cal looks up, to the doors the man refused to look at until the very end. The doors that are crumpled and broken, lines carved through them, exposing a gaping maw waiting to consume him. Pitch-black stares back and –
He remembers. Those aren’t supposed to be open.
Something else happened here. After those Sith, or Sith wannabes, mooks, darksiders, whatever, after they left, new ones took their place. But while the previous occupants took their spawn and their research, they left behind – they brought in…something new.
They left it behind. And it’s still here.
It’s waiting. itshungrybeensolong.
Cal staggers to his feet and walks dazedly towards the doors. He needs to know. He doesn’t know why.
stop-stop-stop
He can’t stop. The fingers of dread, of fear, of his own damn curiosity compels him even though he wants nothing more than to dig his heels in and listen, listen please, to the Force. Cal doesn’t feel like he’s inside his own body, watching from a distance as he pushes through the doors’ opening.
The room is lined with empty bacta tanks. Perfectly intact, if a bit grimy. In the center is a much bigger tank with terminals on either side, wires cradling it from above and below. The glass is nothing more than melted slag, carved opened by a vicious hit, the edges curled like an unfurling flower. He doesn’t have to pull out his lightsaber to compare. He’s intimately familiar with the damage lightsabers can do – and it looks exactly like this. Jedi, something far off in his mind whispers. There was a Jedi here. Not centuries ago, when this was hidden and smarter people ran it, but – and not the padawan, who was here more recently, ready to be experimented on, ready to be changed, hoping against all hope that she will be rescued any day now because they said they would always be by my side.
And then she died in that cell, before any of that could happen.
Never knowing that her Master did, in fact, come for her. It’s written in the slag-glass. It’s a song in the Force, weak and shivery in the way old, sad echoes get. The name of someone long dead, long lost.
He searches for the source and finds a shine under a pile of dust at the front of the broken tank. Cal kneels and carefully swipes the object clean and can barely muster up a reaction to the sight of a dull-cased lightsaber under his hovering palm. It’s all been too much. He feels drained of all energy, completely empty and hollowed out. Numb, almost, as he grabs the hilt, and -- it’s a rush, a flickering holo of memories and emotions strengthened by the kyber inside. The crystal surges at the touch of familiarity – a Jedi, a Jedi!, finally found it – and he wobbles, catching himself on the tank as uncomfortable. this place is uncomfortable
wet and miserable, the rain making their scarf cling to their hidden ears. damn scarf. have to wear it, not human enough for these people
they twist their fingers behind their back, threads the air with everything-is-in-order. the guard blinks and shakes his head, taps his holopad once, twice, nods sharply, right here, sorry about that, sir, they’re waiting for you –
place reeks. the Force is an open wound
they grit their teeth. the scientist is babbling about their experiments. they should be paying attention, report, they need to report these horrors to the Order, but they don’t –
sense, they can sense her. their padawan
a tug, on their bond, a desperate master, master, please, I can’t take this anymore. they send back soothing thoughts, but it just hits a wall of trembling fear
save you, save you. I will save you I’m here for you, young padawan. my padawan
Cal opens his eyes unseeingly, knuckles white from clutching the lightsaber so tightly. He’s standing now. He doesn’t remember getting up. A ghostly figure touches the tank in the center of the room. It bubbles with a hazy liquid, glowing faintly. He tucks their arms behind his back,
and it all slots into place.
“We have this now,” the scientist says, and he’s so proud. So damn proud it radiates in the Force like a beacon. “It took some time for us to wake it from its dormmate state. We’re still not sure what – who – summoned it in the first place, but we have high hopes. It’s unlike any spawn I’ve ever seen. The records called it a siqsa.” He stumbles over the ancient language. Older than four hundred years. Ancient like how the word padawan is ancient. A lost language.
“A siqsa,” Cal repeats, their folded arms tighten briefly before releasing. His tongue doesn’t stumble over the word. It’s familiar, terribly familiar. Not to Cal, but that’s…not true anymore. This Master may not know the whole language, but they know this. This from tales. This from long-forgotten ruins.
A creature is in the tank – and it turns, floating weightlessly. It looks like – it looks like – he doesn’t know. It’s malleable, indistinct. A blank canvas. Smoke from a fire. The Force droops, small and wilting, and they can’t help but reach out, touching the glass. It’s cool under his palm. Something writhes on the Force, hurt and starving and patiently, so patiently, waiting and Cal feels it, hungryhungryhungryhungry. eateateateat. They sway closer, mind going thin. Vision blurring, darkening on the edges. A thread of fear, unspooling in his chest. He blinks. Once. Twice. Eyelashes flutter. They look into the tank.
His padawan stares back. Eyes wide, mouth open in a bubbling scream. She slams against the glass, words inaudible. Blood smokes from cruel, cruel, cruel wires and tubes burrowed beneath her skin. Cal can only watch in horror, unable to move a single limb at the sight. The scientist is still talking, but they hear none of it, their eyes only on his padawan.
Unbidden, he reaches for his lightsaber, tucked under the folds of their stolen uniform – or is it already in his hands? Where is – where is – something isn’t right, he thinks, but it’s a far away whisper that they ignore in favor of what’s in front of him. Save. Save. Save her. savemesavemesavemeplease. They ignite his ‘saber, the violet blade blazing in the dim-darkness, and slashes the tank’s front. Liquid hisses, spilling over to slosh at his feet.
Their padawan smiles unnaturally, mouth stretching too far from side to side, too many teeth. He steps back, raising their lightsaber as a different sort of horror descends and consumes (consumeconsumeconsume) him.
“You’re not her!” he cries out. “Where is she? Where is – !”
His padawan’s face contorts into a visage from a nightmare and she lunges. Someone screams shrilly and a force slams into him, shoving them back. Everything burns. His body throbs in beat with their heart. Their limbs stiffen. His soul…gives out, wisping away like smoke.
The last thing they’re aware of is – more screaming, screaming, s c r e a m i n g.
And, the absolute certainty that…everyone in this facility is going to die.
shoot on sight!
Cal chokes and finds air when he expects nothing. He gasps, breaking the surface, blinking rapidly – and the tank is empty, illuminated only by a purple glow that splits along fault lines in the kyber. He squeezes his hand around the lightsaber, feels one last flicker of the past – Zao-Mosch, the Master who failed, I failed my padawan, my sweet apprentice – the edges dig into his palm. He douses the blade as he breathes slowly, head aching so much.
He's so scared.
And the thing is – he’s been scared before. Terrified beyond all comprehension. He’s faced death in the flesh, dressed in black with a bleeding blade.
But he’s never felt anything like this.
This isn’t him.
The revelation hits Cal like a rampaging bantha. Suddenly, everything becomes clear, unfurling before him like a holocron. And he wants to smack himself for taking so long to see it. A siqsa, they said. A demon, he knows now. A spawn unlike any other. A darksider, or maybe even a Sith themselves if the title Lord meant anything useful, summoned something Dark and malicious through the Force to use as a weapon – and doomed themselves, because it was uncontrollable. It was too hungry.
And it hasn’t left this facility.
Cal’s fallen right into its trap.
Kark. Cal clips Master Zao-Mosch’s lightsaber to his belt opposite of his own and runs a hand through his hair, trying to think of what to do next. Get out of here, yeah. Grab BD, and get the karkin’ hell out of this damn place before, before – something flickers in the Force, just on the edge of his awareness. It feels familiar, and dread pools heavily in his stomach. There is a sound, behind him. A march of boots. A whisper of armor. Cal holds his breath and keeps his eyes on the tank in front of him, refusing to look. He knows if he looks, he’ll lose all this clarity, the fog will come back. The, the smoke will come back and pull that veil of darkness over his eyes.
He's stubborn. He can get out of this without losing his head again. Just don’t look.
no sign of the little one.
Cal turns around, compelled by a power he’s learning isn’t his.
And he sees – a ghost.
That’s all it can be. A kriffin’ ghost.
A figure in white. Plastoid chest piece scuffed with blaster marks from a mission gone wrong. A clanker patrol Cal hadn’t noticed, too caught up in tracking their actual target through splattered echoes. It’d gotten replaced eventually, clean and neat except for the GAR insignia to remind them all who the ‘troopers belong to. Not to themselves. Even less so to the Jedi, the Jedi barely belonged to themselves anymore. They all belonged to the Republic. No one would accept Cal’s guilt or apologies. No one died, everyone kept saying, no one got injured badly enough to required more than a little bacta, and we got our target in the end. You did good, vod’ika, you did good.
And that vambrace, painted in soft yellows and dark irons, combined into swirling, dreamy clouds of half-memories. The first echo the vambrace ever held was a gentle one, can’t sleep, verd’ika? here. I hadn’t gotten the chance to work on this ‘til now. why don’t you paint it for me? gives you something to do and me something to brag about. a heavy hand on the crown of his head, a kind smile, a burst of warmth in the Force.
CC-9284. The Clone Commander of the Iron Battalion.
Bunker.
His brother.
– who pulled a blaster and tried to murder Cal before his Master cut him down. the clones have betrayed us and why, why, why is this happening, WHY DID YOU – and the bleeding anguish of feeling hundreds, no thousands of lights torn apart and snuffed out as his connections to his vode went cold and the ones to his family, the Jedi, went abruptly dark, leaving him alone, alone, so alone.
He’d spent five years wondering why, wondering if there was anything he could’ve done – and knowing, of course, there was nothing. It was inevitable. It was already written. The clones were just another bit player in the rigged game they were all trying to play. They were pawns.
Cal’s seen it, how it weighs on them. He’s only met a couple clones since he left Bracca. He’s seen those haunted eyes. Felt them in the Force as pockets of festering guilt and fiery determination to throw their entire being into the Rebllion in some sense of vengeance for those they had lost and had gunned down, as if they had a single iota of control over it. He knows it wasn’t their fault, he thought he’d accepted that, except –
Except the sight of that armor. That vambrace. The blaster in his hands. And suddenly Cal’s that scared little padawan all over again, running for his life with death stepping on his heels.
His eyes burn. He feels a tiny part of himself curl up small in his chest. “You’re not real,” he croaks out – but saying it out loud doesn’t stop the fear. Like it’s a tangible thing, swirling around him. He can feel an other-worldly presence against his shields, his rotten, flimsy shields, and he’s helpless to it.
Bunker is dead. They’re all dead.
But something whispers, he’s real and he’s here and he hates you so, so much and against everything, he believes it. He believes it and it hurts like a lightsaber to the chest.
there he is! shoot to kill!
“Stop!” he demands, cracking and breaking along fault lines. “You’re not real! Get out of my head!” The Force shouts a warning he hears too late. He doesn’t get the chance to flinch before the creature leaps at him. It slams him back against the tank. Glass shatters, slicing the back of his head. Cal throws up his hands, shoving against its helmet, wrapping the other around the vambrace and –
There’s no gentle echo. No memories of painting it. Of sitting shoulder to shoulder with his brother long into the night cycle, both of them found by Katt in the morning fast asleep, Cal using Bunker’s thigh as a pillow with a brush dipping from his lax hand, and clone draped over him like the galaxy’s bulkiest, pointiest blanket.
All there is – Cal’s mouth opens in a soundless shriek as a thousand voices wail at once, coalescing into a single drone of pain and fear and save me, save me, please. Souls. So many souls. Stretching far, far back, beyond decades, beyond centuries, timeless, eternal, never enough, never full, hungryhungryhungry, waitedwaitedsolong. The demon, fished out the Dark time after time as a weapon, set loose to feed on fear, on terror, on despair, sink your teeth into the jugular and take, take, take. Delicious. So delicious. Then, all alone. For too long. Not enough. It wants more. Always wants more. It wants to FEASTFEASTFEAST again. It can sense the souls outside this facility, on this planet, in this system, in this galaxy. And it will have them. It wants. It wants – wantmorewantmorewantmore.
givememoregivememoremoremore
Inside it, Cal can feel them, a dim collection of awareness of fresh souls who have yet to be rend apart like the others, they reach out for Cal, screaming for him to leave, leave, leave us, save yourself, save us, save us, please tripping contradictions, torn between wanting to be freed from this hell and wanting to spare even a single person from it.
It grabs his face, fingers digging cruelly into his skin. There’s a laugh, something harsh and warped compared to Bunker’s, but Cal shudders anyway because it still sounds like him. He tries to jerk away, but the hand just grips tighter, pressing him against the tank, spine bending in half, did you know, if you’d let us hunt you down first, Tapal would still be alive?
take him out! then we go after Tapal!
Cal gasps his denial, scrabbling at the bucket for leverage, anything to get this thing off him. He hates that it sounds so much like Bunker. It doesn’t matter that the echoes aren’t there, that there’s no familiar thrum in the Force, steady and soft and firm and green like newly sprouted plants, like turned soil under your feet. His thoughts aren’t making any sense. None of this is making sense anymore. This is Bunker, his brain says. And what he’s saying, is the truth, and he tries to fight it, but his thoughts clash against the foreign presence worming between his shields and he wonders what he’s supposed to be fighting against.
“You killed us all,” he warbles. “It didn’t matter. We were all dead in the end.”
you were weak, and Cal can’t deny that, not right now. It doesn’t matter that Master Tapal told him otherwise, told him he was proud of Cal, that he went through all those trials and came out a Knight with his own kyber, his own path, because right here, right now, all he knows, is that he is weak. In the Mind. In the Spirit. In the Flesh. He sobs tightly as the demon laughs.
And as the demon touches Cal, its smoky essence begins to invade his body just as it did Zao-Mosch. Cal feels himself growing ice-cold, feels his limbs stiffen. His mind starts to collapse under the psychic onslaught as his shields give way completely and suddenly – it’s all burning. He screams so loud his voice gives out, scraping his throat raw.
There are so many slow ways to die – and this is the worst of them.
It could do it faster. It has killed faster. Slamming into beings and taking their entire self into its abyss in the blink of an eye. But this, it’s savoring its first meal in decades, flooding Cal’s body and tearing him apart piece by piece.
He can’t even fight back. Everything goes hazy around him as his soul folds in on itself in an attempt to protect him from the hungry maw. The Force won’t, can’t, won’t, can’t answer his call. He fumbles for his ‘saber but his hands are trapped, numb, not even there, does he even have hands anymore? Everything is going dark, weightless, untethered, Cal feels himself sinking rapidly.
And then, without warning, a light.
The demon screeches, and wrenches away from Cal. He blinks in shock as a bright white light beams through the doors and he hears, hears a distant and familiar klaxon piercing the veil. BD-1, he realizes, relief making him feel lightheaded. The droid is calling to him, worried and desperate, and Cal staggers in his direction. The demon wails, smoking where light touches it even through the armor – armor that’s not real, it’s a figment, a projection. None of this is real, and Cal latches onto that thought as he runs towards the light, stumbling drunkenly.
Hands grab at his poncho, trying to yank him back. The light never seems to get closer, the space between them stretching eons. But Cal pushes through, he runs and runs, and finally bursts through the doors, shoulder catching in the edge so hard he nearly spins in place. And – there’s BD, sliced into the only active terminal, pulling power from it to increase the intensity of his high-beam. That wasn’t an illusion. Wasn’t a false hope. The droid beeps shrilly at the sight of him, relieved and fearful, wondering where he went, he completely disappeared off his sensors!
Cal tells him there’s no time and pulls out his lightsaber, igniting both ends, adrenaline and clarity make the golden light blaze gloriously and he only thinks about it for half a second before he pulls out Zao-Mosch’s ‘saber as well. The dual colors, gold and violet, are pretty, he notes absently then shakes his head. Focus.
“We need to go now,” he says. BD bwoops! at him very, very loudly. “I know! I know! It’s not my fault. I’ll explain later. Come on.”
Smoke billows from the door, searching, seeking, as BD pulls his scomp link from the terminal, moving as fast as possible but also so terribly slow. Cal bounces on his toes, and the moment BD clings to his shoulder, he’s running again. He doesn’t want to get close. He can’t afford to get close again. He doesn’t think he’ll manage to fight through a second time – didn’t even fight it a first time, just…felt himself falling away.
BD calls out directions from his back, not bothering to project the map for him, it’ll just get in the way. Cal listens, blindly trustful. His lungs are crying for air, and his legs burning. The combination of the three lights, even if BD’s has grown dimmer now that he’s no longer sliced into a generator, seems to protect them well enough from the seeping, creeping darkness. His own ‘saber answers his plead with an intensity he didn’t expect. Zao-Mosch’s isn’t as bright, it’s sad and thin, but the kyber seems to be responding to the same plead, recognizing, somehow, that Cal is a Jedi in need of help.
The demon screams and Cal keeps running as he gasps for air. The facility is dark all around him and he has to rely on BD to tell him when to climb and when to jump. He only knows that they’re going up. He only knows that – he can’t keep this up for much longer. He’s slowing down. A combination of his injuries and the adrenaline no longer being enough. Blood slicks down the back of his neck. He can’t feel his feet or his hands, or his legs or his arms, his heart is too fast, his lungs too tight. He trips over a door lip and almost doesn’t get back up again, but he struggles to his feet, and takes the offered stim from BD.
It helps, but only barely.
His mind is a ragged, terrible mess. Bunker’s voice calling to him. The demon pushing hungryhungryhungry at him so hard his own stomach seems to grumble. The wail of the padawan bead, resonating with the lightsaber in his hand, save me, master, please, you promised and I failed you, I failed you, I’m so sorry clashing together in painful song.
Cal can’t take much more of this.
And then he hears it, “Cal!”
Oh, stars. He nearly bursts into tears. Cere’s voice. Her presence is strong and unmoving in the Force, an anchor in a stormy sea. There’s a folded, tucked away hum of concern thrumming on their bond, and that he can even feel it means she’s terrified, but not because of a demon, but because of him, for him.
Which means she’s real.
Merrin is a burning spot of emerald next to her, her own concern not nearly as hidden. He uses it as a guiding light out of the dark, only needing BD to tell him when to jump. He hears them calling for him, getting louder and louder. Almost there. He’s almost there.
He can make it.
A hand grabs his ankle and yanks.
Cal goes down hard, crying out in surprise. His chin clips the ground, smashing his teeth together. Blood floods his mouth, warm and coppery, and chokes. Both ‘sabers fly from his hands, skittering across the ground and out of reach. BD screeches and turns to look, electricity buzzing and ready to zap whatever the kark grabbed Cal, but the droid sees nothing. His optics whirl and click, work overtime to peer through the darkness, but there’s nothing there, just an expanse of blankness he can’t read. Yet, Cal doesn’t get up, he kicks the air and shouts again like he’s in pain.
Bunker, helmet nowhere to be seen, eyes alight with an otherworldly glow, claws at Cal’s legs, using them to pull himself up his body to get into his face. Blood dribbles from his mouth, dark and gory. Cal calls his lightsaber to him and raises it, chest heaving, eyes wild, the golden light shining bright over the two of them. Bunker looks at him to the ‘saber then back, and smiles, blood on his teeth.
are you going to strike me down, J e d i ? he asks, the words whispering like a frozen wind battering his mind cold. Cal shudders when Bunker’s expression morphs into something hurting and scared. are you…going to kill me, Cal? your brother? Bunker’s mouth stretches from side to side, a smile too wide with too many teeth. hm, Cal’ika?
“Don’t call me that,” he chokes out. “You’re not – .”
I’m not what? are you sure? No. He isn’t. How can he be when he’s like this, broken and shattered and staring his brother in the eyes with a lightsaber ready to lob his head off. Ca’s already watched him die once, can he do it again and have it be by his hand this time? Bunker reaches out for him, fingers ghosting over his cheek. don’t fight it anymore. come on. let me in. letmeoutletmefeast.
“N-no.”
yes. yesyesyesyes.
He was right. He was never going to be able to fight it a second time.
there we go. perfectperfectwillfeastforevernomorewaiting
The silence rings, dark, abyssal silence that echoes in a thunder in his ears all the way down to his bones. He drowns. There’s ice in his veins. A stiffness to his limbs. Smoke fills his lungs and spreads and, plucks on his nerves like a hallikset, threading between his muscles, pulling on his strings. Cal’s hand – lifts up and he watches it uncomprehendingly.
He’s not the one in control.
Oh.
Tears leak from the corner of his eyes, cutting clean lines of skin at his temples, pooling in his ears uncomfortably. That’s all he’s allowed to do as the demon plays puppeteer. BD tries to sooth him, unable to see what’s truly happening, but it does nothing but make it worse. It would be easier if the demon just consumed him like the rest of them, not, not this, please anything but this. He’d been so close. Cere and Merrin are only a few meters away, just a few meters from rescue, safety was just in reach. And now, now the demon has a meat puppet that can survive the sunlight, it has a way off this planet and someone powerful enough in the Force to help it along. Cal wants to die instead of living like that. He wants to –
“No you DON’T!”
The Force ripples and heaves, throwing Bunker off him and kicking up a dust storm. The demon’s essence tears out of him where it’d started burrowing in so deeply, like someone took a fistful of his nerves and ripped them right out. Cal finally gets to shriek in pain, writhing in place as acid seems to flood under his skin. Merrin appears above him, hands fluttering around his head like she’s not sure where it’s safe to touch. Green crackles and sparks around her, flickers of warmth against his cold skin. Cere stands between them and the demon, Zao-Mosch’s lightsaber held up protectively as Bunker – not-Bunker – climbs to his, its feet.
Cal’s eyes roll wildly in their sockets, his brain turned to mush. “Don’t, don’t let it touch you,” he gasps, not knowing if Cere can hear him but needing to warn her anyway. “Don’t…Don’t….”
Merrin cups his face gently, tilts his head back so they’re eye to eye. He shakily reaches up to wrap a weak hand around her wrist. She’s real, under his touch. Stars Above, she’s blessedly real. The synthleather bracer, one of a pair they picked up on an outpost when they got her a combat staff as well, whispers happy memories, laughter, teasing, a warmth in her chest replacing the cold hollowed out part of her she thought she’d never fill again, but looking at these people who welcomed her onto their ship, opened their arms for her to fall into, it could be a home, it could be home. He sobs brokenly, relishing in the first real piece of comfort he’s received in what feels like forever. She shushes him not unkindly, dragging her thumbs across his cheeks, smearing dust and tears.
“We are here,” she murmurs. “You are safe, Cal.”
“Can you feel it?” he mumbles, squeezing her wrist. Please, can you feel it? I’m not crazy, is it actually here?
Merrin nods even though she doesn’t look, keeping her eyes on him. “Yes, I can feel it. It is a terrible darkness.” Cal laughs wetly. “Can you stand?”
“If you help me.” And she does, bearing most of his weight when his legs refuse to cooperate. She takes up his lightsaber as they go and presents it to him somberly. He takes it gratefully and ignites a single blade. “Cere, we have to go.” His voice is a barely there wretched thing, but she acknowledges him all the same.
Cere shoves the demon further into the shadows, protectiveness and concern for Cal fueling her connection to the Force, and backs up slowly, keeping her borrowed blade up in anticipation. Cal snags the hem of her vest, Merrin’s arm around his waist, and tugs her along as the Nightsister shuffles them towards their way out. The demon cackles. Cal shudders, the only one who can hear it.
little J e d i, where are you going? Cal trips at the forceful shove against his flimsi-made shields. you may leave this place, but I will always be with you now. can you trust that you’re yourself? can you trust you won’t turn against them, that I’m not there with you, step-by-step, dogging your shadows? He clutches his head, whimpering. Merrin calls his name. BD beeps loudly in his ear. don’t you know this is i n e v i t a b l e? even if I have to go through your friends first, you will let me feastfeastfeast on the greater galaxy. you will feedFEEDFEEDME.
Cal realizes what’s happening a split second before it does. He shoves Cere down with the Force, roaring “GET DOWN,” and wrenches away from Merrin just as the demon dissolves into a cloud of writhing, twisting smoke and shoots towards them at breakneck speeds. Not even the light of their ‘sabers are enough to deter it now, notagainnotagainNOTAGAIN NOT AGAIN. Cal grits his teeth against the onslaught of Dark power surging through his mind and agrees grimly, not again.
There’s a single, mindless thought in his head now. One of protect, protect, protect them. He gave up, when it was just him, but he can’t give up now that it’s them. He can’t let them die. Not like this.
And so, he shoves them away and throws himself at the demon, head on, heedless of them crying out his name. He lets the Force guide him as he sweeps his golden blade up and through the smoke, catching something solid and wholly physical. He smiles, all bared teeth and blood and threat, because how dare this thing invade his mind, threaten his family, threaten the galaxy, and the demon just laughslaughslaughs at him. With a crack of thunder, his second blade ignites, and he detaches it to carve through the smoke again, beautiful and elegant in the darkness.
The creature –
dies without an audible sound, yet the psychic scream that echoes and re-echoes in Cal’s mind will stay with him until he dies.
It cracks through his head, wreaking havoc on an already ravaged mind, and he screams in that monster’s place, giving voice to its rage and pathetically unceremonious death. The scream drags out, turning raw and broken, until there’s no sound and no air, and Cal collapses back, halfway to blackout unconsciousness. Cere and Merrin rush to catch him before he hits the ground.
He grins at them, delirious and only half aware of it. “I hate this place,” he slurs out. Merrin chokes on her laugh. Cere rests her palm on his forehead, head bowed, her shoulders are shaking in a way it’s hard to tell if its laughter or tears, but Cal clumsily pats her arm comfortingly. “Can we go home now?”
They don’t get a chance to respond before he finally passes out, but that’s okay, Cal knows the answer anyway.
—
Cal jerks to consciousness but not coherency on the Mantis, on his feet and slumped against Merrin. He blinks into her shoulder, nose squashed painfully, and wonders if she’s going to be mad at him for all the dust he’s leaving behind on her clothes. Probably not, he decides, closing his eyes again. They’re walking. Well, he’s shuffling, barely able to pick his feet up, but they’re moving towards the ‘fresher, probably to fix aforementioned dust problem. That’d be nice. It’s all gritty and gross and he’s got blood on his face too.
Cere and Greez talking loudly behind them. The pilot is insisting they leave right now, this place is a hellhole, and Cere doesn’t seem to be disagreeing, but Cal disagrees. It hits him sharply – they can’t leave yet, Cal realizes. He doesn’t fully understand why. It’s the Force that hums around him that convinces him, though, stay-stay-stay, and he knows that’s important. He tries to say that out loud. It comes out slurred and wheezing, his throat protesting vehemently, torn raw from all this screaming.
Abruptly, they stop moving and he clings to Merrin’s waist to keep from swaying.
“Cal?” Cere touches his face, tilting it away from the comfort of Merrin’s shoulder. He squints at her, blinking rapidly in the dim light of the Mantis that seems so much brighter that it should be. “Hey there. You’re okay. We’ll get you patched up and then you can rest. It’s over.”
His lips crack when he parts them. “C-can’t leave,” he murmurs. Her thumb brushes under his eye. It feels nice. He sighs, leaning into it as much as he can without letting go of Merrin. His shields are so shot right now he can feel every echo from her clothes, but they’re pleasant ones so far, of exploration and delighted discovery with the thrill of battle and the adrenaline of pulling death-defying stunts right alongside Cal. He doesn’t want to lose that. “D-don’t leave,” he tries to tell Greez, but he doesn’t know if the latero can hear him. “Things – I have to do things. There’s things,” he insists.
Cere looks confused and unsure, but something on his face, in the Force, must be convincing because she nods despite it all. Cal smiles gratefully and it hurts a little, then lets them direct him to the ‘fresher.
His hands are shaking too much, so Merrin pulls off his poncho and helps him unbuckle his new(ish) vest – it’s not his rigger vest from Bracca, but something he picked up not long after Nur when he realized no amount of skill would repair the lightsaber-made hole in the synthleather.
The ‘fresher is too small for three bodies and droid, especially a body that can barely function, but they manage to strip him down to his underclothes without much trouble. Cal doesn’t have enough energy to be embarrassed, at least the important bits are covered.
They clean him up the best they can. Streaks of dust get left behind, sure, but in the end the tear tracks are gone, his chin and mouth wiped clean of blood. All that’s left are tear-swollen eyes and the ghastly imprint of finger marks pressed black and blue into his face.
Merrin pauses at the sight. Cal’s face cradled in her hand, his eyes half-lidded and looking up at them with a dazed, bleary expression. Somehow, the bruises are worse than any of the other awful scenarios she’d been coming up with when the time ticked past two hours, and they still hadn’t heard anything from him.
She wipes a damp cloth over his nose then sets it aside to cup his face in both hands. He shivers, closing his eyes all the way, putting more of his weight into her care. “Come, let us get you horizontal before you crack your head open on the sink.” He huffs a near-silent laugh, but she smiles in victory anyway.
It takes time before they find a pair of sleep clothes that don’t make his expression go all pinched, but eventually Cere finds something newer and not as soaked in his own nightmares and hurts. When they try to direct him to the engine room, he balks, digging his heels in with surprising strength. Cere frowns, feeling a thrum of anxiety and fear through their bond.
“Cal, what’s wrong?” she asks soothingly. He’s not fully aware, barely even partially aware, but he droops in her direction. She catches him with a small oof! and wraps her arms around him carefully. Merrin hides a small, fond smile behind her hand.
“Don’t wanna be alone,” he mumbles so, so quietly into her shoulder. He’s getting too tall.
Cere rubs a hand up and down his spine. “Okay,” she says simply then they’re shuffling past the kitchenette where Greez is stress cooking something that smells warm and hearty, to the lounge room.
He immediately stretches out on the couch, BD jumping on the back as a stalwart guardian. Merrin sits next to him, and he shifts until her thigh is under his head. She stiffens in surprise, but relaxes just as quickly, resting a hand on his shoulder. “Istime,” she orders softly in Dathomiri. Cal doesn’t fight it as her magick lulls him to sleep.
—
There are voices in his dreams.
In the waking world, his brows furrow and his expression pinches. Cere is keeping watch this time and she rests her palm on his forehead when she notices, soothing the flicker of fear away. His expression eases and she smiles, but there are still voices in his dreams.
“Thank you,” one of them says. Cal blinks and the dream sharpens into a kaleidoscope of brilliant, bright colors. A far cry from that facility. A ve’aerah stands before him – hare-like ears, long and lopped, covered in brown fur, pierced with golden hoops. They wear traditional Jedi robes; a familiar lightsaber hangs from their hip. “I’m sorry you had to suffer so brutally but thank you for freeing us.”
They wrap their arm around someone who hadn’t been there a second ago, a young human girl with a padawan braid decorated with beads. A thousand more figures, blurry and indistinct, crowd behind them, stretching so far back they fade into the distance. But for all that he can’t see their faces, their gratefulness, their joy, swells and blooms in the Force, like a balm against a burn. He basks in it like a stowaway bogling.
Master Zao-Mosch moves to stand in front of him, looking down with kind eyes, before they sit in meditation, legs crossed, hands on their knees, and Cal mirrors them, mildly uncomfortable. He hasn’t had the chance to sit in the classical meditation pose in what feels like forever.
They smile knowingly and offers their hands to him. “Come,” they say. Their padawan sits next to them. The other figures dissolve into lights and drift away to the sky like millions of stars. “I will help you rebuild before we go.”
He places his hands in theirs. “Thank you.”
They squeeze his hands. “Please don’t. It’s the least I can do.”
Cal has nothing to say to that because he knows it’ll just be shot down. Instead, he stares at their clasped hands and asks, “Where would you like to finally rest?”
Zao-Mosch’s expression turns to one of awe and fondness, directed at him. And he can’t take it. He shifts uncomfortably and looks to the padawan instead when she leans against her Master’s side with a thoughtful hum.
“Somewhere sunny,” she says, “and green, with an always open sky. No more shadows.”
He grins. “I can do that.”
This place isn’t nearly as terrifying anymore, but Cal is still wary about what he touches.
Merrin trails behind him silently, staff in hand just in case. There’s a galaxy-sized difference between then and now, no miasma of terror and dread, no oppressive force making this place a bubble of hell. No presence in his head making his emotions run wild and too big. He can feel Cere plucking at their bond all the way from the emergency hatch, no longer blocked by the Darkness soaking through every centimeter of this facility. BD whistles and clicks and keeps his high-beams on, pulling power from the extra battery pack he insisted Cal add to his bag. Cal hadn’t argued even the slightest.
“How much further?”
He checks BD’s map, added to and expanded on while Cal was sleeping. “Not much.” She huffs. “If you stop asking, it might go faster.”
“If you walked faster, it might go faster,” she shoots back. He laughs, not as loud as he normally would – his throat is still too tender for that, making his voice all raspy and wheezing at times, it’s only been a single cycle after all – but she still counts it as a win. He throws a vulgar gesture over his shoulder, and she hisses an insult in Huttese that makes him start critiquing her accent, and oh, now it’s on.
They bicker back and forth the rest of the way, successfully derailing Cal’s anxiety until they come up to the first set of transparisteel cells. He stares into the dingy space, breathing slowly. Even with the siqsa’s death, this place is still so full of echoes. It had only heightened their effects. Without it, they’ve dimmed to something more bearable. His shields are even stronger now thanks to Zao-Mosch’s help, but that doesn’t stop him from shuddering at the massive amounts of emotions radiating from all around him. This place is a tragedy beyond words. Merrin knocks shoulders with him and doesn’t move, a solid pillar of support.
“Alright?” she asks. He’s silent. “We can wait until tomorrow. They would understand.”
Cal blinks rapidly, shaking his head before he switches to a nod. “N-no. No, I’m alright. Let’s do this.”
They work together, opening the cells and gathering the personal items left behind. Some cells don’t have any even though Cal finds sticky, hurting echoes left behind. He’s careful around those – even debates for a full minute before he finally calls for Merrin to stand guard. Some are of final moments in agony and terror, and some are just…waiting. Waiting and waiting and waiting, hoping for the end because this waiting is almost worse.
He doesn’t have to do this. The originators of those memories won’t find relief or comfort from his actions. They’re long dead and long gone, even more so now one with the Force, but he can’t not, it’s not in his nature.
After most of the cells in the corridors he hadn’t originally gone down are empty, Cal seeks out the one with the loth-cat plushie and braces himself before picking it up. And oh, he hadn’t expected her to be so young. A child yes. But not… He curls the plushie to his chest and just…tries not to cry too loudly for her – and must fail almost immediately because Merrin appears out of nowhere and pulls him into a bone-crushing hug, trapping the loth-cat between them.
Cal doesn’t understand how people can be so cruel and depraved, and he never will.
“Last one?” Merrin asks. He nods and keeps the plushie cradled close, not putting it in his bag. She inspects his expression for something and must find it because she nods sharply and gently pushes him out of the cell. “Then we go. I grow tired of this place. It smells.”
He doesn’t laugh this time, but the corner of his mouth quirks up in what could be a smile, so she counts it.
—
“Find somewhere?” Cere asks as she nudges Cal’s elbow with a mug of tea. He startles, smashing his hand on the holotable’s controls and switching the map to the neighboring system. She switches it back, eyebrow raised. She hadn’t exactly been quiet when making tea. There’s shadows under his eyes and his hair is sticking up like he’s been running his hands through it obsessively.
Cal winces and runs a hand through his hair – case in point – before he takes the mug, sipping it slowly. He wrinkles his nose at the taste of bactade just barely covered by the flavorful tea and sweetener, but he keeps drinking it as the pain in his throat fades just a little more.
“Can’t decide,” he finally admits, voice raspy. Even with the copious amounts of bactade – chalky and thick and barely covered truly means barely covered. There’s nothing in the universe that will make bactade actually palpable – his voice will be like that for a long, long time. He gestures to the map projection. “Sunny, with an always open sky, and a lot of greenery. There aren’t really any planets that have all that.”
Cere hums thoughtfully. “What would you have wanted?”
He’s quiet for a long moment, staring at the contents of his mug. It’s some bright red fruit tea made cloudy. It does a pretty decent job at making him not gag at the bactade. Softly, he says, “It rained a lot, on Bracca. Sometimes it rained so much I thought I’d never see the sun again. But on Bogano, I realized.” He takes a deep breath that hitches, from pain or emotion she can’t tell. “I realized it wasn’t so much the sun as it was the g-grass, the trees, all that flora I hadn’t seen properly in five…six years, we were stationed over Bracca for a year with no leave, so six years.” He shrugs, the tips of his ears turning pink. “It’s not, it’s not the same as what they went through, but…I think as long as the sun shines and there’s enough green, they’ll be okay with it. No more shadows.”
“No more shadows,” Cere echoes. She watches him, letting her pride grow bigger than herself so it feeds into the Force. Cal ducks his head when he feels it, the pink of his ears spreading to his cheeks. She rests her hand on his arm. “I’m proud of you, Cal.”
His eyes flicker in her direction, wet and glimmering in the glow of the ‘table, before he clears his throat and pulls up his chosen planet. He zooms in, pointing at a particular spot on the map. “Kozama’uka. The tallest peaks on the entire planet are right there. It’ll keep them close to the sun and give them a whole lotta green. It’s a rainforest biome, so it’ll rain a lot, but I hear it can be really beautiful when it does. And when the sun comes out, there’s rainbows and everything is just so…so green.”
Cere smiles fondly as the young Jedi gets more and more animated throughout his description. “It sounds perfect, Cal.”
—
The cold blueness of hyperspace makes the Mantis’s interior feel unwelcoming.
Greez had set up warmer colored lights along the ship’s ceiling to combat it a long time ago, but it doesn’t seem to be helping right now, a weird feeling permeating the air. It woke him up from strange dreams and now he’s making his way to the cockpit to check on their timetable, having given up on sleep. He nearly jumps out of his skin at the lump in the co-pilot’s seat, until the bogling chitters at him like it’s…chastising him? What? He rubs his eyes and stares, yep, no, that’s definitely a bogling glare. What gives? They’re supposed to have a mutual respect now. He feeds it under the table, and it stays out of the vents and his quarters. Why is it mad at him?
Oh, right, lump.
Cal sits curled up in the seat, his gangly form squished into an uncomfortable looking position. He’s using one of his ponchos as a blanket – it’s one of those that’s too big for him, but he likes it enough Greez finds him using it as a blanket or a bundled-up pillow more often than not.
The kids murmurs something and shifts, the poncho slipping off his shoulders. Greez goes to fix it when he suddenly whimpers out, “Bunker, no!” and jerks violently, limbs flailing. He lands on the floor with a loud thud and a sharp gasp, and stays there, hunched over his lap, hands in his hair, disturbingly quiet.
The bogling bolted at the first shout, but it didn’t go far, cowering under the side seat Merrin normally sits in. Greez ignores it for now to kneel at Cal’s side, one hand hovering awkwardly over the kid’s shoulder.
“You’re on the Mantis,” Greez says lowly. “Cal, you’re okay. It’s just you, me, and that disgusting bog rat.”
Cal laughs wetly. “You like it, don’t lie,” he rasps out. “Can’t hide from me. I’ve seen you feed it.”
Greez will never admit it out loud. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve been trying to kick it off on every planet we’ve been on.”
His laugh is a little less wet this time. He wipes his face roughly and sighs. “Sorry for waking you.”
It takes a second for Greez to realize what he means, and then it clicks. Weird feeling. He might not be Force-sensitive, or whatever it is, but this ragtag group of menaces is his family and apparently that gives him a certain “in” when it comes to the freaky Jedi stuff.
“Kid, you can wake me up any time.” Greez helps him back into the co-pilot seat and throws his poncho over him with a flourish that makes him smile. “You wanna tell me why the cockpit and not my prized potoli-weave couches?”
“…It was dark,” Cal admits in a hushed voice. Greez bets if he could see his face properly, he’d see a blush. “I got…I got scared.”
“There’s lights in the lounge,” Greez reminds him. “I betcha it’s more comfortable too.”
“Yeah, but the ‘bog rat’ doesn’t join me in the lounge.” Cal taps the dash and suddenly a mass of fur and too long legs jumps up and subjects itself to the awful privilege of getting scritches. “The company is nice.”
Greez looks at the kid. The scars on his face are put in sharp relief in the light of hyperspace. The shadows just make the bags under his eyes look even worse. He’s too damn young. Him and Merrin both. This is not what he signed up for when Cere found him, but he supposes he wouldn’t trade it for anything in this damn galaxy.
Cal gives him a side-eyed glance. “I wouldn’t mind more company,” he says quietly. “I don’t know if I’m going back to sleep.”
He sighs deeply and pats Cal’s knee. “Let me put on some caf first.”
—
Kozama’uka is beautiful, Cal decides.
The soil is wet and dark under his hands. His knees are soaked and he’s probably going to have dirt stuck under his nails for a while after this, but he doesn’t regret turning away Greez’s offer of a shovel. He pulls the dirt over the meeko-te’s jewelry set and pats it down before sitting back on his heels. The waterfall next to them is thunderous, and the mist coming off the edge sends up a beautiful rainbow that Merrin seems enamored with, BD on her shoulder and taking holofilms for later. There aren’t many trees up here, putting this spot under more or less constant sunlight. He smiles and hopes they like it.
“Almost done?” He looks back, shielding his eyes against the sun, to see Cere smiling at him. Her knees are just as dirty, but she chose to wear gloves instead. He…probably should’ve worn gloves, he thinks, especially when Cere laughs and says, “You’re getting soil all over your face.”
He wipes it away and just smears it around instead. Cal shrugs helplessly, unable to stop smiling back. “It’ll wash off. And almost. I just have these left.” He pulls out the padawan bead and Zao-Mosch’s lightsaber. “Help me?”
Cere kneels down next to him and starts digging as he stares at the two items. They both hum with echoes still, holding a lifetime’s worth of memories and feelings that he’s never going to be able to experience them all. But he’s felt some of them, the important ones. Not just of their fear and their capture and their deaths, but the joy of her braiding ceremony and her first successful diplomatic trip, the pride in passing their own Trials and in their padawan. Happy memories. He mediated and pulled at least one from every single item they found in that facility, refusing to let any of their deaths be the last thing anyone experienced.
And now they’re laid to rest, under the sun and surrounded by colors.
Cere’s hand appears in his vision, resting over the lightsaber. He glances up, blinking through blurring vision. He can feel them even now, look, look! it’s a candledroid, I think I can make it change colors. if I can, can I keep it? and I vow to pass on your teachings, just as you did to me, I will make you proud (and a flush of pride as their master replies, you already have).
“They didn’t have to die,” he whispers.
“No, they didn’t,” Cere replies solemnly. “It’s a tragedy, but one you’ve already prevented from happening to another. And here you are, giving them the peaceful rest they deserve. There’s comfort in that, isn’t there?”
He nods silently and puts the bead and the lightsaber together into the ground. Even if they were separated in the last days of living, in death Master and Padawan will never be apart again.
Cere wraps her arm around him after he finishes burying the objects and tugs him close until he’s practically melded to her side. He rests his head on her shoulder and watches Greez try to convince Merrin to climb down from some precarious boulder she found. BD-1 clings to her back, shrieking happily.
On the wind, or maybe through the Force, or maybe it’s just Cal’s imagination, but he swears he hears a gentle harmony of voices sing
thank you.